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The History of Saint-Malo: from Aleth to the Privateer City

Saint-Malo began with a bishop moving house. On 16 August 1146 Pope Eugene III gave back to the bishop of Aleth the church on the rock across the water, where the hermit Aaron had lived, and so cleared the way for him to move his see there. The town that formed around it belonged to the bishop and to his chapter, the college of canons who ran the cathedral. It worked free of them by degrees, governed itself alone from 1590 to 1594, then lived on cod, on the Cadiz trade and on privateering. What you see today behind the ramparts burned in August 1944 and was rebuilt from 1947 onwards.

From Aleth to the rock: the town of the bishop and the canons

Before Saint-Malo there was Aleth. The headland now covered by Saint-Servan was held from the first century BC by the Coriosolites, a Gaulish people of this northern coast, and was ringed around the year 270 with a Roman wall, one stretch of which still stands facing the walled town. Around 538 a churchman from Wales, Maclou, or Malo, came ashore opposite, on the islet where the hermit Aaron was living.

Viking raids in the ninth century emptied the old city, and its people crossed to the rock, which was easier to hold. Jean de Châtillon, bishop of Aleth since 1144, set about moving his see there, but the church of Saint-Malo-de-l'Isle had been signed over in 1108 to the monks of Marmoutier. Pope Lucius II refused at first to hear him. Eugene III confirmed the church's return on 16 August 1146 and imposed perpetual silence on the Benedictines, barring them from ever reopening the claim. The Pouillé de Rennes, the old register of the diocese of Rennes, dates the founding of the town that grew around the new cathedral to about 1152.

The bishop and the chapter, the college of canons attached to the cathedral, shared the lordship of this town born out of a monastery: this was the seigneurie commune, the joint lordship. A concordat of 1219 settled who sat in judgement. While the bishop was in town he held the courts; the moment he had crossed the Pont-l'Évêque on his way out, the chapter held them in his place. The town also lived by the minihy, a right of sanctuary inherited from the monks: whoever took refuge inside it could not be arrested for a killing committed elsewhere.

In 1382 Bishop Josselin de Rohan refused homage to Duke Jean IV: built on Church land, the town answered to the pope and to nobody else. Clement VII signed his rights over to the king of France in 1394, and Saint-Malo became a French enclave inside the duchy of Brittany, at that time a state in its own right under its own duke, until it was handed back to Duke Jean V in 1415. In 1496 the townsmen stopped appearing before the chapter, met instead at the abbey of Saint-Jean and claimed for themselves the right to a town hall. The canons answered with a memorandum in thirty-nine articles setting out their own rights. The edict handed down by Duchess Anne of Brittany in 1513 settled the matter: from then on the assemblies would meet at the town hall, summoned by the governor.

The Saint-Aaron chapel, a granite gable under a small bell turret
The Saint-Aaron chapel, built in 1621, carries the name of the hermit who, in the founding story, lived on the rock of the walled town. Illustration

1590-1594: the republic of Saint-Malo

Three powers shared the town in the sixteenth century: the bishop; the king, through the governor he kept in the castle; and the community of inhabitants, led by its merchants. The third gained ground. Early in the century the inhabitants won the right to levy taxes, at first to keep the ramparts in repair. In 1585 they elected a council of twelve conservateurs, guardians of the town and the castle, charged, in the words of the deed, with providing for whatever the defence of the place required.

The death of Henri III on 2 August 1589 put a Protestant on the French throne, in the last act of the Wars of Religion, a generation of fighting between French Catholics and French Protestants. Saint-Malo would not have him, and the governor, Honorat de Bueil, baron de Fontaines, announced that he would open the gates to Henri IV. At midnight on 11 March 1590 some fifty men led by Michel Frotet de la Bardelière and Jean Pépin de la Bélinaye stormed the castle. The governor fell to an arquebus shot, along with eight of his men. The plot had been laid inside the council itself.

