the french Émigrés in europe and the struggle against ......2 henri-pierre danloux, mgr de la...

The French Émigrés inEurope and the Struggle

against Revolution,1789–1814

Kirsty Carpenter and Philip Mansel

Edited by

THE FRENCH ÉMIGRÉS IN EUROPE AND THESTRUGGLE AGAINST REVOLUTION, 1789–1814

carpenter/88445/crc 8/6/99 3:17 pm Page 1

Also by Kirsty Carpenter

REFUGEES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: Émigrés in London1789–1802

Also by Philip Mansel

LOUIS XVIII

PILLARS OF MONARCHY: Royal Guards in History, 1400–1984

SULTANS IN SPLENDOUR: The Last Years of the Ottoman World

THE COURT OF FRANCE, 1789–1830

LE CHARMEUR DE L’EUROPE: Charles-Joseph de Ligne

CONSTANTINOPLE: City of the World’s Desire, 1453–1924

from the same publishers

*

*


Kirsty CarpenterSchool of History, Philosophy and PoliticsCollege of Humanities and Social SciencesMassey UniversityPalmerston NorthNew Zealand

The French Émigrés inEurope and the Struggleagainst Revolution,1789–1814

Edited by

Philip ManselThe Society for Court StudiesLondon

and


First published in Great Britain 1999 byMACMILLAN PRESS LTDHoundmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and LondonCompanies and representatives throughout the world

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0–333–74436–5

First published in the United States of America 1999 byST. MARTIN’S PRESS, INC.,Scholarly and Reference Division,175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

ISBN 0–312–22381–1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataThe French émigrés in Europe and the struggle against revolution,1789–1814 / edited by Kirsty Carpenter and Philip Mansel.p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 0–312–22381–1 (cloth)1. France—History—Revolution, 1789–1799—Refugees.2. Political refugees—Europe—Conduct of life. I. Carpenter,Kirsty, 1962– . II. Mansel, Philip.DC158.F74 1999944.04'086'91—dc21 99–20923

CIP

Selection and editorial matter © Kirsty Carpenter and Philip Mansel 1999Chapter 1 © Philip Mansel 1999Chapter 3 © Kirsty Carpenter 1999Chapter 7 © Lord Mackenzie-Stuart 1999Chapters 2, 4–6, 8–14 © Macmillan Press Ltd 1999

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be madewithout written permission.

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v

Contents

List of Plates viiAcknowledgements ixNotes on the Contributors xIntroduction by William Doyle xv

1 From Coblenz to Hartwell: the ÉmigréGovernment and the European Powers, 1791–1814Philip Mansel 1

2 A European Destiny: the Armée de Condé, 1792–1801 Frédéric d’Agay 28

3 London: Capital of the Emigration Kirsty Carpenter 43

4 French Émigrés in Hungary Ferenc Tóth 68

5 Portugal and the Émigrés David Higgs 83

6 French Émigrés in Prussia Thomas Höpel 101

7 French Émigrés in Edinburgh Lord Mackenzie-Stuart 108

8 Le milliard des émigrés: the Impact of the Indemnity Bill of 1825 on French Society Almut Franke 124

9 French Émigrés in the United States Thomas C. Sosnowski 138

10 The Émigré Novel Malcolm Cook 151

11 Danloux in England (1792–1802): an Émigré Artist Angelica Goodden 165

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12 The Image of the Republic in the Press of the London Émigrés, 1792–1802 Simon Burrows 184

13 Burke, Boisgelin and the Politics of the Émigré Bishops Nigel Aston 197

14 ‘Fearless resting place’: the Exiled French Clergy in Great Britain, 1789–1815 Dominic Aidan Bellenger 214

Index 230

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List of Plates

1 Henri-Pierre Danloux, Monsieur, Comte d’Artois. (Privatecollection) Painted at Holyroodhouse in 1796, this portrait wasengraved for distribution as propaganda. Monsieur wasleader of the extremist wing of the émigrés until his returnto France in 1814. His residence in Edinburgh wasdescribed as ‘the honour of the nobility’.

2 Henri-Pierre Danloux, Mgr de la Marche, Bishop of Saint Polde Léon, 1797. (Private collection) The Bishop was the leading figure in French émigré char-ities, as the letters and lists of subscribers scattered on andaround his desk suggest. Danloux was a royalist who emi-grated in 1792 to London, where he lived until his returnto Paris in 1802. His diary is a valuable account of émigrélife in London.

3 Henri-Pierre Danloux, Lady Jane Dalrymple Hamilton as Bri-tannia. (Private collection) As this picture suggests, French émigré artists were notashamed to commemorate victories over the French re-public. At the sitter’s feet a British lion is pawing the flag ofthe French ally, the Batavian republic, in celebration ofthe British victory, under the command of the sitter’sfather, Admiral Duncan, over the Dutch fleet at Camper-down in 1797.

4 Mme. Vigée Le Brun, Portrait of Count Stroganov as a child.(Collection Tatiana Zoubov) Mme. Vigée Le Brun, a favourite artist of Marie Antoinette,emigrated in 1791 and earned large sums painting por-traits of members of royal and noble families in Vienna,Naples, Saint Petersburg and London until her eventualreturn to France in 1804.

5 Sophie de Tott, Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Condé.(Private collection) Although this print shows Condé as an émigré leaderfighting on the continent, it was engraved (by F. BartolozziRA) and published by the artist herself in London in October1802, a year after the final disbandment of the armée de

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Condé, and Condé’s arrival in England. The inscriptionbelow the portrait gives all the prince’s Ancien Régime titles:‘Prince de Condé, Prince du Sang, Pair et Grand Maîtrede France, Colonel Général de l’infanterie Française etétrangère, Gouverneur et Lieutenant-Général pour le Roidans la province de Bourgogne, etc. etc. etc.’

6 François Huet Villiers, Louis Antoine Henry de Bourbon, Ducd’Enghien, 1804. (Private collection) As the funeral urn above the prince’s head indicates, thisprint was published in London in 1804 to mourn the Ducd’Enghien’s kidnapping and execution on the orders ofNapoleon I. Enghien was Condé’s grandson and hadfought in the armée de Condé.

7 François Huet Villiers, Louis XVIII, 1810. (Private collec-tion) Huet Villiers, who lived in London from the beginning ofthe revolution until his death there in 1813, painted thisportrait of Louis XVIII, at Hartwell in 1810. This engraving,published by Colnaghi of Bond Street, was distributedfrom 1812 for purposes of propaganda.

8 Mlle de Noireterre, The Comte de Langeron, 1814. (Privatecollection) Born in Paris in 1763, a colonel in the French army by1788, Langeron had joined the Russian service in 1790,fought in the armée des Princes in 1792 and subsequentlyserved in the Austrian army before rejoining the Russianservice. He rose to be a Count and a general and foughtagainst the French Empire at Austerlitz and in the cam-paigns of 1812–14. For his successful command of theallied assault on Montmartre on 30 March 1814, he wasmade a Knight of the Order of Saint Andrew. Instead ofstaying in France, he remained in Russian service as MilitaryGovernor of south Russia and the commander and chiefof the Don Cossacks.

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Acknowledgements

The editors would like to acknowledge the very generous sup-port they have received from the Institut Français in London,which provided a venue for the 1997 conference ‘Les ÉmigrésFrançais en Europe 1789–1814’, where all the contributions inthis volume originated. A second conference on 2–4 July 1999will also take place there continuing the work begun in 1997towards a wider picture of Emigration in Europe during theFrench Revolution. A further conference is planned, for Parisin the year 2002, to mark the anniversary of the return of thevast majority of émigrés from exile. Kirsty Carpenter andPhilip Mansel would particularly like to thank all the particip-ants at the first conference for their interest and enthusiasm,which made the event a memorable experience for all involved.A special thanks also goes to Kimberly Chrisman for her behind-the-scenes work. Finally, we would like to thank Tim Farmiloeand Macmillan Press for their support and recognition of theimportance of the Emigration in its European context.

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Notes on the Contributors

Frédéric d’Agay is an independent historian. Born in 1956,he is the author of Les grands notables du Premier Empire, Var(1987) and Cháteaux et Bastides de Provence (1991), and a special-ist on the history of the French nobility in the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries. He has published editions of the Lettresd’Italie of the Président de Brosses (1986) and the Mémoires ofthe Baron de Frenilly. He collaborated in the DictionnaireNapoléon (1988) and the Dictionnaire du Grand Siècle (1990). Hereceived his doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1996 for histhesis ‘Les officiers de marine provençaux au XVIIIièmesiècle’.

Nigel Aston is Senior Lecturer in History at the University ofLuton. His first book, French Revolution and Religion in France,1780–1804 will appear in 1999. He is the editor of ReligiousChange in Europe, 1650–1914 (1997) and he works on Church–state relations at the end of the Ancien Régime.

Simon Burrows is Lecturer in History at Waikato Universityin Hamilton, New Zealand. He has published several articleson the press of the London émigrés and his first book, Princes,Press and Propaganda: French Exile Journalism and European Polit-ics, 1792–1814, is due to appear in 1999. He is currently work-ing on the Ancien Régime journalist, Charles Theveneau deMorande.

Dominic Aidan Bellenger is a member of the community atDownside Abbey in Bath. He has published widely on the sub-ject of the French émigré priests and their leaders La Marcheand Carron who came to Britain during the Revolution. He isthe author of The French Exiled Clergy in the British Isles after 1789(1986). He is an Associate Lecturer of the Open University andregularly teaches at Bath Spa University College and at theUniversity of Bristol.

Kirsty Carpenter is Lecturer in European History in theSchool of History, Philosophy and Politics at Massey University,

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New Zealand. Her first book was Refugees of the French Revolution:Emigrés in London, 1792–1802 (1999). Her specialist interestsfocus on the political literature of the French Revolution. Sheis currently working on Marie-Joseph Chénier, a member ofthe Convention and the Revolution’s official poet.

Malcolm Cook is Professor of Eighteenth-Century FrenchStudies in the School of Modern Languages at the Universityof Exeter. His most recent book is Fictional France: Social Realityin the French Novel, 1775–1800 (1993) and he is co-editor ofModern France: Society in Transition (1998). He is currently work-ing on a critical edition of the correspondence of Bernardin deSaint-Pierre. He is the General Editor of the Modern Lan-guages Review and serves on the editorial teams of many otherscholarly reviews.

William Doyle has been Professor of History at the Universityof Bristol since 1986. A Fellow of the British Academy, he hasalso taught at the Universities of York and Nottingham. He isthe author of The Oxford History of the French Revolution (1989).Among his other publications are Origins of the French Revolution(1980, 3rd edition, 1999), and most recently, Venality: the Saleof Offices in Eighteenth-Century France (1996). He is currentlyworking on a volume on France 1763–1848 in the Oxford His-tory of Modern Europe series.

Almut Franke is Assistant Lecturer at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. Her Doctorate on the subject of ‘LeMillard des Emigrés’ entitled Die Entschädigung der Emigrationim Frankreich der Restauration (1814–1830) will be published in1999. She has written on the subject of the 1825 indemnity lawin the area of Bordeaux and has contributed to two major pub-lications on relations between France and Germany during theRevolution.

Angelica Goodden is a Fellow and Tutor in French at St Hilda’sCollege Oxford. Her most recent book is a biographical studyof Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun, The Sweetness of Life. Other publi-cations include Action and Persuasion: Dramatic Performance inEighteenth-Century France and The Complete Lover: Eros, Natureand Artifice in the Eighteenth-Century French Novel.

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Thomas Höpel is Lecturer in the Centre of French Studies atLeipzig University. He works on Franco-German relations inthe eighteenth century and has published on refugees andexiles during different waves of emigration between the twocountries in the modern period. He was the co-organiser of aconference, ‘Emigrés and Refugies. Migration zwischen Frank-reich und Deutschland in der frühen Neuzeit’, which tookplace on 13–15 June 1997.

David Higgs is Professor of History and Fellow of UniversityCollege at the University of Toronto. His books includeUltraroyalism in Toulouse from its Origins to the Revolution of 1830(1973), A Future to Inherit: the Portuguese Communities of Canada(1976), an edited book, Church and Society in Catholic Europe ofthe Eighteenth Century (1979) and Nobles in Nineteenth-CenturyFrance: the Practice of Inegalitarianism (1987). His work combinesFrench and Portuguese interests. His latest book, a volume ofgay history entitled Queer Sites, will appear in 1999.

Lord Mackenzie-Stuart practised at the Scots bar until 1792when he was appointed judge of the Court of Session, Scotland’ssupreme court. He was the first British judge at the Court ofJustice of the European Communities, Luxembourg in 1973and its President 1984–88. On retirement he lectured widelyand acted as arbitrator in international commercial disputes.He was awarded the Prix Bech for services to Europe, 1989,and is the author of A French King at Holyrood. He shares histime between his native Scotland and his home in France.

Philip Mansel is an historian of courts and royal dynasties andeditor of The Court Historian, newsletter of the Society forCourt Studies. He is the author of biographies of Louis XVIIIand the Prince de Ligne and his other published works includeSultans in Splendour: the Last Years of the Ottoman World and Con-stantinople: City of the World’s Desire, 1453–1924. He is currentlyworking on a history of Paris from 1814 to 1848.

Thomas Sosnowski is Associate Professor of History at KentState University, Stark Campus in Canton, Ohio. He has pub-lished articles on revolutionary Europe, émigrés and exilesand has given papers regularly at the conferences run by the

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Consortium on Revolutionary Europe, the Society for FrenchHistorical Studies and the Western Society for French History.As well as his European interests he is actively involved in localAmerican history.

Ferenc Tóth is Lecturer in History and Head of the FrenchDepartment at Berzsenyi Daniel College in Szombathely (WestHungary). He completed his Doctorate at the Université deParis IV, Sorbonne in 1996. His research interests focus onHungarian immigration to France and Turkey in the eighteenthcentury and the interplay of the themes of oriental despotism,Enlightenment and nationalism in Hungarian history.

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Voyager est, quoi qu’on puisse dire, un des plus tristes plaisirsde la vie.

(Mme de Staël, Corinne, 1807)

. . . la grande figure de l’Emigré, l’un des types les plusimposants de notre époque. Il était en apparence faible et cassé,mais la vie semblait devoir persister en lui, précisément à causede ses mœurs sobres et ses occupations champêtres.

(Balzac, Le Lys dans la Vallée, 1835)

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Introduction William Doyle

Political exile is as old as history; but the émigré was a creationof the French Revolution. Unlike the British Jacobite exiles,who offered a recent parallel, those who left France during theRevolution were not simply motivated by loyalty to a deposeddynasty. Almost a third of those who left France went beforethe fall of the monarchy.1 Nor were they ‘constructively’ ex-pelled for one overwhelming reason, like the Huguenots, whohad outnumbered them a century previously. The Emigrationbegan as a voluntary exodus, and until late in 1791 official policywas to urge the exiles to return. Later, indeed, their numberswere swelled by deportees and fugitives from revolutionarylaws, who had little or no alternative to leaving. The causes ofemigration evolved and expanded with the course of theRevolution itself. But, at whatever point they chose, or werecompelled, to leave the land of their birth, émigrés werepeople unable to live with the France the Revolution hadmade. Emigration reflected the comprehensiveness of thisrevolution of a new type, that left no aspect of life, and no areaof society, untouched. In so far as subsequent revolutions havemeasured their ambitions by this one, émigrés have become arecognised feature of modern political life.

The word had entered the English language by 1792.2 Bythe end of that year the French Revolution, anti-noble almostfrom the start, had also turned anti-clerical, anti-monarchicaland (with the September massacres) terroristic. It was there-fore scarcely surprising that at least two-thirds of those whohad left the country by the time of the king’s death were eithernobles or clerics. It seems likely that many of the rest weredependent in some way on these two categories. These werethe émigrés of legend. As with the noble victims of the Terror,the sight of the formerly mighty brought low has marked theconventional picture of the emigration ever since. But in 1951the legend was challenged by Donald Greer, with statisticswhich showed incontestably that most emigration took placeafter 1792, and that the vast majority of those leaving were not

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members of the former privileged orders. Most were ordinarypeople fleeing from the consequences of civil war. The officiallists which were Greer’s main source made no distinctions as totheir motivation. All had emigrated, all were subject to thesame penalties. But it is perfectly clear that the faceless major-ity were not exiles in the same way as the nobles and clerics.They would be much more accurately described in recent termsas refugees or displaced persons. True émigrés had acted onprinciple – however self-interested. Most had been persons ofauthority before 1789, and had turned their backs on arevolution which had diminished or dispossessed them. What-ever the intrinsic human importance of the humble, unsungmajority officially categorised as émigrés, those who gave theword its distinctive subsequent meaning would have acknow-ledged little in common with them. Legend still comes closer todefining the essence of emigration than the administrativecategories of revolutionary officials.

Yet legends also distort; and the main purpose of the pagesthat follow is to shed a less partial light on the lives and behaviourof a group too often reviled or admired uncritically. Some ofthis new light, it is true, tends to confirm old stereotypes. Littlein these essays offers us a prospect of émigrés less snobbish,quarrelsome or Francocentric in their attitudes than has alwaysbeen perceived. Nor is their melancholy stoicism in adversity,endless capacity for hoping against hope, and dogged loyaltyto ideals in any way diminished. The geography and chrono-logy of emigration is not much modified either. Great Britain,so close and yet so impregnable beyond the sea, was ultimatelythe most favoured destination [Carpenter]. Of more distantrefuges, only the United States, Sweden and Denmark werenot reached sooner or later by the armies of the republic or theusurper; so continental émigrés were almost always having tomove out of danger. And while émigré numbers, even amongnobles and clergy, continued to expand down to 1794, by thetime the official list of émigrés was closed in 1799, thousandshad already returned, and thousands more would do so as itbecame clear that Bonaparte had restored a world of stability,hierarchy and religious observance, even if there was not aBourbon to preside over it. Louis XVIII and his family, in fact,were the only émigrés for whom returning to France was notan option between 1799 and 1814. Ironically that strengthened

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his diplomatic position. From 1807 he was an honoured andsubsidised (if none-too-hopeful) guest in Great Britain ratherthan the helpless fugitive, not just from France, but sooner orlater from other states too, that he had been for most of thetime since 1791.

In this, Louis XVIII had shared the fate of most of thosewho did not cross the Channel to cluster in genteel penury inSoho or Marylebone. For governments generally found in thepresence of émigrés grounds for suspicion, irritation or embar-rassment. After all, they were the original casus belli in 1791–2.Any ruler who lent them too visible hospitality risked antago-nising a republic that by 1794 had marshalled unprecedentedmilitary power. Besides, it took a long time for populationsand even officials with a long-standing suspicion of thingsFrench to learn that not all Frenchmen abroad were agents oftheir country’s new ideology. The Prussians were notoriouslystingy with their residence permits [Höpel]; the Habsburgauthorities in Hungary suspected even Hungarians returningfrom France when foreign regiments were disbanded [Tóth].Never punctilious debtors, the émigrés were increasingly caval-ier towards their creditors because of dwindling resources;the only refuge of the Count d’Artois from British bailiffs inthe late 1790s was the grace-and-favour sanctuary of Holyrood.Foreign generals, meanwhile, found the posturings of regimentscomposed entirely of nobles regarding themselves as natural-born officers a liability. They were either kept prudently underforeign control, like Condé’s legions [d’Agay], or allowed totake the lead only on reckless ventures of their own dubiousdevising, like the catastrophic Quiberon expedition of 1795.Nor could the most patent martyrs to conviction, the non-jurorclergy, necessarily expect a less guarded welcome. Priests whohad given up all to obey the Pope were objects of suspicion forErastian princes hostile to the pretensions of Rome [Höpel].Orthodox hierarchies feared the contagion of Jansenism,improbable through this was among French non-juringpriests. Only in the Protestant confessional kingdom of GreatBritain, ironically enough, was the impact more benign. Herethe pious resignation and biblical poverty of the expatriateclergy helped to soften the visceral anti-Catholicism oftheir hosts, and so benefited their British co-religionists[Bellenger].

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As Kirsty Carpenter stresses (pp. 59–60), there was a moralforce in the sight of exiles prepared to suffer rather than live ina homeland where they thought they had no place. Theirpresence lent sober reality to a revolution that could otherwiseonly be experienced through the newspapers. Accordingly theywere able to influence their hosts’ picture of conditions inFrance. This was particularly so in the United States, whereFrench visitors had been a rarity since independence [Sos-nowski]. The move towards Jay’s Treaty must have owed agood deal to the prospect and everyday propaganda of Frenchexiles, even if these same exiles mostly found the atmosphereof the first modern republic crude and rebarbative, and a brutalcorrective to the romantic illusions so widespread in the 1780sof life on the sylvan frontier. The ancestral enemy across theChannel, on the other hand, was a pleasant surprise. Most ofthe British proved welcoming and sympathetic; the Treasuryauthorised funds for the relief of the Godless revolution’s indi-gent victims; and tales of Jacobin horrors were eagerly absorbedin a political culture more anxious than it might like to admitfor reassurance about the superiority and durability of its ownways. Despite the struggles of Louis XVIII (shown here to bemore successful than previously thought) [Mansel] to maintainthe trappings of a court and government wherever his exiletook him, London was the true capital of the emigration, ifnot from the start, then certainly once war broke out in Feb-ruary 1793 [Carpenter]. The émigrés concentrated there, sosympathetically received in good society, were all the moreshocked to learn from the disaster of Quiberon how cynicallythey were regarded by George III and his ministers. YetQuiberon was the result of wishful thinking among all concern-ed, and in its aftermath a greater realism set in. While the Brit-ish government never again gave credence to émigré analysesof the situation in France, by grudgingly patronising effortsto relieve the plight of the more indigent exiles on its territory,it acknowledged a certain responsibility towards them.The émigrés, for their part, as an analysis of their press shows[Burrows], now made greater efforts to understand what hadhappened, and was still happening, across the Channel; andthe tissue of fantasies that had made up so much of émigréjournalism was increasingly cut through by commentaries ofreal, if unreassuring, insight.

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Although many émigrés, particularly the clergy, kept tothemselves, and many more were culturally ghettoised bytheir inability or unwillingness to learn languages other thantheir own, in general their capacity to adapt to their circum-stances is striking. For some, indeed, emigration was a positiveopportunity. Condé saw it as the chance to build a militarycareer worthy of his illustrious ancestor [d’Agay]; Danlouxfound a captive market for his paintings secure from the jealousmachinations of David [Goodden]. And whereas merchantsand craftsmen could practise their skills in exile much as before,distressed gentlefolk survived by teaching French as a foreignlanguage, or making straw hats. The ex-monk Dulau opened abookshop and a publishing business in Soho. Nobody, ofcourse, adapted more consistently to the vagaries and vicissi-tudes of changing circumstances than Louis XVIII himselfand his entourage, clinging doggedly to the métier du roi evenwhen there was scarcely any to perform [Mansel]. Enforcedadaptation to the world outside France, however, was noindication of a willingness to change if ever these nightmaredays should end. As the old order grew more remote, memoryoverlaid its more dynamic and nuanced features, and mindsset against anything deemed in retrospect to have precipitatedthe great cataclysm. The Declaration of Verona, which LouisXVIII spent two decades living down, was only the most noto-rious example of this growing rigidity. Condé’s determina-tion to exclude all but scions of the oldest noble stock from hisexile army (which he called simply La Noblesse) was another[d’Agay]. At Toulon in 1793, the only place where émigréswere able to establish more than a fleeting bridgehead inFrance, those who had invited them and their British protectorswere dismayed at the time they devoted, in a city besieged, tore-establishing noble and clerical precedence and preroga-tives.3 Emigration seemed to amplify the ‘cascade of disdain’that had marked old-regime social relations, as the political aswell as the social credentials of each new arrival were exhaust-ively scrutinised. And these attitudes were passed on to a youngergeneration which could recall little of pre-revolutionary life atfirst hand, through an education narrowed by the limitedmeans or censorious ambitions of their parents.

Yet by the time Napoleon fell, nine-tenths of the émigréshad already returned to France. Only those motivated

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overwhelmingly by loyalty to the Bourbon dynasty held aloof froman architect of unprecedented French power and glory whoinvited them back on the sole condition that they accept the legit-imacy of his regime. Their return opened new rifts among thosewho had taken the ‘honourable road’ in grimmer times. Whatcontinued to unite them was the cost of choosing to leaveFrance and not return when summoned to do so. In 1792 thegoods of all declared émigrés were confiscated and added tothe stock of biens nationaux. It is true that much was repur-chased by relations left behind, or by émigrés themselves ontheir return. Land still unsold was returned to its former ownersor their heirs at, or before, the restoration. Nevertheless thecost of repurchase was substantial, and hardly any émigrésrecovered all their former property. The compensationaccorded in the milliard des émigrés of 1825 never reached thatfabulous sum, and sometimes took many years to be assessedand awarded [Franke]. Émigrés and their descendants thuscontinued to suffer for what they had done long after emigra-tion became a myth-laden memory. And despite their implicitrecognition of the Revolution’s legitimacy by acceptance of theindemnity, their political enemies often failed to return thecompliment. Throughout the nineteenth century calls wereperiodically heard for the milliard to be repaid.

However much, therefore, and at however painful a cost,the émigrés and their families came to accept what the Revolu-tion had done, the custodians of its achievements could neveracknowledge the legitimacy of the emigration. As their lan-guage made clear, they drew little distinction between emigra-tion and treason. The language of republican intransigence,inherited from the Year II, implied that the émigrés had aban-doned their country in its hour of peril to give aid and comfortto its enemies. Émigrés for their part claimed that there waslittle choice; and for those fleeing from massacre and arrest in1792–94 that was obviously true. Those who left earlier hadless excuse. Alarming though the events of 1789–92 were tonobles and clerics, a large majority of both orders proved ableto live through them without leaving the country. The earlyRevolution was not so much a mortal threat to establishedélites, as a challenge. The émigrés were the ones who refusedit; and in doing so they played a fateful part in driving the Re-volution to the very extremes they later deplored and claimed

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to have foreseen. Their departure, and their noisy denuncia-tions from beyond the frontiers, only intensified revolutionaryparanoia and suspicion towards all ci-devants. Their attemptsto recruit the king to their cause, culminating in his disastrousflight to Varennes in June 1791, fatally undermined the pro-spect for a constitutional monarchy. Their appeals to foreignpowers to intervene in French internal affairs began the move-ment towards war in the autumn in 1791; and their willingnessto serve in arms under enemy command, once hostilities beganthe following spring, finally marked them out as betrayers oftheir country. Louis XVI’s attempts, meanwhile, to protectthem and their property in France with his veto helped sealthe fate of the monarchy itself.

All these machinations, it is true, were the work of a smallminority. One thing that stands out from the present collec-tion is the political passivity of most émigrés once they hadaffected their escape. They all lived in hope, but most weremore absorbed in the struggle for day-to-day survival than inthe struggle against the Godless popular republic. Apart fromthose who went early, their fortunes as yet unthreatened byovert political dissidence, most émigrés left their sources ofincome behind, inaccessible even before they were confiscated.They had to find new ways of sustaining themselves. Andalthough they usually found abroad, however grudgingly,the noble and clerical solidarity they obviously expected, theymostly had to find their own resources. As Gibbon remarked,‘These noble fugitives are entitled to our pity; they may claimour esteem; but they cannot, in the present state of their mindand fortune, much contribute to our amusement.’4 Therewas, indeed, little amusing about the emigration. The FrenchRevolution imposed unenviable choice on all who had to livethrough it. The émigrés’ choice was to sacrifice everythingbut their lives (and, if they went to Quiberon, even those)rather than accept a new order of things in the land of theirbirth. It was a futile sacrifice. None of them ever recovered allthey lost, and most would have lost less by staying. Notoriously,even the restored Bourbons inherited Napoleon’s throne, nottheir brother’s; and Charles X in 1830 threw that away, dyingin renewed emigration. But the story is no less tragic for itsfutility, and no less significant either. Without the betterunderstanding of the émigrés which this collection offers,

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xxii Introduction

the Revolution they rejected will also be less well under-stood.

NOTES

1. D. Greer, The Incidence of the Emigration during the French Revolution,Cambridge, Mass., 1951, p. 115.

2. The first use recorded by the OED is by no less a writer than EdwardGibbon, who a year earlier had already noted the presence in Lausanne,of ‘a swarm of emigrants of both sexes who escaped from the publicruin’. Memoirs of My Life, ed. G.A. Bonnard, London, 1966, p. 185.

3. M. Crook, Toulon in War and Revolution: from the Ancien Régime to theRestoration, 1750–1820, Manchester, 1991, p. 142.

4. Memoirs of My Life, p. 185.

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1

1 From Coblenz to Hartwell: the ÉmigréGovernment and the European Powers,1791–1814 Philip Mansel

When the Comte de Provence arrived in Brussels on 26 June1791, after his flight from France, he found himself at the headof what he termed, in the memoir he wrote later that summer,‘une des plus grandes machines qui aient jamais existé’,namely the émigré government.1 The émigré government wasof a different nature to its rival under the Queen’s favourite, theBaron de Breteuil, or to any government in exile maintainedby later French pretenders, Bourbon, Orléans or Bonaparte.In its council of Ministers sat such notable former ministers ofLouis XVI as Calonne, the Maréchaux de Broglie and de Cas-tries. By early 1792 it had established its own diplomats intwelve capitals,2 including London, Vienna and Saint Peters-burg, where émigré representatives remained until 1814. Therewas chaos in the émigré government’s finances.3 Nevertheless,by the summer of 1792 it had organised an army of 14 249.One sign of the émigré government’s readiness both to dis-obey even those acts of Louis XVI dating from before 1789, andto strengthen links between the Crown and the nobility, was theinclusion in its army of the Compagnies Nobles d’Ordon-nance. They were a revival, under another name, of the MaisonMilitaire du roi as it had been before the reforms of 1775.4

The émigré government justified its independence on thegrounds that, as Provence wrote to Marie Antoinette, the Prin-ces were the ‘seuls organes légitimes du roi de France, retenuen captivité par ses sujets rebelles’.5 The Comtes de Provenceand d’Artois also represented themselves as leaders of a crusadeto save Europe. This was in part a result of geography: from

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2 The French Émigrés in Europe

7 July they established their court and government in the smalltown of Coblenz at the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle.They were there at the invitation, and under the protection, ofone of their mother’s brothers, Prince Clemenz of Saxony,Archbishop and Elector of Trier, whose principal residence itwas. They had to justify their government’s existence to theElector and the Holy Roman Empire.

However, while alarmed by the progress of what they calledle mal français, most foreign governments saw the Frenchrevolution as a specifically French phenomenon which didnot directly threaten – in some cases could be exploited tostrengthen – their authority in their own countries. The Princesfailed to persuade European powers to withdraw their ambas-sadors from Paris in July 1791.6 The sole result of the Confer-ence held at Pillnitz in August 1791 between the Holy RomanEmperor, the King of Prussia, the Elector of Saxony and theComte d’Artois was the anodyne declaration that the fate ofLouis XVI was ‘un objet d’intérêt commun à tous les souver-ains de l’Europe’. Only Gustavus III, a personal friend of Pro-vence who had conferred with the Princes at Aix-la-Chapellein early July, made plans to attack France.7 But Sweden wastoo distant and impoverished to be an effective ally.

The émigré government had more success with Russia.Catherine II had three motives: monarchical outrage at therevolution; geopolitical desire to keep the western Europeanpowers occupied while Poland was destroyed; and personalhatred for the Baron de Breteuil, head of the rival govern-ment in exile, who as a young French diplomat had opposedher coup d’état in 1762. In the autumn of 1791 the Russianambassador to the Circles of the Upper and Lower Rhine, CountRomanzov, and the Swedish ambassador to the Imperial Diet,Baron Oxenstierna, were also accredited to the Princes atCoblenz. So important was such foreign recognition that, oneach occasion, the émigré nobility at Coblenz en corps was sentto compliment the ambassador.

‘La scene a été des plus brillantes et des plus riches enintérêt . . . ’ wrote the Baron de Bray, the representative of theGrand Master of Malta at Coblenz, of Romanzov’s reception.8Further proof of the émigré government’s European dimen-sion was the presence of both the Russian and Swedish ambas-sadors, the Baron de Duminic first minister of the Elector of


Philip Mansel 3

Trier, the Baron de Bray and the Prince of Nassau-Siegen, aGerman prince in Russian service, in the Princes’ council.9Thereafter the Princes, always eager to internationalise theirsituation, addressed frequent confidential letters to Catherine II,requesting both funds and advice.10 Indeed, without the émigrégovernment’s foreign subsidies, it would not have survived. In1791, for example, Catherine II and Frederick William II ofPrussia sent the Princes 1 591 037 livres and 1 888 874livres respectively.11

The greatest ally of the émigré government, however, wasFrench aggression. The French government declared war onAustria on 20 April 1792. Thereafter, the demands of war fur-ther Europeanised the émigré government. As the allied armies(which the Princes hoped would include Spain and Sardinia)12

gathered for the invasion of France, the Princes and their min-isters had frequent conferences with the allied commander-in-chief, the Duke of Brunswick. They helped to compose theDeclaration of Brunswick and followed his military dispositions.The King of Prussia, thanks in part to the persuasion of thePrinces’ councillor, the Prince of Nassau-Siegen, gave them afurther 800 000 francs to equip their army, reviewed it, andspent an hour discussing policy with the Princes on 21 July.13

Despite the closeness of relations with Austria and Prussia,however, the Allies refused Provence’s request to be recognisedas Regent of France in September 1792.

During the allied retreat in October and November after thedefeat at Valmy, the émigré government remained dependenton Prussia and Austria. Having dissolved their army at theinsistence of the King of Prussia on 23 November, the Princesinstalled themselves, their government and archive on Prus-sian soil in the small town of Hamm in Westphalia in lateDecember.14

They remained dependent on foreign governments for sub-sistence as well as asylum. Russia remained generous: theEmpress sent 1 144 689 livres in 1793. The Russian ambassadorRomanzov, still officially accredited to the Princes, resided atHamm, determined, as he wrote to the Maréchal de Castries,the leading minister of the émigré government, to serve ‘lacause de la Monarchie française avec zèle’.15

Russian assistance was so important that in late 1794 theRussian ambassador in Venice, Count Mordvinov, secured



permission from the Venetian government for Provence toestablish himself in Verona. After Provence became King ofFrance as Louis XVIII on his nephew’s death in 1795, Mordvi-nov was formally accredited to him, followed by Baron Simolin,formerly Russian ambassador in Paris, in 1796–97.16

The years between 1792 and 1798, however, saw a low pointin the émigré government’s relations with the European powers,and therefore in its success in France. Artois admitted thatthe only hope lay in ‘l’appui des grandes puissances’ but that allwere hostile.17 The diplomatic system of the French mon-archy had collapsed at the same time as the monarchy itself.Austria, the ally of 1756, possibly out of dynastic hatred of theBourbons, was actively ill-intentioned and in 1793 wantedterritorial gains in northern France. Echoing the views of LouisXVI’s ministers in the 1780s, Castries wrote in 1794: ‘la courde Vienne considère la France comme une puissance qu’il fautabattre’.18

In 1799 a British diplomat noticed in Baron Thugut, theAustrian chief minister,

a stronger inclination to divide France and perpetuate thedistractions of that country than to re-establish either Mon-archy or any other steady government . . . he has a strongprejudice against the King of France and the French princeswhom he considers as personally obnoxious to the Frenchnation.

In August 1804 Thugut’s successor, Count Ludwig Cobenzl,burnt Louis XVIII’s protest against the proclamation of theFrench empire, in the presence of Napoleon’s ambassador.19

Their Bourbon cousins showed little more sympathy for theémigré Princes. Charles IV of Spain sent them a million francsin 1792 and, until 1807, small subsistence pensions to the dif-ferent members of the French Royal Family.20 However hegave no political or military support and in 1794 refused Pro-vence asylum, as did the Bourbon Duke of Parma, the recipi-ent of the largest single annual pension awarded by Louis XVI(and the Bourbon King of Naples in 1802). Between 1798 and1808 the King of Spain was an ally, first of the French Republic,then of the French Empire.21

Despite the disasters of 1792–98 the émigré governmentsurvived. Wherever he happened to be – between August


Philip Mansel 5

1796 and February 1798 in Blankenburg in the Duchy ofBrunswick, thereafter moving to Mittau in Russia – LouisXVIII held council two or three times a week. In 1795–96 atVerona, according to the unofficial British ambassador LordMacartney, ‘ever since the death of Louis 17th the king’s resid-ence here has been assuming more and more the air of a Court’,not through outward splendour, but ‘by the numerous corres-pondences, the arrival and departure of couriers from time totime’.22 Ministers in attendance included Castries, Flasch-landen, La Vauguyon, Jaucourt and, as representative of theComte d’Artois, the Bishop of Arras.23

The calibre of the émigré government is shown by its use ofa skilled bureaucrat called M. Hermann, to run some of itscyphers from 1793 to 1801. Former Agent général de la Marinede France and Consul-General in London under Louis XVI,he later became a senior financial official of Napoleon I andfinally sous-secrétaire d’état aux affaires étrangères in 1822.24

The principal minister in 1798–1800 was the Comte de Saint-Priest, a former minister of Louis XVI who advocated a recon-ciliation with the constitutional monarchists. In exile, someMinisters retained the arrogance of Versailles. When the Ducde Noailles resigned as Capitaine des Gardes in 1795, hiscousin the Prince de Poix, himself dismissed as Capitaine desGardes by Louis XVIII the same year on the suspicion of mod-eration, wrote to the Maréchal de Castries:

M.de Flaschlanden nous a écrit par un Secrétaire, ce queLouis XIV ne se seroit pas permis dans sa toute puissancepour la démission d’une telle charge.25

Another sign of the calibre of the émigré government is pro-vided by the archives deposited in the Ministère des AffairesÉtrangères in 1814, some of which had followed the exiledcourt through every stage of its European odyssey, fromCoblenz to Hartwell. It is primarily a political archive, contain-ing constitutional projects, despatches by the King’s agents inParis, London, Madrid or Saint Petersburg, or bulletins issuedby the King’s cabinet for the press.26 However, the FondsBourbon is only part of the archives of the émigré government.Much of the personal correspondence of Louis XVIII, and suchdynastic relics as the seal of Louis XVI, remain in the archivesof the Blacas family, descendants of the last chief minister of



the émigré government. They provided material for the manybooks and articles by Ernest Daudet on the Emigration. Thevoluminous archives of the émigré Ministers, the Maréchal deCastries and the Comte de Saint Priest, can be consulted in theArchives Nationales in Paris (306 AP and 395 AP); those ofCalonne in the Public Record Office in London (PC1). Anotherarchive of the émigré government and army, mainly emanatingfrom the Comte d’Artois, with detailed records of pay, ranksand decorations, was removed from the French embassy inLondon in 1816 and is now in the Archives Nationales (O32558–2681).27

In addition to an administration, a diplomatic service andan archive, the émigré government had an army. For althoughthe armée des Princes had been disbanded, the armée deCondé survived as a force of about 5000 men (see Chapter 2).Louis XVIII continued to promote officers and award themhonours as if he were an independent sovereign. As late asNew Year’s day 1812, Louis XVIII promoted the Marquisd’Autichamp and the Comtes de Coigny and de Cély Lieuten-ant Generals.28 The émigré government’s Minister of War until1795 was the Maréchal de Broglie, who was succeeded by theBaron de Flaschlanden, a member of the Princes’ Councilsince 1791; he in turn was succeeded on his death in 1798 bythe Comte de La Chapelle, former Major-Général of l’arméedes Princes in 1792; he died at Hartwell in March 1810.29

In addition to the armée de Condé, émigré or émigré-commanded units, with which the émigré government main-tained contact, served in the Austrian, British, Sardinian andSpanish armies. Lieutenant-Colonel de Durler, commander ofthe Regiment de Roll, which served in the British army from1794 to 1816, for example, paid court to Louis XVIII at Veronaon 25 January 1796.30 In 1796 the King thought of joining theLoyal Emigrant Regiment, which fought for Britain in theAustrian Netherlands, Brittany and Portugal under his friendthe Comte de La Chatre.31

The émigré government also had its own subjects. Over129000 émigrés, perhaps as many as 200000,32 formed an entiresociety on the move, with its own public opinion, culture andstyle, simpler than what Louis XVIII’s favourite the Comted’Avaray called, in 1804, ‘la dignité crapuleuse et empruntéequi aujourd’hui règne en France’.33


Philip Mansel 7

For many émigrés, the government of Louis XVIII remainedthe focus of loyalty and patronage. For the government, theémigrés remained a source of agents – and political pressure:in 1794 Provence wrote to Castries of his fear that a deal withrevolutionaries would open ‘une source intarissable de dis-corde et de guerres civiles’.34 Thus one reason why Bonaparteencouraged émigrés to return to France after 1802, accordingto Talleyrand, was

afin d’isoler davantage Louis XVIII et lui ôter, comme ildisait, l’air de roi qu’une nombreuse émigration lui donnait.35

However, many émigrés remained outside France, rising topositions such as Marshal General of Portugal (Comte deVioménil); military commander of Madrid (the Comte d’Es-pagne); Commander-in-Chief of the Neapolitan army (Rogerde Damas); Austrian general (Comte E. de Pouilly); Governorof Odessa and Minister of the Marine in Russia (the Duc deRichelieu and the Marquis de Traversay). Even if they adoptedanother nationality, an act for which some first asked the King’spermission,36 in contrast to Jacobite officers in foreign servicewho rapidly lost their links with the Jacobite government,many such émigrés remained royalist ‘sleepers’, as the eventsof 1813–14 would show.

Thus the Revolution of 1789 had committed two errors, notrepeated by those of 1830 or 1848. First, by making Francephysically dangerous, it encouraged the emigration of royalistswho, once they had risen in the service of foreign govern-ments, were likely to be in a position to influence them againstthe French government. Second, its policy of territorial expan-sion, more than its revolutionary excesses, obliged the Euro-pean powers in the end to league against it. Louis XVIII, onthe other hand, stuck to the Bourbon policy which had madeFrance, for the first time, renounce European territorialexpansion. Established by Louis XV at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), it had been maintained by Louis XVI on thegrounds that, as Vergennes wrote to him in 1777, ‘la Franceconstituée comme elle l’est doit craindre les agrandissementsbien plus que les ambitionner’.37 In accordance with this tradi-tion Louis XVIII committed himself not to profit from the‘conquêtes faites par la prétendue république’.38 It was theBourbons’ commitment to the former frontiers of France, not



their rights to the throne, which won them the support ofEuropean governments.

The émigré government was at the height of its effectivenesswhen Louis XVIII took up residence in the former palace ofthe Dukes of Courland at Mittau, as a guest of Tsar Paul I,from February 1798 to January 1801. The Tsar took the arméede Condé into his service, awarded Louis XVIII a pension of200 000 roubles a year, paid the salary of the King’s officialrepresentative in Saint Petersburg, the Comte de Caraman,and even paid one hundred former gardes du corps du roi toserve as Louis XVIII’s guards – a symbol of sovereignty whichhad been denied to Louis XVI in the Tuileries after October1789.39 Within four months the King’s court and guard, at firstconfined to one floor of the main wing of the palace, had obligedthe city’s prison, law-court and archives to move out of thepalace and had themselves begun to expand into the town.40

By 1801 the Maison civile du Roi numbered 108 individuals;in all about 300 French émigrés lived in Mittau.41 At one stageLouis XVIII even suggested that his gardes du corps take overthe police of Mittau. Although the Pretender was never al-lowed to see Paul I in Saint Petersburg as he requested, PaulSchroeder’s allegation of the Bourbon court’s ‘pitiful exist-ence’ is clearly not the whole truth.42 At Mittau, Louis XVIIIwas both figuratively and literally on the main road to SaintPetersburg. ‘Placé sur la route de tous les courriers’,43 he rece-ived Russian and British diplomats, General Dumouriez, theGrand Duke Constantine, and Marshal Suvorov himself, whostopped in Mittau in March 1799 to obtain the King’s blessingbefore the Second Coalition’s attack on France that summer.44

In addition to Louis’ government and court at Mittau, therewas a rival court under Artois, whom Provence had appointedLieutenant Général du Royaume on 8 November 1793.45 IfRussia protected Louis XVIII, Britain supported Artois. In1793 Lord Grenville had forbidden Provence to land at Toulon– despite its inhabitants’ request for his presence – and Artoisto land in England.46 In 1799, in a change of heart probablydue to the realisation that the Directory was even more expan-sionist than the Convention, Grenville wrote:

Europe can never be restored to tranquillity but by the res-toration of the monarchy in France.


Philip Mansel 9

Despite Austrian hostility, the Prime Minister, William Pitt,declared in Parliament in January 1800:

The Restoration of the French monarchy . . . I consider as amost desirable object because I think it would afford thestrongest and best security to this country and to Europe.47

In August 1799, at the height of British confidence in theEuropean coalition, Artois accepted an official invitation toleave the palace of Holyrood outside Edinburgh, where he hadresided since January 1796, and move to London. Presentedto George III at court, often meeting the Prime Minister,48 hebecame Britain’s protégé, someone whom Britain preferred toLouis XVIII to accompany an invasion of the south or east ofFrance at the head of a Swiss force.49 Louis XVIII, whom Artoishad not consulted, was furious but impotent.50 In fact Artoisnever reached France and for the next 14 years remained inLondon.

The war of the Second Coalition marked the émigré gov-ernment’s long-anticipated breakthrough with the British andRussian governments or, as Artois wrote, the moment when‘les souverains commencent à ouvrir les yeux’.51 ThereafterRussia and Britain kept the Bourbons as a reserve card in theirEuropean plans. The reconciliation of the Duc d’Orléans withhis Bourbon cousins provides proof of the émigré govern-ment’s European status. Artois insisted that Orléans’ letter ofsubmission to Louis XVIII of 13 February 1800 be at onceshown not only to senior émigré officers in London but also toBritish ministers and the Russian ambassador. Only afterOrléans had made his submission did he receive a British pen-sion, the honour of presentation to George III and the oppor-tunity to meet, at dinner in Artois’ house in 46 Baker Street,the Foreign Secretary and the Austrian, Russian and Neapol-itan ambassadors.52

While Britain turned to Artois, the Tsar turned againstLouis XVIII. Disabused by the defeats of the Second Coalition,having quarrelled with the Bourbon supporter Gustavus IVof Sweden, and having dismissed the pro-Bourbon Vice-Chancellor and joint Minister of Foreign Affairs Count N.P.Panin, Paul I established close relations with the First Consul.On 14 January 1801, possibly as a result of reading a despatchfrom D’Avaray to the Duc d’Havré the émigré representative



in Madrid, with mocking portraits of himself and his ministers,Paul I ordered the expulsion of Louis XVIII, his family andfollowers from Mittau.53 Louis XVIII’s agent in Berlin, thegreat counter-revolutionary writer, Rivarol, helped obtainpermission from the King of Prussia for the Bourbons to live inWarsaw.54 From March 1801 until the summer of 1804, underconsiderable restrictions, enjoying occasional subsidies fromsympathetic Polish nobles, Louis XVIII and his court stayed inrented houses in Warsaw.55

Soon after the King’s installation in Warsaw, Paul I was mur-dered (one of the original conspirators had been Count Panin,the former joint Foreign Minister sympathetic to the Bour-bons). Although no longer recognising the Pretender officiallylike his father and grandmother, Alexander I re-established asmaller pension that summer, renewed the offer of asylum inMittau and assured Louis XVIII:

Vos vertus brillent d’un nouveau lustre dans l’adversité etvous assurent des titres imprescriptibles.56

In January 1802 Alexander I addressed a circular to his ambas-sadors in Madrid, Naples, Paris, London, Berlin and Vienna toask the governments of Europe, including the French, to pro-vide financial support for the Bourbons. The Tsar claimed that

La situation à laquelle se trouve réduit M. le comte deLille . . . ne peut être indifférente à tous les souverains del’Europe.

Austria, Prussia and Spain refused to provide any more thanthey were already. Britain sent £5000 at once and thereafter£6000 a year.57

In 1802 Britain and Russia were at peace with the FrenchRepublic, and appeared to have abandoned the Bourbon cause.The Pope himself had signed a Concordat with the Republic.Louis XVIII experienced a period of despair (at the same timeArtois, possibly intending to leave London, bought an estate atWittmold in Holstein). Moreover, the dynasty was losing itsbiological base. The daughter of Louis XVI, who had beenmarried to her cousin the Duc d’Angoulême at Mittau in 1799,showed no sign of bearing an heir. Louis XVIII had failed inhis efforts to marry the Duc de Berri either to the widowedElectress of Bavaria, or to Princesses of Savoy, Saxony, Parma or


Philip Mansel 11

Naples. He wrote to Artois that he feared that Berri would notbe accepted even by a daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar:‘la terreur est à l’ordre du jour . . . notre temps est passé oupour mieux dire il dort’.58 Through d’Avaray he spoke ofretiring to Naples where he would deposit his crown in the heartof his cousin the King and live as a private person.59 Havingfailed in his negotiations for a restoration with Bonaparte,Louis XVIII even considered, to Artois’s horror, accepting asubsidy from the First Consul, provided that it came via theRussian government.60

However in 1803 and 1804, having forgotten his despair,Louis XVIII made two famous protests of his right to thecrown of France. In February 1803 in Warsaw, to a Prussianofficial sent to urge a renunciation of the throne in return for‘de grands avantages’, he replied with the famous lines:

J’ignore les desseins de Dieu sur ma race et sur moi, mais jeconnais les obligations qu’il m’a imposées par le rang ou ilLui a plu de me faire naître. . . . Successeur de François Ier,je veux au moins pouvoir dire avec lui, ‘Nous avons toutperdu hors l’honneur’.

To the rage of Talleyrand, who pursued a personal vendettaagainst the Bourbons, British boats circulated the King’s replyalong the coast of France.61

A year later Louis XVIII called the assumption of the imper-ial title by Napoleon ‘les circonstances les plus graves et les pluscritiques ou je me suis trouvé depuis le commencement de nosinfortunes’.62

After a meeting at Kalmar on the Swedish coast with KingGustavus IV Adolphus and Artois (the only prince who hadobtained a British passport) in late September 1804, LouisXVIII moved to the house of sympathetic nobles at Blanken-feld in Courland, having been refused permission to return toWarsaw by the King of Prussia at Napoleon I’s request.63 Thusit was at Blankenfeld that Louis XVIII finished the Declara-tion to which he gave a fictitious date – 2 December 1804, theday of what he called ‘l’horrible farce’ in Notre Dame de Paris– and address – ‘au sein de la Baltique, en face et sous la pro-tection du ciel’.64

In its final form the Declaration endorsed a general amnestyand the broad outlines of the post-1789 settlement, including



careers open to the talents, and the post-1789 administrativerevolution. While not explicitly renouncing all conquests, italso criticised France’s expansion in Europe:

Un système perfide de violence, d’ambition sans limites,d’arrogance sans frein, vous livre à d’interminables guerresdont la lassitude seule suspendra le fléau.

Despite the opposition of Artois, the British government andAlexander I, the King insisted on the Declaration’s publica-tion, writing to Gustavus IV that it was ‘destiné pour la France,fait pour la France’ and should be sent there in as great aquantity as possible. With Swedish help, it was printed inStockholm and Berlin in 1805, but its circulation in France isdoubtful.65

After five months at Blankenfeld, in February 1805, the Kingwas readmitted to Mittau by Alexander I. Alexander remainedmore sympathetic to the Bourbon cause than is generallybelieved. His court, like the Swedish court, went into mourningfor the Duc d’Enghien in 1804 and refused to recognise Napo-leon’s imperial title. Although opposed to fighting a war forthe sole object of the restoration of the King of France, Alex-ander I still favoured putting a Bourbon on the French throneprovided he accepted a constitution.66 In 1805 both Russiaand Britain considered

the restoration of the Bourbon family on the throne . . .highly desirable for the future both of France and Europe.67

In 1806–7 the Russian government planned to help a royalistattack in the west of France. On 31 March 1807 Alexander Icame to Mittau and saw Louis XVIII for one and a half hours.68

However later that year Louis XVIII left Russia for England.Again, like his arrival in Russia in 1798 or the Declaration ofCalmar in 1804, this move, planned since March 1806, wasmade on his own initiative. Dislike of the distance of Mittaufrom France, and jealousy of Artois’s control of what the Kingcalled ‘cette multitude d’agens non avoués et d’agences noncommandées’, helped determine Louis XVIII. Money mayhave been the most important factor of all. The Swedish ambas-sador in Saint Petersburg, Count Stedingk, an old friend fromVersailles, claimed to know ‘de science certaine’ that the movewas designed to stop Artois monopolising British subsidies.69


Philip Mansel 13

Certainly in April 1807 d’Avaray had written to Orléans (LouisXVIII’s secret intermediary with the British government inorder to keep Artois and Alexander I in ignorance), that theSpanish and Portuguese pensions had stopped, that the Kinghad given up his personal table and his carriage, and that,‘l’heritier de Saint Louis n’a pas de quoi vivre’.70

After a second visit to Gustavus IV, the King travelled acrossSweden to Gothenburg, where he embarked on a Swedishship, at Swedish expense, for England. They arrived off GreatYarmouth on 30 October 1807.

D’Avaray announced to Canning, who had replaced Gren-ville as Foreign Secretary that year, the arrival of, ‘l’ennemi leplus redoutable du perturbateur du monde . . . le pacificateurfutur de l’Europe’. The King and d’Avaray had hoped to conferwith British ministers in London about the future of Europe,in particular of British relations with Russia and Sweden.71

The British government, however, which was consideringpeace negotiations with Napoleon I, and the Comte d’Artoisand his followers, wanted his boat to leave for Leith andordered Holyrood to be prepared.72 However, Canning was alife-long ‘anti-Jacobin’, who feared criticism for his treatmentof the King of France. Lady Elizabeth Foster, a friend of theFrench royal family since the 1780s, wrote:

never, I think, was the public feeling more strongly expressedthan it has been against the incivility and want of respectand attention to Louis XVIII.73

Finally, with the help of Orléans, Louis XVIII received per-mission to land on the condition that he resided at a distanceof fifty miles from London.74

In Britain, although his hopes for formal recognition, resid-ence in London or meetings with ministers were not recog-nised, the King began to return to official life after the hiatus of1801–7. His British pension was increased from £6000 a yearto £16 000 and he also received the equivalent of £1600 fromPortugal (through British intervention) and £4000 from Rus-sia.75 As a capital reserve he had his aunts’ diamonds and by1797 the côte de bretagne ruby from the French crown jewels.76 InVerona and Blankenburg he had been forbidden to holdcourt; in Mittau and Warsaw, despite his local connectionsthrough his grandmother Marie Leczinska, daughter of King



Stanislas Leczynski of Poland, he saw local nobles on greatoccasions such as the day of Saint Louis, but otherwise received‘few visits . . . (for they do not make any) and those very short’.77

In England, the centre of the Emigration, both French émi-grés and British sympathisers (particularly Roman Catholics)paid him court at Hartwell House, near Aylesbury, to which hemoved in 1809. In 1809, on a visit to the Prince de Condé atWanstead House near London, he received ‘les femmespresentées . . . et tous les émigrés máles sans distinction’.

He also revived the Bourbon tradition of dining in public.78

In addition, like Artois and Orléans, he frequently correspond-ed with both Canning and his successor as Foreign SecretaryLord Wellesley. In 1807, continuing the émigré government’spolicy to internationalise its cause, he wrote to Canning thatFrench interests ‘sont inséparables de ceux de l’Angleterre’.In 1809 he told Lord Wellesley that ‘la cause de FerdinandVII et la mienne sont communes’ and that

je considère les intérêts de son pays [Britain] comme insépa-rables de ceux de la France.79

Indeed one Spanish Junta described itself as fighting for,

the Sacred Rights of the Most August House of Bourbon,whereof His Most Christian Majesty is the Worthy and Illus-trious Chief.80

The British Government refused to allow any French Bourbonto serve in Spain. However, it was eager to preserve the Bour-bons as a political weapon in France. In 1810 it agreed, at therequest of the Comte d’Artois (no doubt alarmed by the mar-riages, that year, of both Napoleon I and the Duc d’Orléans,and by his son’s long liaison with an Englishwoman called AmyBrown), to send a frigate to collect a Sardinian princess for theDuc de Berri, and to provide her with a pension of £3000 perannum.81 Artois, who by 1807 lived in the fashionable addressof South Audley Street, held regular levers and often receivedthe Foreign Secretary Canning and his successor the MarquessWellesley.82 The King of Sardinia, however, reiterated therefusal made in 1805, when he had written:

ce serait marier la faim et la soif et faire devenir ma fille uneperpétuelle bohémienne sans pain ni gîte.83


Philip Mansel 15

The British government also paid part of the cost of the statefuneral of ‘the Queen of France’, Louis XVIII’s wife MarieJosephine of Savoy, in Westminster Abbey, on 26 November1810. The funeral was a European occasion, attended by theambassadors of Sardinia, Sicily, Spain and Portugal, as well asby eleven émigré bishops.84

Another supporter of the Bourbons was the Prince of Wales,who visited Louis XVIII on 20 October 1808 and swore torestore him at a time when nobody else believed it possible.85 On19 June 1811 the King and his family were the guests of honourat the sumptuous fête for 3000 by which the Prince inauguratedhis Regency. The Regent welcomed him, in a room hung withfleurs de lys tapestries and a portrait of Louis XV, with thewords: ‘Ici Votre Majesté est Roi de France’.86

The defeat of Napoleon in Russia in 1812 strengthenedBritish enthusiasm for the Bourbons. There were more meet-ings between the royal families. In London on 19 December,an occasion ignored by British historians like Charles Web-ster (who do not consult émigré sources), Blacas promised aBritish minister that the King will support ‘the present orderof things’. In accordance with the King’s evolution sincebefore the declaration of 1804, the Declaration of Hartwell of1 March 1813 promised ’union’, ‘bonheur’, ‘paix’ and ‘repos’;the maintenance of ‘le Code dit Napoléon’ except in mattersof religion, and of ‘les corps Administratifs et Judiciaires’and guaranteed ‘la liberté du peuple.’ Thereafter the Britishgovernment provided the King with the financial means toprint the Declaration and to have it distributed on the Con-tinent by

des serviteurs devoués qui puissent faire connaître auxFrançois les intentions du Roi et au Roi les dispositions del’intérieur.87

After December 1812 the secret British policy to support theBourbons is revealed by its agents’ acts. In early 1813 the Brit-ish minister in Stockholm had copies of the Declaration ofHartwell printed, while a British officer, Sir Neil Campbell,had 2000 copies printed at Provins in France in mid-February1814.88 Despatches from Hartwell to Vienna were carried bythe couriers of the Regent’s Hanoverian Minister in London,Count Munster.89 Thus the support which Louis XVIII won



in France through the Declaration of Hartwell was due in partto the actions of the British government.

In his letters to Bonnay in Vienna, Blacas confirmed theémigré policy of renunciation of territorial expansion and ofrepresenting Louis XVIII not as a legitimate monarch but as aEuropean necessity (there is no proof, however, that these let-ters influenced the Austrian Foreign Minister, Metternich).Napoleon himself, whose insistence on retaining the ‘naturalfrontiers’ convinced the allies not to make peace with him in1814, felt that a return to the anciennes limites was ‘inséparabledu rétablissement des Bourbons’.90

At the same time the King despatched a volley of émigréofficers from his reserve of supporters, on missions to thediferent powers of Europe. Alexis de Noailles was sent to Alex-ander I and Bernadotte in the summer of 1812; the Comte deLa Ferronays to Saint Petersburg and allied headquarters inearly 1813; the Comte de Bruges to allied headquarters inSilesia in the summer of 1813; Comte Louis de Bouillé to Berna-dotte’s headquarters in October 1813; and the Comtes de Nar-bonne, de Trogoff, Wildermeth and de Chabannes to Spain,Austria and northern France.91

The powers’ reaction was mixed. However, such missionsshow that a Bourbon Restoration, far from being a surprise in1814, had been frequently discussed at government level sinceearly 1813. In April 1813 Count Romanzov, the former Russianambassador to the Princes in 1791–93, now chancellor of theEmpire, who even after the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807 hadremained sympathetic to the émigré government and its agents,informed Count Lieven, Russian ambassador in London, ofthe Russian government’s interest in a restoration. Lieven hadalready visited Hartwell that January.92 However the Tsarprovided neither formal recognition, nor support for an inva-sion in the West, nor permission for Angoulême to serve withthe Russian army, as Louis XVIII requested. In July 1813 theComte d’Artois and the Duc d’Angoulême were forced toreturn to England from Pomerania where they had hoped tojoin allied headquarters.93

One explanation for this policy is revealed in the memoirsand letters of La Ferronays and Rochechouart, an émigré whohad become one of the Tsar’s aides de camp. When La Fer-ronays finally obtained two audiences of the Tsar in May 1813,


Philip Mansel 17

the latter, according to La Ferronays, expressed support forroyalism, mitigated by fear of alienating Austria which was stillneutral:

Si nous parvenons à jeter Napoléon de l’autre côté du Rhinet qu’alors, comme je n’en doute pas, il se manifeste enFrance quelque mouvement en faveur du roi, croyez que jesaurai profiter de ce moment pour faire entendre à l’Autricheque, mon seul but ayant été de rendre la liberté aux nations,le voeu du peuple français qui réclame ses anciens maîtresrend nul tout espèce d’engagement pris avec elle . . . je saismieux qu’un autre, croyez-le, que le rétablissement de lalégitimité partout est la seule base sur laquelle on puisseasseoir la paix et la tranquillité de l’Europe.94

In a letter to Louis XVIII Alexander I assured him of the ‘sen-timents invariables que je vous conserve’ and promised to actonce the armies had crossed the Rhine and royalist movementshad shown themselves: ‘il faut de la patience, une grandecirconspection et le plus profond secret’.95

The calculated wait for French soil and royalist risings, ratherthan opposition on principle, explains the allies’ failure openlyto support a Restoration before March 1814. In early 1814,once the allies had arrived on French soil after a string of vic-tories over Napoleon I, the Comte de Rochechouart wrote toask the Tsar to support the Bourbons, not because they werelegitimate but because their restoration would guarantee the‘independance et repos’ of Europe. The Tsar replied cautiously:

vous ne pouvez douter des sentiments qui m’animent enfaveur de l’auguste famille de vos anciens rois mais je nepuis agir sans mes alliés . . . en attendant, que la France seprononce.

In February, while the allies were discussing peace with Napo-leon at the Congress of Chatillon (thereby paralysing mostFrench royalist initiatives), Alexander I opposed an armis-tice.96 The Tsar was undecided. At one time he declared Louispersonally incapable; a decision should be postponed untilthey reached Paris. A week later Nesselrode received royalistagents on the Tsar’s behalf, telling them that he planned to fol-low ‘le voeu des français’, and requesting the creation of royalistmovements.97



While it was widely believed at the time that Austria tried tosave Napoleon and his empire as a counterbalance to Russia,98

Metternich also considered a Restoration a possibility fromJanuary 1814. On 30 January 1814 he wrote to the Austriancommander-in-chief Prince Schwarzenberg:

Si un parti se déclare, – si ce parti détrône Napoléon – siLouis XVIII est proclamé par la grande majorité de la nationon traitera avec lui. Nous serons enchantés de l’y voir.

Castlereagh thought Metternich had no objection in principleto the Bourbons, whom he regarded as ‘likely to be too weakfor years to molest any of them’.99

Meanwhile, Artois was refused access to allied headquarters,and advised to remain at Vesoul in eastern France and to‘soutenir l’esprit du parti pour le Roi’.100 Rochechouart con-tinued to work for a restoration, meeting royalists from Paris,sending an agent to Hartwell, distributing copies of LouisXVIII’s Declaration.101 Other royalist ADCs of the Tsar were aformer officer of Napoleon’s rival General Moreau, GeneralRapatel, and the earliest and most implacable enemy of Napo-leon, Count Pozzo di Borgo. The latter had been in correspon-dance with the émigré government since at least 1804, hadvisited Mittau in 1805 and had met Blacas and Artois in Londonin 1811 and 1813.102 Émigrés’ role in Napoleon’s downfallshows why, even at the height of his glory, he had been eagerto persuade other monarchs to dismiss them from their serviceand had issued a decree confiscating the goods of émigrés whoserved against France.103

While the attitude of Alexander I remained ambiguous, theBritish government was pro-Bourbon, encouraged by a publicopinion described as ‘insane’, and ‘nearly unanimous’ in itsopposition to peace with Napoleon. Through the Comte deGramont, a son of the King’s Capitaine des Gardes serving inthe Tenth Hussars, Wellington invited a Bourbon prince tohis headquarters in South-West France in December 1813.104

In January 1814 conferences took place between Louis XVIII,Blacas, the Princes, the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool andEdward Cook of the Foreign Office. Artois was so confident ofpublic support that, if the government refused him a passport,he threatened to publish the fact ‘to the whole world . . . toFrance and to Europe’. In fact Liverpool, who had visited


Philip Mansel 19

Coblenz as a young man in 1791, and had many émigré friends,was personally sympathetic to the Bourbon cause.105 On 16January an intimate of the Prince Regent, Lord Yarmouth,wrote:

Bunbury is gone to Lord Wellington . . . to arrange for theappearance of a Bourbon there, and to say much on thissubject which Government are too much afraid of Whit-bread [a Whig MP] to put on paper.106

On 22 January 1814 Artois, Angoulême and Berri left for theContinent, with British passports. On 25 January, breakingBritish constitutional proprieties with the knowledge of LordLiverpool, the Regent summoned the Russian ambassador toCarlton House and informed him that peace with Napoleonwould only be a breathing-space. His entire life was ‘une sériede mauvaise foi, d’atrocité et d’ambition’: in the interests ofEurope, a restoration of the Bourbons, in whom the Regentpersonally took ‘un vif intérêt’, should be proposed to theFrench nation.107

What Louis XVIII had called the ‘vicious circle’ of royalistfear and allied inactivity was finally broken. In fact he had un-derestimated the strength of French royalism. In 1814 it neededonly allied victories and sympathy, rather than a public com-mitment to a restoration, to manifest itself. On 12 March theretreat of Napoleonic forces and the arrival of Wellington’sBritish and Portuguese troops, gave Bordeaux royalists thecourage to declare for Louis XVIII. The Duc d’Angoulême’striumphant entry into the city was decided in consultationwith, and following the orders of, the Duke of Wellington.108

On 17 March 1814 another former émigré, the Baron deVitrolles, arrived at allied headquarters in eastern France witha secret message from Talleyrand, urging a quick march onParis.109 By 23 March, Napoleon’s defeats and intransigence(he still demanded that Antwerp remain French), combinedwith the persistence and moderation of the émigré govern-ment, helped the allies decide publicly to support a restoration.On 31 March allied troops entered Paris. As at Bordeaux, theirarrival led, in some districts, to cries of ‘Vivent les Bourbons!Vivent nos libérateurs! Vive le Roi!’110

One émigré in Russian service, the Comte de Langeron, hadled the allied attack on Montmartre. Rochechouart commanded



the Russian-occupied zone of the capital, while an émigré inAustrian service, Baron von Herzogenburg, commanded theAustrian zone. The Tsar issued a declaration that he would nolonger treat with Napoleon I or any member of his family. On12 April, Artois, whose movements in eastern France, likeAngoulême’s at Bordeaux, had been decided in consultationwith allied commanders, re-entered Paris.111

In conclusion, while its policies and actions inside Francewere generally disastrous, the émigré government succeededin remaining an active element in European politics between1791 and 1814. Louis XVIII and Artois saw European rulerssuch as the King of Sweden (in 1791, 1804 and 1807); theKing of Great Britain and the Prince of Wales (after 1800);and the Tsarina and Tsar of Russia (in 1794 and 1807). Theywere actively, if not always consistently, supported by leadingEuropean statesmen such as Grenville, Canning, Romanzov,Panin, Armfeld, de Maistre, Gentz,112 Stein, as well as by émi-gré officers in foreign service such as Pozzo di Borgo, Rochec-houart, Gramont, and by public opinion in London andSaint Petersburg. The émigré government frequently tookthe initiative, for example, over the Pretender’s movementsin 1796, 1798 and 1807 and his Declarations in 1795 and1804. During the emigration, particularly after 1798, Russiaand Britain, enemies of the French Bourbons before 1791,replaced Austria and the Bourbon monarchies as theirsupporters: in letters and speeches Blacas and Louis XVIIIopenly attributed the restoration in 1814 to Russia andBritain.113

By consciously Europeanising the Bourbon cause, renoun-cing French territorial expansion, and taking the advice ofthe British and Rusian governments, the émigré governmenthelped ensure its survival and the restoration in 1814. It alsoanticipated the European dimension in French politics andculture in the period 1814–48, and the emergence of Britainas France’s principal ally. It is not surprising that, in his speechof 4 June 1814 to the Chamber of Deputies, Louis XVIII men-tioned the reconciliation of France with Europe before theconstitutional charter.114 Nor is it surprising that the Restora-tion government employed, not the ministers or the generals,but the diplomats, of the émigré government.115 In 1816 theFrench ambassadors in London, Berlin, Vienna and Naples (La


Philip Mansel 21

Chatre, Bonnay, Caraman, Blacas) were all former diplomatsof the émigré government. The Restoration government hadlittle choice, for there were few suitable Napoleonic diplomatsin 1814, on account of the French Empire’s policy of war andannexation. This was also the main reason for the return of theBourbons to France.

