Marion du Faouët

Marie-Louise Tromel, better known as Marion du Faouët or Marie Finefont, born on , was the leader of a group of highwaymen who were active near Le Faouët, Morbihan, Brittany. She was arrested four times, and once hanged in effigy. She was finally executed . After her death, she was remembered as an infamous Breton.

Biography Marion was born to Félicien Tromel and Hélène Kerleau on May 6, 1717, in the hamlet of Porz-en-Haie, near Le Faouët, Morbihan. She was the third child of five, with two older brothers, François (1712) and Corentin, then a younger sister Louise (1719) and a younger brother René-Félicien (1721).

In 1737, at the age of twenty, Marion had her first child of four with Henri Pezron, a servant at Guéméné.

The first records of her criminal activity date from 1743. A master tailor, François Hellou, was attacked on the road to Priziac by a band of criminals, armed with sticks and pistols. He identified Henri Pezron and Marion's brother Corentin among his attackers. The same year, Marion was caught giving counterfeit coins to a man called Le Parlouer at the Croisty fair. This was when she was given the nicknames Marion du Faouët and Marie Finefont ("Finefont" meaning, in Breton, very cunning). It was not long after this that Marion became the leader of the emerging group of bandits: the latest year attested for her leadership therein is 1745.

Brice Evain describes the group as pragmatically targeting craftsmen, merchants, and well-to-do peasants, but not the nobility, whose victimisation was more likely to bring more serious consequences. The official website for tourism in Brittany, however, describes her as "a kind of Breton Robin Hood who robbed from the rich to give to the poor."