The very next day the town council made arrangements to govern alone until a Catholic king should come to the throne of France. It took defence, justice and trade into its own hands. The word republic is a label historians attached later, not anything proclaimed in 1590: what Saint-Malo had was independence in fact rather than in law. Nor was this a popular uprising. The same merchant families ran the council before and after, which leads the historian Gilles Foucqueron to call it a parliamentary oligarchy. For four and a half years Saint-Malo levied its own taxes and dealt with other powers as one state deals with another.

Henri IV renounced Protestantism on 25 July 1593 and was crowned at Chartres on 27 February 1594, and with that the whole point of the arrangement fell away. A delegation from the town negotiated with the king in April. The édit de réduction, the act that brought a rebel town back under obedience, was signed on 4 October 1594 and returned Saint-Malo to the kingdom without costing it a single one of its liberties: nobody would be prosecuted for anything done since 1590, the council kept its powers, a governor came back to the castle, and the merchants went six years without paying tax. The Parlement of Brittany, the province's sovereign court of law, registered the agreement on 5 December.

Privateering was not piracy

Privateering, la course in French, was a wartime business, legal and supervised; the man who lived by it was le corsaire. The crown issued the shipowner a commission de guerre, better known as a letter of marque, which authorised one named ship, usually for a short spell, to go after the enemies of the state. The privateer had to declare every prize before a court, which upheld the capture or threw it out, and had to treat captured crews as prisoners of war. Taken himself, he was a prisoner of war in his turn. The pirate worked for his own account, in war and in peace alike, and was hanged.

Between 1688, the first days of the War of the League of Augsburg, the Nine Years' War to an English reader, and 1713, the year of the Treaty of Utrecht, the French Ministry of Culture counts close to a thousand privateering ventures fitted out by Saint-Malo alone. André Lespagnol counts nine hundred, with a peak of seventy-five in the single year 1696. For most of these years the enemy was English and Dutch, and those were the ships Saint-Malo hunted. The scale ran from small craft ambushing English coastal traffic to frigates lying in wait for deep-sea merchantmen. From 1695 the king lent warships of his own, and the business moved up a class: la grande course.

It peaked in 1711. The royal treasury being empty, René Duguay-Trouin, born in Saint-Malo in 1673, had his expedition against Rio de Janeiro paid for by a company with a capital of seven hundred thousand livres, the French currency of the day, subscribed by the comte de Toulouse and by merchants of Saint-Malo. The squadron forced the entrance to the bay on 12 September 1711 and drew out of the city a ransom put at four million livres. Duguay-Trouin announced a profit of ninety-two per cent to the shareholders.

On 7 October 1800, in the Bay of Bengal, Robert Surcouf boarded and took the Kent, a ship of twelve hundred tons belonging to the English East India Company, with the Confiance, the weaker of the two in guns and in men. He was twenty-six. He gave up the sea in 1809 and set up as a shipowner. One other name goes round, that of Pierre Porcon de la Barbinais, called the Regulus of Saint-Malo after the Roman consul who went back to his captors rather than break his word. Porcon too, the story runs, returned of his own will to give himself up to the dey of Algiers. It appears for the first time in 1824, in the writings of the abbé Manet, no seventeenth-century text mentions it, and Marcel Emerit disproved it in 1966.

Newfoundland, Cadiz, the South Sea: where the money came from

Privateering was never the town's first source of wealth. Cod was the foundation of everything the town did at sea. It was being dried on the Sillon, the sand bar joining the rock to the mainland, as early as 1519; around 1535 Saint-Malo was fitting out twenty-five ships for Newfoundland, later sixty to a hundred a year, with three to four thousand men signed on for six months at a stretch. The fish sold well beyond Gibraltar, at Civitavecchia from 1571, at Livorno and at Genoa.

