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Nothing definite is known of Brest till about 1240, when it was ceded by a count of Léon to John I., duke of Brittany. In 1342 John of Montfort gave it up to the English, and it did not finally leave their hands till 1397. Its medieval importance was great enough to give rise to the saying, "He is not duke of Brittany who is not lord of Brest." By the marriage of Francis I. with Claude, daughter of Anne of Brittany, Brest with the rest of the duchy definitely passed to the French crown. The advantages of the situation for a seaport town were first recognized by Richelieu, who in 1631 constructed a harbour with wooden wharves, which soon became a station of the French navy. Colbert changed the wooden wharves for masonry and otherwise improved the post, and Vauban's fortifications followed in 1680-1688. During the 18th century the fortifications and the naval importance of the town continued to develop. In 1694 an English squadron under John, 3rd Lord Berkeley, was miserably defeated in attempting a landing; but in 1794, during the revolutionary war, the French fleet, under Villaret de Joyeuse, was as thoroughly beaten in the same place by the English admiral Howe.
BREST-LITOVSK (Polish Brzesc-Litevski; and in the Chron. Berestie and Berestov), a strongly fortified town of Russia, in the government of Grodno, 137 m. by rail S. from the city of Grodno, in 52° 5? N. lat. and 23° 39? E. long., at the junction of the navigable river Mukhovets with the Bug, and at the intersection of railways from Warsaw, Kiev, Moscow and East Prussia. Pop. (1867) 22,493; (1901) 42,812, of whom more than one-half were Jews. It contains a Jewish synagogue, which was regarded in the 16th century as the first in Europe, and is the seat of an Armenian and of a Greek Catholic bishop; the former has authority over the Armenians throughout the whole country. The town carries on an extensive trade in grain, flax, hemp, wood, tar and leather. First mentioned in the beginning of the 11th century, Brest-Litovsk was in 1241 laid waste by the Mongols and was not rebuilt till 1275; its suburbs were burned by the Teutonic Knights in 1379; and in the end of the 15th century the whole town met a similar fate at the hands of the khan of the Crimea. In the reign of the Polish king Sigismund III. diets were held there; and in 1594 and 1596 it was the meeting-place of two remarkable councils of the bishops of western Russia. In 1657, and again in 1706, the town was captured by the Swedes; in 1794 it was the scene of Suvarov's victory over the Polish general Sierakowski; in 1795 it was added to the Russian empire. The Brest-Litovsk or King's canal (50 m. long), utilizing the Mukhovets-Bug rivers, forms a link in the waterways that connect the Dnieper with the Vistula.
