Émigrés

In the initial stages of the French Revolution there was a trickle of clergy and noblemen who left the country as they did not approve of the direction of the new National Assembly.  Those close to the King such as his brother the Count Artois (the future Charles X) and the Polignacs left France as quickly as they could in the wake of the fall of the Bastille in July 1789.  Events such as the Night of August 4th 1789 which saw the removal of feudal titles made many others make the move abroad.  Some such as Adélaïde and Victoire, aunts of King Louis XVI in particular opposed the treatment of the clergy (such as the nationalisation of their land and the compulsory swearing of the Civic Oath) and in February 1791  moved to Rome to live in a more orthodoxly Catholic atmosphere.  Most nobles and clergy would bide their time in France.  On the 9th November 1791 the Legislative Assembly passed a law stating that any émigré who did not return to France before the end of the year would be sentenced to death.  The inherent paradox in this seems to be lost on them.

It was only in 1792 when war broke out between France and Austria and Prussia that the trickle turned into a flood.  Opponents of the regime realised that they now had a counter revolutionary force to support.  This then led to more hostility towards the remaining nobles from the regime and increasing suspicion from the general populace towards the former First and Second Estates and the monarchy in particular.  As the progress of the war deteriorated for the French more nobles left the country and even more suspicion mounted on the perceived enemy within.  Soon with the decline of the Girondins and the rise of the Jacobins the Terror began.  By 1793 it became clear that with the King executed and nobles across the country facing the same fate France was no longer hospitable for the former nobles.  The Federalist rebellions in Lyon, Toulon and Marseilles as well as the war in the Vendée and their subsequent crushing by the revolutionary forces provided another wave of people to safer countries.  These people came not just from the noble class but the bourgeoisie and peasantry.  As the revolutionaries began to turn on their own many formerly committed patriots left such as Lafayette, Dumouriez and Talleyrand fled the country.

After Thermidor the tide of emigration slowed dramatically.  Emigres would be part of the botched Quiberon enterprise but they were swiftly dispatched by General Hoche in 1795.  Under the Directory and then Napoleon more would believe it safe to come home.  The First Consul would issue a Declaration on 26th  April 1802 stating a general amnesty was now in place.  

In the Journal de Versailles reports on the Comte D’Artois (the King’s brother and future Charles X) going into exile.  Taken from from Madame De Lamballe by Georges Bertin, Godfrey A. S. Wieners, New York (1901) p117 p170

Madame la Comtesse d'Artois with a suite of about thirty has left to join her husband at Turin. She announces her return for next spring, but it is not supposed that it will take place so soon. All the silverware, the horses, and the carriages of the prince have been sold and converted into money. He wishes also to dispose of the superb library which he bought from Monsieur de Paulmy for six hundred thousand livres. We do not know how France will regard this prince who converts into money and carries into a strange country, not only his revenues, which are, in part, the sweat of the people, but the stocks he possesses in the kingdom.  It is reported that Bagatelle is for sale. They add that the officers of the prince were merely thanked, and received no kind of remuneration. This is not the way to preserve people's good opinion or to repair mistakes.

The Marquis de Bouille discusses the increase in emigration after the King’s failed flight from Paris.  Taken from Memoirs Relating to the French Revolution by the Marquis de Bouille, Cadell and Davies, London (1797) p382

After the king's arrest at Varennes, the emigration, which had hitherto been inconsiderable among the members of the first orders of the state, became now general; it even extended to the respectable part of the citizens, who were alarmed at the licentious conduct of the people. Within the space of a few months after I had left the kingdom, almost all the officers of the army quitted their colours, and came to join the French princes at Coblentz, to which place they had retired. The nobility of the provinces, the major part followed by their wives and children, fought in foreign lands an asylum, abandoning a country where the cry of proscription daily resounded in their ears. The clergy almost in a mass, and with them the chief members of the magistracy of France, fought abroad for a refuge from persecution. The grandees of the kingdom had for the most part long since quitted it. Nobility, riches, even virtue itself was a crime in the eyes of the people. Every road in France was covered with men, women, and children, who, fearing to be buried under the ruins of the tottering monarchy, were abandoning a country which was soon to afford then nothing but a tomb.

William Short the American chargé d'affaires notes the emigrants in October 1791 .  Taken from Witnesses to the Revolution American and British Commentators in France 1788-1794, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London (1989)  p154

Notwithstanding the little hopes of foreign succour emigrants continue in great numbers to go and join the princes.  In many provinces not a man of the nobility able to bear arms remains and many of them carry their whole families with them.  An idea prevails among them that they are dishonoured if they remain in France, and that only those who go to join the princes will be considered as noble after the counter revolution which they consider as certain.  The Assembly are now deliberating on the means of preventing emigrations and punishing the emigrants.  If they adopt violent measures the king will probably refuse his sanction.

