76 Charles Kuhlmaim 



The renunciations here referred to were those of the 

 evening of August 4. They had been discussed at the 

 Breton Club, the members of wliich had pledged them- 

 selves to support the motion, or motions, in which they 

 were to be proposed to the assembly.^ It is not certain 

 how far the details had been arranged, but it seems that 

 the leading jjarts had been assigned before the opening of 

 the session, for the Duke d'Antraigues, who was to move 

 the surrender of the privileges of his province, declared 

 that it was a "comedy prepared in advance."^ Aside from 

 the intrinsic importance of the acts of the 4th of August, 

 they are significant as being expressly the result of an un- 

 Avillingness on the part of the Breton element to allow the 

 assembly to pronounce itself firml}^ against violence. The 

 proclamation was to be permitted to pass only under 

 cover of an act so far overshadowing it as to cause it to 

 be lost sight of — an attempt to appease rather than to 

 control by law. This maneuver of the Breton Club marks 

 the beginning of the polic.y — refusal to blame or punish 

 violence once committed — later followed with such fatal 

 effects hy its successors, the Jacobins, 



^Bulletin cle Rennes, No. 41, foot-note: "Cette motion avait ete de- 

 libere au comite de la province de Bretagne, et les deputes s'etaient 

 engages a I'appuyer." Ttiis refers to tlie motion of Noailles. Droz, 

 II, 404, ascribes the initiative to tlie Dul^e d'Aiguillon, as also does 

 Alexandre Lameth, Hlsloire cle VAsscmblce constituante, I, 9G-97; and 

 the deputies of Languedoc wrote on the 4th of August that Noailles 

 had deprived d'Aiguillon of an honor which belonged to the latter by 

 the fact that he had prepared the motion and was to introduce it. 

 Bord; Correspondance incdite de J. M. Pellerin, p. 109. On the other 

 hand, we find in a letter of Legendre and Moyot of August 5 the fol- 

 lowing equivocal passage: "Le Vicomte de Noailles devait remplir le 

 debut et nous etions tons prepares." 



-Leon Pignaud, Un agent secret sous la Revolution et V Empire, le 

 Comte d'Antraigues, p. 70. 



282 