NOTES

1. Récit d’un Voyage de Paris à Coblenz, 1822, p. 132. 2. PRO PC 229/558 précis de la situation des affaires des Princes tant au-dehors

qu’au dedans February 1792. 3. See, for example, Baron F.S. Feuillet de Conches, Louis XVI, Marie

Antoinette et Madame Elizabeth, 6 vols. 1864–1873, VI, 239 Prince deNassau-Siegen to Catherine II, 30 July 1792.

4. AN ABX1X 196 Armée des Princes 1792. 5. Ernest Daudet, Histoire de l’Emigration 3 vols 1904–7, I 172, Provence

to Marie Antoinette, 20 February 1792. 6. Archives des Affaires Etrangères Mémoires et Documents France,

Fonds Bourbon (Henceforward referred to as AAE Fonds Bourbon)588 f. 2 Mémoire of the Princes to Gustavus III, early July 1791.

7. R. Nisbet Bain, Gustavus III and his Contemporaries, 2 vols. 1894, II, 122. 8. Comte de Bray, Mémoires, 1911, p. 219 Bray to the Grand Master, 30

September 1791. 9. Daudet, I, 97; AN 306 AP (Castries papers) 1721 f 21vo Calonne to

Castries, 6 March 1792. 10. See Baron F.S. Feuillet de Conches Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette et Madame

Elizabeth, VI, 82, 241, 398, letters of 8 June, 30 July, 1 August, 31October 1792.

11. PRO PC (Public Record Office, Calonne papers) 126/45 Bordereau desdifférentes sommes réçues . . . pour le compte de Leurs Altesses Royales lesPrinces Frères du Roy.

12. F7 6255 (papers of the Marquis de Lambert) Mémoire of Provence andArtois, 27 August 1792.

13. Feuillet de Conches VI 82 Provence and Artois to Catherine II, 8 June1792; Duc de La Force Dames d’Autrefois, 1933, p. 207, Provence toMadame de Balbi, 22 July 1792.

14. Feuillet de Conches VI 410 Provence and Artois to Catherine II, 29November 1792; Comte de Vaudreuil, Correspondance Inédite . . . avec leComte d’Artois, 2 vols 1896, II 116 Artois to Vaudreuil, 28 December1792.

15. AN O3 Papers of the Emigration government 2667, Etat au vrai desrecettes et dépenses; 306AP 1722 f 88 Romanzov to Castries 1/12 August1793.



16. Gérard Walter, Monsieur Comte de Provence, 1950, p. 226; Correspon-dance inédite du Baron Grimm au Comte de Findlater 1934, 208, letter of 15December 1796. In 1795 Russia asked Austria also to recognise LouisXVIII, see Paul Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics,Oxford 1995, p. 148n.

17. AN 306 AP 30 Artois to Provence 27 April 1794. 18. AN 306 AP 30 Reflexions sur le parti à prendre par M le Régent, 1794 cf.

Comte V. Esterhazy (émigré representative in Saint Petersburg),Mémoires, 1905, 387 referring to Austrian ministers who ‘regardentl’abaissement de la Maison de Bourbon comme le plus sûr moyend’élèver celle d’Autriche’.

19. Earl of Minto, Life and Letters, 3 vols. 1874, III 92; cf. Karl A. Roider,Baron Thugut and the Austrian Reaction to the French Revolution, Princeton1987, pp. 88–9; Louis Wittmer, Le Prince de Ligne, Jean de Muller,Friedrich de Gentz et l’Autriche, 1925, p. 117n.

20. L.J.A. de Bouillé, Souvenirs, 3 vols. 1908–11, II, 33, Jaucourt to Bouillé27 June 1792. Mesdames Victoire and Adélaïde died in the house ofthe Spanish consul in Trieste in 1799 and 1800 respectively.

21. André Fugier, Napoléon et l’Espagne, 2 vols. 1930, I 70, 145n. In 1806Louis XVIII returned his insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece,which he had held in 1767, since Charles IV had appointed Napoleon Ia Knight.

22. Philip Mansel, Louis XVIII, 1981, p. 91. 23. André Lebon, L’Angleterre et l’Emigration Française de 1794 à 1801,

1882, p. 337 Lord Macartney to Grenville 27 September 1795. 24. Daudet, I 220. 25. Archives de Mouchy, A4 23, 5 Prince de Poix to Maréchal de Castries

30 August 1795. 26. Robert de Grandsaigne d’Hauterive, Inventaire des Mémoires et Docu-

ments France. Fonds “Bourbon”, 1960, passim. It was clearly an activelyacquisitive archive, since it contains papers of such enemies of LouisXVIII as Madame Gourbillon, his wife’s friend, and the Comted’Antraigues, purveyor of inaccurate information to the émigré gov-ernment, Spain, Austria, Russia, Naples and finally the United King-dom. The émigré government acquired their papers after theirdeaths in London.

27. Georges Bourgin, ‘Les Papiers de l’Emigration dans la sous-Série O3des Archives Nationales’, La Révolution Française 1933, LXXXVI, pp.311–16.

28. AN O3 2586 f 173 decision of 8 February 1798 re Comte de LaChapelle, ff. 2, 29 decisions of 1 January 1812. In 1813 the Comte deBruges, a Colonel in the British army, was promoted in the émigréarmy to be Colonel with rank from 1 January 1797: BM. Add. Mss.26669 f 15 Blacas to Bruges 25 September 1813. After the restoration,the files of the Émigré army were sent to a commission underMaréchal Pérignon to confirm ranks and pensions. The desire ofapproximately 6500 former émigré officers for honorary ranks, pen-sions or active service in the French army in 1814 was one of the fac-tors alienating Napoleonic officers.


Philip Mansel 23

29. AN O3 2586 f 173 decision of 8 February 1798 re Comte de LaChapelle. La Chapelle came from the heart of the royal bureaucracy.He was son of the premier des premiers commis of the reign of LouisXVI, Commissaire Général de la Maison du Roi, guillotined in 1794:Vicomte de La Boulaye, Mémoires, 1975, p. 340.

30. Daudet, I, 223; Vicomte de Grouvel Les Corps de Troupe de l’EmigrationFrançaise 1789–1815 3 vols 1947–54, III, 301.

31. AN 197AP Louis XVIII to Duke of York, 11 July 1796. 32. Patrice Higonnet, Class, Ideology and the Rights of Nobles during the

French Revolution, Oxford 1981, p. 284. 33. Daudet, III, 338. 34. An 306AP 28 letter of 30 March 1794. 35. Michel Poniatowski Talleyrand et le Consulat, 1986, p. 92. 36. See, for example, BN Dept Mss., Fichier Charavay, 427 the King’s

authorisation for the Comte de Vernègues to adopt Russian nationality,7 December 1803.

37. Gaston Zeller, ‘Les Frontières Naturelles: Histoire d’une Idée Fausse’,in Aspects de la Politique Française sous l’ancién regime, 1964, p. 107.

38. Comte de Barante ed. Lettres et Instructions de Louis XVIII au Comte deSaint-Priest, 1845, p. 145 instructions du Roi, 26 mai 1800.

39. Daudet, II 203. 40. Vicomte de Reiset, Joséphine de Savoie Comtesse de Provence, 1913,

p. 343, quoting official correspondance; Daudet II 227. 41. AN 03 2681 Etat de la Maison du roi 1801; Comte d’Avaray, ‘Louis

XVIII expulsé de Russie en 1801’, Feuilles d’Histoire, Janvier 1910,p. 34.

42. Paul Schroeder op. cit., 217, 197. 43. Duchesse de Dino, Souvenirs 1909, p. 189. 44. Philip Longworth, The Art of Victory. The Life and Achievements of Genera-

lissimo Suvorov, 1965, p. 236. 45. AN O3 604 décisions du roi. 46. Walter, Monsieur comte de Provence, p. 218 Grenville to Drake 22

October 1793, p. 221; Z. Pons, Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire de la Villede Toulon en 1793, 1825, p. 340 Admiral Hood and Sir Gilbert Eliot toConseil General of Toulon, 23 November 1793.

47. Piers Mackesy, Statesmen at War. The strategy of Overthrow 1798–1799,1974 p. 69; Sir Charles Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh, 2 vols1935–50, I 234; cf John Ehrman, The Younger Pitt. The ConsumingStruggle, 1996, pp. 344n, 347.

48. Vincent W. Beach, in Charles X of France, Boulder Colorado 1971,p. 102, refers to a meeting between Artois and Pitt on 4 October 1799.

49. Vicomte de Reiset, Louise d’Esparbès, Comtesse de Polastron, 1907, pp.254–5; Ehrman, p. 237.

50. Barante, pp. 88, 121, Réflexions du roi au sujet de l’Agence de Souabe, June1799.

51. Barante, p. 213 Artois to Saint-Priest, 3 September 1798. 52. Ernest Daudet, ‘Une Réconciliation de Famille en 1800’, Revue

des Deux Mondes, 10 November 1905, p. 294; Marguerite Castillondu Perron, Louis-Philippe et la Révolution Française 1985 edn, p. 491.



Artois and Orléans were presented at court in February 1800: HistoricalManuscripts Commission, The Mss. of J. B Fortescue esq. preserved atDropmore, 10 vols. 1892–1927, V 138 Duc d’Harcourt to Lord Grenville,22 February 1800

53. K. Waliszewski, Paul Ier. Sa vie, son règne et sa mort 1754–1801, 1912,pp. 499–500; Olivier Blanc, Madame de Bonneuil, Femme Galante etAgente secrète, 1987, pp. 166–8.

54. M.F.A. de Lescure, Rivarol et la Société Française pendant la Révolution etl’Emigration, 1883, p. 477.

55. Daudet, III 245, 250. 56. Ernest Daudet, ‘Louis XVIII et le Comte d’Artois’, Revue des Deux

Mondes, 15 February 1906, p. 843 letter of 26 August 1801. 57. Comte Boulay de la Meurthe, Correspondance du Duc d’Enghien, 4 vols

1904–13, I 223–4 circulaire du gouvernement russe; Daudet, III 247. 58. Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 January 1905 p. 133n Louis XVIIII to Artois,

5 June 1797; Daudet, III, 280, Louis XVIII to Artois 1802. 59. Boulay de La Meurthe, I 225 Avaray to Acton, 15 January 1802; Bene-

detto Croce; ‘Il Duca di Serra-Capriola et Giuseppe de Maistre’,Archivio Storico Per le Provincie Napoletane, XLVII, 1922, pp. 338–9 LouisXVIII to Duca di Serra-Capriola, 25 January 1802.

60. Daudet III, 251; AN 161 AP (Serent papers) anon to Duc de Serent, 17March 1801.

61. Boulay de la Meurthe, I 278–9, 291 circular of Talleyrand 23 August1803.

62. Ernest Daudet ‘Souvenirs de l’Emigration’, Revue Hebdomadaire, July1906, p. 395, Louis XVIII to Artois, 25 June 1804.

63. Boulay de La Meurthe, III, 494–496 Napoleon I to Talleyrand 2 October1804, Hardenberg to d’Avaray 9 October 1804, 293 Lombard toHardenberg 10, 12 September 1804.

64. Boulay de La Meurthe, III, 489–492n; Daudet, ‘Souvenirs de l’Emigra-tion’, Revue Hebdomadaire, August 1906, p. 154.

65. Boulay de La Meurthe, III, 524 -529; AN AE I Louis XVIII to GustavusIV Adolphus 5, 16 October 1805.

66. The Tsar’s adviser Prince Adam Czartoyski wrote to d’Avaray that heshould mention the ‘free will’ of France in the Declaration of 1804:Daudet, ‘Souvenirs de l’Emigration’, Revue Hebdomadaire, August1906 p. 159 letter of January 1805.

67. Adam Czartoryski, Mémoires et Correspondance avec l’Empereur AlexandreIer, 2 vols 1887–8, II, 32 instructions to M. Novosiltzov 11 September1804; Charles Webster, Documents relating to the Second Coalition, p. 394,British government to Russian ambassador, 19 January 1805.

68. W.H. Zawadski, A Man of Honour, Oxford 1993 175; Daudet, III 406;AN 198 AP (La Fare papers) 2, 3 d’Avaray to La Fare, 31 March 1807.

69. Dropmore Papers, IX, 445, La Chapelle to Louis Philippe 22 February1806; Comte de Stedingk, Mémoires . . . rédigés sur des lettres, dépêches etautres pièces authentiques, 3 vols 1844–7, II 369 Stedingk to GustavusIV, 5 October 1807.

70. AN 300 AP III Orléans papers 16 d’Avaray to Orléans 6 April 1807;Dropmore Papers, IX 443 La Chapelle to Orléans, 20 February 1806.


Philip Mansel 25

71. West Yorkshire Archives, Leeds, Canning Papers HAR/GC/56 Avarayto Canning 1 November 1807, Louis XVIII to Canning 7, December1807.

72. Daudet III, 412, 438 d’Avaray to Havré, ‘c’est un enfer, l’exil d’Edim-bourg serait à la convenance de bien du monde’; Diary of Lady Eliza-beth Foster (private archives), 27 October 1807 ‘I think Monsieur andall of them are distressed at Louis XVIII’s coming’; cf. HAR/GC/56Artois to Canning 31 October 1807.

73. First Earl of Malmesbury, Letters to His Family and Friends from 1745 to1820, 2 vols. 1870, Mr. Ross to Earl of Malmesbury 4 November 1807;(private archive) diary of Lady Elizabeth Foster, 5 November 1807.

74. AN 300 AP III 16 Orléans to Beaujolais, 4 November 1807. 75. AAE 615f f.254 position annuelle de Mr le comte de Lille, 10 July 1811. 76. AAE 621f. 112 vo Marie Joséphine to Madame Gourbillon 8 March

1809; Bernard Morel, Les Bijoux de la Couronne, 1995, pp. 243, 304. 77. Alessandro Righi, Il Conte di Lilla e l’emigrazione Francese a Verona, Peru-

gia 1909, p. 8; Duc de Castries, Le Maréchal de Castries, 1956, p. 245;Comte Armand de Saint-Priest, ‘Notes sur le séjour du roi Louis XVIIIà Mittau’, Revue d’Histoire Diplomatique, XLVIII, January 1934, p. 200;M.V. Woodhead, The Abbé Edgeworth nd, p. 215, letter of 13 March 1804.

78. AAE 621 f. 111 Marie Joséphine to Madame Gourbillon, 5 March 1809. 79. HAR/GC/56 Louis XVIII to Canning 7, December 1807; BM Add.

Mss. 37290 f.1 Louis XVIII to Lord Wellesley, 9 May 1809; cf. Daudet,III 478 Louis XVIII to Comte de La Chatre 1 March 1809.

80. HAR/GC/55 Junta of Seville to Louis XVIII 4 October 1808 (copy). 81. BM. Add. Mss. 37290 ff. 117, 191 note of April 1810, Artois to Wellesley

8 August 1810. 82. Canning and Artois sometimes corresponded four or six times a

month. On 1 September 1808 for example Canning wrote: ‘I am atYour Royal Highness’s disposal, either tomorrow or Saturday, at anyhour tomorrow and at any hour from twelve to five on Saturday whichmay best suit Your Royal Highness’s Convenience.’ HAR/GC/56; cfAN 224 AP IV journal du Comte de Broval, 2 Novembre 1813, ‘j’ai étéce matin faire ma cour à Monsieur a son lever’.

83. Comte A. de La Ferronays, En Emigration. Souvenirs, 1900, pp. 283,285 letters of Louis XVIII and the Duc de Berri to King of Sardinia 10August 1810.

84. AN F7 4336B 5 Etats des Français qui ont assisté au Convoi de la Comtesse deLille et dont les noms ne sont pas inscrits sur la Liste des Maintenus.

85. Private archive, diary of Lady Elizabeth Foster, 20 October 1808, 5September 1818.

86. Mansel, Louis XVIII, pp. 168–70; George Jackson The Bath Archive, 1873,p. 271 letter of 22 June 1811 to Mrs Jackson; cf. Ferdinand Baron deGeramb, Lettre à Sophie sur la Fête donnée par le Prince Regent pour célébrerl’anniversaire de la Naissance du Roi, London 1811. The French royalfamily also attended the ball given by the Regent on 14 May 1813.

87. PR0 FO 27/91 note of 19 December 1812; AN 37 AP 1 (papers of theMarquis de Bonnay) Blacas to Bonnay 10 September 1812, 17 March1813.



88. La Ferronays, p. 338; Sir Neil Campbell, Napoleon at Fontainebleau andElba, 1869, p. 94.

89. AN 37 AP 1, Blacas to Bonnay, 24 October 1813. 90. AN 37 AP 1, letters of 7 March, 7 April 1813; Comte de Caulaincourt,

Mémoires, 3 vols 1933, III, 339. 91. La Ferronays, p 324; Daudet, ‘Les dernières années de l’Emigration’,

Revue des Deux Mondes 1 August 1906, pp. 632, 658. 92. AAE 606 f.63 Romanzov to Lieven 3/15 April 1813 (copy); cf AN. 37

AP1 Blacas to Bonnay 7 March 1813: ‘le Roi croit pouvoir comptersur le Cabinet de St. Petersbourg, les assurances que l’EmpereurAlexandre a fait donner à notre Maitre et les ordres qu’a reçus Mon-sieur le Comte de Lieven son ambassadeur à Londres ne permettentpas d’en douter’; Marquis de La Maisonfort, Mémoires d’un Agent Roy-aliste, 1998, p. 215. In 1811, Romanzov was assuring Louis XVIII’sagent the Comte de Briou of his desire to give him ‘un nouveautémoignage de sa deférence pour tout ce qui peut lui être agréable’:AAE 605 f 254 letter of 15 June 1811.

93. Lt. Gen. Comte de Suremain, Mémoires, 1902, p. 301 diary for 29June 1813; AAE 606f. 79 Blacas to Briou 19 August 1813. TheComte de Bruges also failed to obtain access to allied headquarters.

94. La Ferronays, pp. 393–7. 95. Daudet, ‘Dernieres Années’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 August 1906,

p. 651; cf. Daudet, III 511–5; La Ferronays, pp. 395–6. 96. Comte de Rochechouart, Souvenirs sur la Révolution, l’Empire et la Res-

tauration, 1933 pp. 329, 331, letter of 15/27 January 1814; Daudet,‘Dernières Années’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 August 1906 p. 661 Alex-ander I to Rapatel and Rochechouart, 31 January 1814; cf. Schroeder,pp. 498, 500.

97. Charles Webster, British Diplomacy 1813–1815, 1921, p. 149 Castle-reagh to Liverpool, 16 February 1814; Rochechouart, p. 335 Roche-chouart to Artois, 23 February 1814.

98. Schroeder, p. 465; cf. Rochechouart, p. 336 l’ennemi le plus dangereux quenous ayons est le prince de Metternich.

99. Alfons Freiherr von Klinkowström, Oesterreichs Theilnahme an derBefreiungskriege, Vienna 1887, p. 805 Metternich to Schwarzenberg,30 January 1814; Webster British Diplomacy, pp. 133, 138, Castlereaghto Liverpool, 22 January 1814.

100. BM. Add. Mss. 38256 f. 284 Artois to Duchesse d’Angoulême, 26February 1814 (copy).

101. Rochechouart, pp. 347, 357, cf. BM. Add. MSS 47287b Lieven papersf 86 Letter to Louis XVIII signed by the Comtes de Wall, Lambert,Rochechouart, Noailles, Rapatel, Loup de Virieu, asking for a princeto organise ‘la délivrance de notre patrie sur les traces des Alliés’.

102. AAE. Mémoires et Documents France 603 ff. 35–7 Pozzo di Borgo tod’Avaray 30 June 1804; AN 197 AP Blacas to La Fare, 8 October 1811.

103. Ghislain de Diesbach, Histoire de l’Emigration, 1990 ed. p. 591. 104. Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh, 2 vols 1950–1935, I 238n;

Philip Mansel, ‘Wellington and the French Restoration’, InternationalHistory Review , XI, I, February 1989, pp. 76–7.


Philip Mansel 27

105. BM Add. Msss. 38364 f. 216 Most Secret Memorandum by Liverpool4 January 1814; Dorothy Margaret Stuart, Dearest Bess, 1955, p. 203diary of 1813.

106. Ernest Taylor ed. The Taylor Papers, 1913, p. 123, Lord Yarmouth toGeneral Taylor, 16 January 1814.

107. Webster, British Diplomacy, p. 145; BM Add. Mss. 47245 f 107 Lievento Nesselrode 14/26 January 1814 (secret).

108. BM Add. Mss. 38256 f 310 Angoulême to Duchesse d’Angoulême, 7March 1814 (copy); Duke of Wellington Despatches, 13 vols. 1834–9,XI 558, 562 Wellington to Beresford, to Bathurst, 7 March 1814.

109. Webster, Foreign Policy, I 241. 110. Madame de Marigny, Journal, p. 55 entry for 31 March 1814; Wel-

lington, Supplementary Despatches (15 vols 1858–1872, IX, Sir CharlesStewart to Wellington 1 April 1814; Arthur Chuquet, L’Année 1814,1914, p. 138 letter from Constantin Bulgakov 31 March 1814.

111. See, for example, BM. Add. Mss 38256 f. 284 Artois to Duchessed’Angoulême 26 February 1814 (copy).

112. In 1805 Gentz wrote from Vienna to Louis XVIII that a Bourbonrestoration was needed to prevent ‘une suite perpetuelle de convul-sions, de catastrophes et de bouleversemens’ and assured the Kingthat, whatever happened, he would remain ‘au nombre de ses plusfidèles serviteurs’ AAE 603 f. 235 letter of 10 August 1805.

113. See, for example, BM. Add. Mss. 47287B f 97 Blacas to Lieven 23March 1814 ‘avec l’appui généreux de la Russie et de l’Angleterre ilne tardera pas à être rétabli sur le trône des ses ayeux’.

114. Moniteur, 5 June 1814, p. 617. 115. See Marquis de Bonnay, representative of Louis XVIII at Vienna

1809–14, Copenhagen 1814–16, Berlin 1816–21; Comte de Cara-man, Saint Petersburg 1799–1801, Berlin 1814–16, Vienna 1816–28;Comte de La Chatre, London 1806–1816 (but formally reappointedin April 1814); Comte de La Ferronays envoy to Bernadotte and Alex-ander I 1813–4, to Copenhagen 1817–19, Saint Petersburg, at theTsar’s request, 1819–1825, Minister of Foreign Affairs 1828–9; Alex-is de Noailles envoy to Bernadotte and Alexander I 1812–14, mem-ber of the French delegation at the Congress of Vienna 1814–5;Comte de Narbonne-Pelet, envoy in Spain 1813–4, Naples 1815–21.The Comte de Blacas was the King’s representative in Saint Peters-burg 1804–8, the head of his household and his chief adviser in1809–14, Ministre de la Maison 1814–5, ambassador in Naples1815–16, Rome 1816–22, Naples 1822–30, and finally the leadingofficial of the Bourbon court in exile from 1830 until his death in1839. He was the only émigré official to serve before 1814 and after1830.


28

2 A European Destiny: the Armée de Condé,1792–1801 Frédéric d’Agay

Je n’ai jamais bien compris comment cet atôme dans l’Europepouvait occuper à ce point les grandes puissances qui ne ces-saient d’en parler.

(Prince de Condé, Journal)

On the night of 17 July 1789 a few horsemen and three car-riages left Versailles and took the road for Chantilly where,after a short rest, they went on to Péronne, Valenciennes,Mons and finally to Brussels. The Prince de Condé, his chil-dren the Duc de Bourbon and the Princesse Louise, his grand-son the Duc d’Enghien, and his mistress, the Princesse deMonaco, and their servants were escaping from the FrenchRevolution. One of the prince’s followers the Comte d’Espin-chal would always remember this image of:

ce chef respectable de l’illustre maison de Condé, en redin-gote bleue l’épée au côté, [ . . . ] Rien ne m’a plus frappé, jel’avoue que cette épée, sur sa redingote. . . . Il semblait quec’était le seul bien qu’il ne voulut point abandonner; elleparaissait lui faire dire: “la marque distinctive d’un gentil-homme est son épée: elle ne doit plus me quitter et monhonneur y est attaché. La monarchie ne peut exister sanscette noblesse dont je suis un des premiers membres et c’està l’épée d’un Condé que le Roi sera peut-être un jour redev-able de sa couronne.”1

The Marquis d’Ecquevilly described this departure in a dif-ferent way:

Il se tut avec les lois et disparut avec la justice; il partit avecson fils et son-petit f ils: il sembla voir Anchise, conduit parEnée que suit le jeune Jules.

Feec02-1.fm Page 28 Tuesday, May 11, 1999 2:42 PM

Frédéric d’Agay 29

The same day the Comte d’Artois, his sons the Duc d’Ang-oulême and the Duc de Berri, and the Prince de Conti leftParis. It was the beginning of the Emigration. Whether onecalls them the far-sighted or the frightened, they under-stood that the Ancien Régime was no more, that the feebleKing Louis XVI would be unable to resist and that the Re-volution would drive everything before it. It was also the firsttime that the French Princes would leave the Kingdom forreasons other than to wage military campaigns or to do a littlesightseeing. Crossing quickly through Germany they tour-ed Switzerland where they met a group of courtiers beforesettling at the end of September in Turin at the court of theKing of Sardinia, who, although father-in-law of the Comte d’Artois and cousin of the Prince de Condé, was scarcely enam-oured of his guests. The arrival of so many young French,exuberant, noisy and conspiring, disturbed the calm of hiscourt.

After almost a year of vain attempts at counter-revolutionaryprojects this little court broke up. The Comte d’Artois left on 4January 1791 for Milan, Venice and Vienna while, on 6 January1791, the Prince de Condé with all his family and their house-holds departed for Switzerland. He stayed there for twomonths, then went to Germany where, after having his expec-tations of hospitality from the Duke of Württemberg at Stutt-gart disappointed, he settled at Worms in a palace belongingto the Elector of Mainz. He and his entourage resided therefrom March 1791 until January 1792.

The Prince de Condé was an honest and chivalrous man.If he was in disagreement with Monsieur, or the Comte d’Artois, he would not let it show. They were the King’s brothers,to whom he owed obedience. His political opinions were sim-ple, even narrow: restore everything to its former state. If,however, Mirabeau can be believed he possessed intellectualqualities;

Je suis frappé de cette netteté de discussion, de cette ex-pression toujours juste, de cette succession de dévelo-ppements, de cette analyse qui, dans sa bouche, réduit lesquestions à un point, et qui d’une missive laconique, fait untraité.2

However in the opinion of the Baronne d’Oberkirch,



M. le prince de Condé a une grande instruction, des con-naissances littéraires variées beaucoup plus qu’on ne lui ensuppose généralement. Il a énormément lu, le retient, et ilsait.3

He was a prince who believed in the French nobility, of whichhis political leadership and sense of honour made him the rep-resentative. He was a modern knight who broke out of the pas-sivity which had been imposed on the French nobility since theSeven Years War. His Journal d’émigration, written from 1789to 1795, gives no echo of the material hardships he enduredbut complains constantly of his family, his relatives and thenobility. He had no regrets, except on one occasion when thelandscape of a foreign chateau reminded him of Chantilly andmade him melancholy.

His sense of duty allowed him to submit to Austrian com-mand, which he despised, and to take whatever measureswere necessary to ensure provisions for his army. Yet hewould not abase himself. He was a Bourbon at all times, whoaccepted the honours which were paid to him as his birthright.Like all the princes of his family, he was aware of etiquette andof the need to show the primacy of his race over the othersovereign houses of Europe. In many ways, he was the proto-type of the eighteenth-century French courtier, of the princeand of the Bourbon, cordial and gallant, worldly at times, aman who loved writing, conversation, hunting, gambling andtheatre-going.

The Prince was proud and courageous and despised cowardsand schemers. First and foremost he was a military man, lovedand respected by his soldiers. ‘Condé’ said William Wickham,‘in their midst is like our medieval Kings with their barons.The old ones are just as difficult as the young ones.’ His ambi-tion as a soldier had not been satisfied before the Revolution;he considered himself the rightful head of the French army, afunction which he had never held except at the camp atSt Omer in 1788.

This mission to lead the French nobility transformed a lifewhich would doubtless have been rather dull, divided betweenmemories of the Seven Years War, the love of Madame deMonaco and entertainments and hunts at Chantilly.



THE FORMATION OF THE REGIMENTS

Almost before he had had time to settle at Worms, the Princede Condé found himself surrounded by a demi-court, andconfronted with meetings with German princes, ambassadors,ministers as well as giving audiences, reading letters fromCalonne, sending dispatches to de Broglie in Trier, to the Comted’Artois in Mannheim, and receiving spies, couriers, and thenews of Paris which was arriving with the émigrés.

Many nobles were torn between honour which dictatedtheir presence in Coblenz, Worms or Ath and loyalty to theKing, who was powerless and would soon be imprisoned. Anofficer wrote to his brother

M. de Gallifet a raison; en reçevant nos grades nous avonsfait serment de vivre et de mourir pour le Roi. Maintenantque Louis XVI est prisonnier dans son château des Tuileries,que des factieux lui imposent leurs néfastes volontés, nousmanquons à notre devoir en n’allant pas nous joindre auxfidèles de la monarchie.

And his brother replied:

Les émigrants seront incapables de battre les troupes queleur opposera l’Assemblée, ils feront appel aux Austrichiens,aux Prussiens: voudrez-vous lutter contre votre pays auxcôtés de ces ennemis héréditaires de la France?

Vous, Jean, faites ce que vous dictera votre conscience, maisprions Dieu qu’il ne nous mettra jamais en présence sur unchamp de bataille, vous du côté des révoltés, moi du côté duRoi.4

From the end of May 1791 the Prince de Condé noted in hisdiary that the number of émigrés at Worms grew daily and hecalled it the ‘asylum of honour’. In July 1791 the Comte deProvence, who had escaped from Paris without difficulty viathe route to Brussels, arrived in Coblenz where the Comted’Artois would shortly join him. The arrest of the King andQueen at Varennes contributed to the changed atmosphere inemigration.

As the focus of intrigue shifted, political objectives gave way tomilitary ones. On 3 August 1791 the prince notes in his journal,



La noblesse pressait pour une formation; nous trouvions,d’après nos nouvelles que c’était trop tôt; d’un côté, nousapercevions bien que tous les retards la décourageaient etnous voulions éviter cela; pour lui faire prendre patience,nous avions arrangé que les Princes demanderaient un étatdes noms, de l’âge, et des services de tous les gentilshom-mes qui voudraient entrer dans la formation du corps de lanoblesse et les princes me chargèrent directement de toutela partie en remontant le Rhin depuis Mayence . . .

At Worms members of the nobility enlisted with the Comte deChoiseul, captain of the guards of the prince; in Heidelberg,with M. de Turpin, lieutenant general; and in Mannheim withthe Marquis de Vaubécourt, lieutenant general.

The Vicomte de Mirabeau, younger brother of the famousdeputy, who went by the name of Mirabeau-Tonneau becauseof his size, had already raised a force which would soon be thefamous légion de Mirabeau which he placed at the dispositionof the Prince de Condé. The Comte de Neuilly wrote ‘Levicomte de Mirabeau était une masse de chair animée par uncourage admirable’. He was malicious, irritable, boastful, areal Mirabeau, and when reproached for his drinking hereplied ‘De tous les vices de la famille, c’est le seul que mon frèrem’ait laissé’.5

His legion was well organised and never lacked recruits.They were nicknamed the hussards of death, wore a skull ontheir shako and they were able to break through enemy lineswherever they charged. After Mirabeau’s premature death in1792, the Comte de Vioménil took command. Then from 1794the Comte Roger de Damas, changed its name to the Légionde Damas, but retained its reputation as the elite of the arméede Condé.

Other nobles grouped themselves by province (Auvergne,Normandie, Franche-Comté) while the officers reassembledthemselves by regiment, like the regiment of Rohan. In addi-tion new corps were created like the chevaliers de la Couronneor the chevaliers nobles.

On 18 August 1791 after a council at Coblenz, the Prince deCondé returned to Worms where he officially read out therules of his corps to 500 noblemen and named the Baron deFumel maréchal de camp responsible for all the details of



training. On 9 September the companies began training in thecourt of the palace at Worms. By the beginning of Octoberaround 50 noblemen were arriving daily at Worms. The repu-tation of the prince sparked the jealousy of the court inCoblenz where there were two Mashals of France, sixteen lieu-tenant généraux, one hundred and eighteen maréchaux decamp and sixteen admirals.

The Duc de Bourbon at Marche-en-Famene in Luxemburgwas charged with the organisation of a third corps of émigrésunder the command of the Comte d’Egmont-Pignatelli. Therewere three armies; the princes’ army with a strength of 12 000men; the army of the Prince de Condé which counted 5000men and the army of the Duc de Bourbon, 4000 men, thus intotal a force of 21–22000 French gentleman soldiers at the serviceof their country.

During this time, relations with the Elector of Mainz deteri-orated. He began to fear the invasion of his own lands byrevolutionary armies and obliged the Prince de Condé to leaveWorms in January 1792 and to go to Oberkirch in the Germanlands of the Cardinal de Rohan, Prince Bishop of Strasbourg.After many disputes mainly due to the ill-will of the court atVienna, the indifference of the Russian Empress and the firstfinancial crises, the corps of the Prince de Condé settled atBingen on the banks of the Rhine, in the lands of the Elector ofMainz. In July, in Kreutznach in the Palatinate, preparationswere made for war against France. The Princes slowly beganto understand that there was no question of Revolution orcounter-Revolution, rather there was simply a war betweenthe powers of Europe and France.

THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1792

On 1 July the armée des Princes left Coblenz for new encamp-ments in the Palatinate before reaching Trier and Luxem-bourg, with the intention of following the troops of the Dukeof Brunswick into France at Thionville. The army of the Princede Condé attached itself to that of the Prince of Hohenlohewho was preparing to take Landau. In September it pushedfurther into the Brisgau, where it hoped to find a place to crossthe Rhine with the Austrian forces led by Prince Esterhazy.



But there too, the court of Vienna issued endless orders andcounter orders; apart from enraging the prince and the nobility,they made it clear that the Emperor regarded the treaty ofWestphalia as null and void. He had designs on Alsace andwished therefore to prevent the émigrés from occupying it.

After the defeat at Valmy, the armée des Princes and that ofthe Duc of Bourbon retreated towards Luxembourg, the LowCountries and Germany and were disbanded in the mostmiserable conditions. The Duc de Bourbon wrote to his fatherdescribing

La consternation, le désespoir que cette nouvelle avaitrépandue dans la noblesse de leur armée où tous les gentil-hommes restaient sans ressource d’aucun genre: mais le roide Prusse l’ayant exigé et les Puissances ayant fait cessertoutes les fournitures de pain et de fourrage à ces armées, ladissolution devenait un parti forcé.

THE ARMÉE DE CONDÉ – THE ONLY ONE LEFT

The Prince de Condé settled at Willingen and, seeing that hewould get nothing from Austria but not wanting to disband histroops, offered leave to all those who asked for it:

Attendu que l’ardeur pour défendre le Brisgau était néces-sairement beaucoup moindre que dans le temps où l’onpouvait espérer que nous attaquerions la France.

In desperation he wrote to the Empress of Russia through theyoung Duc of Richelieu, who was leaving for Saint Petersburg,that the gentlemen soldiers were without any financial assist-ance from Vienna. At Christmas 1792 the Duc de Bourbonand the Duc d’Enghien arrived, bringing with them the rem-nants of the armée des Princes in groups of seven and eightafter a winter march of over 160 miles. In January 1793 theEmpress of Russia sent 120 000 livres and the offer of a colonyon the shores of the Sea of Azov for the nobility. That wasdeclined . . . and on 28 January news arrived of the executionof the King. The Prince of Cobourg came to announce theimminent disbanding of the troops.

On 8 March 1793, however, Francis II, the Emperor, an-nounced his intention to keep the army for the next campaign



under General de Wurmser, the new commander in Brisgau,but limited it to 6000 men and stipulated that they be organised‘à l’Autrichienne’. The Prince de Condé had to work very hardwith his officer corps to meet this condition, ‘qui ne cadrait niavec nos formes, ni avec nos manières, ni avec nos mœurs’.

In the meantime the gentlemen soldiers continued tonumber well above the 6000 limit set by the Emperor, but thePrince de Condé did not have the heart to dismiss them. Therewere also French deserters who came to join Condé’s forces.Squabbles and petty f ights broke out almost daily between the‘patriots’ and the légion de Mirabeau; the Duc d’Enghien dis-tinguished himself at Herheim on 6 May, the day when thetroops left Brisgau and set out again up the Rhine, pursued bythe French army. They went into battle on 17 May nearLandau but due to the negligence of the Austrians who, as usual,multiplied orders and counter-orders, the Prince of Condébecame disheartened,

mais il fallait s’étourdir là-dessus, soutenir la noblesse, etpourtant ne pas abandonner le champ de l’honneur.

In July the troops fought every day against the patriots. Theyfailed to take Lauterbourg at the end of August but enteredAlsace in October. They set up camp in the village of Berstheim,where on 26 October the prince held a memorial service forthe Queen. In November the republicans redoubled attacksagainst the army which ended in the 9 December in the gloriouscombat at Berstheim where the Duc de Bourbon was woundedin the hand.

J’ai peu vu à la guerre de quinzaine plus chaude que celle-là;la noblesse française s’y couvrit de gloire et si le ciel la destineà être anéantie [ . . . ] elle aura terminé sa carrière commeelle l’avait parcourue depuis 1400 ans avec la plus brillantevaleur et toute l’énergie des sentiments purs qui l’attachentà son Dieu, à son honneur, à son Roi.

This brief moment of glory counted for nothing because theDuke of Brunswick gave the order for general retreat. ThePrince de Condé established his winter quarters at Rothemburgon the Neckar. There the dull life of the camp recommen-ced, with disputes with the Austrian military administration,the villages, the principalities and a constant struggle against



poverty. The Emperess Catherine II sent 100 000 florins andin May the prince settled at Rastadt with the object of watchingthe Rhine under the orders of the Prince of Colloredo.

The prince de Condé received a warm welcome from theMargrave of Baden6 who offered him the use of his palace atRastadt and gave protection to the French émigrés.

Il n’y eut sortes d’attentions, de politesses, d’égards, j’oseraispresque dire de respect, que ce Prince ne me rendit pendantmon séjour.

Negotiations with the court of Vienna over a new organisationfor the armée de Condé fell through yet again and the hopesof the troops and their leader turned toward England. Pittsent financial help in November 1794 and made overturestowards formal negotiations. As soon as the court of Viennabecame aware of this, the Emperor refused to release the corpsto the British and Thugut said to the Duc de Richelieu that hehad decided to keep it at the expense of the Empire. 1795passed for the prince and his army, in interminable disputeswith the Bishop of Speyer over negotiations for a military base.

POVERTY AND VIRTUES OF THE FRENCH NOBILITY

The French nobles who made up the corps of gentlemen-soldiers had the valour necessary for officers but also a fatallack of discipline. The army’s military prestige was thus alwaysnegligible.

Cette défaveur est due au manque de généraux et de soldats.Le mérite de Condé est incontesté mais Condé était seul.7

The Baron de Flaschlanden wrote to the Duc d’Harcourt inFebruary 1793,

Il ne faut pas nous dissimuler que les émigrés, individuelle-ment fort braves, sont de mauvaise infanterie, et qu’il faud-rait que ce corps fût soutenu et guidé par une troupe plusaccoutumée à la discipline et à la fatigue.

In fact, unaccustomed to exhausting marches, to rudiment-ary bivouacs, to bad weather and to the cold of the Germanmountains and plains,



Tous ceux qui ont échappé à la mort sont revenus dans unétat d’épuisement et d’infirmité dont ils se ressentironttoute leur vie.

There are numerous accounts in the diaries and memoirs ofthe emigration of these columns of hungry gentlemen-soldiers,shivering, sweating and suffering without complaints or re-criminations, sharing a morsel of bread and a bit of straw. ThePrince de Condé lived a spartan existence but refused the per-sonal pension offered by the Emperor.

Vous ne sauriez croire l’extrême besoin d’argent où je metrouve; nous périssons dans le besoin. Quand ce serait lediable qui m’offrirait sa bourse, je l’accepterais avec bonheur.8

The armée de Condé was synonymous with the nobilityalthough officially the title was the Corps placed under theorders of ‘S.A.S. le prince de Condé’. Condé wrote in his journal:

C’est une furieuse charge que d’avoir à conduire un corps dela noblesse, une petite armée dont il faut écouter jusqu’audernier des soldats.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, 1792–97

The émigrés only real hope was Britain. In a letter Louis XVIIIconfided in the Prince de Condé,

Vous pouvez juger avec quelle impatience j’attends le résul-tat de votre conférence avec M. Wickham; car il ne faut pasnous faire illusion, l’Angleterre seule est notre ancre de mis-éricorde et vous êtes sûrement aussi convaincu que moi quece serait folie d’attendre quelque chose de l’Empereur.9

On the one hand the Austrians wanted to attach the army tothe Austrian army in order to prevent it from either enteringFrance or allying itself with another power. On the other handAustria wanted to keep it weak.

Tous les officiers généraux autrichiens nous détestaientautant par jalousie et par avarice que leur soldats nous aim-aient par estime et considération. On n’a pas d’idée de toutesles noirceurs qu’on nous faisait, de toutes les humilitations



qu’on cherchait à nous faire éprouver; je n’opposais à celàque la patience et les faits.10

The death of the young Louis XVII in 1795 was followed bythe immediate proclamation of the Comte de Provence asLouis XVIII, King of France and Navarre. Exiled in Verona,Louis XVIII threatened to join the armée de Condé in orderto die a glorious death at the head of the army returning toFrance. Lord Grenville, who wanted to see a moderate andlegitimate government re-established in France, sent LordMacartney to him in July 1795 with a mission to negotiate theestablishment of a constitutional monarchy which would res-pect the biens nationaux, pardon the Terror and forget any ideaof return to the absolutism of the Ancien Régime. He was other-wise authorised to plan an invasion of France from the Jura byan army made up of the émigrés and of Condé’s troops, com-bined with a landing of British and émigré forces in the Medi-terranean and a royalist uprising in the interior. WilliamWickham, the British agent in Switzerland, was charged withnegotiating the military aspects with the Prince de Condé.

Nothing came of this plan and the King left Verona on21 April 1796 for Riegel, the headquarters of the Prince deCondé in the Brisgau. There the Prince de Condé negotiatedwith Wickham to transfer his army and himself to the pay ofBritain, while Lord Hervey, the ambassador at Vienna wascharged with procuring the necessary permission from theAustrian government. The Emperor and Thugut refused,wishing to keep the army for the Austrian invasion of Franche-Comté. Nevertheless, the cordial relations between Condé andWickham produced a situation whereby the armée de Condéreceived British financial assistance through the intermediaryof Colonel Charles Craufurd, the British envoy in the prince’sentourage, with the objective of supporting an operation onthe French frontier launched by an Austrian army under thecommand of the Maréchal de Cleyrfayt.

Despite hopes of uprisings in Franche-Comté and Lyon, theydid not take place: the émigrés overestimated the strength ofthe royalist forces in the interior. The interplay of spy net-works and information agencies attached to the princes and theirentourages made the truth impossible for the Prince de Condéto ascertain. The failure of this plan and the advance of the



republican army again threatened the armée de Condé, whichby then numbered around 8–10 000 men. It withdrew towardsthe lake of Constance where it fought several battles protect-ing the retreat of the Austrian army: Ober-Kamlach (13August 1796), Biberach (2 October 1796), Steinstadt (21 Octo-ber 1796). In July 1797 the Prince de Condé gave leave to thegentlemen-soldiers who wished to re-enter France where theybelieved they would be able to regain their properties and returnto normal life. The coup d’état of 18 Fructidor was a rude shockand obliged many of them to emigrate a second time. Thosewho stayed experienced a sad existence of camp life on theedge of Lake Constance.

IN THE SERVICE OF RUSSIA: VOLHYNIA, 1797–98

Two propositions arrived simultaneously in July 1797. TheEmperor Paul I, through the Comte d’Alopeus and PrinceGortschakov, proposed that the Prince de Condé incorporatehis army into the Russian army but with a significant degree ofautonomy. Craufurd, on behalf of Britain, offered to employthe armée de Condé in the British colonies. This latter pro-position was considered offensive because it made them littlemore than mercenary soldiers; the offer of Paul I was accepted.

Britain, without any resentment, gave a six-months gratuityto each soldier but Craufurd was responsible for selling allthe horses of the cavalry. The Prince de Condé took some 4–5000 men, who set out on 4 October 1797 in the direction ofVladimir, capital of Volhynia, a Russian province sandwichedbetween Poland and the Ukraine.11 The army reached theDanube where it embarked and went down the river as far asLinz, after a stop at Regensburg where they bought Russianand Polish grammar books and maps.

From Austria, the armée de Condé travelled through Bohe-mia, Galicia and finally arrived at Vladimir on 2 January 1798.Their lodgings were inadequate and badly equipped. Thesnow was persistant and the cold made the town uninhabitablefor the French; the headquarters was transferred to Dubno, aneighbouring town which offered greater comfort.

The great surprise for the émigrés was the organisation ofthe army along Russian lines. Russian uniforms and flags were



imposed but particularly offensive was the requirement toperform guard duty, a perspective which demoralised every-one who was not a soldier by profession. The result of thisseverity was a rash of desertions, insubordination, and seditionwhich were reported to the Tsar and infuriated him. A numberof officers were arrested and imprisoned.

The only events of note in 1798 were the journey of thePrince de Condé to Saint Petersburg and the arrival of the Ducde Berri to command the cavalry. In the summer Polish noblesin the area opened their homes to the émigrés for huntingparties, theatre and balls. But in spite of these moments ofillusory pleasure the nobility did not hesitate to express surpriseat the need to stay in ‘this tomb’. In January 1799 the army wasdestined to follow the troops of Marshal Souvorov towardsSwitzerland, where the struggle against revolutionary Francecontinued but they did not leave until 2 July, crossing Poland,Bohemia and Austria a second time. There were feasts, musicalfestivities, and artillery displays to fête the armée de Condéwherever it passed. At Lancut princess Lubomirska herselfcame to do the honours. On 13 September the troops reachedRegensburg where they were reunited with the infirm or sickwho had not made the journey to Russia.

THE LAST CAMPAIGNS AND THE DISBANDING OF THEARMÉE DE CONDÉ (1799–1801)

On 1 October 1799 the headquarters of the prince were estab-lished at Bodman on Lake Constance. On 7 October thetroops fought with honour in defence of Constance, which wasretaken by the Duc d’Enghien on the 11 October after terribleman-to-man fighting. New recruits arrived daily and limitshad to be placed on the number taken. The army thenmarched in the direction of Linz where the headquarters wasestablished on 1 January 1800. The prince granted leave to allthose who did not wish to return to Russia. The end of hostilit-ies was imminent and negotiations were underway with Britainas the army prepared to return to Russia. Then, at the lastminute, Wickham arranged for the maintenance of the armyat British expense. It was then composed of 1007 officers and5840 volunteers. The Prince de Condé wrote sadly,



Nous sommes un faible roseau que les puissances se passentpour ne pas se couvrir de la honte de la détruire.12

After participating in the disastrous campaign of 1800 underAustrian command, one émigré wrote,

Le corps dégénère donc visiblement et finira par n’être qu’unrassemblement politique, car nul espoir de recrutement nereste aux corps nobles.13

Gentlemen soldiers were daily asking for leave to return toFrance. The troops settled at Graz where the news of an armis-tice arrived. The bivouacs of the French republican troopswere very close to them and the two armies fraternised anddiscussed the deplorable state of affairs in France.

On 19 April 1800 a letter from George III to the Prince deCondé announced the dissolution of the army. Craufurdbroke the news to the nobility that the King no longer hadneed of their services but was ready to engage those who werewilling to enter British service. Of the 6000 men left, 825 setout for London and Malta. To the others, a year’s pension wasgiven. Nearly all returned to France as soon as they had pro-cured their elimination from the émigré list. For a handful ofthem the European adventure finished in the Tyrol in 1801.The Chevalier de Pradel de Lamase wrote,

Sacrifices inutiles! huit années de luttes tenaces et de fatiguessurhumaines semblent à jamais perdues. Ma jeunesses’est envolée, et je n’aperçois devant moi qu’une existencehumiliée.14

The Prince de Condé and his entourage arrived in Englandsoon after, where they would live until 1814: the Duc d’Enghienstayed in Germany, whence he was abducted and executed onBonaparte’s orders in 1804.

These ‘Condishers’, as they liked to call themselves in Ger-man, met again in Paris in 1814 and 1815 to demand therecognition of their services and their sacrifices. The Prince deCondé helped them as much as he could to obtain certificates,honorary grades, pensions and decorations. Many old soldiersfelt bitter about the lack of public recognition of their loyalty,honour and courage. An old soldier had a portrait painted in1825 in his uniform as lieutenant of the légion of Mirabeau



which he had been 30 years earlier, and named his countryhouse ‘Bersthein’ in memory of the battle where he had beenwounded in 1793 and where his two brothers had also fought.In his journal he described himself as a ‘vieux condisher’, ultra-royalist then legitimist, writing sombre thoughts ‘en son agrestemanoir’ because he knew at the end of his life that his commit-ment had been in vain. On the frontispiece of his livre de raisonwhich was destined for his sons, he wrote in large letters,‘N’émigré jamais, fais-toi tuer sur le sol natal!’15

Text translation by Kirsty Carpenter

NOTES

1. Comte d’Espinchal, Mémoires, Paris, 1912, p. 21. 2. Letter to the Comte de Guibert at the time of the calling of the Etats

Généraux. 3. Baronne Oberkirch de, Mémoires sur la cour de Louis XVI et la société

française avant 1789, Mercure de France, Le temps retrouvé, No. 21. 4. July 1791, letters from MM de Fontane in the regiment of Noailles-

Dragons, quoted by le Comte G. Mareschal de Bièvre, Les ci-devant nobleset la Révolution, Paris, 1914, p. 213.

5. Comte de Neuilly, Dix années d’émigration, Paris, 1865, p. 77. 6. Charles-Frédéric Margrave of Baden-Durlach (1738) and of Baden-

Baden (1771). 7. H. Forneron, Histoire générale des émigrés pendant la Révolution française,

Paris, 3 vols 1884, tome II, p. 25. 8. Letter from the Prince de Condé to Mgr de la Fare, dated 18 October

1794, cited by Forneron, II, p. 13. 9. Letter from Verona dated 15 October 1795, Archives de Chantilly.

10. Prince de Condé in his journal, 15 June 1793, Archives de Chantilly. 11. The prince, taking into account the fact that certain émigrés could not

afford to make the journey, offered leave to anyone who wanted it. 12. Letter dated 8 June1800 cited by Forneron, II, p. 374. 13. Jacques de Thiboult du Puisact, Journal d’un fourrier de l’Armée de

Condé, 1882, p. 263, 21 June 1800. 14. Notes intimes d’un émigré, Paris, 1913, p. 335. 15. Livre de raison et papiers de Melchoir-Emilien de Firaud d’Agay (1771–1853)

Archives d’Agay, Var.


43

3 London: Capital of theEmigration Kirsty Carpenter

London and its suburbs and surrounding villages provide asnapshot of émigré life such as it might have been in any largeforeign city during the Revolution. Politically, socially, eco-nomically, many of the issues that confronted the émigrés else-where in Europe could be found within 50 miles of Cornhill.1The émigrés started to appear in London as early as the autumnof 1789, only months after the storming of the Bastille. Theirnumbers swelled during 1790 but the increases were gradualuntil the King’s attempted flight to Varennes sent a new waveof émigrés on to the London streets in the autumn and winterof 1791–92. The real exodus, which deluged London withpenniless refugees (of whom a great many were priests), came inthe wake of the September Massacres and spanned the closingmonths of 1792.2

London, the largest city in Europe, was an obvious choicefor many émigrés. Many had been in Britain before and werecomfortable in British society. Many of the members of thenobility had connections and friends who welcomed them intotheir circles. Others, like the Marquise de la Tour du Pin, hadrelations in Britain.

The city provided a forum where émigrés from differentregions of France and different socio-economic groupswere thrown together. After a short time these differencesreasserted themselves and translated into a geographic patternwhich saw the wealthy émigrés drawn towards areas likeMarylebone and Richmond and the poorer émigrés seek outthe more squalid suburbs like St Pancras and Saint George’sFields. Throughout the period Soho was an important meet-ing point for émigrés, a place where social status mattered lessthan the accuracy of the latest news from France. The com-bination of its location in central London and its traditionallyinternational population set it apart from other Londondistricts.



With the entry of Britain into the war in February 1793 Lon-don very quickly became the most important émigré centre inEurope and the political hub of the counter-Revolution. Lon-don was a much larger city than Paris and its prosperity wasplainly apparent to the newly arrived émigrés.3

Rien ne sauroit égaler la commodité de ses trottoirs, où l’onmarche avec aussi peu de fatigue que sur un plancher; ni larichesse de ses magasins et de ses boutiques; où l’on voit lesproductions de toutes les parties du monde étalées avec lesoin le plus ingénieux. Il n’est pas de ville dont on puissedire avec plus de verité qu’elle est abrégé de l’univers.4

Few émigrés suspected, particularly in the early stages of theconflict, that the Emigration would last into the next year, letalone into the next century, but when it did become long term,the London émigrés were well placed to maximise theirresources. In contrast, in 1792 and again in 1794, émigrés inthe Austrian Netherlands had to sustain the cost of expensiveand dangerous relocations when the republican army enteredBrussels.

Before 1792 the Emigration was essentially made up of thenobility. Émigrés who came from the lower echelons of societyusually had a direct relationship with their social superiors.5Greer’s statistics, which are commonly cited to suggest that theEmigration had a far more diverse socio-economic composition,can be misleading. These figures (which show that 25 per centof émigrés were clergy, 17 per cent were noble, 51 per centcame from the Third Estate with a further 7 per cent inidenti-fiable but assumed to come from the privileged classes) arecollective figures representing the whole of Europe.6 In theLondon case, a sample of the lay (i.e. non-ecclesiastic) émigrés,taken in 1796 when the British government called for a generalre-enrolment of the relief lists in order to limit the number ofrefugees receiving relief, provides a different picture.

In a sample of 812 émigrés, 201 (nearly 25 per cent) listeda noble title.7 This analysis can be further developed by lookingat the status description given in this same document.8 38 percent (including 11 per cent officers) were either active militarypersonnel waiting to be drafted into the British forces or retiredsoldiers.9 Of the 35 per cent of women, 18 per cent used thedesignation Dame and only 5 per cent, the term Bourgeoise or


Kirsty Carpenter 45

Madame to describe themselves. Comparatively, 11 per centof men used the term Gentilhomme while fewer than 1 percent were Bourgeois. Domestic servants and artisans accountfor 10 per cent of the total. What this suggests is that, in London,the emigration was top and bottom heavy. There were verydefinitely a range of émigrés to whom the designation ‘bour-geois’ applied, but these people invariably had some link withthe nobility and had espoused royalist or constitutional royalistpolitics. Some had links with the luxury trades which hadflourished during the Ancien Régime but found themselvesstruggling to survive under the Republic.

For the purposes of this re-inscription émigrés were requiredto give a description of their ‘status’. Among the more specificvocations were:

Avocat, Chirurgien, Conseiller au Parlement, Constituant,Controleur Général des Fermes, Fermier Général, Fermier,Secrétaire d’Intendant, Imprimeur, Instituteur, Magistrat,Maire en Titre, Maître de Poste, Maître Verrier, Marchand,Membre de la Noblesse des Etats d’Artois, Négociant, Pagede la Reine, Procureur au Châtelet à Paris, Serurier, Tail-leur, Blanchisseuse, Couturière.

The range is quite clear. The military descriptions include titlessuch as Ancien Officier, Garde du Corps du Roi, Officier orOfficier de la Marine, then below the officer level, militaire orancien militaire, or marine (short for membre de la Marinefrançaise). Otherwise the designations were limited to Gentil-homme, Dame/demoiselle, Bourgeois, Bourgeoise, Madame/Mlle, Femme de Chambre, Domestique or Artisan.

The strong aristocratic component of the London émigrépopulation is further suggested by the fact that 33 per cent ofthe émigrés who gave London addresses to the British author-ities in 1796 lived in Marylebone.10 This statistic reveals notonly the bon ton of the area for the London émigrés but, becausetailors, milliners, locksmiths and washerwomen were amongthose who lived there, it suggests a special relationship betweenthe ex-noble émigrés and the others. The French residents oflower social status were probably drawn to Marylebone in thehope of finding a market for their skills. The harp-makerSebastien Erard is a good example of one such émigré whobecame very wealthy, owning businesses in London and Paris



at the Restoration. His first business in exile was set up inMarylebone High Street.11

Information relating to the activity of the lower Third Estateémigrés is difficult to obtain because few of them left anyaccount of their time in London. Few émigrés had any capitaland were therefore confined to working from home or forsomebody else, which they found difficult due to languageproblems. Often émigrés did not possess sufficient clothes tobe able to work outside their homes. Although they did providedressmakers and milliners there is little evidence of émigrésbeing restaurateurs or boarding-house keepers.12

London was a culture shock. The abbé Baston described itas, ‘une ville immense, monstrueuse pour les dimensions’.13

The abbé Tardy was more partial and called it:

une des villes les plus imposantes par l’immensité de sonétendue et de sa population; la richesse, l’activité et l’indus-trie de ses habitans; la distribution générale de ses rues et deses trottoirs; le nombre, la beauté, et la variété de ses places!14

Women in particular, perhaps because they experienced someof the most horrific voyages across the channel in the winterseason, were jubilant about their arrival in London. Theautumn gales of 1792 were particularly bad and émigrés crossedthe channel in a variety of unseaworthy vessels so that manywere lucky to arrive safely.15

Many women’s first memories of emigration were of sicknessor sadness or both.16 The Duchesse de Saulx-Tavannes wroteof being near to death two days after her arrival in Britain.17

Sickness claimed the lives of many small children who weremore susceptible than adults to changes in diet and weatherconditions. Mme de Ménerville describes how her child diedin her arms because she could not find a doctor who wouldtreat the son of an émigré until it was too late.18 The Comtessede Saisseval remembered the anguish of hours going fromdoor to door in the falling snow in Dover to find shelter forherself and her children, who were close to perishing fromcold and hunger.19

As time went on, crossing the channel to get to the safety ofLondon, and British government relief funding, became life-threateningly perilous. Many émigrés were able to leave Franceonly through the compassion of boatmen who assisted them to


Kirsty Carpenter 47

escape at usurious prices and disguised as members of crew.Mme de Lauzun was among those who crossed to Britain dis-guised as a fisherman.20 Many were lucky to arrive alive, con-sidering the unseaworthiness of the vessels in which theytravelled. Mme de Monregard made the crossing with herservants and a priest in a raft with a makeshift sail.21 TheVicomtesse de Sesmaison, her four children and their tutor,barely escaped with their lives when they struck the autumnstorms in a boat which was not sturdy enough for the weather.At Eastbourne, they were rescued from the water by localfishermen.22

It is hardly surprising that émigrés, and women in particular,expressed relief at arriving in Britain. Their enthusiasticdescriptions of the countryside almost invariably evoke thehappiness they felt to be out of reach of the Republican armiesand under the protection of the British government.

Il faisait un temps superbe, nous allions bon train et tout enadmirant ce beau pays, malgré la vilaine saison la propriétédes villages, l’air d’aisance et de richesse du paysan, nousavions toujours l’oeil ouvert sur les gentilhommes de grandschemins et sur notre petite bourse composée chacune d’undemi-guinée et de quelques schellings. . . . Nous arrivâmesaux faubourgs de Londres vers cinq heures (du soir). Lesabords gais et vivants d’une grande ville nous rappelèrent letemps heureux où nous arrivions dans notre Paris.23

The Marquise de Falaiseau was far from the only woman toremember her arrival in London in glowing terms. The Comt-esse de Gontaut (who had been reduced to finding a barn withfresh straw a welcoming prospect) and the Duchesse de Saulx-Tavannes were similarly affected.

Once in London, the prospect of a new city to explore wasattractive though not all were enthusiastic. The Comtesse deBoigne with characteristic scorn described:

Cette grande cité composée de petites maisons pareilles etde larges rues tirées au cordeau, toutes semblables les unsaux autres, cette frappée de monotonie et d’ennui. [ . . . ]Quand on s’est promené cinq minutes, on peut se promenercinq jours dans des quartiers toujours différents et toujourspareils.24



If the transition from Paris to London presented few unknownsto émigrés who moved easily between courts and countries inAncien Régime Europe, the contrast between this and otherjourneys was nevertheless stark. In 1789 George Selwynwrote:

When I left St James I went in search of Mme de Boufflersand found her at Grenier’s Hotel which looks to me morelike an hospital than anything else. Such rooms, such acrowd of miserable wretches, escaped from plunder andmassacre and Mme de Boufflers among them, with I do notknow how many beggars in her suite, [ . . . ]. When I saw herlast, she was in a handsome hôtel dans le quartier duTemple. . . . 25

The forced circumstances made the presence of the French inBritain awkward and embarrassed. They were ill-equipped tocope with living in Britain, rather than just visiting it, and theircommand of the language was, in the vast majority of cases,inadequate for day-to-day living.

In August 1791 Fanny Burney and her friend Mrs Ord meta group of émigrés at Winchester who were on their way toBath. They took pity on this group of weary travellers whowere having great difficulties finding fresh horses, and invitedthem to drink tea with them.

The elder lady was so truly French – so vive and so triste inturn – that she seemed formed from the written character ofa Frenchwoman, such, at least, as we English write them.She was very forlorn in her air, and very sorrowful in hercountenance; yet all action and gesture, and of an animationwhen speaking nearly fiery in its vivacity: neither pretty noryoung, but neither ugly nor old; and her smile, which wasrare, had a finesse very engaging; while her whole deport-ment announced a person of consequence, and all her dis-course told that she was well-informed, well-educated, andwell-bred.26

From 1790 to early 1792 the émigrés conformed to the Britishstereotypes. They spoke English with difficulty but they pro-jected an image of being light-hearted and amiable and littleconcerned with the political storms at home. This was preciselyat a time when the British papers were full of the writings of


Kirsty Carpenter 49

Burke and Paine and most responsible members of society hadan opinion on the events in France. There was subsequently agreat deal of criticism of the levity of the French in regard topolitics and of their readiness to indulge in entertainmentswhich seemed at odds with their circumstances.27 The Marquisede Falaiseau wrote that the British ‘ne concevaient pas com-ment on pouvait supporter tout cela et conserver de la gaieté’.28

By mid-1790 the emigration was starting to include mem-bers of the provincial estates and of the professions who weredisillusioned by the Revolution. These men had shared theearly enthusiasm for change but were repulsed by its pace andleadership. As time went on political sympathies became evenmore varied as the émigrés were joined by moderate membersof the Constituent Assembly and others whose ideas were in-sufficiently radical for the Revolution.

