Aulard was born at Montbron in Charente. He entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1867 and obtained the degree of doctor of letters in 1877 with a thesis in Latin on Gaius Asinius Pollio and a French one on Giacomo Leopardi (whose works he subsequently translated into French). Moving from literature to history, he made a study of parliamentary oratory during the French Revolution and published two volumes on "Les orateurs de la Constituante" (1882) and on "Les orateurs de la Legislative et de la Convention" (1885). With these works, he established a reputation as a careful scholar well versed in the primary sources of the French Revolution.