Chouans, insurrectionary royalists in France, in particular Brittany, during the French Revolution, and even for a time under the Empire, when their head-quarters were in London; so named from their muster by night at the sound of the chat-huant, the screech-owl, a nocturnal bird of prey which has a weird cry.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Chosroës I. * Chrétien