It was into the inns, hotels and boarding-houses of Soho thatthe refugees descended in search of food, friends and newsfrom France. The noticeably French character of Soho in theeighteenth century made it a popular choice.29 There weremany French lodging-houses kept by descendents of FrenchHuguenots, while Huguenot artisans, watchmakers, jewellersand goldsmiths had businesses in the Soho Square and SohoFields area.30 Golden Square was another very French addressand by the mid-1790s émigrés had swelled the existing Frenchpopulation.31 Madame de Gontaut remembered:

Le quartier dans lequel M. de St Blancard avait pris un loge-ment pour nous était assez triste et situé près de GoldenSquare, et je compris ce que les Français éprouvent en arriv-ant un dimanche à Londres. Le silence, le peu de mouve-ment surprend et l’on risque en y arrivant d’être saisi parune attaque de spleen qui se dissipe le lundi par un beausoleil à Hyde Park.32

Soho was an important lay émigré centre. Some priestsfound lodgings there but the expense drove most of them fur-ther afield.33 The hotels of Soho provided the French with tra-ditional food and there is evidence to suggest that hotels such asthe Hotel de la Sablonnière, No. 13 Leicester Square did wellout of their émigré business. This hotel is mentioned in manyof the memoirs either as an address or eating place.34 Rivarolstayed there when he came to London in 1794 and many



counter-revolutionary plots were hatched in its salons, whichhad formerly belonged to Hogarth.35

This great diversity of people, cultures and customs madethe French feel more at home in Soho than anywhere elsein London. This is reinforced by the statistics. Next only toMarylebone, Soho had the highest density of émigré settle-ment in London.36 18 per cent of lay émigré families for whomaddresses are available lived in Soho and this does not includethe 8 per cent for Tottenham Court Road or the 4 per cent forBloomsbury and Fitzroy Square.37 Familiar Soho addresses,Old Compton St., New Compton St., Wardour St., Queen St.,Greek St., St Anne St., Berwick St., Denmark St., Dean St., andPrincess St., appear in the relief lists.

One important émigré in the Soho community was the artist,Henri-Pierre Danloux. He made a conscious decision to emig-rate in January 1792 because he had no desire to work in arevolutionary state.38 A portrait painter whose clientele wasexclusively drawn from the Ancien Régime elite, he was also aroyalist. He chose Soho because it was the home of Sir JoshuaReynolds, and after his arrival he targeted the British gentryand the newly-arrived French.

His studio in Leicester Fields, which he set up with meticu-lous care to appeal to his British clients, in fact became a meetingplace where the demi-monde of the emigration could congreg-ate and chat.39 He also kept a journal in which he recorded hisappointments, sittings and general comments about life andart among the émigrés. Talking about Mme de Pusigneux thesister of Mme de la Suze, early in 1793, he wrote,

Rien en effet trahit chez elle la misère dont on remarque engénéral l’empreinte chez les émigrés.40

Many lesser artists set themselves up in Soho as interior deco-rators and became much sought after. Their reputation forexquisite taste even reached Queen Charlotte. She commentedto Fanny Burney that:

there are no people who understand enjoyable accommoda-tions more than French gentlemen.41

Another feature was its émigré bookshops. Dulau was situatedat 107 Wardour Street near Soho Square. Opened by a formerBenedictine monk who had managed to save the contents of


Kirsty Carpenter 51

his library it was, after an initial relocation, a large shop withplenty of room. It soon became one of the favourite meet-ing places for the émigrés, a centre of gossip and a source ofnews from France. Dulau edited speeches, pamphlets, poetryand travel diaries which were printed by Cox and Baylis, theonly specialist French-language printers in London.42 He wasalso a major distributor for the French émigré newspaperLe Courier de Londres. Another French bookshop, De Boffe,located at 7 Gerrard St., had a similar role as a popular meetingplace for the émigrés. These were not the only French book-shops in London; bookshop owners were among the smallnumber of French émigrés who applied for British naturalisa-tion as a result of the emigration.43

The prosperity of these establishments, of which we knowonly skeletal details, was due to the intense literary activityamong the émigrés and the willingness of the British elite toread what was being written.44 Reading and writing wereprobably the most popular pastimes for émigré society. Manyfound writing a relaxing way to forget the pressures and hard-ships of exile. Those who destined their work for contempor-ary publication usually had political or pecuniary motives butthe émigré memoirs also offer proof of the number of émigréswho sought to justify their own actions to themselves or to othersthrough keeping a journal.

Titles published in London during this period were primarilypolitical in nature. They include, among others, Calonnes’sTableau de l’Europe (1795), Montlosier’s Vues sommaires sur lesmoyens de Paix (1796), Chateaubriand’s Essai historique (1797),and Lally Tollendal’s Defense des émigrés (1797). Women werenot well represented among the professional writers of emig-ration; the Comtesse de Flahaut was an exception but even shereserved her observations for fictional characters.45

No one expressed as clearly as Chateaubriand the isolationof exile or its effect upon the émigré mentality.46 He describedthe survival mechanisms that it inspired in the most delicatewomen or the elderly priest. This was echoed by one of thecharacters in Sénac de Meihan’s novel L’Emigré (1797): ‘on voitsouvent dans l’Emigré l’homme rendu en quelque sorte à sonétat primitif ’.47

Chateaubriand is also responsible for one of the most col-ourful images of émigré poverty in London. He claimed to be



reduced to sucking sheets and eating grass and paper to stave offhunger pangs.48

This image was undoubtedly embellished but his observa-tions about the émigrés and their society are often very lucid.Chateaubriand brought out the divisions among the émigrés,and was not afraid to air them in a critical way, yet he was alsoquick to excuse them.

The Comtesse de Flahaut offers similar opinions of the émi-gré mentality from a female point of view.49 She arrived inLondon in 1792 with her infant son Charles, very little moneyand only a few jewels.50 Her novel Adèle de Senange, which wasto be the first of a dozen over the next 20 years, enabled her tolive comfortably though quietly during her emigration, whichwas relatively short.51 In the preface she wrote:

Seule dans une terre étrangère, avec un enfant qui a atteintl’âge où il n’est plus permis de retarder l’éducation, j’aiéprouvé une sorte de douceur à penser que ses premièresétudes seraient le fruit de mon travail.52

Flahaut used her creative instincts to combat the long daysin exile and she recopied her own manuscripts in order to shutout her worries.53 Yet she was also acutely aware of the suffer-ing of others around her:

Avec les habitudes d’une grande fortune, il suffit d’un car-actère ferme, pour se soumettre aux privations, mais il fautbien du temps pour apprendre l’économie.54

In contrast to Soho, Marylebone housed wealthy émigrés,many of them nobles who had lived at Versailles. The earlyyears 1789–94 were characterised by conspicuous consump-tion, the later ones, 1795–1814 by an elegant sufficiency. Thepolitics of this part of town were exclusively royalist and theultra-royalism of its inhabitants was reinforced by the arrivalof the Comte d’Artois in 1799 and the Prince de Condé in1801.55

Aspersions were often cast on the political pedigree of otherémigrés by those who lived around Portman and ManchesterSquares and there can be no doubt that there were some whoinitially enjoyed a standard of living very little changed fromtheir Parisian one.


Kirsty Carpenter 53

Il se trouvait à Londres quelques personnes à qui des circon-stances heureuses avaient conservé une partie de leur for-tune, ou du moins des ressources momentanées. C’était lapartie élégante de l’emigration; là on montait à cheval, onallait en cariole; là se trouvaient des jeunes femmes suivies,recherchées, comme elles l’eûssent été à Paris, et des jeunesgens aussi occupés de plaire qu’ils avaient pu l’être quandles succès auprès des femmes étaient l’affaire la plus impor-tante de la vie.56

But many émigrés agreed that this was not sensible. MmeDanloux comments on the absurdity of émigrés entertaininglavishly and giving balls:

On parla ensuite du luxe des femmes émigrées qui étaient àce bal; on dit que cela faisait un contraste frappant avec lasimplicité des quelques anglaises qui s’y trouvaient. Nousconvînmes tous qu’il était bien ridicule que des émigrésdonassent des bals.57

The émigrés themselves were highly critical of each other’sbehaviour. Madame de La Tour du Pin wrote in disgust aboutthe pettiness of aristocratic émigré society.58 She describedémigré women as pretentious, haughty and intolerant andthese reactions were shared by Madame de Gontaut whoexpressed a similar desire to leave London as soon as possible.59

Whatever the reasons, some émigrés undoubtedly displayedthese qualities towards those less fortunate in emigration. Wil-liam Windham wondered philosophically whether the Britishmight not have behaved in exactly the same way if put in asimiliar situation.60 However, if anger, disappointment andbitterness found expression in personal behaviour, in theirwritings the émigrés were often more generous.61

Chacun raisonne et s’anime pour ses passions, ses goûts, sesvanités, et les opinions doivent être d’autant plus variées dansun pays où le caractère national présente plus de nuances.L’émigration les rassemblait toutes.62

The special significance of Marylebone for the London émigréswas reinforced by the the Chapel of the Annonciation whichwas built in King Street (Portman Square) and consecrated inMarch 1799. It was also known as the Chapelle Royale de



France because shortly after its consecration the comte d’Artoistook up residence nearby in Baker Street and worshippedthere regularly. The French community provided the moneyand most of the labour for its construction.63

It is mentioned in many of the émigré memoirs64 but unfor-tunately this unimposing little chapel was demolished in 1978.65

Despite its dull appearance it was consecrated by one of thehighest representatives of the French Catholic Church, theArchbishop of Aix, and welcomed no less than three Kingsof France and many princes to worship or mourn within itswalls.66 The list of those who attended the funeral of LouisXVIII’s wife, the comtesse de Lille, in this chapel attests to itshistorical significance.67 The French chapel was closed in 1911and the building subsequently served as a furniture warehouse,a day nursery, a mortuary chapel, a prayer-room, a synagogueand a recording studio.68

By 1799, when the Chapel of the Annunciation opened, thelifestyle of the early days of Emigration had disappearedalmost completely. Even Monsieur the Comte d’Artois livedquietly, enjoying the companionship of his long-time mistressLouise de Polastron, until she died of consumption in 1804.69

Émigrés who had come to the area wealthy with rents andincome from their properties in Saint-Domingue or otherFrench colonies, and who had initially impressed London soci-ety with their taste and entertainments, had since been hum-bled by the events of the war and the disintegration of theirfortunes.70 It was not long before they had adapted to the neces-sity of work and integrated it into the rhythm of their daily life.

The sort of work done by the émigrés reflected their aristo-cratic tastes and employed their existing skills. White muslinembroidered dresses which were easy to make and profitablewere much sought after.71 Embroidery was put to many usesas a fashion accessory.72 Straw hats were the other importantfashion accessory which the émigrés turned into a prosperoustrade. The hats, which sold for 25 shillings apiece, are prob-ably the best-known product of émigré labours in London.73

Life soon revolved around the morning spent in the ‘atelier’or workshop.

On arrivait vers les onze heures du matin. Là nous faisionsdes chapeaux de paille, non tressée, comme la paille de


Kirsty Carpenter 55

Livourne, mais entière, blanche et brillante; des fils de laitonliaient ensemble regulièrement tous ces brins de paille, quis’arrondissaient sur des formes de calotte, en s’aplatissanten passes sur des feuilles de carton. En travaillant sans tropde distraction, on pouvait faire son chapeau en trois jours.74

Walsh describes how the young, because they generally spokebetter English than their elders, were given the unenviabletask of going and selling the hats to the hat shops in the city.75

He remembered clearly the haughtiness of the shop-keeperswhich he describes as their ‘sot orgueil’ and for a well-bornémigré the experience of finding himself at the mercy of amerchant was a situation of unequalled discomfort. The clergydid not like selling their work either and they persuaded theWilmot Committee (responsible for the distribution of Gov-ernment relief) to do it for them.76

The ‘ateliers’ of Emigration were social institutions. Theyprovided the émigrés with an outlet for shared griefs and aspi-rations. The company of other émigrés and the cameraderiewhich lightened the gloom and despair of many émigrés’ per-sonal circumstances played an important role in helping theémigrés both to cope with the strains of prolonged exile andsimply to pass the time.77 This need for society and for compan-ionship created a unity and a sense of common destiny whichdrew the little French community of Marylebone together.Mme de Menerville, describing the dark winters of 1795, 1796and 1797 in London, commented:

Je n’ai jamais retrouvé une société aussi franchement unie(tous les intérêts, toutes les opinions, tous les désirs étaientles mêmes), aussi distinguée par l’esprit, les talents, lesbonnes manières, une conversation plus charmante ni dessoirées qui valussent celles que nous passions à Londresdans de pauvres salons, mal meublés, auprès d’un feu decharbon, éclairé par une petite lampe ou deux chandelles.Des jeunes et souvent très jolies femmes, vêtues d’une robeindienne, coiffées d’un méchant chapeau de paille, déployaitune gaiété, une grace, une amabilité enviées des Anglais.78

Some émigrés turned their hobbies into lucrative occupationswith more success than others. The Duc d’Aiguillon foundwork copying music for the director of the Opera.79 Monsieur



Brillaud de Lonjac, who lived at 103 Marylebone, High Streetwas so indebted to his countrymen for their help and contacts inemigration and in British circles that he proposed, free of charge,

to offer, three days a week, to a limited number of people,group lessons in singing, the English guitar and accompani-ment.80

This gesture suggests just how much music tuition, which formany émigrés was a part of life in France, was missed. And theci-devant noble music mistress made a rather comic figureventuring out in all weathers to go to the homes of her pupils, ‘larobe retroussée dans ses poches et un parapluie à la main’.81

Music lessons and tuning pianos were a favourite way tomake money but few émigrés made their fortunes out of con-cert music. Danloux mentions a Mlle Mérelle, a talented youngharpist who had made the mistake of trying to make her living.She gave sparsely attended concerts in freezing venues andwas thrown into the debtors’ prison for a sum of 15 guineas.Luckily for her, somebody told the Comte d’Artois who paidher debts.82 The Comte de Marin, a talented violin player, wasan exception; he had an established reputation before he cameto London, where he gave charity concerts to raise money forémigrés who were less fortunate than himself.83

There were a few novel occupations. Jean Gabriel Peltier, anémigré journalist, capitalised on the English fascination forthe guillotine. He had a miniature of the guillotine made inwalnut and, for the price of a crown for the front seats and ashilling for the rear, he advertised the spectacle ‘Today weguillotine a goose, tomorrow a duck’.84 It seems that thismacabre performance appealed to the English because severalother émigrés followed his example.

For the inhabitants of Marylebone privations were limitedand work, to the extent that it was necessary, was integratedinto an enjoyable social round. They went to their ateliers inthe mornings, entertained each other in the afternoons andmanaged to survive. Mme de la Tour du Pin, however, knewseveral émigré women who never appeared in society but ded-icated themselves to their work.85

Émigré life in other parts of London was much harsher. Asearly as 1793 poor areas of London like St Pancras, SomersTown and Saint George’s Fields found their communities swollen


Kirsty Carpenter 57

by newly arrived French refugees. The émigrés who wereattracted to these areas were almost invariably those who hadmanaged to save little from the Revolution and what they hadbrought with them was quickly spent.

Prominent in this group was the provincial nobility, women(particularly widows), priests and domestic servants.86 Manywomen, in particular those waiting for husbands who wereserving with the princes, chose Saint George’s Fields whichwas among the poorest, cheapest and most insanitary areas oflate-eighteenth-century London. Most received some assistancefrom the charitable committees and later from the BritishGovernment but in winter and with several children this aidwas inadequate. It took the death of a noblewoman from hun-ger in Saint George’s Fields to bring home to the British justhow bad the situation was.

A group of British women, horrified that such a thing couldhappen, discovered that there were many women in need ofbasic necessities of life. Often the little furniture they possessedhad been sold to buy fuel, with the result that clothes and bed-ding were among their essential needs. There were cases ofgreat distress, women suffering as a result of childbirth withouthelp or support, physical and mental illnesses of differingseverity but all aggravated by the stresses of prolonged separa-tion from loved ones, bereavement and harsh living condi-tions.87 Working for long hours in bad light to supplement whatlittle money they had also took its toll.88 Some coped better thanothers but the squalor, that was evident in Saint George’sFields, as in other poor areas of London, was depressing forthose accustomed to a completely different standard of living.

In July 1795 an expedition to Quiberon Bay was mountedwith the French émigré forces in a leading role. Almost all theLondon families had members in the regiments that wentto the Atlantic coast of Brittany. The disastrous events atQuiberon have been the subject of a number of analyses butwhatever the verdict on the military mismanagement whichproduced such a failure, the cost to the émigrés was plain.89

Prisoners taken at Quiberon were subject to the penal laws,which affected any émigré caught on French soil and wereshot without trial within days of capture. This news took a littletime to filter back to London but its impact was devastating,since many émigrés had counted on Quiberon to release them



from their refugee existence. Without the support of the familymembers who had been killed, the future was even morebleak. This grief was compounded by the fact that boys who hadnot been old enough to serve in the 1792 campaign fought atQuiberon and their young lives were uselessly sacrified.90

Most of the families in Saint George’s Fields were receivingrelief payments but these were barely adequate in summerand in winter or at times of personal crisis many families foundthemselves destitute. The Comtesse de Flahaut wrote:

Ceux qui n’ont jamais connu le malheur ignorent combienune seule circonstance imprévue peut jeter dans le dése-spoir.91

The relocation of the French refugees from Jersey and Guern-sey to the British mainland was another occasion when theémigrés found themselves victims of political crises. This wasessentially because the émigrés were evacuated for militarypurposes and the impact of the dislocation on their daily liveswas not given serious consideration.92 This new group of refu-gees went to Somers Town, a newly developed, cheap area notfar from the city centre.93 Their presence attracted other émi-grés and the outstanding leadership of the Abbé Carron, whobecame the community’s chief organiser and inspiration, wasanother incentive for émigrés to settle there.94 As well as beinga prolific writer, he opened schools for the children (as he hadin Jersey) and he made provision for the sick and the elderly tobe taken care of properly.95 His ability to overcome problems,raise money and organise earned him the epithet of theSt Vincent de Paul of the Emigration.96

His public farewell to the English people before he returnedto France in 1814 illustrates his admiration for the English andtheir support for the émigré cause but also a personal senti-ment which many refugees shared with him,

Magnanimes Anglois, vous m’avez fait retrouver commele doux sol qui me vit naître, sur votre terre hospitalière;mes parens d’adoption, vous m’avez prodigué, durant delongues années, les soins assidus de la mère. Comblé de vosbienfaits, je vais m’arracher de vos bras; la Providence mecondamne à ce grand sacrifice, qui me devient comme uneémigration nouvelle.97


Kirsty Carpenter 59

The warmth of feeling that the emigration created betweenBritish and French people can be gauged from a variety ofsources, from the diversity of donors to the relief subscrip-tions, to the tokens of friendship proudly shown to a travellingEnglishman by two priests on their way to Rouen in 1802.98 Itis impossible to veil the nostalgic nature of that gratitude.There are many examples like the following;

Cette isle est le seul coin de terre Où le malheur soit accueilli. Salut, généreuse Angleterre! Partout nous n’avons recueilli Que les dédains, l’insulte amère D’une tourbe immorale et grossièreEt d’un souverain avili. Mais dans ton sein pur et sensible Nous avons trouvé des amis: Ta rive seule est accessible Aux Français loyaux et soumis.99

The émigrés, who had arrived expecting a stay measured inmonths, returned to France after an average absence of 8–10years. During this time they had established links which boundthem intimately to places and to people and the British toowere sad to see them go.100

For all of this, London provided the backdrop. London wasthe home of the Wilmot Committee which organised the reliefeffort.101 It was the theatre in which the main dramas of emigra-tion took place, from the passing of the Aliens Bill to the mur-der of the Comte d’Antraigues.102 And it was the city fromwhich Louis XVIII set out on his return to Paris cheered on bythe crowd and safe in the knowledge of the support of the Brit-ish government.103

Historians who consider the émigrés to be politically impotenthave overlooked the enormous power of the image created bythe émigré population in the London streets. Both in 1793when the British Government went to war against RepublicanFrance, and in 1798 in the wake of Fructidor, the moral forceof the emigration was an asset to the British Government in itsnegotiations with other European powers.



Nothing cuts so severely into the feelings of the Frenchrebels, as the noble and liberal manner in which the Englishhave relieved those Loyalists whom they have expatriated.It convinces them that their conduct and their new system ofGovernment are detested in this country, as well as in allother civilized parts of the world; and that therefore it is animpossibility ever to maintain a Government to which allnations but that in which it is attempted, are inimical.104

The historian has only to ask the question why the émigrésreceived such generous treatment from a Protestant nationupon whom they had no direct claim to begin to understandthe power of émigré propaganda. Why was the émigré causeable to command support at such a high level of British society?Why were the members of the Wilmot Committee some of themost eminent people in the realm? Why did the British Gov-ernment accept responsibility towards the refugees? Becausethe émigrés had the sympathy of the British élite behind themwhich, reinforced by their generally honourable behaviour,was sufficient to impress upon the government the need tosupport them.

Arthur Young was not the only British subject who could seethrough the Jacobin rhetoric.105 He like others questioned thetreatment émigrés had received under revolutionary law. Thepresence of women, children and priests in the London streetsemphasised the point which Lally Tolendal had argued so elo-quently when he demanded that all those who had not takenarms against the Republic be exempted from the émigré laws:

The child, whom a widow, a father or a daughter over-whelmed with despair, has carried away with her at her blood-stained bosom and who has not yet heard of the calamities ofits country nor of the massacre of its family, the child con-ceived in sorrow in exile and who drinks more of the tearsthan the milk of its wretched mother is already attained bythis murderous law.106

Even some who were blatantly critical of French behaviour feltcompassion:

for the poor women who have been driven to this countryfrom France and I feel inclined to extend that sensation tothe clergy, who have come over in vast numbers;107


Kirsty Carpenter 61

Historians of British radicalism have acknowledged that themost significant impact of the Revolution upon British politicswas the boost it gave to political conservatism.108 The émigréshelped bring about the shift from the enthusiasm for Revolutionof 1791 to the pro-government stance which characterisedearly 1793.109 The dignity of the refugees and their willingnessto make the most of their situation not only increased Britishadmiration for them, but it encouraged an almost universalrejection of all that had made them suffer.

NOTES

1. One of the clauses in the Aliens Bill (1793) specified that the émigrésmust live within 50 miles of Cornhill. Another stated that they must notlive within 10 miles of any port.

2. Figures for the number of émigrés who came to Britain in Sept–Dec1792 are very difficult to ascertain because records were not kept. Esti-mates range between 10 000 and 40 000 and come from a variety ofsources such as the press, the correspondence of members of parliamentand the Wilmot Committee records. To complicate matters further the1786 Trade Treaty between Britain and France had given reciprocalaccess without the need to carry passports to the merchants of bothnations. This was breached by the Aliens Bill ( January 1793) whichrequired all foreigners to carry passports in Britain and the French Gov-ernment made formal protest. 12 500 annually between 1792 and 1802is the figure which I have proposed in my thesis but it is almost certainthat in the very early stages of the influx, that is, Sept–Dec 1792, theremay have been as many as 25 000 émigrés in Britain. See K.A. Carpen-ter, Les émigrés à Londres 1789–1802, unpublished Doctorat de l’Univer-sité thesis, Université de Paris I, 1993. This theory is further developedin my forthcoming book Refugees of Revolution: the French Emigrés in Lon-don 1789–1802, London, 1999.

3. J. Dupâquier, La population française au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1979. 4. Abbé Tardy, Manuel du voyageur à Londres: ou recueil de toutes les instruc-

tions nécessaires aux étrangers qui arrivent dans cette capitale précédé du grandPlan de Londres, par l’abbé Tardy auteur du Dictionnaire de prononciationfrançaise à l’usage des Anglois, Londres, 1800, p. 206.

5. Donald Greer in his study of The Incidence of Emigration during the FrenchRevolution, (Harvard, 1951) found the nobility to be a minority. Clergy25.2 %, Nobility 16.8 %, Upper Bourgeoisie 11.1 %, Lower Bourgeoisie6.2 %, Workers 14.3 %, Peasants 19.4 %, Other 7 % (more briefly andoften quoted Clergy 25 %, Nobility 17 %, Third Estate 51 % and Other 7 %



(p. 112, Table I). This revolutionised the way historians approached theEmigration. Yet his assertion that ‘The brilliant company of aristocratsobscures the presence of a dense throng of drab émigrés’ (p. 63) haspushed assumptions too far the other way.

6. Greer collated figures for all émigrés who left France and thereforefor all destinations in Europe. He was aware of problems relating tothe ‘estates’ terminology. ‘As descriptive of the French social order it hadalways been somewhat inaccurate; by the end of the eighteenth centuryit had lost all social validity, and was nothing more than a consecratedanachronism’. (Incidence of Emigration, p. 65).

7. The sample is taken from PRO T. 93–28. 8. Of the 812 sample 701 gave a description of their status while 111 left

the column blank. The percentages are taken from the 701 ratherthan the total 812.

9. Proportionally this is a much higher percentage than the blanket 10%for the military emigration maintained by Donal Greer, Incidence of theEmigration, Harvard, 1952, p. 90.

10. K.A. Carpenter, Les émigrés à Londres 1789–1802, unpublished Doctoratde l’Université thesis, Université de Paris I, 1993. p. 324. This figurerepresents those who gave an address in Marylebone and Portman orManchester Squares.

11. A. Grangier, A Genius of France, A short sketch of the Famous French Inventor,Sebastien Erard and the firm he founded in Paris 1780, translated by JeanFougueville (3rd edn, Paris, 1924) and Pierre Erard, The Harp, In itspresent improved State compared with the Original Pedal Harp, London,1821 and F. Fétis, Notice biographique sur Sebastien Erard, Chevalier de laLégion d’Honneur, Paris, 1831.

12. Gordon MacKenzie, Marylebone, Great City North of Oxford Street, Lon-don 1972, pp. 28–9. There is nothing in PRO T. 93–28 or Add Ms 18,591–593, to suggest that émigrés kept restaurants, hotels or boardinghouses. These were much more likely to be kept by French Huguenotswho were confused with French émigrés.

13. M. l’Abbé Julien Loth et M. Ch. Verger, réd., Paris, 1897, p. 125. 14. Abbé Tardy, Manuel d’un voyageur à Londres, op. cit., p. 206. 15. J.D. Parry, An historical and descriptive account of the coast of Sussex, Lon-

don, 1833, p. 203. 16. Fanny Burney developed this theme in her novel The Wanderer where

Gabriella was described as having been, ‘punished for plans in whichshe had borne no part, and for crimes of which she had not even anyknowledge; – not only driven, without offence, or even accusation,from prosperity and honours, to exile, to want, to misery, and to labour,but suffering, at the same time, the heaviest of personal afflictions, inthe immediate loss of a darling child’. Burney, The Wanderer, Oxfordedition, 1991, p. 390.

17. Marquis de Valous, Sur les routes de l’Emigration, Mémoires de la duchessede Saulx-Tavannes (1791–1806), Paris, 1934, p. 48.

18. Mme de Ménerville née Fougeret, Souvenirs d’Emigration 1791–1797,Paris, 1934, pp. 66–7.


Kirsty Carpenter 63

19. Henri Forneron, Histoire générale des émigrés pendant la Révolutionfrançaise, Paris 1884–1890, vol. II, p. 44.

20. R., Baron de Portalis, Henry-Pierre Danloux, peintre de portraits et sonjournal durant l’émigration, Paris, 1910 p. 155.

21. Jules Bertaut, Les émigrés français à Londres sous la Révolution, Le Nou-veau Monde, mars 1923, p. 184.

22. J.D. Parry, Coast of Sussex, op. cit., p. 203. 23. Hervé, Vicomte de Broc, Dix ans de la vie d’une femme pendant l’émigra-

tion, Adelaide de Kerjean, Marquise de Falaiseau, Paris, 1893, pp. 140, 141. 24. Comtesse de Boigne, Mémoires, Paris, 1907–8 [reprinted, Mercure de

France 1986,] vol. I, p. 373. 25. G. Selwyn to Lady Carlisle, Hist. MSS Comm. XV, Appendix Part VI,

Manuscripts of the Earl of Carlisle, p. 677, letter dated November1789.

26. Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay edited by her niece, London, 1842,vl 5, pp. 233.

27. Lord Auckland, Journal and Correspondence, London, 1861, vol. II,p. 370, Mr. Storer to Lord Auckland, 6 August 1790, wrote: ‘These peoplealways like a little joke in the midst of their most serious misfortunes’.

28. Vicomte de Broc, op. cit., p. 146. 29. M. Goldsmith, Soho Square, London, 1948, p. 12. 30. There were 612 Huguenots listed in the parish in 1711, ibid. 31. C.L. Kingsford, The Early History of Piccadilly, Leicester Square, Soho, and

their Neighbourhood, Cambridge, 1925 p. 116. 32. Duchesse de Gontaut, Mémoires, 1773–1836 et lettres inédites, Paris,

1895, p. 23. 33. See Chapter 13. 34. Courrier de Londres, 16 August 1793. 35. Leigh Hunt, The Town, its memorable characteristics, St Paul’s to St James’s,

London, 1906, p. 479. 36. PRO T. 93–28. 37. K.A. Carpenter, Les émigrés à Londres 1789–1802, unpublished Doctorat

Nouveau régime, Université de Paris I, 1993. p. 324. 38. Portalis, op. cit., p. 50. ‘Il partit le 11 janvier 1792 seul, ne jugeant pas

prudent d’emmener les siens avant de leur avoir assuré des moyenssuffisants d’existence’.

39. Portalis, op. cit., pp. 106–7. 40. Ibid., p. 169. 41. The Diary and Letters of Mme d’Arblay edited by her niece, London, 1842,

vol. VI, p. 145. 42. 75 Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. 43. Archives Nat. ABXIX-3793 lists Pierre Didier, owner of a bookshop at

75 St James Street, and Laurent-Louis Deconchy, ibid., 100 NewBond Street as successful applicants for British naturalisation.

44. A good example of this is the subscription list of Lally Tolendal’s Lecomte de Strafford, which was published by De Boffe in 1795 and includedthe Prince of Wales, William Pitt, Henry Dundas, James Fox and manyBritish peers.



45. She lived at No. 27 Half Moon Street, Mayfair. 46. Chateaubriand, Essai historique, politique et moral sur les Révolutions anci-

ennes et modernes, œuvres Complètes, Bruxelles 1835, vol. I, p. 7. 47. Senac de Meihan, L’Émigré, Brunswick, 1797. 48. Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’Outre Tombe, op. cit., p. 444. 49. Adelaide Marie Emilie Filleuil, Comtesse de Flahaut. See Maricourt,

Baron de, Mme de Souza et sa famille, Paris, 1907. 50. Charles de Flahaut developed lasting connections with Britain dating

from the Emigration. He later married a British woman and was natu-ralised (1822). His attachment to Britain can be appreciated in this let-ter to his mother: ‘cette Angleterre m’est devenue ce qui était laprovince pour Mme de Sévigné, j’aimais jusqu’à l’accent anglais dansle français’. AN AP 565, 14 February 1816.

51. She returned to France in 1797 and managed to get herself removedfrom the émigré list. Her husband the Comte de Flahaut had beenguillotined in 1794.

52. Œuvres Complètes de Madame de Souza, comtesse puis marquise de Flahaut,Paris 1821. Adèle de Senange.

53. Baldensperger, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 40. 54. Mme de Souza, œuvres Complètes, Paris, 1821, vol. II, p. 302. 55. Apart from summers spent in Scotland between 1801 and 1803 the

Comte d’Artois resided in London from his arrival there in 1799 untilhis return to France in 1814.

56. A. Bardoux, La duchesse de Duras, Paris, 1898, pp. 57–8. 57. Portalis, op. cit., p. 305. 58. Marquise de la Tour du Pin, Journal d’une femme de cinquante ans 1778–

1815, Paris 1920, vol. II, p. 165. 59. Duchesse de Gontaut, op. cit., p. 30. 60. Windham correspondence, quoted by Margery Weiner, The French

Exiles, 1789–1815, London, 1960, p. 100. 61. Guilhermy, le colonel de, Papiers d’un émigré, 1789–1826, Paris, 1886,

pp. 116–17. 62. Bardoux, op. cit., p. 59. 63. Harting, Catholic London Missions from the Reformation to the year 1850,

London, 1903 pp. 231–3, cited by Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 484. 64. ‘Dans une ruelle aboutissant à cette dernière rue, des nobles ouvriers

avaient élevé et báti de leurs mains un temple au Dieu qui soutient lesexilés; la chapelle de King Street existe encore aujourd’hui et le princede Polignac, avec grande convenance, en avait fait la chapelle de l’am-bassade de Sa Majesté très chrétienne. Après le bannissement lesFrançais dont l’exil avait fini, et qui venaient revoir l’Angleterre,s’empressaient d’aller prier dans cette église de leurs mauvais jours’.Walsh, op. cit., p. 151.

65. Margery Weiner wrote in 1960: ‘The curious can still see the Chapelof the Annunciation although it has long since ceased to be called bythat name. From the mews in Carton Street one steps into what isscarcely more than a large room, whitewashed and lit by a skylight inthe roof. Above the entrance passage a gallery is supported on slenderpillars. On one side of the gallery a corkscrew staircase leads up three


Kirsty Carpenter 65

flights, each with a small room where lived the ministering clergy.’ TheFrench Exiles 1789–1815, p. 123.

66. Jean-de-Dieu Raymond de Boisgelin. 67. The funeral of the Comtesse de Lille took place on 26 September

1810. Fonds Bourbons, Mémoires et Documents, 620 provides a list ofthose present at the funeral.

68. Mackenzie, op. cit., p. 231. 69. Louise d’Esparbès de Lussan, Comtesse de Polastron, 1764–1804. 70. The uprisings in Saint-Domingue and other French dependencies

like Martinique and Guadeloupe originated with plantation workersdemanding their rights as French citizens and freedom from oppression.Minor uprisings began as early as 1790, the British became involvedsupporting the royalist planters in the spring and summer of 1793 andthis involvement forced the French Republicans to ally with the slaves.Fighting in Saint-Domingue went on until 1801 when the slave leaderToussaint l’Ouverture gained control but the economy of the oncewealthy colony had been decimated, much property had been destroyedand from mid–late 1794 émigrés with property in Saint-Domingue werecut off from their funds and subsequently denied credit in London.

71. Ménérville, op. cit., p. 169. 72. The Marquess of Buckingham was instrumental in providing a shop

where the émigrée ladies could price their work and leave it to be soldin order to spare them the embarrassment of selling their work them-selves. Duchesse de Gontaut, op. cit., p. 24.

73. Vicomte Walsh, op. cit., p. 153. 74. Ibid. 75. Vicomte Walsh, op. cit., p. 154. 76. Add Ms 18,591 vol. I, p. 130. 77. Ménérville, op. cit., p. 171. 78. Ibid. 79. M. Kelly, Reminiscences, 2 vols, London, 1826, vol. II, pp. 86–7. 80. Le Courrier de Londres, 17 May 1793, Monsieur Brillaud de Lonjac, 103

High Street Marylebone. 81. Daudet, Histoire de l’émigration, vol. I, p. 131. 82. Baron de Portalis, op. cit., p. 117. 83. Vicomte Walsh, Souvenirs de cinquante ans, Paris, 1862, p. 267. 84. Montlosier, Souvenirs d’un émigré, p. 221 quoted by, H. Maspero-Clerc,

Un journaliste Contre-révolutionnaire J-G Peltier, p. 70. 85. Marquise de la Tour du Pin, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 182. 86. Vicomte Walsh, op. cit., p. 170. 87. Lubersac, op. cit., pp. 79–82 mentions specific cases of these circum-

stances. 88. Eye problems were one of the three main categories of illness (along

with faiblesse/grande faiblesse and mauvaise santé) among émigrésaccording to the medical records of the Wilmot Committee. ANABXIX-3791, dos 3.

89. See Maurice Hutt, Chouannerie and Counter-revolution. Puisaye, thePrinces and the British Government in the 1790s, Cambridge, 1983. andPatrick Huchet, Quiberon ou le destin de la France, Rennes, 1995.



90. Lubersac, op. cit., p. 83. 91. ‘Eugénie et Mathilde’, Mme de Souza, Œuvres Complètes, Paris, 1821. 92. This is the subject of sustained correspondence between members of

the Wilmot Committee and the Government contained in P.C. 1/118(particularly no. 73.) which did succeed in facilitating the removalbut the speed with which the operation was accomplished meant thatthe émigrés invariably lost money and possessions which they couldnot easily transport.

93. PRO T.93–39 contains a list of the names and addresses of the 350lay émigrés who came from Jersey.

94. Carron was 36 when he came to London. He also founded theSt Aloysius chapel in the Polygon in Somers Town in 1808. See DominicAidan Bellenger, The French Exiled Clergy, Downside, 1986, pp. 104–9.

95. While in London, he wrote a number of religious works for use bythe clergy and the wider Catholic community. Les pensées ecclésias-tiques, published by Dulau (1797), were perhaps the most influentialin the émigré community at large. They were a series of readingsand thoughts for each day of the year.

96. Walsh, op. cit., p. 165. 97. BM Add Ms 9828, f. 200, extract from, Les Adieux de L’abbé Carron de

Somerstown à ses bienfaisans amis, les citoyens de la Grande Bretagne, Som-ers town, le 29 juillet 1814.

98. John Carr, op. cit., p. 34. 99. Verses from a work by M. de Malherbe, (No. 31 Charles St, London)

with a long dedication to William Windham AN ABXIX-3790, X/47. 100. See, example, Mary Russell Mitford, Recollections of a Literary Life,

London, 1859, pp. 233–6. 101. The Wilmot Committee was set up as a charitable committee to

relieve the sufferings of the French clergy in September 1792. Its keymembers were the Bishop of Saint Pol de Léon who was responsiblefor the distribution of funds within the French community and JohnEardley Wilmot, MP for Coventry, who had previously been involvedin the settlement of Loyalist claims. In December 1794 the WilmotCommittee assumed responsibility for the distribution of Governmentrelief to all émigrés in Britain and administered payments to theémigrés until 1814. See D.A. Bellenger, Fearless Resting Place p. [ . . . ]and for a fuller explanation of the history of the relief, K. Carpenter,Refugees of Revolution, The French Émigrés in London 1789–1802,Chapters 3 and 4.

102. See Colin Duckworth, The D’Antraigues Phenomenon, London, 1986.The murder of the Comte d’Antraigues and his wife in Barnes in1812 remains to this day surrounded by mystery.

103. Mansel, P., Louis XVIII, Paris, 1982, p. 182. 104. The Times, 10 October 1792. 105. A. Young, The Example of France a Warning to Britain, London, 1794. 106. Defence of the French Emigrants addressed to the People of France, translated

by John Gifford Esq, London, 1797, p. 42. 107. Mr. Burges to Lord Auckland, 21 September 1792, He continues: ‘but

I am every day less and less disposed to entertain a similar sentiment


Kirsty Carpenter 67

for the rest of the refugees, the higher orders of whom, with very fewexceptions have been deeply implicated in the guilt of this Revolution’.Lord Auckland, op. cit., vol. II, p. 445.

108. This was stated by H.T. Dickinson in 1789 (H.T. Dickinson, ed., Brit-ain and the French Revolution 1789–1815, London, 1989, p. 103) andreiterated by David Eastwood in 1991, (Mark Philip, ed., The FrenchRevolution and British Popular Politics, Cambridge, 1991, p. 147.)

109. J.B. Burges writes to Lord Auckland from Whitehall on 7 September1792 that: ‘The French excesses, I fancy, have made a great impres-sion here’. Lord Auckland, op. cit., vol. II, p. 441.


68

4 French Émigrés in HungaryFerenc Tóth

The history of Hungary in the eighteenth century was charac-terised by massive migrations, facilitated by its recent recon-quest from the Turks.1 Germans, Slavs, and even Frenchmenmade their homes in the southern part of the country.2 ManyHungarians also left their country for political reasons at thistime, following the failure of the War of Independence led bythe Prince Rákóczi (1703–11). The prince was an ally of LouisXIV and, by the creation of a Hungarian diversion, hadhelped France to avoid total defeat in the wars of the SpanishSuccession. Rákóczi fled to France in the hope of continuinghis war for Hungarian independence and his little court in exilebecame a meeting place for his former followers. Thus at thebeginning of the eighteenth century several thousand Hun-garians were incorporated into regiments of hussars in theroyal army.3 These regiments, like other foreign regiments,were considered loyal servants of the monarchy and severalofficers of Hungarian origin succeeded in making brilliantcareers. A few were even presented at court: François AntoineBerchény (the son of Maréchal Ladislas de Berchény) andLadislas Valentin Esterhazy each commanded their own regi-ments and the famous French diplomat in the Ottoman Empire,and technical advisor of the Ottoman army in the 1770s,François Baron de Tott, also gained this distinction.4

Ladislas Valentin Esterhazy, future ambassador of the Prin-ces, was born in the commune of Vigan in Languedoc in1740.5 Count Ladislas de Berchény took charge of his educa-tion after the death of his father, and he began his militarycareer during the Seven Years War in the regiment of hussarscommanded by Berchény. He fought in the Seven Years Warand was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in 1761,aged only twenty-one. He soon won permission to raise a regi-ment of hussars himself (1764) and his rank and intelligenceobtained him many diplomatic missions in central Europe and,


Ferenc Tóth 69

it is probable, in England. It was he who, in 1770, brought theportrait of the future Louis XVI to Marie Antoinette at Vienna.There he gained the favour and the confidence of the futureQueen of France who, in spite of his reluctance to receivethem, showered him with gifts. During the popular uprisingin 1775 and the ‘Flour War’ he distinguished himself at thehead of his regiment by re-establishing order in the provinceof Brie. He was promoted to the rank of General in 1780 andthe following year was made Military Governor of Rocroy. Itwas during this period that he married the daughter of thewealthy Comte d’Hallwyl. At the height of his career theComte d’Esterhazy was not only a favourite of Queen MarieAntoinette, he was also chosen as one of the eight members ofthe Council of War created in 1787.6

When the Revolution broke out in France, two senior officersof Hungarian origin were at the head of two garrisons in thenorth of France. The Comte d’Esterhazy, commander atValenciennes, played a key role in the escape of the Comted’Artois, which he described in his memoirs thus:

Tout fut calme à Valenciennes pendant la journée du 16. Ilne venait personne de Paris, mais on disait que les issues enseraient libres dès que le roi y serait rentré. Je profitai du dé-part de la diligence pour écrire à ma femme et lui conseillerde venir me retrouver le plus tôt qu’elle pourrait avec sesenfants. Dans la nuit du 17 au 18 on vint m’éveiller en medisant que le prince de Chimay était aux portes et demandaità me parler. Je donnai l’ordre de lui ouvrir, mais supposantque c’était quelqu’un qui prenait son nom, car je le savaislui-même en Italie, je montai ensuite à cheval et courus à laporte de Notre-Dame. En chemin je croisai une berline quiallait à la poste; je m’y rendis, et quel ne fut pas mon étonne-ment de me trouver en ouvrant la portière dans les bras deMonsieur le comte d’Artois.7

Esterhazy then received a letter from the King and anotherfrom Marie Antoinette putting the fugitives under his protec-tion.8 He arranged for the King’s brother to cross into Flanderswith the help of his hussars. Esterhazy was also a key figure inthe escape of the Dukes d’Angoulême and de Berri and thePrince de Condé.9 Rumours about his activity invited accusa-tions against his person in the Assemblée Nationale, which he



refuted by publishing letters to prove his innocence.10 It wasnot long, however, before the royalist activity of the Comted’Esterhazy became self-evident. Probably the Baron de Tottat Douai also facilitated the emigration of aristocrats. In anycase, the royalist activities of these two gentlemen of Hungarianextraction were discovered and they were chased from theirposts by mutinous soldiers in 1790.11 Esterhazy went to Paris tosave his family, while Tott emigrated first to Brussels thento Switzerland.12 He was stopped at the frontier at Cheyres forhaving forgotten his papers and a fight broke out duringwhich the officer at the post said to him, ‘Si vous aviez fait dubien, vous ne seriez pas ici!’13

In Switzerland the Baron de Tott met the Hungarian noble,Count Theodore Batthyány, who invited him to Hungary andgave him a house at Tarcsa (today Bad Tatzmannsdorf in Aus-tria). Count Batthyány was an inventor and, because he neededforeign expertise, he made the most of the baron’s networkof connections. The villagers called his house the ‘Hexenhaus’or witches-house because of his scientific experiments. TheBaron de Tott died there in October 1793.14 A few years ago atomb was built for him in the village cemetery.15 His seconddaughter Sophie de Tott, a musician and a painter, was for along time in the entourage of the Comtesse de Tessé in London,in Bienne in Switzerland and near Hamburg.16 She paintedtwo portraits whose subjects are key figures of the emigration,the Comte d’Artois in uniform in London in 1802, and thePrince de Condé, a painting which is now held in the collectionat Chantilly [see Plate 5]. Another daughter of the Baron,Marie-Françoise, married the Comte François de La Roche-foucauld in 1793 in The Hague.17

The Comte d’Esterhazy, after returning to Paris, set aboutrealising the first political objective of the Princes in exile: theescape of the King. Several projects were discussed. Esterhazygave his version as follows:

Je supposai que tout était concerté, que nous trouverions unbateau pour traverser la Seine, et que des voitures de l’autrecôté nous auraient bientôt menés sur la route de Chantilly,où M. le prince de Condé avait tous ses chevaux qui pour-raient être distribués sur la route, pour mener le roi aucentre de son armée, où il aurait trouvé des fidèles serviteurs.


Ferenc Tóth 71

La même idée vint en même temps au duc de Brissac et nousl’étant fait soupçonner par un coup d’oeil, nous restâmes unpeu arrière pour nous communiquer nos soupçons. Le ré-sultat de notre conversation fut que nous observions chacunun des officiers nationaux, et qu’au moment du passage dela rivière, si l’un d’eux voulait s’y opposer ou ne pas noussuivre, nous lui passerions notre couteau de chasse à traversle corps; c’était la seule arme que nous eussions; ils avaient,eux, leurs sabres et leur pistolets; mais nous espérions nepas leur donner le temps de s’en servir, lorsque le roi s’arrêtaet ordonna à son écuyer de faire venir le relais du Butard aupont du Pecq. Cet ordre détruisait nos espérances, et plus j’yai réflechi depuis, plus j’ai vu combien la fuite eût étéfacile.18

Esterhazy sent his wife and children to Britain and preparedfor his own imminent emigration but did not finally leaveFrance until the end of September 1790.19 He distinguishedhimself as the confidant of the Comte d’Artois during thenegotiations at Pillnitz whence he was sent to Saint Petersburg tobe the Princes’ ambassador at the court of Catherine II.20 Hedied in Russia in 1805 and his son Valentin became an officerin the Austrian army.21

Another important émigré of Hungarian origin was ComteFrançois de Berchény, the son of Marshal Ladislas de Ber-chény. Commandant of a regiment of hussars, he too belongedto the circle which surrounded the royal family and he wasprobably aware of the project to rescue it. At the time theescape took place he was with his hussars at Montmédy awaitingthe King.22 Later, he decided to emigrate and took most of hisregiment with him.23 He entered the service of Austria and atthe time of his presentation at the Austrian court he describedhis situation as the following.

Mon père a dû quitter la Hongrie parce qu’il n’aimait pastrop le roi. Moi, il m’a fallu quitter ma nouvelle patrie parceque j’aime beaucoup mon roi. Les deux choses nous sontcomptées comme fautes.24

Details of how he retained command of his regiment in theAustrian army have not survived but in 1793 he joined theémigrés in London, where he died in 1811.25



In some cases connections between French nobles of Hun-garian extraction and their Hungarian relatives proved anadvantage to the émigrés. For example, General LancelotTurpin de Crissé, a popular military expert of the time andauthor of the famous Essai sur l’art de la guerre (1754), was takenin by the Esterhazy family in Vienna until his death at thebeginning of August 1793. Prince Esterhazy made all thearrangements for his stay as well as his funeral in order to returnthe kindnesses which the Comte Turpin de Crissé had shownto the branch of the Esterhazy family which had settled inFrance. The old strategist continued writing during his stayand when he died all his manuscripts were in the Esterhazys’possession.26

Emigration and desertion were particularly sensitive issuesin the foreign regiments in the French army. The collectiveemigration of entire regiments made up of foreigners beganonly in 1792.27 Four foreign regiments (Royal-Allemand,Berchény, Saxe and Berwick) went over to the Austrians.28 Theregiment of Royal-Allemand dragoons and the regiments ofhussars, Saxe and Berchény were part of the armée des Princesuntil 1 February 1793 at which date they were incorporatedinto the Austrian army.29 The Légion de Bourbon, made up twosquadrons of light cavalry and one division of hussars, enteredthe service of the Emperor in autumn 1793.30 Why were thereso many hussars in the émigré cavalry? According to GeneralWenck, these corps were more mobile and more independentthan other units of the French army.31 It is also possible, how-ever, that the royalist activities of the Hungarian and Germanofficers in these regiments lay behind their heavy desertionrate.

When Dumouriez crossed over to the enemy in 1793, therewere 13 officers in his entourage from the former regiment ofBerchény. They rejoined their friends in Austrian service andComte François-Antoine Berchény began to reorganise hisregiment under Austrian command. In fact, the comte hadvery little room to manœuvre, something that was understoodby the Comte de Neuilly, newly arrived from Flanders in thisperiod, who also wished to rejoin this renowned regiment:

Ayant su, par un des mes camarades, que l’Autriche allaitprendre à sa solde nos régiments de hussards, qui avaient


Ferenc Tóth 73

émigré avec leurs officiers, armes et bagages, et avaient faitla campagne avec nous, je fis trouver le comte de Berchény,colonel du régiment de ce nom, et je le priai de me recevoircomme simple hussard. Il avait connu mon père; et même ilétait peiné de ne pouvoir m’accorder ce que je désirais, maisdit que j’étais trop jeune; et que d’ailleurs sa capitulationavec le gouvernement autrichien n’étant pas encore signé, ilne pouvait augmenter sa troupe.32

The annual lists of the imperial and royal army are a richsource of records relating to the composition of these regiments.They contained members drawn from well-known Frenchnoble families, for example, Joseph de Broglie, Louis dePange, Joseph de Neuilly or François de Goguelat who riskedhis life for the royal family at Varennes.33 One thing seemsclear from these registers: the majority of royalist officers weredenied important posts. Career soldiers were often given pre-ference, as in the case of the replacement of François Antoinede Berchény by colonel Philippe Görger, a former officer inthe Esterhazy regiment of Alsatian extraction.34 Yet while itwas normal for the most important posts to be held by menwithout noble title, nobles were often present in a super-numerary capacity. This ‘social revolution’ devised by the Austri-ans was in part explained by the mutual distrust and conflictingagendas of the Austrian ministers and of the émigrés, whoseintention it was to re-establish the French monarchy in all itsformer grandeur. The Comte Ladislas Valentin Esterhazyalluded to this:

Le prince de Kaunitz, quoique dans de bons principes,paraissait, vu son âge, désirer qu’on n’y prît pas une partactive. On ne me laissa pas ignorer à Vienne que les autresministres, surtout M. de Spielman, regardaient l’affaiblisse-ment de la France comme un grand advantage pour la mai-son d’Autriche, et que ce serait contraire à la politique decette maison de contribuer à lui rendre sa splendeur, àmoins d’en retirer de grands dédommagements.35

Outside the army, the presence of French émigrés in Hungarymade itself felt through the relatively high number of prisonersof war. Around 1000 French officers and more than 10 000subordinate officers and ordinary soldiers were transported



into territories under the authority of the Hungarian crown.36

Their treatment by the authorities involved many precautionsbecause they were widely regarded as dangerous revolution-aries who could contaminate the Hungarian population. Thiswas true of the vast majority of the officers but there were never-theless some who openly declared themselves royalists like col-onel d’Argoubet, who when detained at Szeged, shouted, ‘Iam a soldier of the King never of the Republic’.37 Conflictbetween these two factions was a daily occurrence.

The émigrés sought recruits among the French prisoners.In 1795 two officers from the armée de Condé, colonel deVassé and major de Bouan, were, with the authorisation of theEmperor, employed in Hungary in order to gather recruits.38

Their mission had little success. The spiritual needs of such large numbers of French prison-

ers of war on Hungarian soil required attention. Non-jurorpriests were authorised by the army at Buda and organised bythe archbishops of Esztergom and of Kalocsa. The names ofthe 21 French priests who worked in the principal areas ofdetention have survived.39 In spite of almost unanimous rejec-tion by the French officers, the presence of the priests wasundoubtedly appreciated by the ordinary soldiers.

There is no figure for the exact number of non-jurorpriests who emigrated to Hungary. There are, however, passingreferences. In 1795 the question of the arrival of the Frenchpriests inspired a heated debate in the government in Vienna.40

The Council finally agreed to authorise the immigration of secu-lar priests and a group of monks. In the majority of cases theHungarian clergy took financial responsibility for the Frenchpriests. At Pécs, relations between the Hungarian clergy andthe French ecclesiastics were good and this fact is borne out intheir correspondence.41 At Szombathely, even the municipal-ity contributed to the expenses of the French émigré priests.42

Details have survived of the community of priests in Presburgwhich existed until 1802 and whose spiritual leader was Camille-Louis de Polignac, former Bishop of Meaux.43 Others settledin the Hungarian provinces or in chateaux lent by aristocrats.

The employment of priests also posed problems. CanonLadislas Dessoffy, an ecclesiastic of Hungarian origin, was firstemployed working in a region of French settlement in the Banat.Later he became a librarian to the Archbishop of Esztergom.


Ferenc Tóth 75

He also distinguished himself as a French poet at the imperialcourt. His funeral orations, written in the style of Bossuet onthe occasion of the death of members of the imperial family,were published and even translated into German and Latin.44

The loss of the young Palatine of Hungary, the ArchdukeAlexander Leopold, inspired a lengthy diatribe against theEnlightenment.

Dans ces tems malheureux où la simplicité des mœursdomestiques s’éteint avec la douce familiarité qui en faisait lecharme; où la sainte image de la vertu ne paraît plus qu’unphantôme importun, où l’innocence attaquée tout à la foispar l’audace et par le ridicule, n’ose rougir, et ne peut sedéfendre; où le luxe monté à son dernier periode, porteavec l’ensemble de tous les vices, la confusion, la disette et lamort dans tous les états qu’il atteint de son souffle contagieux;dans ces tems malheureux, dis-je, la providence nous a donnédans ALEXANDRE LEOPOLD le spectacle d’une âme échappéeaux illusions de son siècle: il semble qu’elle ait voulu retracerà nos yeux la mémoire de ces tems fortunés, qui ne sont plusconnus que par la foi des saints livres, en nous laissant voirdans sa personne la simplicité, la bonne foi, la tempérance,la modération, la frugalité.45

With this and other works, long forgotten, Ladislas Dessoffymade his mark in the literature of popular religious roman-ticism.46

With regard to the political activity of the émigrés in Hun-gary, there exist only partial accounts. There is evidenceof political information on the situation in France being sentback to Hungary. Father Alexovits, chaplain at the Univer-sity of Pest in an unpublished manuscript quotes passagesfrom a letter which was sent from Lorraine to an émigré.47

In 1793 another émigré named Pauget presented to the Con-seil de Lieutenance de Buda a ‘Lettre ouverte à la Convention’.48

Some émigrés crossed Hungary in their travels. One of themost famous of these was Charles-Marie d’Irumberry, Comtede Salaberry, a future political figure of the Restoration.49 Heleft France in October 1790.50 This travelling émigré devotedsix letters in his subsequently published work to Hungary andits inhabitants. He made a rather superficial analysis of thepolitical system and from the few contacts he had with the



inhabitants he penned what was really a stereotype of the Hun-garian national character.

Il y a des peuples dont le caractère national, s’effaçant dejour en jour par le mélange des races, devient ainsi plusdifficile à saisir. Mais les Hongrois prennent en naissant les in-clinations et les opinions qui les distinguent au moral,comme leurs traits et leurs habits au physique. [ . . . ] S’il serencontre des gens qui aient pour leur liberté un amour quiva jusqu’à l’enfance, tenant plus aux mots qu’aux choses,ayant une prévention extrême pour leur pays, qui est, seloneux, le premier pays du monde, et celui qu’ils sont presquetous le plus empressés de quitter, ayant une aptitude uniqueà s’exprimer en plusieurs langues; parlant avec la gravité laplus importante de leur diète et de leur constitution, qu’onleur laisse, je dirai comme on laisse des joujoux dangereux àdes enfants colères, parce que l’un et l’autre sont plus nuisi-bles qu’utiles au pays et à la pluralité de ceux qui l’habitent;si vous entendez ainsi parler des hommes ou des femmes,des jeunes gens ou des vieillards, ce sont des Hongrois. . . . 51

According to contemporary accounts émigrés were generallywelcomed in Hungary with a mixture of generosity and preju-dice. All the French and even French-speaking foreignerswere suspect in the eyes of the authorities.52 The Revolution-ary and Napoleonic wars coincided with an abundant and vehe-mently anti-French pamphlet literature. These works servedas ideological arms in the bid to inspire a kind of levée en masse,Hungarian style, that the Emperor could use against theFrench Republican army. Even the traditionally francophileelite, it was believed, would participate in such a movement.Comte Théodore Batthyány, who had at one time been a secretcorrespondent of the French consul at Trieste53 and invitedthe Baron de Tott to his home at Tarsca, wrote a poem entitled‘Sentiment d’un patriote hongrois’ (Pressburg, 1796) whichcontained the lines

Comme on est sur le sujet des nations mal informé De croire, que les Hongrois ont besoin d’être sollicités, Lorsqu’il s’agit de quasi voler au secours de la patrie. Telle leur est non seulement l’Hongrie mais toute la

Monarchie;


Ferenc Tóth 77

Puisque nous sommes tous sous FRANÇOIS le même bon Père

Entre nous tous pour le salut commun de bons confrères. Les Français ne connoissent pas ce que sont les Hongrois Résolus à terrasser les François comme l’yvraie [ . . . ]54

The following anecdote from the mémoirs of Comte Augustede Lagarde illustrates the ambiguous attitude of the Hungari-ans towards the French émigrés:

De retour à Pest, je trouvai devant le café qui avoisine le pont,les musiciens d’un regiment, exécutant, avec une admirableprécision, l’ouverture du Calife de Bagdad par Boyeldieu.Je m’étais fait servir une glace à la même table qu’un sei-gneur hongrois, qui paraissait écouter avec ravissement cechef-d’oeuvre de l’un de nos meilleurs compositeurs. Toutd’un coup, se tournant vers mois; “Vous êtes Français?”, medit-il, “Oui Monsieur”. “C’est une brave nation que j’estime,car elle se bat bien: voilà de la musique, encore, qui se com-pare avec avantage à celle de nos plus célèbres maîtres dechapelle; enfin, sous beaucoup de rapports, ce peuple peutse croire supérieur aux autres.” Je m’inclinais en signe degratitude, lorsqu’il ajouta: “Mais votre révolution, Monsieur,dont le plan sagement conçu pouvait amener des résultatsheureux, n’a été qu’une guerre d’intrigans dans laquelle leplus audacieux a triomphé. – Nous n’ignorons pas, lui dis-je,combien ce fléau a été désastreux. – Oui, pour l’Europe. Etpour nous, Monsieur, ses premières victimes. – Ajoutez quevous n’avez été plaints de personne, et que s’il n’y avaitmême à reprocher aux Français que l’assassinat de la fille deMarie-Thérèse (il tira son sabre à moitié) ce serait assez pourfaire jurer une haine à mort à la nation coupable de cecrime.” Il s’éloigna aussitôt, sans attendre ma réponse, neme laissant pas bien convaincu de l’indulgente urbanitéhongroise.55

Hungarian Francophobia reached its peak in 1809 when partof Hungary was occupied by the Napoleonic armies. But evenbefore this period the émigré priests were the focus of undis-guised animosity.

We can assume that the majority of French émigrés in Hun-gary went back to France after the amnesty of 1802 or at the



Restoration. The case of French families of Hungarian ori-gin is an exceptional one. An example can be take from theDessewffy (Dessoffy in French). The four sons of JacquesCharles Marie de Dessoffy left France as émigrés.56 Duringtheir stay in Austria and in Hungary they were supportedby their Hungarian relatives.57 Two who were in the armyreturned to France in 1811, while the remaining two who wereboth ecclesiastics died in Emigration.58 Yet it is not certain thattheir stay in Hungary was dictated by personal choice. Thechaplain Ladislas Dessoffy wanted to return to France in 1815.He even said farewell in a poem called ‘Mes adieux à Koro-mopa’, where he made explicit his French nationality.

Je dois donc vous quitter, lieux si chers à mon coeur! Jardin de Koromopa! Séjour du vrai bonheur! A ce joli petit bois, à ces charmants asyles, Vont succéder pour moi le tumulte des villes, Le fracas du grande monde, et ses pompeux ennuis [ . . . ] Tu le sais, ô mon cœur! Si dans la solitude Au sein de l’amitié, des arts et de l’étude, Je saurais renoncer aux vœux de la grandeur. – Mais non! Je suis Français, et mon Dieu c’est l’honneur. Je connaîs mes devoirs; je sais y satisfaire. Oublier, s’il faut, jusqu’au nom du plaisir. O mes champs! C’est à vous que j’en veux revenir. [ . . . ]59

In conclusion of this brief study, it can be said that the Emigra-tion during the French Revolution was a phenomenon of minorimportance in Hungary. The imperial authorities were notamenable to lasting French settlement. Paradoxically, the hat-red for the French generated by the Revolutionary and Napo-leonic wars turned the local population against the émigrés.Most went back to France in 1802, after which date only themembers of a few Franco-Hungarian families and a few priestsremained. Yet the contribution of these émigrés to the implanta-tion of French culture and particularly to the use of the Frenchlanguage in the Carpathian basin deserves the attention bothof scholars and of posterity.

Text translation by Kirsty Carpenter


Ferenc Tóth 79

NOTES

1. See Wellmann, I., Magyarország népességének fejlödése a 18. században(Development of the population of Hungary during the EighteenthCentury) in Pach, Zs. P. ed., Magyarország története 4/1 (History of Hun-gary), Budapest, 1989 pp. 25–80; Szekfü, Gu., Etat et Nation, Paris, 1945.

2. See Németh, I., Les colonies françaises de Hongrie, Szeged s.d. pp. 57–80.Also Lotz, F., ‘Die französische Kolonisation des Banats (1748–1773)’,in Suddeutsche Forschungen no. 23, 1964, pp. 139–78.

3. See Zachar, J., A Francia Királyság 18. századi magyar huszárai (TheHungarian Hussars in French Royal Service in the eighteenth century),in HK, 1980, pp. 523–58.

4. Tott, F., ‘Ascension sociale et identité nationale, Intégration de l’im-migration hongroise dans la société française au cours du XVIIIe siècle1692–1815’ (thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris VI, Sorbonne,1995, pp. 206–10). On his missions to the Orient see Mémoires du baronde Tott sur les Turcs et les Tartares, Amsterdam, 1784.

5. His parents were Bálint Jósef Esterhazy and Philippine de Nougarèdede La Garde, see Esterhazy (V.) Mémoires, Paris, 1905.

6. See Franjou, E., Le comte de Valentin Esterhazy, seigneur de La Celle-Saint-Cyr, confident de Marie-Antoinette, Auxerre, 1995. The other membersof the Council of War were, MM de Puységur, de Jaucourt, de Guines– Lieutenants-généraux – MM. D’Autichamp, de Lambert, et d’Ester-hazy – maréchaux de camp – et M. de Gribeauval, chef de l’Artillerie,Lieutenant général; and M. de Foucroy, lieutenant général à la têtedu corps du Génie, see Bombelles, Journal, tome II, Genève, 1982,p. 186.

7. Esterhazy, Mémoires, p. 232. 8. Daudet, E., Histoire de l’émigration pendant la Révolution française, Paris,

1924, tome I, pp. 3–4. 9. Esterhazy, Mémoires, pp. 232–5.

10. BN série Mf. LB 39–7759 lettre de M. Le Comte d’Esterhazy, com-mandant du Haynault à M. le Marquis de Gouy d’Arsy, Député àl’Assemblée Nationale, Valenciennes, le 27 août 1789. Also, MF. LB39–7760, Note de M. Esterhazy, commandant en second en Hainautet Cambrésis, sur la dénonciation portée contre lui, S.l.n.d.

11. On the mutiny at Douai, see Archives municipale de Douai, série H51.20. Wagnair, Ch., ‘La garde nationale de Douai sous la Révolution’,Mémoire de D.E.S., Lille, 1966, p. 13.

12. Cited by Diesbach, G. de, Histoire de l’émigration, Paris 1975, p. 388. SeeAndrewy, G., Les émigrés français dans le canton de Fribourg, 1789–1815,Neuchâtel, 1972, p. 129.

13. Ibid. 14. Magyar Hírmondó (Hungarian Courier) tome IV, Vienne, 1793,

p. 499. 15. Németh, A., Burgenland, Budapest, 1990, p. 156. 16. The Comtesse de Tessé was the daughter of the Maréchal de Noailles.

See Frêne, T.R., Journal de ma vie (1732–1804), tome IV, Vienne,1994, pp. 60–75.



17. Palóczi, E., Báró Tóth Ferenc a Dardanellák megerösitöje (Baron de Tottengineer of the Dardanelles), Budapest, 1916, p. 181.

18. Esterhazy, Mémoires, pp. 301–2. 19. Franjou, E. Le comte . . . op. cit., p. 48. 20. Daudet, p. 92. 21. Zachar, J., Idegen hadakban, Budapest, 1984, p. 444 and OSZK série

Ms. Oct. Hung. 325 (Budapest). 22. Fischbach, G., La fuite de Louis XVI, d’après les Archives Municipales de

Strasbourg, Paris, 1879, p. 122. 23. Rupelle, J. de la., ‘Le maréchal de Berchény de Szekes’, in Vivat Hussar,

n. 12, Tarbes, 1977, p. 131. 24. Ibid, p. 132. and Thaly, K. éd., Székesi gróf Bercsényi Millós levelei

Károlyi Sándorhoz (Letters from Millós Bercsényi to Sándor Károli),Pest, 1868, p. XXVIII.

25. Zachar, Idegen . . . , op. cit., p. 407. 26. Magyar Hírmondó (courier Hongrois) tome IV, Vienne, 1793, p. 231.

Among the archives held at the War Archives in Vienne (Kriegsarchiv,série Mémoires – Verlassenschalf Turpin) there was a work entitled‘Instructions [ . . . ] sur le siège de Mayence présentées à S.M. Prussi-enne le 18 fevrier 1793 à Francfort’, badly damaged but which begins,‘Le zèle d’un françois qu’anime la gloire des armes de V.M. et la ven-geance de son Roy ne sauroit être importun vis-à-vis d’un Monarquequi déploie ses forces pour une aussi noble fin. Dans cette confiance,Sire, j’ai l’honneur de vous présenter un plan d’attaque sur la ville deMayence. ( . . . ).’

