The French Émigrés in Europe and the Struggle against Revolution

Transcription

The French Émigrés in
Europe and the Struggle
against Revolution,
1789–1814
Edited by
Kirsty Carpenter and Philip Mansel
THE FRENCH ÉMIGRÉS IN EUROPE AND THE
STRUGGLE AGAINST REVOLUTION, 1789–1814
Also by Kirsty Carpenter
* REFUGEES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: Émigrés in London
1789–1802
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
The French Émigrés in
Europe and the Struggle
against Revolution,
1789–1814
Edited by
Kirsty Carpenter
School of History, Philosophy and Politics
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Massey University
Palmerston North
New Zealand
and
Philip Mansel
The Society for Court Studies
London
First published in Great Britain 1999 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies 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 by
ST. 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 Data
The 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 1999
944.04'086'91—dc21
99–20923
CIP
Selection and editorial matter © Kirsty Carpenter and Philip Mansel 1999
Chapter 1 © Philip Mansel 1999
Chapter 3 © Kirsty Carpenter 1999
Chapter 7 © Lord Mackenzie-Stuart 1999
Chapters 2, 4–6, 8–14 © Macmillan Press Ltd 1999
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
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written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources.
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire
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Contents
vii
ix
x
xv
List of Plates
Acknowledgements
Notes on the Contributors
Introduction by William Doyle
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
From Coblenz to Hartwell: the Émigré
Government and the European Powers, 1791–1814
Philip Mansel
1
A European Destiny: the Armée de
Condé, 1792–1801
Frédéric d’Agay
28
London: Capital of the Emigration
Kirsty Carpenter
43
French Émigrés in Hungary
Ferenc Tóth
68
Portugal and the Émigrés
David Higgs
83
French Émigrés in Prussia
Thomas Höpel
101
French Émigrés in Edinburgh
Lord Mackenzie-Stuart
108
Le milliard des émigrés: the Impact of the
Indemnity Bill of 1825 on French Society
Almut Franke
124
French Émigrés in the United States
Thomas C. Sosnowski
138
The Émigré Novel
Malcolm Cook
151
Danloux in England (1792–1802):
an Émigré Artist
Angelica Goodden
165
v
vi
12
13
14
Index
Contents
The Image of the Republic in the
Press of the London Émigrés, 1792–1802
Simon Burrows
184
Burke, Boisgelin and the Politics of the
Émigré Bishops
Nigel Aston
197
‘Fearless resting place’: the Exiled French
Clergy in Great Britain, 1789–1815
Dominic Aidan Bellenger
214
230
List of Plates
1
2
3
4
5
Henri-Pierre Danloux, Monsieur, Comte d’Artois. (Private
collection)
Painted at Holyroodhouse in 1796, this portrait was
engraved for distribution as propaganda. Monsieur was
leader of the extremist wing of the émigrés until his return
to France in 1814. His residence in Edinburgh was
described as ‘the honour of the nobility’.
Henri-Pierre Danloux, Mgr de la Marche, Bishop of Saint Pol
de Léon, 1797. (Private collection)
The Bishop was the leading figure in French émigré charities, as the letters and lists of subscribers scattered on and
around his desk suggest. Danloux was a royalist who emigrated in 1792 to London, where he lived until his return
to Paris in 1802. His diary is a valuable account of émigré
life in London.
Henri-Pierre Danloux, Lady Jane Dalrymple Hamilton as Britannia. (Private collection)
As this picture suggests, French émigré artists were not
ashamed to commemorate victories over the French republic. At the sitter’s feet a British lion is pawing the flag of
the French ally, the Batavian republic, in celebration of
the British victory, under the command of the sitter’s
father, Admiral Duncan, over the Dutch fleet at Camperdown in 1797.
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 portraits of members of royal and noble families in Vienna,
Naples, Saint Petersburg and London until her eventual
return to France in 1804.
Sophie de Tott, Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Condé.
(Private collection)
Although this print shows Condé as an émigré leader
fighting on the continent, it was engraved (by F. Bartolozzi
RA) and published by the artist herself in London in October
1802, a year after the final disbandment of the armée de
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6
7
8
List of Plates
Condé, and Condé’s arrival in England. The inscription
below the portrait gives all the prince’s Ancien Régime titles:
‘Prince de Condé, Prince du Sang, Pair et Grand Maître
de France, Colonel Général de l’infanterie Française et
étrangère, Gouverneur et Lieutenant-Général pour le Roi
dans la province de Bourgogne, etc. etc. etc.’
François Huet Villiers, Louis Antoine Henry de Bourbon, Duc
d’Enghien, 1804. (Private collection)
As the funeral urn above the prince’s head indicates, this
print was published in London in 1804 to mourn the Duc
d’Enghien’s kidnapping and execution on the orders of
Napoleon I. Enghien was Condé’s grandson and had
fought in the armée de Condé.
François Huet Villiers, Louis XVIII, 1810. (Private collection)
Huet Villiers, who lived in London from the beginning of
the revolution until his death there in 1813, painted this
portrait of Louis XVIII, at Hartwell in 1810. This engraving,
published by Colnaghi of Bond Street, was distributed
from 1812 for purposes of propaganda.
Mlle de Noireterre, The Comte de Langeron, 1814. (Private
collection)
Born in Paris in 1763, a colonel in the French army by
1788, Langeron had joined the Russian service in 1790,
fought in the armée des Princes in 1792 and subsequently
served in the Austrian army before rejoining the Russian
service. He rose to be a Count and a general and fought
against the French Empire at Austerlitz and in the campaigns of 1812–14. For his successful command of the
allied assault on Montmartre on 30 March 1814, he was
made a Knight of the Order of Saint Andrew. Instead of
staying in France, he remained in Russian service as Military
Governor of south Russia and the commander and chief
of the Don Cossacks.
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to acknowledge the very generous support they have received from the Institut Français in London,
which provided a venue for the 1997 conference ‘Les Émigrés
Français en Europe 1789–1814’, where all the contributions in
this volume originated. A second conference on 2–4 July 1999
will also take place there continuing the work begun in 1997
towards a wider picture of Emigration in Europe during the
French Revolution. A further conference is planned, for Paris
in the year 2002, to mark the anniversary of the return of the
vast majority of émigrés from exile. Kirsty Carpenter and
Philip Mansel would particularly like to thank all the participants 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 behindthe-scenes work. Finally, we would like to thank Tim Farmiloe
and Macmillan Press for their support and recognition of the
importance of the Emigration in its European context.
ix
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 specialist on the history of the French nobility in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. He has published editions of the Lettres
d’Italie of the Président de Brosses (1986) and the Mémoires of
the Baron de Frenilly. He collaborated in the Dictionnaire
Napoléon (1988) and the Dictionnaire du Grand Siècle (1990). He
received his doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1996 for his
thesis ‘Les officiers de marine provençaux au XVIIIième
siècle’.
Nigel Aston is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of
Luton. His first book, French Revolution and Religion in France,
1780–1804 will appear in 1999. He is the editor of Religious
Change 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 University
in Hamilton, New Zealand. He has published several articles
on the press of the London émigrés and his first book, Princes,
Press and Propaganda: French Exile Journalism and European Politics, 1792–1814, is due to appear in 1999. He is currently working on the Ancien Régime journalist, Charles Theveneau de
Morande.
Dominic Aidan Bellenger is a member of the community at
Downside Abbey in Bath. He has published widely on the subject of the French émigré priests and their leaders La Marche
and Carron who came to Britain during the Revolution. He is
the author of The French Exiled Clergy in the British Isles after 1789
(1986). He is an Associate Lecturer of the Open University and
regularly teaches at Bath Spa University College and at the
University of Bristol.
Kirsty Carpenter is Lecturer in European History in the
School 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 interests
focus on the political literature of the French Revolution. She
is currently working on Marie-Joseph Chénier, a member of
the Convention and the Revolution’s official poet.
Malcolm Cook is Professor of Eighteenth-Century French
Studies in the School of Modern Languages at the University
of Exeter. His most recent book is Fictional France: Social Reality
in the French Novel, 1775–1800 (1993) and he is co-editor of
Modern France: Society in Transition (1998). He is currently working on a critical edition of the correspondence of Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre. He is the General Editor of the Modern Languages Review and serves on the editorial teams of many other
scholarly reviews.
William Doyle has been Professor of History at the University
of Bristol since 1986. A Fellow of the British Academy, he has
also taught at the Universities of York and Nottingham. He is
the 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 Sale
of Offices in Eighteenth-Century France (1996). He is currently
working on a volume on France 1763–1848 in the Oxford History of Modern Europe series.
Almut Franke is Assistant Lecturer at the Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversität in Munich. Her Doctorate on the subject of ‘Le
Millard des Emigrés’ entitled Die Entschädigung der Emigration
im Frankreich der Restauration (1814–1830) will be published in
1999. She has written on the subject of the 1825 indemnity law
in the area of Bordeaux and has contributed to two major publications on relations between France and Germany during the
Revolution.
Angelica Goodden is a Fellow and Tutor in French at St Hilda’s
College Oxford. Her most recent book is a biographical study
of Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun, The Sweetness of Life. Other publications include Action and Persuasion: Dramatic Performance in
Eighteenth-Century France and The Complete Lover: Eros, Nature
and Artifice in the Eighteenth-Century French Novel.
xii
Thomas Höpel is Lecturer in the Centre of French Studies at
Leipzig University. He works on Franco-German relations in
the eighteenth century and has published on refugees and
exiles during different waves of emigration between the two
countries in the modern period. He was the co-organiser of a
conference, ‘Emigrés and Refugies. Migration zwischen Frankreich und Deutschland in der frühen Neuzeit’, which took
place on 13–15 June 1997.
David Higgs is Professor of History and Fellow of University
College at the University of Toronto. His books include
Ultraroyalism 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 of
the Eighteenth Century (1979) and Nobles in Nineteenth-Century
France: the Practice of Inegalitarianism (1987). His work combines
French and Portuguese interests. His latest book, a volume of
gay history entitled Queer Sites, will appear in 1999.
Lord Mackenzie-Stuart practised at the Scots bar until 1792
when he was appointed judge of the Court of Session, Scotland’s
supreme court. He was the first British judge at the Court of
Justice of the European Communities, Luxembourg in 1973
and its President 1984–88. On retirement he lectured widely
and 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 his
time between his native Scotland and his home in France.
Philip Mansel is an historian of courts and royal dynasties and
editor of The Court Historian, newsletter of the Society for
Court Studies. He is the author of biographies of Louis XVIII
and the Prince de Ligne and his other published works include
Sultans in Splendour: the Last Years of the Ottoman World and Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire, 1453–1924. He is currently
working on a history of Paris from 1814 to 1848.
Thomas Sosnowski is Associate Professor of History at Kent
State University, Stark Campus in Canton, Ohio. He has published articles on revolutionary Europe, émigrés and exiles
and has given papers regularly at the conferences run by the
xiii
Consortium on Revolutionary Europe, the Society for French
Historical Studies and the Western Society for French History.
As well as his European interests he is actively involved in local
American history.
Ferenc Tóth is Lecturer in History and Head of the French
Department at Berzsenyi Daniel College in Szombathely (West
Hungary). He completed his Doctorate at the Université de
Paris IV, Sorbonne in 1996. His research interests focus on
Hungarian immigration to France and Turkey in the eighteenth
century and the interplay of the themes of oriental despotism,
Enlightenment and nationalism in Hungarian history.
Voyager est, quoi qu’on puisse dire, un des plus tristes plaisirs
de la vie.
(Mme de Staël, Corinne, 1807)
. . . la grande figure de l’Emigré, l’un des types les plus
imposants de notre époque. Il était en apparence faible et cassé,
mais la vie semblait devoir persister en lui, précisément à cause
de ses mœurs sobres et ses occupations champêtres.
(Balzac, Le Lys dans la Vallée, 1835)
xiv
Introduction
William Doyle
Political exile is as old as history; but the émigré was a creation
of the French Revolution. Unlike the British Jacobite exiles,
who offered a recent parallel, those who left France during the
Revolution were not simply motivated by loyalty to a deposed
dynasty. Almost a third of those who left France went before
the fall of the monarchy.1 Nor were they ‘constructively’ expelled for one overwhelming reason, like the Huguenots, who
had outnumbered them a century previously. The Emigration
began as a voluntary exodus, and until late in 1791 official policy
was to urge the exiles to return. Later, indeed, their numbers
were swelled by deportees and fugitives from revolutionary
laws, who had little or no alternative to leaving. The causes of
emigration evolved and expanded with the course of the
Revolution itself. But, at whatever point they chose, or were
compelled, to leave the land of their birth, émigrés were
people unable to live with the France the Revolution had
made. Emigration reflected the comprehensiveness of this
revolution of a new type, that left no aspect of life, and no area
of society, untouched. In so far as subsequent revolutions have
measured their ambitions by this one, émigrés have become a
recognised feature of modern political life.
The word had entered the English language by 1792.2 By
the end of that year the French Revolution, anti-noble almost
from the start, had also turned anti-clerical, anti-monarchical
and (with the September massacres) terroristic. It was therefore scarcely surprising that at least two-thirds of those who
had left the country by the time of the king’s death were either
nobles or clerics. It seems likely that many of the rest were
dependent in some way on these two categories. These were
the émigrés of legend. As with the noble victims of the Terror,
the sight of the formerly mighty brought low has marked the
conventional picture of the emigration ever since. But in 1951
the legend was challenged by Donald Greer, with statistics
which showed incontestably that most emigration took place
after 1792, and that the vast majority of those leaving were not
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Introduction
members of the former privileged orders. Most were ordinary
people fleeing from the consequences of civil war. The official
lists which were Greer’s main source made no distinctions as to
their motivation. All had emigrated, all were subject to the
same penalties. But it is perfectly clear that the faceless majority were not exiles in the same way as the nobles and clerics.
They would be much more accurately described in recent terms
as refugees or displaced persons. True émigrés had acted on
principle – however self-interested. Most had been persons of
authority before 1789, and had turned their backs on a
revolution which had diminished or dispossessed them. Whatever the intrinsic human importance of the humble, unsung
majority officially categorised as émigrés, those who gave the
word its distinctive subsequent meaning would have acknowledged little in common with them. Legend still comes closer to
defining the essence of emigration than the administrative
categories of revolutionary officials.
Yet legends also distort; and the main purpose of the pages
that follow is to shed a less partial light on the lives and behaviour
of a group too often reviled or admired uncritically. Some of
this new light, it is true, tends to confirm old stereotypes. Little
in these essays offers us a prospect of émigrés less snobbish,
quarrelsome or Francocentric in their attitudes than has always
been perceived. Nor is their melancholy stoicism in adversity,
endless capacity for hoping against hope, and dogged loyalty
to ideals in any way diminished. The geography and chronology of emigration is not much modified either. Great Britain,
so close and yet so impregnable beyond the sea, was ultimately
the most favoured destination [Carpenter]. Of more distant
refuges, only the United States, Sweden and Denmark were
not reached sooner or later by the armies of the republic or the
usurper; so continental émigrés were almost always having to
move out of danger. And while émigré numbers, even among
nobles and clergy, continued to expand down to 1794, by the
time the official list of émigrés was closed in 1799, thousands
had already returned, and thousands more would do so as it
became clear that Bonaparte had restored a world of stability,
hierarchy and religious observance, even if there was not a
Bourbon to preside over it. Louis XVIII and his family, in fact,
were the only émigrés for whom returning to France was not
an option between 1799 and 1814. Ironically that strengthened
Introduction
xvii
his diplomatic position. From 1807 he was an honoured and
subsidised (if none-too-hopeful) guest in Great Britain rather
than the helpless fugitive, not just from France, but sooner or
later from other states too, that he had been for most of the
time since 1791.
In this, Louis XVIII had shared the fate of most of those
who did not cross the Channel to cluster in genteel penury in
Soho or Marylebone. For governments generally found in the
presence of émigrés grounds for suspicion, irritation or embarrassment. After all, they were the original casus belli in 1791–2.
Any ruler who lent them too visible hospitality risked antagonising a republic that by 1794 had marshalled unprecedented
military power. Besides, it took a long time for populations
and even officials with a long-standing suspicion of things
French to learn that not all Frenchmen abroad were agents of
their country’s new ideology. The Prussians were notoriously
stingy with their residence permits [Höpel]; the Habsburg
authorities in Hungary suspected even Hungarians returning
from France when foreign regiments were disbanded [Tóth].
Never punctilious debtors, the émigrés were increasingly cavalier towards their creditors because of dwindling resources;
the only refuge of the Count d’Artois from British bailiffs in
the late 1790s was the grace-and-favour sanctuary of Holyrood.
Foreign generals, meanwhile, found the posturings of regiments
composed entirely of nobles regarding themselves as naturalborn officers a liability. They were either kept prudently under
foreign control, like Condé’s legions [d’Agay], or allowed to
take the lead only on reckless ventures of their own dubious
devising, like the catastrophic Quiberon expedition of 1795.
Nor could the most patent martyrs to conviction, the non-juror
clergy, necessarily expect a less guarded welcome. Priests who
had given up all to obey the Pope were objects of suspicion for
Erastian princes hostile to the pretensions of Rome [Höpel].
Orthodox hierarchies feared the contagion of Jansenism,
improbable through this was among French non-juring
priests. Only in the Protestant confessional kingdom of Great
Britain, ironically enough, was the impact more benign. Here
the pious resignation and biblical poverty of the expatriate
clergy helped to soften the visceral anti-Catholicism of
their hosts, and so benefited their British co-religionists
[Bellenger].
xviii
Introduction
As Kirsty Carpenter stresses (pp. 59–60), there was a moral
force in the sight of exiles prepared to suffer rather than live in
a homeland where they thought they had no place. Their
presence lent sober reality to a revolution that could otherwise
only be experienced through the newspapers. Accordingly they
were able to influence their hosts’ picture of conditions in
France. This was particularly so in the United States, where
French visitors had been a rarity since independence [Sosnowski]. The move towards Jay’s Treaty must have owed a
good deal to the prospect and everyday propaganda of French
exiles, even if these same exiles mostly found the atmosphere
of the first modern republic crude and rebarbative, and a brutal
corrective to the romantic illusions so widespread in the 1780s
of life on the sylvan frontier. The ancestral enemy across the
Channel, on the other hand, was a pleasant surprise. Most of
the British proved welcoming and sympathetic; the Treasury
authorised funds for the relief of the Godless revolution’s indigent victims; and tales of Jacobin horrors were eagerly absorbed
in a political culture more anxious than it might like to admit
for reassurance about the superiority and durability of its own
ways. Despite the struggles of Louis XVIII (shown here to be
more successful than previously thought) [Mansel] to maintain
the trappings of a court and government wherever his exile
took him, London was the true capital of the emigration, if
not from the start, then certainly once war broke out in February 1793 [Carpenter]. The émigrés concentrated there, so
sympathetically received in good society, were all the more
shocked to learn from the disaster of Quiberon how cynically
they were regarded by George III and his ministers. Yet
Quiberon was the result of wishful thinking among all concerned, and in its aftermath a greater realism set in. While the British government never again gave credence to émigré analyses
of the situation in France, by grudgingly patronising efforts
to 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 had
happened, and was still happening, across the Channel; and
the tissue of fantasies that had made up so much of émigré
journalism was increasingly cut through by commentaries of
real, if unreassuring, insight.
Introduction
xix
Although many émigrés, particularly the clergy, kept to
themselves, and many more were culturally ghettoised by
their inability or unwillingness to learn languages other than
their own, in general their capacity to adapt to their circumstances is striking. For some, indeed, emigration was a positive
opportunity. Condé saw it as the chance to build a military
career worthy of his illustrious ancestor [d’Agay]; Danloux
found a captive market for his paintings secure from the jealous
machinations of David [Goodden]. And whereas merchants
and craftsmen could practise their skills in exile much as before,
distressed gentlefolk survived by teaching French as a foreign
language, or making straw hats. The ex-monk Dulau opened a
bookshop and a publishing business in Soho. Nobody, of
course, adapted more consistently to the vagaries and vicissitudes of changing circumstances than Louis XVIII himself
and his entourage, clinging doggedly to the métier du roi even
when there was scarcely any to perform [Mansel]. Enforced
adaptation to the world outside France, however, was no
indication of a willingness to change if ever these nightmare
days should end. As the old order grew more remote, memory
overlaid its more dynamic and nuanced features, and minds
set against anything deemed in retrospect to have precipitated
the great cataclysm. The Declaration of Verona, which Louis
XVIII spent two decades living down, was only the most notorious example of this growing rigidity. Condé’s determination to exclude all but scions of the oldest noble stock from his
exile army (which he called simply La Noblesse) was another
[d’Agay]. At Toulon in 1793, the only place where émigrés
were able to establish more than a fleeting bridgehead in
France, those who had invited them and their British protectors
were dismayed at the time they devoted, in a city besieged, to
re-establishing noble and clerical precedence and prerogatives. 3 Emigration seemed to amplify the ‘cascade of disdain’
that had marked old-regime social relations, as the political as
well as the social credentials of each new arrival were exhaustively scrutinised. And these attitudes were passed on to a younger
generation which could recall little of pre-revolutionary life at
first hand, through an education narrowed by the limited
means or censorious ambitions of their parents.
Yet by the time Napoleon fell, nine-tenths of the émigrés
had already returned to France. Only those motivated
xx
Introduction
overwhelmingly by loyalty to the Bourbon dynasty held aloof from
an architect of unprecedented French power and glory who
invited them back on the sole condition that they accept the legitimacy of his regime. Their return opened new rifts among those
who had taken the ‘honourable road’ in grimmer times. What
continued to unite them was the cost of choosing to leave
France and not return when summoned to do so. In 1792 the
goods of all declared émigrés were confiscated and added to
the stock of biens nationaux. It is true that much was repurchased by relations left behind, or by émigrés themselves on
their return. Land still unsold was returned to its former owners
or their heirs at, or before, the restoration. Nevertheless the
cost of repurchase was substantial, and hardly any émigrés
recovered all their former property. The compensation
accorded in the milliard des émigrés of 1825 never reached that
fabulous sum, and sometimes took many years to be assessed
and awarded [Franke]. Émigrés and their descendants thus
continued to suffer for what they had done long after emigration became a myth-laden memory. And despite their implicit
recognition of the Revolution’s legitimacy by acceptance of the
indemnity, their political enemies often failed to return the
compliment. Throughout the nineteenth century calls were
periodically 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 Revolution had done, the custodians of its achievements could never
acknowledge the legitimacy of the emigration. As their language made clear, they drew little distinction between emigration and treason. The language of republican intransigence,
inherited from the Year II, implied that the émigrés had abandoned their country in its hour of peril to give aid and comfort
to its enemies. Émigrés for their part claimed that there was
little choice; and for those fleeing from massacre and arrest in
1792–94 that was obviously true. Those who left earlier had
less excuse. Alarming though the events of 1789–92 were to
nobles and clerics, a large majority of both orders proved able
to live through them without leaving the country. The early
Revolution was not so much a mortal threat to established
élites, as a challenge. The émigrés were the ones who refused
it; and in doing so they played a fateful part in driving the Revolution to the very extremes they later deplored and claimed
Introduction
xxi
to have foreseen. Their departure, and their noisy denunciations from beyond the frontiers, only intensified revolutionary
paranoia and suspicion towards all ci-devants. Their attempts
to recruit the king to their cause, culminating in his disastrous
flight to Varennes in June 1791, fatally undermined the prospect for a constitutional monarchy. Their appeals to foreign
powers to intervene in French internal affairs began the movement towards war in the autumn in 1791; and their willingness
to serve in arms under enemy command, once hostilities began
the following spring, finally marked them out as betrayers of
their country. Louis XVI’s attempts, meanwhile, to protect
them and their property in France with his veto helped seal
the fate of the monarchy itself.
All these machinations, it is true, were the work of a small
minority. One thing that stands out from the present collection is the political passivity of most émigrés once they had
affected their escape. They all lived in hope, but most were
more absorbed in the struggle for day-to-day survival than in
the struggle against the Godless popular republic. Apart from
those who went early, their fortunes as yet unthreatened by
overt political dissidence, most émigrés left their sources of
income behind, inaccessible even before they were confiscated.
They had to find new ways of sustaining themselves. And
although they usually found abroad, however grudgingly,
the noble and clerical solidarity they obviously expected, they
mostly had to find their own resources. As Gibbon remarked,
‘These noble fugitives are entitled to our pity; they may claim
our esteem; but they cannot, in the present state of their mind
and fortune, much contribute to our amusement.’ 4 There
was, indeed, little amusing about the emigration. The French
Revolution imposed unenviable choice on all who had to live
through it. The émigrés’ choice was to sacrifice everything
but their lives (and, if they went to Quiberon, even those)
rather than accept a new order of things in the land of their
birth. It was a futile sacrifice. None of them ever recovered all
they lost, and most would have lost less by staying. Notoriously,
even the restored Bourbons inherited Napoleon’s throne, not
their brother’s; and Charles X in 1830 threw that away, dying
in renewed emigration. But the story is no less tragic for its
futility, and no less significant either. Without the better
understanding of the émigrés which this collection offers,
xxii
Introduction
the Revolution they rejected will also be less well understood.
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
D. Greer, The Incidence of the Emigration during the French Revolution,
Cambridge, Mass., 1951, p. 115.
The first use recorded by the OED is by no less a writer than Edward
Gibbon, who a year earlier had already noted the presence in Lausanne,
of ‘a swarm of emigrants of both sexes who escaped from the public
ruin’. Memoirs of My Life, ed. G.A. Bonnard, London, 1966, p. 185.
M. Crook, Toulon in War and Revolution: from the Ancien Régime to the
Restoration, 1750–1820, Manchester, 1991, p. 142.
Memoirs of My Life, p. 185.
1 From Coblenz to
Hartwell: the Émigré
Government and the
European Powers,
1791–1814
Philip Mansel
When the Comte de Provence arrived in Brussels on 26 June
1791, after his flight from France, he found himself at the head
of 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 was
of a different nature to its rival under the Queen’s favourite, the
Baron de Breteuil, or to any government in exile maintained
by later French pretenders, Bourbon, Orléans or Bonaparte.
In its council of Ministers sat such notable former ministers of
Louis XVI as Calonne, the Maréchaux de Broglie and de Castries. By early 1792 it had established its own diplomats in
twelve capitals, 2 including London, Vienna and Saint Petersburg, where émigré representatives remained until 1814. There
was 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 disobey even those acts of Louis XVI dating from before 1789, and
to strengthen links between the Crown and the nobility, was the
inclusion in its army of the Compagnies Nobles d’Ordonnance. They were a revival, under another name, of the Maison
Militaire du roi as it had been before the reforms of 1775.4
The émigré government justified its independence on the
grounds that, as Provence wrote to Marie Antoinette, the Princes were the ‘seuls organes légitimes du roi de France, retenu
en captivité par ses sujets rebelles’.5 The Comtes de Provence
and d’Artois also represented themselves as leaders of a crusade
to save Europe. This was in part a result of geography: from
1
2
The French Émigrés in Europe
7 July they established their court and government in the small
town of Coblenz at the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle.
They were there at the invitation, and under the protection, of
one of their mother’s brothers, Prince Clemenz of Saxony,
Archbishop and Elector of Trier, whose principal residence it
was. They had to justify their government’s existence to the
Elector and the Holy Roman Empire.
However, while alarmed by the progress of what they called
le mal français, most foreign governments saw the French
revolution as a specifically French phenomenon which did
not directly threaten – in some cases could be exploited to
strengthen – their authority in their own countries. The Princes
failed to persuade European powers to withdraw their ambassadors from Paris in July 1791. 6 The sole result of the Conference held at Pillnitz in August 1791 between the Holy Roman
Emperor, the King of Prussia, the Elector of Saxony and the
Comte d’Artois was the anodyne declaration that the fate of
Louis XVI was ‘un objet d’intérêt commun à tous les souverains de l’Europe’. Only Gustavus III, a personal friend of Provence who had conferred with the Princes at Aix-la-Chapelle
in early July, made plans to attack France.7 But Sweden was
too distant and impoverished to be an effective ally.
The émigré government had more success with Russia.
Catherine II had three motives: monarchical outrage at the
revolution; geopolitical desire to keep the western European
powers occupied while Poland was destroyed; and personal
hatred for the Baron de Breteuil, head of the rival government in exile, who as a young French diplomat had opposed
her coup d’état in 1762. In the autumn of 1791 the Russian
ambassador to the Circles of the Upper and Lower Rhine, Count
Romanzov, and the Swedish ambassador to the Imperial Diet,
Baron Oxenstierna, were also accredited to the Princes at
Coblenz. So important was such foreign recognition that, on
each occasion, the émigré nobility at Coblenz en corps was sent
to compliment the ambassador.
‘La scene a été des plus brillantes et des plus riches en
intérêt . . . ’ wrote the Baron de Bray, the representative of the
Grand Master of Malta at Coblenz, of Romanzov’s reception.8
Further proof of the émigré government’s European dimension was the presence of both the Russian and Swedish ambassadors, the Baron de Duminic first minister of the Elector of
Philip Mansel
3
Trier, the Baron de Bray and the Prince of Nassau-Siegen, a
German prince in Russian service, in the Princes’ council.9
Thereafter the Princes, always eager to internationalise their
situation, addressed frequent confidential letters to Catherine II,
requesting both funds and advice.10 Indeed, without the émigré
government’s foreign subsidies, it would not have survived. In
1791, for example, Catherine II and Frederick William II of
Prussia sent the Princes 1 591 037 livres and 1 888 874
livres respectively.11
The greatest ally of the émigré government, however, was
French aggression. The French government declared war on
Austria on 20 April 1792. Thereafter, the demands of war further 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 ministers had frequent conferences with the allied commanderin-chief, the Duke of Brunswick. They helped to compose the
Declaration of Brunswick and followed his military dispositions.
The King of Prussia, thanks in part to the persuasion of the
Princes’ councillor, the Prince of Nassau-Siegen, gave them a
further 800 000 francs to equip their army, reviewed it, and
spent 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 recognised
as Regent of France in September 1792.
During the allied retreat in October and November after the
defeat at Valmy, the émigré government remained dependent
on Prussia and Austria. Having dissolved their army at the
insistence of the King of Prussia on 23 November, the Princes
installed themselves, their government and archive on Prussian soil in the small town of Hamm in Westphalia in late
December.14
They remained dependent on foreign governments for subsistence as well as asylum. Russia remained generous: the
Empress sent 1 144 689 livres in 1793. The Russian ambassador
Romanzov, still officially accredited to the Princes, resided at
Hamm, determined, as he wrote to the Maréchal de Castries,
the leading minister of the émigré government, to serve ‘la
cause de la Monarchie française avec zèle’. 15
Russian assistance was so important that in late 1794 the
Russian ambassador in Venice, Count Mordvinov, secured
4
permission from the Venetian government for Provence to
establish himself in Verona. After Provence became King of
France as Louis XVIII on his nephew’s death in 1795, Mordvinov 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 point
in the émigré government’s relations with the European powers,
and therefore in its success in France. Artois admitted that
the only hope lay in ‘l’appui des grandes puissances’ but that all
were hostile. 17 The diplomatic system of the French monarchy had collapsed at the same time as the monarchy itself.
Austria, the ally of 1756, possibly out of dynastic hatred of the
Bourbons, was actively ill-intentioned and in 1793 wanted
territorial gains in northern France. Echoing the views of Louis
XVI’s ministers in the 1780s, Castries wrote in 1794: ‘la cour
de Vienne considère la France comme une puissance qu’il faut
abattre’.18
In 1799 a British diplomat noticed in Baron Thugut, the
Austrian chief minister,
a stronger inclination to divide France and perpetuate the
distractions of that country than to re-establish either Monarchy or any other steady government . . . he has a strong
prejudice against the King of France and the French princes
whom he considers as personally obnoxious to the French
nation.
In August 1804 Thugut’s successor, Count Ludwig Cobenzl,
burnt Louis XVIII’s protest against the proclamation of the
French empire, in the presence of Napoleon’s ambassador.19
Their Bourbon cousins showed little more sympathy for the
émigré Princes. Charles IV of Spain sent them a million francs
in 1792 and, until 1807, small subsistence pensions to the different members of the French Royal Family. 20 However he
gave no political or military support and in 1794 refused Provence asylum, as did the Bourbon Duke of Parma, the recipient of the largest single annual pension awarded by Louis XVI
(and the Bourbon King of Naples in 1802). Between 1798 and
1808 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 government
survived. Wherever he happened to be – between August
Philip Mansel
5
1796 and February 1798 in Blankenburg in the Duchy of
Brunswick, thereafter moving to Mittau in Russia – Louis
XVIII held council two or three times a week. In 1795–96 at
Verona, according to the unofficial British ambassador Lord
Macartney, ‘ever since the death of Louis 17th the king’s residence here has been assuming more and more the air of a Court’,
not through outward splendour, but ‘by the numerous correspondences, the arrival and departure of couriers from time to
time’.22 Ministers in attendance included Castries, Flaschlanden, La Vauguyon, Jaucourt and, as representative of the
Comte d’Artois, the Bishop of Arras.23
The calibre of the émigré government is shown by its use of
a skilled bureaucrat called M. Hermann, to run some of its
cyphers from 1793 to 1801. Former Agent général de la Marine
de France and Consul-General in London under Louis XVI,
he later became a senior financial official of Napoleon I and
finally sous-secrétaire d’état aux affaires étrangères in 1822.24
The principal minister in 1798–1800 was the Comte de SaintPriest, a former minister of Louis XVI who advocated a reconciliation with the constitutional monarchists. In exile, some
Ministers retained the arrogance of Versailles. When the Duc
de Noailles resigned as Capitaine des Gardes in 1795, his
cousin the Prince de Poix, himself dismissed as Capitaine des
Gardes by Louis XVIII the same year on the suspicion of moderation, wrote to the Maréchal de Castries:
M.de Flaschlanden nous a écrit par un Secrétaire, ce que
Louis XIV ne se seroit pas permis dans sa toute puissance
pour la démission d’une telle charge. 25
Another sign of the calibre of the émigré government is provided by the archives deposited in the Ministère des Affaires
Étrangères in 1814, some of which had followed the exiled
court through every stage of its European odyssey, from
Coblenz to Hartwell. It is primarily a political archive, containing constitutional projects, despatches by the King’s agents in
Paris, London, Madrid or Saint Petersburg, or bulletins issued
by the King’s cabinet for the press.26 However, the Fonds
Bourbon is only part of the archives of the émigré government.
Much of the personal correspondence of Louis XVIII, and such
dynastic relics as the seal of Louis XVI, remain in the archives
of the Blacas family, descendants of the last chief minister of
6
the émigré government. They provided material for the many
books and articles by Ernest Daudet on the Emigration. The
voluminous archives of the émigré Ministers, the Maréchal de
Castries and the Comte de Saint Priest, can be consulted in the
Archives Nationales in Paris (306 AP and 395 AP); those of
Calonne in the Public Record Office in London (PC1). Another
archive of the émigré government and army, mainly emanating
from the Comte d’Artois, with detailed records of pay, ranks
and decorations, was removed from the French embassy in
London in 1816 and is now in the Archives Nationales (O3
2558–2681).27
In addition to an administration, a diplomatic service and
an archive, the émigré government had an army. For although
the armée des Princes had been disbanded, the armée de
Condé survived as a force of about 5000 men (see Chapter 2).
Louis XVIII continued to promote officers and award them
honours as if he were an independent sovereign. As late as
New Year’s day 1812, Louis XVIII promoted the Marquis
d’Autichamp and the Comtes de Coigny and de Cély Lieutenant Generals.28 The émigré government’s Minister of War until
1795 was the Maréchal de Broglie, who was succeeded by the
Baron de Flaschlanden, a member of the Princes’ Council
since 1791; he in turn was succeeded on his death in 1798 by
the Comte de La Chapelle, former Major-Général of l’armée
des Princes in 1792; he died at Hartwell in March 1810. 29
In addition to the armée de Condé, émigré or émigrécommanded units, with which the émigré government maintained contact, served in the Austrian, British, Sardinian and
Spanish armies. Lieutenant-Colonel de Durler, commander of
the Regiment de Roll, which served in the British army from
1794 to 1816, for example, paid court to Louis XVIII at Verona
on 25 January 1796. 30 In 1796 the King thought of joining the
Loyal Emigrant Regiment, which fought for Britain in the
Austrian Netherlands, Brittany and Portugal under his friend
the Comte de La Chatre. 31
The émigré government also had its own subjects. Over
129 000 émigrés, perhaps as many as 200 000,32 formed an entire
society on the move, with its own public opinion, culture and
style, simpler than what Louis XVIII’s favourite the Comte
d’Avaray called, in 1804, ‘la dignité crapuleuse et empruntée
qui aujourd’hui règne en France’. 33
Philip Mansel
7
For many émigrés, the government of Louis XVIII remained
the focus of loyalty and patronage. For the government, the
émigrés remained a source of agents – and political pressure:
in 1794 Provence wrote to Castries of his fear that a deal with
revolutionaries would open ‘une source intarissable de discorde et de guerres civiles’.34 Thus one reason why Bonaparte
encouraged émigrés to return to France after 1802, according
to Talleyrand, was
afin d’isoler davantage Louis XVIII et lui ôter, comme il
disait, l’air de roi qu’une nombreuse émigration lui donnait.35
However, many émigrés remained outside France, rising to
positions such as Marshal General of Portugal (Comte de
Vioménil); military commander of Madrid (the Comte d’Espagne); Commander-in-Chief of the Neapolitan army (Roger
de Damas); Austrian general (Comte E. de Pouilly); Governor
of Odessa and Minister of the Marine in Russia (the Duc de
Richelieu and the Marquis de Traversay). Even if they adopted
another nationality, an act for which some first asked the King’s
permission,36 in contrast to Jacobite officers in foreign service
who rapidly lost their links with the Jacobite government,
many such émigrés remained royalist ‘sleepers’, as the events
of 1813–14 would show.
Thus the Revolution of 1789 had committed two errors, not
repeated by those of 1830 or 1848. First, by making France
physically dangerous, it encouraged the emigration of royalists
who, once they had risen in the service of foreign governments, were likely to be in a position to influence them against
the French government. Second, its policy of territorial expansion, more than its revolutionary excesses, obliged the European powers in the end to league against it. Louis XVIII, on
the other hand, stuck to the Bourbon policy which had made
France, for the first time, renounce European territorial
expansion. Established by Louis XV at the peace of Aix-laChapelle (1748), it had been maintained by Louis XVI on the
grounds that, as Vergennes wrote to him in 1777, ‘la France
constituée comme elle l’est doit craindre les agrandissements
bien plus que les ambitionner’. 37 In accordance with this tradition Louis XVIII committed himself not to profit from the
‘conquêtes faites par la prétendue république’. 38 It was the
Bourbons’ commitment to the former frontiers of France, not
8
their rights to the throne, which won them the support of
European governments.
