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4 unusual facts about Belle Île


16th The Queen's Lancers

Shortly after its establishment the regiment saw combat in February 1761 against French forces garrisoning Belle Île.

Alberto Gianni

company got the job to carry out some recovery operations near the island of Belle Île, south of Brest, sending the ship Artiglio with Gianni as head of operations.

John Peter Russell

Russell was a man of means and having married a beautiful Italian, Mariana Antoinetta Matiocco, he settled at Belle Île off the coast of Brittany, where he established an artists' colony.

Octave Penguilly L'Haridon

In 1859 he showed at the Salon a landscape entitled Les Petites mouettes ("Little Gulls") (1858, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes), depicting a bleak rocky inlet on Belle Île.


Richard FitzPatrick, 1st Baron Gowran

In command of the 70-gun HMS Burford, he served under Lord Berkeley in 1696, and in July was detached to make a descent on the Groix, an island near Belle Île, off the west coast of Brittany, from which he brought off thirteen hundred head of cattle, with horses, boats, and small vessels.


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