27. Poulet, H., Les volontaires de la Meurthe aux armées de la révolution (levéede 1791), Paris–Nancy, 1910, pp. 45–6.

28. Kriegsarchiv, (KA), Vienne, Hofkriegsrat Protokoll 1792 série G fol.7679–7680.

29. Wrede, A.F. von., Geschichte des K. und K. Wehrmacht III/2, Wien, 1901,pp. 807–9.

30. Ibid., p. 810. 31. Wenk, G., ‘Les hussards en émigration’, in Vivat Hussar, no. 1,

Tarbes, 1966, pp. 71–2. 32. Neuilly, C. de., Dix années d’émigration, Paris, 1941, p. 60. Later in 1795

the Comte de Neuilly was named colonel du corps émigré of the Légionde Bourbon in the imperial army. Kriegsarchiv (KA) Vienne, série MIRI (Contrôles de troupes) 10800 Légion Bourbon.

33. KA, Musterlisten 4078–4079 Bercseny-Husaren Revisions-Listen(1793–1798) Standes-Tabellen (1795–1798).

34. KA, Musterlisten Bercseny-Husaren Revisions-Listen (1793–1798). 35. Esterhazy, Mémoires, p. 308. 36. See Lenkefi, F., ‘Kakas a kasban. Francia hadifoglyok Magyarországon

1793–1795,’ (The cock in the cage, French prisoners of war in Hun-gary) Thèse de Doctorat, Budapest, 1994; Lenkefi, F., ‘Francia hadi-foglyok Magyarországon 1793–1795, in Levéltári Szemle 1995/2,Budapest, 1995 and Barcsay-Amant, Z., A francia forradalmi háborúkhadifoglyok Magyarországon idetelepitésük elso esztendejében (The Frenchprisoners of the revolutionary wars during the first year of their


Ferenc Tóth 81

internment), Budapest, 1934; Georgescu, I., ‘Les prisonniers françaisdans les camps du sud-est de l’Europe au temps des guerres de l’Au-triche avec la France’, in Revue Roumaine d’Histoire 1976/3, pp. 509–31.

37. Lenkefi, F., Francia hadifoglyok . . . , op. cit., p. 44. 38. Lenkefi, F., Kakas a . . . , op. cit., pp. 216–18. 39. Lenkefi, F., ‘A lelkigondozás problémái a francia hadifoglyok körében

Magyarországon 1794–1795’ (The problems of spiritual care of theFrench prisoners of war in Hungary) in HK 107/3, Budapest, 1994,pp. 3–17.

40. See Hermann, E., ‘Francia emigráns papok Magyarországon a nagyforradalom idején’, (French émigré priests in Hungary during theGreat Revolution) in Katholikus Szemle 1933/VII, Budapest, 1933, pp.36–46.

41. Vassko, I., A pécsi püspöki könyvtár francia nyomtatványai és kéziratai(French books and manuscripts in the diocesan library in Pécs), Pécs,1934, pp. 99–122.

42. Vas Megyei Levéltár (Departmental archives of the Vas, Szombathely)série V/105/a/aa Protocollum Perceptionis Cassae Domesticae et Ero-gationis (1787–1797) le 28 mai 1795.

43. Vassko, I., A pécsi püspöki . . . , op. cit., p. 103. 44. Eloge funèbre de très-haut, très puissant, très-excellent Prince, Alexandre

Léopold, archiduc d’Autriche, palatin d’Hongrie par le comte de LadislasDessöffy de Csernek et de Tarkö, licentié ès loix, chanoine du chapître noble del’insigne église cathédrale de Toul, examinateur sinodal du diocèse, Vienne,1795. And the Oraison funèbre de très-haut, très-puissante, très-excellentepersonne Marie Thérèse Caroline Joséphine, Impératrice d’Autriche, reine deHongrie et de Bohême par le comte Ladislas Dessöfy de Csernek, licentié ès loix,ancien chanoine de la cathédrale de Toul. Examinateur synodal du diocèse, bib-liothècaire de l’Archevêché primatial de Hongrie, Presbourg, 1807.

45. Eloge funèbre de très-haut . . . , op. cit., pp. 25–6. 46. For example, Epithalame par le comte Ladislas Desseoffy de Csernek pour le

mariage de Monsieur le comte Hermann de Chotek capitaine de l’état-major del’armée avec Mademoiselle Henriette de Brunsvik, célébré à Korompa, le ? juin1813, Bude, 1813; Mes adieux à Korompa en 1815, Bude, 1815; Coelestine.Ein Schauspiel in 1 Akt von Graf Ladislas Desseöffy nach einer wahrenAnekdote französische bearbeitet übersetzt von Joh. Gottl., Schildbach,Pesth, 1816.

47. Eckhardt, S., De Sicambria à Sans-souci, Budapest, 1943, p. 228. 48. Ibid., p. 229. 49. Michaud, L-G., Biographie Universelle, T. LXXX, Paris, 1847, pp. 437–9. 50. Salaberry, C de., Voyage à Constantinople, en Italie, et aux îles de l’Archipel,

par l’Allemagne et la Hongrie, Paris, L’an VII, p. 1. He wrote: ‘Je suisparti de Paris le 5 octobre 1790. Le premier objet intéressant que j’aivu, a été la plaine de Rocroi que le Grand Condé traversa en vain-queur en 1643 et que son petit-fils traversoit en proscrit en 1789’.

51. Quoted by Humbert, Jean, ‘La Hongrie du XVIIIe siècle vue par desvoyageurs’, in Nouvelle Revue de Hongrie, Budapest, 1938, (Sept),p. 236. Source Birkás, Géza, Francia utazók Magyarországon (FrenchTravellers in Hungary) Szeged, 1948, p. 101.



52. This was described by Robert Townson at Löcse (present-day Levoca )who was summoned before the magistrates of Leutschau whose job itwas to ‘surveiller soigneusement la sûreté publique’. ‘Nous vous avonsmandé, R.T., qui vous donnez pour voyageur anglais parce que nousvous suspectons très fort d’être un émissaire des jacobins de France.Nous avons examiné votre passeport; il certifie que vous êtes un parti-culier d’Angleterre, qui fait le tour de la Hongrie; mais nous avonstous jugé que ce n’est autre qu’un faux passeport, et que vous êtes trèscertainement un agent de la jacobinière; car il serait en effet fort plai-sant et tout à fait extraordinaire qu’un ministre anglais expédiát unpasseport écrit en langue française’. He was given no time to explainand accused of being French on account of his manner, his speakingand the fact that he was wearing Hungarian style pants – proof of hisdesire not to disclose his identity. They kept his passport. See, Hum-bert, Jean, La Hongrie . . . , op. cit., pp. 235–6.

53. Balazs E., ‘A francia-magyar kapcsolatok egy rendhagyó fejezete,’ inKöpeczi, B., and Sziklay, L. eds, A francia felvilágosodas és a magyarkultúra, Budapest, 1975, p. 157.

54. See Leval, A., La révolution française, Napoleon Ier et la Hongrie pendantles guerres révolutionnaires, Budapest, 1921; Leval, A., La révolutionfrançaise, Napoleon Ier et la Hongrie, Essai de bibliographie, Budapest,1921; Eckhardt, S., A francia forradalom eszméi Magyarországon, Buda-pest, 1924.

55. Lagarde, A. de., Voyage de Moscou à Vienne par Kiow, Odessa, Constanti-nople, Bucharest et Hermanstadt ou lettres adressées à Jules Griffith, Paris,1824, pp. 430–1.

56. Archives Départementales de Meuse, série 182 J 19; Service his-torique de l’armée de Terre (Château de Vincennes), Pensions mili-taires 1ère série 61875 (Louis Dessoffy de Cservek); and Dubois, J.,Listes des émigrés, prêtres déportés et des condamnés pour cause révolution-naire du Département de la Meuse, Bar-le-Duc, 1911, p. 67.

57. See Hungarian National Archives, série P 91 Lettres de LadislasDessewffy (1794–1797).

58. Eble, G., A cserneki és tarkôi Dessewffy család, Budapest, 1903, pp. 185–212and Dessewffy, S.A., The History of the Dessewffy de Csernek and Tarkeô,Perth (Australia) 1979, pp. 42–3.

59. Desseöffy, L., Mes adieux à Korompa en 1815, Bude, 1815. Korompawas a village where Ladislas Dessoffy stayed at the home of Hermannde Chotek, in a superb chateau which had belonged to the Brunswickfamily but had been bought by Chotek after his marriage to Henriettede Brunswick.


83

5 Portugal and the Émigrés David Higgs

At the end of the eighteenth century, Paris was at least a week’stravel by both land and sea, from Lisbon. The two cities werealso distant in their attitudes to governance. Although neitherPortugal nor France had convoked an Estates General sincethe seventeenth century, France, during the 1780s, in its parle-ments, had institutions which participated in a semi-publicdebate about royal policy. The parlements found no equival-ent in the submissive law courts of Portugal. There were noregional Estates in Portugal to compare with those of Langue-doc.1 The French Enlightenment had little resonance in Por-tuguese-language publications before 1800; printing pressesthemselves were forbidden in Brazil, the great Portuguese-speaking possession in South America.2 The Catholic Church,seconded by the Inquisition, disapproved of Enlightenmentideas. At the end of the eighteenth century, European Portu-gal was primarily a peasant society, dotted with small towns.There were only two cities of any size, the capital with about200 000 inhabitants, and Oporto, with perhaps 44 000. Bothcities had a significant number of foreign residents andvisitors.

Lisbon was the capital of a Thalassic empire of trading sta-tions on the sea routes of the world that linked Salvador daBahia and Rio de Janeiro; Goa; Macau and others. The Portu-guese elite was conscious of the immensity of the territorialclaims of a kingdom which, in Europe and the Atlantic islands,did not exceed three million souls. Communication in theEmpire was by ship. One vessel carried the 21 February 1792letter of the Overseas Secretary, Martinho de Melo e Castro(1716–95), to the viceroy in Rio de Janeiro, blaming theFrench revolutionary clubs for the ‘destructive fire’ against thewise and paternal government of the natural and legitimaterulers of France. He went on to warn against all such means ofseduction, and forbade all and any communication betweenthe inhabitants of the captaincy of Rio de Janeiro and the pas-sengers, crew, and anybody else who happened to come on



board French ships.3 The correspondence of the colonial coun-cil that was forwarded to the governors throughout the Portu-guese world also warned of the threat of French subversion.

Foreign visitors like Beckford,4 Southey,5 and ambassadorBombelles6 stressed the backwardness and self-absorbed natureof Portuguese life, which they contrasted unfavourably withthe outlook of the North Atlantic world. Beckford was in a spe-cial position to hear this foreign disapproval when talking inJuly 1787 with his agent Thomas Horne (1722–92),7 who isburied in the English Cemetery in Lisbon:

we had a long conversation upon the dirt, dullness and des-potism of Portugal, and the little such a government had tooffer worth any acceptance.8

Beckford conversed with the Duque de Marialva in the Frenchhe had learned in Lausanne as a teenager. The opinions hewrote in his Journal are representative of the condescensionby many northern Europeans that can be encountered ineighteenth-century commentaries on Portugal, its grandeesand fidalguia, and its clergy.

French émigrés often reflected such commonly voiced opin-ions on Portugal before they even arrived there.9 Doubtlessmany of them had read Voltaire (who never crossed thePyrenees) describing Candide, ‘se soutenant à peine, prêché,fessé, absous et béni’ before they reached Rossio Square incentral Lisbon where outdoor Autodafés had occasionally beenheld until the 1760s. Chevalier Blondin d’Abancourt calledLisbon:

Cette grande ville, batie en amphithéâtre, et son port incom-parable, éclairés tous deux par un radieux soleil.10

The émigrés also knew that Portugal was a Catholic countrywhere the Inquisition was still in business.

How did the Portuguese perceive the French émigrésamong them? Portugal, Spain and Italy were rococco Catholicsocieties with different responses to French émigrés to those ofProtestant northern Europe. Like much of the Portugueseelite, the advisors to the pious Queen Maria I, and after 1792to her son João serving as Regent, were too distant in intellec-tual attitudes and culture from the French to make the distinc-tion between the ‘good’ émigrés and the ‘bad’ Jacobins. Mallet


David Higgs 85

du Pan wrote a political correspondence to D. Rodrigo deSousa Coutinho in which he analysed the émigrés as but one ofthe components of the unfolding Revolution. His commentswere not laudatory. Writing from Berne to Turin on 28 March1795 he noted:

En ce moment, les Royalistes Émigrés sont entièrement ef-facés, et n’ont pas plus d’influence au dedans qu’au dehors. Lanullité profonde des Princes, et la conduite de leurs entours,ont plus avili les Aristocrates, aux yeux même des Royalistesde l’intérieur, que l’acharnement des Républicains.11

Dom Rodrigo had served as an ambassador to Turin. A notedpartisan of the British connection, he was probably a freemasonand certainly had a nuanced view of the merits of the politicalprogramme of the Emigration.12 He returned to Lisbon in1796 to take the place of the deceased Martinho de Melo eCastro as Secretary of State for the Navy and the Colonies.Some courtiers were more or less sympathetic to the aristo-cratic émigrés. The Portuguese élite, however, was too awareof the potential dangers to its world possessions of larger andmore powerful states – starting with Spain, France and Britain– to throw in its lot with any single world view.

The Portuguese response to French émigrés was largely oneof suspicion. Francophobia was strong at all levels of society.Long before 1789 those surrounding the Portuguese throneand altar expressed revulsion for godless ‘francesia’. With theoutbreak of the Revolution the collapse of French royalauthority seemed to justify the oft-repeated warnings of thedangers of free thought.13

Michel Vovelle, the French historian, called for study of thetransmission by the émigrés of the negative stereotypes of theFrench Revolution:

ils [les émigrés] ont été considérés depuis l’ouvrage classiquede Baldensperger plus pour ce qu’ils ont reçu, au contactdes pays qu’ils découvraient, que pour ce qu’ils y ontvéhiculé – images et clichés sur la Révolution.14

That transmission of the history of the memory of the FrenchRevolution needs to be written in the light of the way that itwas passed on, and elaborated over time.



The popular assumption that all irreligious foreignerswere French extended to the prisoner accused in 1794 ofblaspheming and denounced to the Inquisition, although infact he was from Milan.15 There were some Portuguese whowere sympathetic to, or at least curious about, the principles ofthe French Revolution as they spread into southern Europe.In 1798 a parody of the Christian creed entitled ‘Creed of theLombard Republic’ was found in the possession of a lawyer inBarcelos in northern Portugal. It started ‘I believe in theFrench Republic’ and ended with a reference to émigrés:

I believe in French intelligence and generosity, the dignityof the Executive Directory in Paris, the destruction of theémigrés, in the remission of tyranny, in the resurrection ofthe natural rights of man and in the future peace, libertyand eternal equality.16

New French arrivals in Portugal, either ecclesiastical or secular,were subject more to suspicion than sympathy. The GeneralIntendant of Police, Pina Manique, thought that many Frenchpriests were infected with Jansenist ideas and that all French-men were Jacobins. His suspicions were fuelled by the obser-vations of the Comte de Châlons, the ambassador of LouisXVI, who stayed on to represent the Comte de Provence inLisbon, and of the head of the French Barbanites who divinedunorthodoxy among recent clerical arrivals. Some French res-idents, like the merchant Pascal LeQuem, sent letters ofdenunciation, all of which fed the paranoia of Pina Manique.After one extensive discussion on the subject of a tavern in ruaFormosa owned by Italians where many foreigners, ‘particu-larly Frenchmen’, gathered to play ball and to sing Portugueserevolutionary songs, Pina Manique called upon the minister togive some ‘lively and severe blows’ (‘dar alguns golpes deseveridade mais vivos’) against the songsters. He concluded bysaying that his motivation might be his negative outlook (‘mel-ancholia minha’) but that he was animated by the purest ofsentiments: his desire to conserve peace and public tranquill-ity and the safely of the royal family.17 Ten days later he report-ed sending a French émigré naval officer to arrest the owners ofthe establishment on rua Formosa, and he ordered the arrestof a former servant of a Frenchman who had a tavern at Rato,and a third man who had been a cook for the Russian minister.


David Higgs 87

The latter two were blamed for Sunday gatherings of liber-tines – of both sexes – and he said that among their possessionswere prints showing priests committing obscene actions withwomen.18 He added that perhaps the ‘plan’ was to attract lib-ertine individuals who could be easily convinced to embracerevolutionary principles. Pina Manique proposed to restrictthe émigrés to one of the towns with a garrison in the Alentejoor Trás-os-Montes, or alternatively to forbid any foreigner,‘qualquer que seja a sua jerarquia’ – whatever his rank – toestablish a residence in the countryside.19 Writing to the cor-regedor of Evora in July 1795, Pina Manique said that it wascertain that even before 1789 many regulars were Jansenistsand possessed by the evil called ‘Philosophie’ that precipitatedthe French nation into the ruin of Revolution. He added thatmany had sworn oaths to the Civil Constitution and embracedthe errors ‘which are now spreading in France’.20

The total population of civilian fugitives from the Revolu-tion who were resident in Portugal in the 1790s never exceeded500, and it was made up mostly of males. This was very differentfrom the biggest émigré centres, those of London and Ham-burg, both numbering up to 40 000.21 The study of émigrés inPortugal thus needs to establish a chronology, to separate theattitudes of those French people who were there as part of thecounter-revolution; those who were there as part of the Atlanticeconomy; or even those who were non-ideological refugees ofthe anti-revolution.

Some Portuguese themselves left their country, possibly forpolitical reasons. Bourdon explained the long exile (until1821) of Correa da Serra from Portugal by the implausiblereason that he was

compromis par l’aide qu’il avait apportée au Girondin[Pierre Marie] Auguste Broussonet, alors réfugié au Portu-gal, il partit subitement en 1795 pour Londres.

Carrère had claimed that Broussonet was protected by theDuque de Lafões, himself a member of the royal family (as theson of an illegitimate son of Pedro II, D. Miguel).22 Since Lafõeswas in favour at court with Dom João, and indeed was entrustedwith the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Portu-guese forces when war with Spain broke out, this seems hardlylikely.



Luís A. de Oliveira Ramos defined the émigrés as but one offour categories among French residents of Portugal at the endof the eighteenth century: those with entrepreneurial skillsand drive like Ratton23 those who were expelled in the 1790sas suspected partisans of Revolution, those individuals whose‘ideário’ was unknown, and royalists like de Rosières.24

In Portugal, as elsewhere, the émigrés had financial prob-lems. In this, naturally enough, there were distinctions betweenthose who had private funds which met their needs, thosewho did not, and those who sought ways to earn a living.Unable to speak Portuguese, they were necessarily depend-ent on compatriots who did, or those educated Portuguesewho could converse in French. (If we exclude Spanish as suffi-ciently cognate to Portuguese to be mutually intelligible,French was the most widely known foreign language.) Theémigrés thus found themselves in contact with economic emi-grants from France who ranged from booksellers and merchantsto hairdressers and tailors.25 Writing of Lisbon, Carrèrenoted:

Il y a, dans cette ville, un nombre considérable d’artistes etd’artisans étrangers; il y a plus de français que de toutes lesautres nations ensemble; tous les parfumeurs, la plupart deshorlogers, beaucoup de perruquiers, plusieurs peintres,doreurs, orfèvres, metteurs en œuvre sont français; on entrouve encore parmi les relieurs, les serruriers, les menui-siers et les autres artisans.26

Long-term French residents of Portugal, especially those withwives and children, had scant contact with the diplomats of theFrench Embassy, although their collective organisation in Lis-bon was concerned with trade relations between the two coun-tries.27 Bombelles quoted approvingly a diplomatic colleaguewho said of such French ‘expatriés’

la plupart étaient les ennemis du gouvernement qui les vitnaître et qui n’obligea que des ingrats.28

In January 1788 he was raging against the ‘misérables march-ands’ who criticised the abbé Garnier of the Saint LouisChurch (p. 246) and by the end of his posting he was callingthem ‘insensés’ and ‘mutins’. Perhaps the émigrés made use ofthe Saint Louis church (São José parish) and turned to the


David Higgs 89

abbé Garnier for confession: he had lived in Portugal for decadesand had been the tutor of the Duque de Cadaval.29

There were evident differences in social life between Franceand Portugal. Writers commented on the limited freedom ofelite women, as when Dumouriez wrote

Les intrigues [amoureuses] sont difficiles et dangereuses enPortugal, et on ne voit les femmes qu’aux spectacles et dansles églises.30

Rochechouart, who arrived in Lisbon in 1800 at the age oftwelve to serve in an émigré regiment ‘à cocarde blanche’ com-manded by his relative the Marquis de Mortemart, recalledintrigues with Portuguese women that started in church.31 Mmede Lage de Volude said: ‘Il n’y a point de société; les femmesne vivent qu’avec les commensaux de leur maison’. . . . 32

The French Ambassador, Bombelles, had much more contactwith the Portuguese court nobility than the writers mentionedbut he also commented on various occasions in the late 1780s onthe restrictions on daughters and married women in terms ofsocial life. He also criticised the early marriages and excessivechildbearing of Portuguese élite women.33 Since the French émi-grés were primarily male, these social customs meant they hadlittle contact with the family life of their Portuguese counterparts.

To foreign eyes, the Portuguese nobility seemed to be lesspolished than that of France. Laure Junot (or perhaps herghost writer, Balzac), summarised stereotypes found in earlierwriters on Portugal when she wrote:

The nobility of Portugal resembles no other. It containsnone of those elements which may be turned to advantagein stormy times when a country is in danger. . . . In no coun-try, however, is the difference between the upper and lowerclasses so strongly marked as in Portugal. (Memoirs, III, 140)

Direct observations at court and elsewhere must have formedthe basis of her remarks, but she spoke no more than a littlePortuguese even by the end of her stay. When she used Portu-guese expressions and names in her memoirs, they appearedmangled and hispanised. In 1787 Beckford lamented that hispatron, the Marquis de Marialva, a perennial favourite of theQueen and a titular of the highest Portuguese nobility, had notseen f it to present him to the French Ambassador, M. de



Bombelles, ‘the only person in this stagnated capital who hasany idea of society.’

Bombelles, in his own diary, made numerous critical asidesabout the Portuguese nobility. He also appraised his Britishcolleague:

M. Walpole, doué de fort peu d’esprit, se permet tant qu’ilpeut de lourdes plaisanteries sur toute la noblesse du pays etcomme il prête fort à la raillerie de son côté et de celui de safemme, on leur rend à l’usure les sarcasmes qu’ils font.34

Beckford, whom Walpole detested, described the aristocraticMarialva family which extended so generous a welcome tohim: ‘Not a book to be seen at the Marialvas. They neverread’.35 When the marquis and his son spent a whole day withBeckford in August, 1787, he wrote:

Both my dear friend and his son are the greatest loungers inEurope. They absolutely know not what to do with them-selves, but gape and tramp about in the most listless uncom-fortable manner. . . . They wear me to a mere bone. Suchsociety is enough to impair one’s faculties. I am perfectlysure I sink deeper and deeper in the slough of idleness andstupidity.36

The Duc de Coigny37 lived in a house on the rua da Quintinhawhich had been opened in 1764. This was close to the Praçadas Flores in the restaurant and entertainment district familiarto modern tourists; the parish was that of N. Senhora das Mer-cês. The salon of the duchesse was the focus of social life for therefugees. Jeanne Françoise Aglaé d’Andlau was the widow ofthe Comte Hardouin de Châlons who had first arrived asFrench ambassador to Portugal in 1790. Châlons resigned asambassador with the progress of revolutionary politics in Parisbut stayed on in Portugal until his death in July 1794. Four-teen months later Châlon’s widow married Coigny, himself awidower. The household was perhaps not overly opulent: anadvertisement in the Gazeta de Lisboa of August 1796 advert-ised two stallions ‘em casa do Excelentíssimo Duque de Cogny[sic] na Quintinha’ and the following year the duke offeredfour carriages of different specifications for sale.38 Toustain’smemoirs said that Coigny’s house was the rendezvous ofFrench aristocratic society in Lisbon since they found Portu-


David Higgs 91

guese society closed and anti-social.39 Unlike La Ferronays in1803, who said of London that, ‘Je vais beaucoup plus dans lemonde anglais que dans le monde aigri de nos compatriotes’,there seems to have been little social interaction between theémigrés and their equivalents among the aristocrats and fidalgosof the Portuguese capital. In 1803 when General Lannes arrivedin Portugal as French ministre plénipotentiaire he demanded theexpulsion of Coigny, and with regret the Prince Regent D. Joãoagreed to this.40 Lord FitzGerald let Coigny take ship to Gib-raltar to have more time to arrange a suitable passage to Lon-don. His wife followed him from Lisbon six months later. Thedisruption of that household must have been a major blow tothe social life of the émigrés in Lisbon. Lannes attacked thepolicies of the secretive Pina Manique, Intendente of Police,who was extremely suspicious of the motives of French people.Oliveira Ramos claims that the hostility of Lannes to PinaManique caused ‘o seu afastamento da cena pública.’41

Another French noble, named Vioménil living on the samerua da Quintinha, came from a Lorraine family claiming no-bility since 1341 and was probably Charles-Gabriel, Baron deVioménil, born on 26 February 1767. He had been a captain ofhussars in France in 1786 and had entered Portuguese serviceas an émigré. Vioménil’s wife was Madeleine-Françoise-LouisRose de Gemit de Luscan who died in Lisbon in 1804, leavinghim a daughter who herself was to die before the age of twelve.He was confirmed in French service by Napoleon on 15 Feb-ruary 1808, and was made a maréchal de camp by the Restora-tion in November 1814. The baron was almost certainly thereason for the subsequent presence in the Portuguese serviceof Charles-Joseph-Hyacinthe du Houx, Marquis de Vioménil(1734–1827), who had been an aide-de-camp to Chevert duringthe Seven Years War and had been commended for action inCorsica under the command of the maréchal de Vaux. InAmerica he served under Rochambeau. He became governorof Martinique in 1789, returned to France and left as an émigréto serve in the Condé army, and then became a lieutenantgénéral in Russia from 1798 to 1809 before becoming amaréchal général in Portugal from 1810 to 1814. When hereturned to France, he was named a life peer in June 1814 anda hereditary peer in August 1815. René de la Tour du PinMontauban, his son-in-law, who had married the marquis’s



daughter in London in 1807, was also a cavalry officer in Por-tugal. During the period of the Emigration, Vioménil’s militaryand family connections stretched from Russia to Portugalto England.42

Émigré circles in Lisbon intersected with the older traditionof foreign officers serving in the Portuguese armed forces.Joseph de Champalimaud de Nussane, a French engineer in thePortuguese service since the 1770s, had married a Portuguesewoman. His son José Joaquim’s entire life since childhood waswith the Portuguese army and his loyalty was to Portugal. In1807 he resigned with the arrival of Junot and was active in therevolt against the French in 1808. French officers also enteredPortuguese service in the 1790s. Antoine-Hyacinthe-Anne deChastenet, Comte de Puységur, was a lieutenant de vaisseau in1790, a rear admiral in Portugal in 1800 and died in Paris in1807.

In his account of French émigrés in Portugal, Chaves listed136 émigrés, ranging from Beckford’s cook Simon, to theComte Jean Victor de Novion (1745–1825), who rose to theposts of lieutenant-colonel of Infantry in 1798 and com-mander of the Royal Police Guard in 1801. Novion had servedat Trier as a volunteer in a company of the Vermandois-Infan-terie regiment and he was noted for his zealous service.43 Heremained in Lisbon at the time of the French invasions and inDecember was named commandant des armes by Junot, andreturned to France with the French forces.44 Chaves also men-tioned a few French noblewomen – the Comtesse de Chálons,who subsequently become Duchesse de Coigny, the Marquisede Lage de Volude, the Comtesse de Puységur and Mme deRoquefeuille. Later, as wife of the French ambassador, LaureJunot would know two French noblewomen in Lisbon: theDuquesa de Cadaval, née Marie-Madeleine de Montmorency-Luxembourg, a younger daughter of the Duc de Pinay-Luxem-bourg-Chátillon, president of the Ordre de la Noblesse in the1789 Estates General,45 and Mme de Braacamp de Sobral, adaughter of Comte Louis de Narbonne. Laure Junot, in herwritings, conveyed that the young French Duquesa de Cadavalhad been harshly disciplined if not beaten by her husband:‘truths such as these caused the Duchesse de Cadaval to shedbitter tears’. (Memoirs, III, 140.)


David Higgs 93

There was one final category that Chaves did not, however,investigate in any detail: French priests who reached Portugaland were considered to be émigrés. Baldensperger long agonoted the lack-lustre priestly accounts of the Emigration (I, 224).In 1794, Manique instructed the magistrate (corregedor) of theBraga district (comarca) that he should distinguish betweenorthodox and exemplary priests from France and those withJansenist notions who should be expelled from the kingdom.46

The Portuguese clergy were well aware of the menace to theirprofession of the French Revolution. The crown wrote to thebishops asking for donations to the war effort, one examplebeing that of the Count Bishop of Arganil.47 On 19 August1794, Pina Manique informed a courtier of the arrival of tenFrench priests but noted that he had resisted the disembarka-tion of many others for fear that they would become too influ-ential in the communities in which they lodged.48

This suspicion is reminiscent of the difficulties of the Frenchémigré clergy in the Papal States. The Italians were vigilant inwatching for ‘democratic’ attitudes among the émigrés andscattered them among different religious houses to avoid dan-gerous, and possibly subversive, concentrations of Frenchpriests. Nine out of ten of the French priests who emigrated tothe Pontifical state had departed by the end of the 1790s.49

This was contrasted by the case of the French priest in Por-tugal who, in September 1800, denounced another Frenchresident of Lisbon to the Inquisition. The denounced man wasthe son of a man living near the former Treasury and hadvoiced ‘propositions’ that religions were equal in merit, thatChristianity was the most intolerant of beliefs since it deniedthe validity of other faiths, and that priests were scoundrelswho keep people in ignorance. The letter was annotated to theeffect that the accused was a Protestant. Called to the Estauspalace of the Inquisition he was solemnly warned, on 5 February1801, to mind his tongue.50 Another priest who stayed on inPortugal was Monseigneur de Montagnac, the former bishop ofTarbes, who died in Lisbon in 1801.51 Once the eliminationsfrom the émigré lists became numerous, however, many of theband of French exiles in Portugal returned to their homeland.The numbers who stayed on were tiny. In due course they hadto deal with the French invasions of their host country.



In 1807, the entire Braganza court sailed for Rio de Janeiroin a large fleet as French troops entered the suburbs of Lisbon.An 1808 proclamation ‘To the People and Plebians of Coimbra’went on to characterise recent French history as understoodon the banks of the Mondêgo. ‘You know that the nobles andlearned men of France having been persecuted, dispersed andexiled when [France] rose against her legitimate king LouisXVI because of the machinations of the perverse and seditiousJacobins’, underwent ‘notable changes’ and experienceddemocratic, aristocratic and monarchical government before a‘foreigner of humble condition, revolutionary, ambitious andtyrannical who wanted to dominate the whole world’ sat onthe throne.52 In late absolutist Portugal the panegyrics of thedead Louis XVI elaborated the sacrificial imagery of the Chris-tian Good Death (‘boa morte’) in sermons and was part of theon-going hagiographic literature on the executed members ofthe Bourbon family.53

Once established in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, the royal familydid not return for 12 years.54 When it returned, Portugal was acountry in the grip of liberal revolution. The French émigrésthey then encountered were Bonapartists. The Cortes now satas a representative institution, the Inquisition was abolished in1821, and the crown began its apprenticeship in parliamentarygovernment under the menace of civil war.

In conclusion, there were relatively few émigrés in Portugaland they had scant influence there. Perhaps future research inthe Portuguese military archives will reveal some significantlinkages: did the return to service in France of Vioménil havea link to the careers of Portuguese military collaborators withthe French? Did French-trained officers serving in Portugaltransmit knowledge of pre-revolutionary French techniquesto their commands? Certainly the police force overseen byNovion in Lisbon made a big contribution to public safety in acity famed for its thieves and cutpurses.

There is no conclusive evidence that the French émigré eccle-siastics made any mark on Portuguese culture. Since Pombaland the changes in the Coimbra University curriculum, thePortuguese hierarchy was resolutely regalist. Ultramontanessometimes declared this regalism to be ‘Jansenist’ but there isno evidence that French refugees participated in Portuguesediscussions of theology in the 1790s. Monseigneur de Royère,


David Higgs 95

bishop of Castres, the only ecclesiastical deputy from his dio-cese to the Estates General, crossed Spain on his way to Portugalto find a refuge at the Monastery of Alcobaça, where he died.55

William Beckford described the hospitality of its monks in1794 but had nothing to say of the refugee bishop residentthere. Despite the best efforts of the editor of a manuscript onthe French Revolution found in the public library of Oporto, itwas impossible to identify the clerical author. It may have beenwritten in Spain, but contained some lines relevant to ecclesi-astical émigrés in Portugal:

Le Portugal, cette nation qui par sa bravoure et sa loyautéfait revivre la gloire que les hauts faits de ses ancêtres lui onttransmise, exerce également une noble hospitalité enversles prêtres français. Ceux de nos collègues qui s’y sontréfugiés, y reçoivent les marques du plus haut intérêt. L’il-lustrissime archevêque de Braga les a accueillis avec unebonté aussi touchante que généreuse. Comme monseigneurl’évêque d’Orense, il les a admis dans son palais et dans saplus intime familiarité.56

Perhaps more important in the long term was the place thatPortugal took in the political analyses of the émigrés, and theiraudiences, after they returned to France. In the 1790s theémigrés pointed critically to the differences between Portu-guese and French aristocratic society. They were full of nostal-gia for the douceur de vivre of Versailles. In comparison, Queluzand the entourage of Queen Maria seemed too pious and inele-gant. Portugal was expensive compared with other parts ofEurope. Toustain’s memoirs showed the social distance thatexisted between the émigrés and the Portuguese. The émigréswere startled by Portuguese suspicion of foreigners: Coignysaid ‘L’esprit du Portugal est affreux contre les étrangers.’57

With the French religious revival at the start of the nine-teenth century and the re-scripting of French court culture ina Catholic formulation,58 old Portugal might appear, in hind-sight and at a distance, to be a good thing. By the 1820s, whenconstitutionalism had arrived in Portugal, the royalist press inParis contrasted the superficial urban layer of the Portuguesenation, especially in Lisbon and Oporto – rotted by danger-ously liberal ideas of French provenance – with the ignorantbut traditional peasantry, submissive to the paternal authority



of the king, and living in superstitious awe of the Church andher miracles.59 Portugal became part of a French conservativeimagery of the Christian Catholic south under attack fromfreemasons and liberals. Those attitudes would continue up tothe time of Doctor Salazar.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Portugal has not excited much interest among historians ofthe French émigrés. The three volumes by Antoine publishedin 1828, the three volumes of Forneron in 1884–90, and thework of Ernest Daudet had only a handful of Lusitanian refer-ences.60 The same can be said of Jean Vidalenc, Les émigrésfrançais 1789–1825 (1963), the Duc de Castries, La vie quotidi-enne des émigrés (1966) and Ghislain de Diesbach, Histoire del’émigration 1789–1814 (1975).

Historians of Portugal have omitted to stress this aspect ofthe revolutionary period. The 1947 biography by Marcus Chekeon Carlota Joaquina, the Spanish wife of the Prince Regent,does not touch on them. There is no modern biography ofD. João who acted as Regent during the period the émigrés werearriving. Boyd Alexander, in his book England’s Wealthiest Son:a Study of William Beckford and his edition of The Journal of Wil-liam Beckford in Portugal and Spain 1787–178861 provides excel-lent information on conditions in Portugal. Published morethan a century ago, Luz Soriano and Latino Coelho, in theirhistories of the period, made only passing references to theémigrés. Latino Coelho put émigrés into his narrative particu-larly as they affected military matters.62

For the best modern overview, the reader is directed toCastelo Branco Chaves, A emigração francesa em Portugal durantea Revolução, Lisbon, 1984. Professor Oliveira Ramos has writtenon French influences in late eighteenth-century Portugal.63

NOTES

1. José Esteves Pereira, O pensamento político em Portugal no século XVIII:António Ribeiro dos Santos, Lisbon, 1983.


David Higgs 97

2. João Luís Lisboa, Ciência e Política: ler nos finais do Antigo Regime (CulturaModerna e Contemporânea – 7), Lisbon, 1991.

3. ANRJ, Codice 67, vol. 18, fol. 150r/v . . . ordena Sua Magestade queV.Ex. tome as mais oportunas e eficazes providencias para acautelar eimpedir toda e qualquer comunicação entre os Habitantes desse Gover-no e os passageiros, equipagem e todas as mais pessoas em geral quevierem a bordo dos navios franceses . . . .

4. Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires, William Beckford e Portugal, Lisbon, 1987. 5. Robert Southey, Journals of a residence in Portugal 1800–1801 . . . edited

by Adolfo Cabral, Oxford, 1960. 6. Marc-Marie de Bombelles, Journal d’un ambassadeur de France au Portu-

gal 1786–1788, Paris, 1979. 7. ‘Horne, who was sitting by during the altercation, chuckled heartily;

as an honest Englishman he always rejoices when any little event takesplace to disgust me with Portugal.’ William Beckford, The Journal ofWilliam Beckford in Portugal and Spain 1787–1788, edited with an intro-duction and notes by Boyd Alexander, London, 1954, p. 139.

8. Journal, p. 136. 9. See Daniel-Henri Pageaux, Images du Portugal dans les Lettres Françaises

(1700–1755) (Memórias e documentos para a história Luso-Francesa– VII) Paris, 1971. A partisan and defensive review of writings by for-eign travellers in Portugal is given by Castelo Branco Chaves, ‘Oslivros de viagens em Portugal no século XVIII e a sua projecção euro-peia’, Lisbon, 1977.

10. Baldensperger, I, 84. 11. J. de Pins, ‘La correspondance de Mallet du Pan avec la cour de Lis-

bonne’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, No. 182 (Oct–Dec.1965), 483. See also 1964.

12. Andrée Mansuy-Diniz Silva, ‘L’Année 1789 vue de Turin par un dip-lomate portugais’, Dix-huitième siècle, No. 20 (1988) 289–312.

13. Vicente de Sousa Coutinho, Diário da Revolução Francesa edited byManuel Cadafaz de Matos, Lisbon, 1990.

14. Michel Vovelle, ‘La Révolution française et son echo’, Le Canada et laRévolution française 7.

15. ANTT IL 5526. 16. Oficio of the Intendente de Policia, 3 March 1798, as quoted in José

Maria Latino Coelho, História política e militar de Portugal desde osfins do século XVIII até 1814 Lisbon (1874–91), vol. II, 401.

17. ANTT Liv. IV Intendencia Geral, 7 August 1794. 18. Ibid. ‘figurando religiosos em acções torpes com mulheres . . . o plano

talvez seria arrastar ai gentes libertinas que fossem faceis abraçarem osprincipios revolucionarios . . . ’.

19. Book 98 p. 121 of the Intendencia da Polícia quoted by Luís de OliveiraRamos, ‘Franceses em Portugal nos fins do século XVIII (Subsídiospara um estudo)’ Studium Generale, Boletim do Centro de Estudos Human-ísticos, vol. XI, Oporto, 1966–67, 9.

20. ANTT Liv. 160 Intendencia Geral da Policia, pp. 180–1, aci Ramos,op. cit.

21. Baldensperger, I, 146.



22. Rómulo de Carvalho, D. João Carlos de Bragança 2o duque de Lafões,fundador da Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Lisbon, 1987. Carrère mis-takenly thought he was a bastard of João V, whom he was in fact anephew, through his father, a half-brother of the king.

23. Nuno Daupias d’Alcochete, ‘Lettres familières de Jacques Ratton(1792–1807)’ in Bulletin des études portugaises de l’Institut Français au Por-tugal, XXIII, 1961, 119 –00.

24. Luís António de Oliveira Ramos, ‘Franceses em Portugal nos fins doséculo XVIII (subsídios para um estudo)’ offprint from Studium Gen-erale, Boletim do Centro de Estudos Humanísticos, vol. XI, Porto, 1966–67.

25. There is no Lisbon equivalent to the listing Os franceses residentes noRio de Janeiro, 1808–1820, (Publicações do arquivo nacional, vol. 45) Riode Janeiro, 1960. See also Registro de estrangeiros nas capitanias 1777–1819, (Publicações do Arquivo Nacional vol. 53), Rio de Janeiro, 1963.

26. Carrère, Tableau de Lisbonne, 67. 27. Jean-François Labourdette, La nation française à Lisbonne de 1669 à

1790: entre Colbertisme et Libéralisme, Paris, 1988. 28. Bombelles, 29 December 1787, p. 236. 29. Nuno Daupias d’Alcochete, ‘Inventaire des archives de l’église de

St. Louis des Français de Lisbonne’, Bulletin des Études Portugaises, t.xxi, Lisbon, 1958, 201–65. These archives are now housed in the ar-chives of the French foreign ministry, Quai d’Orsay.

30. [Charles François Dumouriez] État présent du royaume de Portugal enl’année MDCCLXVI . . . , Lausanne, 1775, 170.

31. Louis Victor Léon, Comte de Rochechouart (1788–1858), Souvenirs. . . nouv. éd. Paris [1933].

32. Baldensperger, I, 84. 33. Bombelles, Journal.34. Bombelles, 14 April 1788, p. 305. 35. Journal, p. 141. 36. Ibid., p. 159. 37. Marie-François-Henri de Franquetot (*Paris 28 March 1737, + Paris

18 May 1821) Marquis then Duc de Coigny, succeeding his father asgovernor and grand bailli d’épée of the city of Caen, maréchal decamp (1761), lieutenant general (1780), deputy of the nobility of Caento the Estates General, emigrated to Portugal and served as an officerthere; named a peer in 1787 he was recalled to the French pairie inJune 1814, and made duc-pair héréditaire by ordonnance of 31August 1817. He had two sons from his first marriage.

38. Chaves, note 15 page 101 for advertisements from the Gazeta de Lisboa.39. Chaves, 25, quoting Toustain, Mémoires, 133. 40. A. Debidour in the article on Lannes in the Grande Encyclopédie noted

‘Envoyé . . . en Portugal comme ambassadeur il n’y f it pas longséjour, les qualités nécessaires à un diplomate lui faisant absolumentdéfaut’.

41. Luís de Oliveira Ramos, ‘Os agentes da introdução do ideário da Rev-olução Francesa em Portugal e as alvancas da repressão’ in Portugal daRevolução Francesa ao Liberalism: actas do colóquio 4 e 5 de Dezembrode 1986 [Braga, 1988], p. 16.


David Higgs 99

42. Duc de Castries, Les hommes de l’émigration 1789–1814, Paris, 1979, listsan unpublished manuscript by Viomenil entitled ‘Relation de ma viemilitaire’, p. 399.

43. Grouvel, III, p. 367. 44. Nuno Daupias d’Alcochete, ‘Le comte de Novion, commandant

général de la garde royale de la police de Lisbonne’, Arquivos do CentroCultural Português, VIII, 1974, 621–25. DP503/C36 By 1805 he com-manded 1241 men.

45. Paul Filleul, Le duc de Montmorency–Luxembourg, Paris, 1939. 46. Ramos, op. cit. 47. Circular dated Queluz, 15 October 1796, calling for clerical contribu-

tions to the war effort. UofT Fisher Library. Portuguese Mss. collec-tion (Stanton).

48. Latino Coelho, title II, p. 379–00. 49. René Picheloup, Les ecclésiastiques français émigrés ou déportés dans l’État

Pontifical, 1792–1800 (Publications de l’Université Toulouse-Le Mirail,sér. A, vol. 15) Toulouse, 1972.

50. ANTT IL Liv. 322, fol. 41r. 51. Ghislain de Diesbach, Histoire de l’émigration 1789–1814, Paris, 1975,

p. 453. 52. [Box Coimbra] An 1808 Proclamação do povo de Coimbra. Ao povo

e pleve da mesma Cidade e termo, Portuguezes conimbriscences vossabeis que havendo sido perseguidos, dispersos e exilados os nobrese sabios da França quando esta se soblevou contra o seu legitimo reiLuis 16 por maquinações dos perversos e sediciosos jacobinos anação errante pela inconstância que Careteriz-a sobre a forma deGoverno, que devia prevalecer no pais em breve circulo de anos sub-iu notaveis mudanças e conheceu governo democratico, aristocrati-co, e monarchico, e que tendo-se reprovava este na pessoa de Luis 16seu soberano sintou sobre o elevado trono de seus augustos princi-pes um homem estrangeiro de humilde condição, revolucionárioambiciosa e tirano que pertendendo dominar todo o mundo comestragemas, similações, etc. Fisher Library, University of Toronto,Portuguese Manuscript Collection, sheets dated 14 July 1808, 14 folsr/v.

53. See Granel, Louis XVI et la Famille Royale, Catalogue énonçant les titresde 3000 volumes, Paris, 1905; Pierre Lacoué, Les panégyristes de LouisXVI et de Marie Antoinette depuis 1793 à 1912. Essai de bibliographie raison-née, Paris, 1912.

54. Luís Norton, A corte de Portugal no Brasil, (Brasiliana, vol. 124) 2ndedn, São Paulo, 1979.

55. Ferreira de Brito, ‘Uma história inédita da ‘Revolução de França’ ummanuscrito do exílio e o exílio dum manuscrito’ in A recepção daRevolução francesa em Portugal e no Brasil: Actas do Colóquio, 2 a 9 deNovembro de 1989, Oporto, 1992, p. 22.

56. Ibid., p. 20. 57. Chaves, op. cit., p. 81. 58. Louis XVIII’s 1795 instructions to French bishops: ‘Je désire que les

ecclésiastiques soutiennent parmi mes sujets l’esprit monarchique



en même temps que l’esprit religieux, qu’ils les pénètrent de la con-nexion intime qui existe entre l’autel et le trône et de la nécessitéqu’ils ont l’un et l’autre de leur appui mutuel.’ Baldensperger, I,p. 225.

59. Sir Marcus Cheke, Carlota Joaquinas, pp. 90–1). 60. A. Anthoine, Histoire des émigrés français depuis 1789 jusqu’en 1828,

Paris, 1828 3 vols; Henri Forneron, Histoire générale des émigrés pendantla révolution française, Paris, 1884–90, 3 vols.

61. B. Alexander, England’s Wealthiest Son: a Study of William Beckford, Lon-don 1962; The Journal of William Beckford, op. cit.

62. L. Coelho, op. cit. 63. Ernest Daudet, Histoire de l’Émigration pendant la Révolution française, 3

vols, Paris, 1912, 4th edn.


101

6 French Émigrés in Prussia Thomas Höpel

The French émigrés who came to Prussia during the revolu-tionary era were watched very closely both by the Prussiangovernment and regional administrations. A vast source ofmaterial, primarily administrative correspondence (e.g. thatin the secret archives of Prussia in Berlin–Dahlem), exists andas a result provides the basis for this brief study. From thesesources it is possible to draw some conclusions relating firstlyto the official policy of the Prussian government towards theFrench émigrés and the reasons behind it and, secondly, tosome aspects of the culture which developed in exile and thehopes and fears of the émigrés themselves. They clearly hopedfor a show of solidarity from the European nobility and werebitterly disillusioned by the reality which confronted them.

Although the Prussian government was fully informed aboutthe problem of Emigration through diplomatic correspondencewith its ministre plénipotentiaire in Paris during the earlystages of the Revolution, nothing was done until the beginningof the year 1792. The first official reactions of the Prussianauthorities coincided with the deterioration of the internationalsituation, in which the warmongering activities of the émigrésin the principalities situated on the Rhine played an importantpart. The first decree, on 4 February 1792, concerned thetreatment of the French émigrés in Prussia and this was closelyconnected with the defensive Austro-Prussian Alliance signedthree days later. The émigré decree was directed to the regionalgovernments of Cleves and Ansbach–Bayreuth. The Prussiangovernment guaranteed the same rights, protection andsecurity to the French émigrés which were granted to othertravellers. But at the same time they were forbidden to assemblein large groups, to recruit troups, to carry out military exercises,to buy horses and to build depots (i.e. all military activitieswere strictly forbidden).

The failure of the allied campaign against France in theautumn of 1792 marked a complete change in the treatmentof émigrés. From this point a substantial body of legislation



was issued to regulate and to guard against uncontrolledFrench immigration to Prussia. This legislation was tightenedup successively and extended to other groups of émigrés: Bra-bançois, Dutch and Liègeois. A relaxation of these controlsoccurred only after the return to France of numerous émigrésafter the amnesties between 1800–1804.

There were four important motives behind the tighteningof the rules regarding émigrés in Prussia. These concernedthe reduced credibility of the émigré government; the fact thatthe émigrés’ goodwill was no longer necessary; fears about thespread of revolutionary propaganda; and worries about possiblesupport for revolutionary principles in Prussian territories.

The problem of the émigrés became real for Prussia onlywhen the émigrés were forced by the revolutionary armies toflee to the Holy Roman Empire. By the autumn of 1792 it hadbecome impossible for the Prussian government to influenceFrench politics through connections with the émigré govern-ment. In addition, the goodwill of the émigrés was no longernecessary to secure conquests in France. Precautions againstrevolutionary emissaries who propagated revolutionary ideasor made secret investigations for the enemy were another factorbehind this change in attitude. Finally, the Prussian governmentwanted to prevent possible riots in sympathy with Revolutionprinciples; pillage by bored and frustrated émigré troups; andcrises resulting from rises in prices for food stuffs caused bythe arrival of émigrés in regions with fragile economies.

Later, two further reasons could be identified. The govern-ment feared that penniless refugees would be a charge on thecountry and, after concluding the Treaty of Bale in 1795,political relations with the French Republic made necessary apolicy of prudence towards the émigrés.

Pragmatic raison d’état dominated the policy of Prussia duringthis period, but this policy was not devoid of human consider-ations. Distinctions were made between desirable and undesir-able émigrés. This increasingly restrictive policy was maintainedby a large number of decrees and publications. But that policydid not lead to a complete prohibition of French émigrés:many obtained official residence permits because they could


Thomas Höpel 103

be supported by social or professional resources, or appealedto the humanity of Prussian leaders (on the grounds of disease,pregnancy or childhood). The émigrés who were acceptedwere registered on lists and kept under surveillance by thepolice.1

Many Prussian bureaucrats regarded French émigrés’ rejec-tion of patriotism as dangerous. French clergymen might insiston their royalist loyalties but they were treated with suspicionbecause they had not only defied the laws of France but they alsoinsisted on the universal claims of the Holy See. The governmentof Lingen wrote to the War and Domains chamber of Minden:

We have already had occasion to learn that these émigrépriests have bad convictions, that they encourage defianceof law and authority and that they instill in our Catholicinhabitants notions which are harmful to the King and tothe state. . . . 2

Consequently their church services and schools for Prussiansubjects were mistrusted and watched. Control and securitywere essential for Prussian leaders. Émigrés searching for asy-lum had to adapt themselves to these conditions.

The strategies of immigration can be reconstructed fromthe petitions of the émigrés directed to the Prussian king or tothe state ministers. Normally, these requests began with a cap-tatio benevolentiae expressing their royalist attitudes and theirveneration for the state ruled by the nephew of Frederick theGreat. Sometimes they even added a poem of homage andthey invariably described dangerous episodes encountered asa result of their escape from France.

After the introduction, individual supplications becamemore personal but many have common elements. Some of thenobles and clergymen offered letters of recommendation fromhigh-ranking persons: connections with Prussian ministersand generals, with Prussian bishops and foreign envoys to thecourt of Berlin, recommendations from French princes orGerman Electors were all used for this purpose. This suggeststhat the émigrés expected to find solidarity among the Europeannobility. Such hopes were fulfilled only in certain cases. Otherémigrés offered their services or (as is the case for non-nobleémigrés) tried to convince the government of their utility forthe Prussian state. Those who had only their royalist convictions



and their distress to offer were in an unfavourable position.The General Directory wrote to the Department of ForeignAffairs on 23 March 1796 that,

Practical workers, who could contribute to the improvementand expansion of local industries, would be much moredesirable than the counts, knights and clergymen who formthe majority of the émigrés seeking asylum.3

However, émigrés without social or professional resourcescould still obtain a residence permit on the grounds of badhealth or harsh weather. These conditions often led to a tem-porary residence permit which was more easily prolongedafterwards.

Frederick William II was often sympathetic to French émi-grés. He elevated two French émigrés to be chamberlains,gave residence permits to a number of descendants of oldnoble families and also gave various benefits to French émi-grés: for example, he supported with subsidies the embroideryproject established by the Countess d’Asfeld in Potsdam andhe offered a property in South Prussia to the Marquis de Bouf-flers. These two establishments should have guaranteed thelivelihood of a group of émigrés but they both came to noth-ing.4 In addition, his Francophile uncle, Prince Henry ofPrussia, who knew many French nobles, protected some ofthem and invited them to his court in Rheinsberg. PrinceHenry also obtained a residence permit for the Countess deGenlis to live in Berlin in 1798. However, her literary workswere distrusted by the Prussian government and the printersin Berlin received the order not to publish any of her workswithout special permission from the Department of ForeignAffairs. French nobles had already been established in thePrussian army before the outbreak of the French Revolution.These Frenchmen in Prussian service often wanted to helptheir relatives but the Prussian bureaucracy discouraged thissort of protection, particularly when the émigrés concernedhad insufficient financial support and were not of interest tothe country.

As well as these legal methods, there were illegal ones: someFrench émigrés pretended to be Italian or Swiss, becausePrussian decrees were not valid for those nationalities. Others


Thomas Höpel 105

referred to their properties in the Holy Roman Empire, and inthe Austrian Netherlands. Émigrés also tried to obtain residencepermits by marrying a Prussian subject but the Prussianadministration stopped these attempts very early:

Poverty and need on one hand and addiction to titles andrank on the other, will undoubtedly lead to marriagesbetween noble émigrés and bourgeois. If such marriageshad as a consequence residence in the country partaking ofall the privileges of its noble subjects, the incidence of suchimmigration would rise substantially. The country wouldconsequently be inundated with émigrés and their descen-dants to the detriment of native subjects.5

The first stage of the Emigration – up to the battle of Valmy in1792 – did not cause any change in the way of life of themajority of émigrés. They continued their court life in thefriendly courts of the Rhineland and they obtained enoughmoney for their expensive habits from their families still inFrance. European monarchs also supported émigré princeswith considerable financial gifts. The codification of the émigrélaws in early 1793 interrupted the transfer of money fromFrance and this coincided with a reduction in support fromother European monarchs after the disastrous campaign of1792. The émigrés had to find other ways to earn their livingwhen their funds were exhausted.6

The majority of the émigré clergymen in Prussia earnedtheir living as preceptors in noble families – in particular inSouth Prussia. Others were accepted in monasteries, especiallyin Silesia and South Prussia.

In most cases Third Estate émigrés continued their accus-tomed trades in exile. They did not have many problems inobtaining residence permits if the trade they practised was aserious one. The income of some craftsmen – especially workersin the silk industry – would have been more than adequate.More than once, the Department of Foreign Affairs sent pass-ports to craftsmen because they were in demand. This wasrather unusual in a country which was suspicious of the increaseof the number of French émigrés. However, as has been said,immigration of people who could not contribute to theeconomy was restricted and, in particular, the number of



servants entering Prussia since many noble families broughtwith them,

a swarm of servants who could be dangerous for securityand order besides which they only increase the number ofidle and unproductive members of society.7

While some émigrés succeeded in integrating themselves intothe Prussian court or into the Prussian army, they representeda minority. Others tried to earn their living in different ways:some worked as teachers or as dancing and fencing masters;others were engaged in or founded schools. There were, how-ever, other activities practised in exile which led to derogation,for example, the different forms of retail trade, but also whole-sale trades like the wine business and various forms of manualwork. Certain nobles did not hesitate to learn a craft. Theseactivities strongly affected their relations with the local ‘TiersEtat’. There are mentions of marriages between French noblesand daughters of Prussian bourgeois and the women range inbackground from the daughter of a successful trader to thedaughter of a midwife.

From the documentation on requests for residence, it is pos-sible to recognise certain ideological trends. Although they arewritten with a specific intention, all of them contain reflectionsabout personal situations and reasons for emigration. Theattitude of the Prussian government contributes to an under-standing of the situation the émigrés found themselves in: theforced changes; the financial distress; the need to adapt and tomove in social spheres other than their own. While these officialrecords need to be contrasted with other documents – particu-larly with the émigrés’ memoirs – they present a clear image ofFrench exile life in Prussia.

NOTES

1. On this policy of supervision in Prussia cf. Thomas Höpel, ‘Emigrantender Französischen Revolution von 1789 im Preußischen GeheimenStaatsarchiv Berlin-Dahlem’, in Michel Espagne, Katharina und Matthias


Thomas Höpel 107

Middell (édit.), Archiv und Gedächtnis, Leipzig, Leipziger Universitäts-verlag, 1997.

2. GStA PK, 1. HA, Rep. 11, Nr. 91b, Frankreich-Tecklenburg-Lingen,Spez. Fasz. 4 (M), Government of Lingen to War an Domains Chamberof Minden, Lingen 15th October 1795 (conception). Original quo-tation: ‘weil wir schon Gelegenheit gehabt haben, zu erfahren, daßdiese emigrirte Priester überaus schlechte Gesinnungen hegen, dieUnterthanen zur Verweigerung des Gehorsams gegen Gesetze u.Obrigkeit aufwiegeln, u. den Catholischen Eingeseßenen solcheGrundsätze beybringen, welche dem König u. dem Staat höchst schäd.sind . . . ’.

3. GStA Merseburg, 1. HA, Rep. 11, Nr.91 b, Französische Emigranten inder Kur- und Neumark, Spez. Fasz. 66 (M), General Directory to theDepartement of foreign affairs, 23 March 1796. Original quotation: ‘Eswäre zu wünschen, daß, statt der Grafen, Chevaliers und Geistlichen,aus welchen fast allein die hier Zuf lucht nehmenden Emigrirten beste-hen, nützliche Ouvriers zur Vermehrung und Vervollkommnung derhiesigen Fabriquen sich einfänden’.

4. Concerning the embroidery of the Countress d’Asfeld cf. ThomasHöpel, ‘Französische Emigranten in der Kurmark’, in Matthias Middella.o. (édit.), Widerstände gegen Revolutionen 1789–1989, Leipzig,Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 1994, pp. 217–18.

5. GStA PK, 1.HA, Rep. 11, Nr. 91b, Frankreich-Cleve, Moers, Mark,Spez. Fasz. 126 (M), rescript to the government and the War andDomains chamber of Cleve, Berlin 29 June 1797 (conception). Originalquotation: ‘Armuth und Hülfsbedürftigkeit auf der einen, und Rang-und Titelsucht auf der andern Seite, werden ohne Zweifel zahlreicheEhen zwischen französischen Emigrirten von Adel und Personen bürg-erlichen Standes veranlaßen. Wenn daher solche Ehen die Folge derAufnahme in das Land, und der Theilnahme der recipirten an allenVorrechten eingebohrener adelicher Unterthanen hätten; so würdeder Fall solcher unfreiwilligen Aufnahmen sehr oft eintreten, und dasLand mit Emigrirten und ihren Nachkommen zum Nachtheil Unserereingebohrnen Unterthanen überladen werden.’

6. The majority of the émigrés had already run into debt in the hope of aquick victory against revolutionary France in the months which precededthe battle of Valmy. In 1793 only a minority preserved enough moneyfor spending years in exile.

7. GStA PK, I.HA Rep. 11, Nr. 91a, Frankreich, Fasz. 1 vol. 2 (M), rescriptto government and war and domains chamber of Cleve, to governmentof Meurs, to administration justice board of Geldern, to governmentand war and domains chamber of Aurich, to government and war anddomains chamber of Minden and to the government of Lingen, Berlin24 August 1794 (conception). Original quotation: ‘da viele vornehmeEmigrierte [ . . . ] einen ganzen Schwarm von Domestiken mitbringen,die der Sittlichkeit und selbst der Ruhe, Sicherheit, u. Ordnunggefährlich werden können, u. auf alle Fälle, die Zahl der Müssiggängerund unnützen Consumenten vermehren’.


108

7 French Émigrés inEdinburgh Lord Mackenzie-Stuart

Until very recently French historians have created legendsabout Artois’s arrival in Edinburgh in January 1796. Theyhave an image of Artois arriving secretly at some remote ren-dezvous on the east coast of Scotland in an enveloping mistand being whisked to some mediaeval ruin, when in fact thearrival at Leith could scarcely have been a more public occa-sion. They have confused Edinburgh Castle and the Palace ofHolyroodhouse which is, for the most part, an elegant seven-teenth-century building rather than a gothic ruin. At the pierto greet him was Lord Adam Gordon, commander-in-chief ofthe forces of North Britain, and his staff, and half of Edinburghturned out to witness the spectacle. The journey to Holyroodhowever was scarcely a festive occasion. Lord Adam’s wife, theDuchess of Athole, had recently died and her husband wasin deepest mourning, Lord Adam Gordon’s coach, ‘paintedblack, with four long-tailed sable horses’ was at the centre ofthe procession. ‘Nothing could be more lugubrious’, wrotePryse Lockhart Gordon, who was there as aide-de-camp togeneral Drummond of Strathallan. Worse was to follow.

At the North Bridge in Edinburgh there was a halt and itwas found that a horse pulling a coal cart had dropped downand expired.

So great was the crowd that it was with difficulty thisobstruction could be removed and it was considered a badomen by the strangers.1

But on Artois’s arrival at the Palace there were salutes of 21guns from Leith Fort and from Edinburgh Castle.

Artois, later Charles X, the last King of France, occupiedthe Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh on two occasionsseparated by more than 30 years. The first was during his longexile from France during the Revolution; the second tookplace after his abdication in July 1830. On each occasion he


Lord Mackenzie-Stuart 109

was accompanied by a group of faithful followers and soughtto create the semblance of a court, albeit modest in comparisonwith Versailles. Artois’s two sons, the Duc d’Angoulême andthe Duc de Berri, also spent periods of time at Holyrood withtheir father.

The character and spirit of the two periods of residencewere very different. During the first stay, the Bourbon restora-tion, distant though it may have been, was never in questionand its certainty was important for émigré morale. During thesecond, there was no likelihood that Charles X would againbecome King of France and, although there was much debateconcerning the royal succession, only the most bigoted mon-archist, of whom there were always some, failed to see that theday of the Bourbons had gone. Holyrood had become thenécropole écossaise. It inspired a funereal poem by Victor Hugowhich contains the lines:

. . . sous ton ombreCette hospitalité mélancolique et sombre

Qu’on reçoit et qu’on rend de Stuarts à Bourbons2

The six years between 1789 and 1796 had been difficult onesfor Artois. He and his entourage, which included his mistressthe Vicomtesse de Polastron, had moved many times. After aninitial period in Turin they travelled to Coblenz but the hos-pitality of his uncle the Elector was extended with no moretolerance than that of his father-in-law the King of Sardinia.The mismanagement of his finances and the expense of hisestablishment was a focus of attention and criticism all overEurope.3

By 1795 Artois’s fortunes had reached their nadir and hewas living in penury at Hamm in Westphalia. Suddenly hereceived a summons from the Duke of York’s headquarters atRotterdam and from there he was ordered to England only tolearn that the expedition to Quiberon had ended in disaster.Of the 3600 émigrés who went as part of the British forces only1800 were evacuated. The rest were executed.

Artois uncharacteristically took the initiative and demandedthe leadership of a second expedition. In September a rag-bagof English, French and German troops transported by theRoyal Navy set sail for the Vendée. They got no further than



the ile d’Yeu, 30 south-west of Nantes. Lack of any strategicplan, lack of provisions, arms, ammunition and courage allplayed a part. The chouans were left in the lurch and, at the endof October, Artois sailed for Portsmouth aboard the frigate Jason.

At Portsmouth the financial difficulties which characterisedArtois’s existence in emigration caught up with him. On thequayside were bailiff’s men seeking to serve him with writs.They represented the creditors or assignees of the creditors towhom Artois owed money as a result of the campaigns in theLow Countries. Equipment and provisions had been boughtwith borrowed money on the assumption of victory, which wasconstantly elusive. Artois was advised that should he stepashore he would be liable to imprisonment for debt underBritish law if he did not meet the sums due.

The government provided the solution. Eager to removethe politically naive prince from London and any influence onBritish policy, it offered him the Palace of Holyroodhouse. ByScots law, provided Artois stayed within the sanctuary providedby the Palace and its extensive grounds, he was safe from arrest.He could however travel abroad on Sunday when arrest for debtwas not permitted. As one modern French historian has said,

It was by putting him in prison that Artois was protectedagainst the threat of imprisonment. In this one sees thesense of humour with which the English know how to colourtheir hypocrisy.4

Accordingly, on 6 December 1795, Lord Grenville, in chargeof Foreign Affairs, wrote to the Duc d’Harcourt offeringHolyroodhouse5. On 22 December 1795, the Duke of Port-land, then Secretary of State for the Home Department, gaveinstructions that Holyrood was to be put in readiness to receivethe Comte d’Artois and Jason set sail for the port of Leith.6

On his arrival at the Palace, Artois was led to the apartmentsof Lord Adam Gordon which seem to have been all that wasprepared for his accommodation. Other rooms must havebeen made available because two days later Artois held the firstof the series of levées at which

the Lord President, the Lord Advocate, the Lord Provostand Magistrates and several Civil and Military Gentlemenattended.7



It was originally announced that such levées were to be heldevery Monday and Thursday but the cost was too much forArtois’s purse and before long they were discontinued.8 It wasnot the citizens of Edinburgh who were wholly to blame:

There was also a weekly dinner at which I assisted ex-officio.Until I had seen these Frenchmen, I thought that the powerof man was limited; one day a salmon three feet long and notless than 25 lbs was put down as the second course and in atrice it disappeared.9

Other exiles arrived in Edinburgh, some of whom were to beaccommodated in the Palace itself, others where lodgingscould be found in the Canongate, the principal street adjoin-ing the Palace. When the Duc d’Angoulême arrived overlandon 21 January, rooms were found for him in Holyrood. Louisede Polastron ‘lived in a small white-washed house’ whichadjoined the Palace.10

Madame de Gontaut’s memoirs reveal important details ofthe prince’s life in Scotland. Her loyalty to Artois was completeand she was present through both his Edinburgh exiles. In1796 she, her daughters and their maid came to Edinburghfrom London by phaeton – a small open carriage – which wasdriven by her husband. The journey took fifteen days.

