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'''Brest''' is a [[French]] naval base and port on the Finisterre peninsula, at the far western end of [[Brittany]], France. It is near the point where the [[English Channel]] becomes the [[Bay of Biscay]] and therefore has had strategic importance since the seventeenth century. (Vessels sailing to and from the Mediterranean and other points south need to pass by Brest to enter the English Channel)

'''Brest''' is a [[French]] naval base and port on the Finisterre peninsula, at the far western end of [[Brittany]], France. It is near therr point where the [[English Channel]] becomes the [[Bay of Biscay]] and therefore has had strategic importance since the seventeenth century. (Vessels sailing to and from the Mediterranean and other points south need to pass by Brest to enter the English Channel)

Brest became a naval base when [[Cardinal Richelieu]] had wooden  wharves built there in 1631. Not much later, “Minister of Marine” Colbert had them replaced with ones of stone, and that great exponent of the art of fortificarrtions, Vauban, had the port fortified during the 1680s. During the eighteenth cenrtury Brest became the site for the French Naval College (École Navale,) the French equivalent of Dartmouth in Britain or Annapolis in the U.S.A.  

Brest became a naval base when [[Cardinal Richelieu]] had wooden  wharves built there in 1631. Not much later, “Minister of Marine” Colbert had them replaced with ones of stone, and that great exponent of the art of fortificarrtions, Vauban, had the port fortified during the 1680s. During the eighteenth cenrtury Brest became the site for the French Naval College (École Navale,) the French equivalent of Dartmouth in Britain or Annapolis in the U.S.A.