The émigré government was at the height of its effectiveness
when Louis XVIII took up residence in the former palace of
the Dukes of Courland at Mittau, as a guest of Tsar Paul I,
from February 1798 to January 1801. The Tsar took the armée
de Condé into his service, awarded Louis XVIII a pension of
200 000 roubles a year, paid the salary of the King’s official
representative in Saint Petersburg, the Comte de Caraman,
and even paid one hundred former gardes du corps du roi to
serve as Louis XVIII’s guards – a symbol of sovereignty which
had been denied to Louis XVI in the Tuileries after October
1789.39 Within four months the King’s court and guard, at first
confined to one floor of the main wing of the palace, had obliged
the city’s prison, law-court and archives to move out of the
palace 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 stage
Louis XVIII even suggested that his gardes du corps take over
the police of Mittau. Although the Pretender was never allowed to see Paul I in Saint Petersburg as he requested, Paul
Schroeder’s allegation of the Bourbon court’s ‘pitiful existence’ is clearly not the whole truth.42 At Mittau, Louis XVIII
was both figuratively and literally on the main road to Saint
Petersburg. ‘Placé sur la route de tous les courriers’,43 he received Russian and British diplomats, General Dumouriez, the
Grand Duke Constantine, and Marshal Suvorov himself, who
stopped in Mittau in March 1799 to obtain the King’s blessing
before the Second Coalition’s attack on France that summer.44
In addition to Louis’ government and court at Mittau, there
was a rival court under Artois, whom Provence had appointed
Lieutenant Général du Royaume on 8 November 1793. 45 If
Russia protected Louis XVIII, Britain supported Artois. In
1793 Lord Grenville had forbidden Provence to land at Toulon
– despite its inhabitants’ request for his presence – and Artois
to land in England.46 In 1799, in a change of heart probably
due to the realisation that the Directory was even more expansionist than the Convention, Grenville wrote:
Europe can never be restored to tranquillity but by the restoration 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 a
most desirable object because I think it would afford the
strongest and best security to this country and to Europe.47
In August 1799, at the height of British confidence in the
European coalition, Artois accepted an official invitation to
leave the palace of Holyrood outside Edinburgh, where he had
resided since January 1796, and move to London. Presented
to George III at court, often meeting the Prime Minister,48 he
became Britain’s protégé, someone whom Britain preferred to
Louis XVIII to accompany an invasion of the south or east of
France at the head of a Swiss force.49 Louis XVIII, whom Artois
had not consulted, was furious but impotent.50 In fact Artois
never reached France and for the next 14 years remained in
London.
The war of the Second Coalition marked the émigré government’s long-anticipated breakthrough with the British and
Russian governments or, as Artois wrote, the moment when
‘les souverains commencent à ouvrir les yeux’.51 Thereafter
Russia and Britain kept the Bourbons as a reserve card in their
European plans. The reconciliation of the Duc d’Orléans with
his Bourbon cousins provides proof of the émigré government’s European status. Artois insisted that Orléans’ letter of
submission to Louis XVIII of 13 February 1800 be at once
shown not only to senior émigré officers in London but also to
British ministers and the Russian ambassador. Only after
Orléans had made his submission did he receive a British pension, the honour of presentation to George III and the opportunity to meet, at dinner in Artois’ house in 46 Baker Street,
the Foreign Secretary and the Austrian, Russian and Neapolitan ambassadors.52
While Britain turned to Artois, the Tsar turned against
Louis XVIII. Disabused by the defeats of the Second Coalition,
having quarrelled with the Bourbon supporter Gustavus IV
of Sweden, and having dismissed the pro-Bourbon ViceChancellor 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 despatch
from D’Avaray to the Duc d’Havré the émigré representative
10
in Madrid, with mocking portraits of himself and his ministers,
Paul I ordered the expulsion of Louis XVIII, his family and
followers from Mittau.53 Louis XVIII’s agent in Berlin, the
great counter-revolutionary writer, Rivarol, helped obtain
permission from the King of Prussia for the Bourbons to live in
Warsaw. 54 From March 1801 until the summer of 1804, under
considerable restrictions, enjoying occasional subsidies from
sympathetic Polish nobles, Louis XVIII and his court stayed in
rented houses in Warsaw. 55
Soon after the King’s installation in Warsaw, Paul I was murdered (one of the original conspirators had been Count Panin,
the former joint Foreign Minister sympathetic to the Bourbons). Although no longer recognising the Pretender officially
like his father and grandmother, Alexander I re-established a
smaller pension that summer, renewed the offer of asylum in
Mittau and assured Louis XVIII:
Vos vertus brillent d’un nouveau lustre dans l’adversité et
vous assurent des titres imprescriptibles.56
In January 1802 Alexander I addressed a circular to his ambassadors in Madrid, Naples, Paris, London, Berlin and Vienna to
ask the governments of Europe, including the French, to provide financial support for the Bourbons. The Tsar claimed that
La situation à laquelle se trouve réduit M. le comte de
Lille . . . ne peut être indifférente à tous les souverains de
l’Europe.
Austria, Prussia and Spain refused to provide any more than
they were already. Britain sent £5000 at once and thereafter
£6000 a year.57
In 1802 Britain and Russia were at peace with the French
Republic, 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 time
Artois, possibly intending to leave London, bought an estate at
Wittmold in Holstein). Moreover, the dynasty was losing its
biological base. The daughter of Louis XVI, who had been
married to her cousin the Duc d’Angoulême at Mittau in 1799,
showed no sign of bearing an heir. Louis XVIII had failed in
his efforts to marry the Duc de Berri either to the widowed
Electress of Bavaria, or to Princesses of Savoy, Saxony, Parma or
Philip Mansel
11
Naples. He wrote to Artois that he feared that Berri would not
be accepted even by a daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar:
‘la terreur est à l’ordre du jour . . . notre temps est passé ou
pour mieux dire il dort’.58 Through d’Avaray he spoke of
retiring to Naples where he would deposit his crown in the heart
of his cousin the King and live as a private person. 59 Having
failed in his negotiations for a restoration with Bonaparte,
Louis XVIII even considered, to Artois’s horror, accepting a
subsidy from the First Consul, provided that it came via the
Russian government.60
However in 1803 and 1804, having forgotten his despair,
Louis XVIII made two famous protests of his right to the
crown of France. In February 1803 in Warsaw, to a Prussian
official 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 je
connais les obligations qu’il m’a imposées par le rang ou il
Lui a plu de me faire naître. . . . Successeur de François Ier,
je veux au moins pouvoir dire avec lui, ‘Nous avons tout
perdu hors l’honneur’.
To the rage of Talleyrand, who pursued a personal vendetta
against the Bourbons, British boats circulated the King’s reply
along the coast of France.61
A year later Louis XVIII called the assumption of the imperial title by Napoleon ‘les circonstances les plus graves et les plus
critiques ou je me suis trouvé depuis le commencement de nos
infortunes’. 62
After a meeting at Kalmar on the Swedish coast with King
Gustavus IV Adolphus and Artois (the only prince who had
obtained a British passport) in late September 1804, Louis
XVIII moved to the house of sympathetic nobles at Blankenfeld in Courland, having been refused permission to return to
Warsaw by the King of Prussia at Napoleon I’s request.63 Thus
it was at Blankenfeld that Louis XVIII finished the Declaration to which he gave a fictitious date – 2 December 1804, the
day of what he called ‘l’horrible farce’ in Notre Dame de Paris
– and address – ‘au sein de la Baltique, en face et sous la protection du ciel’. 64
In its final form the Declaration endorsed a general amnesty
and the broad outlines of the post-1789 settlement, including
12
careers open to the talents, and the post-1789 administrative
revolution. While not explicitly renouncing all conquests, it
also criticised France’s expansion in Europe:
Un système perfide de violence, d’ambition sans limites,
d’arrogance sans frein, vous livre à d’interminables guerres
dont la lassitude seule suspendra le fléau.
Despite the opposition of Artois, the British government and
Alexander I, the King insisted on the Declaration’s publication, writing to Gustavus IV that it was ‘destiné pour la France,
fait pour la France’ and should be sent there in as great a
quantity as possible. With Swedish help, it was printed in
Stockholm and Berlin in 1805, but its circulation in France is
doubtful.65
After five months at Blankenfeld, in February 1805, the King
was readmitted to Mittau by Alexander I. Alexander remained
more sympathetic to the Bourbon cause than is generally
believed. His court, like the Swedish court, went into mourning
for the Duc d’Enghien in 1804 and refused to recognise Napoleon’s imperial title. Although opposed to fighting a war for
the sole object of the restoration of the King of France, Alexander I still favoured putting a Bourbon on the French throne
provided he accepted a constitution.66 In 1805 both Russia
and 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 royalist
attack in the west of France. On 31 March 1807 Alexander I
came 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 of
Calmar in 1804, this move, planned since March 1806, was
made on his own initiative. Dislike of the distance of Mittau
from France, and jealousy of Artois’s control of what the King
called ‘cette multitude d’agens non avoués et d’agences non
commandées’, helped determine Louis XVIII. Money may
have been the most important factor of all. The Swedish ambassador in Saint Petersburg, Count Stedingk, an old friend from
Versailles, claimed to know ‘de science certaine’ that the move
was designed to stop Artois monopolising British subsidies.69
Philip Mansel
13
Certainly in April 1807 d’Avaray had written to Orléans (Louis
XVIII’s secret intermediary with the British government in
order to keep Artois and Alexander I in ignorance), that the
Spanish and Portuguese pensions had stopped, that the King
had 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 across
Sweden to Gothenburg, where he embarked on a Swedish
ship, at Swedish expense, for England. They arrived off Great
Yarmouth on 30 October 1807.
D’Avaray announced to Canning, who had replaced Grenville as Foreign Secretary that year, the arrival of, ‘l’ennemi le
plus redoutable du perturbateur du monde . . . le pacificateur
futur de l’Europe’. The King and d’Avaray had hoped to confer
with 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 considering
peace negotiations with Napoleon I, and the Comte d’Artois
and his followers, wanted his boat to leave for Leith and
ordered Holyrood to be prepared.72 However, Canning was a
life-long ‘anti-Jacobin’, who feared criticism for his treatment
of the King of France. Lady Elizabeth Foster, a friend of the
French royal family since the 1780s, wrote:
never, I think, was the public feeling more strongly expressed
than it has been against the incivility and want of respect
and attention to Louis XVIII.73
Finally, with the help of Orléans, Louis XVIII received permission to land on the condition that he resided at a distance
of fifty miles from London.74
In Britain, although his hopes for formal recognition, residence in London or meetings with ministers were not recognised, the King began to return to official life after the hiatus of
1801–7. His British pension was increased from £6000 a year
to £16 000 and he also received the equivalent of £1600 from
Portugal (through British intervention) and £4000 from Russia. 75 As a capital reserve he had his aunts’ diamonds and by
1797 the côte de bretagne ruby from the French crown jewels.76 In
Verona and Blankenburg he had been forbidden to hold
court; in Mittau and Warsaw, despite his local connections
through his grandmother Marie Leczinska, daughter of King
14
Stanislas Leczynski of Poland, he saw local nobles on great
occasions 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 émigrés and British sympathisers (particularly Roman Catholics)
paid him court at Hartwell House, near Aylesbury, to which he
moved in 1809. In 1809, on a visit to the Prince de Condé at
Wanstead House near London, he received ‘les femmes
presentées . . . 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 corresponded with both Canning and his successor as Foreign Secretary
Lord Wellesley. In 1807, continuing the émigré government’s
policy to internationalise its cause, he wrote to Canning that
French interests ‘sont inséparables de ceux de l’Angleterre’.
In 1809 he told Lord Wellesley that ‘la cause de Ferdinand
VII et la mienne sont communes’ and that
je considère les intérêts de son pays [Britain] comme inséparables 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 Illustrious Chief.80
The British Government refused to allow any French Bourbon
to serve in Spain. However, it was eager to preserve the Bourbons as a political weapon in France. In 1810 it agreed, at the
request of the Comte d’Artois (no doubt alarmed by the marriages, that year, of both Napoleon I and the Duc d’Orléans,
and by his son’s long liaison with an Englishwoman called Amy
Brown), to send a frigate to collect a Sardinian princess for the
Duc de Berri, and to provide her with a pension of £3000 per
annum.81 Artois, who by 1807 lived in the fashionable address
of South Audley Street, held regular levers and often received
the Foreign Secretary Canning and his successor the Marquess
Wellesley.82 The King of Sardinia, however, reiterated the
refusal made in 1805, when he had written:
ce serait marier la faim et la soif et faire devenir ma fille une
perpétuelle bohémienne sans pain ni gîte. 83
Philip Mansel
15
The British government also paid part of the cost of the state
funeral of ‘the Queen of France’, Louis XVIII’s wife Marie
Josephine of Savoy, in Westminster Abbey, on 26 November
1810. The funeral was a European occasion, attended by the
ambassadors of Sardinia, Sicily, Spain and Portugal, as well as
by eleven émigré bishops.84
Another supporter of the Bourbons was the Prince of Wales,
who visited Louis XVIII on 20 October 1808 and swore to
restore him at a time when nobody else believed it possible.85 On
19 June 1811 the King and his family were the guests of honour
at the sumptuous fête for 3000 by which the Prince inaugurated
his Regency. The Regent welcomed him, in a room hung with
fleurs de lys tapestries and a portrait of Louis XV, with the
words: ‘Ici Votre Majesté est Roi de France’.86
The defeat of Napoleon in Russia in 1812 strengthened
British enthusiasm for the Bourbons. There were more meetings between the royal families. In London on 19 December,
an occasion ignored by British historians like Charles Webster (who do not consult émigré sources), Blacas promised a
British minister that the King will support ‘the present order
of things’. In accordance with the King’s evolution since
before the declaration of 1804, the Declaration of Hartwell of
1 March 1813 promised ’union’, ‘bonheur’, ‘paix’ and ‘repos’;
the maintenance of ‘le Code dit Napoléon’ except in matters
of religion, and of ‘les corps Administratifs et Judiciaires’
and guaranteed ‘la liberté du peuple.’ Thereafter the British
government provided the King with the financial means to
print the Declaration and to have it distributed on the Continent by
des serviteurs devoués qui puissent faire connaître aux
François les intentions du Roi et au Roi les dispositions de
l’intérieur.87
After December 1812 the secret British policy to support the
Bourbons is revealed by its agents’ acts. In early 1813 the British minister in Stockholm had copies of the Declaration of
Hartwell printed, while a British officer, Sir Neil Campbell,
had 2000 copies printed at Provins in France in mid-February
1814. 88 Despatches from Hartwell to Vienna were carried by
the couriers of the Regent’s Hanoverian Minister in London,
Count Munster. 89 Thus the support which Louis XVIII won
16
in France through the Declaration of Hartwell was due in part
to the actions of the British government.
In his letters to Bonnay in Vienna, Blacas confirmed the
émigré policy of renunciation of territorial expansion and of
representing Louis XVIII not as a legitimate monarch but as a
European necessity (there is no proof, however, that these letters influenced the Austrian Foreign Minister, Metternich).
Napoleon himself, whose insistence on retaining the ‘natural
frontiers’ convinced the allies not to make peace with him in
1814, felt that a return to the anciennes limites was ‘inséparable
du rétablissement des Bourbons’.90
At the same time the King despatched a volley of émigré
officers from his reserve of supporters, on missions to the
diferent powers of Europe. Alexis de Noailles was sent to Alexander I and Bernadotte in the summer of 1812; the Comte de
La Ferronays to Saint Petersburg and allied headquarters in
early 1813; the Comte de Bruges to allied headquarters in
Silesia in the summer of 1813; Comte Louis de Bouillé to Bernadotte’s headquarters in October 1813; and the Comtes de Narbonne, de Trogoff, Wildermeth and de Chabannes to Spain,
Austria and northern France. 91
The powers’ reaction was mixed. However, such missions
show that a Bourbon Restoration, far from being a surprise in
1814, had been frequently discussed at government level since
early 1813. In April 1813 Count Romanzov, the former Russian
ambassador to the Princes in 1791–93, now chancellor of the
Empire, who even after the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807 had
remained sympathetic to the émigré government and its agents,
informed Count Lieven, Russian ambassador in London, of
the Russian government’s interest in a restoration. Lieven had
already visited Hartwell that January.92 However the Tsar
provided neither formal recognition, nor support for an invasion in the West, nor permission for Angoulême to serve with
the Russian army, as Louis XVIII requested. In July 1813 the
Comte d’Artois and the Duc d’Angoulême were forced to
return to England from Pomerania where they had hoped to
join allied headquarters.93
One explanation for this policy is revealed in the memoirs
and letters of La Ferronays and Rochechouart, an émigré who
had become one of the Tsar’s aides de camp. When La Ferronays finally obtained two audiences of the Tsar in May 1813,
Philip Mansel
17
the latter, according to La Ferronays, expressed support for
royalism, mitigated by fear of alienating Austria which was still
neutral:
Si nous parvenons à jeter Napoléon de l’autre côté du Rhin
et qu’alors, comme je n’en doute pas, il se manifeste en
France quelque mouvement en faveur du roi, croyez que je
saurai profiter de ce moment pour faire entendre à l’Autriche
que, mon seul but ayant été de rendre la liberté aux nations,
le voeu du peuple français qui réclame ses anciens maîtres
rend nul tout espèce d’engagement pris avec elle . . . je sais
mieux qu’un autre, croyez-le, que le rétablissement de la
légitimité partout est la seule base sur laquelle on puisse
asseoir la paix et la tranquillité de l’Europe.94
In a letter to Louis XVIII Alexander I assured him of the ‘sentiments invariables que je vous conserve’ and promised to act
once the armies had crossed the Rhine and royalist movements
had shown themselves: ‘il faut de la patience, une grande
circonspection et le plus profond secret’.95
The calculated wait for French soil and royalist risings, rather
than opposition on principle, explains the allies’ failure openly
to support a Restoration before March 1814. In early 1814,
once the allies had arrived on French soil after a string of victories over Napoleon I, the Comte de Rochechouart wrote to
ask the Tsar to support the Bourbons, not because they were
legitimate 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 en
faveur de l’auguste famille de vos anciens rois mais je ne
puis agir sans mes alliés . . . en attendant, que la France se
prononce.
In February, while the allies were discussing peace with Napoleon at the Congress of Chatillon (thereby paralysing most
French royalist initiatives), Alexander I opposed an armistice.96 The Tsar was undecided. At one time he declared Louis
personally incapable; a decision should be postponed until
they reached Paris. A week later Nesselrode received royalist
agents on the Tsar’s behalf, telling them that he planned to follow ‘le voeu des français’, and requesting the creation of royalist
movements.97
18
While it was widely believed at the time that Austria tried to
save Napoleon and his empire as a counterbalance to Russia,98
Metternich also considered a Restoration a possibility from
January 1814. On 30 January 1814 he wrote to the Austrian
commander-in-chief Prince Schwarzenberg:
Si un parti se déclare, – si ce parti détrône Napoléon – si
Louis XVIII est proclamé par la grande majorité de la nation
on traitera avec lui. Nous serons enchantés de l’y voir.
Castlereagh thought Metternich had no objection in principle
to the Bourbons, whom he regarded as ‘likely to be too weak
for 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 continued to work for a restoration, meeting royalists from Paris,
sending an agent to Hartwell, distributing copies of Louis
XVIII’s Declaration.101 Other royalist ADCs of the Tsar were a
former officer of Napoleon’s rival General Moreau, General
Rapatel, and the earliest and most implacable enemy of Napoleon, Count Pozzo di Borgo. The latter had been in correspondance with the émigré government since at least 1804, had
visited Mittau in 1805 and had met Blacas and Artois in London
in 1811 and 1813.102 Émigrés’ role in Napoleon’s downfall
shows why, even at the height of his glory, he had been eager
to persuade other monarchs to dismiss them from their service
and had issued a decree confiscating the goods of émigrés who
served against France.103
While the attitude of Alexander I remained ambiguous, the
British government was pro-Bourbon, encouraged by a public
opinion described as ‘insane’, and ‘nearly unanimous’ in its
opposition to peace with Napoleon. Through the Comte de
Gramont, a son of the King’s Capitaine des Gardes serving in
the Tenth Hussars, Wellington invited a Bourbon prince to
his 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 and
Edward Cook of the Foreign Office. Artois was so confident of
public support that, if the government refused him a passport,
he threatened to publish the fact ‘to the whole world . . . to
France 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 16
January an intimate of the Prince Regent, Lord Yarmouth,
wrote:
Bunbury is gone to Lord Wellington . . . to arrange for the
appearance of a Bourbon there, and to say much on this
subject which Government are too much afraid of Whitbread [a Whig MP] to put on paper.106
On 22 January 1814 Artois, Angoulême and Berri left for the
Continent, with British passports. On 25 January, breaking
British constitutional proprieties with the knowledge of Lord
Liverpool, the Regent summoned the Russian ambassador to
Carlton House and informed him that peace with Napoleon
would only be a breathing-space. His entire life was ‘une série
de mauvaise foi, d’atrocité et d’ambition’: in the interests of
Europe, a restoration of the Bourbons, in whom the Regent
personally took ‘un vif intérêt’, should be proposed to the
French nation.107
What Louis XVIII had called the ‘vicious circle’ of royalist
fear and allied inactivity was finally broken. In fact he had underestimated the strength of French royalism. In 1814 it needed
only allied victories and sympathy, rather than a public commitment to a restoration, to manifest itself. On 12 March the
retreat of Napoleonic forces and the arrival of Wellington’s
British and Portuguese troops, gave Bordeaux royalists the
courage to declare for Louis XVIII. The Duc d’Angoulême’s
triumphant entry into the city was decided in consultation
with, and following the orders of, the Duke of Wellington.108
On 17 March 1814 another former émigré, the Baron de
Vitrolles, arrived at allied headquarters in eastern France with
a secret message from Talleyrand, urging a quick march on
Paris.109 By 23 March, Napoleon’s defeats and intransigence
(he still demanded that Antwerp remain French), combined
with the persistence and moderation of the émigré government, helped the allies decide publicly to support a restoration.
On 31 March allied troops entered Paris. As at Bordeaux, their
arrival 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, had
led the allied attack on Montmartre. Rochechouart commanded
20
the Russian-occupied zone of the capital, while an émigré in
Austrian service, Baron von Herzogenburg, commanded the
Austrian zone. The Tsar issued a declaration that he would no
longer treat with Napoleon I or any member of his family. On
12 April, Artois, whose movements in eastern France, like
Angoulême’s at Bordeaux, had been decided in consultation
with allied commanders, re-entered Paris.111
In conclusion, while its policies and actions inside France
were generally disastrous, the émigré government succeeded
in remaining an active element in European politics between
1791 and 1814. Louis XVIII and Artois saw European rulers
such as the King of Sweden (in 1791, 1804 and 1807); the
King of Great Britain and the Prince of Wales (after 1800);
and the Tsarina and Tsar of Russia (in 1794 and 1807). They
were actively, if not always consistently, supported by leading
European statesmen such as Grenville, Canning, Romanzov,
Panin, Armfeld, de Maistre, Gentz,112 Stein, as well as by émigré officers in foreign service such as Pozzo di Borgo, Rochechouart, Gramont, and by public opinion in London and
Saint Petersburg. The émigré government frequently took
the initiative, for example, over the Pretender’s movements
in 1796, 1798 and 1807 and his Declarations in 1795 and
1804. During the emigration, particularly after 1798, Russia
and Britain, enemies of the French Bourbons before 1791,
replaced Austria and the Bourbon monarchies as their
supporters: in letters and speeches Blacas and Louis XVIII
openly attributed the restoration in 1814 to Russia and
Britain.113
By consciously Europeanising the Bourbon cause, renouncing French territorial expansion, and taking the advice of
the British and Rusian governments, the émigré government
helped ensure its survival and the restoration in 1814. It also
anticipated the European dimension in French politics and
culture in the period 1814–48, and the emergence of Britain
as France’s principal ally. It is not surprising that, in his speech
of 4 June 1814 to the Chamber of Deputies, Louis XVIII mentioned the reconciliation of France with Europe before the
constitutional charter. 114 Nor is it surprising that the Restoration government employed, not the ministers or the generals,
but the diplomats, of the émigré government.115 In 1816 the
French ambassadors in London, Berlin, Vienna and Naples (La
Philip Mansel
21
Chatre, Bonnay, Caraman, Blacas) were all former diplomats
of the émigré government. The Restoration government had
little choice, for there were few suitable Napoleonic diplomats
in 1814, on account of the French Empire’s policy of war and
annexation. This was also the main reason for the return of the
Bourbons to France.
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
Récit d’un Voyage de Paris à Coblenz, 1822, p. 132.
PRO PC 229/558 précis de la situation des affaires des Princes tant au-dehors
qu’au dedans February 1792.
See, for example, Baron F.S. Feuillet de Conches, Louis XVI, Marie
Antoinette et Madame Elizabeth, 6 vols. 1864–1873, VI, 239 Prince de
Nassau-Siegen to Catherine II, 30 July 1792.
AN ABX1X 196 Armée des Princes 1792.
Ernest Daudet, Histoire de l’Emigration 3 vols 1904–7, I 172, Provence
to Marie Antoinette, 20 February 1792.
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.
R. Nisbet Bain, Gustavus III and his Contemporaries, 2 vols. 1894, II, 122.
Comte de Bray, Mémoires, 1911, p. 219 Bray to the Grand Master, 30
September 1791.
Daudet, I, 97; AN 306 AP (Castries papers) 1721 f 21vo Calonne to
Castries, 6 March 1792.
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, 31
October 1792.
PRO PC (Public Record Office, Calonne papers) 126/45 Bordereau des
différentes sommes réçues . . . pour le compte de Leurs Altesses Royales les
Princes Frères du Roy.
F7 6255 (papers of the Marquis de Lambert) Mémoire of Provence and
Artois, 27 August 1792.
Feuillet de Conches VI 82 Provence and Artois to Catherine II, 8 June
1792; Duc de La Force Dames d’Autrefois, 1933, p. 207, Provence to
Madame de Balbi, 22 July 1792.
Feuillet de Conches VI 410 Provence and Artois to Catherine II, 29
November 1792; Comte de Vaudreuil, Correspondance Inédite . . . avec le
Comte d’Artois, 2 vols 1896, II 116 Artois to Vaudreuil, 28 December
1792.
AN O3 Papers of the Emigration government 2667, Etat au vrai des
recettes et dépenses; 306AP 1722 f 88 Romanzov to Castries 1/12 August
1793.
22
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
Gérard Walter, Monsieur Comte de Provence, 1950, p. 226; Correspondance inédite du Baron Grimm au Comte de Findlater 1934, 208, letter of 15
December 1796. In 1795 Russia asked Austria also to recognise Louis
XVIII, see Paul Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics,
Oxford 1995, p. 148n.
AN 306 AP 30 Artois to Provence 27 April 1794.
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 ‘regardent
l’abaissement de la Maison de Bourbon comme le plus sûr moyen
d’élèver celle d’Autriche’.
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, Princeton
1987, pp. 88–9; Louis Wittmer, Le Prince de Ligne, Jean de Muller,
Friedrich de Gentz et l’Autriche, 1925, p. 117n.
L.J.A. de Bouillé, Souvenirs, 3 vols. 1908–11, II, 33, Jaucourt to Bouillé
27 June 1792. Mesdames Victoire and Adélaïde died in the house of
the Spanish consul in Trieste in 1799 and 1800 respectively.
André Fugier, Napoléon et l’Espagne, 2 vols. 1930, I 70, 145n. In 1806
Louis XVIII returned his insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece,
which he had held in 1767, since Charles IV had appointed Napoleon I
a Knight.
Philip Mansel, Louis XVIII, 1981, p. 91.
André Lebon, L’Angleterre et l’Emigration Française de 1794 à 1801,
1882, p. 337 Lord Macartney to Grenville 27 September 1795.
Daudet, I 220.
Archives de Mouchy, A4 23, 5 Prince de Poix to Maréchal de Castries
30 August 1795.
Robert de Grandsaigne d’Hauterive, Inventaire des Mémoires et Documents France. Fonds “Bourbon”, 1960, passim. It was clearly an actively
acquisitive archive, since it contains papers of such enemies of Louis
XVIII as Madame Gourbillon, his wife’s friend, and the Comte
d’Antraigues, purveyor of inaccurate information to the émigré government, Spain, Austria, Russia, Naples and finally the United Kingdom. The émigré government acquired their papers after their
deaths in London.
Georges Bourgin, ‘Les Papiers de l’Emigration dans la sous-Série O3
des Archives Nationales’, La Révolution Française 1933, LXXXVI, pp.
311–16.
AN O3 2586 f 173 decision of 8 February 1798 re Comte de La
Chapelle, ff. 2, 29 decisions of 1 January 1812. In 1813 the Comte de
Bruges, a Colonel in the British army, was promoted in the émigré
army 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 under
Maréchal Pérignon to confirm ranks and pensions. The desire of
approximately 6500 former émigré officers for honorary ranks, pensions or active service in the French army in 1814 was one of the factors alienating Napoleonic officers.
Philip Mansel
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
23
AN O3 2586 f 173 decision of 8 February 1798 re Comte de La
Chapelle. La Chapelle came from the heart of the royal bureaucracy.
He was son of the premier des premiers commis of the reign of Louis
XVI, Commissaire Général de la Maison du Roi, guillotined in 1794:
Vicomte de La Boulaye, Mémoires, 1975, p. 340.
Daudet, I, 223; Vicomte de Grouvel Les Corps de Troupe de l’Emigration
Française 1789–1815 3 vols 1947–54, III, 301.
AN 197AP Louis XVIII to Duke of York, 11 July 1796.
Patrice Higonnet, Class, Ideology and the Rights of Nobles during the
French Revolution, Oxford 1981, p. 284.
Daudet, III, 338.
An 306AP 28 letter of 30 March 1794.
Michel Poniatowski Talleyrand et le Consulat, 1986, p. 92.
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.
Gaston Zeller, ‘Les Frontières Naturelles: Histoire d’une Idée Fausse’,
in Aspects de la Politique Française sous l’ancién regime, 1964, p. 107.
Comte de Barante ed. Lettres et Instructions de Louis XVIII au Comte de
Saint-Priest, 1845, p. 145 instructions du Roi, 26 mai 1800.
Daudet, II 203.
Vicomte de Reiset, Joséphine de Savoie Comtesse de Provence, 1913,
p. 343, quoting official correspondance; Daudet II 227.
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.
Paul Schroeder op. cit., 217, 197.
Duchesse de Dino, Souvenirs 1909, p. 189.
Philip Longworth, The Art of Victory. The Life and Achievements of Generalissimo Suvorov, 1965, p. 236.
AN O3 604 décisions du roi.
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 Ville
de Toulon en 1793, 1825, p. 340 Admiral Hood and Sir Gilbert Eliot to
Conseil General of Toulon, 23 November 1793.
Piers Mackesy, Statesmen at War. The strategy of Overthrow 1798–1799,
1974 p. 69; Sir Charles Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh, 2 vols
1935–50, I 234; cf John Ehrman, The Younger Pitt. The Consuming
Struggle, 1996, pp. 344n, 347.
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.
Vicomte de Reiset, Louise d’Esparbès, Comtesse de Polastron, 1907, pp.
254–5; Ehrman, p. 237.
Barante, pp. 88, 121, Réflexions du roi au sujet de l’Agence de Souabe, June
1799.
Barante, p. 213 Artois to Saint-Priest, 3 September 1798.
Ernest Daudet, ‘Une Réconciliation de Famille en 1800’, Revue
des Deux Mondes, 10 November 1905, p. 294; Marguerite Castillon
du Perron, Louis-Philippe et la Révolution Française 1985 edn, p. 491.
24
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
Artois and Orléans were presented at court in February 1800: Historical
Manuscripts Commission, The Mss. of J. B Fortescue esq. preserved at
Dropmore, 10 vols. 1892–1927, V 138 Duc d’Harcourt to Lord Grenville,
22 February 1800
K. Waliszewski, Paul Ier. Sa vie, son règne et sa mort 1754–1801, 1912,
pp. 499–500; Olivier Blanc, Madame de Bonneuil, Femme Galante et
Agente secrète, 1987, pp. 166–8.
M.F.A. de Lescure, Rivarol et la Société Française pendant la Révolution et
l’Emigration, 1883, p. 477.
Daudet, III 245, 250.
Ernest Daudet, ‘Louis XVIII et le Comte d’Artois’, Revue des Deux
Mondes, 15 February 1906, p. 843 letter of 26 August 1801.
Comte Boulay de la Meurthe, Correspondance du Duc d’Enghien, 4 vols
1904–13, I 223–4 circulaire du gouvernement russe; Daudet, III 247.
Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 January 1905 p. 133n Louis XVIIII to Artois,
5 June 1797; Daudet, III, 280, Louis XVIII to Artois 1802.
Boulay de La Meurthe, I 225 Avaray to Acton, 15 January 1802; Benedetto Croce; ‘Il Duca di Serra-Capriola et Giuseppe de Maistre’,
Archivio Storico Per le Provincie Napoletane, XLVII, 1922, pp. 338–9 Louis
XVIII to Duca di Serra-Capriola, 25 January 1802.
Daudet III, 251; AN 161 AP (Serent papers) anon to Duc de Serent, 17
March 1801.
Boulay de la Meurthe, I 278–9, 291 circular of Talleyrand 23 August
1803.
Ernest Daudet ‘Souvenirs de l’Emigration’, Revue Hebdomadaire, July
1906, p. 395, Louis XVIII to Artois, 25 June 1804.
Boulay de La Meurthe, III, 494–496 Napoleon I to Talleyrand 2 October
1804, Hardenberg to d’Avaray 9 October 1804, 293 Lombard to
Hardenberg 10, 12 September 1804.
Boulay de La Meurthe, III, 489–492n; Daudet, ‘Souvenirs de l’Emigration’, Revue Hebdomadaire, August 1906, p. 154.
Boulay de La Meurthe, III, 524 -529; AN AE I Louis XVIII to Gustavus
IV Adolphus 5, 16 October 1805.
The Tsar’s adviser Prince Adam Czartoyski wrote to d’Avaray that he
should mention the ‘free will’ of France in the Declaration of 1804:
Daudet, ‘Souvenirs de l’Emigration’, Revue Hebdomadaire, August
1906 p. 159 letter of January 1805.
Adam Czartoryski, Mémoires et Correspondance avec l’Empereur Alexandre
Ier, 2 vols 1887–8, II, 32 instructions to M. Novosiltzov 11 September
1804; Charles Webster, Documents relating to the Second Coalition, p. 394,
British government to Russian ambassador, 19 January 1805.
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.
Dropmore Papers, IX, 445, La Chapelle to Louis Philippe 22 February
1806; Comte de Stedingk, Mémoires . . . rédigés sur des lettres, dépêches et
autres pièces authentiques, 3 vols 1844–7, II 369 Stedingk to Gustavus
IV, 5 October 1807.
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
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
25
West Yorkshire Archives, Leeds, Canning Papers HAR/GC/56 Avaray
to Canning 1 November 1807, Louis XVIII to Canning 7, December
1807.
Daudet III, 412, 438 d’Avaray to Havré, ‘c’est un enfer, l’exil d’Edimbourg serait à la convenance de bien du monde’; Diary of Lady Elizabeth Foster (private archives), 27 October 1807 ‘I think Monsieur and
all of them are distressed at Louis XVIII’s coming’; cf. HAR/GC/56
Artois to Canning 31 October 1807.
First Earl of Malmesbury, Letters to His Family and Friends from 1745 to
1820, 2 vols. 1870, Mr. Ross to Earl of Malmesbury 4 November 1807;
(private archive) diary of Lady Elizabeth Foster, 5 November 1807.
AN 300 AP III 16 Orléans to Beaujolais, 4 November 1807.
AAE 615f f.254 position annuelle de Mr le comte de Lille, 10 July 1811.
AAE 621f. 112 vo Marie Joséphine to Madame Gourbillon 8 March
1809; Bernard Morel, Les Bijoux de la Couronne, 1995, pp. 243, 304.
Alessandro Righi, Il Conte di Lilla e l’emigrazione Francese a Verona, Perugia 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 XVIII
à Mittau’, Revue d’Histoire Diplomatique, XLVIII, January 1934, p. 200;
M.V. Woodhead, The Abbé Edgeworth nd, p. 215, letter of 13 March 1804.
AAE 621 f. 111 Marie Joséphine to Madame Gourbillon, 5 March 1809.
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.
HAR/GC/55 Junta of Seville to Louis XVIII 4 October 1808 (copy).
BM. Add. Mss. 37290 ff. 117, 191 note of April 1810, Artois to Wellesley
8 August 1810.
Canning and Artois sometimes corresponded four or six times a
month. On 1 September 1808 for example Canning wrote: ‘I am at
Your Royal Highness’s disposal, either tomorrow or Saturday, at any
hour tomorrow and at any hour from twelve to five on Saturday which
may best suit Your Royal Highness’s Convenience.’ HAR/GC/56; cf
AN 224 AP IV journal du Comte de Broval, 2 Novembre 1813, ‘j’ai été
ce matin faire ma cour à Monsieur a son lever’.
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 10
August 1810.
AN F7 4336B 5 Etats des Français qui ont assisté au Convoi de la Comtesse de
Lille et dont les noms ne sont pas inscrits sur la Liste des Maintenus.
Private archive, diary of Lady Elizabeth Foster, 20 October 1808, 5
September 1818.
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 de
Geramb, Lettre à Sophie sur la Fête donnée par le Prince Regent pour célébrer
l’anniversaire de la Naissance du Roi, London 1811. The French royal
family also attended the ball given by the Regent on 14 May 1813.
PR0 FO 27/91 note of 19 December 1812; AN 37 AP 1 (papers of the
Marquis de Bonnay) Blacas to Bonnay 10 September 1812, 17 March
1813.
26
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
La Ferronays, p. 338; Sir Neil Campbell, Napoleon at Fontainebleau and
Elba, 1869, p. 94.
AN 37 AP 1, Blacas to Bonnay, 24 October 1813.
AN 37 AP 1, letters of 7 March, 7 April 1813; Comte de Caulaincourt,
Mémoires, 3 vols 1933, III, 339.
La Ferronays, p 324; Daudet, ‘Les dernières années de l’Emigration’,
Revue des Deux Mondes 1 August 1906, pp. 632, 658.
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 compter
sur le Cabinet de St. Petersbourg, les assurances que l’Empereur
Alexandre a fait donner à notre Maitre et les ordres qu’a reçus Monsieur le Comte de Lieven son ambassadeur à Londres ne permettent
pas d’en douter’; Marquis de La Maisonfort, Mémoires d’un Agent Royaliste, 1998, p. 215. In 1811, Romanzov was assuring Louis XVIII’s
agent the Comte de Briou of his desire to give him ‘un nouveau
témoignage de sa deférence pour tout ce qui peut lui être agréable’:
AAE 605 f 254 letter of 15 June 1811.
Lt. Gen. Comte de Suremain, Mémoires, 1902, p. 301 diary for 29
June 1813; AAE 606f. 79 Blacas to Briou 19 August 1813. The
Comte de Bruges also failed to obtain access to allied headquarters.
La Ferronays, pp. 393–7.
Daudet, ‘Dernieres Années’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 August 1906,
p. 651; cf. Daudet, III 511–5; La Ferronays, pp. 395–6.
Comte de Rochechouart, Souvenirs sur la Révolution, l’Empire et la Restauration, 1933 pp. 329, 331, letter of 15/27 January 1814; Daudet,
‘Dernières Années’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 August 1906 p. 661 Alexander I to Rapatel and Rochechouart, 31 January 1814; cf. Schroeder,
pp. 498, 500.
Charles Webster, British Diplomacy 1813–1815, 1921, p. 149 Castlereagh to Liverpool, 16 February 1814; Rochechouart, p. 335 Rochechouart to Artois, 23 February 1814.
Schroeder, p. 465; cf. Rochechouart, p. 336 l’ennemi le plus dangereux que
nous ayons est le prince de Metternich.
Alfons Freiherr von Klinkowström, Oesterreichs Theilnahme an der
Befreiungskriege, Vienna 1887, p. 805 Metternich to Schwarzenberg,
30 January 1814; Webster British Diplomacy, pp. 133, 138, Castlereagh
to Liverpool, 22 January 1814.
BM. Add. Mss. 38256 f. 284 Artois to Duchesse d’Angoulême, 26
February 1814 (copy).
Rochechouart, pp. 347, 357, cf. BM. Add. MSS 47287b Lieven papers
f 86 Letter to Louis XVIII signed by the Comtes de Wall, Lambert,
Rochechouart, Noailles, Rapatel, Loup de Virieu, asking for a prince
to organise ‘la délivrance de notre patrie sur les traces des Alliés’.