That early familiarity with the North American coast is what led the king, François Ier, to pick Jacques Cartier. He sailed from Saint-Malo on 20 April 1534 with two ships of about sixty tons and sixty-one men, and reached Newfoundland in twenty days. On 24 July, at Gaspé, he had a cross bearing the arms of France set up in front of the Iroquoian chief Donnacona, who objected to it. Two further voyages followed, in 1535 and in 1541; neither found the passage to Asia.

The second resource was the Spanish trade. Linen cloth woven at Quintin and Loudéac, inland in Brittany, was exchanged on the Spanish American markets for silver from the mines of Mexico and Peru. Since Spain's imperial monopoly closed the Americas to all but Spaniards, the men of Saint-Malo ran the sea route instead, and the trading houses at Sanlúcar and then at Cadiz after 1600: Magon, Le Fer, Éon, Vincent. André Lespagnol takes this trade, rather than privateering, to be the main foundation of the town's fortune.

The third was short and very large. From 1698, on the initiative of the shipowner Noël Danycan, Saint-Malo crews went to sell directly to the settlers of Chile and Peru: this was the South Sea interlope, illicit trading in waters Madrid had closed to foreigners. They were rounding Cape Horn regularly from 1704-1705 and loading Potosí silver at Arica. Almost all of it happened between 1698 and 1717. The same men set up their own Compagnie des Indes, a Saint-Malo East India company, working from 1708 to 1719 on Pondicherry, Bengal and the coffee of Mocha, until John Law's company took the monopoly away from them. With more than two hundred and thirty slaving voyages fitted out, most of them between 1740 and 1775, Saint-Malo stands fifth among the French ports of the slave trade.

Vauban, Garangeau and the enlargements of the walled town

The work carried out between 1689 and 1695 put the town beyond reach from the sea. In 1691 Vauban, chief military engineer to Louis XIV, appointed Siméon Garangeau engineer-in-chief and director of fortifications for Saint-Malo; Garangeau stayed until his death in 1741. Forts went up out in the water, among them the fort de la Conchée, begun in 1692 on the Quincé rock. The town wall lost its medieval towers, which could not take a cast-iron cannonball, in favour of bastions joined by straight curtain walls. Two Anglo-Dutch squadrons failed in front of the town, in November 1693 and in July 1695.

That left the landward side, and the question of space. Fewer than sixteen hectares inside the walls, and a population the Ministry of Culture puts at more than twenty thousand at the end of the seventeenth century. In 1696 Vauban proposed a wet dock closed off by a lock, so that ships would stop settling on the mud twice a day. Dug out of the marshes, it would have welded the town to the village of Saint-Servan. The hostility of the townspeople brought the scheme down, and it was taken up again only in part in the nineteenth and then the twentieth century.

With no dock, ground was won from the rock instead. The first enlargement opened in 1708: the Fief quarter, with the porte Saint-Vincent. The second began in 1714 to the south, the third in 1721, between the bastion Saint-Louis and the Grand'Porte. A fourth, started in 1737, was never carried through, the golden years being over. The townspeople had not wanted them: more mansions and more tenements to let meant less value in the ones they already owned. Between 1708 and 1742 Garangeau replaced three-quarters of the wall and took the walled town from sixteen to twenty-four hectares.

Fort National at high water, its granite curtain walls set on the rocky foreshore
Fort National, on the rock of l'Islet, built to Vauban's designs. Illustration

August 1944: the ruin and the rebuilding

The Americans entered Brittany on 1 August 1944 and sealed every approach to Saint-Malo on 4 August. Colonel Andreas von Aulock, who commanded the fortress from the tunnels under Aleth, had the population evacuated. The first American shells fell on the walled town on Sunday 6 August, at a time when the garrison inside it came to no more than seventy men.

During the night of 9 to 10 August, eighteen hostages from the town, shut up in the fort National, were killed by Allied shells. On 14 August a hundred and fifty B-24 heavy bombers came back over the town and the castle, and the fires that followed finished off everything inside the walls. The citadel of Aleth surrendered on 17 August, the island of Cézembre on 2 September, after three weeks of pounding.

