Chouan

shoo'an, a French word meaning screech owl. The term was applied as a nickname to the peasant leader of an insurrection in Brittany in 1792. His followers were subsequently called the Chouans. They rose partly by reason of poverty and partly out of loyalty to the royal family and to the church. They gave the young French republic much trouble by adopting guerilla tactics. They were not put down till 1800, nor wholly, in fact, till the restoration of the Bourbons in 1830 gratified their wishes. The uprising of the Chouans in favor of the Bourbon family has points of resemblance to that of the Highlanders for the Stuarts. The two peoples are of the same blood. The leading accounts in fiction are Balzac's best novel, The Chouans, and Victor Hugo's Ninety Three. See Celts; Brittany