I have to admit that our arrival at Edinburgh struck myheart with sadness: Holyroodhouse is situated in the middleof the old town in the poorest and most unhealthy quarter.The chateau itself has a sad and grim appearance. It is pro-tected like a fortress and appeared to me like a prison.

She continues:

Monsieur was waiting in the courtyard for our equipage toarrive: he came towards us with his accustomed grace, atonce so frank and noble, and seemed to be grateful for thejourney which we had undertaken for his sake. In the face ofthis calm and noble fortitude I tried to kneel but I was told,“Your mother awaits you. I am not in my own home; I can-not have any friends to stay with me here but I ask that theysettle not far from me; your lodging is over there in thesquare where we have a small French colony and, God will-ing, the days will pass.” He said that my husband should



come to dine with him whenever he wished but, having onlya modest establishment, he could only ask the ladies for tea.11

Early arrivals included members of the Polignac family.Yolande, Duchesse de Polignac had died during the Emigra-tion but her husband, the Duc de Polignac and their three child-ren, Agläe, Duchesse de Guiche,12 Armand and Jules, laterPrince de Polignac and First Minister during the closing monthsof the reign of Charles X, were among them. The Duc dePolignac’s sister, the Comtesse Diane de Polignac was also withthem. Another important figure was Artois’s close friend, theComte de Vaudreuil, Joseph-Hyacinthe-François de Rigaud,whose letters provide one of the principal sources of informationabout this society.13 He had been the lover of Madame de Pol-ignac and therefore remained a friend of the Polignac family.14

The picture of life at Holyrood is one of constant movement.Some, like Vaudreuil, were visitors from London where hisparents were established as part of the huge émigré colony.Among the first to leave were the Duc de Polignac and his sisterDiane who both found protection and security in Russia.

The Duc d’Angoulême remained in Edinburgh only untilMarch 1797 when he left to join Louis XVIII at Blankenburgin the Hartz Mountains but while in Scotland he was the subjectof one of Kay’s Portraits entitled The Great and the Small arethere. It shows Angoulême’s slight frame accompanying thebulk of Major-General Roger Ayton of Inchdairney at a reviewof the first regiment of the Edinburgh Volunteers.15 It is saidthat Monsieur found that their uniform recalled unhappymemories of the National Guard in Paris and refused to watchthem drill.16 Angoulême is also recorded as having had an enjoy-able day with the Caledonian Hounds near Haddington – agood many gates were left open for him.17 He attended theelection of the Scottish peers to choose their number to sit inthe House of Lords and was a regular patron of the TheatreRoyal, no doubt to the benefit of the management who were infinancial difficulties.18 Perhaps his most lasting memorial is thecharming series of letters which he wrote to the Duchess ofBuccleuch after his departure, in which he makes it clear howmuch Edinburgh meant to him and how strong was his affec-tion for the Duchess who, in many ways, became for him asecond mother.19



Once attempts at ceremonial had been abandoned, domest-icity prevailed.20 Except on Sundays when Artois was free toleave the sanctuary, there was Mass in the private chapelimprovised at the end of the long Gallery; daily exercise in thesafety of the Abbey sanctuary which included the King’s Parkand its mountain, Arthur’s Seat, where snipe could be shot inHunter’s Bog. There were many visitors to receive and in theevening Artois played whist with Louise de Polastron. In Feb-ruary Vaudreuil wrote to his father;

The Scottish nobility is full of kindness, hospitality and goodmanners, and parties, balls and concerts are not wanting,but it is better to keep a certain distance, following theexample of our august Prince. We are in bed every nightbefore midnight and we feel the better for it.21

Not all visits were social. Artois had been given the office ofLieutenant General of the Kingdom by Louis XVIII, with spe-cial responsibility for the west of France. This meant that hewas nominally in charge of the insurgents in Brittany and theVendée. He has been much criticised for his failure to jointhem. Certainly leaders such as Georges Cadoudal felt thatwithout a royal prince at their head they were doomed. Hind-sight suggests that they would have been little better off withArtois but at least one of Artois’s entourage, the Comte deSérent, left Holyrood to meet his death on the Brittany coast.22

The abbé Latil, the future Archbishop of Reims, Cardinaland Peer of France made his debut in Edinburgh during theEmigration. According to the Comtesse de Boigne, Artoisobjected to the number of masses he was expected to attendby the Catholic community since this subjected him to longjourneys on Sundays and he decided to appoint his ownalmoner,

of a social standing sufficiently low to exclude him from theapartments, the Comte’s intention being that he should takehis meals with the valet de chambre.

Enquiries were made in London and a friend replied,

I have just what you want, a priest who is the son of my con-cierge. He is young, not bad looking, in no way fastidiousand you will have no trouble with him.23



The abbé Latil became a very important influence in the life ofthe Comte d’Artois. The immediate consequence of his arrivalwas the establishment of a chapel at the end of the long gallerywhere, as Francis Steuart has observed, a guidebook of 1818noted that Mass was said without the smallest opposition fromeither the clergy or the people of Edinburgh.24

Artois’s other son, the Duc de Berri, who had been servingwith the armée de Condé, did not arrive in Edinburgh untilMarch or April 1798 and left in September.25 He added a littlegaiety to the sombre life of the Palace. He ‘loved music andmusic we had’ recalls Madame de Gontaut.26 Vaudreuil, in aletter to his mother, describes amateur theatricals in an impro-vised theatre in the Duc de Berri’s bedchamber with thewriter’s sister-in-law Pauline at the pianoforte providing theorchestra and the audience composed of ‘valets, chamber-maidsand other servants’. Vaudreuil ends his letter;

Beyond doubt one can call it an innocent pleasure. Perhapsevil tongues would give it the high-sounding name of a fête;what can one do? It reminds me of all the trouble we hadwhen we wanted the children to act Cinderella and thatwithout costing anything. So keep all this to yourself, I begof you.

Artois was released from the confines of his sanctuary duringthe summer of 1799. Various accounts suggest an arrange-ment with his creditors but in fact the true cause was the passingof the Aliens Act of 1798 which gave protection against pursuitfor debt contracted abroad.27 According to one source Artoisembarked on a tour to express his thanks to the ‘illustriouschiefs of Scottish clans’ but further details are not recorded.On 5 August 1799 Artois wrote an official letter of farewell tothe Lord Provost and Magistrates of Edinburgh announcinghis departure;

I am forced, by circumstances touching the true service ofthe King my brother, to leave the country where, during thewhole time of my residence, I have received unvaryingly themost distinguished marks of attention and respect.28

Artois’s occupancy of the Palace, however, was far from over.The Aliens Act of 1800 which continued the operation of the Actof 1798, only had effect ‘until six months after the conclusion



of a general peace’ and in the autumn of 1801 such a generalpeace seemed imminent – the short-lived Treaty of Amienswas signed in March 1802. Artois deemed it prudent to havehis refuge at hand and precipitately returned to Edinburghwhich remained his base until subsequent legislation and theresumption of hostilities with France removed the pressures inthe medium term. This, however, failed to provide total immun-ity, as events many years later were to show.

During this period we catch a glimpse of Artois at large. Wehave reports of an unidentified spy sent by Talleyrand duringthe Peace of Amiens.29 From these reports we know that Artoisattended the Queen’s Ball at the Assembly Rooms and offendedthe eccentric Earl of Buchan by undue insistance on protocol.Through the eyes of the brilliant letter-writer, Lady LouisaStuart, daughter of the Earl of Bute, we see him in 1802 atBothwell Castle for the local races.

Monsieur himself is a very handsome healthy-looking man,remarkably well made, above the middle size and stout. Helooks much younger than his age (45) and has a splendidopen countenance but his mouth does not shut, the upperlip being too short. For his air and manner, it is as I will notsay gentlemen-like only, but noble and prince-like, as youcan imagine, with that sort of high and dignified goodbreeding, that gracious civility to everybody (with at thesame time the greatest ease), you would expect from a pricebred in the politest court of Europe.30

During that summer also there was a visit from the Duc deBerri who arrived aboard an Excise ship and who was presentat the election for the Scottish representative peers. He tookpart in what was described as ‘an elegant entertainment’ at theTontine Tavern and a ‘brilliant Assembly at the Rooms inGeorge Street’.31

Artois’s sojourn at Holyrood brought about many necessaryimprovements to the fabric and furnishings of the Palace. Arnotsummarises them by saying:

This magnificent palace is no use whatever except the partwhich is occupied by the Duke of Hamilton; and the whole isfalling into decay for want of being possessed and kept inrepair.32



One improvement was put in hand immediately. On 24 Janu-ary 1796 Lord Adam Gordon writes to the Duke of Portland,‘the repairs in the King’s apartment are going better on nowthat the water-closets are ordered’.33 No less than £2734 waspaid to Messrs. Young, Trotter and Hamilton for ‘Furniture ofVarious kinds Bed and Table Linnen Glassware and others’.34

Much of the admirable furniture which they supplied remainsin the Palace. A porter’s lodge and stabling were constructedand the total during the same period for plastering, painting,carpentry, glazing and plumbing exceeded £1500. To put thisexpenditure in perspective a substantial country house withstabling could be built at this period for £3000.

It must not be forgotten that Artois shared the large sanctu-ary with many less fortunate debtors huddled in a village ofmean houses which adjoined the Palace building. Worse,

an artifical marsh is created by stopping up the course of thecommon sewer of the city, which is conducted in this direc-tion to the sea, and by spreading over the surface the con-tents of the sewer. Most odiferous is the scent of thebeauteous meadow in the heats of summer, when its rank-ness of corrupting animal and vegetable excrementation issteaming from its fetid surface, and sending its grateful per-fume to the adjoining Palace ‘a dainty dish to set before theKing’.35

After 1803 there is no trace of Artois’s presence in Holyroodalthough it cannot be excluded that there were visits to hisfriends in Scotland, in particular the Buccleuchs. Holyrood-house reverted to a care and maintenance basis. In August1804, Henry Jardine, the King’s Remembrancer, writes toArtois’s secretary in London:

Upon looking thro’ the Royal Apartments last day, I observedthat both the carpets and other furniture were spoiling bybeing exposed to the air, and that it might be advisable toget the furniture washed, and put up till needed – and thatthe carpets ought to be cleaned and rolled up.36

In 1807 there was a flurry of activity because Holyrood wasproposed as a residence for Louis XVIII who had recentlybeen granted asylum in England under the title of the Comtede Lille. Instructions were given to the Lord Provost to make



all necessary arrangements ‘as the Count of Lille and his familyare expected to arrive immediately’. Louis XVIII however set-tled in Essex against the wishes of the British government andthe Palace sank back into its previous torpor. One or two émi-grés remained. Monsieur Pelerin, who seems to have beenArtois’s general factotum, was in charge. Among them werethe Comte de Coigny, a courtier of Madame Elizabeth, scarcelyable to move because of obesity, and the chevalier de Rebour-guil who at Versailles had been a First Lieutenant in Artois’sbodyguard and was now a regular visitor to the Dundas familyat Arniston. Fragmentary records highlight their daily round;the kitchen chimney which smoked, the cloth on the billiardtable which needed replacement, and so on.37

Meanwhile in London, Artois, deeply affected by the deathof Louise de Polaston, led a quiet life surrounded by a fraternityof ultra-royalist émigrés and under the strict spiritual super-vision of the Abbé Latil.

As Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, Artois entered Parison 12 April 1814 but the Restoration so long awaited was pain-fully short-lived. The Hundred Days and Napoleon’s defeatat Waterloo ushered in a second restoration of Louis XVIIImore lasting than the first. Until his death in 1824 he gov-erned France by maintaining a delicate balance between thesurvivors of the Ancien Régime, the Napoleonic administra-tion and the emergent liberal intelligentsia. Artois became thenucleus of the ultra-right. His short reign from 1824–30 wasan unsuccessful attempt to turn back the clock and on 2 August1830 he abdicated the throne in favour of the Duc d’Angoulême.

After a short stay in Dorset under the leaking roof of Lul-worth Castle, Charles X sailed to Newhaven, a fishing villageclose to Edinburgh, where he and the Duc de Bordeaux dis-embarked on 20 October 1830. The latter

leaped ashore with all the agility of youth and the confidenceof innocence. while,

Charles was cautious, staid in his gait, walked remarkablyerect, but there was a shade of gloom in his countenance. Noman cried God save him. No joyful tongue gave him a wel-come back and Heaven for some strong purpose, steel’d theheart of the spectators.38



This time there was no commander-in-chief and no 21 gunsalute. Whig attitudes predominated. The Edinburgh presswas blatantly hostile until the call for tolerance came from SirWalter Scott, whose words had long shown his sympathy forunfortunate royalists:

the effect of this manly admonition was even more completethan the writer had anticipated. The royal exiles were receivedwith perfect decorum, which their modest bearing to allclasses, and unobtrusive, though magnificent benevolenceto the poor, ere long converted into a feeling of deep andaffectionate repectfulness.39

The Newhaven crowd, some wearing white cockades, wasfriendly enough. One fish-wife thrust herself forward andcalled out, ‘O, Sir I’m Happy to see ye again among decenfolk.’ On being asked her name she replied, ‘My name is KirstyRamsay, Sir, and many a guid fish I haw gien ye, sir, and manya good shilling I hae got for’t thirty years sin-syne.’ She wasduly rewarded with half-a-crown and an order for 400 oysters.

The second residence at Holyrood, which lasted from Octo-ber 1830 until August 1832, was characterised by the absence ofany real hope of a Restoration. The bourgeois figure of LouisPhilippe, a constitutional monarch on the throne of France,suited the British far better than the absolutism of Charles X.The latter became increasingly aware of the difficulty of hisposition induced him to seek a more politically appropriaterefuge in Austria. The Duke of Wellington wrote to a friend on28 September 1832:

I am inclined to believe that the retreat of Charles X fromEdinburgh was a measure of prudential anticiption, on hispart, of a course which he conceived was to have been pre-sented to him in a short period of time.40

The politics of the residents of Holyrood were of little interestto those beyond their immediate circle. Issues concerning theRegency led to in-fighting. Charles X, the Dauphin and MarieCaroline, widow of the Duc de Berri described by Walter Scottas ‘that giddy lady’, squabbled over their rights should theoccasion of a return ever arise.41 Marie Caroline, dissatisfiedwith the available rooms in Holyrood, occupied a house inRegent Terrace where the Dauphin and Dauphine were also



installed. It is an irony that that sedate terrace once housed atthe same time l’orpheline du Temple and the mother of l’enfant dumiracle.

The education of the Duc of Bordeaux and his sister PrincessLouise provided a focus of activity for the royal inhabitants ofHolyrood. Both celebrated their first communion at St Mary’sin 1831. At the first, abbé Busson off iciated,

who for this important act [ . . . ] sacrificed his position withthe most noble lack of self-interest.42

For that of the Duc de Bordeaux, the service was presidedover by the Cardinal de Latil and the occasion marked by thepresentation to the church of a suitably inscribed monstrance[a vessel for venerating the Host].

The governor to the young prince was the Baron de Damaswho thought Holyrood ‘good enough for a private citizen’ butinsufficient as the residence of a monarch; he was critical of thefurnishings; ‘a few old pieces of mahogany covered with printedcotton’.43 The baron may perhaps be forgiven because his bed-room also served as a public passage, though later he des-cribed himself as, ‘more suitably lodged’.

There was also an incident where Charles X found himselfembroiled in litigation to do with matters which remainedunsettled from the first period of residence. The first hintappeared in the Scotsman newspaper:

We hear that nine carriages bearing the ex-royal arms ofFrance have been arrested in the hands of an expensivecoach-maker in Edinburgh.44

This report proved accurate and a writ from Francis Simon,Comte de Pfaffenhoffen, claiming 446 000 French francsalleged still to be due as a result of guarantees which he hadgiven on behalf of the Princes more than 30 years before, initi-ated a law-suit which dragged on during the entire royal stay andwas not finally resolved until 1839.45

In contrast to the first visit, during the 1830–32 stay, CharlesX lived like a private individual. By this time, a Catholic church,St Mary’s, Broughton Street, had been built and a royal pewwas duly installed.46 The ex-King ‘clad in a blue coat and whitetrousers and wearing a star’ attended mass with the Dauphinand Dauphine and other members of his entourage.47



Charles X accepted his fate and was reported to have said tothe Duc de Brissac: ‘Ah well, we are here for the second time!We must be quite resigned, God has willed it.’ and to the Duch-ess of Hamilton, ‘I meant well, therefore I lay my head peace-ably down to rest’.48 He was a regular visitor to many of thelocal gentry. Names such as Hope and Wedderburn crop upin French diaries and memoirs as do those of the Duke andDuchess of Hamilton. A particular friend was the Earl ofWemyss whom Charles X had known in Paris and there weremany expeditions to Gosford his estate on the coast to the eastof the city. According to De Damas, all the family spoke Frenchfaultlessly and, for once, he felt at home.49 A carefully vettedselection of children were permitted to play with the Duc deBordeaux and Princess Louise.

Charles X, the Dauphin and the Duc de Bordeaux left Edin-burgh on 20 September 1832 with affectionate farewells, bothofficial and unofficial, formal and informal, to the people whohad received them in the Palace and the city. At Newhaventhere was a bodyguard formed by the Society of NewhavenFishermen, keeping clear the entrance to the Chain Pier,‘which was crowded with a large assemblage of respectablepersons’.50

Their departure brought to an end a sad episode in the his-tory of the French monarchy but one which had forged lastinglinks between the city of Edinburgh and the Bourbons. TheScotsman reported:

The conduct of the whole party, since their re-appearancein the city, has given satisfaction to those who have interestedthemselves in their fortunes. The ex-King especially, livesstrictly retired. When he walks out, he is always accompaniedby one or two, or three gentlemen and appears in the dressof a respectable citizen; he assumes no consequence – heneither courts, fears nor shrinks from the public gaze, buthis whole bearing evinces that he is fully conscious of hismisfortunes, and the consequent sufferings they have occa-sioned. Those who have had opportunities of seeing him,assert that his whole deportment demonstrates that he isconscious that he is fallen from the pinnacle of human great-ness, ‘never to hope again’.51



NOTES

1. Pryse Lockhart Gordon, Personal Memories and Reiniscences, Edin-burgh,1830, vol. I, p. 388. General Drummond was adjutant andquartermaster-general for Scotland.

2. Victor Hugo, Les Rayons et les Ombres, Paris, 1839. 3. English travellers sent back reports from émigré centres in the Rhine-

land, detailing the ineffectiveness of the princes, the ‘levity, vanity andpresumption’ of their followers, and the miseries of their humbleradherents. Gentlemen’s Magazine, vol. LXII, April 1792, pp. 295–6.Letter from Spa dated 17 April 1792.

4. Jacques Vivent, Charles X, Dernier Roi de France et de Navarre, Paris,1958, p. 155.

5. Henri Forneron, Histoire générale des émigrés pendant la Révolutionfrançaise, Paris, 1884–90, 3 vols, vol. I, p. 138.

6. Exchequer Letter Books, Edinburgh, and PRO H.O. 103/2 p. 2. 7. Edinburgh Advertiser, 8 January 1796. 8. Francis Steuart, The Exiled Bourbons in Scotland, Edinburgh, 1908,

Chapter II. 9. Pryse Lockhart Gordon, op. cit., p. 390.

10. Robert Chambers, Walks in Edinburgh, 1830, p. 149. For Louise dePolastron see Vicomte de Reiset, Louise d’Esparbes, comtesse de Polastron,Paris, 1907, and Monique de Heurtas, Louise de Polastron, Paris, 1983.

11. Duchesse de Gontaut, Mémoires, Paris, 1891, p. 70. 12. Aglae Duchesse de Guiche [ob.1803] was buried in a vault in the

chapel of Holyrood, sharing it with the remains of Darnley, husbandof Mary, Queen of Scots, until her coffin was removed in pomp in the1820s.

13. Léonce Pingaud, Correspondance intime du Comte de Vaudreuil et du Comted’Artois, Paris 1889, 2 vols.

14. It is reported that the Duc de Polignac accepted his wife’s death with‘assez de philosophie’ while Vaudreuil was inconsolable. He latermarried his young cousin Josephine. Pingaud, op. cit., vol. 2, pp.287–9.

15. John Kay, Edinburgh Portraits, The re-issue of 1877 is the most com-plete and accessible.

16. Francis Steuart, The Exiled Bourbons in Scotland, Edinburgh, 1908, p. 53. 17. Pryse Lockhart Gordon, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 391. 18. See, for example, Scots Magazine, April 1796, p. 285. The Edinburgh

Advertiser, 4 March 1796, carries a particularly colourful notice of afirework display on behalf of its rival the Royal Circus, ‘By desire ofHis Royal Highness the Duke of Angouleme’.

19. Buccleugh Archives, Drumlanrig. 20. For a list of those who attended the early levées see F. Steuart. 21. Pingaud, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 247. 22. Pingaud, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 250. A touching letter from Sérent to Artois

(presumably intercepted) written in Jersey and dated March 1796 is Ithe archives of the Quai d’Orsay, Fonds Bourbons, 626.



23. Comtesse de Boigne, Mémoires, vol. 1, pp. 130–3. 24. Francis Steuart, op. cit., p. 47. 25. These dates are deduced from Angoulême’s letters to the Duchess of

Buccleugh. 26. Duchesse de Gontaut, Mémoires, p. 70. 27. See Lord Mackenzie Stuart, A Royal Debtor at Holyrood, Stair Society

Miscellany 1, Stair Society publication, 1971, Edinburgh, vol. 26, p. 193. 28. Edinburgh City Archives. 29. Fonds Bourbons. 30. Lady Louisa Stuart, Gleanings from an old Portfolio, 1895, privately

printed. 31. Scots Magazine, p. 705. 32. Arnot, History of Edinburgh, 1788, p. 308. 33. Scottish Record Office, Exchequer Letter Books. 34. The Trotter accounts are in the Edinburgh University Library, Laing

MS II499/29. For a valuable account of the surviving furniture, seeMargaret Swain, The Connoisseur, January 1978, p. 27. An overall pic-ture can be gathered from a synopsis of expenditure, Scottish RecordOffice, Exchequer, Declared Accounts, 1795–1801.

35. Henry Courtoy, Historical Guide to the Abbey and Palace of Holyrood, 2ndedn, Edinburgh, 1834, p. 204.

36. Scottish Record Office: Exchequer Letter Books. 37. Scottish Record Office: Exchequer Letter Books. 38. Scotsman, 1830, p. 687. See also Annual Register, pp. 172–3;

Gentleman’s Magazine, p. 363 and the text of the 1877 edition of Kay’sPortraits.

39. John Gibson Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott, Edinburgh edition,1903, vol. IX, p. 323.

40. Wellington Dispatches, 28 September 1832, New Series, viii, p. 415,quoted by Francis Steuart, p. 126.

41. The Duc de Bordeaux was the son of the Duc de Berri who was assas-sinated on 13 February 1820. He was born on 28 September 1820 andin monarchist eyes was – l’enfant du miracle because he assured the suc-cession. The Duc and Duchesse, d’Angoulême were childless. WhenCharles X abdicated therefore it was in favour of the Duc de Bordeaux,Comte de Chambord who was in monarchist eyes Henri V of Franceand of Navarre.

42. Duchesse de Gontaut, op. cit., p. 377. 43. De Damas, Mémoires, vol. 2, p. 215. 44. Scotsman, 1830, p. 715. 45. The voluminous printed documents associated with the allegations

and counter-allegations are in the Session Papers collection, AdvocatesLibrary, Edinburgh.

46. Their incumbent was James Gillis, later Bishop Gillis who had attendeda Paris seminary from 1818 to 1823. Armed with letters of introductionfrom Charles X, he made a tour of France, Spain and Italy, to raisefunds to build a convent in Edinburgh which became St Mary’sBruntsfield. F. Steuart, op. cit.



47. Francis Steuart, op. cit., p. 106. 48. Duchess of Hamilton, Autobiography, vol. 2, p. 211. 49. De Damas, op. cit., p. 221. 50. Text accompanying Kay’s Portraits, op. cit. 51. Scotsman, 1830, p. 687.


124

8 Le milliard des émigrés: the Impact of the Indemnity Bill of 1825 on FrenchSociety Almut Franke

Cette époque était celle des légendes, créées par malveillance,propagées par crédulité. Une légende demeura, se perpétu-ant avec toutes sortes de grossissements, celle du milliarddes émigrés.1

This was how the historian Pierre de la Gorce saw the Restora-tion period in France in 1926. The creation of this legend ofthe milliard des émigrés shows very clearly how the memory of anevent is used and manipulated, how time and memory interactwith each other, and how collective memory can be influencedin order to establish a view of the past that justifies the presentpolitical regime.

The question of indemnification during the Restoration wasin fact a debate over the legitimacy of the Revolution and theEmigration, and, with the help of the catchphrase milliard desémigrés, this debate can be followed throughout the nineteenthand into the early twentieth century. It is an illustration of howremembering and forgetting are used both by governmentsand their oppositions to create an image of the past.

In 1825 the émigrés were indemnified for the losses theyhad sustained due to the confiscation of their properties. Inthe ten years preceding the Indemnity Bill, there had beenintense discussion in the press and in the two Chambers aboutthe moral legitimacy of Revolution and Emigration and aboutthe place of these two phenomena in the national past. Themoney to be allocated for the indemnification was calculatedto be about one thousand million francs but it was to be distri-buted in government bonds bearing an interest of 3 per cent.The émigrés or their heirs had to make a claim proving their


Almut Franke 125

eligibility to the Directeur général des domaines whose job itwas to establish lists detailing the size, the situation and thevalue of the confiscated properties. The Prefect of each Depart-ment and his council then passed a judgement on the legitim-acy and the accuracy of the claim before a special Commission deliquidation in Paris gave a definite decision.2

The law specified that this process of identification must becompleted within five years. Consequently, one could assumethat in 1830, when the King and the government were over-thrown, the matter was concluded. Indeed, most historianswho have treated the Indemnity Bill have not continued theirstudy beyond that point.3

Yet when the July Revolution broke out, more than 30 000claims had reached the prefectures of the respective Départe-ments and there remained several thousand claims which hadnot come before the Commission de liquidation due to admin-istrative problems and delays. So, far from being concluded,the question of the indemnity re-entered parliamentary debatesand the phrase milliard des émigrés, although convenient andwidely used, was incorrect because in reality the sum was sig-nificantly less.4

Not only in 1830, but also in 1848 and 1851, the legend ofthe milliard des émigrés was resurrected. There was a furtherrevival of the issue in the early twentieth century at the time ofthe separation of Church and State, in relation to the confisca-tion of the Church assets. Sources are at best scarce becauselittle remains of the official records. The majority of the docu-ments concerning the Direction des Domaines, held in thearchives of the Ministry of Finance at Bercy, were burnt duringthe Commune in 1871. Yet despite the loss of these officialsources, there are many references to the indemnity issue inthe work of historians of the Restoration period and in thememoirs of the émigrés themselves.

In the Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, published byPierre Larousse in the first years of the Third Republic, thearticle entitled ‘Émigrés’ gives a very severe judgement on theEmigration and also on the indemnity:

[. . . ] il est incontestable que, prise dans sa généralité, l’émi-gration eut tout d’abord le caractère odieux d’appel àl’étranger, de révolte contre la nation. [ . . . ] ils arrachèrent à



la France le trop fameux milliard des émigrés (1825). C’étaitle salaire de leurs trahisons et de leurs complots.5

The article ‘Milliard’ contains also a few sentences about themilliard des émigrés and repeats the devastating judgement:

Cette libéralité envers des hommes généralement regardéscomme justement punis pour avoir porté les armes contreleur patrie, armé l’Europe contre nous et troublé pendantvingt ans la France par leurs intrigues et leurs trahisons, alaissé un long souvenir d’impopularité. A diverses époques,l’opposition a pu agiter les esprits en demandant la restitu-tion de ce fameux milliard.6

The catchphrase milliard des émigrés was initially used duringthe Restoration by the liberal opposition in order to slur theadvocates of the Indemnity Bill by damning the achievementsof the Revolution. Under subsequent regimes, the meaningevolved and the term served to condemn the Emigration andthe Restoration together. The Emigration was gradually sub-stituted for the Revolution as the target of universal condem-nation in politics and the two above quotations show that everydebate over the indemnity issue successfully opposed Revolu-tion and Emigration. This outcome reflected a patriotic judge-ment condemning the émigrés which prevailed not only duringthe debate over the Indemnity Bill in 1825, but throughoutthe whole of the nineteenth century.

Yet, because the liquidation of the indemnity was not com-pleted within the prescribed five-year period, the July mon-archy had to tackle the problem of the remaining claims. InDecember 1830 the Minister of Finance and President of theCouncil of Ministers, Jacques Laffitte, proposed to the Cham-bers a new law which would abolish the fonds commun de réserve.This was a reserve of about three million francs destined forthose émigrés, eligible for indemnification, who had been dis-advantaged by various circumstances in the sale of their prop-erty during the different revolutionary periods.7

Laff itte stated that the July monarchy agreed to accept thedebts of the Restoration but that it was not willing to do morethan the Indemnity Bill had itself intended. Laffitte cited thefact that the fonds commun had only been attributed ‘à titre con-ditionnel’. Its dissolution required a new piece of legislation


Almut Franke 127

which the Restoration government would not have consideredappropriate. This law would have to be promulgated by theJuly monarchy and it was Laff itte who asked the Chambers:‘Cette loi, seriez-vous disposés à l’adopter?’8

The deputy, Baudet-Lafargue, employed the image of the‘splendide festin du milliard des émigrés’ offered by theFrench nation: ‘C’est notre France qui a donné ce festin, sadesserte peut et doit lui appartenir’.9 The metaphor of thesplendid feast dated from the debate over the indemnity in1825, where it had been used by General Foy, the most brilliantspeaker of the liberal opposition. The debate in December1830 about the abolition of the reserve fund echoed thespeeches of 1825: all the stereotypes, the accusations and theinsults re-emerged, but this time the other way round. Therevolutionaries were no longer the ‘vaincus’. By 1830 the menof the Restoration had taken their place.

Adolphe Thiers showed himself very clearly as a vainqueur, ashe declared that the indemnity was ‘un des plus grands dom-mages qui aient été faits au pays’.10 In his opinion, the JulyRevolution proved that the Indemnity Bill had not achieved itsgoal, the reconciliation between revolutionaries and émigrés.In his eyes, this reconciliation was impossible: ‘Il y a des partisqui ne se pardonnent pas’.11 The men of the Restoration were asmuch the enemies of France as the indemnity was an injustice.Thus, Thiers considered the abolition of the fonds commun to be anecessary measure. Laffitte called the indemnity, ‘un acte de spol-iation envers l’État [. . .] un acte de force en faveur des émigrés’.12

In 1825 the confiscation and the sale of the national goodshad been denounced as spoliation. This term spoliation was sofrequently used that one could get the impression that theprimary objective of the July Revolution was victory over theémigrés. Consequently, nobody was touched by the conciliatorywords of the Marquis de Maleville who appealed in the Cham-bre des Pairs:

Pourquoi faut-il que [ . . . ] quelques personnes aient cru de-voir remettre en jugement l’émigration, et faire le procès àla loi même de l’indemnité? Ne serait-il pas bien temps delaisser au passé les discordes et les passions qui en ont con-tristé l’histoire? Les sollicitudes et les périls du présent nenous suffisent-ils pas?13



The Comte de Montalembert defended the Indemnity Bill andasked if it was really necessary ‘de mutiler une de nos plus belleslois pour rendre la guerre nationale et populaire?’14 He was refer-ring to Laff itte, who had the foresight to establish a link be-tween the abolition of the fonds commun and events in Belgiumwhich might lead to a war, by suggesting that the three millionfrancs of the fonds commun should be employed to reinforce thearmy. The financial situation in France was very precarious:the year 1831 began with a deficit of one hundred millionfrancs.15

The bill abolishing the fonds commun was promulgated inJanuary 1831. The regular liquidations of the indemnity car-ried on until 1832. At the end of that year, the Commission deliquidation was dissolved. But the catchphrase milliard des émi-grés re-emerged throughout the century in times of financialcrisis. In addition, there remained dozens of unsolved cases,and the persons still claiming the liquidation of an indemnityturned towards the Commission des pétitions of the Chamberswith their complaints.

In February 1848, France was in euphoric mood, as it hadbeen in the first months after the July Revolution. But the dif-ference was that, this time, the whole political system hadchanged. In 1848, as in 1830, disenchantment soon took theplace of euphoria. At the beginning of March, the State was onthe verge of financial collapse. The stock market panicked,some Parisians sold their luxury goods and fled the capital.16

The first task of the Provisional Government was to putthrough financial reform. Not only was the Minister of Finance,Louis Antoine Garnier-Pagès, concerned about the financialreform, but the whole of Paris was focused on how to cope withthe situation and did not understand the government’s diffi-culty in finding a solution. Thousands of Parisians met inclubs, discussed various measures and sent delegations to theHôtel de Ville to present them. Newspapers proposed severalprojects and every day a barrage of brochures reached theministry.17 The walls were covered with posters. One of themclaimed:

Aux grands maux, les grands remèdes! Le gouvernementde la Restauration a exercé sur la France un vol d’UN MIL-LIARD pour indemniser des Émigrés! [ . . . ] Le Milliard volé


Almut Franke 129

à la France! Un milliard, voilà un chiffre régénérateur. [ . . . ]La réclamation de ce Milliard est le droit du Peuple; le fairerestituer, c’est le devoir du Gouvernement.18

After the restitution of the milliard, attention would then turnto the invasion of 1814 and 1815 and to the revolutions of 1830and 1848, because the émigrés were also held responsible forthe financial burden of these events.

But instead, the Provisional Government decided to levy anew tax of 45 centimes on every franc already paid, whichwould increase revenue by between 160 and 190 millionfrancs.19 The public’s resistance to this tax increase resulted inriots, payment refusals and the threatening of those who werewilling to pay. The Minister of Finance, Garnier-Pagès, com-plained about the naïvety of most proposals. His own notes,written to justify his actions, show that the poster quoted abovewas not an isolated case:

Des incitations, des sommations pour l’adoption de ceprocédé, que les uns appelaient restitution et les autres né-cessité politique, couvraient les murailles et surgissaient desClubs: Les Bourbons, ramenés par l’étranger, avaient forcéla France d’indemniser des gens justement condamnés,d’après les lois et coutumes de l’ancienne monarchie, pouravoir pris les armes contre la patrie. Un milliard, octroyépar le bon plaisir de la royauté, voté par un parti, par unemajorité de pairs et de députés la plupart intéressés dans laquestion, malgré l’énergique opposition de tout le pays,avait été imposé de force. C’était une spoliation, un partagede dépouilles publiques. Ce que la force avait fait, le droitcommandait de la défaire. [ . . .] La monarchie de Juillet avaitannulé les fractions non distribuées de ce milliard: la Répub-lique devait faire plus, et exercer son droit absolu de révision,d’annulation, de restitution. Ce milliard arracherait la Franceà ses misères, à ses douleurs. Le Gouvernement provisoireserait coupable s’il ne saisissait ce moyen du salut public.20

Thus, the old reproaches against the émigrés resurfaced.Garnier-Pagès saw in these accusations an attempt to win thepeople of the cities and the provinces over to the Republic andthereby, to demean the monarchy and the nobility. But in hisview, it also damaged the State because it reawakened:



[. . . ] les anciennes divisions, les haines éteintes, les ven-geances assoupies; ressusciter le spectre sanglant du passé,avec toutes ses angoisses et toutes ses terreurs; couper denouveau le territoire en deux: les biens domaniaux et les biensnationaux; jeter l’inquiétude sur les droits de la propriété,sur l’origine de ces droits; c’était sanctionner et léguer àl’avenir de la France la loi du vainqueur.21

This demand for the restitution of the milliard des émigrés illus-trates how selective the memory of this event was and how itwas applied to the contemporary political climate. The postermade the solution sound simple: the decree it proposed wouldput the whole financial situation back on its feet in two para-graphs. The catchphrase milliard des émigrés was engraved inthe public memory. One referred simply to le milliard, andgave no consideration to whether the sum was really a milliardor to how the money should be returned.22

And from whom could one take the money? Garnier-Pagèspointed out that in the last 25 years, the recipients hadchanged several times so that it would be impossible to recoverthe money. This argument recalls the debates of the Restora-tion period, when the return of the biens nationaux was consid-ered impossible for the same reason: the diversity of ownersand the difficulty in finding the first buyers.

Over and over again the financial administration was con-fronted with the consequences of the Indemnity Bill. Whenthe Commission de liquidation was dissolved at the end of1832, the remaining claims and the complaints of those whowere not satisfied with the indemnity they had received weresent to the Ministry of Finance. But the Ministry of Financedenied responsibility, and the petitioners were forced to turnto the Conseil d’Etat and the two Chambers. A good exampleis the demand of the Gauthier brothers dating from 1844. Inthe Year III, the two brothers recovered their land which hadbeen confiscated by mistake: the Gauthier brothers had notemigrated as had been presumed. Three years later, in theYear VI, the land was once more confiscated and sold, but thebrothers received a part of the retail price. As a result of thisconfiscation the brothers obtained an indemnity of approxi-mately 14000 francs in 1825. However, they considered thistoo low and demanded a supplement. The most interesting


Almut Franke 131

part of their claim is its reasoning, which was very appropriatefor 1844. The brothers differentiated themselves explicitlyfrom the émigrés whom they qualified as

des personnes qui ont été dépouillées de leurs biens par uneapplication juste et régulière des lois révolutionnaires.

Paradoxically, they were not émigrés, their dispossession was amistake, and yet they claimed an indemnity which met the realvalue of the confiscated land.23 Their demand was not granted.

The over-riding preoccupation of the government was tobury the sensitive issue of the émigrés and the milliard and torelegate it, and them, to history.

[ . . . ] cette loi, consacrée déjà par le temps, a du moins cemérite: c’est d’être comme la pierre scellée sur un passé oùsont ensevelies des passions, des haines, et des guerres dé-plorables, qui ont trop longtemps déchiré notre patrie.24

With these words the reporter of the Commission des pétitions ofthe Chambre des députés rejected a proposal concerning therevision of the indemnification of the émigrés. On 12 March1851, three years after the decree of the tax of 45 centimes,the three deputies, Lagrange, Ducoux et Colfavru, demandedthe reimbursement of this tax by the means of the completerepayment of the milliard des émigrés.25 Ducoux proposed anadditional tax to apply only to the indemnified personsuntil such time as the sum of one milliard francs had beenrecovered. Lagrange claimed that even the interest should berepaid. Colfavru, the most unassuming of the three, demandedonly the payment of a sum equivalent to the expense of the 45centimes tax: a sum of 174,212,404 francs and 26 centimes. Hewas precise about the figure involved, whereas the indemnitywas just called the milliard. The Commission des pétitionsaccused the three deputies of wishing to return to the tempes-tuous time of the Restoration, to revive bitter reminiscencesand

[. . . ] de mettre aux prises de nouveau l’émigration et laFrance révolutionnaire, de grandes infortunes et des loisterribles; de réviser, enfin, après soixante ans, avec les têteset les passions d’un autre âge, un grand procès historiquedont nos pères ne nous avaient pas légué le fardeau.26



The merit of the Indemnity Bill consisted in putting an end toquestions of property rights and confiscation. If the indemnitywas to be revised, these principles would be attacked. Thereproaches made against the speakers of 1825 were now levelledat the petitioners of 1851. The committee decided to prohibitany discussion of the events of 1825, because irrespective ofthe result, such a discussion would disturb the quiet, the security,and the confidence of many families.

André Gain concluded in his study of the indemnification ofthe émigrés that the three deputies’ proposition of 1851 wasthe last attempt to have the milliard reimbursed. After that,stated Gain, ‘la question du milliard des émigrés entra défini-tivement dans l’histoire.’27 But the past and the memory of thepast, were they definitely buried? The great historical trials ofthe Revolution and the Restoration, did they really come to anend at that point? In fact, there were no more parliamentarydebates after 1851 on the indemnity issue, although petitionswere made in 1885, 1886, 1887 and 1891 by a certain Mon-sieur Lépine de Ligondès who obstinately claimed the reim-bursement of the retail price of his ancestors’ castle withoutany success.28

The inspector of finance, Geslié, wrote in a report that thenumber and value of the remaining émigré goods was so mod-est that it would not be worth bothering the Chambers. And headded: ‘Il semble, d’ailleurs, inopportun de réveiller cette vie-ille question des émigrés’.29 But the case was not closed. Untilthe 1920s there existed a Commission des émigrés at the Min-istry of Finance which had to cope with the remaining claims.It was the intention of the Ministry of Finance to appropriatethe last of the unclaimed émigré goods. In a circular datingfrom February 1900, the Directeur général des domainesasked for a list to be established in each Department namingthe émigré goods which remained in the possession of theState.30 Most of the lands which had not been sold during theRevolution and thus remained in the possession of the Statehad already been returned to the former owners by the Resti-tution Bill of December 1814. Consequently, in most of theDepartments there were no more émigré goods and three-quarters of the Departments sent back an empty list. But 23Departments reported 50 cases. In the majority of cases, theState had come into possession of the goods because the buyer


Almut Franke 133

had not paid the bill or because the heirs of the émigré couldnot be found or did not claim anything. In 1920, the operationwas repeated, but at this time most of the émigré goods hadalready been sold.31

Three statements by historians at the end of the 19th and thebeginning of the 20th century illustrate that the reconciliationbetween Emigration and Revolution had never been reached.

In 1886, Paul Gourmain-Cornille was full of bitterness whenhe recalled a project voted some weeks before the coup d’étatby Bonaparte on the 18th Brumaire, which had attributed anindemnity to the immortels défenseurs de la patrie.32 The fact that,

[. . . ] ce milliard promis aux patriotes, à titre de récompensenationale, fût distribué aux émigrés pour les indemniser desruines qu’ils avaient accumulées sur le sol de la France,

proved for Gourmain-Cornille l’énormité du crime des émigrés.33

Gourmain-Cornille reverted to the cliché of the émigrés asdegenerate adventurers and accused those who defended themof being royalists.

Frédéric Masson, who is known for his studies on Napoleon,declared openly in a collection of conferences published in1911, that his dislike of the Bourbons dated from his child-hood. In a conference of 1909 with the title ‘Les émigrés etleur retour’ he adopted the simplistic notion of the noble émigréwho conspired against all those who refused to return to theAncien Régime and he defended the confiscation of the émigrélands in the Revolution.34

Some years later, in 1926, Pierre de la Gorce thought thatthe interval of time would be sufficient to treat the Restorationperiod with impartiality:

On a beaucoup écrit sur la Restauration. Si j’entreprends icid’en retracer l’histoire, c’est que le recul des temps rendpeut-être opportune une révision. Les mêmes querelles departis, les mêmes événements de la vie parlementaire quipassionnaient encore, il y a cinquante ans, les vieillards oules hommes d’âge mûr, semblent aujourd’hui surannés. Ilconvient de les noter comme signes caractéristiques del’époque; mais s’y appesantir serait se traîner dans un détail



désormais superflu. C’est dans cet esprit qu’a été conçu leprésent livre, où l’on s’est appliqué moins à accumuler lesfaits qu’à éliminer tous les incidents peu dignes de mémoire.35

But in this last sentence, de la Gorce destroyed the reader’shope for an impartial interpretation. Like Gourmain-Cornilleand Masson, de la Gorce also wanted to manipulate history inorder to create a certain view of the past: there were eventswhich he qualified as ‘unworthy of memory’.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Paul Pradel deLamase, the descendant of an émigré, published two booksabout the confiscation and the sale of the émigré goods. Hecalled it vol and pillage and presented the dispossession of hisfamily as a representative example.36 In a preface he explainedwhy the question of the national lands had gained new relev-ance. If the government thought again about confiscation, thistime it would be the ‘razzia du problématique milliard appar-tenant aux Congrégations religieuses’.37

This sequestration of church land was used by Pradel deLamase in order to compare the present government with thegovernments of the French Revolution who had decreed theconfiscation and sale of the national lands. His aim was to setright the wrongs of the French Revolution towards the émigrés.He claimed a restitution, but not only of the indemnity but ofthe lands themselves – after more than a century! The nine-teenth century was the century of confiscation, said Pradel deLamase, so the twentieth century should become the centuryof restitution.38 The Indemnity Bill became an expropriationbill in this interpretation.39 Nothing was solved by the indem-nity. The claim by the descendants of the buyers of nationallands, that the question of property rights had been solved in1825, was regarded by Pradel de Lamase as a legend.

Only a few of the memoirs written by émigrés contain informa-tion about the extent of the émigrés’ financial losses, or abouttheir hopes and expectations concerning a restitution or an indem-nity. 40 But the Editors’ prefaces sometimes contain a judge-ment on the Emigration or give the reason for the new edition.

An extraordinary example is the new edition of the memoirswritten by the Comte de Neuilly. They were first published byhis nephew in 1865 and then republished in 1941 by LouisThomas, who described himself as a descendant of a legitimistfamily. The preface to this new edition shows, that even in the


Almut Franke 135

middle of the twentieth century, the Emigration was used toserve current political debates. Louis Thomas saw in the life ofthe Comte de Neuilly proof that emigration was always a mis-take. He claimed:

Lorsqu’un pays subit une transformation profonde, si sesfils ne veulent pas devenir étrangers à sa pensée, à ses senti-ments, à sa volonté de reconstruction et de renaissance, ilsdoivent demeurer avec leurs frères de race, sous le ciel quiles vit naître.41

Then Thomas imagined the life of Neuilly as it would havebeen if he had not emigrated: If, instead of joining the army ofCondé, Neuilly had fought in the French army, he would havebecome, under Napoleon, a general or even marshal ofFrance, his name would have been engraved on the Arc deTriomphe, and he would have gone down in the annals of his-tory. In Thomas’s eyes, Neuilly had ruined his life by his emig-ration. That was the lesson to learn from this tragedy, andThomas recommended it to all those who thought about leavingFrance in 1941:

Sauf pour éviter la mort immédiate, on n’a pas le droitd’émigrer. Et dès qu’on le peut, il faut revenir. On n’a pasdeux patries. On n’a même pas le droit de juger la sienne.On sert. Obstinément. Jusqu’au bout.42

NOTES

1. Pierre de la Gorce, La Restauration, 2 vols, Paris 1926–28, vol. 2, p. 75. 2. For details see the exhaustive work of André Gain, La Restauration et les

biens des émigrés. La législation concernant les biens nationaux de seconde origi-ne et son application dans l’Est de la France (1814–1832), 2 vols, Nancy,1928.

3. Gain (see note 2) gives only a few hints. Victor Pierre, Le milliard des émi-grés, Paris 1881, gives some more information about the aftermath ofthe indemnity, but often his references do not withstand checking.

4. The sum definitely paid is to be found in the Compte général des fi-nances of 1842; in the Grand-livre de la dette publique were recordedabout 26 millions francs [25.995.310 francs] in governmental bonds of3% which corresponded in capital to approximately 870 million francs[866.510.333 francs]. See Marcel Ragon, La législation sur les émigrés,



1789–1825, Paris 1904, p. 188, and Marcel Marion, ‘Une légende his-torique. Le milliard des émigrés’, in Le Correspondant, 10.04.1923, p. 118.

5. Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, vol. VII/1, Paris1870, Reprinted Geneva 1982, p. 437.

6. Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, vol. XI/1, p. 267. 7. For the legislation on the émigrés see Marc Bouloiseau, Étude de l’émi-

gration et de la vente des biens des émigrés (1792–1830). Instruction, sources,bibliographie, législation, tableaux, Paris, 1963.

8. Laffitte before the Chambre des députés, 10.12.1830, Archives parle-mentaires, 2e série, vol. 65, p. 438.

9. Baudet-Lafargue before the Chambre des députés, 10.12.1830, Archivesparlementaires, 2e série, vol. 65, p. 440.

10. Thiers before the Chambre des députés, 9.12.1830, Archives parlemen-taires, 2e série, vol. 65, p. 401.

11. Ibid. 12. Laffitte before the Chambre des députés, 1.12.1830, Archives parle-

mentaires, 2e série, vol. 64, p. 700. 13. Marquis de Maleville before the Chambre des pairs, 27.12.1830, Archives

parlementaires, 2e série, vol. 65, p. 623. 14. Comte de Montalembert before the Chambre des pairs, 29.12.1830,

Archives parlementaires, 2e série, vol. 65, p. 660. 15. Louis Blanc, Révolution française. Histoire de dix ans (1830–1840), Brus-

sels 1847, vol. 1, p. 275. 16. A. Antony, La politique financière du gouvernement provisoire (février–mai

1848), Paris, 1909, p. 52. 17. Some of these brochures are stored in the Bibliothèque nationale,

Lb53 – Histoire du gouvernement provisoire. 18. Un milliard! (signé: L’Enfant), Paris s.d. [1848]. 19. République française. Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Recueil des décrets et actes

financiers du gouvernement provisoire, Paris, 1848, p. 47. 20. Louis Antoine Garnier dit Garnier-Pagès, Histoire de la Révolution de

1848, Paris, 1868, pp. 90–1. 21. Ibid., p. 91. 22. The restitution of the milliard would not have been very profitable:

only 273 millions francs, as in 1848 the bonds of 3% – were only at32,50. See Marcel Marion, Histoire financière de la France 1715–1875,Paris, 1914–1928, vol. 5, p. 86.

23. Petition of Antoine Gauthier towards the Chambre des pairs,14.04.1844, Archives nationales, CC 470: Chambre des Pairs. Péti-tions de la session de 1845, dossier 558.

24. Corne before the Assemblée législative, 31.03.1851, in Compte rendudes séances de l’Assemblée nationale législative, vol. 13:23.03.-9.05.1851, Paris 1851, Annex, p. 47.

25. Assemblée nationale législative, 1851. Impressions. Projets de lois.Propositions. Rapports, etc., Paris 1851, vol. 25, No. 1737 (Lagrange),No. 1738 (Ducoux) and vol. 26, No. 1805 (Colfavru).

26. Corne before the Assemblée législative, 31.03.1851 (see note 24),Annex, p. 47.

27. Gain, La Restauration et les biens des émigrés (see note 2), vol. 2, p. 384.


Almut Franke 137

28. Petitions of 1885, 1886, 1887 et 1891. See the report of M. Babaud-Lacroze concerning the petition No. 1155 of a M. Lépine de Ligondès.Assemblée nationale. Chambre des députés, séance du 11.05.1891,p. 862.

29. Report of the inspector of finance, de Geslié, 9.04.1885. Archiveséconomiques et financières, B 14534.

30. ‘[ . . . ] l’État se trouve encore détenteur d’immeubles et de rentes fon-cières, séquestrés sur des émigrés depuis plus d’un siècle et dont la remiseaux anciens propriétaires n’a pu être effectuée, conformément à la loidu 5 décembre 1814, soit en raison de leur affectation à des servicespublics, soit par l’effet de l’inaction prolongée des ayants-droit. Jevous prie de rechercher la consistance exacte et la valeur actuelle desimmeubles et des rentes dont il s’agit qui peuvent exister dans votredépartement et de m’en adresser, avant le 1er avril 1900, ou, à défaut,un certificat négatif.’ Circular of the Direction générale des Domaines,9.02.1900. Archives économiques et financières, B 14534.

31. Circular of the Direction générale des Domaines, 17.03.1920. Archiveséconomiques et financières, B 14534.

32. Paul Gourmain-Cornille, ‘Le milliard des défenseurs de la patrie et lemilliard des émigrés’, in La Révolution française, vol. X, 1886, pp. 592–607, 678–90, 821–31, 898–917, here p. 916.

33. Ibid., p. 594. 34. Frédéric Masson, ‘Les émigrés et leur retour’, in Au jour le jour, Paris

s.d. [1911], pp. 251–86, here p. 277. 35. Gorce, La Restauration (see note 1), vol. 1, preface written the

23.02.1926, p. 1. 36. Paul Pradel de Lamase, Voleurs et volés, coin d’histoire révolutionnaire,

Paris 1901; Paul Pradel de Lamase, Le pillage des biens nationaux. Unefamille française sous la Révolution, Paris, 1912.

37. Pradel de Lamase, Pillage (see note 36), Preface, p. 1. 38. ‘J’ai la ferme conviction que si le XIXe siècle a été, tout entier, le siècle

de la grande spoliation, le XXe sera le siècle de la grande restitution.’Pradel de Lamase, Voleurs (see note 36), Preface, pp. XIII–XIV.

39. ‘L’indemnité du milliard fut essentiellement une loi générale d’expro-priation pour cause d’utilité publique.’ Ibid., p. 400.

40. See Alfred Fierro, Bibliographie critique des mémoires sur la Révolutionfrançaise écrits ou traduits en français, Paris, 1988; Jean Tulard, Nouvellebibliographie des mémoires sur l’époque napoléonienne écrits ou traduits enfrançais, Paris, 1991; Guillaume de Bertier de Sauvigny/Alfred Fierro,Bibliographie critique des mémoires sur la Restauration écrits ou traduits enfrançais, Geneva, 1988.

41. Comte de Neuilly, Dix années d’émigration. Correspondances et souvenirs,publiés par son neveu Maurice de Barberey, Paris, 1865, 2nd edn by LouisThomas, Paris, 1941, Preface, p. 8.

42. Ibid., p. 13.


138

9 French Émigrés in theUnited States Thomas C. Sosnowski

‘Formez vos bataillons!’ encouraged the ‘Marseillaise’, but as weknow, not all Frenchmen rose up and joined revolutionarybrigades. Many sought asylum in nearby lands like northernItaly, Hamburg, Cologne and London. But more daring werethose who chose more distant locations, especially in the UnitedStates, involving a journey of more than two months. Frenchassistance during the War for American Independence, as wellas the influence of Rousseau’s ideas, made the new trans-Atlantic republic an obvious choice for many. Already severalAmerican cities had noticeable French communities: Boston,Philadelphia, and especially Charleston, South Carolina. Herethe émigrés were welcomed, until relations between Franceand the United States deteriorated into an undeclared mari-time war in the late 1790s. But during this decade perhaps asmany as 10000 exiles came to the United States, although noresearch has been done to confirm this figure.1 Most remainedas refugees with no desire to assimilate into US society whichmany considered primitive. Because their primary attentionwas focused on their homeland, many created French Clubsand patronised French-language newspapers in order to followdevelopments in France. Neverthless, a galaxy of luminariesendured the trans-Atlantic journey: Moreau de St-Méry, Vol-ney, Brillat-Savarin, the Duc d’Orléans, Chateaubriand, Lézay-Marnésia, La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Mme de La Tour duPin and even Talleyrand.

Finances were, of course, a major concern for these émigrés.Some, like Orléans and La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, dependedon money sent by their families in Europe. Talleyrand camewith hopes of participating in land speculation.2 Mme de laTour du Pin and her husband purchased a hundred hectarefarm near Troy, New York – perhaps as a way preserving whatremained of their fortune. In spite of his own distaste for thebusiness world, Moreau de St-Méry became a bookseller and


Thomas C. Sosnowski 139

publisher. His publications included a first edition of La Roche-foucauld-Liancourt’s Prisons de Philadelphie and the émigrénewspaper, the Courrier français. His Voyage aux États-Unis del’Amérique implies that this was a successful operation, but theChevalier Pontgibaud de Moré gave a different evaluation:

Nor was I particularly astonished either to learn, somemonths later [after visiting the store] that he was bankrupt,but I may remark that he failed for twenty-five thousandfrancs, and I would not have given a thousand crowns for allthe stock in [his] shop.3

For many the aristocratic style to which they were accustomedwas impossible to maintain in the New World. Madame de laTour du Pin, for instance, who was assisted by several servantsand slaves, found it necessary to do her own cooking with theaid of a French cookbook, La Cuisine bourgeoise.4 On one occa-sion while she was attempting to butcher a lamb for dinner,she was interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Talleyrandwho said: ‘On ne peut embrocher un gigot avec plus demajesté’.5 Surprised, but not upset, she invited him and hiscompanion Beaumetz to partake of the repast.

Some of the émigrés wrote about their travels and otherexperiences in the United States. La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt,who travelled extensively and wrote an 8-volume work as aresult, also kept a private journal which was not published untilthe twentieth century. He became, like some other émigrés,‘explorateurs malgré eux’.6 Lézay-Marnésia published hiscurious Lettres écrites des rives de l’Ohio which excoriated therevolutionary governments of France while proposing the estab-lishment of a utopian settlement (for him, that is) Saint Pierrewith ‘une monarchie libre et si bien organisée’ – a truly aristo-cratic milieu.7 Everyone seems to have heard of Châteaubriandand his American voyage in 1791. However, what he did andwhere he went was greatly distorted by his romantic ruminationsand extensive readings over more than 20 years.8

The émigrés who left some record of their time in the UnitedStates were usually exiles who pined for France, and had littleor no knowledge of the English language. This proved a majorhurdle in the New World. Their reaction was similar to that ofother non-English speaking immigrants; they tended to live inone district of a city and frequented establishments which



catered for their physical and social needs. Apparently Moreaude St-Méry’s bookstore in Philadelphia (then the capital of theUnited States), like that of Dulau in London (see Chapter 3),acted like a French community clubhouse.9 Some did decideto learn English and even contracted with William Cobbett,the noted polemicist and writer, who had recently moved tothe US. In fact, his first published work was Le Tuteur anglais,an English grammar which was addressed to the Frenchreader.10

Another example of isolation was the creation of the settle-ment of Azilum in a remote region of north central Pennsyl-vania. Here the Vicomte de Noailles, Omer-Antoine Talon, andothers attempted to restore the France of the past. Their‘Grande Maison’, unlike the ordinary domicile on the frontier,was a two-storey structure which measured approximately 20by 26 meters and boasted large fireplaces and large glasswindows.11 La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, however, criticisedTalon’s ignorance of the English language and although hepredicted the success of the venture, he thought one road-block remained:

One of the greatest impediments of this settlement willprobably arise from the prejudices of some Frenchmenagainst the Americans [ . . .] Some of them [. . .] declare thatthey will never learn the language of the country or enterinto conversation with an American.12

This isolationism was noticed again by La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt while travelling through the Finger Lakes district ofNew York State (a remote region at this time). Here he meta M. Vatines who had recently cleared approximately eighthectares where he lived with his wife and the works of Rous-seau, Montesquieu and Corneille which he preserved. Whilehe was delighted to see his countrymen,

he [was] prejudiced against Americans, on account of theirunfair dealings and especially because they are extremelydull and melancholy.

La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt concluded that ‘this sort of dis-like of Americans is common to all Frenchmen . . . in this partof the globe’.13



Although he did not share in this opinion, he easily foundfault with Americans, such as those he met in Albany, NewYork. He described them as ‘people of uncouth manners andwithout the least education’; but their opinions, in contrast,‘were just and sensible and their judgments extremely correct’.14

He also claimed that the neighbours of Mme de la Tour du Pinand her husband were indifferent to the cultural jewel in theirpresence.15 But this judgement can be contrasted in a latertome when he lauds, in general, American hospitality towardsstrangers.16

Talleyrand also wrote extensively about his experiences inthe United States in his Mémoires. There he criticised Americansfor over-emphasising ‘the spirit of enterprise’. In fact, heasserted that ‘trop d’activité se tourne vers les affaires et troppeu vers la culture’.17

As a result he found Americans to be coarse nouveaux richeswho little understood and appreciated the sophisticationaccruing from civilised life. He criticised, like La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, American admiration for money. He thought thepossibilities for luxury had arrived too early in the life of theUnited States as a nation: ‘when the first needs of a personhave been satisfied, luxury becomes shocking’. He describedhis visit to the log cabin of a Mr Smith on the banks of the OhioRiver where ‘there was a piano in the living room ornamentedwith beautiful bronzes’. However, when Talleyrand’s compan-ion, Beaumetz, opened it, he was admonished not to play forthe tuner lived more than a hundred miles away and ‘ had notarrived that year’.18 This statement should be compared to theaccount of a similar incident by a refugee from Saint Domingue:

that is sufficient to have the pretext to ornament their par-lors with a fine piece of furniture [piano] though they stilltry to teach the good people that the fine arts are worth-less!19

In other words, Americans had symbols of civilisation like thepiano, but neither the ability, nor the desire to use them.

Other visitors to the United States were not given to lengthydiscussions like Talleyrand and La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt.For example, the Duc d’Orléans, who was much impressed withthe US, especially its geographical wonders and the Indians,decried American ignorance and laziness on several occasions.



Once he said the ‘indolence and churlishness of the working-men [in Tennessee] . . . are unparalleled’. In the same veinhe cast aspersions upon the quality and lack of variety in thefood in the back country inns.20 Another, but more carefulanalyst, Volney, the author of Tableau du climat et du sol desEtats-Unis, which has been acclaimed as one of the best earlygeographical works on this continent,21 said that Americansreferred to themselves as ‘young people’ and this expressiononly demonstrates their

inexperience and the eagerness with which they give them-selves to the enjoyment of fortune and flattery.22

However, he was careful to praise American freedom of thepress and of opinion.

Yet not all émigrés were critical of the United States. Somewere thankful for the asylum provided. One noteworthyexample was the great gastronome, Brillat-Savarin, whosePhysiologie du goût is a pæan to the culinary arts. He lived forthree years in the United States where, for economic survival,he taught the French language and even played in an orchestra.Nowhere does he express that condescension so common inthe writings of other émigrés. He tried to speak the languageof Americans and to dress like them. He even found reason topraise at least one American food – the turkey – which to hispalate was a delicacy. As a result he called himself a ‘dindono-phile’!23 Mme de la Tour du Pin, whose memoirs neverexpressed anger or condescension in her dealings with Ameri-cans, also showed none of the bitterness that others expressed– she was thankful for life and refuge and as well as the love ofher husband. Her criticism focused on the French, not theAmericans; it was La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt who pitiedMadame’s ‘plight’ in Troy, New York, but her own accountsounds very different.24

The negative attitudes of many émigrés towards Americanswere an obstacle to assimilation and the French languagenewspapers were one proof of this unwillingness to adopt thehabits and customs of the local inhabitants. Some lasted only ashort time, but the Courrier français survived for four years inPhiladelphia until the unfolding of the XYZ affair and itsattendant Francophobia. These usually reported almost nothingabout the United States, but instead focused on France and



sometimes other regions of Europe. In its pages one could dis-cover more about events in Warsaw than in Boston or NewYork!25

Nonetheless, some émigrés maintained contacts with Amer-icans. Mme de la Tour du Pin and her husband were happy totravel to Albany, often weekly, to visit the Schuyler family,where they could temporarily enjoy a more elegant lifestyleand converse in French. In his first five months in Philadel-phia in 1794, La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt spent much time atthe home of Benjamin Chew, a noted lawyer and judge. Hisprivate journal relates that almost every day he was a guest atsomeone’s residence. Among his new acquaintances, the mostprominent were Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treas-ury; Henry Knox, Secretary of War (who became a closefriend); John Kean, officer at the Bank of the United States;William Bingham, merchant, banker, and legislator.26 Yet hisEnglish was not perfect and was heavily laden with gallicismsand ungrammatical structures, as one can easily read in hisprivate letters to Knox. For example, while commenting onthe heavy rains he experienced, he wrote: ‘I reached f loods tome only Saturday. . . . ’ Or another time: ‘No distance can methinking less to your kindness. . . . ’27 He also made the acquaint-ance of the Francophile Thomas Jefferson and visited him athis western Virginia mansion, Monticello.

La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Brillat-Savarin, and Mme dela Tour du Pin appear to have been different from manyother notables who apparently maintained close contactsonly with those in their own ethnic communities. OccasionallyTalleyrand met distinguished Americans like Hamilton, butafter President Washington refused to meet him because ofdiplomatic problems, he preferred the company of his compa-triots. Also, his liaison with a mulatto woman, who travelledwith him publicly, scandalised Philadelphians, especiallythe Quakers.28

Despite these problems of adjustment, many émigrés con-tributed to American culture and society. As the ChevalierPontgibaud de Moré related:

But a man must live, and the most curious spectacle was tosee these Frenchmen, fallen from their former greatnessand now exercising some trade or profession.29



A refugee from Saint-Domingue commented about his fellowexiles and émigrés:

one is a gardener, another a school teacher; this one makesmarionettes, that one gives concerts; some teach dancing,others sell confections; the shrewdest ones go into business,and some have already become well enough known to beconsidered illustrious personages. For you know that heregold is the first title of nobility.30

Perhaps the most French city in the United States in the1790s was Charleston, South Carolina. Originally founded byHuguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, this townmaintained noticeable souvenirs of French culture more thana century later. [Even today the Huguenot church has servicesin that language once a month.] Also, an aristocracy based onland ownership governed the city and dominated its social life.The citizens welcomed the arrival of the émigrés and later therefugees from Saint-Domingue. A number of them involvedthemselves with drama and for several years the city supportedtwo active theatres. French names predominated among thelists of actors and actresses. For a while, there was even aFrench Theatre which performed plays in both French andEnglish and depended heavily on France for its repertoire.31

One noted British actor who participated actively in UStheatre in the early nineteenth century, John Bernard, declared:

One of the ruling amusements of the Carolinas was dancing,the French having apparently inoculated all classes in thistaste in its most confirmed state.32

In other words, they tutored the American aristocracy in theart of dancing. He also emphasised the importance of theFrench émigrés in raising the quality of American culture,both in music and drama.

A variety of other areas must also be examined – and thesecannot be detailed here. Apparently there was some effect onthe culinary tastes of Americans – French food was consideredprestigious in some circles, although eating French food couldbe symbolic of one’s politics (whether pro-French or pro-British,i.e. Federalist or Jeffersonian).33 But there is a problem sing-ling out the émigrés as the exclusive source of dietary changesand even of fashions because of the continuous interchange



between French and Americans, since late colonial days. Forexample, one historian ( Jones) claims that the French intro-duced tomatoes to the Americans who considered it a poisonousfruit and used it only as a garnish.34 Yet, Jefferson’s admirerscredit him with popularising their use.