The survey found 683 of the 865 buildings of the walled town in ruins. The ramparts themselves had held. Most authors put the share of destroyed building stock at 80 per cent, Alain Nafilyan at 75 per cent in the Bulletin monumental, the French journal of architectural history. Of ten thousand inhabitants before the war, half had to be rehoused.

The foundation stone was laid on 26 January 1947. Louis Arretche coordinated the site and set the principles; Raymond Cornon, chief architect for historic monuments, took charge of the older buildings, which were restored, put back up stone by stone or rebuilt from survey drawings. Plot boundaries were redrawn, streets widened, and the fronts pitched to match the granite town houses of the eighteenth-century engineers, without the vanished ones being copied. The cathedral spire, put back in 1971, closes the skyline. Saint-Servan and Paramé joined the commune by decree on 26 October 1967.

Twenty of these places in La Maplouine

The map holds more than 950 of them. Here are twenty that belong to this subject, with their commune and their category. Each one carries a full note in the map, in English and in French, geolocated and read on the spot.

La Maplouine gathers more than 950 geolocated notes across Saint-Malo, the Rance and the Clos-Poulet. It opens in Google Maps, with no account to create and no app to install, in English and in French.

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Questions La Maplouine answers

Why is Saint-Malo called the privateer city?

Because its shipowners went in for privateering on a very large scale. The French Ministry of Culture counts close to a thousand privateering ventures sailing from Saint-Malo between 1688 and 1713; André Lespagnol counts nine hundred, with a peak of seventy-five in the single year 1696. Duguay-Trouin and Surcouf, both born in the town, fixed the image. Trade, though, brought in more than privateering did.

What was the republic of Saint-Malo?

Independence in fact, from 11 March 1590 to 4 October 1594. Refusing to recognise Henri IV, a Protestant king, some fifty men of Saint-Malo took the castle and killed the governor; the next day the town council made arrangements to govern alone until a Catholic king should come to the throne of France. The édit de réduction of 4 October 1594 gave the town back to the kingdom. Republic is a label historians attached afterwards, not a title anyone claimed at the time.

What is the difference between a privateer and a pirate?

The privateer sails under commission. The king issues him a letter of marque authorising one named ship, for a limited time, to attack the vessels of an enemy nation; he must declare his prizes before a court and treat captured crews as prisoners of war. Captured himself, he is a prisoner of war in his turn. The pirate acts for his own account, in war and in peace alike, and he is hanged.

When was Saint-Malo founded?

The rock carried nothing but a hermitage, and then a small monastery, when Pope Eugene III gave back to the bishop of Aleth, on 16 August 1146, the church that Jean de Châtillon wanted in order to move his see there. The town formed around the new cathedral, and the Pouillé de Rennes, the old register of the diocese of Rennes, dates its founding to about 1152. Aleth, on the shore opposite, had been occupied since the first century BC.

What is the motto of Saint-Malo?

The only official motto is Semper fidelis, always faithful. The words you read on shop signs all over town, Ni Français, ni Breton, Malouin suis, neither French nor Breton, a man of Saint-Malo am I, make up a local saying and not a motto: they go with no known coat of arms.

What happened at Saint-Malo in August 1944?

The Americans sealed the approaches to the town on 4 August; the first shells fell on the walled town on the 6th; a hundred and fifty heavy bombers came back on the 14th, and the fires finished off everything inside the walls. The citadel of Aleth surrendered on 17 August, Cézembre on 2 September. 683 of the 865 buildings of the walled town were in ruins; the ramparts, for their part, had held.

How long have Saint-Servan and Paramé been part of Saint-Malo?

Since the decree of 26 October 1967, which joined the three communes, the French unit of local government. At the 1962 census Saint-Malo had 17,137 inhabitants, Saint-Servan 14,963 and Paramé 8,811: the town born of the merger passed forty thousand people and became the second largest in Ille-et-Vilaine, the surrounding département. People in Saint-Malo had long been against it.

