Grosmont, the Duke of Lancaster, cousin of the English king, but Bertrand du Guesclin slipped into the city and took over the resistance, which would ultimately be victorious. After nearly a year, Lancaster abandoned the English siege in 1357.
In 1491, the French army of Charles VIII, led by General Louis II de la Trémoille, unsuccessfully attacked Rennes. Brittany having already capitulated elsewhere, Rennes alone still resisted. The defenders of Rennes were determined to resist to the death, but the Duchess Anne of Brittany chose instead to negotiate. By her marriage to Charles VIII, she made Brittany a part of France. Anne jealously guarded Brittany's autonomy, but the duchy was eventually fully merged with the French crown through the marriage of her daughter Claude of France to the French King and the so-called Union of Brittany and France under Claude's son.
In 1720, a big fire destroyed all timber framing houses the northern part of the city. The rebuilding was made of stone, on a grid plan.
Modern era
In 1857, the Rennes train station was built, which gradually led to the southward sprawl of the town. In 1899, Alfred Dreyfus' second trial in Rennes caused a national commotion.
During World War II, Rennes suffered heavy damage from just three German aircraft which hit an ammunition train parked alongside French and English troop trains and near a refugee train on the yard: 1,000 died. The next day, 18 June 1940, German troops entered the city. Later, Rennes endured heavy bombings by the US and Royal Air Forces in March and May 1943, and again in June 1944, causing hundreds of deaths. Rennes contained a German transit POW camp and a POW hospital which contained many of the paratroopers captured on D-Day. Patton's army freed the capital of Brittany on 4 August, as retreating German troops blew up the bridges behind them, adding further damage. About 50,000 German prisoners were kept in four camps, in a city of only