AAE. Mémoires et Documents France 603 ff. 35–7 Pozzo di Borgo to
d’Avaray 30 June 1804; AN 197 AP Blacas to La Fare, 8 October 1811.
Ghislain de Diesbach, Histoire de l’Emigration, 1990 ed. p. 591.
Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh, 2 vols 1950–1935, I 238n;
Philip Mansel, ‘Wellington and the French Restoration’, International
History Review , XI, I, February 1989, pp. 76–7.
Philip Mansel
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
114.
115.
27
BM Add. Msss. 38364 f. 216 Most Secret Memorandum by Liverpool
4 January 1814; Dorothy Margaret Stuart, Dearest Bess, 1955, p. 203
diary of 1813.
Ernest Taylor ed. The Taylor Papers, 1913, p. 123, Lord Yarmouth to
General Taylor, 16 January 1814.
Webster, British Diplomacy, p. 145; BM Add. Mss. 47245 f 107 Lieven
to Nesselrode 14/26 January 1814 (secret).
BM Add. Mss. 38256 f 310 Angoulême to Duchesse d’Angoulême, 7
March 1814 (copy); Duke of Wellington Despatches, 13 vols. 1834–9,
XI 558, 562 Wellington to Beresford, to Bathurst, 7 March 1814.
Webster, Foreign Policy, I 241.
Madame de Marigny, Journal, p. 55 entry for 31 March 1814; Wellington, Supplementary Despatches (15 vols 1858–1872, IX, Sir Charles
Stewart to Wellington 1 April 1814; Arthur Chuquet, L’Année 1814,
1914, p. 138 letter from Constantin Bulgakov 31 March 1814.
See, for example, BM. Add. Mss 38256 f. 284 Artois to Duchesse
d’Angoulême 26 February 1814 (copy).
In 1805 Gentz wrote from Vienna to Louis XVIII that a Bourbon
restoration was needed to prevent ‘une suite perpetuelle de convulsions, de catastrophes et de bouleversemens’ and assured the King
that, whatever happened, he would remain ‘au nombre de ses plus
fidèles serviteurs’ AAE 603 f. 235 letter of 10 August 1805.
See, for example, BM. Add. Mss. 47287B f 97 Blacas to Lieven 23
March 1814 ‘avec l’appui généreux de la Russie et de l’Angleterre il
ne tardera pas à être rétabli sur le trône des ses ayeux’.
Moniteur, 5 June 1814, p. 617.
See Marquis de Bonnay, representative of Louis XVIII at Vienna
1809–14, Copenhagen 1814–16, Berlin 1816–21; Comte de Caraman, Saint Petersburg 1799–1801, Berlin 1814–16, Vienna 1816–28;
Comte de La Chatre, London 1806–1816 (but formally reappointed
in April 1814); Comte de La Ferronays envoy to Bernadotte and Alexander I 1813–4, to Copenhagen 1817–19, Saint Petersburg, at the
Tsar’s request, 1819–1825, Minister of Foreign Affairs 1828–9; Alexis de Noailles envoy to Bernadotte and Alexander I 1812–14, member 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 Petersburg 1804–8, the head of his household and his chief adviser in
1809–14, Ministre de la Maison 1814–5, ambassador in Naples
1815–16, Rome 1816–22, Naples 1822–30, and finally the leading
official of the Bourbon court in exile from 1830 until his death in
1839. He was the only émigré official to serve before 1814 and after
1830.
2 A European Destiny: the
Armée de Condé,
1792–1801
Frédéric d’Agay
Je n’ai jamais bien compris comment cet atôme dans l’Europe
pouvait occuper à ce point les grandes puissances qui ne cessaient d’en parler.
(Prince de Condé, Journal)
On the night of 17 July 1789 a few horsemen and three carriages 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 children the Duc de Bourbon and the Princesse Louise, his grandson the Duc d’Enghien, and his mistress, the Princesse de
Monaco, and their servants were escaping from the French
Revolution. One of the prince’s followers the Comte d’Espinchal would always remember this image of:
ce chef respectable de l’illustre maison de Condé, en redingote bleue l’épée au côté, [ . . . ] Rien ne m’a plus frappé, je
l’avoue que cette épée, sur sa redingote. . . . Il semblait que
c’était le seul bien qu’il ne voulut point abandonner; elle
paraissait lui faire dire: “la marque distinctive d’un gentilhomme est son épée: elle ne doit plus me quitter et mon
honneur y est attaché. La monarchie ne peut exister sans
cette noblesse dont je suis un des premiers membres et c’est
à l’épée d’un Condé que le Roi sera peut-être un jour redevable de sa couronne.” 1
The Marquis d’Ecquevilly described this departure in a different way:
Il se tut avec les lois et disparut avec la justice; il partit avec
son fils et son-petit f ils: il sembla voir Anchise, conduit par
Enée que suit le jeune Jules.
28
Frédéric d’Agay
29
The same day the Comte d’Artois, his sons the Duc d’Angoulême and the Duc de Berri, and the Prince de Conti left
Paris. It was the beginning of the Emigration. Whether one
calls them the far-sighted or the frightened, they understood that the Ancien Régime was no more, that the feeble
King Louis XVI would be unable to resist and that the Revolution would drive everything before it. It was also the first
time that the French Princes would leave the Kingdom for
reasons other than to wage military campaigns or to do a little
sightseeing. Crossing quickly through Germany they toured Switzerland where they met a group of courtiers before
settling at the end of September in Turin at the court of the
King of Sardinia, who, although father-in-law of the Comte d’
Artois and cousin of the Prince de Condé, was scarcely enamoured of his guests. The arrival of so many young French,
exuberant, noisy and conspiring, disturbed the calm of his
court.
After almost a year of vain attempts at counter-revolutionary
projects this little court broke up. The Comte d’Artois left on 4
January 1791 for Milan, Venice and Vienna while, on 6 January
1791, the Prince de Condé with all his family and their households departed for Switzerland. He stayed there for two
months, then went to Germany where, after having his expectations of hospitality from the Duke of Württemberg at Stuttgart disappointed, he settled at Worms in a palace belonging
to the Elector of Mainz. He and his entourage resided there
from 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 simple, even narrow: restore everything to its former state. If,
however, Mirabeau can be believed he possessed intellectual
qualities;
Je suis frappé de cette netteté de discussion, de cette expression toujours juste, de cette succession de développements, de cette analyse qui, dans sa bouche, réduit les
questions à un point, et qui d’une missive laconique, fait un
traité. 2
However in the opinion of the Baronne d’Oberkirch,
30
M. le prince de Condé a une grande instruction, des connaissances littéraires variées beaucoup plus qu’on ne lui en
suppose généralement. Il a énormément lu, le retient, et il
sait. 3
He was a prince who believed in the French nobility, of which
his political leadership and sense of honour made him the representative. He was a modern knight who broke out of the passivity which had been imposed on the French nobility since the
Seven Years War. His Journal d’émigration, written from 1789
to 1795, gives no echo of the material hardships he endured
but complains constantly of his family, his relatives and the
nobility. He had no regrets, except on one occasion when the
landscape of a foreign chateau reminded him of Chantilly and
made him melancholy.
His sense of duty allowed him to submit to Austrian command, which he despised, and to take whatever measures
were necessary to ensure provisions for his army. Yet he
would not abase himself. He was a Bourbon at all times, who
accepted the honours which were paid to him as his birthright.
Like all the princes of his family, he was aware of etiquette and
of the need to show the primacy of his race over the other
sovereign houses of Europe. In many ways, he was the prototype of the eighteenth-century French courtier, of the prince
and of the Bourbon, cordial and gallant, worldly at times, a
man who loved writing, conversation, hunting, gambling and
theatre-going.
The Prince was proud and courageous and despised cowards
and schemers. First and foremost he was a military man, loved
and 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 ambition as a soldier had not been satisfied before the Revolution;
he considered himself the rightful head of the French army, a
function which he had never held except at the camp at
St Omer in 1788.
This mission to lead the French nobility transformed a life
which would doubtless have been rather dull, divided between
memories of the Seven Years War, the love of Madame de
Monaco and entertainments and hunts at Chantilly.
Frédéric d’Agay
31
THE FORMATION OF THE REGIMENTS
Almost before he had had time to settle at Worms, the Prince
de Condé found himself surrounded by a demi-court, and
confronted with meetings with German princes, ambassadors,
ministers as well as giving audiences, reading letters from
Calonne, sending dispatches to de Broglie in Trier, to the Comte
d’Artois in Mannheim, and receiving spies, couriers, and the
news of Paris which was arriving with the émigrés.
Many nobles were torn between honour which dictated
their presence in Coblenz, Worms or Ath and loyalty to the
King, who was powerless and would soon be imprisoned. An
officer wrote to his brother
M. de Gallifet a raison; en reçevant nos grades nous avons
fait serment de vivre et de mourir pour le Roi. Maintenant
que Louis XVI est prisonnier dans son château des Tuileries,
que des factieux lui imposent leurs néfastes volontés, nous
manquons à notre devoir en n’allant pas nous joindre aux
fidèles de la monarchie.
And his brother replied:
Les émigrants seront incapables de battre les troupes que
leur opposera l’Assemblée, ils feront appel aux Austrichiens,
aux Prussiens: voudrez-vous lutter contre votre pays aux
côtés de ces ennemis héréditaires de la France?
Vous, Jean, faites ce que vous dictera votre conscience, mais
prions Dieu qu’il ne nous mettra jamais en présence sur un
champ de bataille, vous du côté des révoltés, moi du côté du
Roi.4
From the end of May 1791 the Prince de Condé noted in his
diary that the number of émigrés at Worms grew daily and he
called it the ‘asylum of honour’. In July 1791 the Comte de
Provence, who had escaped from Paris without difficulty via
the route to Brussels, arrived in Coblenz where the Comte
d’Artois would shortly join him. The arrest of the King and
Queen at Varennes contributed to the changed atmosphere in
emigration.
As the focus of intrigue shifted, political objectives gave way to
military ones. On 3 August 1791 the prince notes in his journal,
32
La noblesse pressait pour une formation; nous trouvions,
d’après nos nouvelles que c’était trop tôt; d’un côté, nous
apercevions bien que tous les retards la décourageaient et
nous voulions éviter cela; pour lui faire prendre patience,
nous avions arrangé que les Princes demanderaient un état
des noms, de l’âge, et des services de tous les gentilshommes qui voudraient entrer dans la formation du corps de la
noblesse et les princes me chargèrent directement de toute
la partie en remontant le Rhin depuis Mayence . . .
At Worms members of the nobility enlisted with the Comte de
Choiseul, captain of the guards of the prince; in Heidelberg,
with M. de Turpin, lieutenant general; and in Mannheim with
the Marquis de Vaubécourt, lieutenant general.
The Vicomte de Mirabeau, younger brother of the famous
deputy, who went by the name of Mirabeau-Tonneau because
of his size, had already raised a force which would soon be the
famous légion de Mirabeau which he placed at the disposition
of the Prince de Condé. The Comte de Neuilly wrote ‘Le
vicomte de Mirabeau était une masse de chair animée par un
courage admirable’. He was malicious, irritable, boastful, a
real Mirabeau, and when reproached for his drinking he
replied ‘De tous les vices de la famille, c’est le seul que mon frère
m’ait laissé’.5
His legion was well organised and never lacked recruits.
They were nicknamed the hussards of death, wore a skull on
their shako and they were able to break through enemy lines
wherever they charged. After Mirabeau’s premature death in
1792, the Comte de Vioménil took command. Then from 1794
the Comte Roger de Damas, changed its name to the Légion
de Damas, but retained its reputation as the elite of the armée
de Condé.
Other nobles grouped themselves by province (Auvergne,
Normandie, Franche-Comté) while the officers reassembled
themselves by regiment, like the regiment of Rohan. In addition new corps were created like the chevaliers de la Couronne
or the chevaliers nobles.
On 18 August 1791 after a council at Coblenz, the Prince de
Condé returned to Worms where he officially read out the
rules of his corps to 500 noblemen and named the Baron de
Fumel maréchal de camp responsible for all the details of
Frédéric d’Agay
33
training. On 9 September the companies began training in the
court of the palace at Worms. By the beginning of October
around 50 noblemen were arriving daily at Worms. The reputation of the prince sparked the jealousy of the court in
Coblenz where there were two Mashals of France, sixteen lieutenant généraux, one hundred and eighteen maréchaux de
camp and sixteen admirals.
The Duc de Bourbon at Marche-en-Famene in Luxemburg
was charged with the organisation of a third corps of émigrés
under the command of the Comte d’Egmont-Pignatelli. There
were three armies; the princes’ army with a strength of 12 000
men; the army of the Prince de Condé which counted 5000
men and the army of the Duc de Bourbon, 4000 men, thus in
total a force of 21–22 000 French gentleman soldiers at the service
of their country.
During this time, relations with the Elector of Mainz deteriorated. He began to fear the invasion of his own lands by
revolutionary armies and obliged the Prince de Condé to leave
Worms in January 1792 and to go to Oberkirch in the German
lands of the Cardinal de Rohan, Prince Bishop of Strasbourg.
After many disputes mainly due to the ill-will of the court at
Vienna, the indifference of the Russian Empress and the first
financial crises, the corps of the Prince de Condé settled at
Bingen on the banks of the Rhine, in the lands of the Elector of
Mainz. In July, in Kreutznach in the Palatinate, preparations
were made for war against France. The Princes slowly began
to understand that there was no question of Revolution or
counter-Revolution, rather there was simply a war between
the powers of Europe and France.
THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1792
On 1 July the armée des Princes left Coblenz for new encampments in the Palatinate before reaching Trier and Luxembourg, with the intention of following the troops of the Duke
of Brunswick into France at Thionville. The army of the Prince
de Condé attached itself to that of the Prince of Hohenlohe
who was preparing to take Landau. In September it pushed
further into the Brisgau, where it hoped to find a place to cross
the Rhine with the Austrian forces led by Prince Esterhazy.
34
But there too, the court of Vienna issued endless orders and
counter orders; apart from enraging the prince and the nobility,
they made it clear that the Emperor regarded the treaty of
Westphalia as null and void. He had designs on Alsace and
wished therefore to prevent the émigrés from occupying it.
After the defeat at Valmy, the armée des Princes and that of
the Duc of Bourbon retreated towards Luxembourg, the Low
Countries and Germany and were disbanded in the most
miserable conditions. The Duc de Bourbon wrote to his father
describing
La consternation, le désespoir que cette nouvelle avait
répandue dans la noblesse de leur armée où tous les gentilhommes restaient sans ressource d’aucun genre: mais le roi
de Prusse l’ayant exigé et les Puissances ayant fait cesser
toutes les fournitures de pain et de fourrage à ces armées, la
dissolution devenait un parti forcé.
THE ARMÉE DE CONDÉ – THE ONLY ONE LEFT
The Prince de Condé settled at Willingen and, seeing that he
would get nothing from Austria but not wanting to disband his
troops, offered leave to all those who asked for it:
Attendu que l’ardeur pour défendre le Brisgau était nécessairement beaucoup moindre que dans le temps où l’on
pouvait espérer que nous attaquerions la France.
In desperation he wrote to the Empress of Russia through the
young Duc of Richelieu, who was leaving for Saint Petersburg,
that the gentlemen soldiers were without any financial assistance from Vienna. At Christmas 1792 the Duc de Bourbon
and the Duc d’Enghien arrived, bringing with them the remnants of the armée des Princes in groups of seven and eight
after a winter march of over 160 miles. In January 1793 the
Empress of Russia sent 120 000 livres and the offer of a colony
on the shores of the Sea of Azov for the nobility. That was
declined . . . and on 28 January news arrived of the execution
of the King. The Prince of Cobourg came to announce the
imminent disbanding of the troops.
On 8 March 1793, however, Francis II, the Emperor, announced his intention to keep the army for the next campaign
Frédéric d’Agay
35
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 hard
with his officer corps to meet this condition, ‘qui ne cadrait ni
avec nos formes, ni avec nos manières, ni avec nos mœurs’.
In the meantime the gentlemen soldiers continued to
number well above the 6000 limit set by the Emperor, but the
Prince de Condé did not have the heart to dismiss them. There
were 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 distinguished himself at Herheim on 6 May, the day when the
troops left Brisgau and set out again up the Rhine, pursued by
the French army. They went into battle on 17 May near
Landau but due to the negligence of the Austrians who, as usual,
multiplied orders and counter-orders, the Prince of Condé
became disheartened,
mais il fallait s’étourdir là-dessus, soutenir la noblesse, et
pourtant ne pas abandonner le champ de l’honneur.
In July the troops fought every day against the patriots. They
failed to take Lauterbourg at the end of August but entered
Alsace in October. They set up camp in the village of Berstheim,
where on 26 October the prince held a memorial service for
the Queen. In November the republicans redoubled attacks
against the army which ended in the 9 December in the glorious
combat at Berstheim where the Duc de Bourbon was wounded
in 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 destine
à être anéantie [ . . . ] elle aura terminé sa carrière comme
elle l’avait parcourue depuis 1400 ans avec la plus brillante
valeur et toute l’énergie des sentiments purs qui l’attachent
à son Dieu, à son honneur, à son Roi.
This brief moment of glory counted for nothing because the
Duke of Brunswick gave the order for general retreat. The
Prince de Condé established his winter quarters at Rothemburg
on the Neckar. There the dull life of the camp recommenced, with disputes with the Austrian military administration,
the villages, the principalities and a constant struggle against
36
poverty. The Emperess Catherine II sent 100 000 florins and
in May the prince settled at Rastadt with the object of watching
the Rhine under the orders of the Prince of Colloredo.
The prince de Condé received a warm welcome from the
Margrave of Baden 6 who offered him the use of his palace at
Rastadt and gave protection to the French émigrés.
Il n’y eut sortes d’attentions, de politesses, d’égards, j’oserais
presque dire de respect, que ce Prince ne me rendit pendant
mon séjour.
Negotiations with the court of Vienna over a new organisation
for the armée de Condé fell through yet again and the hopes
of the troops and their leader turned toward England. Pitt
sent financial help in November 1794 and made overtures
towards formal negotiations. As soon as the court of Vienna
became aware of this, the Emperor refused to release the corps
to the British and Thugut said to the Duc de Richelieu that he
had decided to keep it at the expense of the Empire. 1795
passed for the prince and his army, in interminable disputes
with 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 gentlemensoldiers had the valour necessary for officers but also a fatal
lack of discipline. The army’s military prestige was thus always
negligible.
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 in
February 1793,
Il ne faut pas nous dissimuler que les émigrés, individuellement fort braves, sont de mauvaise infanterie, et qu’il faudrait que ce corps fût soutenu et guidé par une troupe plus
accoutumée à la discipline et à la fatigue.
In fact, unaccustomed to exhausting marches, to rudimentary bivouacs, to bad weather and to the cold of the German
mountains and plains,
Frédéric d’Agay
37
Tous ceux qui ont échappé à la mort sont revenus dans un
état d’épuisement et d’infirmité dont ils se ressentiront
toute leur vie.
There are numerous accounts in the diaries and memoirs of
the emigration of these columns of hungry gentlemen-soldiers,
shivering, sweating and suffering without complaints or recriminations, sharing a morsel of bread and a bit of straw. The
Prince de Condé lived a spartan existence but refused the personal pension offered by the Emperor.
Vous ne sauriez croire l’extrême besoin d’argent où je me
trouve; nous périssons dans le besoin. Quand ce serait le
diable qui m’offrirait sa bourse, je l’accepterais avec bonheur.8
The armée de Condé was synonymous with the nobility
although officially the title was the Corps placed under the
orders 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 de
la noblesse, une petite armée dont il faut écouter jusqu’au
dernier des soldats.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, 1792–97
The émigrés only real hope was Britain. In a letter Louis XVIII
confided in the Prince de Condé,
Vous pouvez juger avec quelle impatience j’attends le résultat de votre conférence avec M. Wickham; car il ne faut pas
nous faire illusion, l’Angleterre seule est notre ancre de miséricorde et vous êtes sûrement aussi convaincu que moi que
ce serait folie d’attendre quelque chose de l’Empereur. 9
On the one hand the Austrians wanted to attach the army to
the Austrian army in order to prevent it from either entering
France or allying itself with another power. On the other hand
Austria wanted to keep it weak.
Tous les officiers généraux autrichiens nous détestaient
autant par jalousie et par avarice que leur soldats nous aimaient par estime et considération. On n’a pas d’idée de toutes
les noirceurs qu’on nous faisait, de toutes les humilitations
38
qu’on cherchait à nous faire éprouver; je n’opposais à celà
que la patience et les faits. 10
The death of the young Louis XVII in 1795 was followed by
the immediate proclamation of the Comte de Provence as
Louis XVIII, King of France and Navarre. Exiled in Verona,
Louis XVIII threatened to join the armée de Condé in order
to die a glorious death at the head of the army returning to
France. Lord Grenville, who wanted to see a moderate and
legitimate government re-established in France, sent Lord
Macartney to him in July 1795 with a mission to negotiate the
establishment of a constitutional monarchy which would respect the biens nationaux, pardon the Terror and forget any idea
of return to the absolutism of the Ancien Régime. He was otherwise authorised to plan an invasion of France from the Jura by
an army made up of the émigrés and of Condé’s troops, combined with a landing of British and émigré forces in the Mediterranean and a royalist uprising in the interior. William
Wickham, the British agent in Switzerland, was charged with
negotiating the military aspects with the Prince de Condé.
Nothing came of this plan and the King left Verona on
21 April 1796 for Riegel, the headquarters of the Prince de
Condé in the Brisgau. There the Prince de Condé negotiated
with Wickham to transfer his army and himself to the pay of
Britain, while Lord Hervey, the ambassador at Vienna was
charged with procuring the necessary permission from the
Austrian government. The Emperor and Thugut refused,
wishing to keep the army for the Austrian invasion of FrancheComté. Nevertheless, the cordial relations between Condé and
Wickham produced a situation whereby the armée de Condé
received British financial assistance through the intermediary
of Colonel Charles Craufurd, the British envoy in the prince’s
entourage, with the objective of supporting an operation on
the French frontier launched by an Austrian army under the
command of the Maréchal de Cleyrfayt.
Despite hopes of uprisings in Franche-Comté and Lyon, they
did not take place: the émigrés overestimated the strength of
the royalist forces in the interior. The interplay of spy networks and information agencies attached to the princes and their
entourages made the truth impossible for the Prince de Condé
to ascertain. The failure of this plan and the advance of the
Frédéric d’Agay
39
republican army again threatened the armée de Condé, which
by then numbered around 8–10 000 men. It withdrew towards
the lake of Constance where it fought several battles protecting the retreat of the Austrian army: Ober-Kamlach (13
August 1796), Biberach (2 October 1796), Steinstadt (21 October 1796). In July 1797 the Prince de Condé gave leave to the
gentlemen-soldiers who wished to re-enter France where they
believed they would be able to regain their properties and return
to normal life. The coup d’état of 18 Fructidor was a rude shock
and obliged many of them to emigrate a second time. Those
who stayed experienced a sad existence of camp life on the
edge of Lake Constance.
IN THE SERVICE OF RUSSIA: VOLHYNIA, 1797–98
Two propositions arrived simultaneously in July 1797. The
Emperor Paul I, through the Comte d’Alopeus and Prince
Gortschakov, proposed that the Prince de Condé incorporate
his army into the Russian army but with a significant degree of
autonomy. Craufurd, on behalf of Britain, offered to employ
the armée de Condé in the British colonies. This latter proposition was considered offensive because it made them little
more than mercenary soldiers; the offer of Paul I was accepted.
Britain, without any resentment, gave a six-months gratuity
to each soldier but Craufurd was responsible for selling all
the horses of the cavalry. The Prince de Condé took some 4–
5000 men, who set out on 4 October 1797 in the direction of
Vladimir, capital of Volhynia, a Russian province sandwiched
between Poland and the Ukraine.11 The army reached the
Danube where it embarked and went down the river as far as
Linz, after a stop at Regensburg where they bought Russian
and Polish grammar books and maps.
From Austria, the armée de Condé travelled through Bohemia, Galicia and finally arrived at Vladimir on 2 January 1798.
Their lodgings were inadequate and badly equipped. The
snow was persistant and the cold made the town uninhabitable
for the French; the headquarters was transferred to Dubno, a
neighbouring town which offered greater comfort.
The great surprise for the émigrés was the organisation of
the army along Russian lines. Russian uniforms and flags were
40
imposed but particularly offensive was the requirement to
perform guard duty, a perspective which demoralised everyone who was not a soldier by profession. The result of this
severity was a rash of desertions, insubordination, and sedition
which were reported to the Tsar and infuriated him. A number
of officers were arrested and imprisoned.
The only events of note in 1798 were the journey of the
Prince de Condé to Saint Petersburg and the arrival of the Duc
de Berri to command the cavalry. In the summer Polish nobles
in the area opened their homes to the émigrés for hunting
parties, theatre and balls. But in spite of these moments of
illusory pleasure the nobility did not hesitate to express surprise
at the need to stay in ‘this tomb’. In January 1799 the army was
destined to follow the troops of Marshal Souvorov towards
Switzerland, where the struggle against revolutionary France
continued but they did not leave until 2 July, crossing Poland,
Bohemia and Austria a second time. There were feasts, musical
festivities, and artillery displays to fête the armée de Condé
wherever it passed. At Lancut princess Lubomirska herself
came to do the honours. On 13 September the troops reached
Regensburg where they were reunited with the infirm or sick
who had not made the journey to Russia.
THE LAST CAMPAIGNS AND THE DISBANDING OF THE
ARMÉE DE CONDÉ (1799–1801)
On 1 October 1799 the headquarters of the prince were established at Bodman on Lake Constance. On 7 October the
troops fought with honour in defence of Constance, which was
retaken by the Duc d’Enghien on the 11 October after terrible
man-to-man fighting. New recruits arrived daily and limits
had to be placed on the number taken. The army then
marched in the direction of Linz where the headquarters was
established on 1 January 1800. The prince granted leave to all
those who did not wish to return to Russia. The end of hostilities was imminent and negotiations were underway with Britain
as the army prepared to return to Russia. Then, at the last
minute, Wickham arranged for the maintenance of the army
at British expense. It was then composed of 1007 officers and
5840 volunteers. The Prince de Condé wrote sadly,
Frédéric d’Agay
41
Nous sommes un faible roseau que les puissances se passent
pour ne pas se couvrir de la honte de la détruire. 12
After participating in the disastrous campaign of 1800 under
Austrian command, one émigré wrote,
Le corps dégénère donc visiblement et finira par n’être qu’un
rassemblement politique, car nul espoir de recrutement ne
reste aux corps nobles.13
Gentlemen soldiers were daily asking for leave to return to
France. The troops settled at Graz where the news of an armistice arrived. The bivouacs of the French republican troops
were very close to them and the two armies fraternised and
discussed the deplorable state of affairs in France.
On 19 April 1800 a letter from George III to the Prince de
Condé announced the dissolution of the army. Craufurd
broke the news to the nobility that the King no longer had
need of their services but was ready to engage those who were
willing to enter British service. Of the 6000 men left, 825 set
out for London and Malta. To the others, a year’s pension was
given. Nearly all returned to France as soon as they had procured their elimination from the émigré list. For a handful of
them 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 fatigues
surhumaines semblent à jamais perdues. Ma jeunesse
s’est envolée, et je n’aperçois devant moi qu’une existence
humiliée.14
The Prince de Condé and his entourage arrived in England
soon after, where they would live until 1814: the Duc d’Enghien
stayed in Germany, whence he was abducted and executed on
Bonaparte’s orders in 1804.
These ‘Condishers’, as they liked to call themselves in German, met again in Paris in 1814 and 1815 to demand the
recognition of their services and their sacrifices. The Prince de
Condé helped them as much as he could to obtain certificates,
honorary grades, pensions and decorations. Many old soldiers
felt bitter about the lack of public recognition of their loyalty,
honour and courage. An old soldier had a portrait painted in
1825 in his uniform as lieutenant of the légion of Mirabeau
42
which he had been 30 years earlier, and named his country
house ‘Bersthein’ in memory of the battle where he had been
wounded in 1793 and where his two brothers had also fought.
In his journal he described himself as a ‘vieux condisher’, ultraroyalist then legitimist, writing sombre thoughts ‘en son agreste
manoir’ because he knew at the end of his life that his commitment had been in vain. On the frontispiece of his livre de raison
which 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.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
Comte d’Espinchal, Mémoires, Paris, 1912, p. 21.
Letter to the Comte de Guibert at the time of the calling of the Etats
Généraux.
Baronne Oberkirch de, Mémoires sur la cour de Louis XVI et la société
française avant 1789, Mercure de France, Le temps retrouvé, No. 21.
July 1791, letters from MM de Fontane in the regiment of NoaillesDragons, quoted by le Comte G. Mareschal de Bièvre, Les ci-devant nobles
et la Révolution, Paris, 1914, p. 213.
Comte de Neuilly, Dix années d’émigration, Paris, 1865, p. 77.
Charles-Frédéric Margrave of Baden-Durlach (1738) and of BadenBaden (1771).
H. Forneron, Histoire générale des émigrés pendant la Révolution française,
Paris, 3 vols 1884, tome II, p. 25.
Letter from the Prince de Condé to Mgr de la Fare, dated 18 October
1794, cited by Forneron, II, p. 13.
Letter from Verona dated 15 October 1795, Archives de Chantilly.
Prince de Condé in his journal, 15 June 1793, Archives de Chantilly.
The prince, taking into account the fact that certain émigrés could not
afford to make the journey, offered leave to anyone who wanted it.
Letter dated 8 June1800 cited by Forneron, II, p. 374.
Jacques de Thiboult du Puisact, Journal d’un fourrier de l’Armée de
Condé, 1882, p. 263, 21 June 1800.
Notes intimes d’un émigré, Paris, 1913, p. 335.
Livre de raison et papiers de Melchoir-Emilien de Firaud d’Agay (1771–1853)
Archives d’Agay, Var.
3 London: Capital of the
Emigration
Kirsty Carpenter
London and its suburbs and surrounding villages provide a
snapshot of émigré life such as it might have been in any large
foreign city during the Revolution. Politically, socially, economically, many of the issues that confronted the émigrés elsewhere in Europe could be found within 50 miles of Cornhill.1
The émigrés started to appear in London as early as the autumn
of 1789, only months after the storming of the Bastille. Their
numbers swelled during 1790 but the increases were gradual
until the King’s attempted flight to Varennes sent a new wave
of émigrés on to the London streets in the autumn and winter
of 1791–92. The real exodus, which deluged London with
penniless refugees (of whom a great many were priests), came in
the wake of the September Massacres and spanned the closing
months of 1792.2
London, the largest city in Europe, was an obvious choice
for many émigrés. Many had been in Britain before and were
comfortable in British society. Many of the members of the
nobility had connections and friends who welcomed them into
their circles. Others, like the Marquise de la Tour du Pin, had
relations in Britain.
The city provided a forum where émigrés from different
regions of France and different socio-economic groups
were thrown together. After a short time these differences
reasserted themselves and translated into a geographic pattern
which saw the wealthy émigrés drawn towards areas like
Marylebone and Richmond and the poorer émigrés seek out
the more squalid suburbs like St Pancras and Saint George’s
Fields. Throughout the period Soho was an important meeting point for émigrés, a place where social status mattered less
than the accuracy of the latest news from France. The combination of its location in central London and its traditionally
international population set it apart from other London
districts.
43
44
With the entry of Britain into the war in February 1793 London very quickly became the most important émigré centre in
Europe and the political hub of the counter-Revolution. London was a much larger city than Paris and its prosperity was
plainly apparent to the newly arrived émigrés. 3
Rien ne sauroit égaler la commodité de ses trottoirs, où l’on
marche avec aussi peu de fatigue que sur un plancher; ni la
richesse de ses magasins et de ses boutiques; où l’on voit les
productions de toutes les parties du monde étalées avec le
soin le plus ingénieux. Il n’est pas de ville dont on puisse
dire avec plus de verité qu’elle est abrégé de l’univers.4
Few émigrés suspected, particularly in the early stages of the
conflict, that the Emigration would last into the next year, let
alone into the next century, but when it did become long term,
the London émigrés were well placed to maximise their
resources. In contrast, in 1792 and again in 1794, émigrés in
the Austrian Netherlands had to sustain the cost of expensive
and dangerous relocations when the republican army entered
Brussels.
Before 1792 the Emigration was essentially made up of the
nobility. Émigrés who came from the lower echelons of society
usually had a direct relationship with their social superiors.5
Greer’s statistics, which are commonly cited to suggest that the
Emigration had a far more diverse socio-economic composition,
can be misleading. These figures (which show that 25 per cent
of émigrés were clergy, 17 per cent were noble, 51 per cent
came from the Third Estate with a further 7 per cent inidentifiable but assumed to come from the privileged classes) are
collective figures representing the whole of Europe.6 In the
London case, a sample of the lay (i.e. non-ecclesiastic) émigrés,
taken in 1796 when the British government called for a general
re-enrolment of the relief lists in order to limit the number of
refugees receiving relief, provides a different picture.
In a sample of 812 émigrés, 201 (nearly 25 per cent) listed
a noble title.7 This analysis can be further developed by looking
at the status description given in this same document. 8 38 per
cent (including 11 per cent officers) were either active military
personnel waiting to be drafted into the British forces or retired
soldiers.9 Of the 35 per cent of women, 18 per cent used the
designation Dame and only 5 per cent, the term Bourgeoise or
Kirsty Carpenter
45
Madame to describe themselves. Comparatively, 11 per cent
of men used the term Gentilhomme while fewer than 1 per
cent were Bourgeois. Domestic servants and artisans account
for 10 per cent of the total. What this suggests is that, in London,
the emigration was top and bottom heavy. There were very
definitely a range of émigrés to whom the designation ‘bourgeois’ applied, but these people invariably had some link with
the nobility and had espoused royalist or constitutional royalist
politics. Some had links with the luxury trades which had
flourished during the Ancien Régime but found themselves
struggling to survive under the Republic.
For the purposes of this re-inscription émigrés were required
to give a description of their ‘status’. Among the more specific
vocations 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, Page
de la Reine, Procureur au Châtelet à Paris, Serurier, Tailleur, Blanchisseuse, Couturière.
The range is quite clear. The military descriptions include titles
such as Ancien Officier, Garde du Corps du Roi, Officier or
Officier de la Marine, then below the officer level, militaire or
ancien militaire, or marine (short for membre de la Marine
française). Otherwise the designations were limited to Gentilhomme, Dame/demoiselle, Bourgeois, Bourgeoise, Madame/
Mlle, Femme de Chambre, Domestique or Artisan.
The strong aristocratic component of the London émigré
population is further suggested by the fact that 33 per cent of
the émigrés who gave London addresses to the British authorities in 1796 lived in Marylebone. 10 This statistic reveals not
only the bon ton of the area for the London émigrés but, because
tailors, milliners, locksmiths and washerwomen were among
those who lived there, it suggests a special relationship between
the ex-noble émigrés and the others. The French residents of
lower social status were probably drawn to Marylebone in the
hope of finding a market for their skills. The harp-maker
Sebastien Erard is a good example of one such émigré who
became very wealthy, owning businesses in London and Paris
46
at the Restoration. His first business in exile was set up in
Marylebone High Street. 11
Information relating to the activity of the lower Third Estate
émigrés is difficult to obtain because few of them left any
account of their time in London. Few émigrés had any capital
and were therefore confined to working from home or for
somebody else, which they found difficult due to language
problems. Often émigrés did not possess sufficient clothes to
be able to work outside their homes. Although they did provide
dressmakers and milliners there is little evidence of émigrés
being restaurateurs or boarding-house keepers.12
London was a culture shock. The abbé Baston described it
as, ‘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 son
étendue et de sa population; la richesse, l’activité et l’industrie de ses habitans; la distribution générale de ses rues et de
ses trottoirs; le nombre, la beauté, et la variété de ses places!14
Women in particular, perhaps because they experienced some
of the most horrific voyages across the channel in the winter
season, were jubilant about their arrival in London. The
autumn gales of 1792 were particularly bad and émigrés crossed
the channel in a variety of unseaworthy vessels so that many
were lucky to arrive safely. 15
Many women’s first memories of emigration were of sickness
or sadness or both. 16 The Duchesse de Saulx-Tavannes wrote
of being near to death two days after her arrival in Britain.17
Sickness claimed the lives of many small children who were
more susceptible than adults to changes in diet and weather
conditions. Mme de Ménerville describes how her child died
in her arms because she could not find a doctor who would
treat the son of an émigré until it was too late.18 The Comtesse
de Saisseval remembered the anguish of hours going from
door to door in the falling snow in Dover to find shelter for
herself and her children, who were close to perishing from
cold and hunger.19
As time went on, crossing the channel to get to the safety of
London, and British government relief funding, became lifethreateningly perilous. Many émigrés were able to leave France
only 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 disguised as a fisherman.20 Many were lucky to arrive alive, considering the unseaworthiness of the vessels in which they
travelled. Mme de Monregard made the crossing with her
servants and a priest in a raft with a makeshift sail.21 The
Vicomtesse de Sesmaison, her four children and their tutor,
barely escaped with their lives when they struck the autumn
storms in a boat which was not sturdy enough for the weather.
At Eastbourne, they were rescued from the water by local
fishermen.22
It is hardly surprising that émigrés, and women in particular,
expressed relief at arriving in Britain. Their enthusiastic
descriptions of the countryside almost invariably evoke the
happiness they felt to be out of reach of the Republican armies
and under the protection of the British government.
Il faisait un temps superbe, nous allions bon train et tout en
admirant ce beau pays, malgré la vilaine saison la propriété
des villages, l’air d’aisance et de richesse du paysan, nous
avions toujours l’oeil ouvert sur les gentilhommes de grands
chemins et sur notre petite bourse composée chacune d’un
demi-guinée et de quelques schellings. . . . Nous arrivâmes
aux faubourgs de Londres vers cinq heures (du soir). Les
abords gais et vivants d’une grande ville nous rappelèrent le
temps heureux où nous arrivions dans notre Paris. 23
The Marquise de Falaiseau was far from the only woman to
remember her arrival in London in glowing terms. The Comtesse de Gontaut (who had been reduced to finding a barn with
fresh straw a welcoming prospect) and the Duchesse de SaulxTavannes were similarly affected.
Once in London, the prospect of a new city to explore was
attractive though not all were enthusiastic. The Comtesse de
Boigne with characteristic scorn described:
Cette grande cité composée de petites maisons pareilles et
de larges rues tirées au cordeau, toutes semblables les uns
aux autres, cette frappée de monotonie et d’ennui. [ . . . ]
Quand on s’est promené cinq minutes, on peut se promener
cinq jours dans des quartiers toujours différents et toujours
pareils. 24
48
If the transition from Paris to London presented few unknowns
to émigrés who moved easily between courts and countries in
Ancien Régime Europe, the contrast between this and other
journeys was nevertheless stark. In 1789 George Selwyn
wrote:
When I left St James I went in search of Mme de Boufflers
and found her at Grenier’s Hotel which looks to me more
like an hospital than anything else. Such rooms, such a
crowd of miserable wretches, escaped from plunder and
massacre and Mme de Boufflers among them, with I do not
know how many beggars in her suite, [ . . . ]. When I saw her
last, she was in a handsome hôtel dans le quartier du
Temple. . . . 25
The forced circumstances made the presence of the French in
Britain awkward and embarrassed. They were ill-equipped to
cope with living in Britain, rather than just visiting it, and their
command 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 met
a group of émigrés at Winchester who were on their way to
Bath. They took pity on this group of weary travellers who
were having great difficulties finding fresh horses, and invited
them to drink tea with them.
The elder lady was so truly French – so vive and so triste in
turn – that she seemed formed from the written character of
a Frenchwoman, such, at least, as we English write them.
