by documents.  One Olivier Guinemer gave a receipt in 1306 to the executors of Duke Jean II de Bretagne.  He held a fief under Saint-Sauveur de Dinan, “on which the duke had settled tenants contrary to agreements.”  The executors, to liquidate the estate, had to pay immense sums for “indemnification, restitution and damages,” and took care to “take receipts from all those to whom their commission obliged them to distribute money."[37] The Treaty of Guerande (April 11, 1365), which ended the war for the Breton succession and gave the Duchy to Jean de Montfort, though under the suzerainty of the King of France, is signed by thirty Breton knights, among whom is a Geoffrey Guinemer.  A Mathelin Guinemer, squire, is mentioned in an act received at Bourges in 1418; while in 1464, an Yvon Guynemer, man-at-arms, is promoted to full pay, and he already spells his name with a y.

[Footnote 36:  Catalogue des actes d’Henri I, Roi de France (1031-1060), by Frederic Soehnee, archivist at the National Archives.]

[Footnote 37:  Histoire de Bretagne, by Dom Lobineau (1707), Vol.  I, p. 293. Recherches sur la chevalerie du duche de Bretagne, by A. de Couffon de Kerdellech, Vol.  II (Nantes, Vincent Forest and Emile Grimaud, Printers and Publishers).]

It is somewhat difficult to trace the history of this lesser provincial nobility, engaged sometimes in petty wars, sometimes in the cultivation of their domains.  In a book glorifying the humble service of ancient French society, Gentilshommes Campagnards, M. Pierre de Vaissiere has shown how this race of rural proprietors lived in the closest contact with French agriculture, counseling and defending the peasant, clearing and cultivating their land, and maintaining their families by its produce.  In his Memoires, the famous Retif de la Bretonne paints in the most picturesque manner the patriarchal and authoritative manners of his grandfather who, by virtue of his own unquestioned authority prevented his descendant from leaving his native village and establishing in Paris.  Paris was already exercising its fascination and uprooting the youth of the time.  The Court of Versailles had already weakened the social authority of families still attached to their lands.

[Transcriber’s Note: 

The following typographical errors in the original were corrected: 

batallion (to battalion) Fleugzeg (to Flugzeug) eclaties (to eclatiez) Kamfflieger (to Kampfflieger)]