Influence of the Breton Deputation 5 



iniicli of a definite and positive nature result from his work 

 after it is stripped of its conjectures. From this material, 

 then, little is to be learned. In 1889, Professor F. A. 

 Aulard, in his La ^ocicte cles Jacohins, published all the 

 evidence, as he then believed, which contemporaries had 

 left us concerning the Breton Club, but admitted that it 

 was contradictor^^ and unsatisfactory. He concluded: 

 "What historians posterior to the Eevolution have added 

 to tliese details does not seem to rest upon anything 

 serious."^ 



Aulard, however, who treated the Breton Club only as 

 an introduction to his collection of sources on the Jacobin 

 Club, did not make use of the correspondence of the Bre- 

 ton deputies. But it is precisely in this correspondence 

 that nearly the whole of our reliable evidence is found. 

 Of this correspondence, seven collections, either in the 

 original or in copy, have at present been recovered, namely, 

 those of the deputations of Rennes, Nantes, Brest, Saint- 

 Brieuc, and of the deputies Delaville Le Roulx, Boull6, 

 and Pellerin, representing in all twenty-one deputies. To 

 this must be added the correspondence of the Clergy of 

 Rennes, included in the bulletin published at Rennes. Un- 

 fortunately for our purpose, the writers as a rule confine 

 themselves to the general affairs of the assembly. It is 

 by way of exception that the Breton Committee and the 

 Breton Club are mentioned, and even then we are often not 

 informed what action they took. In this way, we are fre- 

 quently forced to recur to the individual opinions as ex- 

 pressed in the debates and correspondence of the different 

 deputies, in order to learn what the position of the depu- 

 tation and those allied with it was. For this purpose, the 

 original letters of Legendre and :Moyot, the copies of those 

 of Le Roulx, and the reprints of the originals of Cham- 



'I, p. XVI. 



211 



