Influence of the Breton Deputation 17 



ment either directly or through the representatives of their 

 order already at Paris. ^ The importance of this move- 

 ment was at once realized by the privileged orders, but 

 their attempt to influence the ministers to cause the king 

 to refuse to receive the envoys, and thus discredit the idea 

 to which their reception might give rise, failed.^ At 

 Paris the envoys formed themselves into a single body for 

 the discussion, not only of the immediate business for 

 which the different members had been sent, but of the 

 whole political movement of the time. At first, they sent 

 daily bulletins to Nantes in the name of the "Twelve dep- 

 uties of the Third Estate at Court," ^ but on December 18 

 they either assumed, or were given the title, "The deputies 

 of the Third Estate of the province of Bretagne, at the 

 Court." ^ On November 18 they wrote: "Deputies from 

 the different cities of our province come to us here, and 

 we receive daily from other cities the adhesions which 

 they hasten to address to us."^ On December 19, they 

 announced : "The deputies of Lorraine and of Franche- 

 Comte join us to present to the ministers a memoire which 

 will destroy the false insinuations contained in the one 

 drawn up in the name of several provinces, insinuations 



^Pecquet, II, chap. 2. A large mass of these resolutions, together 

 with the pamphlets of the same period and of a period a little later, 

 exist in the National Library and in the municipal and departmental 

 archives of Bretagne. 



-Charles Robert, Urhain de Herce, etc. Paris. Victor Retaux. 

 Herce was at Versailles at this time and charged by the Nobility to 

 confer with the ministers to prevent the reception of the envoys of 

 Nantes. See the correspondence of the first half of November. 



^Bulletin No. 3. Four of these bulletins, Nos. 3, 8, 13, and 14, are 

 preserved in the departmental archives at Saint-Brieuc in printed 

 form, all but No. 3 dated from Paris. No. 3 is dated November 14, 

 No. 14, December 19. They were printed and distributed by the mu- 

 nicipality of Nantes to justify the course of its deputies at the court, ■ 

 as is explained by a letter of expedition accompanying them, dated 

 from Nantes, December 25, 1788. 



*No. 13. 



=^No. 8. 



223 