Another area of French influence was the Catholic Church.Usually a rather reclusive group in Protestant America, Catho-lics were scattered in many of the colonies. Their strongestpresence was in Maryland which was originally founded as arefuge for them in the 1630s. Yet even there they remained asmall minority. After the American Revolution, Fr John Car-roll of Maryland petitioned the Pope to establish a US dioceseseparate from that of Québec. The response was the creationof the diocese of Baltimore with Carroll named as its firstbishop. The new bishop quickly turned his attention to streng-thening the Catholic presence in the US by supporting theestablishment of Georgetown University with the help ofex-Jesuits, including some from France, and then by establish-ing a seminary in Baltimore. In the latter effort, he made contactwith the erudite Sulpician Order, recently suppressed inFrance, and encouraged some of its members to establish aseminary. Numerous other non-juring clergy were also wel-comed by Bishop Carroll. As the number of Catholics increasedover the next few decades, many of these émigré priests wereappointed bishops of newly created dioceses: Dubourg at NewOrleans; Maréchal at Baltimore after Carroll’s death; Flaget atBardstown, Kentucky; Bruté at Vincennes, Indiana; GabrielRichard at Detroit (although he died before consecration), andso on. Also, in 1792, some Poor Clares, driven from France,sought refuge in Maryland and founded one of the firstcloistered convents in the United States. Indeed the most notice-able and long-lasting influence that the émigrés had on theUnited States was on the Catholic Church, which f lourishedunder their leadership.35

The emigration in the United States ended almost abruptlyin 1798. Some émigrés had already returned to France by themid-1790s and did not experience the worst of the Franco-phobia which affected many parts of the States: Talleyrand,who helped cause this episode, Mme de la Tour du Pin, whoreturned with her family to claim the ancestral lands underthe terms of an amnesty, and others.



Several factors encouraged the rise of Francophobia. First, itmust be noted that many Americans welcomed the FrenchRevolution as an advance of liberty and the destruction ofmonarchical tyranny but as the Revolution became moreradical and violent many joined the anti-French movement. Themisguided and undiplomatic mission of Edmond Genêt to theUnited States to undermine US neutrality, as well as the Reignof Terror and its excesses, encouraged the pro-British stanceof the Federalist Party whose efforts were crowned with Jay’sTreaty of 1795. The French wanted the United States to keep tothe terms of the original Treaty of Alliance of 1778, which wereobviated by Jay’s Treaty with the British and Washington’sProclamation of Neutrality. The Directory encouraged attackson US vessels in the West Indies in reaction both to the Anglo-American Treaty and the lack of understanding over respons-ibilities ensuing from the alliance. The attacks of the Frenchcorsairs were not the only acts of piracy Americans faced, forthe British continued to stop US ships in order to impress sail-ors. During John Adams’ presidency (1797–1801), the neutralUnited States chose to maintain British friendship, eventuallyengaging in an undeclared war against France as a result ofthe notorious and misguided XYZ Affair.

The deterioration of diplomatic relations between the tworepublics placed the émigrés in an awkward situation at best.From at least 1795 until the summer of 1798, one notices agrowth of anti-French sentiment as reported by them in theirwritings. Moreau de St-Méry emphasised the English procliv-ities of the Federalists to the detriment of the French. In addi-tion, he stated that,

people acted as though a French invasion force might landin America at any moment. Everybody was suspicious ofeverybody else: everywhere one saw murderous glances.

In an entry of 14 July 1798, he stated bluntly:

antagonism against the French increased daily. I was theonly person in Philadelphia who continued to wear a Frenchcockade.

Moreau was also angered by the lack of support from PresidentJohn Adams who as Vice President (1789–97) had patronisedhis bookstore. He was placed on the list of French citizens to be



deported. When queried about the reason for the addition ofMoreau’s name to the list, Adams replied to Senator Langdon ofNew Hampshire: ‘Nothing in particular, but he’s too French’.36

One more example can be seen in Volney’s Tableau wherehe states bluntly that, ‘an epidemic of animosity against theFrench [is] breaking out’ with himself as the object of virulent,verbal abuse. He was angered by the suspicion that he workedas a secret agent of a foreign government. Of course, he ridi-culed the proposal presented to the Congress that would havedeclared the United States ‘the most enlightened and wisestnation on the globe’ which he felt emboldened this hysteria ‘bydeclamations in Congress [ . . . ] and even in colleges by prizesfor [. . .] defamatory theses against the French’. Volney departedfrom the United States in the midst of this fury and completedhis work overseas. Surprisingly, his anger did not obfuscate hisadmiration for American liberty.37

Another significant source of information about this gallo-phobia is the émigré newspaper press. In the Courrier français,editor Pierre Parent often railed against the calumnies and libelthat he found in the US press. He denounced John Fenno’sGazette of the United States for its accusations that the Frenchespecially were ‘spreading trouble and disorder in the UnitedStates’.38

The horrors of this hysteria can be seen in an attack onpatients in a French hospital in Philadelphia by a group ofworkers in August 1796. The editor called for justice, whichapparently was had within a few days with the arrest of theguilty.39 And later that year when fires swept through Charles-ton, Savannah, Baltimore and Boston, the French were accusedof these dastardly acts. Parent this time singled out the notedAmerican lexicographer Noah Webster as one of the perpetra-tors of these lies and then said:

Absurdités, suppositions, interprétations, invectives, injures,outrages, rien n’est négligés pour satisfaire leur haine contrele Peuple Français.40

Unfortunately, mass hysteria has occasionally occurred in UShistory and the Francophobia of the 1790s is only one heinousepisode. One cannot forget the anti-Catholic riots in Boston in1830s, the Red Scare of 1919 and McCarthyism of the 1950s.Whereas in the twentieth century Americans inveighed



against ‘reds’, some of them in the 1790s inveighed againstthose representing a different revolution. As a result in July 1798the Courrier français ceased publication. Moreau de St-Méry,Volney and others returned to France. The vibrant émigrécommunities disappeared, but the United States would onlyhave to wait a few years before a new breed of French émigrés,the Bonapartists, would arrive.

NOTES

1. Fernand Baldensperger, Le mouvement des idées dans l’émigrationfrançaise, 1789–1815 (Paris, 1924; reprinted by Burt Franklin, 1968), I,p. 105. For an introduction to the émigrés in America, consult the fol-lowing works: Frances Sargeant Childs, French Refugee Life in the UnitedStates, 1790–1800 (Baltimore, 1940); Durand Echeverrie, Mirage in theWest: a History of the French Image of American Society to 1815 (Princeton,1957); Bernard Faÿ, L’Esprit révolutionnaire en France et aux États-Unis(Paris, 1925); Howard Mumford Jones, American and French Culture,1750–1848 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1927), Roger Kennedy, Orders fromFrance: the Americans and the French in a Revoluionary World, 1780–1820(New York, 1989); J.G. Rosengarten, French Colonists and Exiles in theUnited States (Philadelphia & London, 1907); and ‘Anne CatherineBieri Hebert’, ‘The Pennsylvania French in the 1790s: the Story ofTheir Survival’, PhD dissertation (University of Texas at Austin), 1981.It should be noted that the émigrés arrived after the census of 1790 andmost departed before that of 1800. Also, at times it is difficult to distin-guish in American sources between exiles from France and those fromSaint-Domingue.

2. See Talleyrand in America as a Financial Promoter, 1794–96: UnpublishedLetters and Memoirs, vol. II, trans. and ed. Hans Huth and Wilma J.Pugh (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1942).

3. Chevalier de Pontgibaud [de Moré], A French Volunteer of the War ofIndependence, trans. and ed., Robert B. Douglas (New York, 1898), pp.128–9.

4. Marquise de la Tour du Pin, Journal d’une femme de cinquante ans, 1778–1815 (Paris: Librairie Chapelot, 1914), II, p. 31.

5. Ibid., II, pp. 31–2. 6. Baldensperger, Le mouvement des idées dans l’émigration, vol. I, Chapter 2. 7. Claude-François Adrien, Marquis de Lézay-Marnézia, Lettres écrites des

rives de l’Ohio (Fort Pitt and Paris, An IX [1801] in Nineteenth CenturyLiterature on Microcards (Louisville, KY: Lost Cause Press, 1956).

8. See The Memoirs of Chateaubriand, ed. and trans. Robert Baldick (NewYork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961) and François-Réné, Vicomte de Cha-teaubriand, Travels in America and Italy (London: H. Colburn, 1828).



9. Moreau de St. Méry, Voyage aux États-Unis de l’Amérique, ed. Stewart L.Mims (New Haven, 1913). This work was been translated and edited byKenneth Roberts and Anne M. Roberts, Moreau de St. Méry’s AmericanJourney, 1793–1798 (Garden City, NY, 1947). Allen J. Barthold in his‘French Journalists in the United States, 1780–1800’, The Franco-American Review I (1937) relates a story about Mme. de St-Mérybreaking up parties with Talleyrand because of the morning’s workschedule. She said to him: ‘Vous ferez demain le paresseux dans votrelit jusqu’au midi, tandis qu’à sept heures du matin votre ami sera forcéd’aller ouvrir son magasin’.

10. G.D. Cole, The Life of William Cobbett (New York: Harcourt, Brace andCompany), pp. 52–4.

11. For one of the best works on Azilum, see Louise W. Murray, The Storyof Some Refugees and Their ‘Azilum’ (Athens, PA, 1917).

12. La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Voyage dans les États-Unis d’Amérique, 8vols (Paris [1799]) was translated into English as Travels Through theUnited States of America (London, 1800). This paper uses the latteredition. For this quotation, see I, pp. 168–9.

13. Ibid., II, pp. 23–7. 14. Ibid., II, p. 53. 15. Ibid., II, pp. 83–4. 16. Ibid., III, pp. 23–4. 17. Talleyrand, Mémoires, ed. Paul-Louis Couchoud and Jean-Paul Cou-

choud (Paris, 1957), I, p. 227. 18. Ibid., I, p. 228. My own studies of American pioneeer life make me

question the validity of this scenario. Also see Talleyrand in America,p. 96 where he emphasises his investments in land in the US and hisplans to seek US citizenship if necessary in order to continue withthese financial activities. Also see Michel Poniatowski, Talleyrand auxÉtats-Unis, 1794–1796 (Paris, 1967).

19. Althéa de Puech Parham, trans. and ed., My Odyssey: Experiences of aYoung Refugee from Two Revolutions, by a Creole of Saint Domingue (BâtonRouge, 1959), p. 203.

20. Diary of My Travels in America, Louis-Philippe, King of France, 1830–1848Stephen Becker, trans. and ed. Henry Steele Commager (New York,1977), pp. 50, 60.

21. See Anne Godlewska, ‘Geography under Napoleon and NapoleonicGeography’, Proceedings, Consortium on Revolutionary Europe (1989) I,pp. 281–302 and also by the same author, ‘Traditions, Crisis, and NewParadigms in the Rise of the Modern French Discipline of Geography,1760–1850’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers (1989), pp.191–213.

22. Constantin-F. Volney, Tableau du climat et du sol des États-Unis (Paris,1803). Also published in English as View of the Climate and Soil of theUnited States (London, 1804), pp. xiv, xvii.

23. [Anthelme] Brillat-Savarin, Physiologie du goût ou méditations de gastron-omie transcendante (Brussels, 1835), pp. 280, 131.

24. Marquise de la Tour du Pin, Journal d’une femme de cinquante ans, 1778–1815 (Paris, 1914), vol. II, especially Chapters 1 to 3.



25. For a good introduction to the émigré newspapers, consult SamuelJoseph Marino, ‘The French Refugee Newspapers in the UnitedStates, 1789–1825’, PhD dissertation (University of Michigan, 1962).

26. See especially La Rochefoucault-Liancourt, Journal de voyage enAmérique et d’un séjour à Philadelphie, ed. Jean Marchand (Paris, [n.d.]).Also see J.-D. de la Rochefoucauld, C. Wolikow, G. Inki, Le Duc de LaRochefoucauld-Liancourt, 1747–1827 (Paris, 1980).

27. Henry Knox Papers (microfilm), 31 Oct. 1795; 27 April 1796. 28. Pontgibaud [de Moré], p. 134. 29. Ibid., p. 128. 30. Parham, pp. 180–1. 31. Eola Willis, The Charleston Stage in the XVIII Century: With Social Settings

of the Time (New York & London: Benjamin Blom, 1968) pp. 190–425passim.

32. John Bernard, Retrospections of America, 1797–1811, ed. Mrs. BayleBernard (New York & London, 1969 reprint of 1887 edition), pp.207, 262; also see Walter J. Fraser, Jr., Charleston!

33. Jones, p. 303. 34. Ibid., p. 302. 35. Henry de Courcy, The Catholic Church in the United States: a Sketch of Its

Ecclesiastical History, trans. and enlarged by John Gilmary Shea (NewYork: Edward Dunigan and Brother, 1856), especially Chapters 6, 7and 8.

36. Moreau de St-Méry, pp. 252–3. For more information about Franco-American relations in the 1790s, consult Alexander DeCondé, TheQuasi-War: the Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France,1797–1801 (New York, 1966) and James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fet-ters: the Alien and Sedition Laws (Ithaca, NY, 1956).

37. Volney, pp. xix, xxii, xvii. 38. Courrier français, 13 July 1796. 39. Ibid., 11 August 1796 and 15 August 1796. 40. Ibid., 28, 30, 31 December 1796.


151

10 The Émigré Novel Malcolm Cook

Critics of French literature in the years 1789–1800 are awareof the dramatic changes which the various genres underwentduring that period of social turbulence. It has been suggestedthat the novel went into decline during the Revolution years andthere is no doubt that the statistics would support this sugges-tion, particularly for the years of the Terror.1 It is also clearthat the Revolution had a dramatic effect on the fiction itinspired. Fiction was, throughout the eighteenth century, aform of social history without precise definition and works offiction therefore reflected social changes as they took placeand often contained allusions to political events and theirinterpretation.2 It is in this context that many of the commentsbelow must be understood.

It is difficult to know how to define the émigré novel and yetit is impossible to begin without a definition. It could be arguedthat émigré novels are those works of fiction which were writtenby émigrés, authors who left France during the Revolution.Perhaps the best known of such authors is Chateaubriand,who left France for America in 1791, fought with the arméedes Princes, was wounded during the siege of Thionville, andescaped to England in 1793. It could therefore be said thatAtala and René are novels of Emigration – but, like so manynovels written by authors who emigrated, the tales do notreally have the sense of contemporary history which the term‘émigré fiction’ surely implies. It might also be suggested thatmemoirs, in which characters give a personal account of theirlives for the benefit of others, have a particular status. Surelythey underline the ambiguity of the fictional work. Whenauthors like Diderot (in the short story, ‘Les Deux amis deBourbonne’) and Mme de Staël, in her ‘Essai sur les fictions’talk about the conte historique in the case of Diderot and theroman historique in the case of Mme de Staël, they are in factreferring to two quite different kinds of work. Diderot seeks inhis ‘history’ the ability of the author to persuade the reader ofthe actual truth of the events described. Mme de Staël expects



authors to introduce into their fictions some elements of his-torical ‘truth’.

Where does this lead the authors of memoirs? It has some-times been suggested that the distinguishing feature is theactual existence of the ‘writer’ of the memoirs. But we knowonly too well that authors who are real people are quite cap-able of modifying truth for their own purposes.3 Other authorsfall into the same category, for example, Mme de Flahaut whoemigrated to Surrey, in England, while her husband, theComte de Flahaut, was guillotined in 1794. Mme de Genlis,whose husband suffered a similar fate in 1793, emigrated inthe same year, living both in England and in Switzerland.However, it could hardly be proposed that she is rememberedtoday for her novels of Emigration, although one, Les PetitsÉmigrés ou Correspondance de quelques enfants (1798) clearlyevokes the reality of life as an émigré. It was translated quicklyinto English, appearing in 1799 as The Young Exiles or Corres-pondence of some juvenile emigrants. Edouard d’Armilly is one ofthe young émigrés of the title who is exiled near Zurich andwho writes letters to friends and relations who, in turn, replyto him. There is no doubt about the political allegiance ofthe author in this account of life outside France. Edouard’sfather, at the beginning of the novel, sets the tone for the textand gives an explanation of the accumulated correspondence:

Veux-tu vivre pour obtenir une grande réputation etl’amour de tes concitoyens? Réfléchis à l’inconstance de lamultitude, porte tes regards vers Paris, vois l’inconséquenceet l’absurdité de ce peuple malheureux, et tu sauras apprécierles couronnes qu’il distribue [. . . ]. Profite, mon ami desévénements terribles qui se passent sous tes yeux; ce ne sontpas des historiens peut-être infidèles ou mal instruits, qui teparlent; c’est ce tableau frappant de toutes les passionshumaines qui se déroule devant toi.4

During the period of Emigration other novels appeared whichmore clearly highlighted the problems and conditions of exist-ence for those authors who found themselves uprooted andforced to adapt to life in a foreign environment. For the pur-poses of this chapter I intend to concentrate primarily onthose novels written in French which have a political message


Malcolm Cook 153

to impart about the process of Emigration and which, natur-ally, must be seen as novels of propaganda.

My first example, perhaps the first example, is Les Emigrantesou la Folie à la mode, par Mme** (Paris, 1792). The title suggeststhat this is a novel which should not be taken too seriously.The author writes in the preface:

Le but que je me suis proposé en écrivant est manqué, si jesuis obligée de le faire apercevoir,

but it remains true that the political message of the novel is farfrom clear. A group of women decide to emigrate for differentreasons, mostly for fun. They tell each other stories about theirlives which explain why they want to join the party. The storiesare not without interest but it would be difficult to give thework a political interpretation. This is unusual for a novelwhich has such a precise and suggestive title. The novel wasreviewed in the Correspondance littéraire of June 1792 in whatwas a fairly conventional style: the novel is briefly describedand the conclusion reads:

Voilà le cadre où l’auteur a fait entrer une douzaine de petiteshistoriettes dont le fond, sans être ni très-neuf ni trèsingénieux, a pourtant plus ou moins d’agrément et de variété.C’est, dit-on, l’ouvrage d’une femme.5

The anonymous Délices de Coblentz, ou anecdotes libertines des émi-grés français poses similar problems of interpretation. Appar-ently published in Coblenz in 1792, the anecdotes give detailsof the life of the émigrés in exile. The Discours préliminairepoints out:

le préjugé le plus injuste et le plus sot est de croire que cen’est que dans sa patrie qu’on peut trouver les seules jouis-sances de la volupté.

Mme de Mesgrigny, writing to her friend Mme de Saluces inParis, points out, provocatively, that life away from home isnot without its compensations:

Il n’est pas étonnant, ma chère amie, que la vie des émigrésfrançais soit si délicieuse; ils ont avant de quitter la France,accaparé tout l’or de ce pays fortuné, ils en ont fait trans-porter les provisions les plus précieuses, au point qu’il ne



vous reste plus à Paris et dans toutes les provinces, que dupapier pour toute ressource. Cette contrée de l’Allemagneest le dépôt des richesses de l’Europe, et (comme vous lesavez) les plaisirs et les jouissances ne sont réservés qu’auxopulents capitalistes. Jugez donc, ma chère amie, des agré-mens que nous goûtons ici, et comparez-les à la vie ennuy-euse et mesquine que vous menez à Paris, où l’on gémitentre l’indigence et le chagrin (pp. 17–18).

This is a text which poses particular problems of interpreta-tion. The descriptions of life in Coblenz are pornographic andit would be easy to dismiss the novel as trivial. However, thelong preface is full of statements which need to be analysed.Paris, the author says, is known for its wealth and its pleasures.It is a city of opulence and luxury, paradise on earth (pp. 3–4).

However, the process of emigration has allowed the transferof such luxury and pleasure which Paris previously offered:

Coblentz est, en effet, devenue en proportion de son éten-due, la rivale de Paris. Ses environs sont délicieux, ses mai-sons de campagne, dans le cœur de l’hyver annoncent lesplaisirs du printemps et de l’amour. Il ne faut pas s’imaginerque les Mécontens françois qui se sont réunis ici dans la réso-lution de porter la guerre dans le sein de leur patrie nes’occupent sans cesse que de leurs intentions hostiles, que deleurs préparatifs militaires; il est des heures et même des joursconsacrés uniquement aux délassemens du cœur. (pp. 9–10)

This is a text which is a puzzle. Is it intended to give a criticaldescription of a debauched and decadent aristocracy andclergy (and thereby be a revolutionary novel) or is it written toantagonise the Parisians living lives of hardship while the richémigrés enjoy themselves in exile?

Two other texts which appeared in the same year, 1792,merit our attention. The first is a short account of the return ofa servant from Coblenz, published anonymously in Paris andentitled: L’Aristocrate converti ou le retour de Coblentz. He is a con-verted aristocrat because he has learned to question the opin-ions of his master with whom he emigrated to Coblenz. Hedescribes his previous condition:

Et réellement je la croyois bien malade cette patrie, l’objetde ma sollicitude; je la croyois dans cet état désespéré, qui ne


Malcolm Cook 155

laisse de ressource que dans les remèdes violens. A travers levoile fasciné que la séduction tenoit constamment sur mesyeux, je la voyois peuplée de fous, tourmentée par les fac-tieux, dévastée par les brigands, ensanglantée par des trou-peaux de tigres, en proie, enfin, à tous les maux que peutentraîner la plus affreuse anarchie; et tant de maux, il estinutile de dire à qui je les attribuois, puisqu’on sait de quellesorte de gens j’étois innocemment l’écho. (pp. 23–4).

He has now learned the errors of his ways and returned toParis. The description of life in Paris is in stark contrast to thatgiven in the Délices. If this is an accurate account of life in Parisin 1792, the capital must have been a very pleasant place inwhich to reside. The people have been transformed by theRevolution into a nation of brothers. Paris is a cultural delight:

Dans un coin c’est un chanteur de couplets patriotiques;dans un autre, c’est un lecteur qui met à sa portée les leçonsles plus sublimes de politique, d’administration et de finance.

[ . . . ] Parcourez les promenades, et voyez si elles ne présen-tent pas l’aspect d’une foire continuelle et brillante. Les plusjolies marchandises provoquent vos désirs, et s’y donnent àsi bas prix. (pp. 46–7)

This pamphlet, which is long at 61 pages, is worth seriousconsideration. I have previously suggested that it is by the nov-elist, Gorjy, about whom very little is known but who wroteone of the most remarkable novels of the French Revolution,Ann’ Quin Bredouille, of 1792.6 The six volumes of the novel rep-resent a severe and ironical attack on the Revolution. How-ever, the sixth volume is completed by this pamphlet, acting asa kind of antidote to the critical account which precedes it.There is textual evidence to suggest that both texts are by thesame author, although the ‘libraire’ introducing the Aristocrateconverti, does not make any explicit statement about author-ship. The novel finishes abruptly and the libraire claims that hehas had to seek material to complete the final volume. Hewrites that he has ‘procuré la bagatelle suivante’:

Elle n’est pas du même genre que le reste mais elle nous a paruavoir son mérite. Peut-être même cette diversité aura-t-elleson prix pour le plus grand nombre des lecteurs. (vi, 143–4)7



It is difficult to understand what is intended by this intro-duction. Certainly the text of the Aristocrate is different fromwhat precedes but what is the libraire implying? The majorityof revolutionary novels pose no problems of interpretation.Yet already we have seen two novels about emigration whichare far from clear.

Another novel of 1792, Liomin’s, La Bergère d’Aranville oul’Emigration, presents no such problems.8 This is a novel which,unusually, describes the landscape of south-west France. It isessentially a love story in which a young peasant woman falls inlove with a fleeing nobleman. The novel is full of revolutionarydiscourse, with a series of arguments about the status of therevolution and the relative merits of the various factions. Lifewill be better if the fugitives can reach Spain. They do and thenovel finishes on a note of happiness.

It is a little surprising that novels like Liomin’s should berepublished as late as 1826. It reads so much like a product ofits time that it is difficult to believe that the overt political state-ments had much resonance for the readers of the next genera-tion. One cannot say the same for Sénac de Meilhan’s majornovel, L’Emigré of 1797. This is the best known example of thekind of fiction we are discussing and it is not difficult to under-stand why it has survived. Sénac left France in 1790 and visitedLondon, Aix-la-Chapelle, Rome, Saint Petersburg and Moscow.He settled in Brunswick, composed his major novel in 1794 andpublished it in 1797. In other words, it was already a historicalnovel when he published it. He wrote in the avertissement:

On ne doit pas perdre de vue que les lettres qui composentce recueil ont été écrites en 1793. La plupart des tableaux etdes sentiments qu’elles renferment sont relatifs à cetteépoque affreuse et unique dans l’histoire.9

Sénac’s novel has become reasonably well known in recenttimes, thanks to Etiemble’s edition of 1965. It is a fine, well-written novel, in letter form, and describes the life and loves ofthe Marquis de St Alban in Prussia. Of particular interest, per-haps, is the third-person account of the life of the hero beforeand during the revolutionary crisis (pp. 1576–97). The Kingand Queen are sympathetically portrayed and the revolution-ary events are described as ‘une dissipation générale’ (p.1588). Personal interest is seen as the guiding force (p. 1591) but


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the turning point for the marquis is the treatment by the peopleof an aristocratic widow for whom he had a romantic interest:

elle fut inhumainement traînée dans un cachot, après avoirvu brûler son chateau; [ . . . ] elle y expira dans des convul-sions affreuses excitées par la terreur (p. 1593).

The author was fortunate to escape the same fate and emigrated. The major focus of the novel is on the relationship between

the marquis and the Comtesse de Loewenstein, in whosehouse he is staying. However, throughout the text, we arereminded of the situation in France and certain key events aredescribed and analysed in some detail. Of particular interest,perhaps, is the death of the Queen:

La fille de Marie-Thérèse, la descendante de vingt Empereurs,a succombé sous la hache des bourreaux. Un sentimentd’horreur m’empêche de vous tracer les circonstances de sadéplorable fin, qu’on a cherché à rendre plus affreuse quecelle du Roi, en y joignant l’ignominie des traitements.(p. 1886–7)

The author seeks to make his major characters sympatheticand, through them, to encourage the reader to share theircritical view of the revolutionary events. The picture of emig-ration and the émigrés is a sad one and the author uses hisentire palette to paint a picture of devastating sensibility:

Si le spectacle de l’émigration déchire le cœur , il est aussiune source de réflexions profondes. On y voit souventl’homme rendu en quelque sorte à son état primitif, et réduità vivre de son industrie; on voit développer un grand courageà des gens qu’on croyait faibles et pusillanimes; mais onapprend aussi que les malheurs généraux, loin d’adoucir leshommes et de resserrer les liens de l’humanité, les mettentdans un état de rivalité et qui dégénère bientôt en hostilité.(p. 1816)

Sénac’s novel is exceptional and powerful. It survives well andcan be read with interest today for the elegance of the proseand the poignant observations it contains. Other novels tooare worth reading but, for reasons which would be too long togo into, have not survived.



A striking example is Hubert de Sevrac, a romance of the eight-eenth century by the English novelist, Mary Robinson.10 Thiswas soon translated into French and obviously appealed to theFrench readership (the first French edition dates from 1796).The mood of the novel is established from the beginning, asthe description of the perfect hero is contrasted with the ter-rible conditions in which he finds himself:

But, at that dreadful period, when the tumult of discontentperverted the cause of universal liberty; when the vast mul-titudes were destined to expiate the crimes of individuals,indiscriminate vengeance swept all before it and, like anoverwhelming torrent, engulphed every object that attemptedto resist its force. It was at that momentous crisis, that thewise, the virtuous, and the unoffending, were led forth tothe scene of slaughter; while in the glorious effort for theemancipation of millions, justice and humanity were for atime unheard or unregarded. (I, 2)

The plot is extremely complicated, telling the story of theSevrac family who are obliged to leave France in the Summerof 1792 to seek refuge in Tuscany. As they cross France they gothrough a violent thunderstorm, which provokes Sevrac to say:

This is but a transient tempest; when will the storm subsidethat pours its crimson torrents over my distracted country,that strikes her children to the dust or scatters them over theearth to beg for mercy? What is to become of her laws? Whowill afford an asylum to her exiled nobles? (I, 6)

The novel is full of sub-plots and mystification, and representsa striking example of the way novels about the Revolutionmove almost imperceptibly to Gothic novels, what the Frenchcall ‘le roman noir’.

A similar interpretation can be offered for Bourlin’s LesAmours et Aventures d’un Emigré (of An VI, 1797).11 It effectivelyconveys the sense of horror and panic which was a feature ofpeople’s lives – the plot is a complicated one, taking the readeroutside France to see how émigrés lived in Hamburg and,eventually, leading to the hero joining the army of Condé. Thepicture of France is one of horror and instability – a commonperception, naturally, of émigré fiction. Here, uniquely I thinkin fiction, we are given a glimpse of the inside of the Tuileries


Malcolm Cook 159

palace during the events of 10 August 1792. After killing apatriote the hero takes the dead man’s uniform and leads themob unwittingly to the room in which his loved one and herfather are sheltering. They survive, thanks to the interventionof a young man who calms the mob, saying: ‘nous sommesarmés pour combattre la tyrannie, nous ne sommes pas desassassins’ (I, 34).

Eventually the three survivors leave Paris to go to Hamburg,whence the hero joins the army of Condé. At the end of thestory the hero returns to France to explain that he is notagainst the Republic but that he hopes that, once established,the example of France will serve as a model of freedom forEurope and the world. The novel is lively and well written andoffers an exciting picture of the dangerous world inhabited bythe individuals of the period. As in a number of émigré novels,there is significant geographical movement and much use ofcoincidence as characters meet again in the most unlikely ofcircumstances. The world of the émigré is dangerous andexciting but, on the whole, it remains a relatively small one.

It is not surprising that émigré fiction should offer Frenchreaders a new kind of novel in which the landscape is moreEuropean and less parochial and where the sense of mysteryand the fear of the unknown become stock features. Perhapsthe finest example of such fiction, for a number of reasons, isLouis de Bruno’s striking novel, Lioncel ou l’Emigré, nouvelle his-torique of 1800. The nouvelle is interesting not only for the detailsof émigré life which it contains, but also because it includes aquite remarkable preface which offers an analysis of what ismeant by the term ‘nouvelle’. The theme of the novel willremind specialists of Balzac’s story Le Colonel Chabert. The hero,thought dead, seeks to rediscover his past. The novel containssome tragic stories of life in Paris during the Terror, so that thepolitical allegiance of the author is never in doubt. Here thenovel of the Revolution and the fashionable Gothic form a per-fect union. European in scope, with a sense of the drama of theRevolution and the excitement offered by a wider, Europeanlandscape, Lioncel is a novel which can certainly be read withinterest and pleasure today. The same cannot be said for allthe novels which fall into this category.

It is possible in this short study to offer only a quick survey ofthe kind of fiction which might be described as ‘émigré fiction’.



Concentrating essentially on texts which appeared during theRevolution, I have necessarily had to give this chapter a cer-tain emphasis: it is important to measure the effectiveness ofnovels in giving an accurate account of the revolutionary real-ity and in particular, here, that of the émigré. It is the period1800–20, so little known to literary critics and yet which sawdramatic developments in French fiction, which needs furtheranalysis. If we take just one example, Corinne (1807) by Mmede Staël, we can see to what extent the whole process of Emig-ration, and the unsettling and mixing of cultures, had ledEuropean literature, art, music and fashion into a new era. Inthe third chapter of Corinne Oswald, the male hero of thenovel, hears the story of a French émigré, called le comte d’Er-feuil. He agrees to offer Erfeuil the chance of accompanyinghim to Italy, impressed as he is by Erfeuil’s generosity towardsan old uncle. Erfeuil has suffered as a consequence of theRevolution, having spent time in Germany, been appreciated,and yet, unable to speak the language, he had felt isolated andoutcast. Corinne paints a moving picture of the social disrup-tion of its time and of the suffering experienced by sensitiveindividuals. Erfeuil’s anguish in exile is typical, it would seem, ofthat of many of his class who were unprepared for the turmoilwhich was to face them in France and for whom emigrationmeant alienation and isolation. What we see in Corinne, per-haps paradoxically, is that it is the Englishman abroad whosuffers the greater anguish. Erfeuil, the Frenchman, is able toenjoy the pleasures of civilised society, while Oswald is keen tosavour the delights of melancholy which the images of naturepresent to him:

Oswald prêtait l’oreille autant qu’il le pouvait au bruit duvent, au murmure des vagues; car toutes les voix de la naturefaisaient plus de bien à son âme que les propos de la sociététenus au pied des Alpes, à travers les ruines et sur les bordsde la mer.12

While the incidents of emigration may not be a major featureof many novels which were written in the period immediatelysucceeding the Revolution, it is clear that many novels alludeto emigration and suggest, I think, that images of the newRomantic movement are linked to the process of travel andmovement across frontiers.


Malcolm Cook 161

As has been said, the concentration here has been on fictionof the revolutionary period but it should be understood thatthe subject is a much larger one. Many texts which would notbe defined purely as fiction have fictional elements which dorefer to the process of emigration. To exclude them entirelyfrom this study could be misleading. For example, the an-onymous Journal of a French Emigrant of 1795 purports to be areal account of a journey undertaken by a young French boy.Curiously and unusually the text appears in what is now calleda bilingual format with the English translation of the Frenchaccount on the facing page.13 We are given an insight into thereality of an émigré’s life in what is now northern Belgium:

En attendant que notre cantonnement fut fixé, nous prismesla résolution de venir habiter Spa, l’air y étant très sain, et leséjour fort agréable. Un concours immense d’étrangers, deprinces, parmi les-quels il se trouve quelque fois des sou-verains, qui s’y rendent pendant la saison où se prennent leseaux des différentes parties de l’Europe, font de Spa unendroit unique. Les spectacles, le bal, le jeu, de jolies prome-nades y attirent plus de monde que le besoin de prendre leseaux. (p. 12)

However, the threat of revolution is ever present and theyoung writer of the diary leaves for Holland and then Englandwhere, he promises, a second volume of the diary will be written.There is no evidence that it was ever produced and I give thisexample simply to show the variety of fictional forms whichwere being produced.

If one looks further ahead there is, of course, the immenseresource of the memoirs produced during the following decadesand which give a lavish and colourful account of life as an émi-gré. The distinction between truth and fiction is a constant fac-tor to bear in mind as we read these lively accounts whichprejudice and distance have coloured and modified. As Bourlinsays, at the beginning of his Les Amours et Aventures d’un Emigré:

Je ne veux point écrire l’histoire de la révolution, c’est à lapostérité à le faire sur les mémoires des contemporains, et àdémêler la vérité entre tant de récits contradictoires où l’es-prit de parti dénature les faits; où le même homme célébrécomme un héros par les uns est traité de brigand par les au-tres. (I, 29–30)



There are other texts which a longer study of émigré fictionmight include: those novels in other languages in which Frenchcharacters figure as part of a local landscape and the manyFrench novels by novelists of the generation which succeededthe Revolution, who call on their memories of the process ofemigration to give their creations local colour and a trulyEuropean dimension. The influence of emigration on fiction isdifficult to assess: the travel and upheaval which was part ofthe process seems to have encouraged novels in which charac-ters seek to achieve happiness (an Enlightenment theme)against the odds, overcoming social and physical obstacles.The cultural mix which emigration naturally brought about issimilarly difficult to assess. The enormous success of theGothic novel in England was quickly imitated in France andone senses that the very events which define the Revolutionalso had an impact on the murkier aspects of the Gothic, withthe emphasis on blood and hiding, ruined castles and dark-ness. What one can assert with some certainty is that the novelof the eighteenth century was transformed by the Revolutionto an extent which, ten years earlier, would have been unima-ginable. French fiction took inspiration from England andother neighbours and it also took account of the growing mar-ket for travel books as readers looked for spectacles of theunknown in their popular reading.

Émigré fiction is, perhaps unavoidably, critical of the Revolu-tion; it offers the reader a picture of France seen from thesafety of a neighbouring country which, itself, introduces newlandscapes and new ‘romantic’ images. Émigré fiction is perhapsthe motor which drives fiction into the new century. Its charac-ters will be disabused and world weary. They will be confrontedby exile and foreign landscapes; they will ask questions aboutthe transience of life and the harmony of nature. Is it too muchto suggest that the fictional characters in these novels are theRomantics of the next generation?

NOTES

1. For full details of publication figures and for information concerningreprints of novels, see R. Frautschi, A. Martin and V.G. Mylne, Biblio-


Malcolm Cook 163

graphie du genre romanesque, 1750–1800 (London and Paris, 1977). For astudy of the ways in which politics became the subject of fiction duringthe Revolution, see my ‘Politics in the fiction of the French Revolution,1789–1794’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 201 (1982), pp.233–340. As I make clear there, although it has often been said that thenovel went into decline during the Revolution, it is necessary tobroaden one’s definition of fiction and understand the extent to whichthe novel was modified by the events which, of course, form it.

2. See my Fictional France: Social Reality in the French Novel, 1775–1800(Providence and Oxford, Berg, 1993), in which I argue that that histo-rians pay insufficient attention to pictures of social reality contained indifferent types of fiction. Novelists, on the whole, attempt to providesettings which will be familiar to contemporary readers. It is likelytherefore that social conditions, physical conditions of environmentsand language will bear some resemblance to the prevailing reality.

3. A good example of this kind of literature can be found in Chateaubri-and, Mémoires d’outre-tombe in which the author, writing his memoirssome years after the event, gives the reader a picture of emigrationwhich reads like an adventure novel. For example: ‘Nous traversámesdes blés parmi lesquels serpentaient des sentiers à peine tracés. Lespatrouilles françaises et autrichiennes battaient la campagne; nouspouvions tomber dans les unes et dans les autres, ou nous trouver sousle pistolet d’une vedette. Nous entrevîmes de loin des cavaliers isolés,immobiles et l’arme au poing; nous ouîmes des pas de chevaux dansdes chemins creux; en mettant l’oreille à terre, nous entendîmes lebruit régulier d’une marche d’infanterie.’ (Mémoires d’outre-tombe (Paris,Librairie Générale Française, Livre de Poche, 1973, 3 vols), I, p. 363).

4. Mme de Genlis, Les Petits Emigrés ou correspondance de quelques enfans;ouvrage fait pour servir à l’éducation de la jeunesse (Paris, 1928, I, pp. 19–20).The novel first appeared in 1798. Mme de Genlis offers the reader ageneral picture of the French reality and concentrates on the plight ofher young heroes. News from Paris is consistently bad and serves as abackcloth to the fiction. The plot is slight and the characters fail tointerest sufficiently to allow the reader any kind of sympathy. Accordingto Feller’s Biographie universelle (Paris, Gauthier, 1834), Mme de Genliswas at first sympathetic to the Revolution: ‘En partant pour l’exil, elles’était donné le titre d’émigrante jacobine. Mais lorsque la cause du ducd’Orléans fut absolument perdue, et surtout depuis que ce prince eutporté sa tête sur l’échafaud, elle changea de sentiment et de langage, etprit la révolution en horreur. Partout où elle passa les émigrés françaisla repoussèrent comme une ennemie’. She was eventually allowed toreturn to France under Bonaparte and was given a state pension andan apartment in the Arsenal.

5. Correspondance littéraire, ed. by M. Tourneux (Paris, Garnier, 1882),XVI, p. 152. A footnote on the same page reads: ‘Nous n’avons pu voirun exemplaire de ce livre dont l’auteur nous est inconnu’.

6. See my ‘Politics in the fiction of the French Revolution’, pp. 287–9 for adiscussion of the relationship between the novel by Gorgy and thepamphlet referred to here.



7. J.-C. Gorgy, ‘Ann’ Quin Bredouille ou le petit cousin de Tristram Shandy(Paris, Louis, 1792), 6 vols.

8. L.-A. Liomin, La Bergère d’Aranville ou l’Emigration, par M.L***. Thenovel first appeared in 1792 but I have never seen a copy of that date.References here are given for the 1826 Paris edition, (2 vols).

9. All references are taken from the edition prepared by Etiemble for theGallimard-Pléiade edition of Romanciers du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1965),II, 1541–1912 (p. 1547). While it is true that L’Émigré has been thesubject of a good deal of recent criticism (see, for example, F. Laforge,‘Illusion et désillusion dans L’Émigré de Sénac de Meilhan’, Dix-huitième siècle, 17 (1985), pp. 367–75 and Elizabeth Zawiska, ‘Unevision romanesque de la Révolution: L’Émigré de Sénac de Meilhan’,Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 2 (1990), pp. 141–50, the relationshipbetween the novel and other works by Sénac remains to be studied indetail. Of particular interest too is the largely unknown oriental taleby Sénac, Les Deux Cousins, histoire véritable, of 1790.

10. Quotations are taken from the copy in the British Library (CUP 407.f.39), printed in Dublin (Smith, Browne and Colbert), 2 vols, 1797. Thefirst edition dates from 1796.

11. The author’s name is a pseudonym for A.J. Dumaniant. 12. Mme de Staël, Corinne ou l’Italie (Paris, Gallimard, 1985), p. 37. 13. Anonymous, Journal of a French Emigrant (Londres, Lewis et Fienes,

1795).


165

11 Danloux in England (1792–1802): an ÉmigréArtist Angelica Goodden

On 4 March 1791 the Public Advertiser announced that,

three celebrated French artists, in different ways, have latelycome to this kingdom, M. Mesnier [sic] in oil, M. de Creux[sic] in crayon, and M. Gratis [sic] in miniature painting. Thelittle encouragement given to the arts in the present state oftheir country has made them emigrate.

Gratise, or Gratitien, had not in fact come from France, butfrom Germany, where he was employed as miniature painterand pastellist to the Elector of Cologne. Mosnier was the artistbest known to British audiences, and stayed six years: althoughhe was fairly successful, his portraits were often dismissed byEnglish critics as laboured and over-polished, as Danloux’sand Mme Vigée Le Brun’s would be after him.1 He moved toHamburg and Saint Petersburg, and must have been happy tofind himself in countries where high finishing was not regardedas a vice.2 Ducreux, who is probably most familiar for his cari-catural self-portraits,3 stayed only six months before returningto Paris, where his past as Marie-Antoinette’s First Painterseems never to have counted against him; apparently the pro-tection of David, effectively master of the arts under the Revolu-tion and an extremely important political figure, was enoughto guarantee his safety.

Henri-Pierre Danloux arrived in London a year after thesethree. He did not enjoy the protection extended to Ducreux,and may have been glad to escape the enmity of David: theyhad fallen out in the mid-1770s, when David, the winner of thePrix de Rome in 1774, was a pensionnaire at the Académie deFrance.4 Danloux’s resentment does not seem to have lessenedwith the passage of time. His journal reveals that he dislikedhearing David praised by his fellow-countrymen, objecting



that, ‘lorsqu’un homme a la vogue, ce qu’il ferait serait-il détes-table, n’importe, c’est de lui’.5 Sincerely or not, he expressed hispreference for Mme Vigée Le Brun, because, ‘pour le portraitelle a une grâce qui convient à ce genre que jamais David nepourra avoir’.

If the royalist convictions he shared with Vigée Le Brunmade departure from France advisable in 1792, so too did hisfamily connections. Danloux, a bourgeois, had in 1787 marriedinto the nobility. His wife, Antoinette de Saint-Redan, was theillegitimate child of the Baron d’Etigny, and his widow hadbrought her up as her own daughter. His marriage, to whichthe d’Etignys had agreed on condition that he never practisehis art professionally in France,6 thus gave Danloux access toan aristocratic and courtly clientele from which he was boundto profit.

It was a clientele he must have hoped to be able to rebuild inBritain. True, few of the émigrés came with enough money topay for luxuries like paintings, though as Danloux would dis-cover to his cost, impecuniousness rarely stopped them com-missioning or sitting for portraits they could not afford.During his ten years in Britain Danloux painted about 135portraits, of which 44 were of British sitters and the majority ofthe remainder French. On the whole the British preferrednative portraitists like Hoppner, Romney and Beechey, whomDanloux was annoyed to find enjoying the kind of vogue-patronage for which he envied David: someone told him, forinstance, that Lady Massereene had decided to be painted byBeechey instead of Danloux simply because she had recog-nised the faces of so many friends among the canvases inBeechey’s studio.7 Still, in May 1792, after f ive months in Eng-land, he was able to write to his wife in France that, ‘je com-menc[e] à avoir du travail, et [ . . . ] l’avenir sembl[e] s’offrir àmoi sous un jour meilleur’.8

The ‘best’ light would be the one cast by the nobility, andDanloux was quite unabashed about explaining to influentialpatrons like the Marquess of Lansdowne that he wanted topaint a well-born lady, ‘à n’importe quel prix’, in order tomake his reputation.9 There were inevitable disappointments.The great beauty Lady Charlotte Campbell, who had seemeda likely client, in the end decided on Hoppner,10 just as LadyMassereene had decided on Beechey, and despite winning


Angelica Goodden 167

commissions to paint a few aristocratic Englishwomen duringhis exile Danloux never attracted any of the iconic femaleswho helped establish the fame of Romney, Lawrence and theirlike. Mrs. Fitzherbert had seemed a possible sitter at one stage,but eventually declined.11

Grand male sitters proved elusive too. The courtesan MrsHuntley told Danloux that she would try to procure her occa-sional lover the Prince of Wales for him,12 but failed to do so(although Danloux did paint his brother Prince Augustus, andexhibited the portrait at the 1795 Royal Academy exhibition).13

The husband of the former courtesan Mrs Boyd, Walter Boyd,offered Danloux an entrée to the society of William Pitt, whichDanloux hoped would lead to a commission to paint the PrimeMinister himself, but again his hope was vain.14 French contactscould disappoint too. The disgraced contrôleur-général desfinances, Calonne, made vague promises to sit, but kept evadingactual sittings,15 and the former Grand Fauconnier de France,Vaudreuil, stopped coming when he decided that Danloux’sportrait made him look too old.16 Still, some promises of pat-ronage did yield results. Another courtesan, Mlle Duthé, tookthe credit for persuading her former lover the Duc de Bour-bon – the father of the murdered Duc d’Enghien – to sit forDanloux,17 though according to Mme Danloux the Marquisde Montazet had also offered to arrange the commission.18

Courtesans in fact provided Danloux with much of his clien-tele, both as subjects themselves and as intermediaries; andmembers of the creole community filled some of the gaps. Thecourtesans had few inhibitions about showing themselves, andthe creoles, on the whole, were wealthy. Three portraits Dan-loux did in London – of Mlle Duthé (1792), of the creole MrsBoyd (1796) and of the wealthy planter Hosten (1795) – illus-trate the theme of absence that defines the émigré in a particu-larly effective way, and so turn the commemorative function ofportraiture to new account. All do so by way of symbols: thefirst through the picture the subject is hanging in her boudoir,and the others through letters the sitters are holding in theirhands and which convey separation or longing.19

The Duthé portrait had originally been intended to show a‘sacrifice à l’amitié’,20 and the friendship to which the cour-tesan was to have been sacrif icing was that of her admirer Per-regaux, a wealthy Swiss banker (and a future Régent of the



Banque de France) with numerous English clients. He wasalso an art-collector of some note, and had expressed a desirefor Duthé’s portrait early in 1792. Duthé had herself apparentlyselected the pose in Danloux’s picture, but it was subsequentlydecided to show her hanging not a sacrifice to friendship, butan allegorical image of Hope looking out to sea at a departingvessel and presumably longing for its return. The change wasno doubt wise: Duthé never sacrificed in the course of her phe-nomenally successful career as a kept woman, but rather accu-mulated. Her attitude in Danloux’s portrait bears a distinctresemblance to that of Reynolds’s, Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrifi-cing to the Graces, a symbolic image of perfect friendship, yetappears more playful.21 The inventive Duthé tried unsuccess-fully to have details of the portrait altered – she did not like theblue taffeta background, for instance22 – but Danloux’s owninstincts for arranging it effectively appear to have prevailed.It is a very French-seeming picture in its innocent gaiety, andsums up both the frivolity and the generosity of the sitter’scharacter.

Danloux had arrived in England with an introduction toDuthé from the actress Mme Dugazon, and she was expansivelywelcoming. He called her an excellent creature,23 and wasgrateful to her both for offering to model nude (a favour hewas also granted by other courtesans she introduced him to)and for bringing work his way. Well before painting the Ducde Bourbon he did a portrait of her lover Robert Lee (1792),possibly the ‘faithful Englishman’ with whom Vigée Le Brunrecords seeing her in the early 1770s in the Palais-Royal gardens,and whom she was amused to see still her companion 18 yearslater in London.24 She had retained her charms: Mme Dan-loux remarked in 1795 that even at the age of 50 she was apretty woman.25 According to Vigée Le Brun she had runthrough millions, and Danloux too was struck by her extra-vagance. Slightly guiltily he enjoyed her hospitality until hiswife joined him in England in 1793, but managed to avoid aproposed, and perhaps rather compromising, trip to Napleswith her late in the previous year.26 She seemed to find Englishlife dull, especially when she accompanied her lover to hiscountry estate,27 and Danloux’s friendship, as well as the hopeof re-establishing old friendships which his portrait encapsulated,were apparently welcome supports.



Danloux clearly felt uneasy in such company and aftera walk from Vauxhall with her and another kept woman,Mme Nauzières – whose portrait by Danloux would later be paidfor by the generous and prosperous Duthé28 – he reflected that,‘je n’étais pas à ma place au milieu de ces femmes; elles sontgênées et moi aussi’.29 Although Mrs Huntley flatteringlytold Danloux that he inspired confidence, and although hesometimes allowed himself to become free in his behaviourwith them, he was rather priggish when they seemed to forgettheir position: he disliked the courtesan-harpist Mlle Mérelle’saffectation of familiarity with his wife, for example, telling her tomind her place.30 He found her type amusing, sometimes excit-ing and certainly useful, but also untrustworthy and irritating.

By far the most exasperating was the so-called Mrs Boyd,whom Danloux ended up calling a ‘fille’, but who gave herselfthe airs of a ‘grande dame’.31 Portalis’s 1910 monograph onDanloux is altogether too respectful of this creature, and heseems to have been misled by the then owner of the portrait,the Baronne de Férussac, into believing her better than shewas. She had not, in fact, married the banker Walter Boyd inParis in 1790, but had lived with him there until he wasobliged to return to England in November 1793 on account ofhis counter-revolutionary activities, including arranging forBoyd & Ker’s Bank to circulate false assignats in Paris on behalfof the émigré Princes.32 Although the Baronne de Férussacalleged that Mrs Boyd – alias Nicole de Vignier-Montréal – had‘remarried’ Boyd in London after the loss of the original mar-riage-certificate,33 in 1796 she was despairing of ever persuad-ing Boyd to make an honest woman of her and legitimising thebaby she was bearing. According to Danloux’s friend and pat-ron Mme Digneron, whose planter husband was related toNicole’s father, she had herself been born out of wedlock of anegro or mulatto mother in the colonies, shown her wayward-ness early, been sent to live with a respectable lady in Paris,run off with a young man at the age of 16, and walked thestreets of the capital until she had been discovered by Boyd.34

She seems to have stayed in Paris after he returned to London,and had been arrested and jailed during the Terror under theLaw of Suspects. She told Danloux that she was already in jailwhen she received, via a chambermaid, the letter Danloux’spicture shows her clutching, and which she claimed might



have led to her execution:35 she was suspected of correspond-ing with foreigners,36 as emerges from the records of theComité de sûreté générale. Boyd was said to be delighted withthe commemorative image of her languishing in her cell.37 Sheis depicted in the attitude of a supplicating vestal, perched onher mean pallet, holding the letter to her heart and gazing soul-fully towards the light filtering in through the barred window.

But however flattering this Greuzian scene may have beento the lovers’ vanity, Mrs Boyd was difficult to please as a sitter.She annoyed Danloux (who was already finding her casualand high-handed) by demanding radical changes to the com-position, and more than one angry scene passed betweenthem.38 And even if she occasionally expressed satisfactionwith his work to Danloux’s face,39 she openly declared herreservations to others.40 She was, for instance, explicit abouther displeasure to her friend Hosten, who had probablyintroduced her to Danloux in the first place. He may haveknown her from his planter days, but – being an acknowledgedman of pleasure – he could also have met her in Paris, eitherbefore Boyd became her lover or after: Boyd was one of thefrequent banker visitors to Hosten’s house in the rue Saint-Georges.41

Whatever the case, he took an almost proprietorial interestin the portrait, and urged Danloux to hurry on when, becom-ing discouraged, he was predicting that he would never finish it.Partly for this reason, perhaps, Danloux came to dislike Hostenintensely, observing that ‘il n’avait jamais que des chosesdésagréables à dire’,42 and that he seemed a parvenu, ‘qui nemanque pas d’esprit mais qui perd la mesure à chaqueinstant’,43 – an intemperateness which Danloux would success-fully capture in his portrait of Hosten.

Admittedly, he helped Danloux out of financial difficultieson more than one occasion, and he was flamboyant withmoney: he boasted that the drawing-room alone of his splen-did house – part of a development designed for him by thearchitect Ledoux – had cost over 60 000 francs.44 But he had amean streak, and proved unwilling to pay the agreed sum forthe magnificent portrait Danloux painted of him in 1795,45

despite criticising Mrs Boyd for employing similarly evasivetactics herself.46 And he shamelessly had Danloux pursued byhis agents over a debt for £200 in 1797.47



Hosten had moved back to Paris from Saint-Dominguebecause his wife disliked the climate there,48 but returned to hisplantations – a wedding-present from a cousin – after the greatslave rebellion of 1791 to try to salvage his fortune. Findingthis difficult, he had joined the deputation which Malouet ledto England in 1792 to offer the island to the protection of theBritish Crown. Malouet’s efforts at that time were unsuccessful,and Hosten probably went back to the colonies with him beforesettling in London in 1794 or 1795. (He appears to have becomesuspect to the French authorities in the meantime.) Left alonein Paris, his wife had been arrested on charges of being noble,married to an émigré and holding suspicious assemblies in herParis house (referred to in her denunciation as being in therue Favart, the other side of the boulevard des Italiens fromthe rue Saint-Georges)49. Although Mme Hosten’s submis-sions to the comité de sûreté générale denied that she wasguilty of any of these offences, the fact that foreign financierslike Boyd were known to frequent her house cannot havehelped her case. Since all her ‘crimes’ were punishable underthe Law of Suspects passed in 1793, she was jailed at the prisonof Port-Libre in Paris, and it was as a result of events whichtook place there that Hosten conceived the rage he wishedDanloux’s portrait of him to eternalise.

Mme Hosten’s daughter Pascalie, a beautiful young womanwhose melancholy appearance led the Duchesse de Coigny toremark that ‘elle avait mangé sa soupe trop chaude’,50 visitedher mother daily at Port-Libre, and there met the young aris-tocrat Gabriel d’Arjuzon, who had been imprisoned undersuspicion of assisting the King and Queen’s flight to Varennesin 1791.51 They fell in love and were betrothed with Mme Hos-ten’s blessing, marrying on 28 April 1795 after both motherand bridegroom had been released.52 It seems scarcely think-able that they had not tried to obtain Hosten’s permission, butHosten told Danloux that he had not been consulted overtheir plans. On 12 June 1795 he asked Danloux to paint him inthe state of fury induced in him by letters he had receivedfrom his wife and daughter announcing Pascalie’s marriage.(D’Arjuzon, who also emphasised his father-in-law’s virtues,referred to his ‘caractère extrêmement vif’.)53 He informedDanloux that Mme Hosten and Pascalie ‘avaient de grandstorts avec lui’,54 and clearly felt that his indignation – which he



also wished to disseminate among his acquaintances by havingthe portrait engraved and circulated, though characteristicallyhe thought the engraver Dickinson’s price too high55 – wasjustified. In fact his own life had been far from blameless: hehad ‘kept’ Mme Nauzières in London,56 and in Paris had amistress, Marie Collard-Arnould, who during his exile in Eng-land embarrassed him by deciding to visit him in his FitzroySquare house (bringing with her their enchantingly prettydaughter Rose, whom Danloux would also paint).57 Whether ornot he had really been inconsiderately treated, in any case,Hosten was secretly thrilled with the drama of his situation.Obviously a narcissist, he prescribed an image that recalls oneof Greuze’s scenes of paternal malediction, and gloried in thenotion of having been ill used.

Portraiture was what the natives wanted, and Danloux hadto stick to it. He may have said in a moment of discouragementthat he despised English artists for their materialism, andagreed with a visitor to his studio who said that, ‘ils travaillentpour l’argent, et vous pour l’art’;58 but he could never affordto treat art as disinterestedly as his relations by marriage hadintended. His development of a virtual engravings industry –from the map of Saint-Domingue he had engraved to sell tocreole émigrés,59 through the prints of the picture of theleader of the émigré priests’ cause, the Bishop of Saint Pol deLéon,60 and of the portraits done in Edinburgh of the Comted’Artois and the Duc d’Angoulême, to the huge image ofAdmiral Duncan victorious at Camperdown61 – showed his keeneconomic sense; and his close involvement with the actual pre-paration, as well as the marketing, of the prints reveals thepractical nature of his attitude to art. On the other hand, hewas never free from financial worries in Britain, and he neverearned what he thought was his due. He charged a great dealless than Beechey, Hoppner and Lawrence and infinitely lessthan Mme Vigée Le Brun (who outcharged everyone) woulddo when she arrived in England;62 but friends advised him topitch his prices still lower. Mlle Duthé, whose own portrait wasdone for 50 guineas, told him that the English disliked spend-ing heavily on paintings, and he asked more or less what hisauctioneer friend John Greenwood suggested: 15 guineas fora bust, 25 for a half-length and 50 for a full-length.63 He des-pairingly responded to Duthé that he must needs observe the



mercantile conventions of the country he was living in: ‘il mefaudra demander combien on veut y mettre, et je les ferai enconséquence’.64

He quoted a prospective client 200 guineas for a life-sizefamily portrait with five figures,65 and charged Lord Petre 80guineas for painting Lady Petre together with her two chil-dren,66 but usually earned considerably less. In mid-1796 hebegan to do rapid portraits which required only two sittings,and asked six guineas for them;67 but still he could not makeends meet. To an émigré friend he spoke of the, ‘misère qu’onéprouve dans ce pays-ci en travaillant beaucoup’,68 and com-plained of being crippled with debt.69 He even consideredemigrating to Russia until the Comte d’Artois signalled his dis-pleasure at the idea:70 Danloux was too valuable a worker forthe counter-Revolutionary cause in London to be let go easily.

His work for the French royal family ought to have earnedhim money as well as prestige, but in fact he was never paidwhat he thought was due to his efforts. The diaries give a vividdescription of Danloux’s employment first as a producer ofroyalist images to be sent to the commanders of the Princes’army – essentially adaptations of existing portraits of LouisXVIII and Artois, engraved for the purposes of wide circula-tion – and then as the preferred portraitist of Artois, his sonthe Duc d’Angoulême and eventually the latter’s brother theDuc de Berri. Dating the various portraits of Artois, all basedon an original done during his exile at Holyroodhouse, hasbeen much complicated by the confused account of the com-mission in Portalis, but the original itself and at least some ofthe many replicas were clearly painted in late 1796. (TheAngoulême portrait was done immediately after that of Artois,but Berri’s much later – probably after he arrived in Edin-burgh in February 1798.) Artois gave copies to friends andsupporters, particularly Scottish nobles and officials who helpedto ease his time at Holyrood, but the primary purpose of theenterprise seems to have been to disseminate French royalistengravings among the Princes’ allies in Europe: althoughDanloux himself bought back the plates and began to circulatethe prints under his own name from 1799, the project wasinitially paid for by the French Crown.71 Artois, however, wasremarkably reluctant to settle his account with Danloux, whoseotherwise surprising unwillingness to travel to Edinburgh to



paint Monsieur in the first place (amply detailed in the diaries)may have stemmed from an awareness of his poverty.72

The treatment Danloux suffered from Artois was not untyp-ical, and the diaries reveal recurrent worries about money.One problem was that he often had to pay large bills before hehimself had earned anything from his work. The fastidious (orover-principled?) Danloux seems not to have adopted the Eng-lish habit of charging a client half the agreed price of a por-trait when the facial likeness had been captured,73 though atleast one sitter, Lord Moira, assumed that this would be hispractice.74 Danloux used models extensively, especially whenpainting important (and busy) sitters, and models usually hadto be paid on the nail.75 Engravers’ bills, too, generally neededsettling before the earnings on their work had begun to accu-mulate: advance subscriptions could help here, of course, butthe money owed might be as difficult to extract as Mme Dan-loux found it to be when she travelled to Scotland to act as herhusband’s agent in connection with the engraving of LordDuncan.76 Another problem was self-imposed: Danloux wasoften unwilling to charge enough for his work,77 or even tocharge at all if the client was impoverished or had aroused hissympathy. When a client was both impoverished and associatedwith royalty, like Artois’s mistress Mme de Polastron, he waseven more reluctant to ask for a fee.78

The real difficulty, though, lay in persuading parsimonious,recalcitrant or simply dishonest clients to pay what they owed.Sometimes, it is true, a semi-aristocratic disdain seems to haveprevented Danloux from pressing his financial claims. He toldthe valet of the Duc de Bourbon that he would ask nothing,‘pour ce moment-ci’ for painting his master, ‘mais qu’il espéraitvoir ce prince en France’.79

The picture was done in 1797, but the fee of £25 was paidonly in 1802.80 Lord Malden kept him waiting for the best partof two years for 24 guineas, and treated him high-handedlywhen he eventually requested the money;81 Lord Valentia wasfour years late in paying the 15 guineas he owed;82 Artois andhis courtiers haggled undignifiedly over the money due forthe portraits done during Artois’s exile in Holyroodhouse andother works Danloux had contributed to the Royalist cause;and the Boyds kept ‘forgetting’ to settle.83 Some clients wouldpay only part of what they owed, like Mme d’ Amécourt84 and



Prince von Starhemberg (whose behaviour Danloux called‘malhonnête’, an abuse of his position and power).85 Othersnever paid at all. Vaudreuil had originally told Danloux that,being short of money, he would give him what he could in Lon-don and leave the rest for Paris,86 but disliked his unflatter-ing portrait so much that he simply left it in the artist’s studio.

It is hardly surprising, then, that the tone of the diaries isoften one of despair. Danloux was obliged to maintain a smartestablishment to impress visitors and sitters, because this wasthe English way, but could not really afford to do so.87 (He was,incidentally, tricked into taking out a 17-year lease on anexpensive house in Charles Street (now Mortimer Street),88

which caused further sleepless nights.) But the Danloux life-style was modest, and he and his wife bitterly disapproved ofémigré extravagance when they saw it. They refused to econo-mise on a few things, it is true: they carried on wearing hair-powder even after the introduction of the powder-tax in 1795,because they considered it a mark of devotion to Ancien Régimeways, though they much resented having to pay a guinea everyyear for the privilege;89 but in other respects it seemed imposs-ible for them to live more cheaply than they did.

Occasionally Danloux felt that he was prostituting his talent– not, apparently, when he had to do replicas of his work forpatrons (as with the various versions of the Artois portraits),and certainly not when he had to spend time supervisingthe production of engravings, but undoubtedly when he wasasked to copy another artist’s work. Mme de Polastron, forinstance, wanted him to do another version of Vigée Le Brun’sposthumous portrait of the Duchesse de Polignac, her aunt bymarriage, which seemed to Danloux a wretched diversionfrom more worthwhile activities;90 but he needed the money,and so complied with the request. Nor did he feel that the Brit-ish always treated him as he deserved. Not only were somewell-born patrons insufferably rude, but the Royal Academy, towhich he had rather painfully gained access,91 seemed to ignorebasic courtesies. Like Mosnier,92 he was sure that his work wasbeing hung disadvantageously (and probably suspected thatanti-French prejudice was the cause), though Benjamin West,the President, assured him that this was not the case.93 North-cote, in any event, told him that xenophobia had nothing to dowith it, and that British artists suffered as badly:



lui-même, quoiqu’académicien, ils l’ont on ne peut plus maltraité en différentes occasions [ . . . ] ils n’ont rien de ce quedevraient être les artistes.94

* * *

According to Danloux, Northcote congratulated him on the‘prodigious progress’95 he had made since coming to England.But although he deliberately abandoned much of his French‘finish’, he never really admired what he thought of as thelooseness of the English style: to him it betrayed carelessness(his verdict on Romney) and a reprehensible reliance on inbornaptitude.96 British painters, in his view, had huge talent, butwere less well trained than French, and so subordinated every-thing to easy effect.

Plus j’étudie la peinture anglaise, moins je l’aime. Ses maîtresse permettent tout pour parler aux yeux, mais ils n’ontaucune idée des convenances, et ne dessinent pas.97

He did begin to paint more quickly, it is true,98 admitting thejustice in Calonne’s criticism of his ‘heaviness’:99 of his workshe wrote that, ‘je les travaille trop à force de vouloir bien faire’(exactly the judgement Vigée Le Brun would pass on her ownpaintings when her style was attacked in England).100 He did,too, abandon the kind of detail that characterised his 1791portrait of the baron de Besenval sitting in his ‘salon decompagnie’ surrounded by all his objets de luxe, where thewhole is almost like a Dutch cabinet picture in its minute ren-dering of individual objects.101 The portrait of Hosten is barein comparison, reflecting the greater simplicity of Englishtaste and style. And he could say with a degree of truth that hehad become ‘very English’. The child-portraits he painted inScotland for the Buccleuch family, for instance, belong to atradition made familiar by Reynolds,102 while the Romanticdash of certain pictures draws him close to Romney, Lawrenceand even Raeburn. But there was also truth in the verdictwhich the Portuguese Viería passed on his work in 1800: ‘Cen’est pas là la manière anglaise’.103 He was referring to the Eng-lish obsession with money and Danloux’s disinterested pursuitof art, but the remark is apt in another respect. Danloux neverdid become completely naturalised.