She was very forlorn in her air, and very sorrowful in her
countenance; yet all action and gesture, and of an animation
when speaking nearly fiery in its vivacity: neither pretty nor
young, but neither ugly nor old; and her smile, which was
rare, had a finesse very engaging; while her whole deportment announced a person of consequence, and all her discourse told that she was well-informed, well-educated, and
well-bred.26
From 1790 to early 1792 the émigrés conformed to the British
stereotypes. They spoke English with difficulty but they projected an image of being light-hearted and amiable and little
concerned with the political storms at home. This was precisely
at a time when the British papers were full of the writings of
Kirsty Carpenter
49
Burke and Paine and most responsible members of society had
an opinion on the events in France. There was subsequently a
great deal of criticism of the levity of the French in regard to
politics and of their readiness to indulge in entertainments
which seemed at odds with their circumstances.27 The Marquise
de Falaiseau wrote that the British ‘ne concevaient pas comment on pouvait supporter tout cela et conserver de la gaieté’.28
By mid-1790 the emigration was starting to include members of the provincial estates and of the professions who were
disillusioned by the Revolution. These men had shared the
early enthusiasm for change but were repulsed by its pace and
leadership. As time went on political sympathies became even
more varied as the émigrés were joined by moderate members
of the Constituent Assembly and others whose ideas were insufficiently radical for the Revolution.
It was into the inns, hotels and boarding-houses of Soho that
the refugees descended in search of food, friends and news
from France. The noticeably French character of Soho in the
eighteenth century made it a popular choice.29 There were
many French lodging-houses kept by descendents of French
Huguenots, while Huguenot artisans, watchmakers, jewellers
and goldsmiths had businesses in the Soho Square and Soho
Fields area.30 Golden Square was another very French address
and by the mid-1790s émigrés had swelled the existing French
population. 31 Madame de Gontaut remembered:
Le quartier dans lequel M. de St Blancard avait pris un logement pour nous était assez triste et situé près de Golden
Square, et je compris ce que les Français éprouvent en arrivant un dimanche à Londres. Le silence, le peu de mouvement surprend et l’on risque en y arrivant d’être saisi par
une attaque de spleen qui se dissipe le lundi par un beau
soleil à Hyde Park. 32
Soho was an important lay émigré centre. Some priests
found lodgings there but the expense drove most of them further afield.33 The hotels of Soho provided the French with traditional food and there is evidence to suggest that hotels such as
the Hotel de la Sablonnière, No. 13 Leicester Square did well
out of their émigré business. This hotel is mentioned in many
of the memoirs either as an address or eating place.34 Rivarol
stayed there when he came to London in 1794 and many
50
counter-revolutionary plots were hatched in its salons, which
had formerly belonged to Hogarth.35
This great diversity of people, cultures and customs made
the French feel more at home in Soho than anywhere else
in London. This is reinforced by the statistics. Next only to
Marylebone, Soho had the highest density of émigré settlement in London.36 18 per cent of lay émigré families for whom
addresses are available lived in Soho and this does not include
the 8 per cent for Tottenham Court Road or the 4 per cent for
Bloomsbury 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., and
Princess 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 emigrate in January 1792 because he had no desire to work in a
revolutionary state.38 A portrait painter whose clientele was
exclusively drawn from the Ancien Régime elite, he was also a
royalist. He chose Soho because it was the home of Sir Joshua
Reynolds, and after his arrival he targeted the British gentry
and the newly-arrived French.
His studio in Leicester Fields, which he set up with meticulous care to appeal to his British clients, in fact became a meeting
place where the demi-monde of the emigration could congregate and chat.39 He also kept a journal in which he recorded his
appointments, sittings and general comments about life and
art among the émigrés. Talking about Mme de Pusigneux the
sister of Mme de la Suze, early in 1793, he wrote,
Rien en effet trahit chez elle la misère dont on remarque en
général l’empreinte chez les émigrés.40
Many lesser artists set themselves up in Soho as interior decorators and became much sought after. Their reputation for
exquisite taste even reached Queen Charlotte. She commented
to Fanny Burney that:
there are no people who understand enjoyable accommodations more than French gentlemen. 41
Another feature was its émigré bookshops. Dulau was situated
at 107 Wardour Street near Soho Square. Opened by a former
Benedictine monk who had managed to save the contents of
Kirsty Carpenter
51
his library it was, after an initial relocation, a large shop with
plenty of room. It soon became one of the favourite meeting places for the émigrés, a centre of gossip and a source of
news from France. Dulau edited speeches, pamphlets, poetry
and travel diaries which were printed by Cox and Baylis, the
only specialist French-language printers in London.42 He was
also a major distributor for the French émigré newspaper
Le Courier de Londres. Another French bookshop, De Boffe,
located at 7 Gerrard St., had a similar role as a popular meeting
place for the émigrés. These were not the only French bookshops in London; bookshop owners were among the small
number of French émigrés who applied for British naturalisation as a result of the emigration.43
The prosperity of these establishments, of which we know
only skeletal details, was due to the intense literary activity
among the émigrés and the willingness of the British elite to
read what was being written.44 Reading and writing were
probably the most popular pastimes for émigré society. Many
found writing a relaxing way to forget the pressures and hardships of exile. Those who destined their work for contemporary publication usually had political or pecuniary motives but
the émigré memoirs also offer proof of the number of émigrés
who sought to justify their own actions to themselves or to others
through keeping a journal.
Titles published in London during this period were primarily
political in nature. They include, among others, Calonnes’s
Tableau de l’Europe (1795), Montlosier’s Vues sommaires sur les
moyens de Paix (1796), Chateaubriand’s Essai historique (1797),
and Lally Tollendal’s Defense des émigrés (1797). Women were
not well represented among the professional writers of emigration; the Comtesse de Flahaut was an exception but even she
reserved her observations for fictional characters.45
No one expressed as clearly as Chateaubriand the isolation
of exile or its effect upon the émigré mentality. 46 He described
the survival mechanisms that it inspired in the most delicate
women or the elderly priest. This was echoed by one of the
characters in Sénac de Meihan’s novel L’Emigré (1797): ‘on voit
souvent dans l’Emigré l’homme rendu en quelque sorte à son
état primitif ’.47
Chateaubriand is also responsible for one of the most colourful images of émigré poverty in London. He claimed to be
52
reduced to sucking sheets and eating grass and paper to stave off
hunger pangs.48
This image was undoubtedly embellished but his observations 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 also
quick to excuse them.
The Comtesse de Flahaut offers similar opinions of the émigré mentality from a female point of view. 49 She arrived in
London in 1792 with her infant son Charles, very little money
and only a few jewels.50 Her novel Adèle de Senange, which was
to be the first of a dozen over the next 20 years, enabled her to
live comfortably though quietly during her emigration, which
was relatively short. 51 In the preface she wrote:
Seule dans une terre étrangère, avec un enfant qui a atteint
l’âge où il n’est plus permis de retarder l’éducation, j’ai
éprouvé une sorte de douceur à penser que ses premières
études seraient le fruit de mon travail.52
Flahaut used her creative instincts to combat the long days
in exile and she recopied her own manuscripts in order to shut
out her worries.53 Yet she was also acutely aware of the suffering of others around her:
Avec les habitudes d’une grande fortune, il suffit d’un caractère ferme, pour se soumettre aux privations, mais il faut
bien 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 early
years 1789–94 were characterised by conspicuous consumption, the later ones, 1795–1814 by an elegant sufficiency. The
politics of this part of town were exclusively royalist and the
ultra-royalism of its inhabitants was reinforced by the arrival
of the Comte d’Artois in 1799 and the Prince de Condé in
1801. 55
Aspersions were often cast on the political pedigree of other
émigrés by those who lived around Portman and Manchester
Squares and there can be no doubt that there were some who
initially enjoyed a standard of living very little changed from
their Parisian one.
Kirsty Carpenter
53
Il se trouvait à Londres quelques personnes à qui des circonstances heureuses avaient conservé une partie de leur fortune, ou du moins des ressources momentanées. C’était la
partie élégante de l’emigration; là on montait à cheval, on
allait en cariole; là se trouvaient des jeunes femmes suivies,
recherchées, comme elles l’eûssent été à Paris, et des jeunes
gens aussi occupés de plaire qu’ils avaient pu l’être quand
les succès auprès des femmes étaient l’affaire la plus importante de la vie.56
But many émigrés agreed that this was not sensible. Mme
Danloux comments on the absurdity of émigrés entertaining
lavishly and giving balls:
On parla ensuite du luxe des femmes émigrées qui étaient à
ce bal; on dit que cela faisait un contraste frappant avec la
simplicité des quelques anglaises qui s’y trouvaient. Nous
convînmes tous qu’il était bien ridicule que des émigrés
donassent des bals. 57
The émigrés themselves were highly critical of each other’s
behaviour. Madame de La Tour du Pin wrote in disgust about
the pettiness of aristocratic émigré society.58 She described
émigré women as pretentious, haughty and intolerant and
these reactions were shared by Madame de Gontaut who
expressed a similar desire to leave London as soon as possible.59
Whatever the reasons, some émigrés undoubtedly displayed
these qualities towards those less fortunate in emigration. William Windham wondered philosophically whether the British
might not have behaved in exactly the same way if put in a
similiar situation. 60 However, if anger, disappointment and
bitterness found expression in personal behaviour, in their
writings the émigrés were often more generous.61
Chacun raisonne et s’anime pour ses passions, ses goûts, ses
vanités, et les opinions doivent être d’autant plus variées dans
un pays où le caractère national présente plus de nuances.
L’émigration les rassemblait toutes.62
The special significance of Marylebone for the London émigrés
was reinforced by the the Chapel of the Annonciation which
was built in King Street (Portman Square) and consecrated in
March 1799. It was also known as the Chapelle Royale de
54
France because shortly after its consecration the comte d’Artois
took up residence nearby in Baker Street and worshipped
there regularly. The French community provided the money
and most of the labour for its construction.63
It is mentioned in many of the émigré memoirs64 but unfortunately this unimposing little chapel was demolished in 1978.65
Despite its dull appearance it was consecrated by one of the
highest representatives of the French Catholic Church, the
Archbishop of Aix, and welcomed no less than three Kings
of France and many princes to worship or mourn within its
walls.66 The list of those who attended the funeral of Louis
XVIII’s wife, the comtesse de Lille, in this chapel attests to its
historical significance.67 The French chapel was closed in 1911
and the building subsequently served as a furniture warehouse,
a day nursery, a mortuary chapel, a prayer-room, a synagogue
and a recording studio.68
By 1799, when the Chapel of the Annunciation opened, the
lifestyle of the early days of Emigration had disappeared
almost completely. Even Monsieur the Comte d’Artois lived
quietly, enjoying the companionship of his long-time mistress
Louise de Polastron, until she died of consumption in 1804.69
Émigrés who had come to the area wealthy with rents and
income from their properties in Saint-Domingue or other
French colonies, and who had initially impressed London society with their taste and entertainments, had since been humbled by the events of the war and the disintegration of their
fortunes.70 It was not long before they had adapted to the necessity of work and integrated it into the rhythm of their daily life.
The sort of work done by the émigrés reflected their aristocratic tastes and employed their existing skills. White muslin
embroidered dresses which were easy to make and profitable
were much sought after.71 Embroidery was put to many uses
as a fashion accessory. 72 Straw hats were the other important
fashion accessory which the émigrés turned into a prosperous
trade. The hats, which sold for 25 shillings apiece, are probably 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 faisions
des chapeaux de paille, non tressée, comme la paille de
Kirsty Carpenter
55
Livourne, mais entière, blanche et brillante; des fils de laiton
liaient ensemble regulièrement tous ces brins de paille, qui
s’arrondissaient sur des formes de calotte, en s’aplatissant
en passes sur des feuilles de carton. En travaillant sans trop
de distraction, on pouvait faire son chapeau en trois jours.74
Walsh describes how the young, because they generally spoke
better English than their elders, were given the unenviable
task of going and selling the hats to the hat shops in the city.75
He remembered clearly the haughtiness of the shop-keepers
which he describes as their ‘sot orgueil’ and for a well-born
émigré the experience of finding himself at the mercy of a
merchant was a situation of unequalled discomfort. The clergy
did not like selling their work either and they persuaded the
Wilmot Committee (responsible for the distribution of Government relief) to do it for them. 76
The ‘ateliers’ of Emigration were social institutions. They
provided the émigrés with an outlet for shared griefs and aspirations. The company of other émigrés and the cameraderie
which lightened the gloom and despair of many émigrés’ personal circumstances played an important role in helping the
émigrés both to cope with the strains of prolonged exile and
simply to pass the time.77 This need for society and for companionship created a unity and a sense of common destiny which
drew the little French community of Marylebone together.
Mme de Menerville, describing the dark winters of 1795, 1796
and 1797 in London, commented:
Je n’ai jamais retrouvé une société aussi franchement unie
(tous les intérêts, toutes les opinions, tous les désirs étaient
les mêmes), aussi distinguée par l’esprit, les talents, les
bonnes manières, une conversation plus charmante ni des
soirées qui valussent celles que nous passions à Londres
dans de pauvres salons, mal meublés, auprès d’un feu de
charbon, éclairé par une petite lampe ou deux chandelles.
Des jeunes et souvent très jolies femmes, vêtues d’une robe
indienne, coiffées d’un méchant chapeau de paille, déployait
une gaiété, une grace, une amabilité enviées des Anglais.78
Some émigrés turned their hobbies into lucrative occupations
with more success than others. The Duc d’Aiguillon found
work copying music for the director of the Opera.79 Monsieur
56
Brillaud de Lonjac, who lived at 103 Marylebone, High Street
was so indebted to his countrymen for their help and contacts in
emigration 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 accompaniment. 80
This gesture suggests just how much music tuition, which for
many émigrés was a part of life in France, was missed. And the
ci-devant noble music mistress made a rather comic figure
venturing out in all weathers to go to the homes of her pupils, ‘la
robe retroussée dans ses poches et un parapluie à la main’.81
Music lessons and tuning pianos were a favourite way to
make money but few émigrés made their fortunes out of concert music. Danloux mentions a Mlle Mérelle, a talented young
harpist who had made the mistake of trying to make her living.
She gave sparsely attended concerts in freezing venues and
was thrown into the debtors’ prison for a sum of 15 guineas.
Luckily for her, somebody told the Comte d’Artois who paid
her debts.82 The Comte de Marin, a talented violin player, was
an exception; he had an established reputation before he came
to London, where he gave charity concerts to raise money for
émigrés who were less fortunate than himself.83
There were a few novel occupations. Jean Gabriel Peltier, an
émigré journalist, capitalised on the English fascination for
the guillotine. He had a miniature of the guillotine made in
walnut and, for the price of a crown for the front seats and a
shilling for the rear, he advertised the spectacle ‘Today we
guillotine a goose, tomorrow a duck’.84 It seems that this
macabre performance appealed to the English because several
other émigrés followed his example.
For the inhabitants of Marylebone privations were limited
and work, to the extent that it was necessary, was integrated
into an enjoyable social round. They went to their ateliers in
the mornings, entertained each other in the afternoons and
managed to survive. Mme de la Tour du Pin, however, knew
several émigré women who never appeared in society but dedicated themselves to their work.85
Émigré life in other parts of London was much harsher. As
early as 1793 poor areas of London like St Pancras, Somers
Town and Saint George’s Fields found their communities swollen
Kirsty Carpenter
57
by newly arrived French refugees. The émigrés who were
attracted to these areas were almost invariably those who had
managed to save little from the Revolution and what they had
brought with them was quickly spent.
Prominent in this group was the provincial nobility, women
(particularly widows), priests and domestic servants.86 Many
women, in particular those waiting for husbands who were
serving with the princes, chose Saint George’s Fields which
was among the poorest, cheapest and most insanitary areas of
late-eighteenth-century London. Most received some assistance
from the charitable committees and later from the British
Government but in winter and with several children this aid
was inadequate. It took the death of a noblewoman from hunger in Saint George’s Fields to bring home to the British just
how bad the situation was.
A group of British women, horrified that such a thing could
happen, discovered that there were many women in need of
basic necessities of life. Often the little furniture they possessed
had been sold to buy fuel, with the result that clothes and bedding were among their essential needs. There were cases of
great distress, women suffering as a result of childbirth without
help or support, physical and mental illnesses of differing
severity but all aggravated by the stresses of prolonged separation from loved ones, bereavement and harsh living conditions.87 Working for long hours in bad light to supplement what
little money they had also took its toll.88 Some coped better than
others but the squalor, that was evident in Saint George’s
Fields, as in other poor areas of London, was depressing for
those accustomed to a completely different standard of living.
In July 1795 an expedition to Quiberon Bay was mounted
with the French émigré forces in a leading role. Almost all the
London families had members in the regiments that went
to the Atlantic coast of Brittany. The disastrous events at
Quiberon have been the subject of a number of analyses but
whatever the verdict on the military mismanagement which
produced 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 were
shot without trial within days of capture. This news took a little
time to filter back to London but its impact was devastating,
since many émigrés had counted on Quiberon to release them
58
from their refugee existence. Without the support of the family
members who had been killed, the future was even more
bleak. This grief was compounded by the fact that boys who had
not been old enough to serve in the 1792 campaign fought at
Quiberon and their young lives were uselessly sacrified.90
Most of the families in Saint George’s Fields were receiving
relief payments but these were barely adequate in summer
and in winter or at times of personal crisis many families found
themselves destitute. The Comtesse de Flahaut wrote:
Ceux qui n’ont jamais connu le malheur ignorent combien
une seule circonstance imprévue peut jeter dans le désespoir.91
The relocation of the French refugees from Jersey and Guernsey to the British mainland was another occasion when the
émigrés found themselves victims of political crises. This was
essentially because the émigrés were evacuated for military
purposes and the impact of the dislocation on their daily lives
was not given serious consideration.92 This new group of refugees went to Somers Town, a newly developed, cheap area not
far from the city centre.93 Their presence attracted other émigrés and the outstanding leadership of the Abbé Carron, who
became the community’s chief organiser and inspiration, was
another incentive for émigrés to settle there.94 As well as being
a prolific writer, he opened schools for the children (as he had
in Jersey) and he made provision for the sick and the elderly to
be taken care of properly.95 His ability to overcome problems,
raise money and organise earned him the epithet of the
St Vincent de Paul of the Emigration.96
His public farewell to the English people before he returned
to France in 1814 illustrates his admiration for the English and
their support for the émigré cause but also a personal sentiment which many refugees shared with him,
Magnanimes Anglois, vous m’avez fait retrouver comme
le doux sol qui me vit naître, sur votre terre hospitalière;
mes parens d’adoption, vous m’avez prodigué, durant de
longues années, les soins assidus de la mère. Comblé de vos
bienfaits, je vais m’arracher de vos bras; la Providence me
condamne à ce grand sacrifice, qui me devient comme une
émigration nouvelle.97
Kirsty Carpenter
59
The warmth of feeling that the emigration created between
British and French people can be gauged from a variety of
sources, from the diversity of donors to the relief subscriptions, to the tokens of friendship proudly shown to a travelling
Englishman by two priests on their way to Rouen in 1802.98 It
is 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 grossière
Et 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 in
months, returned to France after an average absence of 8–10
years. During this time they had established links which bound
them intimately to places and to people and the British too
were sad to see them go. 100
For all of this, London provided the backdrop. London was
the home of the Wilmot Committee which organised the relief
effort.101 It was the theatre in which the main dramas of emigration took place, from the passing of the Aliens Bill to the murder of the Comte d’Antraigues.102 And it was the city from
which Louis XVIII set out on his return to Paris cheered on by
the crowd and safe in the knowledge of the support of the British government. 103
Historians who consider the émigrés to be politically impotent
have overlooked the enormous power of the image created by
the émigré population in the London streets. Both in 1793
when the British Government went to war against Republican
France, and in 1798 in the wake of Fructidor, the moral force
of the emigration was an asset to the British Government in its
negotiations with other European powers.
60
Nothing cuts so severely into the feelings of the French
rebels, as the noble and liberal manner in which the English
have relieved those Loyalists whom they have expatriated.
It convinces them that their conduct and their new system of
Government are detested in this country, as well as in all
other civilized parts of the world; and that therefore it is an
impossibility ever to maintain a Government to which all
nations but that in which it is attempted, are inimical. 104
The historian has only to ask the question why the émigrés
received such generous treatment from a Protestant nation
upon whom they had no direct claim to begin to understand
the power of émigré propaganda. Why was the émigré cause
able to command support at such a high level of British society?
Why were the members of the Wilmot Committee some of the
most eminent people in the realm? Why did the British Government accept responsibility towards the refugees? Because
the émigrés had the sympathy of the British élite behind them
which, reinforced by their generally honourable behaviour,
was sufficient to impress upon the government the need to
support them.
Arthur Young was not the only British subject who could see
through the Jacobin rhetoric.105 He like others questioned the
treatment émigrés had received under revolutionary law. The
presence of women, children and priests in the London streets
emphasised the point which Lally Tolendal had argued so eloquently when he demanded that all those who had not taken
arms against the Republic be exempted from the émigré laws:
The child, whom a widow, a father or a daughter overwhelmed with despair, has carried away with her at her bloodstained bosom and who has not yet heard of the calamities of
its country nor of the massacre of its family, the child conceived in sorrow in exile and who drinks more of the tears
than the milk of its wretched mother is already attained by
this murderous law.106
Even some who were blatantly critical of French behaviour felt
compassion:
for the poor women who have been driven to this country
from France and I feel inclined to extend that sensation to
the clergy, who have come over in vast numbers; 107
Kirsty Carpenter
61
Historians of British radicalism have acknowledged that the
most significant impact of the Revolution upon British politics
was the boost it gave to political conservatism.108 The émigrés
helped bring about the shift from the enthusiasm for Revolution
of 1791 to the pro-government stance which characterised
early 1793.109 The dignity of the refugees and their willingness
to make the most of their situation not only increased British
admiration for them, but it encouraged an almost universal
rejection of all that had made them suffer.
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
One of the clauses in the Aliens Bill (1793) specified that the émigrés
must live within 50 miles of Cornhill. Another stated that they must not
live within 10 miles of any port.
Figures for the number of émigrés who came to Britain in Sept–Dec
1792 are very difficult to ascertain because records were not kept. Estimates range between 10 000 and 40 000 and come from a variety of
sources such as the press, the correspondence of members of parliament
and the Wilmot Committee records. To complicate matters further the
1786 Trade Treaty between Britain and France had given reciprocal
access without the need to carry passports to the merchants of both
nations. This was breached by the Aliens Bill ( January 1793) which
required all foreigners to carry passports in Britain and the French Government made formal protest. 12 500 annually between 1792 and 1802
is the figure which I have proposed in my thesis but it is almost certain
that in the very early stages of the influx, that is, Sept–Dec 1792, there
may have been as many as 25 000 émigrés in Britain. See K.A. Carpenter, Les émigrés à Londres 1789–1802, unpublished Doctorat de l’Université thesis, Université de Paris I, 1993. This theory is further developed
in my forthcoming book Refugees of Revolution: the French Emigrés in London 1789–1802, London, 1999.
J. Dupâquier, La population française au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1979.
Abbé Tardy, Manuel du voyageur à Londres: ou recueil de toutes les instructions nécessaires aux étrangers qui arrivent dans cette capitale précédé du grand
Plan de Londres, par l’abbé Tardy auteur du Dictionnaire de prononciation
française à l’usage des Anglois, Londres, 1800, p. 206.
Donald Greer in his study of The Incidence of Emigration during the French
Revolution, (Harvard, 1951) found the nobility to be a minority. Clergy
25.2 %, Nobility 16.8 %, Upper Bourgeoisie 11.1 %, Lower Bourgeoisie
6.2 %, Workers 14.3 %, Peasants 19.4 %, Other 7 % (more briefly and
often quoted Clergy 25 %, Nobility 17 %, Third Estate 51 % and Other 7 %
62
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
(p. 112, Table I). This revolutionised the way historians approached the
Emigration. Yet his assertion that ‘The brilliant company of aristocrats
obscures the presence of a dense throng of drab émigrés’ (p. 63) has
pushed assumptions too far the other way.
Greer collated figures for all émigrés who left France and therefore
for all destinations in Europe. He was aware of problems relating to
the ‘estates’ terminology. ‘As descriptive of the French social order it had
always been somewhat inaccurate; by the end of the eighteenth century
it had lost all social validity, and was nothing more than a consecrated
anachronism’. (Incidence of Emigration, p. 65).
The sample is taken from PRO T. 93–28.
Of the 812 sample 701 gave a description of their status while 111 left
the column blank. The percentages are taken from the 701 rather
than the total 812.
Proportionally this is a much higher percentage than the blanket 10%
for the military emigration maintained by Donal Greer, Incidence of the
Emigration, Harvard, 1952, p. 90.
K.A. Carpenter, Les émigrés à Londres 1789–1802, unpublished Doctorat
de l’Université thesis, Université de Paris I, 1993. p. 324. This figure
represents those who gave an address in Marylebone and Portman or
Manchester Squares.
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 Jean
Fougueville (3rd edn, Paris, 1924) and Pierre Erard, The Harp, In its
present improved State compared with the Original Pedal Harp, London,
1821 and F. Fétis, Notice biographique sur Sebastien Erard, Chevalier de la
Légion d’Honneur, Paris, 1831.
Gordon MacKenzie, Marylebone, Great City North of Oxford Street, London 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 boarding
houses. These were much more likely to be kept by French Huguenots
who were confused with French émigrés.
M. l’Abbé Julien Loth et M. Ch. Verger, réd., Paris, 1897, p. 125.
Abbé Tardy, Manuel d’un voyageur à Londres, op. cit., p. 206.
J.D. Parry, An historical and descriptive account of the coast of Sussex, London, 1833, p. 203.
Fanny Burney developed this theme in her novel The Wanderer where
Gabriella was described as having been, ‘punished for plans in which
she had borne no part, and for crimes of which she had not even any
knowledge; – 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, in
the immediate loss of a darling child’. Burney, The Wanderer, Oxford
edition, 1991, p. 390.
Marquis de Valous, Sur les routes de l’Emigration, Mémoires de la duchesse
de Saulx-Tavannes (1791–1806), Paris, 1934, p. 48.
Mme de Ménerville née Fougeret, Souvenirs d’Emigration 1791–1797,
Paris, 1934, pp. 66–7.
Kirsty Carpenter
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
63
Henri Forneron, Histoire générale des émigrés pendant la Révolution
française, Paris 1884–1890, vol. II, p. 44.
R., Baron de Portalis, Henry-Pierre Danloux, peintre de portraits et son
journal durant l’émigration, Paris, 1910 p. 155.
Jules Bertaut, Les émigrés français à Londres sous la Révolution, Le Nouveau Monde, mars 1923, p. 184.
J.D. Parry, Coast of Sussex, op. cit., p. 203.
Hervé, Vicomte de Broc, Dix ans de la vie d’une femme pendant l’émigration, Adelaide de Kerjean, Marquise de Falaiseau, Paris, 1893, pp. 140, 141.
Comtesse de Boigne, Mémoires, Paris, 1907–8 [reprinted, Mercure de
France 1986,] vol. I, p. 373.
G. Selwyn to Lady Carlisle, Hist. MSS Comm. XV, Appendix Part VI,
Manuscripts of the Earl of Carlisle, p. 677, letter dated November
1789.
Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay edited by her niece, London, 1842,
vl 5, pp. 233.
Lord Auckland, Journal and Correspondence, London, 1861, vol. II,
p. 370, Mr. Storer to Lord Auckland, 6 August 1790, wrote: ‘These people
always like a little joke in the midst of their most serious misfortunes’.
Vicomte de Broc, op. cit., p. 146.
M. Goldsmith, Soho Square, London, 1948, p. 12.
There were 612 Huguenots listed in the parish in 1711, ibid.
C.L. Kingsford, The Early History of Piccadilly, Leicester Square, Soho, and
their Neighbourhood, Cambridge, 1925 p. 116.
Duchesse de Gontaut, Mémoires, 1773–1836 et lettres inédites, Paris,
1895, p. 23.
See Chapter 13.
Courrier de Londres, 16 August 1793.
Leigh Hunt, The Town, its memorable characteristics, St Paul’s to St James’s,
London, 1906, p. 479.
PRO T. 93–28.
K.A. Carpenter, Les émigrés à Londres 1789–1802, unpublished Doctorat
Nouveau régime, Université de Paris I, 1993. p. 324.
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 moyens
suffisants d’existence’.
Portalis, op. cit., pp. 106–7.
Ibid., p. 169.
The Diary and Letters of Mme d’Arblay edited by her niece, London, 1842,
vol. VI, p. 145.
75 Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Archives Nat. ABXIX-3793 lists Pierre Didier, owner of a bookshop at
75 St James Street, and Laurent-Louis Deconchy, ibid., 100 New
Bond Street as successful applicants for British naturalisation.
A good example of this is the subscription list of Lally Tolendal’s Le
comte de Strafford, which was published by De Boffe in 1795 and included
the Prince of Wales, William Pitt, Henry Dundas, James Fox and many
British peers.
64
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
She lived at No. 27 Half Moon Street, Mayfair.
Chateaubriand, Essai historique, politique et moral sur les Révolutions anciennes et modernes, œuvres Complètes, Bruxelles 1835, vol. I, p. 7.
Senac de Meihan, L’Émigré, Brunswick, 1797.
Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’Outre Tombe, op. cit., p. 444.
Adelaide Marie Emilie Filleuil, Comtesse de Flahaut. See Maricourt,
Baron de, Mme de Souza et sa famille, Paris, 1907.
Charles de Flahaut developed lasting connections with Britain dating
from the Emigration. He later married a British woman and was naturalised (1822). His attachment to Britain can be appreciated in this letter to his mother: ‘cette Angleterre m’est devenue ce qui était la
province pour Mme de Sévigné, j’aimais jusqu’à l’accent anglais dans
le français’. AN AP 565, 14 February 1816.
She returned to France in 1797 and managed to get herself removed
from the émigré list. Her husband the Comte de Flahaut had been
guillotined in 1794.
Œuvres Complètes de Madame de Souza, comtesse puis marquise de Flahaut,
Paris 1821. Adèle de Senange.
Baldensperger, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 40.
Mme de Souza, œuvres Complètes, Paris, 1821, vol. II, p. 302.
Apart from summers spent in Scotland between 1801 and 1803 the
Comte d’Artois resided in London from his arrival there in 1799 until
his return to France in 1814.
A. Bardoux, La duchesse de Duras, Paris, 1898, pp. 57–8.
Portalis, op. cit., p. 305.
Marquise de la Tour du Pin, Journal d’une femme de cinquante ans 1778–
1815, Paris 1920, vol. II, p. 165.
Duchesse de Gontaut, op. cit., p. 30.
Windham correspondence, quoted by Margery Weiner, The French
Exiles, 1789–1815, London, 1960, p. 100.
Guilhermy, le colonel de, Papiers d’un émigré, 1789–1826, Paris, 1886,
pp. 116–17.
Bardoux, op. cit., p. 59.
Harting, Catholic London Missions from the Reformation to the year 1850,
London, 1903 pp. 231–3, cited by Wilkinson, op. cit., p. 484.
‘Dans une ruelle aboutissant à cette dernière rue, des nobles ouvriers
avaient élevé et báti de leurs mains un temple au Dieu qui soutient les
exilés; la chapelle de King Street existe encore aujourd’hui et le prince
de Polignac, avec grande convenance, en avait fait la chapelle de l’ambassade de Sa Majesté très chrétienne. Après le bannissement les
Français 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.
Margery Weiner wrote in 1960: ‘The curious can still see the Chapel
of the Annunciation although it has long since ceased to be called by
that name. From the mews in Carton Street one steps into what is
scarcely more than a large room, whitewashed and lit by a skylight in
the roof. Above the entrance passage a gallery is supported on slender
pillars. On one side of the gallery a corkscrew staircase leads up three
Kirsty Carpenter
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
65
flights, each with a small room where lived the ministering clergy.’ The
French Exiles 1789–1815, p. 123.
Jean-de-Dieu Raymond de Boisgelin.
The funeral of the Comtesse de Lille took place on 26 September
1810. Fonds Bourbons, Mémoires et Documents, 620 provides a list of
those present at the funeral.
Mackenzie, op. cit., p. 231.
Louise d’Esparbès de Lussan, Comtesse de Polastron, 1764–1804.
The uprisings in Saint-Domingue and other French dependencies
like Martinique and Guadeloupe originated with plantation workers
demanding their rights as French citizens and freedom from oppression.
Minor uprisings began as early as 1790, the British became involved
supporting the royalist planters in the spring and summer of 1793 and
this involvement forced the French Republicans to ally with the slaves.
Fighting in Saint-Domingue went on until 1801 when the slave leader
Toussaint l’Ouverture gained control but the economy of the once
wealthy colony had been decimated, much property had been destroyed
and from mid–late 1794 émigrés with property in Saint-Domingue were
cut off from their funds and subsequently denied credit in London.
Ménérville, op. cit., p. 169.
The Marquess of Buckingham was instrumental in providing a shop
where the émigrée ladies could price their work and leave it to be sold
in order to spare them the embarrassment of selling their work themselves. Duchesse de Gontaut, op. cit., p. 24.
Vicomte Walsh, op. cit., p. 153.
Ibid.
Add Ms 18,591 vol. I, p. 130.
Ménérville, op. cit., p. 171.
Ibid.
M. Kelly, Reminiscences, 2 vols, London, 1826, vol. II, pp. 86–7.
Le Courrier de Londres, 17 May 1793, Monsieur Brillaud de Lonjac, 103
High Street Marylebone.
Daudet, Histoire de l’émigration, vol. I, p. 131.
Baron de Portalis, op. cit., p. 117.
Vicomte Walsh, Souvenirs de cinquante ans, Paris, 1862, p. 267.
Montlosier, Souvenirs d’un émigré, p. 221 quoted by, H. Maspero-Clerc,
Un journaliste Contre-révolutionnaire J-G Peltier, p. 70.
Marquise de la Tour du Pin, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 182.
Lubersac, op. cit., pp. 79–82 mentions specific cases of these circumstances.
Eye problems were one of the three main categories of illness (along
with faiblesse/grande faiblesse and mauvaise santé) among émigrés
according to the medical records of the Wilmot Committee. AN
ABXIX-3791, dos 3.
See Maurice Hutt, Chouannerie and Counter-revolution. Puisaye, the
Princes and the British Government in the 1790s, Cambridge, 1983. and
Patrick Huchet, Quiberon ou le destin de la France, Rennes, 1995.
66
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
Lubersac, op. cit., p. 83.
‘Eugénie et Mathilde’, Mme de Souza, Œuvres Complètes, Paris, 1821.
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 removal
but the speed with which the operation was accomplished meant that
the émigrés invariably lost money and possessions which they could
not easily transport.
PRO T.93–39 contains a list of the names and addresses of the 350
lay émigrés who came from Jersey.
Carron was 36 when he came to London. He also founded the
St Aloysius chapel in the Polygon in Somers Town in 1808. See Dominic
Aidan Bellenger, The French Exiled Clergy, Downside, 1986, pp. 104–9.
While in London, he wrote a number of religious works for use by
the clergy and the wider Catholic community. Les pensées ecclésiastiques, published by Dulau (1797), were perhaps the most influential
in the émigré community at large. They were a series of readings
and thoughts for each day of the year.
Walsh, op. cit., p. 165.
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, Somers town, le 29 juillet 1814.
John Carr, op. cit., p. 34.
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.
See, example, Mary Russell Mitford, Recollections of a Literary Life,
London, 1859, pp. 233–6.
The Wilmot Committee was set up as a charitable committee to
relieve the sufferings of the French clergy in September 1792. Its key
members were the Bishop of Saint Pol de Léon who was responsible
for the distribution of funds within the French community and John
Eardley Wilmot, MP for Coventry, who had previously been involved
in the settlement of Loyalist claims. In December 1794 the Wilmot
Committee assumed responsibility for the distribution of Government
relief to all émigrés in Britain and administered payments to the
émigrés 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.
See Colin Duckworth, The D’Antraigues Phenomenon, London, 1986.
The murder of the Comte d’Antraigues and his wife in Barnes in
1812 remains to this day surrounded by mystery.
Mansel, P., Louis XVIII, Paris, 1982, p. 182.
The Times, 10 October 1792.
A. Young, The Example of France a Warning to Britain, London, 1794.
Defence of the French Emigrants addressed to the People of France, translated
by John Gifford Esq, London, 1797, p. 42.
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
108.
109.
67
for the rest of the refugees, the higher orders of whom, with very few
exceptions have been deeply implicated in the guilt of this Revolution’.
Lord Auckland, op. cit., vol. II, p. 445.
This was stated by H.T. Dickinson in 1789 (H.T. Dickinson, ed., Britain and the French Revolution 1789–1815, London, 1989, p. 103) and
reiterated by David Eastwood in 1991, (Mark Philip, ed., The French
Revolution and British Popular Politics, Cambridge, 1991, p. 147.)
J.B. Burges writes to Lord Auckland from Whitehall on 7 September
1792 that: ‘The French excesses, I fancy, have made a great impression here’. Lord Auckland, op. cit., vol. II, p. 441.
4 French Émigrés in
Hungary
Ferenc Tóth
The history of Hungary in the eighteenth century was characterised by massive migrations, facilitated by its recent reconquest from the Turks. 1 Germans, Slavs, and even Frenchmen
made their homes in the southern part of the country.2 Many
Hungarians also left their country for political reasons at this
time, following the failure of the War of Independence led by
the Prince Rákóczi (1703–11). The prince was an ally of Louis
XIV and, by the creation of a Hungarian diversion, had
helped France to avoid total defeat in the wars of the Spanish
Succession. Rákóczi fled to France in the hope of continuing
his war for Hungarian independence and his little court in exile
became a meeting place for his former followers. Thus at the
beginning of the eighteenth century several thousand Hungarians were incorporated into regiments of hussars in the
royal army.3 These regiments, like other foreign regiments,
were considered loyal servants of the monarchy and several
officers of Hungarian origin succeeded in making brilliant
careers. A few were even presented at court: François Antoine
Berchény (the son of Maréchal Ladislas de Berchény) and
Ladislas Valentin Esterhazy each commanded their own regiments 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 Princes, was born in the commune of Vigan in Languedoc in
1740. 5 Count Ladislas de Berchény took charge of his education after the death of his father, and he began his military
career during the Seven Years War in the regiment of hussars
commanded by Berchény. He fought in the Seven Years War
and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in 1761,
aged only twenty-one. He soon won permission to raise a regiment of hussars himself (1764) and his rank and intelligence
obtained him many diplomatic missions in central Europe and,
68
Ferenc Tóth
69
it is probable, in England. It was he who, in 1770, brought the
portrait of the future Louis XVI to Marie Antoinette at Vienna.
