Influence of the Breton Deputation 21 



where many of the students and young men met to discuss 

 the political questions of the day.^ At the Cafe d/Union 

 a similar club existed.^ This whole group of men they 

 now attacked in a niemoire drawn up in the name of the 

 Clergy and Nobility. In this it was charged that a body 

 of men existed who, in order to further their sinister de- 

 signs, had persuaded the "jeuues gens" that the Nobility 

 had armed its valets for the attack on the 26th of Janu- 

 ary''. It was claimed, too, that this organization of young 

 men, manipulated by the leaders of the agitation, could 

 have no other design than to attack the Nobility. 



This attack of the Clergy and Nobility, almost official 

 in form, while denouncing the whole movement of the 

 Third Estate, was especially dangerous for the avocats 

 at Kennes in that it gave their enemy, the Parliament, an 

 occasion" for beginning a systematic prosecution, not only 

 of themselves, but of the whole body of young men who 

 had now become recognized as the final support of the 

 Third Estate. The leaders and their armed supporters 

 were thus to be struck down together. The avocats at 

 once saw the danger and drew up a reply in which they 

 made a vigorous defense of the "jeunes gens" and declared 

 the Parliament of Kennes a body unfit to sit in judgment 

 over the affairs of the 26th and 27th of January, because 

 it w^as at the same time party and judge, it being notorious 

 that its interests were entirely with the Nobility.^ What 

 part the future deputies of Eennes had in this episode may 

 be judged from the fact that Glezen, Lanjuinais, Le Chap- 

 elier, and Varin were appointed to present this memoire 

 to the king.^ 



^Pecquet, II, 232 ff. 

 ^Note 1, p. 20, above. 



^Pecquet, II, pp. 296 ff. Also Discours adressr d Monseigneur le 

 Garde-des-Sceaux, le G fcvrier 17SV, etc. Bib. Nat. Lb39/6969. 

 «Ibid. 



227 