Read next

The malouinièresThe country houses that shipowners enriched by these trades had built in the Clos-Poulet, the peninsula behind the town: what the money from cod, from Cadiz and from the South Sea turned into once it came ashore.Daily life in the townWhat those centuries left behind in trades, customs and everyday habits, from the guard dogs turned loose on the beach at nightfall to the crews who sailed for Newfoundland six months at a time.The RanceThe river that made Aleth a port before Saint-Malo existed, its tide mills, and the barrage that closed the estuary in 1966.
Sources for this page
  • Wikipédia FR, Jean de la Grille, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_de_la_Grille — épiscopat d'Aleth de 1144 à 1146, refus de Lucius II en 1144, intervention de Bernard de Clairvaux, entérinement du transfert par Eugène III le 16 août 1146 et silence perpétuel imposé aux moines de Marmoutier (d'après Chédeville et Tonnerre, La Bretagne féodale, p. 259).
  • Guillotin de Corson, Pouillé de Rennes, repris par infobretagne, La ville de Saint-Malo et la seigneurie commune, https://www.infobretagne.com/saint-malo-seigneurie.htm — fondation de la ville vers 1152, seigneurie commune de l'évêque et du chapitre, concordat de 1219 et Pont-l'Évêque, minihy et droit d'asile, bulle de Nicolas V du 29 octobre 1453, ordonnance de 1539, refus d'hommage de Josselin de Rohan en 1382, cession de Clément VII en 1394, rupture des bourgeois en 1496 et mémoire des chanoines en trente-neuf articles, édit d'Anne de Bretagne de 1513.
  • Wikipédia FR, Aleth, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleth — occupation coriosolite du promontoire, rempart romain de trois à quatre mètres sur 1 400 mètres vers 270-280, arrivée de Maclou vers 538 auprès de l'ermite Aaron, repli des habitants sur le rocher après les raids normands, fortification allemande et reddition du 17 août 1944.
  • Wikipédia FR, République de Saint-Malo, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9publique_de_Saint-Malo — assaut du 11 mars 1590, gouverneur et huit hommes tués, formule de la proclamation « jusqu'à ce que Dieu eût donné à la France un roi catholique », abjuration du 25 juillet 1593, sacre du 27 février 1594, délégation d'avril 1594, édit de réduction signé le 4 octobre 1594, enregistrement par le Parlement de Bretagne le 5 décembre, franchises conservées et exemption de taxes de six ans.
  • Gilles Foucqueron cité par Céline Diais, Le Télégramme, repris par La France pittoresque le 10 décembre 2020, https://www.france-pittoresque.com/spip.php?article12396 — coexistence des trois pouvoirs, droit de lever l'impôt obtenu au début du XVIe siècle, élection en 1585 du conseil de douze conservateurs de la ville et du château, réunion hebdomadaire et compte rendu mensuel, heure et meneurs de l'assaut de 1590 (Michel Frotet de la Bardelière et Jean Pépin de la Bélinaye), qualification d'oligarchie parlementaire, amnistie et retour du gouverneur.
  • Ministère de la Culture, Les épaves corsaires de la Natière, La guerre de course, https://archeologie.culture.gouv.fr/epaves-corsaires/fr/la-guerre-de-course — définition de la course, commissions en guerre délivrées pour un à quatre mois, distinction d'avec la piraterie et la flibuste, près de mille armements malouins entre 1688 et 1713.
  • Ministère de la Culture, Les épaves corsaires de la Natière, Saint-Malo vers 1700, https://archeologie.culture.gouv.fr/epaves-corsaires/fr/saint-malo-vers-1700 — moins de seize hectares intra-muros et plus de vingt mille habitants à la fin du XVIIe siècle, travaux de Vauban de 1689 à 1695, projet de bassin à flot de 1696 et hostilité des Malouins.
