It was no doubt during this interval that the captain of the Bretons, Robert de Beaumanoir, grievously wounded and dying of fatigue and thirst, cried out for a drink. “Drink thy blood, Beaumanoir,” said one of his comrades, Geoffrey de Bois, according to some accounts, and Sire de Tinteniac, according to others. From that day those words became the war-cry of the Beaumanoirs. Froissart says nothing of this incident. Let us return to his narrative.
“When they were refreshed, the first to get up again made a sign, and recalled the others. Then the battle recommenced as stoutly as before, and lasted a long while. They had short swords of Bordeaux, tough and sharp, and boar-spears and daggers, and some had axes, and therewith they dealt one another marvellously great dings, and some seized one another by the arms a-struggling, and they struck one another, and spared not. At last the English had the worst of it; Brandebourg, their captain, was slain, with eight of his comrades, and the rest yielded themselves prisoners when they saw that they could no longer defend themselves, for they could not and must not fly. Sir Robert de Beaumanoir and his comrades, who remained alive, took them and carried them off to Castle Josselin as their prisoners; and then admitted them to ransom courteously when they were all cured, for there was none that was not grievously wounded, French as well as English. I saw afterwards, sitting at the table of King Charles of France, a Breton knight who had been in it, Sir Yvon Charnel , and he had a face so carved and cut that he showed full well how good a fight had been fought. The matter was talked of in many places, and some set it down as a very poor, and others as a very swaggering business.”
The most modern and most judicious historian of Brittany, Count Daru, who has left a name as honorable in literature as in the higher administration of the First Empire, says, very truly, in recounting this incident, “It is not quite certain whether this was an act of patriotism or of chivalry.” He might have gone farther, and discovered in this exploit not only the characteristics he points out, but many others besides. Local patriotism, the honor of Brittany, party spirit, the success of John of Montfort or Charles of Blois, the sentiment of gallantry, the glorification of the most beautiful one amongst their lady-loves, and, chiefly, the passion for war amongst all and sundry-- there was something of all this mixed up with the battle of the Thirty, a faithful reflex of the complication and confusion of minds, of morals, and of wants at that forceful period. It is this very variety of the ideas, feelings, interests, motives, and motive tendencies involved in that incident which accounts for the fact that the battle of the Thirty has remained so vividly remembered, and that in 1811 a monument, unpretentious but national, replaced the simple stone at first erected on the field of battle, on the edge of the road from P1o6rmel to Josselin, with this inscription: “To the immortal memory of the battle of the Thirty, gained by Marshal Beaumanoir, on the 26th of March, 1350 (1351).”