There he gained the favour and the confidence of the future
Queen of France who, in spite of his reluctance to receive
them, showered him with gifts. During the popular uprising
in 1775 and the ‘Flour War’ he distinguished himself at the
head of his regiment by re-establishing order in the province
of Brie. He was promoted to the rank of General in 1780 and
the following year was made Military Governor of Rocroy. It
was during this period that he married the daughter of the
wealthy Comte d’Hallwyl. At the height of his career the
Comte d’Esterhazy was not only a favourite of Queen Marie
Antoinette, he was also chosen as one of the eight members of
the Council of War created in 1787.6
When the Revolution broke out in France, two senior officers
of Hungarian origin were at the head of two garrisons in the
north of France. The Comte d’Esterhazy, commander at
Valenciennes, played a key role in the escape of the Comte
d’Artois, which he described in his memoirs thus:
Tout fut calme à Valenciennes pendant la journée du 16. Il
ne venait personne de Paris, mais on disait que les issues en
seraient libres dès que le roi y serait rentré. Je profitai du départ de la diligence pour écrire à ma femme et lui conseiller
de venir me retrouver le plus tôt qu’elle pourrait avec ses
enfants. Dans la nuit du 17 au 18 on vint m’éveiller en me
disant que le prince de Chimay était aux portes et demandait
à me parler. Je donnai l’ordre de lui ouvrir, mais supposant
que c’était quelqu’un qui prenait son nom, car je le savais
lui-même en Italie, je montai ensuite à cheval et courus à la
porte de Notre-Dame. En chemin je croisai une berline qui
allait à la poste; je m’y rendis, et quel ne fut pas mon étonnement de me trouver en ouvrant la portière dans les bras de
Monsieur le comte d’Artois. 7
Esterhazy then received a letter from the King and another
from Marie Antoinette putting the fugitives under his protection.8 He arranged for the King’s brother to cross into Flanders
with the help of his hussars. Esterhazy was also a key figure in
the escape of the Dukes d’Angoulême and de Berri and the
Prince de Condé.9 Rumours about his activity invited accusations against his person in the Assemblée Nationale, which he
70
refuted by publishing letters to prove his innocence.10 It was
not long, however, before the royalist activity of the Comte
d’Esterhazy became self-evident. Probably the Baron de Tott
at Douai also facilitated the emigration of aristocrats. In any
case, the royalist activities of these two gentlemen of Hungarian
extraction were discovered and they were chased from their
posts by mutinous soldiers in 1790.11 Esterhazy went to Paris to
save his family, while Tott emigrated first to Brussels then
to Switzerland.12 He was stopped at the frontier at Cheyres for
having forgotten his papers and a fight broke out during
which the officer at the post said to him, ‘Si vous aviez fait du
bien, vous ne seriez pas ici!’13
In Switzerland the Baron de Tott met the Hungarian noble,
Count Theodore Batthyány, who invited him to Hungary and
gave him a house at Tarcsa (today Bad Tatzmannsdorf in Austria). Count Batthyány was an inventor and, because he needed
foreign expertise, he made the most of the baron’s network
of connections. The villagers called his house the ‘Hexenhaus’
or witches-house because of his scientific experiments. The
Baron de Tott died there in October 1793.14 A few years ago a
tomb was built for him in the village cemetery.15 His second
daughter Sophie de Tott, a musician and a painter, was for a
long time in the entourage of the Comtesse de Tessé in London,
in Bienne in Switzerland and near Hamburg. 16 She painted
two portraits whose subjects are key figures of the emigration,
the Comte d’Artois in uniform in London in 1802, and the
Prince de Condé, a painting which is now held in the collection
at Chantilly [see Plate 5]. Another daughter of the Baron,
Marie-Françoise, married the Comte François de La Rochefoucauld in 1793 in The Hague.17
The Comte d’Esterhazy, after returning to Paris, set about
realising the first political objective of the Princes in exile: the
escape of the King. Several projects were discussed. Esterhazy
gave his version as follows:
Je supposai que tout était concerté, que nous trouverions un
bateau pour traverser la Seine, et que des voitures de l’autre
côté nous auraient bientôt menés sur la route de Chantilly,
où M. le prince de Condé avait tous ses chevaux qui pourraient être distribués sur la route, pour mener le roi au
centre 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 nous
l’étant fait soupçonner par un coup d’oeil, nous restâmes un
peu arrière pour nous communiquer nos soupçons. Le résultat de notre conversation fut que nous observions chacun
un des officiers nationaux, et qu’au moment du passage de
la rivière, si l’un d’eux voulait s’y opposer ou ne pas nous
suivre, nous lui passerions notre couteau de chasse à travers
le corps; c’était la seule arme que nous eussions; ils avaient,
eux, leurs sabres et leur pistolets; mais nous espérions ne
pas leur donner le temps de s’en servir, lorsque le roi s’arrêta
et ordonna à son écuyer de faire venir le relais du Butard au
pont du Pecq. Cet ordre détruisait nos espérances, et plus j’y
ai réflechi depuis, plus j’ai vu combien la fuite eût été
facile.18
Esterhazy sent his wife and children to Britain and prepared
for his own imminent emigration but did not finally leave
France until the end of September 1790.19 He distinguished
himself as the confidant of the Comte d’Artois during the
negotiations at Pillnitz whence he was sent to Saint Petersburg to
be the Princes’ ambassador at the court of Catherine II.20 He
died in Russia in 1805 and his son Valentin became an officer
in the Austrian army.21
Another important émigré of Hungarian origin was Comte
François de Berchény, the son of Marshal Ladislas de Berchény. Commandant of a regiment of hussars, he too belonged
to the circle which surrounded the royal family and he was
probably aware of the project to rescue it. At the time the
escape took place he was with his hussars at Montmédy awaiting
the King. 22 Later, he decided to emigrate and took most of his
regiment with him.23 He entered the service of Austria and at
the time of his presentation at the Austrian court he described
his situation as the following.
Mon père a dû quitter la Hongrie parce qu’il n’aimait pas
trop le roi. Moi, il m’a fallu quitter ma nouvelle patrie parce
que j’aime beaucoup mon roi. Les deux choses nous sont
comptées comme fautes.24
Details of how he retained command of his regiment in the
Austrian army have not survived but in 1793 he joined the
émigrés in London, where he died in 1811. 25
72
In some cases connections between French nobles of Hungarian extraction and their Hungarian relatives proved an
advantage to the émigrés. For example, General Lancelot
Turpin de Crissé, a popular military expert of the time and
author of the famous Essai sur l’art de la guerre (1754), was taken
in by the Esterhazy family in Vienna until his death at the
beginning of August 1793. Prince Esterhazy made all the
arrangements for his stay as well as his funeral in order to return
the kindnesses which the Comte Turpin de Crissé had shown
to the branch of the Esterhazy family which had settled in
France. The old strategist continued writing during his stay
and when he died all his manuscripts were in the Esterhazys’
possession.26
Emigration and desertion were particularly sensitive issues
in the foreign regiments in the French army. The collective
emigration of entire regiments made up of foreigners began
only in 1792.27 Four foreign regiments (Royal-Allemand,
Berchény, Saxe and Berwick) went over to the Austrians.28 The
regiment of Royal-Allemand dragoons and the regiments of
hussars, Saxe and Berchény were part of the armée des Princes
until 1 February 1793 at which date they were incorporated
into the Austrian army.29 The Légion de Bourbon, made up two
squadrons of light cavalry and one division of hussars, entered
the service of the Emperor in autumn 1793. 30 Why were there
so many hussars in the émigré cavalry? According to General
Wenck, these corps were more mobile and more independent
than other units of the French army.31 It is also possible, however, that the royalist activities of the Hungarian and German
officers in these regiments lay behind their heavy desertion
rate.
When Dumouriez crossed over to the enemy in 1793, there
were 13 officers in his entourage from the former regiment of
Berchény. They rejoined their friends in Austrian service and
Comte François-Antoine Berchény began to reorganise his
regiment under Austrian command. In fact, the comte had
very little room to manœuvre, something that was understood
by the Comte de Neuilly, newly arrived from Flanders in this
period, who also wished to rejoin this renowned regiment:
Ayant su, par un des mes camarades, que l’Autriche allait
prendre à sa solde nos régiments de hussards, qui avaient
Ferenc Tóth
73
émigré avec leurs officiers, armes et bagages, et avaient fait
la campagne avec nous, je fis trouver le comte de Berchény,
colonel du régiment de ce nom, et je le priai de me recevoir
comme simple hussard. Il avait connu mon père; et même il
était peiné de ne pouvoir m’accorder ce que je désirais, mais
dit que j’étais trop jeune; et que d’ailleurs sa capitulation
avec le gouvernement autrichien n’étant pas encore signé, il
ne pouvait augmenter sa troupe.32
The annual lists of the imperial and royal army are a rich
source of records relating to the composition of these regiments.
They contained members drawn from well-known French
noble families, for example, Joseph de Broglie, Louis de
Pange, Joseph de Neuilly or François de Goguelat who risked
his life for the royal family at Varennes.33 One thing seems
clear from these registers: the majority of royalist officers were
denied important posts. Career soldiers were often given preference, as in the case of the replacement of François Antoine
de Berchény by colonel Philippe Görger, a former officer in
the Esterhazy regiment of Alsatian extraction.34 Yet while it
was normal for the most important posts to be held by men
without noble title, nobles were often present in a supernumerary capacity. This ‘social revolution’ devised by the Austrians was in part explained by the mutual distrust and conflicting
agendas of the Austrian ministers and of the émigrés, whose
intention it was to re-establish the French monarchy in all its
former grandeur. The Comte Ladislas Valentin Esterhazy
alluded to this:
Le prince de Kaunitz, quoique dans de bons principes,
paraissait, vu son âge, désirer qu’on n’y prît pas une part
active. On ne me laissa pas ignorer à Vienne que les autres
ministres, surtout M. de Spielman, regardaient l’affaiblissement de la France comme un grand advantage pour la maison d’Autriche, et que ce serait contraire à la politique de
cette maison de contribuer à lui rendre sa splendeur, à
moins d’en retirer de grands dédommagements.35
Outside the army, the presence of French émigrés in Hungary
made itself felt through the relatively high number of prisoners
of war. Around 1000 French officers and more than 10 000
subordinate officers and ordinary soldiers were transported
74
into territories under the authority of the Hungarian crown.36
Their treatment by the authorities involved many precautions
because they were widely regarded as dangerous revolutionaries who could contaminate the Hungarian population. This
was true of the vast majority of the officers but there were nevertheless some who openly declared themselves royalists like colonel d’Argoubet, who when detained at Szeged, shouted, ‘I
am a soldier of the King never of the Republic’.37 Conflict
between 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 de
Vassé and major de Bouan, were, with the authorisation of the
Emperor, employed in Hungary in order to gather recruits.38
Their mission had little success.
The spiritual needs of such large numbers of French prisoners of war on Hungarian soil required attention. Non-juror
priests were authorised by the army at Buda and organised by
the archbishops of Esztergom and of Kalocsa. The names of
the 21 French priests who worked in the principal areas of
detention have survived.39 In spite of almost unanimous rejection by the French officers, the presence of the priests was
undoubtedly appreciated by the ordinary soldiers.
There is no figure for the exact number of non-juror
priests who emigrated to Hungary. There are, however, passing
references. In 1795 the question of the arrival of the French
priests inspired a heated debate in the government in Vienna.40
The Council finally agreed to authorise the immigration of secular priests and a group of monks. In the majority of cases the
Hungarian clergy took financial responsibility for the French
priests. At Pécs, relations between the Hungarian clergy and
the French ecclesiastics were good and this fact is borne out in
their correspondence. 41 At Szombathely, even the municipality contributed to the expenses of the French émigré priests.42
Details have survived of the community of priests in Presburg
which existed until 1802 and whose spiritual leader was CamilleLouis de Polignac, former Bishop of Meaux. 43 Others settled
in the Hungarian provinces or in chateaux lent by aristocrats.
The employment of priests also posed problems. Canon
Ladislas Dessoffy, an ecclesiastic of Hungarian origin, was first
employed 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 imperial
court. His funeral orations, written in the style of Bossuet on
the 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 Archduke
Alexander Leopold, inspired a lengthy diatribe against the
Enlightenment.
Dans ces tems malheureux où la simplicité des mœurs
domestiques s’éteint avec la douce familiarité qui en faisait le
charme; où la sainte image de la vertu ne paraît plus qu’un
phantôme importun, où l’innocence attaquée tout à la fois
par l’audace et par le ridicule, n’ose rougir, et ne peut se
défendre; où le luxe monté à son dernier periode, porte
avec l’ensemble de tous les vices, la confusion, la disette et la
mort dans tous les états qu’il atteint de son souffle contagieux;
dans ces tems malheureux, dis-je, la providence nous a donné
dans ALEXANDRE LEOPOLD le spectacle d’une âme échappée
aux illusions de son siècle: il semble qu’elle ait voulu retracer
à nos yeux la mémoire de ces tems fortunés, qui ne sont plus
connus que par la foi des saints livres, en nous laissant voir
dans sa personne la simplicité, la bonne foi, la tempérance,
la modération, la frugalité. 45
With this and other works, long forgotten, Ladislas Dessoffy
made his mark in the literature of popular religious romanticism.46
With regard to the political activity of the émigrés in Hungary, there exist only partial accounts. There is evidence
of political information on the situation in France being sent
back to Hungary. Father Alexovits, chaplain at the University of Pest in an unpublished manuscript quotes passages
from a letter which was sent from Lorraine to an émigré. 47
In 1793 another émigré named Pauget presented to the Conseil de Lieutenance de Buda a ‘Lettre ouverte à la Convention’.48
Some émigrés crossed Hungary in their travels. One of the
most famous of these was Charles-Marie d’Irumberry, Comte
de Salaberry, a future political figure of the Restoration. 49 He
left France in October 1790.50 This travelling émigré devoted
six letters in his subsequently published work to Hungary and
its inhabitants. He made a rather superficial analysis of the
political system and from the few contacts he had with the
76
inhabitants he penned what was really a stereotype of the Hungarian national character.
Il y a des peuples dont le caractère national, s’effaçant de
jour en jour par le mélange des races, devient ainsi plus
difficile à saisir. Mais les Hongrois prennent en naissant les inclinations et les opinions qui les distinguent au moral,
comme leurs traits et leurs habits au physique. [ . . . ] S’il se
rencontre des gens qui aient pour leur liberté un amour qui
va jusqu’à l’enfance, tenant plus aux mots qu’aux choses,
ayant une prévention extrême pour leur pays, qui est, selon
eux, le premier pays du monde, et celui qu’ils sont presque
tous le plus empressés de quitter, ayant une aptitude unique
à s’exprimer en plusieurs langues; parlant avec la gravité la
plus importante de leur diète et de leur constitution, qu’on
leur laisse, je dirai comme on laisse des joujoux dangereux à
des enfants colères, parce que l’un et l’autre sont plus nuisibles 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 generally
welcomed in Hungary with a mixture of generosity and prejudice. All the French and even French-speaking foreigners
were suspect in the eyes of the authorities.52 The Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars coincided with an abundant and vehemently anti-French pamphlet literature. These works served
as ideological arms in the bid to inspire a kind of levée en masse,
Hungarian style, that the Emperor could use against the
French Republican army. Even the traditionally francophile
elite, it was believed, would participate in such a movement.
Comte Théodore Batthyány, who had at one time been a secret
correspondent of the French consul at Trieste 53 and invited
the Baron de Tott to his home at Tarsca, wrote a poem entitled
‘Sentiment d’un patriote hongrois’ (Pressburg, 1796) which
contained 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 Auguste
de Lagarde illustrates the ambiguous attitude of the Hungarians 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 admirable
précision, l’ouverture du Calife de Bagdad par Boyeldieu.
Je m’étais fait servir une glace à la même table qu’un seigneur hongrois, qui paraissait écouter avec ravissement ce
chef-d’oeuvre de l’un de nos meilleurs compositeurs. Tout
d’un coup, se tournant vers mois; “Vous êtes Français?”, me
dit-il, “Oui Monsieur”. “C’est une brave nation que j’estime,
car elle se bat bien: voilà de la musique, encore, qui se compare avec avantage à celle de nos plus célèbres maîtres de
chapelle; enfin, sous beaucoup de rapports, ce peuple peut
se croire supérieur aux autres.” Je m’inclinais en signe de
gratitude, lorsqu’il ajouta: “Mais votre révolution, Monsieur,
dont le plan sagement conçu pouvait amener des résultats
heureux, n’a été qu’une guerre d’intrigans dans laquelle le
plus audacieux a triomphé. – Nous n’ignorons pas, lui dis-je,
combien ce fléau a été désastreux. – Oui, pour l’Europe. Et
pour nous, Monsieur, ses premières victimes. – Ajoutez que
vous n’avez été plaints de personne, et que s’il n’y avait
même à reprocher aux Français que l’assassinat de la fille de
Marie-Thérèse (il tira son sabre à moitié) ce serait assez pour
faire jurer une haine à mort à la nation coupable de ce
crime.” Il s’éloigna aussitôt, sans attendre ma réponse, ne
me laissant pas bien convaincu de l’indulgente urbanité
hongroise.55
Hungarian Francophobia reached its peak in 1809 when part
of Hungary was occupied by the Napoleonic armies. But even
before this period the émigré priests were the focus of undisguised animosity.
We can assume that the majority of French émigrés in Hungary went back to France after the amnesty of 1802 or at the
78
Restoration. The case of French families of Hungarian origin is an exceptional one. An example can be take from the
Dessewffy (Dessoffy in French). The four sons of Jacques
Charles Marie de Dessoffy left France as émigrés.56 During
their stay in Austria and in Hungary they were supported
by their Hungarian relatives.57 Two who were in the army
returned to France in 1811, while the remaining two who were
both ecclesiastics died in Emigration. 58 Yet it is not certain that
their stay in Hungary was dictated by personal choice. The
chaplain Ladislas Dessoffy wanted to return to France in 1815.
He even said farewell in a poem called ‘Mes adieux à Koromopa’, 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 Emigration during the French Revolution was a phenomenon of minor
importance in Hungary. The imperial authorities were not
amenable to lasting French settlement. Paradoxically, the hatred for the French generated by the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars turned the local population against the émigrés.
Most went back to France in 1802, after which date only the
members of a few Franco-Hungarian families and a few priests
remained. Yet the contribution of these émigrés to the implantation of French culture and particularly to the use of the French
language in the Carpathian basin deserves the attention both
of scholars and of posterity.
Text translation by Kirsty Carpenter
Ferenc Tóth
79
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
See Wellmann, I., Magyarország népességének fejlödése a 18. században
(Development of the population of Hungary during the Eighteenth
Century) in Pach, Zs. P. ed., Magyarország története 4/1 (History of Hungary), Budapest, 1989 pp. 25–80; Szekfü, Gu., Etat et Nation, Paris, 1945.
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.
See Zachar, J., A Francia Királyság 18. századi magyar huszárai (The
Hungarian Hussars in French Royal Service in the eighteenth century),
in HK, 1980, pp. 523–58.
Tott, F., ‘Ascension sociale et identité nationale, Intégration de l’immigration hongroise dans la société française au cours du XVIIIe siècle
1692–1815’ (thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris VI, Sorbonne,
1995, pp. 206–10). On his missions to the Orient see Mémoires du baron
de Tott sur les Turcs et les Tartares, Amsterdam, 1784.
His parents were Bálint Jósef Esterhazy and Philippine de Nougarède
de La Garde, see Esterhazy (V.) Mémoires, Paris, 1905.
See Franjou, E., Le comte de Valentin Esterhazy, seigneur de La Celle-SaintCyr, confident de Marie-Antoinette, Auxerre, 1995. The other members
of the Council of War were, MM de Puységur, de Jaucourt, de Guines
– Lieutenants-généraux – MM. D’Autichamp, de Lambert, et d’Esterhazy – maréchaux de camp – et M. de Gribeauval, chef de l’Artillerie,
Lieutenant général; and M. de Foucroy, lieutenant général à la tête
du corps du Génie, see Bombelles, Journal, tome II, Genève, 1982,
p. 186.
Esterhazy, Mémoires, p. 232.
Daudet, E., Histoire de l’émigration pendant la Révolution française, Paris,
1924, tome I, pp. 3–4.
Esterhazy, Mémoires, pp. 232–5.
BN série Mf. LB 39–7759 lettre de M. Le Comte d’Esterhazy, commandant du Haynault à M. le Marquis de Gouy d’Arsy, Député à
l’Assemblée Nationale, Valenciennes, le 27 août 1789. Also, MF. LB
39–7760, Note de M. Esterhazy, commandant en second en Hainaut
et Cambrésis, sur la dénonciation portée contre lui, S.l.n.d.
On the mutiny at Douai, see Archives municipale de Douai, série H5
1.20. Wagnair, Ch., ‘La garde nationale de Douai sous la Révolution’,
Mémoire de D.E.S., Lille, 1966, p. 13.
Cited by Diesbach, G. de, Histoire de l’émigration, Paris 1975, p. 388. See
Andrewy, G., Les émigrés français dans le canton de Fribourg, 1789–1815,
Neuchâtel, 1972, p. 129.
Ibid.
Magyar Hírmondó (Hungarian Courier) tome IV, Vienne, 1793,
p. 499.
Németh, A., Burgenland, Budapest, 1990, p. 156.
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.
80
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
Palóczi, E., Báró Tóth Ferenc a Dardanellák megerösitöje (Baron de Tott
engineer of the Dardanelles), Budapest, 1916, p. 181.
Esterhazy, Mémoires, pp. 301–2.
Franjou, E. Le comte . . . op. cit., p. 48.
Daudet, p. 92.
Zachar, J., Idegen hadakban, Budapest, 1984, p. 444 and OSZK série
Ms. Oct. Hung. 325 (Budapest).
Fischbach, G., La fuite de Louis XVI, d’après les Archives Municipales de
Strasbourg, Paris, 1879, p. 122.
Rupelle, J. de la., ‘Le maréchal de Berchény de Szekes’, in Vivat Hussar,
n. 12, Tarbes, 1977, p. 131.
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.
Zachar, Idegen . . . , op. cit., p. 407.
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. Prussienne 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 vengeance de son Roy ne sauroit être importun vis-à-vis d’un Monarque
qui 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 de
Mayence. ( . . . ).’
Poulet, H., Les volontaires de la Meurthe aux armées de la révolution (levée
de 1791), Paris–Nancy, 1910, pp. 45–6.
Kriegsarchiv, (KA), Vienne, Hofkriegsrat Protokoll 1792 série G fol.
7679–7680.
Wrede, A.F. von., Geschichte des K. und K. Wehrmacht III/2, Wien, 1901,
pp. 807–9.
Ibid., p. 810.
Wenk, G., ‘Les hussards en émigration’, in Vivat Hussar, no. 1,
Tarbes, 1966, pp. 71–2.
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 Légion
de Bourbon in the imperial army. Kriegsarchiv (KA) Vienne, série MI
RI (Contrôles de troupes) 10800 Légion Bourbon.
KA, Musterlisten 4078–4079 Bercseny-Husaren Revisions-Listen
(1793–1798) Standes-Tabellen (1795–1798).
KA, Musterlisten Bercseny-Husaren Revisions-Listen (1793–1798).
Esterhazy, Mémoires, p. 308.
See Lenkefi, F., ‘Kakas a kasban. Francia hadifoglyok Magyarországon
1793–1795,’ (The cock in the cage, French prisoners of war in Hungary) Thèse de Doctorat, Budapest, 1994; Lenkefi, F., ‘Francia hadifoglyok Magyarországon 1793–1795, in Levéltári Szemle 1995/2,
Budapest, 1995 and Barcsay-Amant, Z., A francia forradalmi háborúk
hadifoglyok Magyarországon idetelepitésük elso esztendejében (The French
prisoners of the revolutionary wars during the first year of their
Ferenc Tóth
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
81
internment), Budapest, 1934; Georgescu, I., ‘Les prisonniers français
dans les camps du sud-est de l’Europe au temps des guerres de l’Autriche avec la France’, in Revue Roumaine d’Histoire 1976/3, pp. 509–31.
Lenkefi, F., Francia hadifoglyok . . . , op. cit., p. 44.
Lenkefi, F., Kakas a . . . , op. cit., pp. 216–18.
Lenkefi, F., ‘A lelkigondozás problémái a francia hadifoglyok körében
Magyarországon 1794–1795’ (The problems of spiritual care of the
French prisoners of war in Hungary) in HK 107/3, Budapest, 1994,
pp. 3–17.
See Hermann, E., ‘Francia emigráns papok Magyarországon a nagy
forradalom idején’, (French émigré priests in Hungary during the
Great Revolution) in Katholikus Szemle 1933/VII, Budapest, 1933, pp.
36–46.
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.
Vas Megyei Levéltár (Departmental archives of the Vas, Szombathely)
série V/105/a/aa Protocollum Perceptionis Cassae Domesticae et Erogationis (1787–1797) le 28 mai 1795.
Vassko, I., A pécsi püspöki . . . , op. cit., p. 103.
Eloge funèbre de très-haut, très puissant, très-excellent Prince, Alexandre
Léopold, archiduc d’Autriche, palatin d’Hongrie par le comte de Ladislas
Dessöffy de Csernek et de Tarkö, licentié ès loix, chanoine du chapître noble de
l’insigne église cathédrale de Toul, examinateur sinodal du diocèse, Vienne,
1795. And the Oraison funèbre de très-haut, très-puissante, très-excellente
personne Marie Thérèse Caroline Joséphine, Impératrice d’Autriche, reine de
Hongrie et de Bohême par le comte Ladislas Dessöfy de Csernek, licentié ès loix,
ancien chanoine de la cathédrale de Toul. Examinateur synodal du diocèse, bibliothècaire de l’Archevêché primatial de Hongrie, Presbourg, 1807.
Eloge funèbre de très-haut . . . , op. cit., pp. 25–6.
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 de
l’armée avec Mademoiselle Henriette de Brunsvik, célébré à Korompa, le ? juin
1813, Bude, 1813; Mes adieux à Korompa en 1815, Bude, 1815; Coelestine.
Ein Schauspiel in 1 Akt von Graf Ladislas Desseöffy nach einer wahren
Anekdote französische bearbeitet übersetzt von Joh. Gottl., Schildbach,
Pesth, 1816.
Eckhardt, S., De Sicambria à Sans-souci, Budapest, 1943, p. 228.
Ibid., p. 229.
Michaud, L-G., Biographie Universelle, T. LXXX, Paris, 1847, pp. 437–9.
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 suis
parti de Paris le 5 octobre 1790. Le premier objet intéressant que j’ai
vu, a été la plaine de Rocroi que le Grand Condé traversa en vainqueur en 1643 et que son petit-fils traversoit en proscrit en 1789’.
Quoted by Humbert, Jean, ‘La Hongrie du XVIIIe siècle vue par des
voyageurs’, in Nouvelle Revue de Hongrie, Budapest, 1938, (Sept),
p. 236. Source Birkás, Géza, Francia utazók Magyarországon (French
Travellers in Hungary) Szeged, 1948, p. 101.
82
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
This was described by Robert Townson at Löcse (present-day Levoca )
who was summoned before the magistrates of Leutschau whose job it
was to ‘surveiller soigneusement la sûreté publique’. ‘Nous vous avons
mandé, R.T., qui vous donnez pour voyageur anglais parce que nous
vous suspectons très fort d’être un émissaire des jacobins de France.
Nous avons examiné votre passeport; il certifie que vous êtes un particulier d’Angleterre, qui fait le tour de la Hongrie; mais nous avons
tous jugé que ce n’est autre qu’un faux passeport, et que vous êtes très
certainement un agent de la jacobinière; car il serait en effet fort plaisant et tout à fait extraordinaire qu’un ministre anglais expédiát un
passeport écrit en langue française’. He was given no time to explain
and accused of being French on account of his manner, his speaking
and the fact that he was wearing Hungarian style pants – proof of his
desire not to disclose his identity. They kept his passport. See, Humbert, Jean, La Hongrie . . . , op. cit., pp. 235–6.
Balazs E., ‘A francia-magyar kapcsolatok egy rendhagyó fejezete,’ in
Köpeczi, B., and Sziklay, L. eds, A francia felvilágosodas és a magyar
kultúra, Budapest, 1975, p. 157.
See Leval, A., La révolution française, Napoleon Ier et la Hongrie pendant
les guerres révolutionnaires, Budapest, 1921; Leval, A., La révolution
française, Napoleon Ier et la Hongrie, Essai de bibliographie, Budapest,
1921; Eckhardt, S., A francia forradalom eszméi Magyarországon, Budapest, 1924.
Lagarde, A. de., Voyage de Moscou à Vienne par Kiow, Odessa, Constantinople, Bucharest et Hermanstadt ou lettres adressées à Jules Griffith, Paris,
1824, pp. 430–1.
Archives Départementales de Meuse, série 182 J 19; Service historique de l’armée de Terre (Château de Vincennes), Pensions militaires 1ère série 61875 (Louis Dessoffy de Cservek); and Dubois, J.,
Listes des émigrés, prêtres déportés et des condamnés pour cause révolutionnaire du Département de la Meuse, Bar-le-Duc, 1911, p. 67.
See Hungarian National Archives, série P 91 Lettres de Ladislas
Dessewffy (1794–1797).
Eble, G., A cserneki és tarkôi Dessewffy család, Budapest, 1903, pp. 185–212
and Dessewffy, S.A., The History of the Dessewffy de Csernek and Tarkeô,
Perth (Australia) 1979, pp. 42–3.
Desseöffy, L., Mes adieux à Korompa en 1815, Bude, 1815. Korompa
was a village where Ladislas Dessoffy stayed at the home of Hermann
de Chotek, in a superb chateau which had belonged to the Brunswick
family but had been bought by Chotek after his marriage to Henriette
de Brunswick.
5 Portugal and the Émigrés
David Higgs
At the end of the eighteenth century, Paris was at least a week’s
travel by both land and sea, from Lisbon. The two cities were
also distant in their attitudes to governance. Although neither
Portugal nor France had convoked an Estates General since
the seventeenth century, France, during the 1780s, in its parlements, had institutions which participated in a semi-public
debate about royal policy. The parlements found no equivalent in the submissive law courts of Portugal. There were no
regional Estates in Portugal to compare with those of Languedoc.1 The French Enlightenment had little resonance in Portuguese-language publications before 1800; printing presses
themselves were forbidden in Brazil, the great Portuguesespeaking possession in South America.2 The Catholic Church,
seconded by the Inquisition, disapproved of Enlightenment
ideas. At the end of the eighteenth century, European Portugal was primarily a peasant society, dotted with small towns.
There were only two cities of any size, the capital with about
200 000 inhabitants, and Oporto, with perhaps 44 000. Both
cities had a significant number of foreign residents and
visitors.
Lisbon was the capital of a Thalassic empire of trading stations on the sea routes of the world that linked Salvador da
Bahia and Rio de Janeiro; Goa; Macau and others. The Portuguese elite was conscious of the immensity of the territorial
claims of a kingdom which, in Europe and the Atlantic islands,
did not exceed three million souls. Communication in the
Empire was by ship. One vessel carried the 21 February 1792
letter of the Overseas Secretary, Martinho de Melo e Castro
(1716–95), to the viceroy in Rio de Janeiro, blaming the
French revolutionary clubs for the ‘destructive fire’ against the
wise and paternal government of the natural and legitimate
rulers of France. He went on to warn against all such means of
seduction, and forbade all and any communication between
the inhabitants of the captaincy of Rio de Janeiro and the passengers, crew, and anybody else who happened to come on
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84
board French ships.3 The correspondence of the colonial council that was forwarded to the governors throughout the Portuguese world also warned of the threat of French subversion.
Foreign visitors like Beckford,4 Southey,5 and ambassador
Bombelles6 stressed the backwardness and self-absorbed nature
of Portuguese life, which they contrasted unfavourably with
the outlook of the North Atlantic world. Beckford was in a special position to hear this foreign disapproval when talking in
July 1787 with his agent Thomas Horne (1722–92), 7 who is
buried in the English Cemetery in Lisbon:
we had a long conversation upon the dirt, dullness and despotism of Portugal, and the little such a government had to
offer worth any acceptance.8
Beckford conversed with the Duque de Marialva in the French
he had learned in Lausanne as a teenager. The opinions he
wrote in his Journal are representative of the condescension
by many northern Europeans that can be encountered in
eighteenth-century commentaries on Portugal, its grandees
and fidalguia, and its clergy.
French émigrés often reflected such commonly voiced opinions on Portugal before they even arrived there.9 Doubtless
many of them had read Voltaire (who never crossed the
Pyrenees) describing Candide, ‘se soutenant à peine, prêché,
fessé, absous et béni’ before they reached Rossio Square in
central Lisbon where outdoor Autodafés had occasionally been
held until the 1760s. Chevalier Blondin d’Abancourt called
Lisbon:
Cette grande ville, batie en amphithéâtre, et son port incomparable, éclairés tous deux par un radieux soleil. 10
The émigrés also knew that Portugal was a Catholic country
where the Inquisition was still in business.
How did the Portuguese perceive the French émigrés
among them? Portugal, Spain and Italy were rococco Catholic
societies with different responses to French émigrés to those of
Protestant northern Europe. Like much of the Portuguese
elite, the advisors to the pious Queen Maria I, and after 1792
to her son João serving as Regent, were too distant in intellectual attitudes and culture from the French to make the distinction between the ‘good’ émigrés and the ‘bad’ Jacobins. Mallet
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du Pan wrote a political correspondence to D. Rodrigo de
Sousa Coutinho in which he analysed the émigrés as but one of
the components of the unfolding Revolution. His comments
were not laudatory. Writing from Berne to Turin on 28 March
1795 he noted:
En ce moment, les Royalistes Émigrés sont entièrement effacés, et n’ont pas plus d’influence au dedans qu’au dehors. La
nullité profonde des Princes, et la conduite de leurs entours,
ont plus avili les Aristocrates, aux yeux même des Royalistes
de l’intérieur, que l’acharnement des Républicains. 11
Dom Rodrigo had served as an ambassador to Turin. A noted
partisan of the British connection, he was probably a freemason
and certainly had a nuanced view of the merits of the political
programme of the Emigration. 12 He returned to Lisbon in
1796 to take the place of the deceased Martinho de Melo e
Castro as Secretary of State for the Navy and the Colonies.
Some courtiers were more or less sympathetic to the aristocratic émigrés. The Portuguese élite, however, was too aware
of the potential dangers to its world possessions of larger and
more 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 one
of suspicion. Francophobia was strong at all levels of society.
Long before 1789 those surrounding the Portuguese throne
and altar expressed revulsion for godless ‘francesia’. With the
outbreak of the Revolution the collapse of French royal
authority seemed to justify the oft-repeated warnings of the
dangers of free thought. 13
Michel Vovelle, the French historian, called for study of the
transmission by the émigrés of the negative stereotypes of the
French Revolution:
ils [les émigrés] ont été considérés depuis l’ouvrage classique
de Baldensperger plus pour ce qu’ils ont reçu, au contact
des pays qu’ils découvraient, que pour ce qu’ils y ont
véhiculé – images et clichés sur la Révolution.14
That transmission of the history of the memory of the French
Revolution needs to be written in the light of the way that it
was passed on, and elaborated over time.
86
The popular assumption that all irreligious foreigners
were French extended to the prisoner accused in 1794 of
blaspheming and denounced to the Inquisition, although in
fact he was from Milan. 15 There were some Portuguese who
were sympathetic to, or at least curious about, the principles of
the French Revolution as they spread into southern Europe.
In 1798 a parody of the Christian creed entitled ‘Creed of the
Lombard Republic’ was found in the possession of a lawyer in
Barcelos in northern Portugal. It started ‘I believe in the
French Republic’ and ended with a reference to émigrés:
I believe in French intelligence and generosity, the dignity
of the Executive Directory in Paris, the destruction of the
émigrés, in the remission of tyranny, in the resurrection of
the natural rights of man and in the future peace, liberty
and eternal equality.16
New French arrivals in Portugal, either ecclesiastical or secular,
were subject more to suspicion than sympathy. The General
Intendant of Police, Pina Manique, thought that many French
priests were infected with Jansenist ideas and that all Frenchmen were Jacobins. His suspicions were fuelled by the observations of the Comte de Châlons, the ambassador of Louis
XVI, who stayed on to represent the Comte de Provence in
Lisbon, and of the head of the French Barbanites who divined
unorthodoxy among recent clerical arrivals. Some French residents, like the merchant Pascal LeQuem, sent letters of
denunciation, all of which fed the paranoia of Pina Manique.
After one extensive discussion on the subject of a tavern in rua
Formosa owned by Italians where many foreigners, ‘particularly Frenchmen’, gathered to play ball and to sing Portuguese
revolutionary songs, Pina Manique called upon the minister to
give some ‘lively and severe blows’ (‘dar alguns golpes de
severidade mais vivos’) against the songsters. He concluded by
saying that his motivation might be his negative outlook (‘melancholia minha’) but that he was animated by the purest of
sentiments: his desire to conserve peace and public tranquillity and the safely of the royal family.17 Ten days later he reported sending a French émigré naval officer to arrest the owners of
the establishment on rua Formosa, and he ordered the arrest
of 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.
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The latter two were blamed for Sunday gatherings of libertines – of both sexes – and he said that among their possessions
were prints showing priests committing obscene actions with
women.18 He added that perhaps the ‘plan’ was to attract libertine individuals who could be easily convinced to embrace
revolutionary principles. Pina Manique proposed to restrict
the émigrés to one of the towns with a garrison in the Alentejo
or Trás-os-Montes, or alternatively to forbid any foreigner,
‘qualquer que seja a sua jerarquia’ – whatever his rank – to
establish a residence in the countryside.19 Writing to the corregedor of Evora in July 1795, Pina Manique said that it was
certain that even before 1789 many regulars were Jansenists
and possessed by the evil called ‘Philosophie’ that precipitated
the French nation into the ruin of Revolution. He added that
many had sworn oaths to the Civil Constitution and embraced
the errors ‘which are now spreading in France’. 20
The total population of civilian fugitives from the Revolution who were resident in Portugal in the 1790s never exceeded
500, and it was made up mostly of males. This was very different
from the biggest émigré centres, those of London and Hamburg, both numbering up to 40 000.21 The study of émigrés in
Portugal thus needs to establish a chronology, to separate the
attitudes of those French people who were there as part of the
counter-revolution; those who were there as part of the Atlantic
economy; or even those who were non-ideological refugees of
the anti-revolution.
Some Portuguese themselves left their country, possibly for
political reasons. Bourdon explained the long exile (until
1821) of Correa da Serra from Portugal by the implausible
reason that he was
compromis par l’aide qu’il avait apportée au Girondin
[Pierre Marie] Auguste Broussonet, alors réfugié au Portugal, il partit subitement en 1795 pour Londres.
Carrère had claimed that Broussonet was protected by the
Duque de Lafões, himself a member of the royal family (as the
son of an illegitimate son of Pedro II, D. Miguel).22 Since Lafões
was in favour at court with Dom João, and indeed was entrusted
with the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Portuguese forces when war with Spain broke out, this seems hardly
likely.
88
Luís A. de Oliveira Ramos defined the émigrés as but one of
four categories among French residents of Portugal at the end
of the eighteenth century: those with entrepreneurial skills
and drive like Ratton 23 those who were expelled in the 1790s
as suspected partisans of Revolution, those individuals whose
‘ideário’ was unknown, and royalists like de Rosières.24
In Portugal, as elsewhere, the émigrés had financial problems. In this, naturally enough, there were distinctions between
those who had private funds which met their needs, those
who did not, and those who sought ways to earn a living.
Unable to speak Portuguese, they were necessarily dependent on compatriots who did, or those educated Portuguese
who could converse in French. (If we exclude Spanish as sufficiently cognate to Portuguese to be mutually intelligible,
French was the most widely known foreign language.) The
émigrés thus found themselves in contact with economic emigrants from France who ranged from booksellers and merchants
to hairdressers and tailors.25 Writing of Lisbon, Carrère
noted:
Il y a, dans cette ville, un nombre considérable d’artistes et
d’artisans étrangers; il y a plus de français que de toutes les
autres nations ensemble; tous les parfumeurs, la plupart des
horlogers, beaucoup de perruquiers, plusieurs peintres,
doreurs, orfèvres, metteurs en œuvre sont français; on en
trouve encore parmi les relieurs, les serruriers, les menuisiers et les autres artisans.26
Long-term French residents of Portugal, especially those with
wives and children, had scant contact with the diplomats of the
French Embassy, although their collective organisation in Lisbon was concerned with trade relations between the two countries.27 Bombelles quoted approvingly a diplomatic colleague
who said of such French ‘expatriés’
la plupart étaient les ennemis du gouvernement qui les vit
naître et qui n’obligea que des ingrats.28
In January 1788 he was raging against the ‘misérables marchands’ who criticised the abbé Garnier of the Saint Louis
Church (p. 246) and by the end of his posting he was calling
them ‘insensés’ and ‘mutins’. Perhaps the émigrés made use of
the Saint Louis church (São José parish) and turned to the
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abbé Garnier for confession: he had lived in Portugal for decades
and had been the tutor of the Duque de Cadaval.29
There were evident differences in social life between France
and Portugal. Writers commented on the limited freedom of
elite women, as when Dumouriez wrote
Les intrigues [amoureuses] sont difficiles et dangereuses en
Portugal, et on ne voit les femmes qu’aux spectacles et dans
les églises.30
Rochechouart, who arrived in Lisbon in 1800 at the age of
twelve to serve in an émigré regiment ‘à cocarde blanche’ commanded by his relative the Marquis de Mortemart, recalled
intrigues with Portuguese women that started in church.31 Mme
de Lage de Volude said: ‘Il n’y a point de société; les femmes
ne vivent qu’avec les commensaux de leur maison’. . . . 32
The French Ambassador, Bombelles, had much more contact
with the Portuguese court nobility than the writers mentioned
but he also commented on various occasions in the late 1780s on
the restrictions on daughters and married women in terms of
social life. He also criticised the early marriages and excessive
childbearing of Portuguese élite women.33 Since the French émigrés were primarily male, these social customs meant they had
little contact with the family life of their Portuguese counterparts.