  • Wikipédia FR, Lettre de marque, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lettre_de_marque — nature de la lettre patente, obligations de déclaration des prises, traitement des équipages et des corsaires capturés en prisonniers de guerre.
  • André Lespagnol, Quand Saint-Malo commerçait avec le monde, Place Publique Rennes, http://www.placepublique-rennes.com/article/Quand-Saint-Malo-commercait-avec-le-monde-1 — séchage de la morue sur le Sillon dès 1519, vingt-cinq navires pour Terre-Neuve vers 1535, puis soixante à cent navires et trois à quatre mille hommes par an, marchés de Civitavecchia dès 1571, toiles de Quintin-Loudéac et maisons de Sanlúcar puis Cadix après 1600 (Magon, Le Fer, Éon, Vincent), primauté du commerce d'Espagne sur la course, interlope de la mer du Sud 1698-1717 et cap Horn à partir de 1704-1705, Compagnie des Indes malouine de 1708 à 1719 et perte du monopole au profit de Law, plus de 230 armements négriers et cinquième rang français, 900 armements en course entre 1689 et 1713 avec un pic de 75 en 1696.
  • Musée canadien de l'histoire, Musée virtuel de la Nouvelle-France, Jacques Cartier 1534-1542, https://www.museedelhistoire.ca/musee-virtuel-de-la-nouvelle-france/les-explorateurs/jacques-cartier-1534-1542/ et Parcs Canada, Le premier voyage (1534), https://parcs.canada.ca/lhn-nhs/qc/cartierbrebeuf/culture/histoire-history/evenement-event/cartier/a — appareillage du 20 avril 1534, deux navires d'environ soixante tonneaux, soixante et un hommes, Terre-Neuve atteinte en vingt jours, départ du troisième voyage le 23 mai 1541.
  • Wikipédia FR, Jacques Cartier, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Cartier — croix dressée à Gaspé le 24 juillet 1534, mort à Saint-Malo le 1er septembre 1557.
  • Wikipédia FR, Bataille de Rio de Janeiro (1711), https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataille_de_Rio_de_Janeiro_(1711) — financement privé par une société au capital de 700 000 livres souscrite par le comte de Toulouse, Danycan, Magon de la Lande et d'autres négociants malouins ; passe forcée le 12 septembre 1711 ; rançon estimée à quatre millions de livres ; trois navires perdus au retour ; quatre-vingt-douze pour cent de profit annoncés par Duguay-Trouin.
  • Musée d'histoire de Saint-Malo, notice de L'abordage du Kent par La Confiance (Garneray), https://webmuseo.com/ws/musee-histoire-saint-malo/app/site/garneray — prise du Kent le 7 octobre 1800 dans le golfe du Bengale par Robert Surcouf (1773-1827).
  • Wikipédia FR, Pierre Porcon de La Barbinais, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Porcon_de_La_Barbinais — première apparition du récit dans la Biographie des Malouins célèbres de l'abbé Manet, 1824, p. 76-78 ; absence de tout texte du XVIIe siècle ; réfutation de Marcel Emerit.
  • Marcel Emerit, Une édifiante légende, Le Regulus breton, Porcon de la Barbinais, Annales de Bretagne, tome 73, no 2, 1966, p. 283-286, https://www.persee.fr/doc/abpo_0003-391x_1966_num_73_2_2341 — démonstration du caractère légendaire du récit et de sa transmission depuis Manet par Guilbert, Henri Martin et Victor Duruy.
  • Wikipédia FR, Siméon Garangeau, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sim%C3%A9on_Garangeau — nomination par Vauban en 1691 comme ingénieur en chef et directeur des fortifications de Saint-Malo, mort à Saint-Malo en 1741, agrandissements de 1708-1710, 1714-1725, 1721 et 1737, attaques anglo-hollandaises de novembre 1693 et juillet 1695.
