Every party sought to gain the people; it was courted as sovereign. After attempting to influence it by religion, another means was employed, that of the clubs. At that period, clubs were private assemblies, in which the measures of government, the business of the state, and the decrees of the assembly were discussed; their deliberations had no authority, but they exercised a certain influence. The first club owed its origin to the Breton deputies, who already met together at Versailles to consider the course of proceeding they should take. When the national representatives were transferred from Versailles to Paris, the Breton deputies and those of the assembly who were of their views held their sittings in the old convent of the Jacobins, which subsequently gave its name to their meetings. It did not at first cease to be a preparatory assembly, but as all things increase in time, the Jacobin club did not confine itself to the influencing the assembly; it sought also to influence the municipality and the people, and received as associates members of the municipality and common citizens. Its organization became more regular, its action more powerful; its sittings were regularly reported in the papers; it created branch clubs in the provinces, and raised by the side of legal power another power which first counselled and then conducted it. The Jacobin club, as it lost its primitive character and became a popular assembly, had been forsaken by part of its founders. The latter established another society on the plan of the old one, under the name of the club of '89. Sieyès, Chapelier, Lafayette, La Rochefoucauld directed it, as Lameth and Barnave directed that of the Jacobins. Mirabeau belonged to both, and by both was equally courted. These clubs, of which the one prevailed in the assembly and the other amongst the people, were attached to the new order of things, though in different degrees. The aristocracy sought to attack the revolution with its own arms; it opened royalist clubs to oppose the popular clubs. That first established under the name of the _Club des Impartiaux_ could not last because it addressed itself to no class opinion. Reappearing under the name of the _Club Monarchique_, it included among its members all those whose views it represented. It sought to render itself popular with the lower classes, and distributed bread; but far from accepting its overtures, the people considered such establishments as a counter-revolutionary movement. The people disturbed their sittings, and obliged them several times to change their place of meeting. At length, the municipal authority found itself obliged, in January, 1791, to close this club, which had been the cause of several riots.