Combat of the Thirty

Combat of the Thirty
Part of Breton War of Succession
Penguilly l'Haridon: Le Combat des Trente
Date 26 March 1351 Location Brittany Result Franco-Breton victory
Belligerents
Kingdom of France House of Blois	Kingdom of England House of Montfort
Commanders and leaders
Jean de Beaumanoir	Robert Bemborough  †
Strength
30 knights and squires	30 knights and squires
Casualties and losses
6 dead	9 dead

The Combat of the Thirty (26 March 1351) (French: Combat des Trente) was an episode in the Breton War of Succession, a war fought to determine who would rule the Duchy of Brittany. It was an arranged fight between picked combatants from both sides of the conflict.

It was fought at a site midway between the Breton castles of Josselin and Ploërmel between thirty champions, knights and squires on each side, in a challenge issued by Jean de Beaumanoir, a captain of Charles of Blois supported by the King of France, to Robert Bemborough, a captain of Jean de Montfort supported by the King of England.

After a hard-fought battle, the Franco-Breton Blois faction emerged victorious. The combat was later celebrated by medieval chroniclers and balladeers as a noble display of the ideals of chivalry. In the words of Jean Froissart, the warriors "held themselves as valiantly on both sides as if they had been all Rolands and Olivers." This idealised account conflicts with a version according to which the combat arose from the mistreatment of the local population by Bemborough.

The Breton War of Succession was a struggle between the House of Montfort and House of Blois for control of the Duchy of Brittany. It came to be absorbed into the larger Hundred Years War between France and England, with England supporting the Montforts and France supporting the Blois family. At the time of the Combat, the war had become stalemated, with each faction controlling strongholds at different locations within Brittany, but occasionally making sorties into one another's territory.

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