To foreign eyes, the Portuguese nobility seemed to be less
polished than that of France. Laure Junot (or perhaps her
ghost writer, Balzac), summarised stereotypes found in earlier
writers on Portugal when she wrote:
The nobility of Portugal resembles no other. It contains
none of those elements which may be turned to advantage
in stormy times when a country is in danger. . . . In no country, however, is the difference between the upper and lower
classes so strongly marked as in Portugal. (Memoirs, III, 140)
Direct observations at court and elsewhere must have formed
the basis of her remarks, but she spoke no more than a little
Portuguese even by the end of her stay. When she used Portuguese expressions and names in her memoirs, they appeared
mangled and hispanised. In 1787 Beckford lamented that his
patron, the Marquis de Marialva, a perennial favourite of the
Queen and a titular of the highest Portuguese nobility, had not
seen fit to present him to the French Ambassador, M. de
90
Bombelles, ‘the only person in this stagnated capital who has
any idea of society.’
Bombelles, in his own diary, made numerous critical asides
about the Portuguese nobility. He also appraised his British
colleague:
M. Walpole, doué de fort peu d’esprit, se permet tant qu’il
peut de lourdes plaisanteries sur toute la noblesse du pays et
comme il prête fort à la raillerie de son côté et de celui de sa
femme, on leur rend à l’usure les sarcasmes qu’ils font.34
Beckford, whom Walpole detested, described the aristocratic
Marialva family which extended so generous a welcome to
him: ‘Not a book to be seen at the Marialvas. They never
read’.35 When the marquis and his son spent a whole day with
Beckford in August, 1787, he wrote:
Both my dear friend and his son are the greatest loungers in
Europe. They absolutely know not what to do with themselves, but gape and tramp about in the most listless uncomfortable manner. . . . They wear me to a mere bone. Such
society is enough to impair one’s faculties. I am perfectly
sure I sink deeper and deeper in the slough of idleness and
stupidity. 36
The Duc de Coigny37 lived in a house on the rua da Quintinha
which had been opened in 1764. This was close to the Praça
das Flores in the restaurant and entertainment district familiar
to modern tourists; the parish was that of N. Senhora das Mercês. The salon of the duchesse was the focus of social life for the
refugees. Jeanne Françoise Aglaé d’Andlau was the widow of
the Comte Hardouin de Châlons who had first arrived as
French ambassador to Portugal in 1790. Châlons resigned as
ambassador with the progress of revolutionary politics in Paris
but stayed on in Portugal until his death in July 1794. Fourteen months later Châlon’s widow married Coigny, himself a
widower. The household was perhaps not overly opulent: an
advertisement in the Gazeta de Lisboa of August 1796 advertised two stallions ‘em casa do Excelentíssimo Duque de Cogny
[sic] na Quintinha’ and the following year the duke offered
four carriages of different specifications for sale. 38 Toustain’s
memoirs said that Coigny’s house was the rendezvous of
French aristocratic society in Lisbon since they found Portu-
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91
guese society closed and anti-social.39 Unlike La Ferronays in
1803, who said of London that, ‘Je vais beaucoup plus dans le
monde anglais que dans le monde aigri de nos compatriotes’,
there seems to have been little social interaction between the
émigrés and their equivalents among the aristocrats and fidalgos
of the Portuguese capital. In 1803 when General Lannes arrived
in Portugal as French ministre plénipotentiaire he demanded the
expulsion of Coigny, and with regret the Prince Regent D. João
agreed to this. 40 Lord FitzGerald let Coigny take ship to Gibraltar to have more time to arrange a suitable passage to London. His wife followed him from Lisbon six months later. The
disruption of that household must have been a major blow to
the social life of the émigrés in Lisbon. Lannes attacked the
policies 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 Pina
Manique caused ‘o seu afastamento da cena pública.’41
Another French noble, named Vioménil living on the same
rua da Quintinha, came from a Lorraine family claiming nobility since 1341 and was probably Charles-Gabriel, Baron de
Vioménil, born on 26 February 1767. He had been a captain of
hussars in France in 1786 and had entered Portuguese service
as an émigré. Vioménil’s wife was Madeleine-Françoise-Louis
Rose de Gemit de Luscan who died in Lisbon in 1804, leaving
him a daughter who herself was to die before the age of twelve.
He was confirmed in French service by Napoleon on 15 February 1808, and was made a maréchal de camp by the Restoration in November 1814. The baron was almost certainly the
reason for the subsequent presence in the Portuguese service
of Charles-Joseph-Hyacinthe du Houx, Marquis de Vioménil
(1734–1827), who had been an aide-de-camp to Chevert during
the Seven Years War and had been commended for action in
Corsica under the command of the maréchal de Vaux. In
America he served under Rochambeau. He became governor
of Martinique in 1789, returned to France and left as an émigré
to serve in the Condé army, and then became a lieutenant
général in Russia from 1798 to 1809 before becoming a
maréchal général in Portugal from 1810 to 1814. When he
returned to France, he was named a life peer in June 1814 and
a hereditary peer in August 1815. René de la Tour du Pin
Montauban, his son-in-law, who had married the marquis’s
92
daughter in London in 1807, was also a cavalry officer in Portugal. During the period of the Emigration, Vioménil’s military
and family connections stretched from Russia to Portugal
to England.42
Émigré circles in Lisbon intersected with the older tradition
of foreign officers serving in the Portuguese armed forces.
Joseph de Champalimaud de Nussane, a French engineer in the
Portuguese service since the 1770s, had married a Portuguese
woman. His son José Joaquim’s entire life since childhood was
with the Portuguese army and his loyalty was to Portugal. In
1807 he resigned with the arrival of Junot and was active in the
revolt against the French in 1808. French officers also entered
Portuguese service in the 1790s. Antoine-Hyacinthe-Anne de
Chastenet, Comte de Puységur, was a lieutenant de vaisseau in
1790, a rear admiral in Portugal in 1800 and died in Paris in
1807.
In his account of French émigrés in Portugal, Chaves listed
136 émigrés, ranging from Beckford’s cook Simon, to the
Comte Jean Victor de Novion (1745–1825), who rose to the
posts of lieutenant-colonel of Infantry in 1798 and commander of the Royal Police Guard in 1801. Novion had served
at Trier as a volunteer in a company of the Vermandois-Infanterie regiment and he was noted for his zealous service.43 He
remained in Lisbon at the time of the French invasions and in
December was named commandant des armes by Junot, and
returned to France with the French forces.44 Chaves also mentioned a few French noblewomen – the Comtesse de Chálons,
who subsequently become Duchesse de Coigny, the Marquise
de Lage de Volude, the Comtesse de Puységur and Mme de
Roquefeuille. Later, as wife of the French ambassador, Laure
Junot would know two French noblewomen in Lisbon: the
Duquesa de Cadaval, née Marie-Madeleine de MontmorencyLuxembourg, a younger daughter of the Duc de Pinay-Luxembourg-Chátillon, president of the Ordre de la Noblesse in the
1789 Estates General,45 and Mme de Braacamp de Sobral, a
daughter of Comte Louis de Narbonne. Laure Junot, in her
writings, conveyed that the young French Duquesa de Cadaval
had been harshly disciplined if not beaten by her husband:
‘truths such as these caused the Duchesse de Cadaval to shed
bitter tears’. (Memoirs, III, 140.)
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There was one final category that Chaves did not, however,
investigate in any detail: French priests who reached Portugal
and were considered to be émigrés. Baldensperger long ago
noted the lack-lustre priestly accounts of the Emigration (I, 224).
In 1794, Manique instructed the magistrate (corregedor) of the
Braga district (comarca) that he should distinguish between
orthodox and exemplary priests from France and those with
Jansenist notions who should be expelled from the kingdom.46
The Portuguese clergy were well aware of the menace to their
profession of the French Revolution. The crown wrote to the
bishops asking for donations to the war effort, one example
being that of the Count Bishop of Arganil. 47 On 19 August
1794, Pina Manique informed a courtier of the arrival of ten
French priests but noted that he had resisted the disembarkation of many others for fear that they would become too influential in the communities in which they lodged. 48
This suspicion is reminiscent of the difficulties of the French
émigré clergy in the Papal States. The Italians were vigilant in
watching for ‘democratic’ attitudes among the émigrés and
scattered them among different religious houses to avoid dangerous, and possibly subversive, concentrations of French
priests. Nine out of ten of the French priests who emigrated to
the Pontifical state had departed by the end of the 1790s.49
This was contrasted by the case of the French priest in Portugal who, in September 1800, denounced another French
resident of Lisbon to the Inquisition. The denounced man was
the son of a man living near the former Treasury and had
voiced ‘propositions’ that religions were equal in merit, that
Christianity was the most intolerant of beliefs since it denied
the validity of other faiths, and that priests were scoundrels
who keep people in ignorance. The letter was annotated to the
effect that the accused was a Protestant. Called to the Estaus
palace of the Inquisition he was solemnly warned, on 5 February
1801, to mind his tongue.50 Another priest who stayed on in
Portugal was Monseigneur de Montagnac, the former bishop of
Tarbes, who died in Lisbon in 1801.51 Once the eliminations
from the émigré lists became numerous, however, many of the
band of French exiles in Portugal returned to their homeland.
The numbers who stayed on were tiny. In due course they had
to deal with the French invasions of their host country.
94
In 1807, the entire Braganza court sailed for Rio de Janeiro
in 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 understood
on the banks of the Mondêgo. ‘You know that the nobles and
learned men of France having been persecuted, dispersed and
exiled when [France] rose against her legitimate king Louis
XVI because of the machinations of the perverse and seditious
Jacobins’, underwent ‘notable changes’ and experienced
democratic, aristocratic and monarchical government before a
‘foreigner of humble condition, revolutionary, ambitious and
tyrannical who wanted to dominate the whole world’ sat on
the throne.52 In late absolutist Portugal the panegyrics of the
dead Louis XVI elaborated the sacrificial imagery of the Christian Good Death (‘boa morte’) in sermons and was part of the
on-going hagiographic literature on the executed members of
the Bourbon family.53
Once established in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, the royal family
did not return for 12 years.54 When it returned, Portugal was a
country in the grip of liberal revolution. The French émigrés
they then encountered were Bonapartists. The Cortes now sat
as a representative institution, the Inquisition was abolished in
1821, and the crown began its apprenticeship in parliamentary
government under the menace of civil war.
In conclusion, there were relatively few émigrés in Portugal
and they had scant influence there. Perhaps future research in
the Portuguese military archives will reveal some significant
linkages: did the return to service in France of Vioménil have
a link to the careers of Portuguese military collaborators with
the French? Did French-trained officers serving in Portugal
transmit knowledge of pre-revolutionary French techniques
to their commands? Certainly the police force overseen by
Novion in Lisbon made a big contribution to public safety in a
city famed for its thieves and cutpurses.
There is no conclusive evidence that the French émigré ecclesiastics made any mark on Portuguese culture. Since Pombal
and the changes in the Coimbra University curriculum, the
Portuguese hierarchy was resolutely regalist. Ultramontanes
sometimes declared this regalism to be ‘Jansenist’ but there is
no evidence that French refugees participated in Portuguese
discussions of theology in the 1790s. Monseigneur de Royère,
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bishop of Castres, the only ecclesiastical deputy from his diocese to the Estates General, crossed Spain on his way to Portugal
to find a refuge at the Monastery of Alcobaça, where he died.55
William Beckford described the hospitality of its monks in
1794 but had nothing to say of the refugee bishop resident
there. Despite the best efforts of the editor of a manuscript on
the French Revolution found in the public library of Oporto, it
was impossible to identify the clerical author. It may have been
written in Spain, but contained some lines relevant to ecclesiastical émigrés in Portugal:
Le Portugal, cette nation qui par sa bravoure et sa loyauté
fait revivre la gloire que les hauts faits de ses ancêtres lui ont
transmise, exerce également une noble hospitalité envers
les prêtres français. Ceux de nos collègues qui s’y sont
réfugiés, y reçoivent les marques du plus haut intérêt. L’illustrissime archevêque de Braga les a accueillis avec une
bonté aussi touchante que généreuse. Comme monseigneur
l’évêque d’Orense, il les a admis dans son palais et dans sa
plus intime familiarité.56
Perhaps more important in the long term was the place that
Portugal took in the political analyses of the émigrés, and their
audiences, after they returned to France. In the 1790s the
émigrés pointed critically to the differences between Portuguese and French aristocratic society. They were full of nostalgia for the douceur de vivre of Versailles. In comparison, Queluz
and the entourage of Queen Maria seemed too pious and inelegant. Portugal was expensive compared with other parts of
Europe. Toustain’s memoirs showed the social distance that
existed between the émigrés and the Portuguese. The émigrés
were startled by Portuguese suspicion of foreigners: Coigny
said ‘L’esprit du Portugal est affreux contre les étrangers.’57
With the French religious revival at the start of the nineteenth century and the re-scripting of French court culture in
a Catholic formulation,58 old Portugal might appear, in hindsight and at a distance, to be a good thing. By the 1820s, when
constitutionalism had arrived in Portugal, the royalist press in
Paris contrasted the superficial urban layer of the Portuguese
nation, especially in Lisbon and Oporto – rotted by dangerously liberal ideas of French provenance – with the ignorant
but traditional peasantry, submissive to the paternal authority
96
of the king, and living in superstitious awe of the Church and
her miracles.59 Portugal became part of a French conservative
imagery of the Christian Catholic south under attack from
freemasons and liberals. Those attitudes would continue up to
the time of Doctor Salazar.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Portugal has not excited much interest among historians of
the French émigrés. The three volumes by Antoine published
in 1828, the three volumes of Forneron in 1884–90, and the
work of Ernest Daudet had only a handful of Lusitanian references.60 The same can be said of Jean Vidalenc, Les émigrés
français 1789–1825 (1963), the Duc de Castries, La vie quotidienne des émigrés (1966) and Ghislain de Diesbach, Histoire de
l’émigration 1789–1814 (1975).
Historians of Portugal have omitted to stress this aspect of
the revolutionary period. The 1947 biography by Marcus Cheke
on Carlota Joaquina, the Spanish wife of the Prince Regent,
does not touch on them. There is no modern biography of
D. João who acted as Regent during the period the émigrés were
arriving. Boyd Alexander, in his book England’s Wealthiest Son:
a Study of William Beckford and his edition of The Journal of William Beckford in Portugal and Spain 1787–1788 61 provides excellent information on conditions in Portugal. Published more
than a century ago, Luz Soriano and Latino Coelho, in their
histories of the period, made only passing references to the
émigrés. Latino Coelho put émigrés into his narrative particularly as they affected military matters.62
For the best modern overview, the reader is directed to
Castelo Branco Chaves, A emigração francesa em Portugal durante
a Revolução, Lisbon, 1984. Professor Oliveira Ramos has written
on 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
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
97
João Luís Lisboa, Ciência e Política: ler nos finais do Antigo Regime (Cultura
Moderna e Contemporânea – 7), Lisbon, 1991.
ANRJ, Codice 67, vol. 18, fol. 150r/v . . . ordena Sua Magestade que
V.Ex. tome as mais oportunas e eficazes providencias para acautelar e
impedir toda e qualquer comunicação entre os Habitantes desse Governo e os passageiros, equipagem e todas as mais pessoas em geral que
vierem a bordo dos navios franceses . . . .
Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires, William Beckford e Portugal, Lisbon, 1987.
Robert Southey, Journals of a residence in Portugal 1800–1801 . . . edited
by Adolfo Cabral, Oxford, 1960.
Marc-Marie de Bombelles, Journal d’un ambassadeur de France au Portugal 1786–1788, Paris, 1979.
‘Horne, who was sitting by during the altercation, chuckled heartily;
as an honest Englishman he always rejoices when any little event takes
place to disgust me with Portugal.’ William Beckford, The Journal of
William Beckford in Portugal and Spain 1787–1788, edited with an introduction and notes by Boyd Alexander, London, 1954, p. 139.
Journal, p. 136.
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 foreign travellers in Portugal is given by Castelo Branco Chaves, ‘Os
livros de viagens em Portugal no século XVIII e a sua projecção europeia’, Lisbon, 1977.
Baldensperger, I, 84.
J. de Pins, ‘La correspondance de Mallet du Pan avec la cour de Lisbonne’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, No. 182 (Oct–Dec.
1965), 483. See also 1964.
Andrée Mansuy-Diniz Silva, ‘L’Année 1789 vue de Turin par un diplomate portugais’, Dix-huitième siècle, No. 20 (1988) 289–312.
Vicente de Sousa Coutinho, Diário da Revolução Francesa edited by
Manuel Cadafaz de Matos, Lisbon, 1990.
Michel Vovelle, ‘La Révolution française et son echo’, Le Canada et la
Révolution française 7.
ANTT IL 5526.
Oficio of the Intendente de Policia, 3 March 1798, as quoted in José
Maria Latino Coelho, História política e militar de Portugal desde os
fins do século XVIII até 1814 Lisbon (1874–91), vol. II, 401.
ANTT Liv. IV Intendencia Geral, 7 August 1794.
Ibid. ‘figurando religiosos em acções torpes com mulheres . . . o plano
talvez seria arrastar ai gentes libertinas que fossem faceis abraçarem os
principios revolucionarios . . . ’.
Book 98 p. 121 of the Intendencia da Polícia quoted by Luís de Oliveira
Ramos, ‘Franceses em Portugal nos fins do século XVIII (Subsídios
para um estudo)’ Studium Generale, Boletim do Centro de Estudos Humanísticos, vol. XI, Oporto, 1966–67, 9.
ANTT Liv. 160 Intendencia Geral da Policia, pp. 180–1, aci Ramos,
op. cit.
98
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
Rómulo de Carvalho, D. João Carlos de Bragança 2o duque de Lafões,
fundador da Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Lisbon, 1987. Carrère mistakenly thought he was a bastard of João V, whom he was in fact a
nephew, through his father, a half-brother of the king.
Nuno Daupias d’Alcochete, ‘Lettres familières de Jacques Ratton
(1792–1807)’ in Bulletin des études portugaises de l’Institut Français au Portugal, XXIII, 1961, 119 –00.
Luís António de Oliveira Ramos, ‘Franceses em Portugal nos fins do
século XVIII (subsídios para um estudo)’ offprint from Studium Generale, Boletim do Centro de Estudos Humanísticos, vol. XI, Porto, 1966–67.
There is no Lisbon equivalent to the listing Os franceses residentes no
Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1820, (Publicações do arquivo nacional, vol. 45) Rio
de Janeiro, 1960. See also Registro de estrangeiros nas capitanias 1777–
1819, (Publicações do Arquivo Nacional vol. 53), Rio de Janeiro, 1963.
Carrère, Tableau de Lisbonne, 67.
Jean-François Labourdette, La nation française à Lisbonne de 1669 à
1790: entre Colbertisme et Libéralisme, Paris, 1988.
Bombelles, 29 December 1787, p. 236.
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 archives of the French foreign ministry, Quai d’Orsay.
[Charles François Dumouriez] État présent du royaume de Portugal en
l’année MDCCLXVI . . . , Lausanne, 1775, 170.
Louis Victor Léon, Comte de Rochechouart (1788–1858), Souvenirs
. . . nouv. éd. Paris [1933].
Bombelles, Journal.
Bombelles, 14 April 1788, p. 305.
Journal, p. 141.
Ibid., p. 159.
Marie-François-Henri de Franquetot (*Paris 28 March 1737, + Paris
18 May 1821) Marquis then Duc de Coigny, succeeding his father as
governor and grand bailli d’épée of the city of Caen, maréchal de
camp (1761), lieutenant general (1780), deputy of the nobility of Caen
to the Estates General, emigrated to Portugal and served as an officer
there; named a peer in 1787 he was recalled to the French pairie in
June 1814, and made duc-pair héréditaire by ordonnance of 31
August 1817. He had two sons from his first marriage.
Chaves, note 15 page 101 for advertisements from the Gazeta de Lisboa.
Chaves, 25, quoting Toustain, Mémoires, 133.
A. Debidour in the article on Lannes in the Grande Encyclopédie noted
‘Envoyé . . . en Portugal comme ambassadeur il n’y f it pas long
séjour, les qualités nécessaires à un diplomate lui faisant absolument
défaut’.
Luís de Oliveira Ramos, ‘Os agentes da introdução do ideário da Revolução Francesa em Portugal e as alvancas da repressão’ in Portugal da
Revolução Francesa ao Liberalism: actas do colóquio 4 e 5 de Dezembro
de 1986 [Braga, 1988], p. 16.
David Higgs
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
99
Duc de Castries, Les hommes de l’émigration 1789–1814, Paris, 1979, lists
an unpublished manuscript by Viomenil entitled ‘Relation de ma vie
militaire’, p. 399.
Grouvel, III, p. 367.
Nuno Daupias d’Alcochete, ‘Le comte de Novion, commandant
général de la garde royale de la police de Lisbonne’, Arquivos do Centro
Cultural Português, VIII, 1974, 621–25. DP503/C36 By 1805 he commanded 1241 men.
Paul Filleul, Le duc de Montmorency–Luxembourg, Paris, 1939.
Ramos, op. cit.
Circular dated Queluz, 15 October 1796, calling for clerical contributions to the war effort. UofT Fisher Library. Portuguese Mss. collection (Stanton).
Latino Coelho, title II, p. 379–00.
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.
ANTT IL Liv. 322, fol. 41r.
Ghislain de Diesbach, Histoire de l’émigration 1789–1814, Paris, 1975,
p. 453.
[Box Coimbra] An 1808 Proclamação do povo de Coimbra. Ao povo
e pleve da mesma Cidade e termo, Portuguezes conimbriscences vos
sabeis que havendo sido perseguidos, dispersos e exilados os nobres
e sabios da França quando esta se soblevou contra o seu legitimo rei
Luis 16 por maquinações dos perversos e sediciosos jacobinos a
nação errante pela inconstância que Careteriz-a sobre a forma de
Governo, que devia prevalecer no pais em breve circulo de anos subiu notaveis mudanças e conheceu governo democratico, aristocratico, e monarchico, e que tendo-se reprovava este na pessoa de Luis 16
seu soberano sintou sobre o elevado trono de seus augustos principes um homem estrangeiro de humilde condição, revolucionário
ambiciosa e tirano que pertendendo dominar todo o mundo com
estragemas, similações, etc. Fisher Library, University of Toronto,
Portuguese Manuscript Collection, sheets dated 14 July 1808, 14 fols
r/v.
See Granel, Louis XVI et la Famille Royale, Catalogue énonçant les titres
de 3000 volumes, Paris, 1905; Pierre Lacoué, Les panégyristes de Louis
XVI et de Marie Antoinette depuis 1793 à 1912. Essai de bibliographie raisonnée, Paris, 1912.
Luís Norton, A corte de Portugal no Brasil, (Brasiliana, vol. 124) 2nd
edn, São Paulo, 1979.
Ferreira de Brito, ‘Uma história inédita da ‘Revolução de França’ um
manuscrito do exílio e o exílio dum manuscrito’ in A recepção da
Revolução francesa em Portugal e no Brasil: Actas do Colóquio, 2 a 9 de
Novembro de 1989, Oporto, 1992, p. 22.
Ibid., p. 20.
Chaves, op. cit., p. 81.
Louis XVIII’s 1795 instructions to French bishops: ‘Je désire que les
ecclésiastiques soutiennent parmi mes sujets l’esprit monarchique
100
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
en même temps que l’esprit religieux, qu’ils les pénètrent de la connexion intime qui existe entre l’autel et le trône et de la nécessité
qu’ils ont l’un et l’autre de leur appui mutuel.’ Baldensperger, I,
p. 225.
Sir Marcus Cheke, Carlota Joaquinas, pp. 90–1).
A. Anthoine, Histoire des émigrés français depuis 1789 jusqu’en 1828,
Paris, 1828 3 vols; Henri Forneron, Histoire générale des émigrés pendant
la révolution française, Paris, 1884–90, 3 vols.
B. Alexander, England’s Wealthiest Son: a Study of William Beckford, London 1962; The Journal of William Beckford, op. cit.
L. Coelho, op. cit.
Ernest Daudet, Histoire de l’Émigration pendant la Révolution française, 3
vols, Paris, 1912, 4th edn.
6 French Émigrés in Prussia
Thomas Höpel
The French émigrés who came to Prussia during the revolutionary era were watched very closely both by the Prussian
government and regional administrations. A vast source of
material, primarily administrative correspondence (e.g. that
in the secret archives of Prussia in Berlin–Dahlem), exists and
as a result provides the basis for this brief study. From these
sources it is possible to draw some conclusions relating firstly
to the official policy of the Prussian government towards the
French émigrés and the reasons behind it and, secondly, to
some aspects of the culture which developed in exile and the
hopes and fears of the émigrés themselves. They clearly hoped
for a show of solidarity from the European nobility and were
bitterly disillusioned by the reality which confronted them.
Although the Prussian government was fully informed about
the problem of Emigration through diplomatic correspondence
with its ministre plénipotentiaire in Paris during the early
stages of the Revolution, nothing was done until the beginning
of the year 1792. The first official reactions of the Prussian
authorities coincided with the deterioration of the international
situation, in which the warmongering activities of the émigrés
in the principalities situated on the Rhine played an important
part. The first decree, on 4 February 1792, concerned the
treatment of the French émigrés in Prussia and this was closely
connected with the defensive Austro-Prussian Alliance signed
three days later. The émigré decree was directed to the regional
governments of Cleves and Ansbach–Bayreuth. The Prussian
government guaranteed the same rights, protection and
security to the French émigrés which were granted to other
travellers. But at the same time they were forbidden to assemble
in large groups, to recruit troups, to carry out military exercises,
to buy horses and to build depots (i.e. all military activities
were strictly forbidden).
The failure of the allied campaign against France in the
autumn of 1792 marked a complete change in the treatment
of émigrés. From this point a substantial body of legislation
101
102
was issued to regulate and to guard against uncontrolled
French immigration to Prussia. This legislation was tightened
up successively and extended to other groups of émigrés: Brabançois, Dutch and Liègeois. A relaxation of these controls
occurred only after the return to France of numerous émigrés
after the amnesties between 1800–1804.
There were four important motives behind the tightening
of the rules regarding émigrés in Prussia. These concerned
the reduced credibility of the émigré government; the fact that
the émigrés’ goodwill was no longer necessary; fears about the
spread of revolutionary propaganda; and worries about possible
support for revolutionary principles in Prussian territories.
The problem of the émigrés became real for Prussia only
when the émigrés were forced by the revolutionary armies to
flee to the Holy Roman Empire. By the autumn of 1792 it had
become impossible for the Prussian government to influence
French politics through connections with the émigré government. In addition, the goodwill of the émigrés was no longer
necessary to secure conquests in France. Precautions against
revolutionary emissaries who propagated revolutionary ideas
or made secret investigations for the enemy were another factor
behind this change in attitude. Finally, the Prussian government
wanted to prevent possible riots in sympathy with Revolution
principles; pillage by bored and frustrated émigré troups; and
crises resulting from rises in prices for food stuffs caused by
the arrival of émigrés in regions with fragile economies.
Later, two further reasons could be identified. The government feared that penniless refugees would be a charge on the
country and, after concluding the Treaty of Bale in 1795,
political relations with the French Republic made necessary a
policy of prudence towards the émigrés.
Pragmatic raison d’état dominated the policy of Prussia during
this period, but this policy was not devoid of human considerations. Distinctions were made between desirable and undesirable émigrés. This increasingly restrictive policy was maintained
by a large number of decrees and publications. But that policy
did 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 appealed
to the humanity of Prussian leaders (on the grounds of disease,
pregnancy or childhood). The émigrés who were accepted
were registered on lists and kept under surveillance by the
police.1
Many Prussian bureaucrats regarded French émigrés’ rejection of patriotism as dangerous. French clergymen might insist
on their royalist loyalties but they were treated with suspicion
because they had not only defied the laws of France but they also
insisted on the universal claims of the Holy See. The government
of Lingen wrote to the War and Domains chamber of Minden:
We have already had occasion to learn that these émigré
priests have bad convictions, that they encourage defiance
of law and authority and that they instill in our Catholic
inhabitants notions which are harmful to the King and to
the state. . . . 2
Consequently their church services and schools for Prussian
subjects were mistrusted and watched. Control and security
were essential for Prussian leaders. Émigrés searching for asylum had to adapt themselves to these conditions.
The strategies of immigration can be reconstructed from
the petitions of the émigrés directed to the Prussian king or to
the state ministers. Normally, these requests began with a captatio benevolentiae expressing their royalist attitudes and their
veneration for the state ruled by the nephew of Frederick the
Great. Sometimes they even added a poem of homage and
they invariably described dangerous episodes encountered as
a result of their escape from France.
After the introduction, individual supplications became
more personal but many have common elements. Some of the
nobles and clergymen offered letters of recommendation from
high-ranking persons: connections with Prussian ministers
and generals, with Prussian bishops and foreign envoys to the
court of Berlin, recommendations from French princes or
German Electors were all used for this purpose. This suggests
that the émigrés expected to find solidarity among the European
nobility. Such hopes were fulfilled only in certain cases. Other
émigrés offered their services or (as is the case for non-noble
émigrés) tried to convince the government of their utility for
the Prussian state. Those who had only their royalist convictions
104
and their distress to offer were in an unfavourable position.
The General Directory wrote to the Department of Foreign
Affairs on 23 March 1796 that,
Practical workers, who could contribute to the improvement
and expansion of local industries, would be much more
desirable than the counts, knights and clergymen who form
the majority of the émigrés seeking asylum. 3
However, émigrés without social or professional resources
could still obtain a residence permit on the grounds of bad
health or harsh weather. These conditions often led to a temporary residence permit which was more easily prolonged
afterwards.
Frederick William II was often sympathetic to French émigrés. He elevated two French émigrés to be chamberlains,
gave residence permits to a number of descendants of old
noble families and also gave various benefits to French émigrés: for example, he supported with subsidies the embroidery
project established by the Countess d’Asfeld in Potsdam and
he offered a property in South Prussia to the Marquis de Boufflers. These two establishments should have guaranteed the
livelihood of a group of émigrés but they both came to nothing. 4 In addition, his Francophile uncle, Prince Henry of
Prussia, who knew many French nobles, protected some of
them and invited them to his court in Rheinsberg. Prince
Henry also obtained a residence permit for the Countess de
Genlis to live in Berlin in 1798. However, her literary works
were distrusted by the Prussian government and the printers
in Berlin received the order not to publish any of her works
without special permission from the Department of Foreign
Affairs. French nobles had already been established in the
Prussian army before the outbreak of the French Revolution.
These Frenchmen in Prussian service often wanted to help
their relatives but the Prussian bureaucracy discouraged this
sort of protection, particularly when the émigrés concerned
had insufficient financial support and were not of interest to
the country.
As well as these legal methods, there were illegal ones: some
French émigrés pretended to be Italian or Swiss, because
Prussian decrees were not valid for those nationalities. Others
Thomas Höpel
105
referred to their properties in the Holy Roman Empire, and in
the Austrian Netherlands. Émigrés also tried to obtain residence
permits by marrying a Prussian subject but the Prussian
administration stopped these attempts very early:
Poverty and need on one hand and addiction to titles and
rank on the other, will undoubtedly lead to marriages
between noble émigrés and bourgeois. If such marriages
had as a consequence residence in the country partaking of
all the privileges of its noble subjects, the incidence of such
immigration would rise substantially. The country would
consequently be inundated with émigrés and their descendants to the detriment of native subjects.5
The first stage of the Emigration – up to the battle of Valmy in
1792 – did not cause any change in the way of life of the
majority of émigrés. They continued their court life in the
friendly courts of the Rhineland and they obtained enough
money for their expensive habits from their families still in
France. European monarchs also supported émigré princes
with considerable financial gifts. The codification of the émigré
laws in early 1793 interrupted the transfer of money from
France and this coincided with a reduction in support from
other European monarchs after the disastrous campaign of
1792. The émigrés had to find other ways to earn their living
when their funds were exhausted.6
The majority of the émigré clergymen in Prussia earned
their living as preceptors in noble families – in particular in
South Prussia. Others were accepted in monasteries, especially
in Silesia and South Prussia.
In most cases Third Estate émigrés continued their accustomed trades in exile. They did not have many problems in
obtaining residence permits if the trade they practised was a
serious one. The income of some craftsmen – especially workers
in the silk industry – would have been more than adequate.
More than once, the Department of Foreign Affairs sent passports to craftsmen because they were in demand. This was
rather unusual in a country which was suspicious of the increase
of the number of French émigrés. However, as has been said,
immigration of people who could not contribute to the
economy was restricted and, in particular, the number of
106
servants entering Prussia since many noble families brought
with them,
a swarm of servants who could be dangerous for security
and order besides which they only increase the number of
idle and unproductive members of society.7
While some émigrés succeeded in integrating themselves into
the Prussian court or into the Prussian army, they represented
a 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, however, other activities practised in exile which led to derogation,
for example, the different forms of retail trade, but also wholesale trades like the wine business and various forms of manual
work. Certain nobles did not hesitate to learn a craft. These
activities strongly affected their relations with the local ‘Tiers
Etat’. There are mentions of marriages between French nobles
and daughters of Prussian bourgeois and the women range in
background from the daughter of a successful trader to the
daughter of a midwife.
From the documentation on requests for residence, it is possible to recognise certain ideological trends. Although they are
written with a specific intention, all of them contain reflections
about personal situations and reasons for emigration. The
attitude of the Prussian government contributes to an understanding of the situation the émigrés found themselves in: the
forced changes; the financial distress; the need to adapt and to
move in social spheres other than their own. While these official
records need to be contrasted with other documents – particularly with the émigrés’ memoirs – they present a clear image of
French exile life in Prussia.
NOTES
1.
On this policy of supervision in Prussia cf. Thomas Höpel, ‘Emigranten
der Französischen Revolution von 1789 im Preußischen Geheimen
Staatsarchiv Berlin-Dahlem’, in Michel Espagne, Katharina und Matthias
Thomas Höpel
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
107
Middell (édit.), Archiv und Gedächtnis, Leipzig, Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 1997.
GStA PK, 1. HA, Rep. 11, Nr. 91b, Frankreich-Tecklenburg-Lingen,
Spez. Fasz. 4 (M), Government of Lingen to War an Domains Chamber
of Minden, Lingen 15th October 1795 (conception). Original quotation: ‘weil wir schon Gelegenheit gehabt haben, zu erfahren, daß
diese emigrirte Priester überaus schlechte Gesinnungen hegen, die
Unterthanen zur Verweigerung des Gehorsams gegen Gesetze u.
Obrigkeit aufwiegeln, u. den Catholischen Eingeseßenen solche
Grundsätze beybringen, welche dem König u. dem Staat höchst schäd.
sind . . . ’.
GStA Merseburg, 1. HA, Rep. 11, Nr.91 b, Französische Emigranten in
der Kur- und Neumark, Spez. Fasz. 66 (M), General Directory to the
Departement of foreign affairs, 23 March 1796. Original quotation: ‘Es
wäre zu wünschen, daß, statt der Grafen, Chevaliers und Geistlichen,
aus welchen fast allein die hier Zuf lucht nehmenden Emigrirten bestehen, nützliche Ouvriers zur Vermehrung und Vervollkommnung der
hiesigen Fabriquen sich einfänden’.
Concerning the embroidery of the Countress d’Asfeld cf. Thomas
Höpel, ‘Französische Emigranten in der Kurmark’, in Matthias Middell
a.o. (édit.), Widerstände gegen Revolutionen 1789–1989, Leipzig,
Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 1994, pp. 217–18.
GStA PK, 1.HA, Rep. 11, Nr. 91b, Frankreich-Cleve, Moers, Mark,
Spez. Fasz. 126 (M), rescript to the government and the War and
Domains chamber of Cleve, Berlin 29 June 1797 (conception). Original
quotation: ‘Armuth und Hülfsbedürftigkeit auf der einen, und Rangund Titelsucht auf der andern Seite, werden ohne Zweifel zahlreiche
Ehen zwischen französischen Emigrirten von Adel und Personen bürgerlichen Standes veranlaßen. Wenn daher solche Ehen die Folge der
Aufnahme in das Land, und der Theilnahme der recipirten an allen
Vorrechten eingebohrener adelicher Unterthanen hätten; so würde
der Fall solcher unfreiwilligen Aufnahmen sehr oft eintreten, und das
Land mit Emigrirten und ihren Nachkommen zum Nachtheil Unserer
eingebohrnen Unterthanen überladen werden.’
The majority of the émigrés had already run into debt in the hope of a
quick victory against revolutionary France in the months which preceded
the battle of Valmy. In 1793 only a minority preserved enough money
for spending years in exile.
GStA PK, I.HA Rep. 11, Nr. 91a, Frankreich, Fasz. 1 vol. 2 (M), rescript
to government and war and domains chamber of Cleve, to government
of Meurs, to administration justice board of Geldern, to government
and war and domains chamber of Aurich, to government and war and
domains chamber of Minden and to the government of Lingen, Berlin
24 August 1794 (conception). Original quotation: ‘da viele vornehme
Emigrierte [ . . . ] einen ganzen Schwarm von Domestiken mitbringen,
die der Sittlichkeit und selbst der Ruhe, Sicherheit, u. Ordnung
gefährlich werden können, u. auf alle Fälle, die Zahl der Müssiggänger
und unnützen Consumenten vermehren’.
7 French Émigrés in
Edinburgh
Until very recently French historians have created legends
about Artois’s arrival in Edinburgh in January 1796. They
have an image of Artois arriving secretly at some remote rendezvous on the east coast of Scotland in an enveloping mist
and being whisked to some mediaeval ruin, when in fact the
arrival at Leith could scarcely have been a more public occasion. They have confused Edinburgh Castle and the Palace of
Holyroodhouse which is, for the most part, an elegant seventeenth-century building rather than a gothic ruin. At the pier
to greet him was Lord Adam Gordon, commander-in-chief of
the forces of North Britain, and his staff, and half of Edinburgh
turned out to witness the spectacle. The journey to Holyrood
however was scarcely a festive occasion. Lord Adam’s wife, the
Duchess of Athole, had recently died and her husband was
in deepest mourning, Lord Adam Gordon’s coach, ‘painted
black, with four long-tailed sable horses’ was at the centre of
the procession. ‘Nothing could be more lugubrious’, wrote
Pryse Lockhart Gordon, who was there as aide-de-camp to
general Drummond of Strathallan. Worse was to follow.
At the North Bridge in Edinburgh there was a halt and it
was found that a horse pulling a coal cart had dropped down
and expired.