When he returned to France in 1802, with the signing ofthe Treaty of Amiens, he belatedly submitted some work tothe Salon. One critic, while calling the style of the 1798 pictureof Viscount Keith ‘French’, actually mentioned featuresmore usually associated with the English mode of portraiture– incorrect draughtsmanship, a murky tone, and a reliance oncrude effects.104 The lack of patriotism implicit in the glori-fication of British naval victory (Keith had defeated theDutch, allies of the French, at Muizenberg) was generally noted,and the removal of the portrait of the Bishop of Saint-Paul deLéon from the exhibition because of his counter-Revolutionaryactivities was applauded.105 In other words, the royalist Danlouxhad made an unwelcome return. (The equally fervently royalistVigée Le Brun was treated altogether more gently when sheexhibited some work done during her own recent exile at thesame Salon.) Most critics either ignored Danloux’s offerings atthe Salon of 1806 or gave them very short shrift. This time his‘artificial’ colour was likened to Boucher’s:106 still French,then, but French in the wrong kind of way, an improper ancienrégime rococo in Napoleonic times. Fittingly enough for an artistjust returned from England, however, Danloux was consideredto paint dogs well.

One critic’s conclusion that, ‘le climat nébuleux de l’Angle-terre [ . . . ], les brouillards de la Tamise [sont] funestes aux artsd’imitation’107 was both typical and symptomatic. Actually Dan-loux had found the dank climate trying because – or so heclaimed – the light was often too bad to paint by. But Frenchcriticism of the émigré’s work owed as much to nationalist ran-cour as to genuine aesthetic perceptions. The range and qualityof the paintings he did during his British exile scarcely sup-ports the contention that his art had ‘suffered’ during the tenyears spent away from France, although it had certainlychanged. Danloux’s lofty attitude to the money-mindedness ofBritish artists should theoretically have made it hard for himto adapt to the conditions he found prevailing in the coun-try:108 claiming to paint for art’s sake, he must have found theneed to adapt his style for purely material reasons repugnant.In fact, of course, he could not afford to be an aesthete; he hadto treat his art as a business enterprise,109 however much thenecessity would have shocked the aristocratic d’Etignys. Butthey had set their conditions before the Revolution, and could



never have anticipated the poverty that Revolutionary eventswould create for their kind. And in any case one suspects thatDanloux’s adaptation was not quite as unwilling as his diaryentries often make it sound. Admiring British painting as hesometimes did, he may have wanted occasionally to emulate itsstyle.

NOTES

1. On Mosnier’s technical inferiority to British artists see Edward Edwards,Anecdotes of Painters (London, 1808), p. 255.

2. However, on the ‘vice’ of careless finishing in the English school see,for example, Conversations of James Northcote R.A. with James Ward on Artand Artists (London, 1907), p. 67.

3. See Alan Wintermute, The French Portrait 1550–1850 (New York,1996), p. 59.

4. According to a Danloux family tradition, they quarrelled over anagreement to share the funding of their planned journey around Italy,which ended in Danloux’s subsidising David’s trip and David claimingthat he could not support Danloux’s. See Papiers Baron Portalis, MS.‘Henri-Pierre Danloux’, Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie (Biblio-thèque Nationale, Paris), boîte III.

5. Journal de Pierre Danloux, private collection, 2 August 1792. 6. See Baron Roger Portalis, Henri-Pierre Danloux et son journal durant

l’émigration (Paris, 1910), p. 28. 7. Journal de Mme Danloux, private collection, 8 August 1796; also Portalis,

op. cit., p. 327. Lady Massereene was the daughter of the governor ofthe Châtelet, and was known as ‘the beautiful Countess of Massereene’.

8. Journal de Danloux, 8 May 1792. 9. Ibid., 30 January 1793.

10. Journal de Mme Danloux, 19 February 1796. Mme Danloux, who initiallyexpressed great admiration for Lady Charlotte Campbell’s looks, laterdeclared them to be overrated (7 April 1796). See also Portalis, p. 327.

11. Journal de Danloux, 23 June 1792. 12. Ibid., 22 July 1792. 13. The archives of the Royal Collection contain no record of this commis-

sion, and the present location of the picture is unknown. 14. Journal de Mme Danloux, 21 February 1796; also Portalis, p. 274. 15. For example, Journal de Danloux, 29 October 1792. Calonne also

offered to display Danloux’s paintings of Mlle Duthé and the abbéde Saint-Far, the natural brother of Philippe-Egalité, in his own house(he was a noted collector and connoisseur, and still owned many out-standing pictures).

16. Journal de Mme Danloux, 23 February 1796.



17. Ibid., 8 September 1795 and 10 September 1795. 18. Ibid., 4 September 1795. 19. Another notable portrait of this kind is the picture of the duc de Cho-

iseul reading a letter from his aunt: see Journal de Danloux, 5 July 1800et seq., and Portalis, p. 424 ff.

20. Journal de Danloux, 2 July 1792. 21. See Nicholas Penny ed., Reynolds (catalogue to exhibition at Royal

Academy of Arts, London, 1986), p. 224. In fact there is a mock-heroiclevity to Reynolds’s image too: according to Mrs. Thrale, Lady Sarah‘never did sacrifice to the Graces; her face was gloriously handsome,but she used to play cricket and eat beefsteak on the Steyne atBrighton’ (loc. cit.).

22. See Journal de Danloux, 16 July 1792. Danloux had obtained the taffeta– for the curtains and sofa – from his laundrywoman Mme Fichu (seeibid., 6–7 August 1792).

23. Ibid., 25 April 1792. 24. Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Souvernirs, ed. Claudine Herrmann, 2 vols

(Paris, 1984), I.40 (see also Portalis, p. 130). Lee may have been tooyoung to fit this rôle, however. Vigée Le Brun’s assertion incidentallysupports the notion that she came to England for the first time in theearly 1790s, something suggested at the time in French and Italianjournals – which alleged that she had crossed the Channel to be withCalonne – but which her own memoirs never mention. Danloux’sjournal reports the rumour that Vigée Le Brun has arrived in Eng-land (24 December 1792); Mrs. Papendiek’s Court and Private Life inthe Time of Queen Charlotte, ed. Mrs. V. Delves-Broughton, 2 vols (Lon-don, 1887), II. 253, reports of the year 1791 that ‘Mme Le Brun hadlately come to England’ and painted the Prince of Wales. According toVigée Le Brun herself, she was in Italy from late 1789 until 1792,when she moved straight on to Vienna.

25. Journal de Mme Danloux, 4 September 1795. 26. Journal de Danloux, 1 August 1792. 27. Ibid., 13 July 1792. 28. Journal de Mme Danloux, 16 September 1795. 29. Journal de Danloux, 1 August 1792. 30. Ibid., 23 May 1792. 31. Journal de Mme Danloux, 22 March 1796. 32. See Arnaud de Lestapis, ‘Emigration et faux assignats’, Revue de Deux

Mondes, 1955, pp. 462–3. 33. See Portalis, p. 273 34. Journal de Mme Danloux, 16 December 1795 and 15 February

1796. 35. Ibid., 23 October 1795. 36. See Portalis, p. 273 37. Journal de Mme Danloux, 29 March 1796. 38. Ibid., 9 November 1795; 10 December 1795. 39. Ibid., 24 December 1795. 40. Ibid., 26 December 1795. 41. See Oliver Blanc, Madame de Bonneuil (Paris, 1987), p. 93.



42. Journal de Mme Danloux, 11 August 1795. On Hosten’s badgering ofDanloux over the portrait see ibid.,7 December 1795 and 31 December1795: ‘il fallait que le tableau de Mme Boyd fût fini dans dix joursparce qu’elle partait pour la campagne. Cela nous tourmenta d’autantplus qu’ayant toujours les ouvriers dans la maison, il n’y avait aucunechambre où mon mari pût travailler’.

43. Ibid., 16 June 1795. 44. Ibid., 15 June 1795. 45. Ibid., 9 June 1795; 20 July 1795. 46. Ibid., 30 July 1796. 47. Journal de Danloux, 8 July 1797, 11 August 1797. 48. See Portalis, p. 266. She was, however, a native of Saint-Domingue. 49. Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, MS. 766 (Révolution-Justice-

Police), document 75. Apparently Mme Hosten had let the rue Saint-Georges house and moved to the rue Favart to save money.

50. Her portrait by Vestier (private collection), done in about 1790 whenshe was 15, reveals all her beauty (and a slight haughtiness which isperhaps simply a muted version of the arrogance Danloux captures inhis picture of her father), but makes her look twice her age.

51. See Jacques d’Arjuzon, Histoire et généalogie de la famille d’Arjuzon(Paris, 1978), p. 110, who quotes from Caroline d’Arjuzon, ‘Fragmentdu journal d’un prisonnier à Port-Libre en 1793’, Magasin pittoresque,30 June 1889.

52. D’Arjuzon in fact exchanged Port-Libre for house arrest, and thebetrothal took place the day before he left prison. Portalis wrongly states(p. 267) that the letter merely announced the betrothal, and that themarriage itself occurred on 18 April 1796.

53. See Portalis, p. 271. 54. Journal de Mme Danloux, 12 June 1795. 55. Ibid., 28 October 1795; 7 March 1796. 56. Journal de Danloux, 15 June 1795. 57. Journal de Mme Danloux, 6 May 1796; also Portalis, p. 270. Rose Arnould

was the great-niece of the famous actress–courtesan Sophie Arnould. 58. Journal de Danloux, 17 July 1800; also Portalis, p. 431. 59. A diary entry of Mme Danloux’s for 10 January 1795 notes that the

maps were to sell at 3s. apiece. 60. The picture (at present in the Louvre) was painted in 1793, but the

engraving produced only in 1797. On Danloux’s engravings see theunpublished thesis by Susan Adams, ‘Henri-Pierre Danloux: An EmigréPainter’ (University of London, n.d. – c. 1990).

61. Danloux’s diary for 1800 records his wife’s trip to Scotland to collectthe subscriptions due on the engraving (for example, 13 June £103,19 June £32, 24 June, 1 July £11, 17 July). The picture itself was ondisplay in Danloux’s studio.

62. The Telegraph of 29 April 1796 reported Hoppner’s prices for a full-length as one hundred guineas, Beechey’s as 120, and Lawrence’s as160. 200 guineas for a full-length was not a remarkable sum for theend of the eighteenth century. In the last decade of his life Reynolds(who died in 1792) had countless commissions for a 200–guinea full-



length (see Gerald Reitlinger, The Economics of Taste, 3 vols (London,1961–70), I. pp. 59–60). By 1806 Lawrence was charging 200 guineasfor a full-length, and Hoppner probably the same. But Vigée LeBrun’s Duchess of Dorset, painted in England, sold in 1804 for £525. Onthis general matter see also David H. Solkin, Painting for Money: theVisual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England (NewHaven and London, 1993).

63. See Portalis, p. 80, p. 102. 64. Ibid., p. 136. 65. Journal de Mme Danloux, 21 October 1795. 66. Ibid., 31 March 1796. 67. Ibid., 23 June 1796. 68. To Mme Ferrière, wife of an émigré Swiss miniaturist (Journal de Dan-

loux, 4 July 1797). 69. Ibid., 7 July 1797. He twice mentions going to the pawnbroker’s

(ibid., 11 July 1792 and 19 December 1792). 70. See, for example, Journal de Mme Danloux, 25 January 1795 et seq., 31

January 1795, 8 February 1795, 3 April 1795, 2 May 1797; Journal deDanloux, 14 June 1800. See also Portalis, p. 274 f.

71. In vol. I of his manuscript notes on printers Thomas Dodd, the earlynineteenth-century dealer, writes that Audinet did plates of portraitsof several members of the French royal family, engraved at theexpense of Louis XVIII from paintings by Danloux (British Museum,Department of Manuscripts, Add Mss 33394, p. 258). I am most grate-ful to David Alexander for this information.

72. Danloux was told that he should expect to receive 300 guineas for hisroyal pictures, and was anyway sure of 250 (Journal de Mme Danloux, 9November 1796); but Artois, deducting 25 guineas already paid by anagent (Journal de Danloux, 3 September 1796), claimed that he couldonly pay another 100 guineas at most (Journal de Mme Danloux, 14November 1796). Apart from the Edinburgh portraits of Artois andthe Duc d’Angoulême, Danloux did one of Louis XVIII flanked byJustice and Clemency and of Artois at the head of the royalist troops inthe Vendée (Journal de Danloux, 22 June 1795). He also prepared aprofile study of Louis XVIII for some counterfeit currency that was tobe minted (Journal de Mme Danloux, 14 July 1795).

73. See Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Form inEighteenth-Century England (New Haven and London, 1993), p. 50.

74. Journal de Danloux, 26 June 1797. 75. Female models were better paid than male, though their social stand-

ing was lesser: males earned 5s. per week and 1s. for each two-hoursitting, females half a guinea per sitting in the 1770s in London. SeeIlaria Bignamini and Martin Postle, The Artist’s Model (Nottingham,1991), pp. 17, 19. Danloux occasionally mentions the rates he paid: 4s.9d. to a female model who posed from 10 am until 4 pm (Journal deDanloux, 1 July 1797), half a guinea to another female for a day (ibid.,27 July 1797), 4s. per day to the daughter of the Marquis de Courtinfor modelling hands (ibid., 25 September 1797), but £10 to the mar-quis himself – possibly for his daughter – for ten days’ modelling



(ibid., 8 October 1797). The Journal shows that Danloux’s grasp of thecomplexities of English currency was uncertain, however, and some ofthese figures may be incorrect.

76. However, Mme Danloux may have had the help of an agent of Dan-loux’s in Edinburgh, conceivably the Marnoch who framed at leastsome of Danloux’s Scottish portraits and whose Princes Street shopalso dealt in prints and paintings. It seems unlikely that she wouldhave been left entirely to her own devices in Scotland, especially assome of the subscribers she had most difficulty with lived as far afieldas Dundee. I owe this suggestion to Helen Smailes.

77. He reduced his fee for Mme Digneron, a popular hostess in the creoleémigré circle (Journal de Mme Danloux, 27 August 1795), who paid 180guineas rather than 200 for a four-figure portrait, charged only threeguineas for a child portrait because he was touched by the mother’slove (Journal de Danloux, 3 October 1792), and otherwise occasionallyreduced his rates for the poverty-stricken provided they did notadvertise his generosity (ibid., 8 February 1793).

78. He painted both her and her son for nothing (Journal de Mme Danloux,16 September 1795).

79. Ibid., 22 September 1795; also Portalis, p. 292. 80. A preliminary bust was done in 1795, and served as a model for the

1797 picture, a half-length showing the duke leaning on his swordand holding a plumed hat. Both are in the Musée Condé at Chantilly,but the half-length was originally given by the duke to his friendMr. Crawfurd, in whose London house he was a frequent guest, and onlysubsequently purchased from a descendant by the Duc d’Aumale forChantilly. Danloux’s receipt of £25, apparently for this portrait, ismentioned by Macon in Les Arts dans la maison de Condé (Paris, 1903),p. 144, but cannot be traced in the Musée Condé archives.

81. Journal de Mme Danloux, 1 February 1795. 82. Journal de Danloux, 26 July 1797. 83. Journal de Mme Danloux, 15 May 1796, 24 June 1796, 29 July 1796. 84. Ibid., 3 September 1796. 85. Journal de Danloux, 9 July 1797, 17 July 1797. 86. Journal de Mme Danloux, 25 September 1795. 87. Ibid., 31 December 1795. 88. Journal de Danloux, 3 July 1797, 6 July 1797. 89. Journal de Mme Danloux, 5 May 1795. She wrongly puts the charge at

25s. 90. Journal de Danloux, 10 July 1797. 91. Not being a member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculp-

ture (or of any other foreign academy), he had to submit a drawingbefore being allowed to attend the Royal Academy’s life classes (Portalis,pp. 90–1).

92. See Edwards, p. 255. 93. Journal de Danloux, 17 May 1792. 94. Ibid., 20 July 1800. 95. Ibid., loc. cit. 96. Ibid., loc. cit.



97. Ibid., 1 August 1792; also 24 July 1792, and Portalis, p. 93. 98. Ibid., 20 December 1792. 99. See Portalis, p. 151.

100. Hoppner violently criticised her polish in the preface to the OrientalTales (London, 1805), p. x, and Sir George Beaumont thought thather paintings resembled waxwork (see Joseph Farington, Diary, ed.James Greig, 8 vols (London, 1922–8), II. 219). Vigée Le Brun her-self admitted that ‘je quitte difficilement mes ouvrages. Je ne les croisjamais assez finis’ (Souvenirs, II. 133).

101. See An Aspect of Collecting Taste (Stair Sainty Matthiesen, New York,1986), pp. 48–9.

102. See Helen Smailes, A French Painter in Exile: Henri-Pierre Danloux(1753–1809), in France in the National Galleries of Scotland (Edinburgh,1985), p. 48.

103. Journal de Danloux, 17 July 1800; see also Portalis, p. 431. 104. Revue du Salon de l’an X, ou Examen critique de tous les tableaux qui ont été

exposés au Muséum, in Collection Deloynes, 63 vols (Bibliothèque Natio-nale, Paris), XXVIII, no. 769, p. 178.

105. For example, in Dernières Observations sur cette exposition, ibid., vol.XXX, no. 815, p. 77. The portrait was not re-exhibited until 1814.

106. Le Pausanias français: état des arts du dessin en France à l’ouverture du dix-neuvième siècle, ibid., vol. XXXIX, p. 270.

107. Ibid., p. 271. 108. On this general point see Martin Warnke, introduction to ‘Künstler

der Emigration’, Künstlerischer Austausch (Akten des XXVIII. inter-nationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte, Berlin, 15–20 July 1992),3 vols (Berlin, 1993), I. p. 161.

109. See Marcia Pointon, ‘Portrait-Painting as a Business Enterprise inLondon in the 1780s’, Art History, 7 (1984), and Hanging the Head,op. cit.


184

12 The Image of the Republic in the Press of the London Émigrés,1792–1802 Simon Burrows

Successive French governments feared the ability of the émigrépress to influence ideologies, allied policy and strategy, businessconfidence and opinion. Above all perhaps they feared itspower to shape the image of the Republic in the eyes of theirémigré and European elite audience. As a result they watchedthe content of émigré journals with interest.

In late 1795 Charles Alexandre de Calonne’s Tableau del’Europe raised a storm of controversy in émigré circles.1 TheTableau, which first appeared in the émigré newspaper, LeCourier de Londres, argued that the revolutionary governmentwould invent new financial resources to replace the failingassignats, that royalism had little popular appeal in France, andthat the French monarchy had never had a true constitution.To many émigrés these arguments seemed sacrilegious.2 Theyimplied that the old regime was despotic; that the republic wasnot about to collapse; and internal counter-Revolution wasunlikely. But more was at stake than the sensibilities of theémigrés, for each of Calonne’s points had policy implications.If the old regime lacked a constitution, royalists needed toconvince France that a restored monarchy would establishsafeguards against despotism. If royalism lacked popular appealinside France, the Bourbons and allied powers had little tohope for from ballot box or insurrection. And, if Calonne’s fin-ancial assessment was correct, only a vigorous and successfulmilitary offensive could hope to achieve victory. This was theopposite of the policy urged by Francis d’Ivernois, a rival experton French finances, who, like Calonne, had access to the Britishgovernment. D’Ivernois contended that France’s resourceswere exhausted, and hence a mere holding operation would

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bring the allies victory through attrition.3 Is it surprising thenthat one French diplomat blamed d’Ivernois for the breakdownof peace negotiations in July 1796?4 This is a telling, if extreme,example of the power attributed to émigré publications.

Indeed, the image of the Republic in the newspapers andperiodicals of the London émigrés was highly political andoften bitterly contested. Yet although the émigré press was tobecome a significant propaganda arm of British foreign policyafter 1803, the exile journalists of the 1790s wrote with consid-erable freedom. The British government showed scant inter-est in what they wrote, and offered the barest of patronageopportunities and, while the émigré journalists aligned them-selves with various political camps within the Emigration, fin-ancial support from this quarter was meagre.5 Instead, theémigré journalists were supported by subscriptions from theémigré public and British and European élites, on circulationsvarying from several hundred to several thousand.6 Thusalthough several political persuasions were represented in theémigré press, most London-based émigré journalists wrotefrom conviction, rather than as hired hands, and severalamong them were important political actors in their own right.The moderate monarchiens had two journals, Montlosier’sJournal de France et d’Angleterre (January–June 1797), and MalletDu Pan’s Mercure britannique (1798–1800). The intransigentpurs had their own Mercure de France from April 1800–April1801. The splenetic, prolific Jean-Gabriel Peltier produced aseries of titles: initially relatively moderate in politics if notstyle, he was recruited by the purs in 1797.7 Finally there wasthe Courier de Londres (1776–1826).8 In the 1790s it was amouthpiece for its co-proprietor Calonne under the editor-ship of Verduisant (April–October 1793) and the abbé Calonne(1793–1799). Over time the Calonne brothers became estrangedfrom the pur camp, and in July 1797 Montlosier was recruitedas the abbé’s co-editor.9 In June 1802 editorship passed toJacques ( James) Regnier, who turned it into an outspoken andvitriolic pur organ.10

Jeremy Popkin has shown how the revolutionary pressscripted the revolution in advance by creating the tensionsand expectations which gave rise to the great revolutionaryjournées and retrospectively by giving or denying symbolicmeaning to events.11 The émigré press also defined new realities



by imposing patterns on events. Thus, in 1792 Peltier insistedthat his role was to disabuse Europe of the version of eventspropagated by the revolutionaries, and to justify the king andhis Swiss guards in the face of their calumnies.12 More significant-ly, he offered the first extensive and detailed eyewitnessaccounts of the September massacres not to be produced ‘sousl’influence de la faction dominante’.13 In Peltier’s narrative theRepublic was born amidst murder and blood.

According to most of the émigré journalists, the Republic wasnot truly ‘popular’ and, despite appearances, the governmentdid not enjoy widespread support. They were basing theirargument on the revolutionary principle of popular sovereigntyrather than traditional absolutist and legitimist theories. Onone level, this was pragmatic – they hoped to undermine therevolution’s main claim to legitimacy and to promote foreignpolitical or military intervention by convincing their readersthat support for royalism was widespread. On another level, itindicates the extent to which revolutionary political culturehad penetrated. The émigré journalists were suggesting thatpolitical power must be based on popular consent. They dif-fered from the revolutionaries only about which side enjoyedthat consent.

Hence the overthrow of the monarchy was portrayed asneither easy nor popular. Peltier claimed that the 10 Augustinsurrection was the work of a hundred factious individuals.Even though the people were blind instruments, it had requiredmonths to gather sufficient force for the coup.14 Moreover, theinsurgents had been either fédérés summoned from Marseilles,or members of the urban under-class, seduced by cash and thehope of pillage, and enflamed by alcohol and the prospect ofan orgy of destruction.15 Peltier also offered statistical proofsthat popular opinion opposed the revolution claiming that in1789 counter-Revolutionary newspapers outnumbered revolu-tionary ones by three to one and outsold them by 35:2.16 Like-wise, the abbé Calonne argued that the menu peuple had beendeceived into supporting the revolution. In a patronising articleaddressed (somewhat improbably) to the French people, heexplained how they had been duped and that their true inter-est lay in the re-establishment of the monarchy.17

By late 1795, following the débacles of Quiberon andvendémiaire, some émigré journalists were questioning the


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popularity of the Bourbons inside France. Calonne’s Tableaude l’Europe, for example, argued that the émigrés misunder-stood the discontent in France. Rather than indicating royalistsympathies it stemmed from fear of arbitrary or anarchicgovernment, concern for property, worries about the nation’sfinances and a desire to conserve religion. Mallet Du Panagreed that Frenchmen did not favour royalism. If offered lib-erty, property and the exercise of their religion, they wouldrally to the Directory.18 In 1799 he added that royalists neededto persuade Frenchmen that Louis XVIII’s maxims were notthose of some ‘choleric, absurd and vindictive émigré’, andprovoked a new storm in the process.19 His remarks indicate agrowing belief that the Republican government was not inher-ently unpopular, weak or short-lived, despite continuing dis-content in France. Moreover, the bitter polemical debatessparked by Calonne and Mallet Du Pan’s remarks helped tocreate and perpetuate the image of an emigration which wassimultaneously divided and intransigent.

Republican leaders and revolutionaries were portrayed inthe émigré press as divided, ambitious, immoral plotters. Theirpower derived from their ability to dupe the people and froma general confusion in ideas. Peltier remarked that philosophesand revolutionary writers had attached the words ‘liberté’ and‘patriote’ to men and objects worthy of scorn.20 He also main-tained that the Constitution of the Year I was produced byNecker’s pride and destroyed by Robespierre’s rage.21 Therevolutionary leaders were bloodthirsty rogues, or worse, as wasproved once and for all by the September massacres andTerror. Thus, when the Girondins were executed, Peltierexplained that they died for being ‘un peu moins scélérats’ thantheir accusers and the Courier de Londres said Brissot’s silenceon the scaffold seemed to indicate that he was still plotting.22

Other revolutionaries were more criminal still. When Bentaboleattacked Hébert’s patriotism in the Convention, Peltierexpressed surprise at the content of his speech. He claimedBentabole had been expected to reproach Hébert for notdenouncing his own brothers, killing his father, poisoning hismother and raping his sisters.23 The abbé Calonne, reviewingthe satirical novel Confessions of Jean-Baptiste Couteau,24 foundthe logic and morality of its absurdly bloodthirsty hero per-fectly resembled those of the real Jacobin innovators.25 Such



stereotypes were reinforced by reports of the excesses of dechris-tianisation and the revolutionary cults, including Peltier’s glee-ful description of the ‘prostitutes’ chosen to represent the newdeities Reason and Liberty.26 Nevertheless, Peltier contradict-ed those who heralded the advent of a new order after thepurges of the Hébertists and Dantonists in March 1794;St Just’s report on the police merely offered further insights into‘le culte de Moloch’ and its ‘sacrifices humains’.27 Thermidormade little difference to portrayals of revolutionary politi-cians. The abbé Calonne reminded his readers that Tallien,though in appearance more moderate than Robespierre, wasnevertheless a regicide and Peltier argued that the coup wasonly the replacement of one faction by another.28 The Ther-midorians’ apparent honesty was a calculated survival strategy.It was the minimum possible concession to popular outrage.29

Like the republican leadership, Republican culture was por-trayed as morally deformed and explicitly and implicitly con-trasted with the literature and arts of the old regime. This wasintended as a political and moral point as well as a literary one.For just as de Bonald argued ‘la littérature est l’expression dela société’, so Peltier commented ‘le spectacle est le tableau desmœurs d’un peuple’.30 Naturally, his depiction of revolution-ary theatre was scathing and the dramatist Marie-JosephChénier was described as an ‘insecte de la littérature et de lapolitique.’31 Republican literature was the product of a processof debasement that began even before the revolution. Hence,as the revolution approached:

La langue de Fénelon & de Racine, de Bossuet & de Buffon;cette langue simple sans bassesse, & noble sans enflure, har-monieuse sans fatigue, précise sans obscurité, élégante sansafféterie, la véritable expression d’une nature perfectionée,devenait brusque, dure, courte, sauvage, hyperbolique, parcequ’il fallait, disait-on, que la langue fût pensée, fût sentie,forte, pittoresque comme la nature.32

The debasement of culture was portrayed as both a cause ofrevolution and as symptomatic of the republic.

Counter-revolutionary writers were among the first toattempt to explain the revolution and the émigré journalistswere no exception. In October 1789 Peltier had been amongthe first to propose that the revolution was the result of an


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Orleanist conspiracy, an idea he repeated in exile.33 Peltier’sjournals and the Courier de Londres also endorse Barruel’s con-spiracy theories and accuse the philosophes of preparing revolu-tion by undermining religion and morality.34 In contrast, MalletDu Pan and Montlosier both denied the existence of either amasonic or philosophe conspiracy. Yet even they acceptedthat the enlightenment had contributed to the outbreak ofrevolution by breaking down social bonds and the mechanismsof moral control.35 Exile journalists also offered providentialinterpretations of the Revolution. In late January 1793 theCourier de Londres threatened the regicides with celestial justiceand, as the Terror progressed, Peltier, Verduisant and theabbé Calonne expressed awe at the swiftness of divine retribu-tion whenever a revolutionary leader went to the scaffold.36

The Republic was thus the instrument of heaven’s punish-ment and hence a temporary phenomenon. This rhetoric wasless common after Thermidor but providential explanationsof the revolution remained implicit in the émigré journals’vocabulary and presentation.

However, in time a new, more pressing question had to beanswered: how had the republic survived in the face of massiveinternal and external opposition? Economic causes seemed tooffer the best explanation. The revolution had gained hugeresources by seizing Church property and minting countlessassignats. Moreover, the Revolution opposed all property andwas hence a threat to European society. Thus, the Courier deLondres questioned the wisdom of the supposed predilection ofthe merchant classes for revolution, citing Danton’s rhetoricalquestion ‘de quel droit voulez-vous qu’on respecte vos pro-priétés, acquises très souvent par des moyens injustes et vexa-toires?’ and in late 1793 Peltier remarked that the merchantsof Bordeaux, Lyon and Marseille and bankers of Paris hadbeen executed for being rich.37

The Republican threat to property justified the émigré jour-nalists’ support of war. As early as 1793 they were arguing thatthe Republic threatened all society, all states, all religion andall property and therefore required a universal response, anda new, more energetic form of warfare.38 It was impossible tohave a just and lasting peace with the revolution. The onlyanswer to the French threat was to extinguish republicangovernment and restore the legitimate Bourbon monarchy.39



While this argument was ultimately self-interested, the émigréjournalists had acknowledged the huge military potentialunleashed by the revolution long before allied governments,which persistently under-estimated French strength.

By late 1795, although hopes of military victory over theRepublic were fading, the Constitution of the year III, whichenfranchised only a relatively small propertied elite, providedhope of victory by the ballot box. Thus the decision of the Con-vention that one third of the new legislature should be electedannually and that in the first instance two thirds of themembers of the Convention should remain sitting in the newassembly, came as a rude shock.40 The failure of the vendémiairecoup (3 October 1795) finally dashed remaining royalist hopes.These two events seemed to confirm that the constitutionwas designed to perpetuate the power of the Convention.41

Since the 1795 elections showed a clear preference for mod-erates and royalists, the Two Thirds Decree violated theexpressed wishes of the political nation. Moreover, it wasprobable that whenever royalist, moderate, or Jacobin gainsthreatened the conventionnel hegemony, the constitutionwould be violated.42 This realisation led to a new interpreta-tion of the revolution’s momentum. An endless procession offactions, each temporarily in control of the government,would be unable to master the revolution because the destruc-tion of legitimacy in turn legitimised successive coups. Thisview of the revolution was to remain fundamental to Peltier’sconception of its continuing dynamic even after 1814. Theargument was self-fulfilling, and allowed no compromise. Onlythe return of the legitimate monarch could break the cycle.Thus, the 18 Fructidor coup was part of a predictable patternof violence, as Peltier insinuated ironically:

Encore une révolution; encore une fois le régime de la ter-reur substitué à celui de la constitution! Puis fiez-vous àtoutes ces constitutions de 1791, 1793 & 1795!43

The period between September 1797 and November 1799 wasone of disillusionment for the émigré journalists, who renewedtheir attempts to convince Europe and its sovereigns of thesame basic set of propositions they had advanced during theTerror. Mallet Du Pan argued that experience had proventhat the French were as oppressive in peace as in war.44 The


Simon Burrows 191

Republic had a huge population in which every man was a sol-dier and a doctrine to spread worldwide. It was thus on a per-manent war footing with the rest of the world. Peace wouldonly be possible ‘when the rights of man shall cease to con-spire against the rights of man in society’ or when the Directoryhad renounced tyranny, disorder, rapine, and set aboutrestoring a balance of power.45 This was unlikely to happen asthe republic could only subsist by plunder:

She revolutionises Nations that she may plunder them; andshe plunders them to enable her to exist. The circle of herphilosophy extends no further. She would exchange all thecharacters of the Rights of Man for a good bag of crownpieces, were not those Republican characters and trappingsin her hands what a drowsy potion is in the hands ofrobbers. . . . 46

The French Republic had become a military oligarchy.47

Tragically, it had ceased to be monarchical without becomingtruly republican. It had no fixed laws, religion or institutions,and created a new constitution for every crisis.48 France wasruled by a monstrous hybrid of republicanism, anarchy anddespotism and the Revolution had become synonymous withdestruction – when it ceased to destroy it would cease to exist.49

Brumaire divided the émigré press along predictable lines.The monarchiens’ judgement was, despite reservations, gener-ally favourable to Bonaparte. Mallet Du Pan believed his was ‘amore tolerable government’, which would rest on the supportof ‘moderates’, ‘mild constitutionalists’, and ‘mild royalists’and secure the middle ground abandoned by the intransigentroyalists.50 Mallet du Pan praised Bonaparte for restoring theChurch, releasing political prisoners, improving the treatmentof émigrés and securing the rule of law, adding:

Surely this enumeration renders it unnecessary to provethat, however there may be a continuance of usurpation,there is certainly no continuation of the former system; andthat nothing can differ more than the regulations and pol-icies adopted by Bonaparte and those invariably observedby his predecessors.51

Mallet Du Pan died before he could give a definitive judge-ment on the new regime, but his friend Montlosier rallied to



it.52 Montlosier believed Napoleon had neutralised egalitarianforces, and his genius was thus ‘de conserver les établissemensrévolutionnaires en faisant cesser la révolution’.53

He approved of the new regime’s concentration, centralisa-tion and bureaucratisation of power and believed the constitu-tion of year VIII established a monarchie limitée, based on threegreat political truths:

[1] la nécessité d’une intervention aristocratique commeingrédient nécessaire à la conservation d’un grand état et parconséquence l’absurdité d’une démocratie absolue . . . [2] lanécessité de concentrer l’autorité. . . . il y a dix fois plus demonarchie dans la république actuelle que dans la monar-chie constituée de 1791 . . . [3] qu’on ne gouverne point lepeuple par le peuple.54

For the purs however the consulate was just another phase ofthe revolution: Bonaparte was an usurper and tyrant, and hisgovernment revolutionary in both origins and dynamic. It wasdriven by cupidity and egoism and hence unjust and inherentlyunstable as well as illegitimate. Napoleonic France would con-tinue to seek internal stability by external pillage and thus rep-resented a permanent threat to Europe. The Mercure de Francecastigated Napoleon as a military despot surrounded byrepublican forms, maintaining that the French people ralliedto him through desperation. The forms were changed butrevolutionaries still held power.55 Peace would therefore onlyperpetuate a government without regular form ruling over apeople without religion or morals.56 The French were still:

un peuple révolté, sans religion, sans gouvernement régulier,ivre de sang et plongé dans l’anarchie qui favorise tous sesattentats; . . . un sujet audacieux et rebelle, monté de crimeen crime jusque sur le trône de son bienfaiteur.57

Peltier, too, saw Bonaparte as the incarnation of revolutionaryprinciples. Compromise had been forced upon him becausehis rift with his natural allies, the Jacobins, had become un-bridgeable, but his character was base and hideous.58 More-over, the return to monarchic forms would not restorestability: the ‘charme’ to bind millions to the commands of oneman could only stem from legitimacy.59 Without their legitimatemonarch, the French were slaves to force.60 Their government


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did not even guarantee fundamental rights such as the integ-rity of posts, freedom of thought, liberty of the press, andsecurity of the person.61 The same men, armed with the sameprinciples, remained in power. ‘Des philosophes bouchers’had replaced ‘des bouchers philosophes’.62

By 1799 émigré journalists had models of revolution againstwhich to interpret Bonapartism. A mixture of political cal-culation, ideology and genuine perceptions, their images of theRepublic offer insights into changing émigré mentalities, andperhaps even into British policy. For some, Bonaparte remainedthe personification of a revolution driven by cupidity, spoil,usurpation and ambition, with which there could be no com-promise. But for others his government combined many posit-ive features of the old regime with popular support. Who canwonder therefore that Montlosier rallied to Bonaparte, andthat 90 per cent of all émigrés, weary of exile, had returned toFrance by May 1803. Moreover, in denying that the republicenjoyed widespread popular support, the émigré journalistshad tacitly accepted the principle of popular sovereignty.Despite ridiculing Siéyès’ ‘sublime découverte’ that ‘le [plus]grand nombre est le [plus] grand nombre’,63 they were pre-pared to invoke the theory of consent and the general will tolegitimise their case. Paradoxically, they were embracing thevery democratic political culture they sought to anathematise.The highly contested image of the Republic in the émigrépress therefore both highlighted, perpetuated and exaggeratedpolitical divisions within the ranks of the emigration, anddemonstrated the potency of the principle of popularsovereignty from which the Republic drew its strength.

NOTES

1. Charles Alexandre de Calonne, Le Tableau de l’Europe en novembre1795; et pensées sur ce qu’on a fait et qu’on n’aurait pas dû faire (London,1796). The text of the pamphlet first appeared in the Courier de Londres,vol. 38, nos. 33–52 (27 October 1795–29 December 1795). An appendixappeared in Courier de Londres vol. 39, no. 2 (5 January 1796).

2. The most significant reply to Calonne was A.J.B.R. Auget de Monty-on’s Rapport fait à sa majesté, Louis XVIII sur le livre intitulé Tableau de



l’Europe (1796). The debate between them was discussed at length inthe Parisian press, for example, Les Nouvelles politiques (15 August1796), and by Peltier in Paris pendant l’année 1796, nos. 64 (23 July1796) and 70 (27 August 1796). Émigré attacks on Calonne forcedhim to publish an appendix as early as 5 January 1796.

3. See especially Francis d’Ivernois, Réflexions sur la guerre (1795) andCoup d’oeil sur les assignats (1795). Both works were translated intoEnglish.

4. See Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris, Correspondance politi-que/Angleterre, 589, fos. 330–1, Nettement to Delacroix de Contaut,Londres, 9 thermidor IV (27 July 1796).

5. S. Burrows, ‘The Exile Press in London, 1789–1814’, (unpublishedDPhil thesis, Oxford, 1992) pp. 168–96.

6. Burrows, op. cit., pp. 147–61. 7. Between 1792 and 1818 Peltier published Le Dernier Tableau de Paris

(1792–1793); L’Histoire de la restauration de la monarchie française, ou lacampagne de 1793 (1793); La Correspondance politique (1793–1794); LeTableau de l’Europe (1794–1795); Paris pendant l’année (1795–1802);L’Ambigu (1802–1818). On Peltier see H. Maspero-Clerc, Un journalisteContre-révolutionnaire: Jean-Gabriel Peltier (1760–1825), Paris, Sociétédes Etudes Robespierristes), 1973.

8. The paper is better known under its earlier title, Le Courier de l’Europe.On its early history see Gunnar and Mavis von Proschwitz, Beaumar-chais et le Courier de l’Europe, documents inédits ou peu connus, 2 vols.(Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1990); H. Maspero-Clerc, ‘Une“Gazette anglo-française” pendant la guerre d’Amérique: le Courier del’Europe (1776–1788)’, Annales historiques de la révolution française(1976), pp. 572–94.

9. François-Dominique Reynaud, Comte de Montlosier, Souvenirs d’unémigré (1791–1798) publiés par son arrière petit-fils le comte de Larouzière-Montlosier et par Ernest d’Hauterive (Paris, Hachette, 1951), pp. 247–9.Courier de Londres, 42 (9), (1 August 1797).

10. Public Record Office, Kew, FO 27/70 fos. 624–625, ‘Note of Regnier’(undated); Archives Nationales, Paris, F7 6330 dossier 6959, ‘Rapportde M. Lamberte’. On Regnier: S. Burrows, ‘British Propagandafor Russia in the Napoleonic Wars: the Courier d’Angleterre’, NewZealand Slavonic Journal (1993), pp. 85–100.

11. Jeremy D. Popkin, Revolutionary News: the Press in France, 1789–1799(Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1990), pp. 96–168.

12. Dernier Tableau de Paris, especially I: iv–vi, 66–8, 140–5. 13. Dernier Tableau de Paris, I, avertissement, p. i. 14. Dernier Tableau de Paris, I: p. 81. 15. Dernier Tableau de Paris, I: pp. 143–4. 16. Dernier Tableau de Paris, I: p. 44. A review of titles suggests these

numbers are sheer fantasy. However, subscription information forpro-revolutionary titles is hazy, and it is certain that the leading coun-ter-revolutionary papers were among the best supported papers ofthe period 1789–1792.

17. Courier de Londres, 35 (31, 32 and 37), (18 and 22 April and 9 May 1794).


Simon Burrows 195

18. British Mercury, no. 11 (30 January 1799), pp. 166–7 [R.G. Dallas autho-rised English translation which regularly appeared five days after theFrench edition.].

19. British Mercury, no. 26 (15 October 1799), p. 88. 20. Paris pendant l’année 1796, no. 62, (9 July 1796), pp. 612–13. The state-

ment is copied from an article by a right-wing Parisian journalist Adriende Lezay Marnézia which Peltier reprinted with a strong endorsement.

21. Peltier, Correspondance française ou tableau de l’Europe, no. 1 (2 November1793), thereafter entitled Correspondance politique.

22. Correspondance politique, no. 5 (12 November 1793); Courier de Londres,34 (39), (12 November 1793).

23. Correspondance politique, no. 23 (24 December 1793). 24. Robert Jephson, Confessions of Jean-Baptiste Couteau, Citizen of France,

written by himself: and translated from the French by Robert Jephson, 2 vols.(1794).

25. Courier de Londres, 36 (2), (4 July 1794). 26. Correspondance politique, no. 12 (28 November 1793). 27. Correspondance politique, no. 76 (26 April 1794). 28. Courier de Londres, 36 (16), (22 August 1794) and Tableau de l’Europe, I:

34. 29. Tableau de l’Europe, I: 50. 30. Paris pendant l’année 1798, no. 171 (31 December 1798), p. 149. 31. Paris pendant l’année 1797, no. 100 (18 February 1797) p. 605. 32. Paris pendant l’année 1798, no. 160 (16 July 1798), pp. 37–8. 33. Peltier, Le Coup d’equinoxe d’octobre 1789. Lettre de M. P . . . de Paris à M.

M . . . son ami négociant de Nantes (Paris, 1789); Peltier, Domine, salvumfac regem (Paris, 1789); Dernier Tableau de Paris, II: pp. 10–23; 98–9n.Correspondance politique, no. 7 (16 November 1793); Paris pendant l’année1795, no. 9 (1 August 1795) pp. 3–10n. See also Maspero-Clerc, Peltier,pp. 17–26.

34. Augustin Barruel, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme 4 vols.,(London: P. Le Boussonier, 1797–1798). See also Courier de Londres,41 (16), (24 February 1797); Paris pendant l’année 1798, no. 169 (30November 1798), pp. 594–6, no. 170 (17 December 1798), pp. 114–18.Religion and morality; Dernier Tableau de Paris, I: vii; II: 4, 396n.;Courier de Londres, 34 (9), (30 July 1793); 35 (12), (11 February 1794).

35. British Mercury no. 14, (15 March 1799), pp. 335–63; Journal de Franceet d’Angleterre, no. 12 (7 April 1797), pp. 161–84 and no. 14 (22 April1797), p. 290.

36. Courier de Londres, 33 (9), (29 January 1793) and Correspondance poli-tique, nos.5, 7, 68, (12, 16 November 1793, 8 April 1794); Courier deLondres, 34 (8, 40), (26 July, 15 November 1793); Dernier Tableau deParis, I: appendix, p. 72.

37. Courier de Londres, 34 (25), (24 September 1793). The speech wasmade on 31 August 1793 and Correspondance politique, no. 12, (28November 1793).

38. See Dernier Tableau de Paris, I: 149, 179; Tableau de l’Europe, I: iii; Corres-pondance politique, no. 2 (4 November 1793); Courier de Londres, 33 (10,12), (1, 8 February 1793).



39. See Histoire de la restauration, letter 2, (dated 6 April 1793), p. 38; Corres-pondance politique, no. 27 (2 January 1794); Courier de Londres, 40 (29),(7 October 1796).

40. See, for example, Paris pendant l’année, no. 14 (7 September 1795), pp.321–36 and no. 15 (12 September 1795), pp. 434–7 et passim.

41. Paris pendant l’année, no, 25 (21 November 1795), pp. 3–11. 42. See, for example, Paris pendant l’année 1797, no. 132 (9 September

1797), p. 57 ff. 43. Paris pendant l’année 1797, no.132 (9 September 1797), p. 61. 44. British Mercury, no. 4 (15 October 1797), pp. 271–98. 45. British Mercury, no. 6 (15 October 1708), p. 449. 46. British Mercury, no. 11 (29 January 1799), p. 130. 47. British Mercury, no. 6 (15 November 1798), p. 413. The same view was

expressed by the abbé Calonne, Courier de Londres, 42 (22), (15 Septem-ber 1797), and Montlosier, Courier de Londres, 42 (52), (29 December1797).

48. Courier de Londres, 42 (52), (29 December 1797); British Mercury, no. 11(29 January 1799), p. 131. Courier de Londres, 44 (16), (24 August1798).

49. Courier de Londres, 44 (25), (25 September 1798). 50. British Mercury, no. 30 (11 December 1799), pp. 340, 346–7 and 372. 51. British Mercury, no. 35, (10 March 1800), p. 170. 52. On Montlosier’s rapprochement with the Consulate: H. de Miramon-

Fitzjames, ‘Le comte de Montlosier pendant la révolution et l’empire’,(unpublished PhD thesis: Aix-en-Provence, 1944); Maspero-Clerc,‘Montlosier, journaliste de l’émigration’, Bulletin d’Histoire éco-nomique et sociale de la révolution française, année 1975 (1977), pp. 81–103.; Robert Griffiths, Le Centre perdu: Malouet et les ‘monarchiens’ dansla révolution française (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble,1988).

53. Courier de Londres, 46 (52), (27 December 1799). 54. Courier de Londres, 46, (52), (27 December 1799). 55. Mercure de France, no. 1 (10 April 1800), pp. 35–65. 56. Mercure de France, no. 10 (10 July 1800), pp. 253–4. 57. Mercure de France, no. 4 (10 May 1800), p. 319. 58. Paris pendant l’année 1800, no. 195 (15 January 1800), p. 103. 59. The image is Peltier’s own. See Dernier Tableau de Paris, I: 10. 60. Paris pendant l’année 1799, no. 193 (30 November 1799), p. 479. 61. See Dernier Tableau de Paris, vol. 1, avertissement, p. ii. 62. Paris pendant l’année 1799, no. 194 (24 December 1799), p. 610. 63. Dernier Tableau de Paris, I: 14n.


197

13 Burke, Boisgelin and the Politics of the ÉmigréBishops Nigel Aston

We may have some diversity in our opinions, but we have nodifference in principles.

(Burke to Boisgelin, 1791)

Crossing hastily to England during 1791 and 1792, often indisguise, many French bishops found themselves undertakingtheir first ever maritime journey, to a country none of themhad previously visited. What possible cause for hope couldEngland offer these reluctant but steadfast opponents of theCivil Constitution of the Clergy, as they came ashore at thechannel coast ports of Kent, Sussex and Hampshire and triedto make sense of their fate? Most immediately, there was theconsolation of meeting fellow exiles, often clergy from theirhome dioceses.1 There were also touching displays of activesympathy and charitable relief from most sections of the Brit-ish propertied élites; these sprang from a sense of pity, shame,and incredulity at the mistreatment of fellow Christians by theRevolutionaries. Finally, there was the comfort of knowingthat their cause had been taken up before their arrival by oneof the outstanding public figures and political campaigners ofthe late eighteenth century, Edmund Burke, MP for Malton,and leading Portland Whig, the opposition grouping increas-ingly, by the early 1790s, working in conjunction with Pitt theYounger’s administration. To the non-juring clergy and theémigrés generally, his name had a resonance and an interestunequalled by any other Briton thanks to his Reflections on theRevolution in France, first published in November 1790.

On the basis of this support, it might have been thought thatBurke would have the émigré bishops in his pocket, but such aprediction would have been false. Burke’s view of the bishops– and his intended role for them as the spiritual leaders of the



counter-Revolution – generated its own distinctive tensionsthroughout the next few years, because it conflicted with themore pragmatic reality. They could admire and usually endorsehis general case against the Revolution, but that shared senti-ment was never translated into effective joint action. Beforetheir arrival in Britain, Burke had praised what he saw as thebishops’ uncompromising attitude to Revolution which heassumed would remain as inflexible in exile as it had been athome. It was a misreading of the situation. In fact many prel-ates had done their utmost to come to terms with the revolu-tionary settlement of 1789–91, until the imposition of the CivilConstitution without the Church’s consent made their positionintolerable. Burke’s failure to register such tokens of episcopalmoderation would persist after the bishops left France. He wasreluctant or unable to admit the complexities of the situationconfronting the French episcopate, and the result of his wishfulthinking would be a turbulent and more distant alliancebetween the bishops and their parliamentary champion thanmany commentators could have predicted in 1791. This chapterexamines these mutual misunderstandings by focusing on therelationship between Burke and archbishop Boisgelin of Aix,one of the outstanding prelates of the ‘generation of 1789’and, aged 59 in 1791, only three years younger than Burke.On the face of it, they were natural allies and counter-Revolu-tionary comrades with shared politico-religious hopes for thefuture of France and Europe. Yet the association of these twogifted men was destined never to pass beyond the stage of res-pect into a warmer amity.

The advent of the French Revolution when Burke’s career –and his morale – were at their nadir, gave him a completelynew cause, and it was one that, together with Ireland, sus-tained and engaged him for the last seven years of his life.2Believing, as he did, in the supreme importance of religion as‘the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and allcomfort’ and the Church as consecrating the life of the state,Burke maintained that the Revolution represented a decisivechallenge to the Christian basis of European civilisation, andthat it could only be successfully counter-acted by imbuingopposition to Revolution with a predominantly Christiancharacter.3 It would be a contest which overrode the traditionalconfessional divisions. Burke relied on the bishops – Anglican


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as much as Gallican – to concede as much and to act as the key-stone in this pan-Christian front he had dedicated himself toproclaiming.

In the Reflections, Burke identified the Gallican episcopateas leaders of a Church polity remarkable both for its principlesand its purity, but one which faced an impoverished anduncertain future having ‘patriotically’ given up its income andits juridical identity to the demands of the Revolution:

Who but a tyrant . . . could think of seizing on the propertyof men, unaccused, unheard, untried, by whole descriptions,by hundreds and thousands together.

He acclaimed the Church’s steadfastness in adversity, its un-willingness to put prosperity before principle, as articulatedin the Exposition des principes of October 1790, presented byBoisgelin in the name of all the bishops in the National Assem-bly (except for Talleyrand and Gobel) only a month before theReflections was published.4 Burke deplored these revolutionaryinflictions, though he was joining a chorus of Anglican lamentswhich dated from the October Days. Events in France con-firmed Burke’s recently developed awareness that Churchaffairs were far less settled than he could have wished and thata very real threat to ecclesiastical establishments was gatheringstrength on both sides of the Channel. From his point of view,it was no coincidence that English dissenters had made furthermoves in Parliament towards achieving repeal of the Test andCorporation Acts in 1788–90 just as the French revolutionarieshad dispossessed the Gallican Church.5 The loss of its tithesand landed possessions was a terrible warning of the confisca-tions that would assuredly happen in England if the Anglicanorder was not defended from enemies like Priestley, Price andthe ‘rational dissenters’.6 Behind these restless men, Burkeimagined he detected the hand of malcontent noblemen likethe Marquess of Lansdowne or Earl Stanhope, conspiring, liketheir French equivalents, to overthrow the monarchical stateand the religion which validated participation in its life.7

By 1789, Burke was taking pride in British tenacity in ad-hering in crisis to ‘the old ecclesiastical modes and fashionsof institution’.8 He insisted that corporate integrity markedany legitimate branch of the Church and that it was the task ofthe state to uphold that hallmark rather than subvert and



subordinate it, as he believed the National Assembly was tryingto do. He did not deny that there were aspects of Church life inFrance which needed reform, but he believed that it was forthe Gallican Church to address its own problems and not enduresolutions foisted on it by the revolutionaries. We have a clue tohis approach in an important letter of September 1791 when,at the request of Calonne (then acting as chief minister of theémigré government), Burke had sent his son Richard toCoblenz to consult with the émigrés regarding the promotionof a military alliance with Britain for intervention in France.The letter elaborates at length on possible changes in a restoredmonarchy which would include a canonical synod of the Gal-lican Church ‘to reform all abuses’ (left unspecified).9

Such a proposal was broadly in line with the approach articu-lated in the Exposition of October 1790, but there were differ-ences, especially in attitudes towards any sovereign electedassembly. The irony was that it never seems to have occurredto Burke that much influential opinion among the Frenchbishops was, throughout 1790, keen to reach an accommoda-tion with the politicians in the National Assembly, ready evento adhere to the Civil Constitution so long as the Church wasallowed a formal consultative role through the suitably Gal-lican device of a national council.10 Such a stance was moreflexible than Burke’s insistence that Church reform shouldprocede primarily from a council rather than from the politi-cians in the Assembly. Yet the opportunity for compromisewas lost, the Constitutional Church was created in France, andonly three of the existing diocesan prelates felt able to retainoffice within it. The rest chose – or were impelled into – exileduring 1791–92. This early difference of emphasis prefiguredfuture tensions between Burke and the émigré bishops. It sug-gests, before most of them had even left France, that it was nottheir policy preferences but what the episcopate symbolised asan essential component of France’s historic identity that mostmattered to Burke. For him the bishops were an essential leader-ship cadre, a rallying point in the crusade that Burke wantedthe British government to unleash against the Revolution inconjunction with the other European powers. He found ithard to accept the reality that, for the most part, the bishopswere demoralised, impoverished, and only too aware of thelimited scope for political initiative in exile. Besides nursing


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resentment at a sudden exclusion from public consequence,they brought to Britain a range of divergent views about theway forward for Church and State in France which Burke wasreluctant to register.

The destruction of the old ecclesiastical order entailed theabandonment of pre-Revolutionary political ambitions for theoverthrown Bishops, unless they were willing to be flexible as,notoriously, Loménie de Brienne and Talleyrand were. Mostput principle before further hope of government office. Thisexclusion was hard for front-rank prélats politiques to accept,men such as archbishops Champion de Cicé of Bordeaux,Keeper of the Seals as recently as 1789–90 and Arthur de Dillon,Archbishop of Narbonne and President of the Estates ofLanguedoc before 1789. But loss of political prospects fell onno one harder than on Jean de Dieu-Raymond de Cucé deBoisgelin (1732–1804), archbishop of Aix since 1770. Herewas an immensely able and intelligent prelate, known and res-pected across Provence for his administrative competence; inthe General Assembly of the Clergy of France (which met peri-odically down to 1788) he had proposed reforms to clericaltaxation, increasing the revenues of the lower clergy, and afairer system of appointments to benefices. None of theseachievements satisfied him. He remained a frustrated politi-cian, denied the appointment he coveted at the highest levelsof the state. He was elected to the Estates-General in the springof 1789 and quickly emerged as the de facto leader of the formerFirst Estate deputies once their order had been submergedwithin the National Assembly.

The contrast between the undeviating conduct in difficultcircumstances which Burke expected of the Gallican episcopateand the lingering pragmatism displayed by some of the bishopsin the National Assembly is nowhere better illustrated than ina brief survey of archbishop Boisgelin’s involvement in its con-stitutional deliberations between 1789 and 1791.11 As a prom-inent member of the centre-right Monarchien grouping,Boisgelin fought hard to give the Gallican Church an inde-pendent voice in determining its future and the chance of res-ponding freely to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.12 In hismajor speech of 29 May 1790, while declaring that kings andcivil authorities had to obey the Church in matters of salvation,he conceded:



It is possible that some retrenchments might be made in theChurch; but the Church must be consulted. . . . We thinkthat the ecclesiastical power must do everything possibleto conciliate your wishes with the interests of religion. . . .Therefore, we propose that you consult the Gallican Churchin a national council. There lies the power which must watchover the trust of the faith; there, instructed in our duties andyour wishes, we shall conciliate the interests of the peoplewith those of religion.13

His politics reflected a commitment to reform typical of thegreat majority of politicians during those two years including,whatever their personal misgivings, a high proportion of fellowmembers of the centre-right.14 If pressed, Boisgelin like manyof the French bishops in 1790, would have found it as hard tosubscribe unreservedly to Burke’s full-blown presentation ofthe destruction of the French polity in the Reflections as hisBritish critics did.

From a royalist angle, some of Boisgelin’s actions wereembarrassingly open to misconstruction. At one point, thearchbishop appeared to be aligning himself with Dr RichardPrice, whose sermon Discourse on the Love of our Country was,notoriously, the catalyst for Burke’s Reflections.15 Boisgelin waspresident of the National Assembly in December 1789 whendeputies required that he should, as representative of themall, offer their fraternal thanks for greetings received fromthe Revolution Society of London. Mirabeau insisted that thearchbishop as president could not delegate that duty to anotherdeputy. That was not the last of the matter. In March 1790, theRevolution Society published a summary of its doctrine. Itincluded among the documentation, along with Price’s notori-ous sermon, a fraternal letter of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, and Boisgelin’s reply in the name of the Assembly.As Burke reported, ‘The whole of that publication, . . . gave mea considerable degree of uneasiness’.16

He would have been still more disquieted if he had beenaware of the unsollicited advice senior French churchmenwere offering the Vatican throughout July and August 1790.They argued that, even without a national council, there wasmore to be gained by working with the new ecclesiastical orderthan lost by rebelling against it. Boisgelin felt so strongly on


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this point he was ready to travel personally to Rome to pressthe case.17 Indeed, in a memorandum of early December1790, Boisgelin was still pressing Pius VI to accept the reformsor risk schism. Such temporising conduct had no place in anyBurkean agenda.

Along with the majority of episcopal deputies, Boisgelinretained his membership of the National Assembly until its dis-solution in September 1791. He took a leading and constructivepart in its proceedings, despite the passage into law of the CivilConstitution. Despite his irregular attendance, the arch-bishop’s studied moderation and attempts at compromiseplayed their part in achieving some concessions for the refract-ories, like the law of 7 May allowing them the hire of churchbuildings for their own ceremonies, and the decision to excludethe Civil Constitution from the overall provisions of thenational constitution of September 1791.18 Boisgelin was oneof those episcopal deputies who defended their work on thenew constitution and the principles of liberty to which theywere committed against implied papal criticism in a collectiveletter of 3 May. They insisted their view of liberty was notincompatible with Pius VI’s recently published Brief Quod ali-quantum.19 This oblique proclamation of Gallican independencewas a brave gesture that was appreciated more by many laydeputies than by their clerical colleagues, not to mention thePope, but the majority of prelates in the Assembly were un-deterred. They made up an unofficial steering committee thatwould not accept the preferences of Rome uncritically, by forinstance, holding up the publication of Pius’ condemnatoryBriefs.20 Nevertheless, those bishops who were not membersof the Assembly and who had not taken the oath were leavingfor exile from spring 1791 onwards and Burke immediatelystarted to organise help for those who came to Britain. For thiswork, he received the thanks of Boisgelin speaking for all hisfellow episcopal deputies, and there was a heartfelt, publicexchange of compliments between Burke and the archbishop inJuly.21

Other French clergy had their doubts about the principlesunderlying the archbishop’s conduct. His conspicuous mod-eration and his suspicion of émigré schemes appeared dis-tasteful set against the suffering of dispossessed non-jurors.Simply by remaining in the Assembly, he and the other



episcopal deputies were sanctioning the legitimacy of Revolu-tionary actions whose fury fell on their colleagues. Therefollowed an attempt to reveal to Burke how much he hadmistaken his man if he deemed the archbishop principallyresponsible for preserving the integrity of the Catholic religion.There was, according to Boisgelin’s critics, a much seamierreality, with the archbishop ready to make every sort of con-cession throughout 1790–91 in his indefatigable search for aneleventh-hour compromise. Boisgelin and Bishop Bonal ofClermont were condemned by Claude-Constant Rougane, acuré from the Auvergne, for taking the civic oath of 4 February1790 without a murmur – ‘au lieu de rougir, il avait souri’.They and all the prelates had to accept their share of the blamefor the constitution, and repent. Criticism was directed inparticular towards the archbishop of Aix, whose lifelongendorsement of religious tolerance Rougane execrated – thecuré even blamed him for writing to a Protestant and ended hisown letter to Burke by abjuring the politician to convert! Theresulting mini-controversy has two points we might note. First,Boisgelin’s French critics were anxious to alert Burke directlyabout episcopal conduct he might find unacceptable. Toquote from Rougane’s letter:22

Il faut, Monsieur, que vous n’ayez pas lu en entier les ouvragesde M. d’Aix, ou que vous ne les ayez lus qu’à travers la plusgrande prévention pour l’auteur.

Secondly, whatever the flexibility shown by the French epis-copate either in the National Assembly or in local government,the passing of the Civil Constitution and the oath required toit, was a watershed. It became desirable for the bishops to pro-ject back on events since 1789 an image of their uncomprom-ising political rectitude, precisely the version depicted in theReflections.23 The compromising spirit of a Boisgelin was essen-tially alien to Burke’s emerging crusading mentality.24 Thefact was that Boisgelin’s character and commitment to a mod-erate reformism – well displayed in his Coronation sermon of1775 at Reims when he commended a limited monarchy to theyoung Louis XVI – was, as Rougane had correctly surmised,scarcely known to Burke.25 While there was no taint of theolo-gical heterodoxy attached to the archbishop, he had been asso-ciated from his student years at the seminary of Saint-Sulpice


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in the early 1750s with kindred spirits like Brienne, Jérome-Marie Champion de Cicé, Morellet and Turgot who were by nomeans unsympathetic to the modernising vision commendedin the Encyclopédie.26 Boisgelin was subtle in his diplomacy,capable of dissimulation, with an equal facility for writingfuneral orations and licentious verse, alert to the beauties ofOvid as well as Bossuet.27 Burke took cognisance of none ofthis. Had he been better acquainted with the diversity of char-acter and outlooks among the exiled bishops, Burke’s assess-ment of their viewpoints both in the Reflections, the subsequentwritings, and his day-to-day politics might have been morenuanced. It should not be forgotten that in 1791–92 it was notthe bishops who were known to Burke (except in a corporatesense), but Burke who was known to them, through the elec-trifying impact of the Reflections after translation and publica-tion in France.28

To all his readers of whatever nationality, Burke stood forthas the defender of the historic order in Church and State inFrance and, indeed, in the whole of Europe. Yet, like themajority of educated Britons, Burke’s first-hand familiaritywith religious politics in France during Louis XVI’s reign wasrestricted. This was predictable if, following scholars like C.P.Courtney, James Boulton and Marilyn Butler, one acceptsthat Burke knew little in detail about public affairs in France.29

He had not even visited it since his well-known journey of1773, an occasion which prompted Mme du Deffand to con-fide in Horace Walpole the halting character of Burke’sspoken French.30 So Yves Chiron’s recent claim that ‘EdmundBurke connaît bien la France’ requires qualification.31 AsBurke’s writings show, he was in command of much accurateinformation about the organisation and working of the FirstEstate in France, but none of his correspondents from Francein 1789 or immediately before – Decrétot, Third Estate deputyfor Rouen, Charles Jean-François de Pont, the Paris parlemen-taire, or Mme Parisot, Richard Burke’s landlady – had access toinformed sources inside the Church.32 There was no one whocould pass on rumour and opinion in the manner that the abbéMorellet did for Lord Lansdowne. The one prelate Burke didknow at first-hand, Jean-Baptiste-Marie Champion de Cicé,bishop of Auxerre, who had befriended him in 1773 andtaught his son Richard the rudiments of French, he took as



representative of the whole episcopal bench. The fact thatChampion de Cicé was regularly absent in Paris, a fiery anti-Jansenist, and an ambitious politician, either did not impingeor was not taken into account. There was, then, every need forthe first of the exiled prelates to arrive in Britain, Jean-François de La Marche, bishop of Saint Pol de Léon, to corres-pond with Burke in 1791, about some of the misconceptionshe entertained about the French clergy.33

Once the other episcopal exiles reached Britain, Burke hadhis first opportunity to meet them personally or offer greetingsand messages of support. He quickly, to quote Dominie AidanBellenger, ‘became the chief polemicist of the exiles’ principles’,seeing in them exemplars of suffering in ‘the cause of honour,virtue, loyalty and religion’, ‘a key part of that ancient consti-tutional order he wished to see restored in France’.34

But the immediate priority after the September Massacresand the overthrow of the monarchy was to bring practicalassistance and comfort to the exiled clergy gathering in theChannel Islands and the southern ports. Burke did more thanmerely lend a prestigious name to fund raising. He wrote hisCase of the Suffering Clergy of France which first appeared in TheEvening Mail (17–19 September 1792), was translated, distrib-uted in pamphlet form, and reprinted in The Annual Register.More than any other publication, it generated public supportfor French émigrés and facilitated the creation of John Wilmot’sEmigrant Relief Committee to co-ordinate charitable workamong them.

But Burke’s primary concern was always war on the Republicand its destruction. It was no coincidence that the Case of theSuffering Clergy was published in the same month (September1792) as Burke drew up a memorandum for ministers, Headsfor Consideration on the Present State of Affairs, the nearest hecomes to grand strategy, urging the liberation of the Europeannations from the Jacobins. The French émigrés and royalistsstill in arms were to be the vanguard of the liberating armies,backed by British might.35 As for the émigré bishops, theywere identified as a cohesive force which could both mobilisecounter-Revolutionary opinion and give it the religiousrationale appropriate in a battle for the survival of Christendom;he presumed, all too easily, that the notion of a crusade wouldhave an immediate appeal to them.


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It was not the first of Boisgelin’s concerns when he finallyreached London in September 1792 to join up again with for-mer Monarchien colleagues, among them Malouet and Lally-Tollendal. He was one of the last bishops to reach Britain.During the winter of 1791–92 he had briefly visited Brusselsand Mainz, before returning to Paris to resume his difficultrole as unofficial head of the bishops’ committee in the capital.His arrival in England coincided with the imposition of a newoath on the non-juring clergy (the so-called ‘Liberty–Equality’oath) which he reluctantly accepted. So did the majority ofother London exiles, but their choice conflicted with the pref-erence of French bishops elsewhere in Europe.

Once in London, Boisgelin’s restless political drive gave himan involuntary supremacy in the committee of French bishopsalready in operation. Bishop La Marche’s pre-Revolutionaryfamiliarity with policy-making was minimal by comparisonwith Boisgelin’s: he had not even been a member of theNational Assembly. Yet it was La Marche who was identified asleader of the exiles in the host community. He was an earlyarrival in Britain, possessing a stability of character and purposeand lack of worldly ambition not to be found in the archbishopof Aix: to the pastoral respect of most exiled priests, includingthe non-Bretons, he added the confidence of Pitt’s administra-tion. The two prelates actually worked together constructivelyfor the rest of the 1790s. They pursued a moderate policyintended to preserve a spirit of Gallican collegiality amongcolleagues, putting pastoral care before political militancy.Boisgelin was more anxious than La Marche to influence Britishpolicy towards revolutionary France but scope for unilateralinitiatives was restricted.