Germaine De Staël on emigres.  Taken from Considerations on the Principle events of the French Revolution, Germaine De Staël, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis (2008) p287-289

The nobles of France unfortunately consider themselves rather as the countrymen of the nobles of all countries than as the fellow citizens of Frenchmen.  According to their manner of judging, the race of the ancient conquerors of Europe owes itself mutual aid from one empire to another; but a people, on the other hand, conscious of forming a uniform whole naturally wish to be the disposers of their own fate; and from the times of antiquity down to our days, no free, or even merely spirited, people has ever borne without horror the interference of a foreign government in its domestic quarrels…

Emigration, far from keeping up the respectability of the nobility, was the greatest blow to it.  A new generation has risen up in the absence of the nobles, and as this generation has lived, prospered, and triumphed without the privileged classes, it still thinks itself capable of maintaining itself alone.  The emigrants, on the other hand, living always in the same circle, are persuaded that whatever is different from their ancient habits is rebellion: they have thus acquired by degrees the same kind of inflexibility which marks the clergy…

The emigrants must have convinced themselves by their own feelings, in different circumstances, that the step they had taken was reprehensible.  When they found themselves in the midst of foreign uniforms, when they heard those German dialects, no sound of which recalled to them the recollections of their past life, is it possible that they could still think themselves devoid of blame?  Did they not see the whole of France arrayed to defend herself on the opposite bank?  Did they not experience unspeakable distress on recognising the national music, on hearing the ascents of their native province, in that camp which they were obliged to call hostile?  How many of them must have returned with sorrow among the English, among so many other nations whom they were ordered to consider as their allies!

Madam De La Tour Du Pin on the flight of the emigres.   Taken from Escape from the Terror The Journal of Madam De La Tour Du Pin, The Folio Society, London (1979) p133-134

The flight of the emigres, more than a thousand of whom had taken refuge in Brussels, was the saddest, most lamentable thing imaginable.  Secure in the declarations of the ministers of the archduchess, who had promised to give them any warning of any French approach, they lived there without the slightest misgiving.  With that heedlessness and lack of foresight which so often brought disaster upon them, they thought themselves perfectly safe in Brussels…

The wisest, and those most plentifully provided with funds, decided to cross to England.  I had numerous acquaintances among those who fled.  Many of them still persisted in the attitude formerly fashionable in Paris and Versailles and presented a sorry spectacle of the most shocking heartlessness towards their companion in misfortune…

During the last days of November 1792, the Convention passed a decree against emigres, ordering them to return within a given period, a very short one, under pain of confiscation of their property.  My good father-in-law was in England and thinking of re-joining us at the Hague.  When he heard of this decree he wrote to us that not for any personal consideration would he act against the interests of his children, and that he was returning to Paris.  In this most fatherly of letters, were expressions of sadness so profound that if it had been possible even then, after the massacres of September, to conceive the excesses to which the Revolution was to lead, it might have been thought inspired by presentiment.

Chateaubriand on emigre armies.  Taken from Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb, François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, Penguin Classics, London (2014) p170

The army of the Princes was composed of gentlemen, classed by provinces and serving as private soldiers: the aristocracy was harking back to its origins and the origins of the monarchy at the very moment when both the aristocracy and the monarchy were coming to an end, just as the old man reverts to his childhood.  There were also brigades of emigrant officers of different regimes, who likewise become privates once more.

Chateaubriand on naval officers joining the emigre armies.  Taken from Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb, François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, Penguin Classics, London (2014) p171

Naval officers from Brest, Rochefort, and Toulon, supported our infantry.  The wholesale emigration of these last officers plunged the French navy back into the state of weakness from which Louis XVI had extricated it.  Never since the days of Duquesne and Tourville had our squadrons won greater glory.  My comrades were delighted, but I had tears in my eyes when I saw those ocean dragoons go by who no longer commanded the ships with which they had humbled the English and delivered America.  Instead of going in search of new continents to bequeath to France, these companions of Lapérouse sank into the mud of Germany.  They rode the horse dedicated to Neptune; but they had changed their element, and the land was not for them.  It was all in vain that their commander carried at their head the tattered ensign of the Belle-Poule, the sacred relic of the white flag, from whose shreds honour still hung, but victory had fallen.

Chateaubriand on emigre armies.  Taken from Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb, François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, Penguin Classics, London (2014) p172-173

An army is generally composed of soldiers of roughly the same age, the same height, and the same strength.  Ours was a very different body, a motley collection of grown men, old men, and children fresh from their dovecotes, jabbering Norman, Breton, Picard, Auvergnat, Gascon, Provencal and Languedocian.  A father served with his sons, a father-in-law with his son-in-law, an uncle with his nephews, a brother with a brother; a cousin with a cousin.  This strange host, ridiculous though it appeared, had something honourable and touching about it, because it was animated by sincere convictions; it presented an image of the old monarchy and provided a last glimpse of a dying world.  I have seen old noblemen, stern faced and grey haired, dressed in torn coats with knapsacks on their backs and muskets slung over their shoulders, dragging themselves along with the aid of a stick and supported under the arm by one of their sons; I have seen young men lying wounded under a tree while a chaplain in frock coat and stole knelt by their side, sending them to St Louis, whose heirs they had striven to defend.  The whole of this needy troop, which did not receive a single sou from the Princes, made war at its own expense, while the Assembly’s decrees finished the task of despoiling it and consigned our wives and mothers to prison.