So great was the crowd that it was with difficulty this
obstruction could be removed and it was considered a bad
omen by the strangers. 1
But on Artois’s arrival at the Palace there were salutes of 21
guns from Leith Fort and from Edinburgh Castle.
Artois, later Charles X, the last King of France, occupied
the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh on two occasions
separated by more than 30 years. The first was during his long
exile from France during the Revolution; the second took
place after his abdication in July 1830. On each occasion he
108
109
was accompanied by a group of faithful followers and sought
to create the semblance of a court, albeit modest in comparison
with Versailles. Artois’s two sons, the Duc d’Angoulême and
the Duc de Berri, also spent periods of time at Holyrood with
their father.
The character and spirit of the two periods of residence
were very different. During the first stay, the Bourbon restoration, distant though it may have been, was never in question
and its certainty was important for émigré morale. During the
second, there was no likelihood that Charles X would again
become King of France and, although there was much debate
concerning the royal succession, only the most bigoted monarchist, of whom there were always some, failed to see that the
day of the Bourbons had gone. Holyrood had become the
nécropole écossaise. It inspired a funereal poem by Victor Hugo
which contains the lines:
. . . sous ton ombre
Cette 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 ones
for Artois. He and his entourage, which included his mistress
the Vicomtesse de Polastron, had moved many times. After an
initial period in Turin they travelled to Coblenz but the hospitality of his uncle the Elector was extended with no more
tolerance than that of his father-in-law the King of Sardinia.
The mismanagement of his finances and the expense of his
establishment was a focus of attention and criticism all over
Europe. 3
By 1795 Artois’s fortunes had reached their nadir and he
was living in penury at Hamm in Westphalia. Suddenly he
received a summons from the Duke of York’s headquarters at
Rotterdam and from there he was ordered to England only to
learn that the expedition to Quiberon had ended in disaster.
Of the 3600 émigrés who went as part of the British forces only
1800 were evacuated. The rest were executed.
Artois uncharacteristically took the initiative and demanded
the leadership of a second expedition. In September a rag-bag
of English, French and German troops transported by the
Royal Navy set sail for the Vendée. They got no further than
110
the ile d’Yeu, 30 south-west of Nantes. Lack of any strategic
plan, lack of provisions, arms, ammunition and courage all
played a part. The chouans were left in the lurch and, at the end
of October, Artois sailed for Portsmouth aboard the frigate Jason.
At Portsmouth the financial difficulties which characterised
Artois’s existence in emigration caught up with him. On the
quayside were bailiff’s men seeking to serve him with writs.
They represented the creditors or assignees of the creditors to
whom Artois owed money as a result of the campaigns in the
Low Countries. Equipment and provisions had been bought
with borrowed money on the assumption of victory, which was
constantly elusive. Artois was advised that should he step
ashore he would be liable to imprisonment for debt under
British law if he did not meet the sums due.
The government provided the solution. Eager to remove
the politically naive prince from London and any influence on
British policy, it offered him the Palace of Holyroodhouse. By
Scots law, provided Artois stayed within the sanctuary provided
by the Palace and its extensive grounds, he was safe from arrest.
He could however travel abroad on Sunday when arrest for debt
was not permitted. As one modern French historian has said,
It was by putting him in prison that Artois was protected
against the threat of imprisonment. In this one sees the
sense of humour with which the English know how to colour
their hypocrisy.4
Accordingly, on 6 December 1795, Lord Grenville, in charge
of Foreign Affairs, wrote to the Duc d’Harcourt offering
Holyroodhouse5. On 22 December 1795, the Duke of Portland, then Secretary of State for the Home Department, gave
instructions that Holyrood was to be put in readiness to receive
the Comte d’Artois and Jason set sail for the port of Leith.6
On his arrival at the Palace, Artois was led to the apartments
of Lord Adam Gordon which seem to have been all that was
prepared for his accommodation. Other rooms must have
been made available because two days later Artois held the first
of the series of levées at which
the Lord President, the Lord Advocate, the Lord Provost
and Magistrates and several Civil and Military Gentlemen
attended.7
111
It was originally announced that such levées were to be held
every Monday and Thursday but the cost was too much for
Artois’s purse and before long they were discontinued. 8 It was
not 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 power
of man was limited; one day a salmon three feet long and not
less than 25 lbs was put down as the second course and in a
trice it disappeared. 9
Other exiles arrived in Edinburgh, some of whom were to be
accommodated in the Palace itself, others where lodgings
could be found in the Canongate, the principal street adjoining the Palace. When the Duc d’Angoulême arrived overland
on 21 January, rooms were found for him in Holyrood. Louise
de Polastron ‘lived in a small white-washed house’ which
adjoined the Palace.10
Madame de Gontaut’s memoirs reveal important details of
the prince’s life in Scotland. Her loyalty to Artois was complete
and she was present through both his Edinburgh exiles. In
1796 she, her daughters and their maid came to Edinburgh
from London by phaeton – a small open carriage – which was
driven by her husband. The journey took fifteen days.
I have to admit that our arrival at Edinburgh struck my
heart with sadness: Holyroodhouse is situated in the middle
of the old town in the poorest and most unhealthy quarter.
The chateau itself has a sad and grim appearance. It is protected like a fortress and appeared to me like a prison.
She continues:
Monsieur was waiting in the courtyard for our equipage to
arrive: he came towards us with his accustomed grace, at
once so frank and noble, and seemed to be grateful for the
journey which we had undertaken for his sake. In the face of
this calm and noble fortitude I tried to kneel but I was told,
“Your mother awaits you. I am not in my own home; I cannot have any friends to stay with me here but I ask that they
settle not far from me; your lodging is over there in the
square where we have a small French colony and, God willing, the days will pass.” He said that my husband should
112
come to dine with him whenever he wished but, having only
a 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 Emigration but her husband, the Duc de Polignac and their three children, Agläe, Duchesse de Guiche,12 Armand and Jules, later
Prince de Polignac and First Minister during the closing months
of the reign of Charles X, were among them. The Duc de
Polignac’s sister, the Comtesse Diane de Polignac was also with
them. Another important figure was Artois’s close friend, the
Comte de Vaudreuil, Joseph-Hyacinthe-François de Rigaud,
whose letters provide one of the principal sources of information
about this society.13 He had been the lover of Madame de Polignac 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 his
parents were established as part of the huge émigré colony.
Among the first to leave were the Duc de Polignac and his sister
Diane who both found protection and security in Russia.
The Duc d’Angoulême remained in Edinburgh only until
March 1797 when he left to join Louis XVIII at Blankenburg
in the Hartz Mountains but while in Scotland he was the subject
of one of Kay’s Portraits entitled The Great and the Small are
there. It shows Angoulême’s slight frame accompanying the
bulk of Major-General Roger Ayton of Inchdairney at a review
of the first regiment of the Edinburgh Volunteers.15 It is said
that Monsieur found that their uniform recalled unhappy
memories of the National Guard in Paris and refused to watch
them drill.16 Angoulême is also recorded as having had an enjoyable day with the Caledonian Hounds near Haddington – a
good many gates were left open for him.17 He attended the
election of the Scottish peers to choose their number to sit in
the House of Lords and was a regular patron of the Theatre
Royal, no doubt to the benefit of the management who were in
financial difficulties.18 Perhaps his most lasting memorial is the
charming series of letters which he wrote to the Duchess of
Buccleuch after his departure, in which he makes it clear how
much Edinburgh meant to him and how strong was his affection for the Duchess who, in many ways, became for him a
second mother.19
113
Once attempts at ceremonial had been abandoned, domesticity prevailed.20 Except on Sundays when Artois was free to
leave the sanctuary, there was Mass in the private chapel
improvised at the end of the long Gallery; daily exercise in the
safety of the Abbey sanctuary which included the King’s Park
and its mountain, Arthur’s Seat, where snipe could be shot in
Hunter’s Bog. There were many visitors to receive and in the
evening Artois played whist with Louise de Polastron. In February Vaudreuil wrote to his father;
The Scottish nobility is full of kindness, hospitality and good
manners, and parties, balls and concerts are not wanting,
but it is better to keep a certain distance, following the
example of our august Prince. We are in bed every night
before midnight and we feel the better for it. 21
Not all visits were social. Artois had been given the office of
Lieutenant General of the Kingdom by Louis XVIII, with special responsibility for the west of France. This meant that he
was nominally in charge of the insurgents in Brittany and the
Vendée. He has been much criticised for his failure to join
them. Certainly leaders such as Georges Cadoudal felt that
without a royal prince at their head they were doomed. Hindsight suggests that they would have been little better off with
Artois but at least one of Artois’s entourage, the Comte de
Sérent, left Holyrood to meet his death on the Brittany coast.22
The abbé Latil, the future Archbishop of Reims, Cardinal
and Peer of France made his debut in Edinburgh during the
Emigration. According to the Comtesse de Boigne, Artois
objected to the number of masses he was expected to attend
by the Catholic community since this subjected him to long
journeys on Sundays and he decided to appoint his own
almoner,
of a social standing sufficiently low to exclude him from the
apartments, the Comte’s intention being that he should take
his 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 concierge. He is young, not bad looking, in no way fastidious
and you will have no trouble with him. 23
114
The abbé Latil became a very important influence in the life of
the Comte d’Artois. The immediate consequence of his arrival
was the establishment of a chapel at the end of the long gallery
where, as Francis Steuart has observed, a guidebook of 1818
noted that Mass was said without the smallest opposition from
either the clergy or the people of Edinburgh. 24
Artois’s other son, the Duc de Berri, who had been serving
with the armée de Condé, did not arrive in Edinburgh until
March or April 1798 and left in September. 25 He added a little
gaiety to the sombre life of the Palace. He ‘loved music and
music we had’ recalls Madame de Gontaut.26 Vaudreuil, in a
letter to his mother, describes amateur theatricals in an improvised theatre in the Duc de Berri’s bedchamber with the
writer’s sister-in-law Pauline at the pianoforte providing the
orchestra and the audience composed of ‘valets, chamber-maids
and other servants’. Vaudreuil ends his letter;
Beyond doubt one can call it an innocent pleasure. Perhaps
evil tongues would give it the high-sounding name of a fête;
what can one do? It reminds me of all the trouble we had
when we wanted the children to act Cinderella and that
without costing anything. So keep all this to yourself, I beg
of you.
Artois was released from the confines of his sanctuary during
the summer of 1799. Various accounts suggest an arrangement with his creditors but in fact the true cause was the passing
of the Aliens Act of 1798 which gave protection against pursuit
for debt contracted abroad. 27 According to one source Artois
embarked on a tour to express his thanks to the ‘illustrious
chiefs of Scottish clans’ but further details are not recorded.
On 5 August 1799 Artois wrote an official letter of farewell to
the Lord Provost and Magistrates of Edinburgh announcing
his departure;
I am forced, by circumstances touching the true service of
the King my brother, to leave the country where, during the
whole time of my residence, I have received unvaryingly the
most 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 Act
of 1798, only had effect ‘until six months after the conclusion
115
of a general peace’ and in the autumn of 1801 such a general
peace seemed imminent – the short-lived Treaty of Amiens
was signed in March 1802. Artois deemed it prudent to have
his refuge at hand and precipitately returned to Edinburgh
which remained his base until subsequent legislation and the
resumption of hostilities with France removed the pressures in
the medium term. This, however, failed to provide total immunity, as events many years later were to show.
During this period we catch a glimpse of Artois at large. We
have reports of an unidentified spy sent by Talleyrand during
the Peace of Amiens.29 From these reports we know that Artois
attended the Queen’s Ball at the Assembly Rooms and offended
the eccentric Earl of Buchan by undue insistance on protocol.
Through the eyes of the brilliant letter-writer, Lady Louisa
Stuart, daughter of the Earl of Bute, we see him in 1802 at
Bothwell Castle for the local races.
Monsieur himself is a very handsome healthy-looking man,
remarkably well made, above the middle size and stout. He
looks much younger than his age (45) and has a splendid
open countenance but his mouth does not shut, the upper
lip being too short. For his air and manner, it is as I will not
say gentlemen-like only, but noble and prince-like, as you
can imagine, with that sort of high and dignified good
breeding, that gracious civility to everybody (with at the
same time the greatest ease), you would expect from a price
bred in the politest court of Europe. 30
During that summer also there was a visit from the Duc de
Berri who arrived aboard an Excise ship and who was present
at the election for the Scottish representative peers. He took
part in what was described as ‘an elegant entertainment’ at the
Tontine Tavern and a ‘brilliant Assembly at the Rooms in
George Street’.31
Artois’s sojourn at Holyrood brought about many necessary
improvements to the fabric and furnishings of the Palace. Arnot
summarises them by saying:
This magnificent palace is no use whatever except the part
which is occupied by the Duke of Hamilton; and the whole is
falling into decay for want of being possessed and kept in
repair. 32
116
One improvement was put in hand immediately. On 24 January 1796 Lord Adam Gordon writes to the Duke of Portland,
‘the repairs in the King’s apartment are going better on now
that the water-closets are ordered’.33 No less than £2734 was
paid to Messrs. Young, Trotter and Hamilton for ‘Furniture of
Various kinds Bed and Table Linnen Glassware and others’.34
Much of the admirable furniture which they supplied remains
in the Palace. A porter’s lodge and stabling were constructed
and the total during the same period for plastering, painting,
carpentry, glazing and plumbing exceeded £1500. To put this
expenditure in perspective a substantial country house with
stabling could be built at this period for £3000.
It must not be forgotten that Artois shared the large sanctuary with many less fortunate debtors huddled in a village of
mean houses which adjoined the Palace building. Worse,
an artifical marsh is created by stopping up the course of the
common sewer of the city, which is conducted in this direction to the sea, and by spreading over the surface the contents of the sewer. Most odiferous is the scent of the
beauteous meadow in the heats of summer, when its rankness of corrupting animal and vegetable excrementation is
steaming from its fetid surface, and sending its grateful perfume to the adjoining Palace ‘a dainty dish to set before the
King’.35
After 1803 there is no trace of Artois’s presence in Holyrood
although it cannot be excluded that there were visits to his
friends in Scotland, in particular the Buccleuchs. Holyroodhouse reverted to a care and maintenance basis. In August
1804, Henry Jardine, the King’s Remembrancer, writes to
Artois’s secretary in London:
Upon looking thro’ the Royal Apartments last day, I observed
that both the carpets and other furniture were spoiling by
being exposed to the air, and that it might be advisable to
get the furniture washed, and put up till needed – and that
the carpets ought to be cleaned and rolled up.36
In 1807 there was a flurry of activity because Holyrood was
proposed as a residence for Louis XVIII who had recently
been granted asylum in England under the title of the Comte
de Lille. Instructions were given to the Lord Provost to make
117
all necessary arrangements ‘as the Count of Lille and his family
are expected to arrive immediately’. Louis XVIII however settled in Essex against the wishes of the British government and
the Palace sank back into its previous torpor. One or two émigrés remained. Monsieur Pelerin, who seems to have been
Artois’s general factotum, was in charge. Among them were
the Comte de Coigny, a courtier of Madame Elizabeth, scarcely
able to move because of obesity, and the chevalier de Rebourguil who at Versailles had been a First Lieutenant in Artois’s
bodyguard and was now a regular visitor to the Dundas family
at Arniston. Fragmentary records highlight their daily round;
the kitchen chimney which smoked, the cloth on the billiard
table which needed replacement, and so on. 37
Meanwhile in London, Artois, deeply affected by the death
of Louise de Polaston, led a quiet life surrounded by a fraternity
of ultra-royalist émigrés and under the strict spiritual supervision of the Abbé Latil.
As Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, Artois entered Paris
on 12 April 1814 but the Restoration so long awaited was painfully short-lived. The Hundred Days and Napoleon’s defeat
at Waterloo ushered in a second restoration of Louis XVIII
more lasting than the first. Until his death in 1824 he governed France by maintaining a delicate balance between the
survivors of the Ancien Régime, the Napoleonic administration and the emergent liberal intelligentsia. Artois became the
nucleus of the ultra-right. His short reign from 1824–30 was
an unsuccessful attempt to turn back the clock and on 2 August
1830 he abdicated the throne in favour of the Duc d’Angoulême.
After a short stay in Dorset under the leaking roof of Lulworth Castle, Charles X sailed to Newhaven, a fishing village
close to Edinburgh, where he and the Duc de Bordeaux disembarked on 20 October 1830. The latter
leaped ashore with all the agility of youth and the conf idence
of innocence.
while,
Charles was cautious, staid in his gait, walked remarkably
erect, but there was a shade of gloom in his countenance. No
man cried God save him. No joyful tongue gave him a welcome back and Heaven for some strong purpose, steel’d the
heart of the spectators.38
118
This time there was no commander-in-chief and no 21 gun
salute. Whig attitudes predominated. The Edinburgh press
was blatantly hostile until the call for tolerance came from Sir
Walter Scott, whose words had long shown his sympathy for
unfortunate royalists:
the effect of this manly admonition was even more complete
than the writer had anticipated. The royal exiles were received
with perfect decorum, which their modest bearing to all
classes, and unobtrusive, though magnificent benevolence
to the poor, ere long converted into a feeling of deep and
affectionate repectfulness. 39
The Newhaven crowd, some wearing white cockades, was
friendly enough. One fish-wife thrust herself forward and
called out, ‘O, Sir I’m Happy to see ye again among decen
folk.’ On being asked her name she replied, ‘My name is Kirsty
Ramsay, Sir, and many a guid fish I haw gien ye, sir, and many
a good shilling I hae got for’t thirty years sin-syne.’ She was
duly rewarded with half-a-crown and an order for 400 oysters.
The second residence at Holyrood, which lasted from October 1830 until August 1832, was characterised by the absence of
any real hope of a Restoration. The bourgeois figure of Louis
Philippe, 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 his
position induced him to seek a more politically appropriate
refuge in Austria. The Duke of Wellington wrote to a friend on
28 September 1832:
I am inclined to believe that the retreat of Charles X from
Edinburgh was a measure of prudential anticiption, on his
part, of a course which he conceived was to have been presented to him in a short period of time.40
The politics of the residents of Holyrood were of little interest
to those beyond their immediate circle. Issues concerning the
Regency led to in-fighting. Charles X, the Dauphin and Marie
Caroline, widow of the Duc de Berri described by Walter Scott
as ‘that giddy lady’, squabbled over their rights should the
occasion of a return ever arise.41 Marie Caroline, dissatisfied
with the available rooms in Holyrood, occupied a house in
Regent Terrace where the Dauphin and Dauphine were also
119
installed. It is an irony that that sedate terrace once housed at
the same time l’orpheline du Temple and the mother of l’enfant du
miracle.
The education of the Duc of Bordeaux and his sister Princess
Louise provided a focus of activity for the royal inhabitants of
Holyrood. Both celebrated their first communion at St Mary’s
in 1831. At the first, abbé Busson off iciated,
who for this important act [ . . . ] sacrificed his position with
the most noble lack of self-interest.42
For that of the Duc de Bordeaux, the service was presided
over by the Cardinal de Latil and the occasion marked by the
presentation to the church of a suitably inscribed monstrance
[a vessel for venerating the Host].
The governor to the young prince was the Baron de Damas
who thought Holyrood ‘good enough for a private citizen’ but
insufficient as the residence of a monarch; he was critical of the
furnishings; ‘a few old pieces of mahogany covered with printed
cotton’. 43 The baron may perhaps be forgiven because his bedroom also served as a public passage, though later he described himself as, ‘more suitably lodged’.
There was also an incident where Charles X found himself
embroiled in litigation to do with matters which remained
unsettled from the first period of residence. The first hint
appeared in the Scotsman newspaper:
We hear that nine carriages bearing the ex-royal arms of
France have been arrested in the hands of an expensive
coach-maker in Edinburgh.44
This report proved accurate and a writ from Francis Simon,
Comte de Pfaffenhoffen, claiming 446 000 French francs
alleged still to be due as a result of guarantees which he had
given on behalf of the Princes more than 30 years before, initiated a law-suit which dragged on during the entire royal stay and
was not finally resolved until 1839.45
In contrast to the first visit, during the 1830–32 stay, Charles
X lived like a private individual. By this time, a Catholic church,
St Mary’s, Broughton Street, had been built and a royal pew
was duly installed. 46 The ex-King ‘clad in a blue coat and white
trousers and wearing a star’ attended mass with the Dauphin
and Dauphine and other members of his entourage.47
120
Charles X accepted his fate and was reported to have said to
the Duc de Brissac: ‘Ah well, we are here for the second time!
We must be quite resigned, God has willed it.’ and to the Duchess of Hamilton, ‘I meant well, therefore I lay my head peaceably down to rest’. 48 He was a regular visitor to many of the
local gentry. Names such as Hope and Wedderburn crop up
in French diaries and memoirs as do those of the Duke and
Duchess of Hamilton. A particular friend was the Earl of
Wemyss whom Charles X had known in Paris and there were
many expeditions to Gosford his estate on the coast to the east
of the city. According to De Damas, all the family spoke French
faultlessly and, for once, he felt at home.49 A carefully vetted
selection of children were permitted to play with the Duc de
Bordeaux and Princess Louise.
Charles X, the Dauphin and the Duc de Bordeaux left Edinburgh on 20 September 1832 with affectionate farewells, both
official and unofficial, formal and informal, to the people who
had received them in the Palace and the city. At Newhaven
there was a bodyguard formed by the Society of Newhaven
Fishermen, keeping clear the entrance to the Chain Pier,
‘which was crowded with a large assemblage of respectable
persons’.50
Their departure brought to an end a sad episode in the history of the French monarchy but one which had forged lasting
links between the city of Edinburgh and the Bourbons. The
Scotsman reported:
The conduct of the whole party, since their re-appearance
in the city, has given satisfaction to those who have interested
themselves in their fortunes. The ex-King especially, lives
strictly retired. When he walks out, he is always accompanied
by one or two, or three gentlemen and appears in the dress
of a respectable citizen; he assumes no consequence – he
neither courts, fears nor shrinks from the public gaze, but
his whole bearing evinces that he is fully conscious of his
misfortunes, and the consequent sufferings they have occasioned. Those who have had opportunities of seeing him,
assert that his whole deportment demonstrates that he is
conscious that he is fallen from the pinnacle of human greatness, ‘never to hope again’.51
121
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
Pryse Lockhart Gordon, Personal Memories and Reiniscences, Edinburgh,1830, vol. I, p. 388. General Drummond was adjutant and
quartermaster-general for Scotland.
Victor Hugo, Les Rayons et les Ombres, Paris, 1839.
English travellers sent back reports from émigré centres in the Rhineland, detailing the ineffectiveness of the princes, the ‘levity, vanity and
presumption’ of their followers, and the miseries of their humbler
adherents. Gentlemen’s Magazine, vol. LXII, April 1792, pp. 295–6.
Letter from Spa dated 17 April 1792.
Jacques Vivent, Charles X, Dernier Roi de France et de Navarre, Paris,
1958, p. 155.
Henri Forneron, Histoire générale des émigrés pendant la Révolution
française, Paris, 1884–90, 3 vols, vol. I, p. 138.
Exchequer Letter Books, Edinburgh, and PRO H.O. 103/2 p. 2.
Edinburgh Advertiser, 8 January 1796.
Francis Steuart, The Exiled Bourbons in Scotland, Edinburgh, 1908,
Chapter II.
Pryse Lockhart Gordon, op. cit., p. 390.
Robert Chambers, Walks in Edinburgh, 1830, p. 149. For Louise de
Polastron see Vicomte de Reiset, Louise d’Esparbes, comtesse de Polastron,
Paris, 1907, and Monique de Heurtas, Louise de Polastron, Paris, 1983.
Duchesse de Gontaut, Mémoires, Paris, 1891, p. 70.
Aglae Duchesse de Guiche [ob.1803] was buried in a vault in the
chapel of Holyrood, sharing it with the remains of Darnley, husband
of Mary, Queen of Scots, until her coffin was removed in pomp in the
1820s.
Léonce Pingaud, Correspondance intime du Comte de Vaudreuil et du Comte
d’Artois, Paris 1889, 2 vols.
It is reported that the Duc de Polignac accepted his wife’s death with
‘assez de philosophie’ while Vaudreuil was inconsolable. He later
married his young cousin Josephine. Pingaud, op. cit., vol. 2, pp.
287–9.
John Kay, Edinburgh Portraits, The re-issue of 1877 is the most complete and accessible.
Francis Steuart, The Exiled Bourbons in Scotland, Edinburgh, 1908, p. 53.
Pryse Lockhart Gordon, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 391.
See, for example, Scots Magazine, April 1796, p. 285. The Edinburgh
Advertiser, 4 March 1796, carries a particularly colourful notice of a
firework display on behalf of its rival the Royal Circus, ‘By desire of
His Royal Highness the Duke of Angouleme’.
Buccleugh Archives, Drumlanrig.
For a list of those who attended the early levées see F. Steuart.
Pingaud, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 247.
Pingaud, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 250. A touching letter from Sérent to Artois
(presumably intercepted) written in Jersey and dated March 1796 is I
the archives of the Quai d’Orsay, Fonds Bourbons, 626.
122
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
Comtesse de Boigne, Mémoires, vol. 1, pp. 130–3.
Francis Steuart, op. cit., p. 47.
These dates are deduced from Angoulême’s letters to the Duchess of
Buccleugh.
Duchesse de Gontaut, Mémoires, p. 70.
See Lord Mackenzie Stuart, A Royal Debtor at Holyrood, Stair Society
Miscellany 1, Stair Society publication, 1971, Edinburgh, vol. 26, p. 193.
Edinburgh City Archives.
Fonds Bourbons.
Lady Louisa Stuart, Gleanings from an old Portfolio, 1895, privately
printed.
Scots Magazine, p. 705.
Arnot, History of Edinburgh, 1788, p. 308.
Scottish Record Office, Exchequer Letter Books.
The Trotter accounts are in the Edinburgh University Library, Laing
MS II499/29. For a valuable account of the surviving furniture, see
Margaret Swain, The Connoisseur, January 1978, p. 27. An overall picture can be gathered from a synopsis of expenditure, Scottish Record
Office, Exchequer, Declared Accounts, 1795–1801.
Henry Courtoy, Historical Guide to the Abbey and Palace of Holyrood, 2nd
edn, Edinburgh, 1834, p. 204.
Scottish Record Office: Exchequer Letter Books.
Scottish Record Office: Exchequer Letter Books.
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’s
Portraits.
John Gibson Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott, Edinburgh edition,
1903, vol. IX, p. 323.
Wellington Dispatches, 28 September 1832, New Series, viii, p. 415,
quoted by Francis Steuart, p. 126.
The Duc de Bordeaux was the son of the Duc de Berri who was assassinated on 13 February 1820. He was born on 28 September 1820 and
in monarchist eyes was – l’enfant du miracle because he assured the succession. The Duc and Duchesse, d’Angoulême were childless. When
Charles X abdicated therefore it was in favour of the Duc de Bordeaux,
Comte de Chambord who was in monarchist eyes Henri V of France
and of Navarre.
Duchesse de Gontaut, op. cit., p. 377.
De Damas, Mémoires, vol. 2, p. 215.
Scotsman, 1830, p. 715.
The voluminous printed documents associated with the allegations
and counter-allegations are in the Session Papers collection, Advocates
Library, Edinburgh.
Their incumbent was James Gillis, later Bishop Gillis who had attended
a Paris seminary from 1818 to 1823. Armed with letters of introduction
from Charles X, he made a tour of France, Spain and Italy, to raise
funds to build a convent in Edinburgh which became St Mary’s
Bruntsfield. F. Steuart, op. cit.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
Francis Steuart, op. cit., p. 106.
Duchess of Hamilton, Autobiography, vol. 2, p. 211.
De Damas, op. cit., p. 221.
Text accompanying Kay’s Portraits, op. cit.
Scotsman, 1830, p. 687.
123
8 Le milliard des émigrés: the
Impact of the Indemnity
Bill of 1825 on French
Society
Almut Franke
Cette époque était celle des légendes, créées par malveillance,
propagées par crédulité. Une légende demeura, se perpétuant avec toutes sortes de grossissements, celle du milliard
des émigrés.1
This was how the historian Pierre de la Gorce saw the Restoration period in France in 1926. The creation of this legend of
the milliard des émigrés shows very clearly how the memory of an
event is used and manipulated, how time and memory interact
with each other, and how collective memory can be influenced
in order to establish a view of the past that justifies the present
political regime.
The question of indemnification during the Restoration was
in fact a debate over the legitimacy of the Revolution and the
Emigration, and, with the help of the catchphrase milliard des
émigrés, this debate can be followed throughout the nineteenth
and into the early twentieth century. It is an illustration of how
remembering and forgetting are used both by governments
and their oppositions to create an image of the past.
In 1825 the émigrés were indemnified for the losses they
had sustained due to the confiscation of their properties. In
the ten years preceding the Indemnity Bill, there had been
intense discussion in the press and in the two Chambers about
the moral legitimacy of Revolution and Emigration and about
the place of these two phenomena in the national past. The
money to be allocated for the indemnification was calculated
to be about one thousand million francs but it was to be distributed in government bonds bearing an interest of 3 per cent.
The émigrés or their heirs had to make a claim proving their
124
Almut Franke
125
eligibility to the Directeur général des domaines whose job it
was to establish lists detailing the size, the situation and the
value of the confiscated properties. The Prefect of each Department and his council then passed a judgement on the legitimacy and the accuracy of the claim before a special Commission de
liquidation in Paris gave a definite decision.2
The law specified that this process of identification must be
completed within five years. Consequently, one could assume
that in 1830, when the King and the government were overthrown, the matter was concluded. Indeed, most historians
who have treated the Indemnity Bill have not continued their
study beyond that point.3
Yet when the July Revolution broke out, more than 30 000
claims had reached the prefectures of the respective Départements and there remained several thousand claims which had
not come before the Commission de liquidation due to administrative problems and delays. So, far from being concluded,
the question of the indemnity re-entered parliamentary debates
and the phrase milliard des émigrés, although convenient and
widely used, was incorrect because in reality the sum was significantly less.4
Not only in 1830, but also in 1848 and 1851, the legend of
the milliard des émigrés was resurrected. There was a further
revival of the issue in the early twentieth century at the time of
the separation of Church and State, in relation to the confiscation of the Church assets. Sources are at best scarce because
little remains of the official records. The majority of the documents concerning the Direction des Domaines, held in the
archives of the Ministry of Finance at Bercy, were burnt during
the Commune in 1871. Yet despite the loss of these official
sources, there are many references to the indemnity issue in
the work of historians of the Restoration period and in the
memoirs of the émigrés themselves.
In the Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, published by
Pierre Larousse in the first years of the Third Republic, the
article entitled ‘Émigrés’ gives a very severe judgement on the
Emigration and also on the indemnity:
[. . . ] il est incontestable que, prise dans sa généralité, l’émigration eut tout d’abord le caractère odieux d’appel à
l’étranger, de révolte contre la nation. [. . . ] ils arrachèrent à
126
la France le trop fameux milliard des émigrés (1825). C’était
le salaire de leurs trahisons et de leurs complots. 5
The article ‘Milliard’ contains also a few sentences about the
milliard des émigrés and repeats the devastating judgement:
Cette libéralité envers des hommes généralement regardés
comme justement punis pour avoir porté les armes contre
leur patrie, armé l’Europe contre nous et troublé pendant
vingt ans la France par leurs intrigues et leurs trahisons, a
laissé un long souvenir d’impopularité. A diverses époques,
l’opposition a pu agiter les esprits en demandant la restitution de ce fameux milliard. 6
The catchphrase milliard des émigrés was initially used during
the Restoration by the liberal opposition in order to slur the
advocates of the Indemnity Bill by damning the achievements
of the Revolution. Under subsequent regimes, the meaning
evolved and the term served to condemn the Emigration and
the Restoration together. The Emigration was gradually substituted for the Revolution as the target of universal condemnation in politics and the two above quotations show that every
debate over the indemnity issue successfully opposed Revolution and Emigration. This outcome reflected a patriotic judgement condemning the émigrés which prevailed not only during
the debate over the Indemnity Bill in 1825, but throughout
the whole of the nineteenth century.
Yet, because the liquidation of the indemnity was not completed within the prescribed five-year period, the July monarchy had to tackle the problem of the remaining claims. In
December 1830 the Minister of Finance and President of the
Council of Ministers, Jacques Laffitte, proposed to the Chambers a new law which would abolish the fonds commun de réserve.
This was a reserve of about three million francs destined for
those émigrés, eligible for indemnification, who had been disadvantaged by various circumstances in the sale of their property during the different revolutionary periods.7
Laffitte stated that the July monarchy agreed to accept the
debts of the Restoration but that it was not willing to do more
than the Indemnity Bill had itself intended. Laffitte cited the
fact that the fonds commun had only been attributed ‘à titre conditionnel’. Its dissolution required a new piece of legislation
Almut Franke
127
which the Restoration government would not have considered
appropriate. This law would have to be promulgated by the
July 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 the
French nation: ‘C’est notre France qui a donné ce festin, sa
desserte peut et doit lui appartenir’. 9 The metaphor of the
splendid feast dated from the debate over the indemnity in
1825, where it had been used by General Foy, the most brilliant
speaker of the liberal opposition. The debate in December
1830 about the abolition of the reserve fund echoed the
speeches of 1825: all the stereotypes, the accusations and the
insults re-emerged, but this time the other way round. The
revolutionaries were no longer the ‘vaincus’. By 1830 the men
of the Restoration had taken their place.
Adolphe Thiers showed himself very clearly as a vainqueur, as
he declared that the indemnity was ‘un des plus grands dommages qui aient été faits au pays’. 10 In his opinion, the July
Revolution proved that the Indemnity Bill had not achieved its
goal, the reconciliation between revolutionaries and émigrés.
In his eyes, this reconciliation was impossible: ‘Il y a des partis
qui ne se pardonnent pas’.11 The men of the Restoration were as
much the enemies of France as the indemnity was an injustice.
Thus, Thiers considered the abolition of the fonds commun to be a
necessary measure. Laffitte called the indemnity, ‘un acte de spoliation envers l’État [. . .] un acte de force en faveur des émigrés’.12
In 1825 the confiscation and the sale of the national goods
had been denounced as spoliation. This term spoliation was so
frequently used that one could get the impression that the
primary objective of the July Revolution was victory over the
émigrés. Consequently, nobody was touched by the conciliatory
words of the Marquis de Maleville who appealed in the Chambre des Pairs:
Pourquoi faut-il que [ . . . ] quelques personnes aient cru devoir remettre en jugement l’émigration, et faire le procès à
la loi même de l’indemnité? Ne serait-il pas bien temps de
laisser au passé les discordes et les passions qui en ont contristé l’histoire? Les sollicitudes et les périls du présent ne
nous suffisent-ils pas?13
128
The Comte de Montalembert defended the Indemnity Bill and
asked if it was really necessary ‘de mutiler une de nos plus belles
lois pour rendre la guerre nationale et populaire?’14 He was referring to Laffitte, who had the foresight to establish a link between the abolition of the fonds commun and events in Belgium
which might lead to a war, by suggesting that the three million
francs of the fonds commun should be employed to reinforce the
army. The financial situation in France was very precarious:
the year 1831 began with a deficit of one hundred million
francs. 15
The bill abolishing the fonds commun was promulgated in
January 1831. The regular liquidations of the indemnity carried on until 1832. At the end of that year, the Commission de
liquidation was dissolved. But the catchphrase milliard des émigrés re-emerged throughout the century in times of financial
crisis. In addition, there remained dozens of unsolved cases,
and the persons still claiming the liquidation of an indemnity
turned towards the Commission des pétitions of the Chambers
with their complaints.
In February 1848, France was in euphoric mood, as it had
been in the first months after the July Revolution. But the difference was that, this time, the whole political system had
changed. In 1848, as in 1830, disenchantment soon took the
place of euphoria. At the beginning of March, the State was on
the 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 put
through financial reform. Not only was the Minister of Finance,
Louis Antoine Garnier-Pagès, concerned about the financial
reform, but the whole of Paris was focused on how to cope with
the situation and did not understand the government’s difficulty in finding a solution. Thousands of Parisians met in
clubs, discussed various measures and sent delegations to the
Hôtel de Ville to present them. Newspapers proposed several
projects and every day a barrage of brochures reached the
ministry. 17 The walls were covered with posters. One of them
claimed:
Aux grands maux, les grands remèdes! Le gouvernement
de la Restauration a exercé sur la France un vol d’ UN MILLIARD 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 faire
restituer, c’est le devoir du Gouvernement. 18
After the restitution of the milliard, attention would then turn
to the invasion of 1814 and 1815 and to the revolutions of 1830
and 1848, because the émigrés were also held responsible for
the financial burden of these events.
But instead, the Provisional Government decided to levy a
new tax of 45 centimes on every franc already paid, which
would increase revenue by between 160 and 190 million
francs. 19 The public’s resistance to this tax increase resulted in
riots, payment refusals and the threatening of those who were
willing to pay. The Minister of Finance, Garnier-Pagès, complained about the naïvety of most proposals. His own notes,
written to justify his actions, show that the poster quoted above
was not an isolated case:
Des incitations, des sommations pour l’adoption de ce
procédé, que les uns appelaient restitution et les autres nécessité politique, couvraient les murailles et surgissaient des
Clubs: Les Bourbons, ramenés par l’étranger, avaient forcé
la France d’indemniser des gens justement condamnés,
d’après les lois et coutumes de l’ancienne monarchie, pour
avoir pris les armes contre la patrie. Un milliard, octroyé
par le bon plaisir de la royauté, voté par un parti, par une
majorité de pairs et de députés la plupart intéressés dans la
question, malgré l’énergique opposition de tout le pays,
avait été imposé de force. C’était une spoliation, un partage
de dépouilles publiques. Ce que la force avait fait, le droit
commandait de la défaire. [. . .] La monarchie de Juillet avait
annulé les fractions non distribuées de ce milliard: la République devait faire plus, et exercer son droit absolu de révision,
d’annulation, de restitution. Ce milliard arracherait la France
à ses misères, à ses douleurs. Le Gouvernement provisoire
serait 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 the
people of the cities and the provinces over to the Republic and
thereby, to demean the monarchy and the nobility. But in his
view, it also damaged the State because it reawakened:
130
[. . . ] les anciennes divisions, les haines éteintes, les vengeances assoupies; ressusciter le spectre sanglant du passé,
avec toutes ses angoisses et toutes ses terreurs; couper de
nouveau le territoire en deux: les biens domaniaux et les biens
nationaux; jeter l’inquiétude sur les droits de la propriété,
sur l’origine de ces droits; c’était sanctionner et léguer à
l’avenir de la France la loi du vainqueur.21
This demand for the restitution of the milliard des émigrés illustrates how selective the memory of this event was and how it
was applied to the contemporary political climate. The poster
made the solution sound simple: the decree it proposed would
put the whole financial situation back on its feet in two paragraphs. The catchphrase milliard des émigrés was engraved in
the public memory. One referred simply to le milliard, and
gave no consideration to whether the sum was really a milliard
or to how the money should be returned.22
And from whom could one take the money? Garnier-Pagès
pointed out that in the last 25 years, the recipients had
changed several times so that it would be impossible to recover
the money. This argument recalls the debates of the Restoration period, when the return of the biens nationaux was considered impossible for the same reason: the diversity of owners
and the difficulty in finding the first buyers.
Over and over again the financial administration was confronted with the consequences of the Indemnity Bill. When
the Commission de liquidation was dissolved at the end of
1832, the remaining claims and the complaints of those who
were not satisfied with the indemnity they had received were
sent to the Ministry of Finance. But the Ministry of Finance
denied responsibility, and the petitioners were forced to turn
to the Conseil d’Etat and the two Chambers. A good example
is the demand of the Gauthier brothers dating from 1844. In
the Year III, the two brothers recovered their land which had
been confiscated by mistake: the Gauthier brothers had not
emigrated as had been presumed. Three years later, in the
Year VI, the land was once more confiscated and sold, but the
brothers received a part of the retail price. As a result of this
confiscation the brothers obtained an indemnity of approximately 14000 francs in 1825. However, they considered this
too low and demanded a supplement. The most interesting
Almut Franke
131
part of their claim is its reasoning, which was very appropriate
for 1844. The brothers differentiated themselves explicitly
from the émigrés whom they qualified as
des personnes qui ont été dépouillées de leurs biens par une
application juste et régulière des lois révolutionnaires.