Burke had only restricted contact with Boisgelin or, indeed,the other prelates between 1792 and 1797. Disagreementsover policy meant that only weeks after he had helped summonit into existence, Burke ceased to attend meetings of the Emig-rant Relief Committee regularly. It would be an exaggerationto say that Burke thereafter lost interest in their cause, but hewas denying himself an important official forum in which toair his views among the Gallican leaders. He still acted as afundraiser for the exiles, and entertained them on his estate atGregories near Beaconsfield in south Buckinghamshire.36 ButGregories was small; the revenue it generated barely enough



for Burke to maintain his status as a minor country gentleman.Though individual émigrés like the young and then unknownChateaubriand travelled 30 miles north-west out of London toenjoy Burke’s table, his company and his temporary accom-modation, Boisgelin felt no such compulsion.37 He eventuallyvisited in the autumn of 1793 and helped to brief Burke aboutdevelopments in France, much of it reaching him via clandestinecontacts with clergy under persecution in Paris and Provence.38

Whatever their difference of emphasis on policy details, theexiled archbishop could not neglect the influence of Burkeand his circle on the government. Burke may have left Parlia-ment in the summer of 1794 just as the Portland Whig alliesjoined Pitt’s government, but he maintained his internationalprestige for the last three years of his life, not least by polem-ical contributions like the Letters . . . on a Regicide Peace. Hiscordial relationship with the new Secretary-at-War, WilliamWindham, was potentially of vital consequence to the fortunesof the émigré bishops, despite the setback their cause sustainedat Quiberon in 1795.39 Boisgelin was desperate to have influ-ence in these circles. Shortly after Burke had retired from theHouse of Commons in favour of his son, Richard, Boisgelindrew up a memorandum on the problems of a peace, anunpublished tract written in a relatively informal style, almostcertainly sent initially to Richard Burke, to be passed on to theyoung man’s father. Yet its suggestion that, in the aftermath ofthe Thermidor coup which had deposed Robespierre, Britainstood to gain little from imposing a severe peace and that‘l’ Angleterre en relevant la France, relève son commerce’ washardly the sort of advice likely to win ministerial endorsement,particularly as Boisgelin tactlessly if prophetically argued thatthe popularity of Pitt was likely to plummet if the war contin-ued.40 The predictably cool official reception of this documentdid not deter Boisgelin from further efforts.41

Burke’s practical usefulness to Boisgelin and the other émigrébishops in the last three years of his life was limited. He re-mained well disposed to the émigré cause, though increasinglypreoccupied with Ireland, and in deep mourning for the pre-mature death of his son Richard. Burke was respected for suchinitiatives as the Penn school for the education of émigréchildren, but he was not loved, and the relationship betweenhimself and the French bishops in London had become


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progressively more distant since 1794. In particular, he hadgrown to disapprove of the bishop of St Pol de Léon’s influ-ence: his role as trusted go-between for the Wilmot ReliefCommittee and the cosy relationship he had with some gov-ernment circles.42 This might, in other circumstances, haverepresented an opening for Boisgelin, but the archbishop wasdisinclined to break rank, and spent much of the later 1790swith those members of his family sharing his London exile andtaking solace from his literary studies, not Ovid this time butan appropriately penitential translation of the Psalms.43

For Burke, the unpalatable fact was that most bishops weremore comfortable with the pragmatic approach of Pitt andDundas towards the conduct of the war (and the minimal rolefor the exiled clergy within it) than with his own ideologicallydriven crusading schemes. The realisation that only a minorityof the prelates such as Hercé of Dol (who perished on thesands of Quiberon Bay in 1795) were disposed either to takeon the role of latter day knights templar and act as chaplains tothe counter-revolutionaries in arms, or lend their skills andpolemical talents to furthering the great cause was only slowlyadmitted by Burke. Burke was unprepared for compromisewith any aspect of the French revolutionary state; Boisgelinwas much more adaptable, as one might have expected from hisreputation as a prélat administrateur before the Revolution.44

After Burke’s death, he would accept the Concordat, andresume his ecclesiastical career during the Consulate as arch-bishop of Tours (1802), a cardinal, and a Napoleonic senator(1803). Such a move was symptomatic of deep-seated differ-ences towards the conduct of political life held by Burke andBoisgelin. However much mutual respect they entertained foreach other, this divergence worked against bringing the two meninto a close working alliance in their resistance to Revolution.

NOTES

1. Dominic Aidan Bellenger, The French exiled clergy in the British Isles after1789, Bath, 1986, pp. 4–5; ‘The French exiled clergy in England andnational identity’, Studies in Church History 18 (1982), pp. 397–407.



2. Frank O’Gorman, Edmund Burke. His Political Philosophy, London,1973, p. 108.

3. Harmondsworth, 1969, 186; C.R. Cragg, Reason and Authority in theEighteenth Century, Cambridge, 1964, pp. 273–4; Nigel Aston, ‘A “laydivine”: Burke, Christianity, and the Preservation of the British State,1790–1797’, in Religious Change in Europe 1650–1914. Essays for JohnMcManners, Oxford, 1997, pp. 185–211.

4. The extent to which Burke drew on the Exposition des principes inReflections is invariably overlooked. The episcopal declaration maskedthe extent to which the bishops had in 1789–90 been prepared toaccept the end of the ‘old Order’. Significantly, Boisgelin’s final bid tohave the Civil Constitution accepted by the papacy occurred a monthafter Reflections appeared.

5. Albert Goodwin, ‘The Political Genesis of Edmund Burke’s Reflectionson the Revolution in France’, Bull. of the John Rylands Library, 50 (1968),pp. 336–64.

6. Burke, Reflections, pp. 263–4. He also accepted that ‘The robbery ofyour church has proved a security to the possessions of ours’, ibid.,p. 204.

7. Frederick Dreyer, ‘The Genesis of Burke’s Reflections’, Journal ofModern History 50 (1978), pp. 464–6; cf. O’Gorman, Edmund Burke,pp. 110–11, 136–7.

8. Burke, Reflections, p. 198. 9. Burke to Richard Burke, 26 Sept. 1791, in ed. Thomas W. Copeland

et al., Correspondence of Edmund Burke, 10 vols., Cambridge, 1958–78,VI. For the background to Richard Burke’s mission see JenniferM. Welsh, Edmund Burke and International Relations. The Commonwealth ofEurope and the Crusade against the French Revolution, Basingstoke, 1995,pp. 118–19.

10. Nigel Aston, The End of an Elite. The French Bishops and the Coming of theRevolution, 1786–1790, Oxford, 1992, pp. 238, 241–2.

11. See Jacques Le Goff & René Rémond, eds, Histoire de la Francereligieuse, vol. 3, Du roi Très Chrétien à la laïcité républicaine, Paris, 1991,90. See generally E. Lavaquery, Le Cardinal de Boisgelin, 1732–1804, 2vols, Paris, 1921.

12. Boisgelin’s letters of spring 1789–spring 1790 to the Comtesse de Gra-mont (A.N. M.788) were ed. by A. Cans in La Révolution française 79(1902), pp. 316–23; 80 (1902), 65–77, 301–17; Robert Griffiths, LeCentre perdu. Malouet et les ‘monarchiens’ dans la Révolution française,Grenoble, 1988.

13. B.-J.-B. Buchez and P.-C. Roux, Histoire parlementaire de la révolutionfrançaise, ou Journal des assemblés nationales depuis 1789 jusqu’en 1815,Paris, 1834, VI. pp. 11–12; Timothy Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary.The Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Emergence of a Revolu-tionary Culture (1789–1790), Princeton, NJ, 1996, p. 290.

14. See Boisgelin’s criticism of the far right in a letter of 10 Oct. 1788:‘You cannot imagine the harm which this group has done and contin-ues to do. . . . Nothing could be more stupid. They understand neithercircumstances nor human nature’. A.N. M 788.


Nigel Aston 211

15. Goodwin, ‘The Political Genesis of Edmund Burke’s Reflections’,348–50. See generally D.O. Thomas, The Honest Mind: the Thought andWork of Richard Price, Oxford, 1977.

16. Burke, Reflections, p. 198; Lavaquery, Boisgelin, II. pp. 50–1. By 1791,Burke gave the archbishop an honourable mention among other pre-dominantly clerical deputies who had resisted the Revolution. SeeBurke to the Comtesse de Montrond, 25 Jan. 1791, Correspondence,VI. pp. 211–12.

17. Maurice Vaussard, ‘Eclaircissements sur la Constitution civile duclergé’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française 42 (1970), pp. 286–93, 292.

18. Bernard Cousin, Monique Cubells, René Moulinas, La pique et la croix.Histoire religieuse de la Révolution française, Paris, 1989, pp. 151–2.

19. J. Chaunu, Pie VI et les Evêques français. Droits de l’Eglise et de l’Homme. Lebref Quod aliquantum et autres textes, Limoges, 1989.

20. A. Mathiez, ‘Les Divisions du Clergé Refractaire’, La Révolutionfrançaise 39 (1900), pp. 44–73. Cf. Charles Ledré, L’abbé de Salamon:Correspondant et Agent du Saint-Siège pendant la Révolution, Paris, 1965,104 ff. The committee continued to function until August 1792.

21. See Boisgelin to Burke, n.d., Northamptonshire Record Office,Fitzwilliam MSS. A. xviii. 6 enclosing a missing copy of the Expositiondes principes, and Burke to Boisgelin 15 July 1791, Correspondence, VI.pp. 293–5 (originally pub. London Chronicle, 30 Aug.–1 Sept. 1791). On17 Aug., Boisgelin sent Burke a copy of his Considérations sur la Paixpublique, adressées aux chefs de la Révolution, Paris, 1791. Burke toldBoisgelin: ‘I will not examine scrupulously, by what motives men likeyou have thought it your duty to support all that you have done’, 15July 1791, Correspondence, VI. 294. The Reflections contains a singlepassage (p. 223) criticising Boisgelin for offering (12 Apr. 1790), onbehalf of the Clergy, an excessively large loan of 400 million livres tomeet the fiscal needs of the state as an alternative to the land appropri-ation earlier decreed.

22. C. Rougane, ancien curé d’Auvergne, Plaintes à M. Burke sur la lettre deM. l’archevêque d’Aix, Paris, 1791, B.L. F.R. 142 (10).

23. Burke had told Boisgelin: ‘Your Church, the intelligence of which wasthe ornament of the Christian world in its prosperity, is now morebrilliant, in the moment of its misfortunes, to the eyes who are capableof judging it’. 15 July 1791, Correspondence, VI. p. 293.

24. Discussed most recently in Welsh, Edmund Burke and International Rela-tions, pp. 141–66.

25. John McManners, ‘Authority in Church and State. Reflections on theCoronation of Louis XVI’, in Christian Authority. Essays in Honour ofHenry Chadwick, Oxford, 1988; Bernard Plongeron, La Vie quotidiennedu clergé français au 18e siècle, Paris, 1974, 228. See also Boisgelin’spamphlet of 1785 arguing that every political organisation should befounded in reason and the republican ideal of vertù. Lavaquery, Bois-gelin, I. pp. 299–304.

26. Edna Hindie Lemay, Dictionaire des Constituants, 2 vols., Oxford, 1991,II. p. 105.



27. See the lucid contemporary character sketch cited in Louis Guim-baud, Un Grand Bourgeois au dix-huitième siècle. Auget de Montyon (1733–1820), Paris, 1909, p. 142.

28. The first 2500 copies translated into French sold out in two days. Wil-liam B. Todd, ‘The Bibliographical History of Burke’s Reflections on theRevolution in France’, The Library, 5th ser., 6 (1951–2), pp. 100–8.

29. C.P. Courtney, Montesquieu and Burke Oxford, 1963, pp. 36–8; JamesBoulton, The Language of Politics in the Age of Wilkes and Burke, Oxford,1963, p. 95; ed. Marilyn Butler, Burke, Paine, Godwin, and the RevolutionControversy. Cambridge, 1984, pp. 32–3. Cf. Conor Cruise O’Brien,The Great Melody. Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke, London, 1992,pp. 392–4; J.G.A. Pocock, ‘The political economy of Burke’s analysisof the French Revolution’, Historical Journal, 25 (1982), pp. 331–49.Burke’s library certainly contained an extensive collection of works onFrance and its history. See the Catalogue of the Library of the LateRight Hon. Edmund Burke (London, 1833).

30. Sir Philip Magnus, Edmund Burke. A Life, London, 1939, speaks moreaptly of Burke’s ‘fluent but atrocious French’. The details of the 1773visit are given in Courtney, Montesquieu and Burke, pp. 32–5.

31. Yves Chiron, ‘Edmund Burke’, pp. 85–97, in Jean Tulard, ed. La Contre-Révolution. Origines, Histoire, Postérité, Paris, 1990. See also his EdmundBurke et la Révolution française, Paris, 1987.

32. Jean Dumont, La Révolution française ou les Prodiges du Sacrilège, Paris,1984, p. 234. Dumont is another who overstates Burke’s ‘connais-sance directe du clergé français’. Cf. Burke’s own words in Reflections,pp. 252–3.

33. Burke, Correspondence, VII. pp. 207–10. 34. Bellenger, The French exiled clergy in the British Isles, p. 13. 35. Russell Kirk, Edmund Burke. A Genius Reconsidered, Peru, Illinois, rev.

edn, 1988, pp. 186–7. 36. C.P. Ives, ‘The Gregories Today’, The Burke Newsletter, 4 (1962–3),

pp. 188–9. 37. There is useful material on Burke’s relations with the émigrés generally

in S. Skalweit, E. Burke und Frankreich, Köln and Opladen, 1956. 38. Burke to Richard Burke, 11 Nov. 1793, Correspondence, VII. p. 483.

The Burke-Boisgelin tie was held up for censure by one British radicalas indicative of ‘the polluted source whence his [Burke’s] intelligenceis derived’. Charles Pigott, Strictures on the New Political Tenets of theRight Honourable Edmund Burke, London, 1791, p. 59.

39. Jacques Godechot, The Counter-Revolution. Doctrine and Action 1789–1804, trans. Salvator Attanasio (Princeon, 1971), pp. 254–60.

40. Ar. Aff. Etr. Fr. 623, f. 130. A copy was also sent to the Regent (thefuture Louis XVIII).

41. In late 1794 he was trying to interest ministers in information aboutthe Midi and Provence based on his own knowledge as well as observa-tions on the émigré cause generally. He had little to show for his efforts.Lavaquery, Boisgelin, II. pp. 200–1. Boisgelin was averse to Fox andhis politics. Declaring the leader of the Whig opposition to be a ‘Dem-agogue and Rebel’, he stated on 29 June 1793 that ‘Fox seems to be in


Nigel Aston 213

universal contempt both as a man & a politician all over the Continent’.To Lady Wharncliffe, in ed. C. Grosvenor, The First Lady Wharncliffeand Her Family (London, 1927), I. p. 33.

42. Burke, Correspondence, IX. p. 11. 43. Lavaquery, Boisgelin, II. pp. 203–4.45 and First pub. as Le Psalmiste

(London, 1798). 44. For Boisgelin’s politics in the mid-1790s, see his unpublished Projet de

déclaration royale intended for Louis XVIII, and recommending thatthe king should have all power in his hands to ensure public peaceand security. He would be ‘ . . . le garant et la sauvegarde de la tran-quillité publique. D’immenses ressources seront données au monarquefrançais pour rendre l’état florissant’. The Projet is in Archives desAffaires étrangères, fonds Bourbon, vol. 589, f. 567. It is a very much aproduct of the royalist high tide of 1795–7.


214

14 ‘Fearless resting place’: the Exiled French Clergy in Great Britain,1789–1815 Dominic Aidan Bellenger

Great Britain provided a refuge for several thousand exiledFrench clergy following ‘the moral tempest’ of the French Re-volution.1 Most of these clergy had left France following theCivil Constitution of the Clergy and its attendant and con-sequent oaths.2 A few clergy, mainly from the aristocraticclasses, had made their move to British territory before 1792,but the numbers who came in the latter months of that yearwere on an unprecedented scale. The refugees of the 1792–93generation were not the last. There was a continuous tricklethroughout the decade, and on two occasions there were fur-ther floods. These were in 1794–95, following the successfulFrench invasion of Germany and Holland and the decisionto isolate the Channel Islands, and in 1797, when the coup d’étatof Fructidor stopped a royalist reaction and drove many clergywho had returned to France, thinking the worst was over, backinto exile. The two latter waves were diverted from the Southof England to the North: on one day, 5 October 1796, 295clergy were landed at South Shields as the northern part ofthe country was placed on a war footing.3

The various dates of arrival, the dispersal of the clergy, anda certain amount of travelling back and forth to and from Eur-ope, make it difficult to asses the numbers of the clergy whofound refuge in the British Isles, although the extant recordsof the Emigrant Relief Committee, founded by voluntary sub-scription, and later financed by government, to succour andadminister the exiles, suggest some estimates.4 By September1792 there were already 1500 exiled clergy in England and1000 in Jersey.5 By December, the numbers had increased to6000 or 7000 in the British Isles – 3000 in England and 3400


Dominic Aidan Bellenger 215

in Jersey and the other Channel Islands.6 Throughout theperiod 1793–1800 there was a mean figure of some 5000 exiledclergy on the English mainland – 4008 were receiving state aidat the end of 1793, 5621 in 1800. After the Concordat of 1801between the French government and the Papacy, the numbersbegan to dwindle. By 1802 there were 800. After the restora-tion of the French monarchy in 1815, the numbers had fallenstill further and of the 450 or so who were still receiving relief,90 were marked as ‘returned’. Thus by 1815 only 350remained.7 By that date as many as 1000 had died in exile,although the obituaries in the English Catholic review, TheLaity’s Directory, suggest a figure nearer 700. Few, beside thedead, remained in England after 1815. John McManners, inhis study of Angers, has indicated that all the surviving parishclergy exiled from their city on the Loire returned as soon aspossible to their native soil.8 Many had grown old in exile,although the gloomy pages of the Treasury records, with theirrequests for medicines, hide from view the fact that most of thepriests were relatively young on arrival.9

A group of exiles in Alderney, for example, in October 1792,whose ages were recorded, had an average age of 36.9 years,

Age indications of émigré priests in Britain

Born 1760-70

Born before 1730

Born 1730-40

Born 1740-50Born 1750-60

28%

22%

9%

16%

25%

Figure 14.1 Age indications of émigré priests in Britain.



and only two of this sample of 23 were over 60 years.10 Anothergroup (of 12) resident in 1798 in the vicinity of Hexham inNorthumberland, had an average age of 48 – the youngest was37, the oldest 71.11 Priests too old to be deported were oftenoverlooked, and the really sick were frequently given compas-sionate dispensation ‘cette mesure est sans doute contraire auxlois; mais l’humanité semble l’exiger’.12

Most of the 30 or so bishops exiled in England chose Londonas their home. They were accompanied by many other dignit-aries of the Church: vicars-general, canons, university professors.This middle rank of clergy was sizeable. The pre-Revolution-ary chapter of Bayeux, for example, was a foundation of 62,consisting of a dean, 12 office holders and 49 canons – with acorporate wealth equal to that of the bishop.13 Such men wereused to the routine of administration and were prepared tocontinue such a role in exile, thus retaining their diocesansolidarity, one of the chief marks of the Gallican church.14 AtScarborough in 1796 there was a heavy concentration of Bre-tons among the clergy (61 as compared to 33 from elsewhere)but what was more striking was that 53 of these came from thediocese of Rennes, one of whose ‘ci-devant’ vicars-general,Fayolle, acted as paymaster and coordinator of relief.15 Atnearby York, where all the known exiled clergy were Bretons,a vicar-general for the Bishop of Saint Pol de Léon acted aslinkman with the London administration whose presidinggenius was his ordinary, Mgr de la Marche, Bishop of Saint Polde Léon.16

The ease with which diocesan uniformity was maintained wasfacilitated by the predominance of priests from Normandyand Brittany among the exiles. An analysis of the priestsremaining in Jersey in March 1797 shows what dioceses theycame from: Angers (3), Avranches (19), Bayeux (63), Chartres(1), Coutances (54), Dol (8), Evreux (4), Laon (1), Lisieux (2),Mans (22), Nantes (1), Paris (2), Quimper (1), Rennes (16),Rouen (2), Sens (8), Saint-Brieuc (11), Saint-Malo (35), Tours(1), Treguier (8) and Vannes (6).17 All the dioceses here are nofurther south than the Loire and mostly on the western sea-board. The Normans and Bretons clung to their identity;when the great hostel for the French priests in the King’sHouse, Winchester, was dispersed, the clergy there wererehoused according to region – the Normans to Reading, the



Bretons to Thame.18 The survival not only of ecclesiastical loyal-ties but also of regional attachments helped to increase theisolation of the exiles from the mainstream of English life.

The British administration saw the clergy as sufferers for‘King and Country’ or more precisely for ‘Throne and altar’.An Emigrant Relief Committee, with special attention to theclergy, was set up in 1792, a quasi political body supported bycollections.19 Its chairman was John Wilmot, MP for Coventry,who had previously administered the committee to relieve theplight of the American Loyalists, who had backed Britain dur-ing the American War of Independence.20 Wilmot was to bethe dominant influence until his resignation in 1806.21 but,to give the committee’s money-raising activities maximumeffect, Wilmot was supported – on the printed appeal and in theearly policy meetings – by a formidable panel of celebratednames.22 These included leading figures from political, civic,commercial and church life. The political figures were largelydrawn from the Anti-Jacobins, like Burke, the Marquess ofBuckingham, Earl Fitzwilliam and the Duke of Portland – menpolitically associated with the Portland Whig faction. Perhapsthe most influential of the group was William Windham, Sec-retary at War (1794–1801), who was to become the linchpin inthe governments’s dealing with the French émigrés, althoughhe was never able to convert Pitt’s administration to the ‘ultra’cause.23 It was never Wilmot’s intention to give the committeean ‘ultra’ political complexion and Wilmot must have beenpleased by William Wilberforce’s membership of the com-mittee, even if the opponent of the slave trade, no lover ofCatholics, accepted membership mainly, or at his own under-standing ‘partly’, to wipe out the ‘French citizenship’ withwhich the Republic had honoured him in 1792, and which hethought identified him with supporters of revolution.24 Wil-mot must also have been pleased by the presence of the LordMayor of London whose own committee he had absorbed.25

The Bishops of Durham and London sat on the committeealongside several of the leading London clergy, including DrWalker King, Preacher of Gray’s Inn and afterwards Bishop ofRochester, who was later to administer Burke’s school forexiled French children at Penn in Buckinghamshire.26 Minor-ity interests were not neglected. Charles Butler, a leadingRoman Catholic layman and lawyer, was to be among the most



active of the sponsors and one of the least objectionable repre-sentatives of his community.27 Sir William Pepperell, a dispos-sessed baronet from New England who had benefited fromthe American Loyalists’ Commission, added a touch of insti-tutional continuity.28

Thus supported, Wilmot set his appeal under way, and inlate September and early October 1792, advertisements askingfor support appeared in local and national papers. Newspapersappealed to public pity and charity in the face of the sufferingof the clergy who had been ‘deprived of their property, anddriven from their habitations, many of them imprisoned withoutcause, and all of them exposed to every species of insult’. Francewas presented as a salutary reminder of what civil disordercould bring to any society and as a country ‘where no one is safe,who will not trifle with oaths, and scoff at the Saviour of theWorld’. England was eulogised as the home of Christians whose

national character is generous compassion and they surelyhave the strongest claims on us who suffer persecution forconscience sake. The clergy of France have been persecuted. . . merely because they were Christians.29

The stirring words of the appeals carefully glossed over theRoman Catholic convictions of the French clergy and madelittle mention of the complexities of the revolution in France.They called directly on benevolence and charity. They made noovert avowal of political stance, although they implicitly con-demned the Republic of ‘pretended philosophy’.30 Such printednotices were highly successful in bringing in cash, collectedlocally, and sent to the central committee’s office at the resid-ence of Dorothy Silburn, a widow from Durham who dedic-ated her life to the exiles and gave hospitality to the Bishop ofSaint Pol de Léon,31 in Little Queen Street, Bloomsbury.32

The formidable French Bishop was to be the leader of theecclesiastical exiles.33

The main subscription books survive and the names ofdonors reveal the wide public sympathy for the victims of re-volution.34 The tales of the Terror caught the imagination ofthe public and loosened its purse-strings. It was not only therich and influential who contributed. Laurence Neil, ‘a commonweaver’, gave 2s 6d as did ‘a protestant servant’: two ‘work



people’ presented £1.1s a ‘respecter of conscience and an enemyof persecution’ donated £3.3s, the ‘agents of the Leicester andNorth Canal’ gave £7.7s.35 But, admittedly, it was the moreprosperous sections of society, and especially the aristocracywho gave the most. Buckingham, Fitzwilliam, Portland andother noble members of the Committee encouraged their fel-lows in the House of Lords.36 The Administration was slowerin coming forward with donations but Lord Hawkesbury (latercreated Earl of Liverpool), President of the Board of Trade,gave £50 before the end of 1792 and Henry Dundas, HomeSecretary, £100 on March 4 1793.37 Some of the donors wereunexpected: Charles James Fox, no hater of revolutions oradmirer of priests, gave £10.38

The monies received were considerable, but outgoings werelarge. The payment of the clergy was now settling down to aregular system which needed more than a successful appeal tofinance it. Before the end of October 1792 the everyday run-ning of the committee was in the hands of the Bishop of SaintPol de Léon.39 who, with his wide personal knowledge of theexiles, along with his trusted ‘Grand Vicars’, provided not onlyan efficient accounting system but also a reliable agency ofscrutiny.40 The bishop relied on his network of local paymasters,many of whom – like Postel, Pénitencier de Séez at Canterburyand Aprix de Bonnière at Winchester, who had been pro-curator of Evreux Cathedral, had gained their knowledge ofpractical matters as officials in the diocesan chapters of pre-Revolutionary France.41 The income of the committee – apartfrom the small cost of hiring a room, a clerk of two, and sta-tionery – was spent almost exclusively on the clergy and when,in the later months of 1793, the government began helping‘the charity’ it had no problems of overbearing bureaucracyor unjust distribution of resources to eliminate.42

The Established Church backed up the state. Bishop SamuelHorsley drew comparisons, on 30 January 1793, in his sermonat Westminster Abbey to commemorate the anniversary of theexecution of Charles I, between the events of 1649 and the‘foul murder’ and barbarities of the unfolding French Revolu-tion.43 Horsley’s sermon met with a thunderous reception atWestminster and later won him preferment.44 The Critical Reviewregarded it, not without justification, as an exaggerated case.45

And, like The Analytical Review, compared its lack of moderation



unfavourably to the pronouncement of the Bishop of Saint Polde Léon.46 The Critical Review further declared that

while respecting on the whole the bishop of St David’stalents . . . truth and justice oblige us to confess that his ideasupon politics are neither clear nor distinct, and that in thisscience at least he is far from being an adept.47

The Critical Review attempted a brief response to what it regard-ed as ‘new-modelled Jacobitism’ in the bishops’ arguments.48

Criticism notwithstanding, Horsley’s propositions foundgeneral acceptance among his colleagues on the episcopal benchwho sensed in criticisms of the bishops’ writings a confirmationof the tendencies which Horsley had exposed. Such endorse-ment was shown in the widely voiced (and frequently printed)pronouncements of the bishops in the months and years fol-lowing January 1793. Beilby Porteous, Bishop of London, in his1794 Charge to the clergy of the diocese of London, waxed eloqu-ent on the dangers of infidelity, atheism and dissent. He wrote,

Though there is not ground for apprehending the intro-duction of atheism among us, yet we must not think our-selves secure from the inroad of every species of infidelity.

He acknowledged the necessity of ‘some religion, some acknow-ledgement of a supreme Governor’, some sort of belief neces-sary for, ‘the security of this and every other government uponearth’.49

Like Horsley, the Bishop of London recognised the neces-sity of a religious dimension in society – a conscience of the state– like Horsley, he saw the Revolution as creating in France anunacceptable lacuna in this compartment. Like Horsley, too,the Bishop of London gave active support to the French exilesas exemplars of his theories, and became a member of therelief committee.50 He encouraged the Bishop of Saint Polde Léon in his work for emigrant relief.51 He supported Han-nah More, the educator and popular writer, in her efforts forthe ‘émigrés’.52 In the north, the Bishop of Durham, ShuteBarrington, normally no supporter of ‘Romanism’, not onlyencouraged the exiles, but lodged some of them in his palace.53

The eccentric Bishop of Derry, who was also Earl of Bristol,gave practical assistance to ‘two miserable French exiles’ at



St Austell, Cornwall, and overcame through them some of hisprejudice against the French.54 The Bishop of Ely, JamesYorke, suggested the setting up of an ‘émigré’ school to theWilmot Committee for Emigrant Relief, while John Moore,Archbishop of Canterbury, was forthcoming not only withfunds but even with practical advice as to how funds should becollected.55

The clearest indication of the ‘politick’ charity of the epis-copate, and other leading clergy, is provided by the subscrip-tion lists for the relief committee. The sums given by thebishops were considerable; few gave less than £50 and manygave more.56 The Cathedral foundations were particularlybenevolent. The Dean and Chapter of Durham gave £52.10son 11 October 1792 and the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury£50 on 10 December 1793.57 Both universities were more thangenerous.58 A sum of £500 was received from the Vice-Chan-cellor of Oxford in November 1792 and considerable sumsflowed in from Cambridge.59 The latter is overlooked by mostcommentators on the exile, perhaps because the Cambridgecollection came in gradual instalments, perhaps because Ox-ford was more openly connected with the exiles not onlybecause its Vice-Chancellor was a founder member of the reliefcommittee but also because its university press was responsiblefor an edition of the Vulgate (of which two thousand wereproduced) for distribution to the French priests.60 As with thebishops, the universities were prepared to give occasionalpractical assistance to individual exiles. Thomas Ingle, Fellowof Peterhouse, proved an invaluable friend to abbé Martinet,chaplain to the Huddlestons at Sawston, when the abbé was insome difficulties with the local authorities. At Oxford, it seems,many exiled priests were able to make a living from teachingFrench to undergraduates, and some were patronised by uni-versity society.61 Abbé Thoumin des Valpons, formerly Arch-deacon and Vicar General of Dol, was buried in DorchesterAbbey at the expense of the Warden of New College.62 Thereception of the ‘émigrés’ by the Church of England reflectedHorsley’s analysis of the nature of society and the impact ofthe French Revolution. The holders of office and influencewithin the Church appreciated the essential union of the Churchand State in the Warburtonian perspective: they realisedthe use the emigrants could have not only in a demonstration



of the catastrophic effects of the Revolution but also in the wit-ness of suffering for conscience’s sake. They realised, too, andthis should not be overlooked, the imperatives of Christiancharity.

It was the imperatives of Christian charity which led to thefirst contacts between the clergy charged with parish duty andthe exiled priests of France. The parish clergyman was theestablished purveyor of charity in the locality and an obviousleader of local community action. The sudden influx of immi-grants gave the clergy little time to think out the implications.Theirs was primarily a pastoral duty. What would now becalled ecumenical relations were marginal, although a fewspectacular defections from Rome to Canterbury were noted.Conversions to Rome were already discouraged and any signsof Catholic proselytism were stamped out.63 The English RomanCatholic community was somewhat ill at ease with the exiledclergy. It had suffered greatly during the French Revolutionfrom the closure of its seminaries, monasteries, convents andschools on the continent. It was an under-resourced body witha network of missions and chaplaincies which depended on itsgentry patrons in the same way its houses in Northern Francehad depended on French charity. Urban Catholicism wasstrengthening but the administrative structure, based on vicarsapostolic rather than diocesan bishops, made the EnglishCatholics the poor relations of the once great GallicanChurch.64

London provides an example of the development of a sep-arate French Catholic community in parallel to the Englishcommunity.65 The Laity’s Directory listed eight French Catholicchapels in London in 1800.66 Abbé Tardy, whose guide for theFrench in London appeared in the same year, listed nine.67

Most of the priests who came to England through the southernports drifted towards London. Some came to see the sights,others to find a permanent base.68 The number of Frenchclergy in London at any one time in the 1790s hovered around1500; 1719 in November 1795, 1605 in January 1796, not alarge number in a city whose population was already not farshort of a million.69 Their numbers seemed exaggerated,however, by their tendency, common for displaced persons, tomove around in groups, and by a look of desolation, charac-teristics captured by a caricaturist in a print of 1792 depicting



Emigrant Clergy Reading the late Decree, that all who returns (sic)shall be put to Death.70 As early as the end of 1792, they wereattracting unfavourable attention. ‘It is impossible to walk ahundred yards in any public street here in the middle of theday without meeting two or three French priests’.71 Thereseemed no end to their numbers. They ‘swarmed into thestreets of London’, where, in great distress, ‘they led some ofthe population to fear the worst’.72 The ‘very great number’,in a city full of rumours of war, seemed to confirm threats ofimminent invasion.73 Such feelings were largely dispelledwhen the exiled clergy settled down to become a familiar, self-sufficient, and particularly quiescent section of London’s cos-mopolitan population.

The newly arrived exiles found temporary accommodationin the ‘emigrant’ hotels which prospered as a result of theRevolution. Tardy recommended ‘Chez Guédon’ in LeicesterSquare, or ‘Chez Saulieu’, on the corner of Gerrard Street andNassau Street, Soho, as a cheap and welcoming rendezvousfor the newcomer, although English visitors to such placesfound them sordid.74 Sometimes the clergy found themselvesin strange company. Abbé Petel, a curé from the diocese ofLisieux, wrote of the Hôtel du Canon where a motley crew wasaccommodated,

Cette auberge, dont le Maitre parlait Français, était pleinede Liègois, jacobins forcenés et propagandistes, qui nousconnurent de prime abord.75

Abbé Jean Baptiste Henry, a Premonstratensian canon, metless threatening company at the ‘Hôtel Suisse’, ‘Chez Danton’,Panton Square, where he paid ‘36 sols’ for each meal and thesame for a bed.76 The effect on the prosperity of the hotelscaused by such customers was short-lived, however, becausethe majority of the priests sought more permanent and eco-nomical lodgings.

Petel, who only stayed in London for four months, found aplace in the house of a Mr Adams in Portman Square at a costof half a guinea a week.77 Some could not afford so much. LaCour, a young Norman priest from Bernay, found lodgings atthe house of a ‘marchand épicier’ in Margate Street, where for‘3 livres 12s’ a week a share in a bed was available.78 Thomas



Moore, the Irish poet, while studying for the Bar in London,shared his humble digs with an exiled priest, ‘an old curé’,whose bed was placed tête-a-tête with his (a thin partitionin between) ensuring that ‘not a snore’ escaped him.79 Somelived in community, like the seminarists from the Foreign Mis-sions Society, who were able to live on 30 sous a day.80 A few man-aged to retain something of their accustomed lifestyle. Thearchbishop of Narbonne, Arthur Dillon, lived in ‘a modesthouse’, but was none the less able to employ a personal servant,and offer open house to six aged bishops, who included severalof his suffragans from Languedoc.81

The exiles gravitated to the areas where cafés and ‘hôtelsgarnis’ provided suitably ‘French’ material comforts, andencouraged a ‘ghetto’ mentality. An address book preservedin the Treasury records suggests that Somers Town, on thenorthern fringes of Central London, a speculative buildingestate with much vacant property in the early 1790s, was thefavourite residence for the clergy.82 It had many advantages.It was cheap, but convenient for most of the exiles’ needs; theBishop of Saint Pol de Léon’s relief office, where the nationalfunds for the French clergy were distributed, was in nearbyBloomsbury as was the Reading Room of the British Museum,much frequented by exiles and Somers Town was well placed,too, for several of the chapels established for the use of theFrench.83 The principal chapel, the Annunciation, KingStreet, Portman Square, was opened in 1799. Many celebra-tions and still more funerals were held there.84 Mrs Larpentcommented on the funeral of the Bishop of Montpellier.

The whole scene was extremely interesting, the chapel filledwith old venerable distinguished clergy and tottering yetfine-looking men with their crosses and stars . . . fadedgrandeur, such a melancholy remnant of their prosperousdays.85

But not all was so poignant. The ‘Annonciation’ was the centreof religious formation for a group of Suplicians who hoped towork in Canada, having been refreshed by the ‘grande tran-quillité’ of London.86 There was catechism for children, reli-gious instruction for adolescents and a variety of ‘self help’activities, concentrated in the ‘Association de Prières et deCharité’.87



Frequently, however, they found themselves reliant on thegenerosity of their hosts. Talma, cousin of the great actor, whopractised as a dentist in London, looked after the émigrés’teeth for nothing.88 Some doctors offered their services ‘gratis’,they included Mr Ball, a surgeon of Warwick Street, nearCharing Cross, who was prepared to give ‘surgical assistance’to any poor exile in distress.89 Hospitals, too, offered theirfacilities. The Middlesex Hospital was particularly helpful. Twowards were made available for the French clergy from 1793 to1814. In the hospital, the French were self-catering, and inthis setting, as elsewhere, chose to keep to themselves, living asseparately as possible from their English fellow patients.90

In the world of education, into which many of the clergywere drawn, both by economic necessity, and by the desire forFrench tutors, the exiles also preferred to remain their ownmasters. Some found jobs as private tutors to English families –like abbé Lainé who taught the children of a Lord Mayor;others, like abbé Voyaux de Franous, who included the futurePrime Minister Robert Peel among his pupils – were able tobuild up a considerable reputation as private teachers. Manyother exiles, however, clubbed together and started schoolsboth for the children of lay emigrants and for any Englishperson who might like to make use of them.91 The pages of TheLaity’s Directory over the years include numerous notices forschools like those for ‘The French Academy’ in Hammersmith(1793) and ‘The French Charity School’ at 42 North Street,Manchester Square (1812) which provided education for 30 or40 boys, and for 15 or 20 girls.92 Some of these schools were tohave a long life, and to provide a good educational standard,but too many were based on shaky foundations.

The isolation of the French clergy in London was encour-aged by their environment. Many of the exiles were from thecountryside, and found adjustment to urban life difficult, losingsomething of the status and influence they had held in theirvillage communities. They found the climate – especially theLondon fog – a constant cause for concern, and unfavourablecomparison.93 Others found the fog less disagreeable than thepeople of the city. Overt dislike was combined with casual mis-understandings, like that which prompted an English womanto ask a priest, ‘What have you done with your wives?’.94 Pov-erty emphasised isolation and depression. ‘There was no view



. . . except the Catholic churchyard, the last resting-place ofour poor fellow countrymen. The dismal bell and the tears thatwere shed on these modest tombs, often wrung our hearts’.95

Although, as we have seen, the life of the French émigréclergy in London was largely a life apart, it nevertheless had aninfluence in the London population, especially on the Catholicminority. The French chapels soon opened their doors towider congregations. One of those – St Mary’s, Holly Place,Hampstead, opened in 1816 by Abbé Jacques Morel fromNormandy – remains in use in a much altered state, but severalLondon Catholic parishes, including St Aloysius, SomersTown and St Mary’s, Cadogan Street, Chelsea, which bothretain contemporary monuments to thier respective founders,Carron and Voyaux de Franous, owed their foundation to anemigrant priest.96 One émigré cleric, Charles Adrien Lan-gréney, was among the first to minister (in modern times) tothe Catholics in the area now served by Westminster Cathed-ral.97 The French also assisted the English (and Irish) priestsin existing chapels. At St Patrick’s, Soho, Anne René le Sage,who later settled and died in Staffordshire, was a frequentadministrator of the sacraments in the 1790s.98 Abbé PierreAlexis Massot was priest-sacristan at the Spanish Chapel whileabbé Bargelon acted as an assistant-priest at the Bavarianchapel.99 To the wider London community, the French émigréclergy contributed information on France, French lessons anda healthy reminder of the existence of a wider European societyduring a period when xenophobia was all too obviously theorder of the day. Without this forgotten community, Londonlife, as well as the life of the wider nation, would have beenvery much the poorer.

They came; – and, while the moral tempest roars Throughout the Country they have left, our shores Give to their Faith a fearless resting-place

William Wordsworth



NOTES

1. The phrase comes from an ecclesiastical sonnet, first published in1827, by William Wordsworth.

2. See D.A. Bellenger, The French Exiled Clergy in the British Isles after 1789,Bath, 1986, p. 2.

3. J. Sykes, Local Records, Newcastle, 1866, p. 381. 4. PRO T93 1–89; BL addI MSS 18591–18593. 5. BL addl MS 18591, fol 3. 6. Foreign Ministry Archives, Paris. AAE 616 (France et divers stats, 263)

1801–1815. Liste générale des ecclésiastiques existant en Angleterrelors de la rentrée du Roi, fols 230–42.

7. Archives Nationales, Paris. ANF 19 (Cultes) 3219, le clergé Français enAngleterre.

8. J. McManners, French Ecclesiastical Society under the Ancien Regime, Man-chester, 1960, p. 298.

9. The following table draws on data complied by Bellenger for The FrenchExiled Clergy, pp. 142–258. The chart was created for, K. Carpenter,Les émigrés à Londres 1792–1797, Doctoral thesis, Paris I, Sorbonne,1995, p. 322.

10. PRO T 93, 43, 292–93. 11. Northumberland Record Office, Allendale MSS, Hexham Manor

Papers, Box 60. 12. ANF 19 (Cultes) 1006. Département de Cantal. Directoire au Ministre

de la Police, unfoliated. 13. O. Hufton, Bayeux in the late eighteenth century, Oxford, 1967, pp. 21–2. 14. B. Plongeron, La vie quotidienne du clergé français au XVIII siècle, Paris,

1974, p. 93. 15. PRO T 93, 44, pp. 254–5. 16. Ibid, pp. 259–60. 17. PRO T 93, 42, pp. 575–80. 18. See Bellenger, op. cit., Chapter 5, pp. 73–9. 19. Ibid, for the Committee, Bellenger, Chapter 2, pp. 11–20. 20. See M.B. Norton, The British-Americans. The Loyalist Exiles in England,

London, 1974. 21. PRO T 93, 6, p. 285. 22. BL addl MS 18591, unfoliated; PRO T 93 89 (Printed émigré docu-

ments). 23. F. O’Gorman, The Whig Party and the French Revolution, London, 1969,

pp. 215–16. 24. R. Furneaux, William Wilberforce, London, 1974, pp. 319 and 107. 25. Margery Weiner, The French Exiles 1789–1815, London,1960, p. 57. 26. BL addl MS 45, 723 (Penn School Papers) La Marche to Walker King,

1798, fol 3. 27. PRO T93, 2, p. 270. 28. J.E. Wilmot, Historical View, London, 1815, p. 18. 29. The Reading Mercury, 15 October 1792. 30. Ibid. 31. PRO T93, 13, Testimonial of Mrs Silburn, pp. 302–4.



32. PRO T 93, 1, 6 November 1794, unfoliated. 33. See Bellenger, Chapter 7, pp. 99–104. 34. PRO T 93, 8, 24, 25, 50. 35. PRO T 93, 8. 36. Ibid, pp. 3, 25 and 60. 37. Ibid p. 36 and PRO T93 26, Wilmot to Audit Office, January 1807,

unfoliated. 38. Ibid, Wilmot and Glyn to Audit Office, 21 February 1807. 39. PRO T 93, 40, Canterbury. 40. Archives départmentales de L’Eure, G 1816. 41. PRO T93, 1, 6 November 1794, and S Horsley, Sermon 44 Sermons

III, Dunlee, 1813. 42. A.P. Stanley, Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey, 2nd edn, London,

1868, p. 535. 43. Ibid, p. 536. 44. The Critical Review VII, p. 215. 45. The Analytical Review XV, p. 232. 46. The Critical Review VII, pp. 219–20. 47. Ibid., p. 473. 48. B. Porteus, Change, London, 1794, pp. 19–31. 49. BL addl MS 18591. Printed list of Committee. 50. Lambeth Palace, London, M S 2102 Diary of Beilby Porteus, 3 April

1791. 51. H. More, Life and Correspondence II, London, 1834, p. 368. 52. G. Townsend, (ed.) The Theological Works of the First Viscount Barrington

I, London, 1828, pp. XLVIII–XLIX. 53. W.S. Childe-Pemberton, The Earl Bishop, II, London, 1924, pp. 433–4. 54. BL addl MS 18592, fol 105. 55. PRO T 93, 8, p. 61, and BL addI MS 18591, fol. 87. 56. PRO T 13, 8. 57. Ibid., pp. 33 and 53. 58. L. Stone, ed., The University in Society I, Princeton, 1975, p. 285. 59. PRO T93, 8, pp. 47, 42, 50, 51, 52, 58. 61, 67, 71, 74. 60. B L addI M S 18591. Printed list of Committee and Weiner, op. cit.,

pp. 65–6. 61. Cambridge Record Office, Sawston Papers, Martinet to Richard Hud-

dleston, 17 October 1798, 488 C.3 M 27 and L. Stone, op. cit., p. 285. 62. B. Stapleton, Catholic Missions in Oxfordshire, 1906, pp. 247–8. 63. See Bellenger, Chapter 3, pp. 31–43. 64. For the British establishments on the European mainland see P. Guil-

day, The English Catholic Refugees on the Continent, 1558–1795, London,1914. For the English Catholics see the revisionist account of J. Bossy,The English Catholic Community 1570–1850, London, 1975.

65. For the place of London in the clerical emigration see Bellenger, Chapter5, pp. 67–73.

66. The Laity’s Directory 1800, p. 6. 67. Abbé Tardy, Manuel du voyageur à Londres, London, 1800, p. 221. 68. Abbé Barston, Mémoires, II, Paris, 1898, p. 9. 69. BL addl MS 18592, fol. 66 and 97.



70. Printed by S.W. Fores of 3 Piccadilly, London. 71. S. Romilly, Memoirs, II, London, 1840, p. 11. 72. Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, Memoirs, II, London, 1853–55,

p. 215. 73. Earl of Minto, Life and Letters II, London, 1874, p. 91. 74. Abbé Tardy, Manuel du Voyageur à Londres, London, 1800, p. 16 and

The European Magazine 39 (1801), pp. 441–3. 75. S.J.H. Petel, Sur les routes de l’exil, Rouen, p. 16. 76. J.B. Henry, ‘Journal d’emigration’, Analectes pour servir à l’histoire ecclé-

siastique de la Belgique 26 (1896), pp. 207–72. 77. Petel, p. 16. 78. Ibid., p. 24. 79. T. Moore, Memoirs I, London, 1853, p. 73. 80. See E.M. Wilkinson, ‘French Emigres in England’, unpublished Oxford

BLitt, Dissertation (1952), pp. 239–40. 81. Marquise de la Tour du Pin, Memoirs, ed. F. Harcourt, London, 1969,

pp. 315–16. 82. PRO T 93 (Clergy Payments), D, Ecclesiastics receiving aid, circa

1803, unfoliated. 83. D. Newton, Catholic London, London, 1950, p. 276 and G.F. Barwick,

The Reading Room of the British Museum, London, 1929 p. 47. 84. See Bellenger, pp. 68–70. 85. R.M. Bradley, ‘Mrs Larpent and the French Refugees’, The Nineteenth

Century, 75 (1914) p. 1329. 86. Archives of Saint-Sulpice, Paris, Fonds Canada. Dossier 55. Bourret,

Lettre 14, 5 August 1799. 87. J. de Boisgelin, Discours, London, 1799, p. 29. 88. Weiner, p. 128. 89. PRO T93, 52, p. 56. 90. D. Bellenger, Healing and Expiation, London Recusant NSI (1985,

pp. 6–12. 91. W.J. Battersby, ‘The Educational work of the French Refugees’, The

Dublin Review 223 (1949) p. 108. and BL addI MS 4025 (Peel Papers),‘Memorial of Abbé Voyaux de Franous’, 1813, fol 259.

92. The Laity’s Directory 1793, p. 11 and ibid., an 1812 advertisement. 93. Petel, p. 23. 94. Ibid., p. 32n. 95. Duchesse de Gontaut, Memoirs I, London, 1894, p. 51. 96. See Bellenger, ‘Hampstead Catholics of the Georgian Age’, Camden

History Review 10 (1982) pp. 5–6. Bellenger, Chapter 7, pp. 104–9.W.J. Anderson, A History of the Catholic Parish of St Mary’s, Chelsea,Chelsea, 1938.

97. H. Keldany, ‘In the steps on the Abbe Langreney’, WestminsterCathedral Chronicle (December 1972) p. 12.

98. Baptismal Register of St Patrick’s, Soho Square, London, 1790–1807,especially 1803–1807.

99. Baptismal Register of St James, Spanish Place, London, 1761–1815and Baptismal Register of the Assumption, Warwick Street, London,1793–1819 especially 1812.


230

Index

Adams, John 146–7agents and spy networks 7, 38Aix-la-Chapelle 7Alexander, Boyd 96Alexander I, Tsar 10, 12, 17Alexander Leopold, Archduke,

death 75Aliens Acts (1798 and 1800) 59,

114Alsace 35Angoulême, Duc d’ 19, 29,

109, 117, 118in Edinburgh 111, 112portrait by Danloux 172, 173

armée de Condé 6, 34–6, 36–7, 39, 74

British financial assistance 38dissolution 41proposed employment in

British colonies 39proposed incorporation into

Russian army 39–40and William Pitt 36

armée des Princes 33, 34army of the émigré government 1, 6

desertion from 72Artois, Comte d’ (Charles X) 5, 8–9,

11, 12, 14, 16, 19, 29, 54, 109appearance 115arrival in Edinburgh 108–9at Portsmouth 110escape from Valenciennes 69estate at Wittmold 10in Holyrood 110–14, 115–16,

117–20in London 9, 52, 54, 117in Paris 117portrait by Danloux Plate 1,

172, 173–4Assemblée Nationale 69‘ateliers’ 54–5Austria 3, 4, 18, 34, 37–8Austro-Prussian Alliance

(1792) 101

Azilum, Philadelphia 140

Barruel, Abbé, conspiracy theories of 180

Batthyány, Count Théodore 70‘Sentiment d’un patriote

hongrois’ 76–7Beaumetz, M. de 139, 141Beckford, William 84, 89, 90, 95Berchény, François Antoine 68,

71, 72, 73Berchény, Maréchal Ladislas

de 68, 71Berri, Duc de 14, 19, 29, 40, 109

in Edinburgh 114, 115marriage attempts 10–11portrait by Danloux 173

Berstheim 35Besenval, Baron de, portrait by

Danloux 176Biberach, battle 39Blacas, Comte de 15, 16, 18Blankenfeld 11Boigne, Comtesse de 47, 113Boisgelin, Jean de Dieu-Raymond

de Cucé de, Archibishop of Aix 54, 198, 201–2, 203, 204

arrival in London 207and Burke 206–7character and reformism

204–5Exposition des principes 199

Bombelles, Marc-Marie, Marquis de 84, 88, 89, 90

bookshops, in London 50–1Bordeaux 19Bordeaux, Duc de 117, 119, 120Boufflers family 48, 104Bourbon, Duc de 28, 33, 34

portrait by Danloux 167wounding at Berstheim 35

Bourlin, Les Amours et Aventures d’un Émigré 158–9, 161

Boyd & Ker’s Bank 169

Feed01-1.fm Page 230 Wednesday, June 2, 1999 11:15 AM

Index 231

Boyd, Mrs 167, 169–70Boyd, Walter 167, 169, 170Brabant 33Braganza court 94Brazil 83, 94Brillat-Savarin, Anthelme

Physiologie du goût 142in the United States 138

Brisgau 35, 38Britain 9, 15–16, 18–19, 37Brumaire 191Bruno, Louis de, Lioncel ou l’Émigré,

nouvelle historique 159Brunswick, Duke of 3, 35Buccleuch family 112, 176Burke, Edmund 198–9, 205

Case of the Suffering Clergy of France 206

contact with Boisgelin 206–7and exiled clergy 206–7Heads for Consideration on the

Present State of Affairs 206Letters . . . 208Reflections on the Revolution in

France 197, 199Burke, Richard 200, 205, 208Burney, Fanny 48, 50

Calonne, Charles Alexandre de 167, 176, 185

Tableau de l’Europe 184, 187Canning, George 13, 14Carrère 87, 88Castries, Maréchal de 3, 4, 5, 6

La vie quotidienne des émigrés 96Catherine II, Empress of Russia

2, 3, 34, 36Catholic Church, in the United

States 145Châlons, Comte de 86, 90Champion de Cicé, Jean-Baptiste-

Marie, Bishop of Auxerre 205–6

Channel Islands, and exiled clergy 206, 214–15

Chantilly 30Chapel of the Annonciation, King

Street (Portman Square), London 53–4, 224

Charles X see ArtoisCharleston, South Carolina 144Chateaubriand, François René,

Vicomte de: Atala 151and Burke 208Essai historique sur les révolutions

anciennes et modernes 51René 151in the United States 138, 139

Chaves, Castelo Branco 92–3A emigraçao francesa em portugal

durante a Revoluçao 96church property, confiscation 125,

134, 189, 199Civil Constitution of the

Clergy 197, 198, 200, 203, 204, 214

Cobbett, William, le Tuteur anglais 140

Coblenz 2, 31, 33, 153–5, 200Coigny, Duc de 90–1, 95, 117Coigny, Duchesse de 92Condé, Prince de 11, 33, 35,

37, 38, 40–1at Rastadt 36at Worms 31Journal d’émigration 30journey to Brussels 28in Marylebone 52portrait by Sophie de Tott

Plate 5qualities 29–30

Condé, Princess Louise de 119, 120Confessions of Jean-Baptiste

Couteau 187confiscation, of émigré goods 134Congress of Chatillon 17Constance 40Convention, the 190Council of War (1787) 69Courier de Londres, Le 51,

185, 187, 189Courrier français 139, 142–3,

147, 148Craufurd, Colonel Charles

38, 39, 41‘Creed of the Lombard Republic’ 86Crissé, General Lancelot Turpin de,

Essai sur l’art de la guerre 72


232 Index

Damas, Comte Roger de 32, 120Danloux, Henri-Pierre 50

life: and Calonne 167; in London 165; marriage 166; and Mme de Polastron 174, 175; money problems 174; return to France 177; and William Pitt 167

work: child-portraits of Buccleuch family 176; engravings172; for French Royal family 173; portrait of Angoulême 172, 173; portrait of Artois Plate 1, 172, 173–4; portrait of Baron de Besenval 176; portrait of Mgr de la Marche, Bishop of Saint Pol de Léon Plate2; portrait of Duc d’Bourbon 167; portrait of Duc de Berri 173; portrait of Hosten 167, 176; portrait of Lady Jane Dalrymple Hamilton Plate 3; portrait of Lady Petre 173; portrait of Mlle Duthé 167–8; portrait of Mrs Boyd 167; portrait of Prince Augustus 167; portrait of Robert Lee 168; portrait of Comte de Vaudreuil 167, 175; portrait of Viscount Keith 177; and Royal Academy 175

Danloux, Mme 53David 165, 166De Boffe (bookshop) 51Declaration of Brunswick 3Declaration of Calmar (1804) 11–12Declaration of Hartwell (1813)

15–16Delices de Coblentz, ou anecdotes libertines

des émigrés français 153–4Dessoffy, Canon Ladislas 74–5

‘Mes adieus à Korompa’ 78Diesbach, Ghislain de, Histoire de

l’émigration 1789–1814 96

Dillon, Arthur, Archbishop of Narbonne 201, 224

Directory 8, 146, 191D’Ivernois, Francis 184, 185Dulau 50–1, 140Dumouriez 72Duthé, Mlle 167–9, 172

Edinburgharrival of Artois 108–9arrival of Polignac family 112see also Holyrood

Emigrant Relief Committee 206, 207, 209, 214, 217–19

Les Emigrantes ou la Folie à la mode 153

Emigration 29, 44, 105, 126émigré bishops 206

in England 197, 216and ‘Liberty-Equality’ oath

207émigré clergy 77, 93, 94–5, 225

in Britain 206, 214; age indications 215–16; from Normandy 216–17; isolation 217; numbers 214

in Hungary 74–5in London 222–6and parish clergy, in

England 222in Prussia 103, 105

émigré craftsmen, in Prussia 105émigré government 1–8

archives 5–6army 6calibre 5–6and European politics 20–1and Russia 2–4subjects of 6–7

émigré novel 151–8émigré press 184–93émigrés

bookshops 50–1crossing the channel 46–7financial losses 134in Hungary 76–8; political

activity 75–6; as prisoners of war 73–4


Index 233

indemnification 124–33in London 43–9, 53; life in poor

areas 56–7; literary activity 51–2; music 55–6; poverty 51–2; socio-economic composition44–5; Soho 43, 49–51; work 54–6

mémoires 134–5and Napoleon’s downfall 18outside France 7in Portugal 84–6, 87–8, 94–6;

financial problems 88in Prussia 101–5petitions to king 103–4; and

servants 105–6transfer of money from

France 105in United States 138–9;

isolation 140–1; language problem 139–40; trades and professions 143–4

Encyclopédie 205Enghien, Duc d’ 12, 28, 34, 35, 40

execution 41Esterhazy family 33, 71, 72Esterhazy, Ladislas Valentin

Comte d’ 68, 73military career 68–9plans for King’s escape 70–1royalist activity 70

Fenno, John, Gazette of the United States 147

fiction, during the eighteenth century 151

financial reform, and the Provisional Government 128–9

Flahaut, Comtesse de 58, 152Adèle de Senange 51, 52

Flaschlanden, Baron de 5, 6, 36Fonds Bourbon 5fonds commun de réserve,

abolition 126, 127, 128food, influence of the French in

the United States 144–5France

aristocratic society 95expansion in Europe 12

and Portugal 83–4religious revival 95war against 33–4war against Austria 3

Franche-Comté 38Francis II, Emperor of Austria 34Francophobia, in the United

States 145–8Frederick William II 3, 104French army, emigration and

desertion 72French deserters, and Condé’s

forces 35French nobility, as soldiers 36–7French Revolution 7–8

émigré press on 188–9and foreign governments 2

Fructidor 214

Garnier-Pagès, Louis Antoine 128–30

Gauthier brothers 130–1General Assembly of the Clergy

of France 201Genlis, Comtesse de

Les Petits Emigrés ou Correspondance de quelques enfants 152

literary works 104Gontaut, Madame de 111, 114Gorce, Pierre de la 124, 133–4Gordon, Lord Adam 108, 110, 116Gorjy, Ann’ Quin Bredouille 155–6Grenville, Lord 8, 38, 110

Hamm 3Harcourt, Duc d’ 36, 110Hartwell House, near

Aylesbury 14hat-making, in London 54–5Henry of Prussia, Prince 104Herheim 35Holy See 103Holyrood 108, 109, 110

Artois at 110–14, 115–16, 118–20improvements 115–16proposed as residence for Louis

XVIII 116–17Hosten, M. 170–2

portrait by Danloux 167


234 Index

Huet Villiers, François, portrait of Louis XVIII Plate 7

Hugo, Victor 109Hungary

attitude to French émigrés 76–8émigré priests 74–5migrations 68political activities of émigrés

75–6prisoners of war 73–4

Indemnity Bill (1825) 124, 125, 127–8, 130, 132, 134

Inquisition 86, 93, 94international relations 1792–97

37–9isolation

of émigré clergy in Britain217, 225–6

of émigrés in United States 140–1

Jay’s Treaty (1795) 146Journal de France et d’Angleterre 185Journal of a French Emigrant 161Junot, Laure, Duchesse d’ 92

Memoirs 89

Keith, Viscount, portrait by Danloux 177

Kreutznach 33

La Ferronays, Comte de 16, 91La Marche, Jean-François de,

Bishop of Saint Pol de Léon 172, 206, 207, 209, 216, 218, 224

portrait by Danloux Plate 2La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Duc

de 140–1, 142, 143, 202Prisons de Philadelphie 139in the United States 138

La Rochefoucauld, Comte François de 70

la Tour du Pin, Marquise de 43la Tour du Pin, Mme de 56, 138,

139, 141, 142, 143, 145la Tour du Pin Montauban, René,

Marquis de 91–2Laffitte, Jacques 126–7

Lagrange 131Landau 35Langeron, Comte de 19

portrait by Mlle de Noireterre Plate 8

L’Aristocrate converti ou le retour de Coblentz 154–5

Larousse, Pierre, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle 125–6

Latil, Abbé (later Cardinal)113–14, 117, 119

Lauterbourg 35Lee, Robert, portrait by

Danloux 168Lézay-Marnésia, Marquis de

Lettres écrites des rives de l’Ohio 139in the United States 138

‘Liberty-Equality’ oath, and émigré bishops 207

Liomin, La Bergère d’Aranville ou l’Emigration 156

Lisbon 83–4, 88, 90–1literary activity, of émigrés in

London 51–2London

arrival of émigrés 43–9development of French Catholic

church 222–8émigré poverty 51–2, 56–7Marylebone, émigré

population 45, 52–6Saint George’s Fields 57, 58Soho 43, 49–51, 223

Louis XVIII 4at Mittau 8, 10, 12in Britain 13–16council 4–5in Essex 117portrait by François Huet Villiers

Plate 7right to the crown of France 11in Verona 38see also Provence, Comte de

Loyal Emigrant Regiment 6

Maison Militaire du roi 1Mallet du Pan, Jacques 85, 185,

187, 190, 191Manique, Pina 86–7, 91, 93


Index 235

Marialva, Marquis de 84, 89, 90Meilhan, Senac de, L’Émigré 51Melo e Castro, Martinho 83, 85mémoires, of émigrés 134–5,

151–2, 161Mercure britannique 185Mercure de France 185Mesgrigny, Mme de 153–4milliard des émigrés 124–32Mirabeau, Comte de 29, 32, 202Mittau 8, 10, 12Montlosier, Comte de 185,

191–2Moreau de St-Méry 146–7

bookstore in Philadelphia 140in the United States 138–9Voyage aux États-Unis de

l’Amérique 139

Napoleon I 17, 18defeat at Waterloo 117defeat in Russia 15émigré press on 192–3

National Assembly 201, 203Nauzières, Mme 172

portrait by Danloux 169Neuilly, Comte de 72–3, 134–5Noailles, Duc de 5Noailles, Vicomte de 140Northcote, Mr 175, 176

Ober-Kamlach, battle 39Oliveira Ramos, Luís A. de

88, 91, 96Orléans, Duc d’ 9, 138, 141–2

pamphlet literature, anti-French 76

Paris 19–20, 155Paul I, Emperor of Russia 8,

9–10, 39Peltier, Jean-Gabriel 56, 185,

186, 187, 190Perregaux, M. 167–8Petre, Lady, portrait by

Danloux 173Pillnitz, conference of 2Pitt, William 36, 167Pius VI, Quod aliquantum 203

Polastron, Louise d’Espartès Vicomtesse de 54, 109, 111, 113, 117

and Danloux 174, 175Polignac, Duc de 74, 112Pomerania 16Pontgibaud de Moré,

Chevalier 139, 143–4Portland, Duke of 110, 116Portugal

aristocratic society 95attitudes to governance 83émigrés 87–8, 94–6; émigré

priests 93; financial problems 88; Portugese perception of émigrés84–6

and France 83–4French priests in 93, 94–5nobility 89–90social life 89–91women 89

Pradel de Lamase, Paul 41, 134Pressburg, community of priests

at 74Price, Dr Richard, Discourse on the

Love of our Country 202priests see émigré clergyprisoners of war, in Hungary 73–4professions, emigration 49property, Republican threat

to 189Provence, Comte de (Louis

XVIII) 1, 2, 3, 31, 38Provisional Government, and

financial reform 128–9Prussia

émigrés: émigré clergymen 103, 105; government policy towards 101–5; servants 106; trades105–6

legislation to control immigration into 102, 106

secret archives 101Public Advertiser 165

Quiberon Bay, expedition to57–8, 109


236 Index

Reflections 204, 205Republic, image in émigré

press 185–8Revolution Society 202Rivarol, Antoine 10, 49Robinson, Mary, Hubert de Sevrac,

a romance of the eighteenth century 158

Rochechouart, Comte de 16, 17, 18, 19, 89

Romanzov, Count 2, 16Rothemburg 35Russia 2–4, 9, 12, 16–17, 39–40

Saint-Priest, Comte de 5, 6Saint-Domingue 144, 171Salaberry, Charles-Marie d’,

Comte de 75–6Sardinia 14, 29Second Coalition, war of 9Sénac de Meilhan, L’Émigré 156–7Staël, Mme de 151–2

Corinne 160Steinstadt, battle of 39Sweden 13

Talleyrand, Charles-Maurice de7, 19, 115

Mémoires 141in the United States 138, 139,

143, 145territorial expansion, French 7, 16The Critical Review 219, 220Thermidor 188, 189, 208Third Estate émigrés 44, 45, 105Thugut, Baron 4, 38Tott, François Baron de 68,

70, 76Tott, Sophie de 70

portrait of Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Condé Plate 5

Toustain, Comte de 90, 95trades and professions, of

émigrés 105–6, 143–4Treaty of Amiens (1802) 115Treaty of Bâle (1795) 102Treaty of Westphalia 34Turin 29

Two Thirds Decree 190

United StatesCatholic Church 145émigrés 138; trades and

professions 143–4Francophobia 145–8French influence on food

144–5

Vaudreuil, and Danloux 167, 175Vaudreuil, Joseph-Hyacinthe-

François de Rigaud 112, 113, 114

Varennes, flight to 31vendémiaire coup (1795) 190Verona 38Vidalenc, Jean, Les émigrés français

1789–1825 96Vigée Le Brun, Mme 165, 166,

168, 177portrait of Count Stroganov

Plate 4Vignier-Montréal, Nicole de see

Mrs BoydVioménil, Charles-Gabriel

Baron de 91–2Volhynia 39Volney

Tableau du climat et du sol des États-Unis 142, 147

in the United States 138Voltaire, Candide 84

Walpole, Horace 90, 205War of Independence

(Hungary) 68Warsaw 10Wellington, Duke of 19, 118Wickham, William 30, 38Wilmot Committee 55, 59, 60Wilmot, John 206, 217, 221Windham, William 208, 217women

experience as émigrés 46, 57in Portugal 89

Worms 29, 31

XYZ affair 142, 146