  • Wikipédia FR, Remparts de Saint-Malo, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remparts_de_Saint-Malo — remplacement des tours médiévales par des bastions reliés par des courtines, trois quarts de l'enceinte refaits entre 1708 et 1742, passage de seize à vingt-quatre hectares, développement de 1 754 mètres, ultime transformation de 1855-1864, remparts épargnés en août 1944 et classés le 12 juillet 1886.
  • Philippe Petout cité par Balades armoricaines, Quand Garangeau voulut agrandir Saint-Malo, https://www.baladesarmoricaines.fr/2021/01/15/quand-garangeau-voulut-agrandir-saint-malo/ — premier accroissement commencé en 1708, deuxième à partir de 1714, troisième à partir de 1721, quatrième lancé en 1737 et resté inachevé, hostilité de la communauté de ville par crainte de la baisse des valeurs immobilières, passage de 16 à 24 hectares.
  • infobretagne, Saint-Malo : histoire, patrimoine, noblesse, https://www.infobretagne.com/saint-malo.htm — accroissement du Fief en 1708-1710, accroissements de 1714, 1721, 1737 et 1855-1864, enceinte primitive d'environ seize hectares, commune éphémère de 1308, bulle du 4 juin 1394 ratifiée en 1395, rattachement de Paramé et Saint-Servan en 1967.
  • Wikipédia FR, Château de Saint-Malo, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_de_Saint-Malo — perte de la ville au profit du roi de France en 1395 et restitution au duc Jean V en 1415, Grand Donjon entrepris en 1424 pour tenir les Malouins en sujétion, tour La Générale de 1475, tour Quic-en-Groigne de 1498-1501, assauts de 1590 et de 1792, caserne jusqu'en 1921 et musée en 1927.
  • Wikipédia FR, Libération de Saint-Malo, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lib%C3%A9ration_de_Saint-Malo — entrée en Bretagne le 31 juillet 1944, ordre d'évacuation de von Aulock, premiers obus sur la ville close le 6 août, garnison intra-muros d'environ soixante-dix hommes, dix-huit otages tués au fort National dans la nuit du 9 au 10 août, bombardement du 14 août par cent cinquante B-24, reddition d'Aleth le 17 août et de Cézembre le 2 septembre, 683 des 865 immeubles en ruines, 80 % de destruction (75 % selon Alain Nafilyan), première pierre posée le 26 janvier 1947.
  • Alain Nafilyan, Enjeux de la reconstruction après la Seconde Guerre mondiale : Saint-Malo et le choix des styles, Bulletin monumental, vol. 170, no 2, 2012, p. 171-172, https://doi.org/10.3406/bulmo.2012.8300 — estimation de 75 % de bâti détruit.
  • Association nationale des architectes des bâtiments de France, La Pierre d'Angle, Saint-Malo intra muros, une reconstruction à l'identique ? (2/2), https://anabf.org/pierredangle/dossiers/littoral/saint-malo-intra-muros-une-reconstruction-a-lidentique-2-2 — dix mille habitants avant guerre dont la moitié à reloger, rôles respectifs de Louis Arretche et de Raymond Cornon, remembrement du parcellaire, référence aux hôtels des ingénieurs du XVIIIe siècle, flèche de la cathédrale posée en 1971 par Pierre Prunet.
  • France 3 Bretagne, Il y a 50 ans, naissait le Grand Saint-Malo, https://france3-regions.franceinfo.fr/bretagne/ille-et-vilaine/saint-malo/il-y-50-ans-naissait-grand-saint-malo-1353895.html — décret de fusion du 26 octobre 1967, populations au recensement de 1962 (Saint-Malo 17 137, Saint-Servan 14 963, Paramé 8 811) et total de plus de 42 000 habitants.
  • Audit contradictoire du 6 août 2026 : la page a été relue par un auditeur chargé d'y chercher ce qui est faux, puis les corrections introduisant un chiffre neuf ont été soumises à un second lecteur chargé de les réfuter. Les corrections réfutées n'ont pas été appliquées.