Influence of the Breton Deputation 3 



But their extraordinary infiiience was due to their unity, 

 to tlieir hatred of the privileged orders, to their experience 

 in previous conflicts witli them. When the Revolution, 

 largely through their efforts, stood triumphant, when the 

 4th of August decrees had legally sAvept away the remains 

 of the feudal system and positive legislation began, they 

 no longer possessed their former advantage over their co- 

 deputies. They may still have been more radical or more 

 violent in the expression of their views, but they were little 

 more experienced in the problems which now faced them. 

 The causes which had united them had now weakened or 

 disappeared, their counsels become divided, and with the 

 October revolution their great role seems fully ended. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



In Der J akoUner-Klul , written in 1852, J. W. Zink- 

 eisen devotes a chapter to the Breton Club. Speaking of 

 the light in which its enemies later represented this or- 

 ganization he says : "Likewise it certainly remained aloof 

 from the acts of violence which already in the first months 

 of its existence gave to the Eevolution the threatening 

 character of a general uprising of the people. But ad- 

 mittedly, too, in later times when only too often passion 

 was forced to direct the blood-dipped pen of history, many 

 charges of this kind were laid to its account, because it 

 was regarded as the cradle and forerunner of Jacobinism, 

 whose fatal influence it was sought to discover every- 

 where."^ How true this observation is even the meagre 

 evidence we possess to-day abundantly shows. But this 

 knowledge brings us only slightly nearer to historical 

 truth, for no one with even the most elementary idea of 

 the early period of the devolution would give serious con- 

 sideration to the accounts of the "blood-dipped pen" as 



'I, p. 86. 



209 