Paradoxically, they were not émigrés, their dispossession was a
mistake, and yet they claimed an indemnity which met the real
value of the confiscated land.23 Their demand was not granted.
The over-riding preoccupation of the government was to
bury the sensitive issue of the émigrés and the milliard and to
relegate it, and them, to history.
[ . . . ] cette loi, consacrée déjà par le temps, a du moins ce
mérite: c’est d’être comme la pierre scellée sur un passé où
sont ensevelies des passions, des haines, et des guerres déplorables, qui ont trop longtemps déchiré notre patrie.24
With these words the reporter of the Commission des pétitions of
the Chambre des députés rejected a proposal concerning the
revision of the indemnification of the émigrés. On 12 March
1851, three years after the decree of the tax of 45 centimes,
the three deputies, Lagrange, Ducoux et Colfavru, demanded
the reimbursement of this tax by the means of the complete
repayment of the milliard des émigrés.25 Ducoux proposed an
additional tax to apply only to the indemnified persons
until such time as the sum of one milliard francs had been
recovered. Lagrange claimed that even the interest should be
repaid. Colfavru, the most unassuming of the three, demanded
only the payment of a sum equivalent to the expense of the 45
centimes tax: a sum of 174,212,404 francs and 26 centimes. He
was precise about the figure involved, whereas the indemnity
was just called the milliard. The Commission des pétitions
accused the three deputies of wishing to return to the tempestuous time of the Restoration, to revive bitter reminiscences
and
[. . . ] de mettre aux prises de nouveau l’émigration et la
France révolutionnaire, de grandes infortunes et des lois
terribles; de réviser, enfin, après soixante ans, avec les têtes
et les passions d’un autre âge, un grand procès historique
dont nos pères ne nous avaient pas légué le fardeau. 26
132
The merit of the Indemnity Bill consisted in putting an end to
questions of property rights and confiscation. If the indemnity
was to be revised, these principles would be attacked. The
reproaches made against the speakers of 1825 were now levelled
at the petitioners of 1851. The committee decided to prohibit
any discussion of the events of 1825, because irrespective of
the 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 of
the émigrés that the three deputies’ proposition of 1851 was
the last attempt to have the milliard reimbursed. After that,
stated Gain, ‘la question du milliard des émigrés entra définitivement dans l’histoire.’27 But the past and the memory of the
past, were they definitely buried? The great historical trials of
the Revolution and the Restoration, did they really come to an
end at that point? In fact, there were no more parliamentary
debates after 1851 on the indemnity issue, although petitions
were made in 1885, 1886, 1887 and 1891 by a certain Monsieur Lépine de Ligondès who obstinately claimed the reimbursement of the retail price of his ancestors’ castle without
any success.28
The inspector of finance, Geslié, wrote in a report that the
number and value of the remaining émigré goods was so modest that it would not be worth bothering the Chambers. And he
added: ‘Il semble, d’ailleurs, inopportun de réveiller cette vieille question des émigrés’. 29 But the case was not closed. Until
the 1920s there existed a Commission des émigrés at the Ministry of Finance which had to cope with the remaining claims.
It was the intention of the Ministry of Finance to appropriate
the last of the unclaimed émigré goods. In a circular dating
from February 1900, the Directeur général des domaines
asked for a list to be established in each Department naming
the émigré goods which remained in the possession of the
State. 30 Most of the lands which had not been sold during the
Revolution and thus remained in the possession of the State
had already been returned to the former owners by the Restitution Bill of December 1814. Consequently, in most of the
Departments there were no more émigré goods and threequarters of the Departments sent back an empty list. But 23
Departments reported 50 cases. In the majority of cases, the
State 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 could
not be found or did not claim anything. In 1920, the operation
was repeated, but at this time most of the émigré goods had
already been sold.31
Three statements by historians at the end of the 19th and the
beginning of the 20th century illustrate that the reconciliation
between Emigration and Revolution had never been reached.
In 1886, Paul Gourmain-Cornille was full of bitterness when
he recalled a project voted some weeks before the coup d’état
by Bonaparte on the 18th Brumaire, which had attributed an
indemnity to the immortels défenseurs de la patrie.32 The fact that,
[. . . ] ce milliard promis aux patriotes, à titre de récompense
nationale, fût distribué aux émigrés pour les indemniser des
ruines 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 as
degenerate adventurers and accused those who defended them
of being royalists.
Frédéric Masson, who is known for his studies on Napoleon,
declared openly in a collection of conferences published in
1911, that his dislike of the Bourbons dated from his childhood. In a conference of 1909 with the title ‘Les émigrés et
leur retour’ he adopted the simplistic notion of the noble émigré
who conspired against all those who refused to return to the
Ancien Régime and he defended the confiscation of the émigré
lands in the Revolution. 34
Some years later, in 1926, Pierre de la Gorce thought that
the interval of time would be sufficient to treat the Restoration
period with impartiality:
On a beaucoup écrit sur la Restauration. Si j’entreprends ici
d’en retracer l’histoire, c’est que le recul des temps rend
peut-être opportune une révision. Les mêmes querelles de
partis, les mêmes événements de la vie parlementaire qui
passionnaient encore, il y a cinquante ans, les vieillards ou
les hommes d’âge mûr, semblent aujourd’hui surannés. Il
convient de les noter comme signes caractéristiques de
l’époque; mais s’y appesantir serait se traîner dans un détail
134
désormais superf lu. C’est dans cet esprit qu’a été conçu le
présent livre, où l’on s’est appliqué moins à accumuler les
faits qu’à éliminer tous les incidents peu dignes de mémoire.35
But in this last sentence, de la Gorce destroyed the reader’s
hope for an impartial interpretation. Like Gourmain-Cornille
and Masson, de la Gorce also wanted to manipulate history in
order to create a certain view of the past: there were events
which he qualified as ‘unworthy of memory’.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Paul Pradel de
Lamase, the descendant of an émigré, published two books
about the confiscation and the sale of the émigré goods. He
called it vol and pillage and presented the dispossession of his
family as a representative example.36 In a preface he explained
why the question of the national lands had gained new relevance. If the government thought again about confiscation, this
time it would be the ‘razzia du problématique milliard appartenant aux Congrégations religieuses’. 37
This sequestration of church land was used by Pradel de
Lamase in order to compare the present government with the
governments of the French Revolution who had decreed the
confiscation and sale of the national lands. His aim was to set
right the wrongs of the French Revolution towards the émigrés.
He claimed a restitution, but not only of the indemnity but of
the lands themselves – after more than a century! The nineteenth century was the century of confiscation, said Pradel de
Lamase, so the twentieth century should become the century
of restitution.38 The Indemnity Bill became an expropriation
bill in this interpretation. 39 Nothing was solved by the indemnity. The claim by the descendants of the buyers of national
lands, that the question of property rights had been solved in
1825, was regarded by Pradel de Lamase as a legend.
Only a few of the memoirs written by émigrés contain information about the extent of the émigrés’ financial losses, or about
their hopes and expectations concerning a restitution or an indemnity. 40 But the Editors’ prefaces sometimes contain a judgement on the Emigration or give the reason for the new edition.
An extraordinary example is the new edition of the memoirs
written by the Comte de Neuilly. They were first published by
his nephew in 1865 and then republished in 1941 by Louis
Thomas, who described himself as a descendant of a legitimist
family. The preface to this new edition shows, that even in the
Almut Franke
135
middle of the twentieth century, the Emigration was used to
serve current political debates. Louis Thomas saw in the life of
the Comte de Neuilly proof that emigration was always a mistake. He claimed:
Lorsqu’un pays subit une transformation profonde, si ses
fils ne veulent pas devenir étrangers à sa pensée, à ses sentiments, à sa volonté de reconstruction et de renaissance, ils
doivent demeurer avec leurs frères de race, sous le ciel qui
les vit naître.41
Then Thomas imagined the life of Neuilly as it would have
been if he had not emigrated: If, instead of joining the army of
Condé, Neuilly had fought in the French army, he would have
become, under Napoleon, a general or even marshal of
France, his name would have been engraved on the Arc de
Triomphe, and he would have gone down in the annals of history. In Thomas’s eyes, Neuilly had ruined his life by his emigration. That was the lesson to learn from this tragedy, and
Thomas recommended it to all those who thought about leaving
France in 1941:
Sauf pour éviter la mort immédiate, on n’a pas le droit
d’émigrer. Et dès qu’on le peut, il faut revenir. On n’a pas
deux patries. On n’a même pas le droit de juger la sienne.
On sert. Obstinément. Jusqu’au bout.42
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
Pierre de la Gorce, La Restauration, 2 vols, Paris 1926–28, vol. 2, p. 75.
For details see the exhaustive work of André Gain, La Restauration et les
biens des émigrés. La législation concernant les biens nationaux de seconde origine et son application dans l’Est de la France (1814–1832), 2 vols, Nancy,
1928.
Gain (see note 2) gives only a few hints. Victor Pierre, Le milliard des émigrés, Paris 1881, gives some more information about the aftermath of
the indemnity, but often his references do not withstand checking.
The sum definitely paid is to be found in the Compte général des finances of 1842; in the Grand-livre de la dette publique were recorded
about 26 millions francs [25.995.310 francs] in governmental bonds of
3% which corresponded in capital to approximately 870 million francs
[866.510.333 francs]. See Marcel Ragon, La législation sur les émigrés,
136
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
1789–1825, Paris 1904, p. 188, and Marcel Marion, ‘Une légende historique. Le milliard des émigrés’, in Le Correspondant, 10.04.1923, p. 118.
Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, vol. VII/1, Paris
1870, Reprinted Geneva 1982, p. 437.
Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, vol. XI/1, p. 267.
For the legislation on the émigrés see Marc Bouloiseau, Étude de l’émigration et de la vente des biens des émigrés (1792–1830). Instruction, sources,
bibliographie, législation, tableaux, Paris, 1963.
Laffitte before the Chambre des députés, 10.12.1830, Archives parlementaires, 2e série, vol. 65, p. 438.
Baudet-Lafargue before the Chambre des députés, 10.12.1830, Archives
parlementaires, 2e série, vol. 65, p. 440.
Thiers before the Chambre des députés, 9.12.1830, Archives parlementaires, 2e série, vol. 65, p. 401.
Ibid.
Laffitte before the Chambre des députés, 1.12.1830, Archives parlementaires, 2e série, vol. 64, p. 700.
Marquis de Maleville before the Chambre des pairs, 27.12.1830, Archives
parlementaires, 2e série, vol. 65, p. 623.
Comte de Montalembert before the Chambre des pairs, 29.12.1830,
Archives parlementaires, 2e série, vol. 65, p. 660.
Louis Blanc, Révolution française. Histoire de dix ans (1830–1840), Brussels 1847, vol. 1, p. 275.
A. Antony, La politique financière du gouvernement provisoire (février–mai
1848), Paris, 1909, p. 52.
Some of these brochures are stored in the Bibliothèque nationale,
Lb53 – Histoire du gouvernement provisoire.
Un milliard! (signé: L’Enfant), Paris s.d. [1848].
République française. Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Recueil des décrets et actes
financiers du gouvernement provisoire, Paris, 1848, p. 47.
Louis Antoine Garnier dit Garnier-Pagès, Histoire de la Révolution de
1848, Paris, 1868, pp. 90–1.
Ibid., p. 91.
The restitution of the milliard would not have been very profitable:
only 273 millions francs, as in 1848 the bonds of 3% – were only at
32,50. See Marcel Marion, Histoire financière de la France 1715–1875,
Paris, 1914–1928, vol. 5, p. 86.
Petition of Antoine Gauthier towards the Chambre des pairs,
14.04.1844, Archives nationales, CC 470: Chambre des Pairs. Pétitions de la session de 1845, dossier 558.
Corne before the Assemblée législative, 31.03.1851, in Compte rendu
des séances de l’Assemblée nationale législative, vol. 13:23.03.9.05.1851, Paris 1851, Annex, p. 47.
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).
Corne before the Assemblée législative, 31.03.1851 (see note 24),
Annex, p. 47.
Gain, La Restauration et les biens des émigrés (see note 2), vol. 2, p. 384.
Almut Franke
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
137
Petitions of 1885, 1886, 1887 et 1891. See the report of M. BabaudLacroze concerning the petition No. 1155 of a M. Lépine de Ligondès.
Assemblée nationale. Chambre des députés, séance du 11.05.1891,
p. 862.
Report of the inspector of finance, de Geslié, 9.04.1885. Archives
économiques et financières, B 14534.
‘[ . . . ] l’État se trouve encore détenteur d’immeubles et de rentes foncières, séquestrés sur des émigrés depuis plus d’un siècle et dont la remise
aux anciens propriétaires n’a pu être effectuée, conformément à la loi
du 5 décembre 1814, soit en raison de leur affectation à des services
publics, soit par l’effet de l’inaction prolongée des ayants-droit. Je
vous prie de rechercher la consistance exacte et la valeur actuelle des
immeubles et des rentes dont il s’agit qui peuvent exister dans votre
département 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.
Circular of the Direction générale des Domaines, 17.03.1920. Archives
économiques et financières, B 14534.
Paul Gourmain-Cornille, ‘Le milliard des défenseurs de la patrie et le
milliard des émigrés’, in La Révolution française, vol. X, 1886, pp. 592–
607, 678–90, 821–31, 898–917, here p. 916.
Ibid., p. 594.
Frédéric Masson, ‘Les émigrés et leur retour’, in Au jour le jour, Paris
s.d. [1911], pp. 251–86, here p. 277.
Gorce, La Restauration (see note 1), vol. 1, preface written the
23.02.1926, p. 1.
Paul Pradel de Lamase, Voleurs et volés, coin d’histoire révolutionnaire,
Paris 1901; Paul Pradel de Lamase, Le pillage des biens nationaux. Une
famille française sous la Révolution, Paris, 1912.
Pradel de Lamase, Pillage (see note 36), Preface, p. 1.
‘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.
‘L’indemnité du milliard fut essentiellement une loi générale d’expropriation pour cause d’utilité publique.’ Ibid., p. 400.
See Alfred Fierro, Bibliographie critique des mémoires sur la Révolution
française écrits ou traduits en français, Paris, 1988; Jean Tulard, Nouvelle
bibliographie des mémoires sur l’époque napoléonienne écrits ou traduits en
français, Paris, 1991; Guillaume de Bertier de Sauvigny/Alfred Fierro,
Bibliographie critique des mémoires sur la Restauration écrits ou traduits en
français, Geneva, 1988.
Comte de Neuilly, Dix années d’émigration. Correspondances et souvenirs,
publiés par son neveu Maurice de Barberey, Paris, 1865, 2nd edn by Louis
Thomas, Paris, 1941, Preface, p. 8.
Ibid., p. 13.
9 French Émigrés in the
United States
Thomas C. Sosnowski
‘Formez vos bataillons!’ encouraged the ‘Marseillaise’, but as we
know, not all Frenchmen rose up and joined revolutionary
brigades. Many sought asylum in nearby lands like northern
Italy, Hamburg, Cologne and London. But more daring were
those who chose more distant locations, especially in the United
States, involving a journey of more than two months. French
assistance during the War for American Independence, as well
as the influence of Rousseau’s ideas, made the new transAtlantic republic an obvious choice for many. Already several
American cities had noticeable French communities: Boston,
Philadelphia, and especially Charleston, South Carolina. Here
the émigrés were welcomed, until relations between France
and the United States deteriorated into an undeclared maritime war in the late 1790s. But during this decade perhaps as
many as 10000 exiles came to the United States, although no
research has been done to confirm this figure.1 Most remained
as refugees with no desire to assimilate into US society which
many considered primitive. Because their primary attention
was focused on their homeland, many created French Clubs
and patronised French-language newspapers in order to follow
developments in France. Neverthless, a galaxy of luminaries
endured the trans-Atlantic journey: Moreau de St-Méry, Volney, Brillat-Savarin, the Duc d’Orléans, Chateaubriand, LézayMarnésia, La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Mme de La Tour du
Pin and even Talleyrand.
Finances were, of course, a major concern for these émigrés.
Some, like Orléans and La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, depended
on money sent by their families in Europe. Talleyrand came
with hopes of participating in land speculation.2 Mme de la
Tour du Pin and her husband purchased a hundred hectare
farm near Troy, New York – perhaps as a way preserving what
remained of their fortune. In spite of his own distaste for the
business world, Moreau de St-Méry became a bookseller and
138
Thomas C. Sosnowski
139
publisher. His publications included a first edition of La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt’s Prisons de Philadelphie and the émigré
newspaper, the Courrier français. His Voyage aux États-Unis de
l’Amérique implies that this was a successful operation, but the
Chevalier Pontgibaud de Moré gave a different evaluation:
Nor was I particularly astonished either to learn, some
months later [after visiting the store] that he was bankrupt,
but I may remark that he failed for twenty-five thousand
francs, and I would not have given a thousand crowns for all
the stock in [his] shop.3
For many the aristocratic style to which they were accustomed
was impossible to maintain in the New World. Madame de la
Tour du Pin, for instance, who was assisted by several servants
and slaves, found it necessary to do her own cooking with the
aid of a French cookbook, La Cuisine bourgeoise.4 On one occasion while she was attempting to butcher a lamb for dinner,
she was interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Talleyrand
who said: ‘On ne peut embrocher un gigot avec plus de
majesté’.5 Surprised, but not upset, she invited him and his
companion Beaumetz to partake of the repast.
Some of the émigrés wrote about their travels and other
experiences in the United States. La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt,
who travelled extensively and wrote an 8-volume work as a
result, also kept a private journal which was not published until
the twentieth century. He became, like some other émigrés,
‘explorateurs malgré eux’.6 Lézay-Marnésia published his
curious Lettres écrites des rives de l’Ohio which excoriated the
revolutionary governments of France while proposing the establishment of a utopian settlement (for him, that is) Saint Pierre
with ‘une monarchie libre et si bien organisée’ – a truly aristocratic milieu.7 Everyone seems to have heard of Châteaubriand
and his American voyage in 1791. However, what he did and
where he went was greatly distorted by his romantic ruminations
and extensive readings over more than 20 years. 8
The émigrés who left some record of their time in the United
States were usually exiles who pined for France, and had little
or no knowledge of the English language. This proved a major
hurdle in the New World. Their reaction was similar to that of
other non-English speaking immigrants; they tended to live in
one district of a city and frequented establishments which
140
catered for their physical and social needs. Apparently Moreau
de St-Méry’s bookstore in Philadelphia (then the capital of the
United States), like that of Dulau in London (see Chapter 3),
acted like a French community clubhouse.9 Some did decide
to learn English and even contracted with William Cobbett,
the noted polemicist and writer, who had recently moved to
the US. In fact, his first published work was Le Tuteur anglais,
an English grammar which was addressed to the French
reader. 10
Another example of isolation was the creation of the settlement of Azilum in a remote region of north central Pennsylvania. Here the Vicomte de Noailles, Omer-Antoine Talon, and
others 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 20
by 26 meters and boasted large fireplaces and large glass
windows. 11 La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, however, criticised
Talon’s ignorance of the English language and although he
predicted the success of the venture, he thought one roadblock remained:
One of the greatest impediments of this settlement will
probably arise from the prejudices of some Frenchmen
against the Americans [. . .] Some of them [. . .] declare that
they will never learn the language of the country or enter
into conversation with an American.12
This isolationism was noticed again by La RochefoucauldLiancourt while travelling through the Finger Lakes district of
New York State (a remote region at this time). Here he met
a M. Vatines who had recently cleared approximately eight
hectares where he lived with his wife and the works of Rousseau, Montesquieu and Corneille which he preserved. While
he was delighted to see his countrymen,
he [was] prejudiced against Americans, on account of their
unfair dealings and especially because they are extremely
dull and melancholy.
La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt concluded that ‘this sort of dislike of Americans is common to all Frenchmen . . . in this part
of the globe’. 13
Thomas C. Sosnowski
141
Although he did not share in this opinion, he easily found
fault with Americans, such as those he met in Albany, New
York. He described them as ‘people of uncouth manners and
without 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 Pin
and her husband were indifferent to the cultural jewel in their
presence.15 But this judgement can be contrasted in a later
tome when he lauds, in general, American hospitality towards
strangers.16
Talleyrand also wrote extensively about his experiences in
the United States in his Mémoires. There he criticised Americans
for over-emphasising ‘the spirit of enterprise’. In fact, he
asserted that ‘trop d’activité se tourne vers les affaires et trop
peu vers la culture’.17
As a result he found Americans to be coarse nouveaux riches
who little understood and appreciated the sophistication
accruing from civilised life. He criticised, like La RochefoucauldLiancourt, American admiration for money. He thought the
possibilities for luxury had arrived too early in the life of the
United States as a nation: ‘when the first needs of a person
have been satisfied, luxury becomes shocking’. He described
his visit to the log cabin of a Mr Smith on the banks of the Ohio
River where ‘there was a piano in the living room ornamented
with beautiful bronzes’. However, when Talleyrand’s companion, Beaumetz, opened it, he was admonished not to play for
the tuner lived more than a hundred miles away and ‘ had not
arrived that year’.18 This statement should be compared to the
account of a similar incident by a refugee from Saint Domingue:
that is sufficient to have the pretext to ornament their parlors with a fine piece of furniture [piano] though they still
try to teach the good people that the fine arts are worthless!19
In other words, Americans had symbols of civilisation like the
piano, but neither the ability, nor the desire to use them.
Other visitors to the United States were not given to lengthy
discussions like Talleyrand and La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt.
For example, the Duc d’Orléans, who was much impressed with
the US, especially its geographical wonders and the Indians,
decried American ignorance and laziness on several occasions.
142
Once he said the ‘indolence and churlishness of the workingmen [in Tennessee] . . . are unparalleled’. In the same vein
he cast aspersions upon the quality and lack of variety in the
food in the back country inns. 20 Another, but more careful
analyst, Volney, the author of Tableau du climat et du sol des
Etats-Unis, which has been acclaimed as one of the best early
geographical works on this continent,21 said that Americans
referred to themselves as ‘young people’ and this expression
only demonstrates their
inexperience and the eagerness with which they give themselves to the enjoyment of fortune and flattery. 22
However, he was careful to praise American freedom of the
press and of opinion.
Yet not all émigrés were critical of the United States. Some
were thankful for the asylum provided. One noteworthy
example was the great gastronome, Brillat-Savarin, whose
Physiologie du goût is a pæan to the culinary arts. He lived for
three 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 in
the writings of other émigrés. He tried to speak the language
of Americans and to dress like them. He even found reason to
praise at least one American food – the turkey – which to his
palate was a delicacy. As a result he called himself a ‘dindonophile’!23 Mme de la Tour du Pin, whose memoirs never
expressed anger or condescension in her dealings with Americans, also showed none of the bitterness that others expressed
– she was thankful for life and refuge and as well as the love of
her husband. Her criticism focused on the French, not the
Americans; it was La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt who pitied
Madame’s ‘plight’ in Troy, New York, but her own account
sounds very different.24
The negative attitudes of many émigrés towards Americans
were an obstacle to assimilation and the French language
newspapers were one proof of this unwillingness to adopt the
habits and customs of the local inhabitants. Some lasted only a
short time, but the Courrier français survived for four years in
Philadelphia until the unfolding of the XYZ affair and its
attendant Francophobia. These usually reported almost nothing
about the United States, but instead focused on France and
Thomas C. Sosnowski
143
sometimes other regions of Europe. In its pages one could discover more about events in Warsaw than in Boston or New
York!25
Nonetheless, some émigrés maintained contacts with Americans. Mme de la Tour du Pin and her husband were happy to
travel to Albany, often weekly, to visit the Schuyler family,
where they could temporarily enjoy a more elegant lifestyle
and converse in French. In his first five months in Philadelphia in 1794, La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt spent much time at
the home of Benjamin Chew, a noted lawyer and judge. His
private journal relates that almost every day he was a guest at
someone’s residence. Among his new acquaintances, the most
prominent were Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury; Henry Knox, Secretary of War (who became a close
friend); John Kean, officer at the Bank of the United States;
William Bingham, merchant, banker, and legislator.26 Yet his
English was not perfect and was heavily laden with gallicisms
and ungrammatical structures, as one can easily read in his
private letters to Knox. For example, while commenting on
the heavy rains he experienced, he wrote: ‘I reached f loods to
me only Saturday. . . . ’ Or another time: ‘No distance can me
thinking less to your kindness. . . . ’27 He also made the acquaintance of the Francophile Thomas Jefferson and visited him at
his western Virginia mansion, Monticello.
La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Brillat-Savarin, and Mme de
la Tour du Pin appear to have been different from many
other notables who apparently maintained close contacts
only with those in their own ethnic communities. Occasionally
Talleyrand met distinguished Americans like Hamilton, but
after President Washington refused to meet him because of
diplomatic problems, he preferred the company of his compatriots. Also, his liaison with a mulatto woman, who travelled
with him publicly, scandalised Philadelphians, especially
the Quakers.28
Despite these problems of adjustment, many émigrés contributed to American culture and society. As the Chevalier
Pontgibaud de Moré related:
But a man must live, and the most curious spectacle was to
see these Frenchmen, fallen from their former greatness
and now exercising some trade or profession. 29
144
A refugee from Saint-Domingue commented about his fellow
exiles and émigrés:
one is a gardener, another a school teacher; this one makes
marionettes, 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 be
considered illustrious personages. For you know that here
gold is the first title of nobility. 30
Perhaps the most French city in the United States in the
1790s was Charleston, South Carolina. Originally founded by
Huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, this town
maintained noticeable souvenirs of French culture more than
a century later. [Even today the Huguenot church has services
in that language once a month.] Also, an aristocracy based on
land ownership governed the city and dominated its social life.
The citizens welcomed the arrival of the émigrés and later the
refugees from Saint-Domingue. A number of them involved
themselves with drama and for several years the city supported
two active theatres. French names predominated among the
lists of actors and actresses. For a while, there was even a
French Theatre which performed plays in both French and
English and depended heavily on France for its repertoire.31
One noted British actor who participated actively in US
theatre 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 this
taste in its most confirmed state. 32
In other words, they tutored the American aristocracy in the
art of dancing. He also emphasised the importance of the
French émigrés in raising the quality of American culture,
both in music and drama.
A variety of other areas must also be examined – and these
cannot be detailed here. Apparently there was some effect on
the culinary tastes of Americans – French food was considered
prestigious in some circles, although eating French food could
be symbolic of one’s politics (whether pro-French or pro-British,
i.e. Federalist or Jeffersonian). 33 But there is a problem singling out the émigrés as the exclusive source of dietary changes
and even of fashions because of the continuous interchange
Thomas C. Sosnowski
145
between French and Americans, since late colonial days. For
example, one historian ( Jones) claims that the French introduced tomatoes to the Americans who considered it a poisonous
fruit and used it only as a garnish.34 Yet, Jefferson’s admirers
credit him with popularising their use.
Another area of French influence was the Catholic Church.
Usually a rather reclusive group in Protestant America, Catholics were scattered in many of the colonies. Their strongest
presence was in Maryland which was originally founded as a
refuge for them in the 1630s. Yet even there they remained a
small minority. After the American Revolution, Fr John Carroll of Maryland petitioned the Pope to establish a US diocese
separate from that of Québec. The response was the creation
of the diocese of Baltimore with Carroll named as its first
bishop. The new bishop quickly turned his attention to strengthening the Catholic presence in the US by supporting the
establishment of Georgetown University with the help of
ex-Jesuits, including some from France, and then by establishing a seminary in Baltimore. In the latter effort, he made contact
with the erudite Sulpician Order, recently suppressed in
France, and encouraged some of its members to establish a
seminary. Numerous other non-juring clergy were also welcomed by Bishop Carroll. As the number of Catholics increased
over the next few decades, many of these émigré priests were
appointed bishops of newly created dioceses: Dubourg at New
Orleans; Maréchal at Baltimore after Carroll’s death; Flaget at
Bardstown, Kentucky; Bruté at Vincennes, Indiana; Gabriel
Richard at Detroit (although he died before consecration), and
so on. Also, in 1792, some Poor Clares, driven from France,
sought refuge in Maryland and founded one of the first
cloistered convents in the United States. Indeed the most noticeable and long-lasting inf luence that the émigrés had on the
United States was on the Catholic Church, which f lourished
under their leadership.35
The emigration in the United States ended almost abruptly
in 1798. Some émigrés had already returned to France by the
mid-1790s and did not experience the worst of the Francophobia which affected many parts of the States: Talleyrand,
who helped cause this episode, Mme de la Tour du Pin, who
returned with her family to claim the ancestral lands under
the terms of an amnesty, and others.
146
Several factors encouraged the rise of Francophobia. First, it
must be noted that many Americans welcomed the French
Revolution as an advance of liberty and the destruction of
monarchical tyranny but as the Revolution became more
radical and violent many joined the anti-French movement. The
misguided and undiplomatic mission of Edmond Genêt to the
United States to undermine US neutrality, as well as the Reign
of Terror and its excesses, encouraged the pro-British stance
of the Federalist Party whose efforts were crowned with Jay’s
Treaty of 1795. The French wanted the United States to keep to
the terms of the original Treaty of Alliance of 1778, which were
obviated by Jay’s Treaty with the British and Washington’s
Proclamation of Neutrality. The Directory encouraged attacks
on US vessels in the West Indies in reaction both to the AngloAmerican Treaty and the lack of understanding over responsibilities ensuing from the alliance. The attacks of the French
corsairs were not the only acts of piracy Americans faced, for
the British continued to stop US ships in order to impress sailors. During John Adams’ presidency (1797–1801), the neutral
United States chose to maintain British friendship, eventually
engaging in an undeclared war against France as a result of
the notorious and misguided XYZ Affair.
The deterioration of diplomatic relations between the two
republics placed the émigrés in an awkward situation at best.
From at least 1795 until the summer of 1798, one notices a
growth of anti-French sentiment as reported by them in their
writings. Moreau de St-Méry emphasised the English proclivities of the Federalists to the detriment of the French. In addition, he stated that,
people acted as though a French invasion force might land
in America at any moment. Everybody was suspicious of
everybody else: everywhere one saw murderous glances.
In an entry of 14 July 1798, he stated bluntly:
antagonism against the French increased daily. I was the
only person in Philadelphia who continued to wear a French
cockade.
Moreau was also angered by the lack of support from President
John Adams who as Vice President (1789–97) had patronised
his bookstore. He was placed on the list of French citizens to be
Thomas C. Sosnowski
147
deported. When queried about the reason for the addition of
Moreau’s name to the list, Adams replied to Senator Langdon of
New Hampshire: ‘Nothing in particular, but he’s too French’.36
One more example can be seen in Volney’s Tableau where
he states bluntly that, ‘an epidemic of animosity against the
French [is] breaking out’ with himself as the object of virulent,
verbal abuse. He was angered by the suspicion that he worked
as a secret agent of a foreign government. Of course, he ridiculed the proposal presented to the Congress that would have
declared the United States ‘the most enlightened and wisest
nation on the globe’ which he felt emboldened this hysteria ‘by
declamations in Congress [. . . ] and even in colleges by prizes
for [. . .] defamatory theses against the French’. Volney departed
from the United States in the midst of this fury and completed
his work overseas. Surprisingly, his anger did not obfuscate his
admiration for American liberty.37
Another significant source of information about this gallophobia is the émigré newspaper press. In the Courrier français,
editor Pierre Parent often railed against the calumnies and libel
that he found in the US press. He denounced John Fenno’s
Gazette of the United States for its accusations that the French
especially were ‘spreading trouble and disorder in the United
States’.38
The horrors of this hysteria can be seen in an attack on
patients in a French hospital in Philadelphia by a group of
workers in August 1796. The editor called for justice, which
apparently was had within a few days with the arrest of the
guilty.39 And later that year when fires swept through Charleston, Savannah, Baltimore and Boston, the French were accused
of these dastardly acts. Parent this time singled out the noted
American lexicographer Noah Webster as one of the perpetrators of these lies and then said:
Absurdités, suppositions, interprétations, invectives, injures,
outrages, rien n’est négligés pour satisfaire leur haine contre
le Peuple Français. 40
Unfortunately, mass hysteria has occasionally occurred in US
history and the Francophobia of the 1790s is only one heinous
episode. One cannot forget the anti-Catholic riots in Boston in
1830s, the Red Scare of 1919 and McCarthyism of the 1950s.
Whereas in the twentieth century Americans inveighed
148
against ‘reds’, some of them in the 1790s inveighed against
those representing a different revolution. As a result in July 1798
the Courrier français ceased publication. Moreau de St-Méry,
Volney and others returned to France. The vibrant émigré
communities disappeared, but the United States would only
have to wait a few years before a new breed of French émigrés,
the Bonapartists, would arrive.
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Fernand Baldensperger, Le mouvement des idées dans l’émigration
française, 1789–1815 (Paris, 1924; reprinted by Burt Franklin, 1968), I,
p. 105. For an introduction to the émigrés in America, consult the following works: Frances Sargeant Childs, French Refugee Life in the United
States, 1790–1800 (Baltimore, 1940); Durand Echeverrie, Mirage in the
West: 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 from
France: the Americans and the French in a Revoluionary World, 1780–1820
(New York, 1989); J.G. Rosengarten, French Colonists and Exiles in the
United States (Philadelphia & London, 1907); and ‘Anne Catherine
Bieri Hebert’, ‘The Pennsylvania French in the 1790s: the Story of
Their Survival’, PhD dissertation (University of Texas at Austin), 1981.
It should be noted that the émigrés arrived after the census of 1790 and
most departed before that of 1800. Also, at times it is difficult to distinguish in American sources between exiles from France and those from
Saint-Domingue.
See Talleyrand in America as a Financial Promoter, 1794–96: Unpublished
Letters and Memoirs, vol. II, trans. and ed. Hans Huth and Wilma J.
Pugh (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1942).
Chevalier de Pontgibaud [de Moré], A French Volunteer of the War of
Independence, trans. and ed., Robert B. Douglas (New York, 1898), pp.
128–9.
Marquise de la Tour du Pin, Journal d’une femme de cinquante ans, 1778–
1815 (Paris: Librairie Chapelot, 1914), II, p. 31.
Ibid., II, pp. 31–2.
Baldensperger, Le mouvement des idées dans l’émigration, vol. I, Chapter 2.
Claude-François Adrien, Marquis de Lézay-Marnézia, Lettres écrites des
rives de l’Ohio (Fort Pitt and Paris, An IX [1801] in Nineteenth Century
Literature on Microcards (Louisville, KY: Lost Cause Press, 1956).
See The Memoirs of Chateaubriand, ed. and trans. Robert Baldick (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961) and François-Réné, Vicomte de Chateaubriand, Travels in America and Italy (London: H. Colburn, 1828).
Thomas C. Sosnowski
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
149
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 by
Kenneth Roberts and Anne M. Roberts, Moreau de St. Méry’s American
Journey, 1793–1798 (Garden City, NY, 1947). Allen J. Barthold in his
‘French Journalists in the United States, 1780–1800’, The FrancoAmerican Review I (1937) relates a story about Mme. de St-Méry
breaking up parties with Talleyrand because of the morning’s work
schedule. She said to him: ‘Vous ferez demain le paresseux dans votre
lit jusqu’au midi, tandis qu’à sept heures du matin votre ami sera forcé
d’aller ouvrir son magasin’.
G.D. Cole, The Life of William Cobbett (New York: Harcourt, Brace and
Company), pp. 52–4.
For one of the best works on Azilum, see Louise W. Murray, The Story
of Some Refugees and Their ‘Azilum’ (Athens, PA, 1917).
La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Voyage dans les États-Unis d’Amérique, 8
vols (Paris [1799]) was translated into English as Travels Through the
United States of America (London, 1800). This paper uses the latter
edition. For this quotation, see I, pp. 168–9.
Ibid., II, p. 53.
Ibid., III, pp. 23–4.
Talleyrand, Mémoires, ed. Paul-Louis Couchoud and Jean-Paul Couchoud (Paris, 1957), I, p. 227.
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 his
plans to seek US citizenship if necessary in order to continue with
these financial activities. Also see Michel Poniatowski, Talleyrand aux
États-Unis, 1794–1796 (Paris, 1967).
Althéa de Puech Parham, trans. and ed., My Odyssey: Experiences of a
Young Refugee from Two Revolutions, by a Creole of Saint Domingue (Bâton
Rouge, 1959), p. 203.
Diary of My Travels in America, Louis-Philippe, King of France, 1830–1848
Stephen Becker, trans. and ed. Henry Steele Commager (New York,
1977), pp. 50, 60.
See Anne Godlewska, ‘Geography under Napoleon and Napoleonic
Geography’, Proceedings, Consortium on Revolutionary Europe (1989) I,
pp. 281–302 and also by the same author, ‘Traditions, Crisis, and New
Paradigms in the Rise of the Modern French Discipline of Geography,
1760–1850’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers (1989), pp.
191–213.
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 the
United States (London, 1804), pp. xiv, xvii.
[Anthelme] Brillat-Savarin, Physiologie du goût ou méditations de gastronomie transcendante (Brussels, 1835), pp. 280, 131.
Marquise de la Tour du Pin, Journal d’une femme de cinquante ans, 1778–
1815 (Paris, 1914), vol. II, especially Chapters 1 to 3.
150
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
For a good introduction to the émigré newspapers, consult Samuel
Joseph Marino, ‘The French Refugee Newspapers in the United
States, 1789–1825’, PhD dissertation (University of Michigan, 1962).
See especially La Rochefoucault-Liancourt, Journal de voyage en
Amérique 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 La
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, 1747–1827 (Paris, 1980).
Henry Knox Papers (microfilm), 31 Oct. 1795; 27 April 1796.
Pontgibaud [de Moré], p. 134.
Ibid., p. 128.
Parham, pp. 180–1.
Eola Willis, The Charleston Stage in the XVIII Century: With Social Settings
of the Time (New York & London: Benjamin Blom, 1968) pp. 190–425
passim.
John Bernard, Retrospections of America, 1797–1811, ed. Mrs. Bayle
Bernard (New York & London, 1969 reprint of 1887 edition), pp.
207, 262; also see Walter J. Fraser, Jr., Charleston!
Jones, p. 303.
Ibid., p. 302.
Henry de Courcy, The Catholic Church in the United States: a Sketch of Its
Ecclesiastical History, trans. and enlarged by John Gilmary Shea (New
York: Edward Dunigan and Brother, 1856), especially Chapters 6, 7
and 8.
Moreau de St-Méry, pp. 252–3. For more information about FrancoAmerican relations in the 1790s, consult Alexander DeCondé, The
Quasi-War: the Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France,
1797–1801 (New York, 1966) and James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters: the Alien and Sedition Laws (Ithaca, NY, 1956).
Volney, pp. xix, xxii, xvii.
Courrier français, 13 July 1796.
Ibid., 11 August 1796 and 15 August 1796.
Ibid., 28, 30, 31 December 1796.
10 The Émigré Novel
Malcolm Cook
Critics of French literature in the years 1789–1800 are aware
of the dramatic changes which the various genres underwent
during that period of social turbulence. It has been suggested
that the novel went into decline during the Revolution years and
there is no doubt that the statistics would support this suggestion, particularly for the years of the Terror. 1 It is also clear
that the Revolution had a dramatic effect on the fiction it
inspired. Fiction was, throughout the eighteenth century, a
form of social history without precise definition and works of
fiction therefore reflected social changes as they took place
and often contained allusions to political events and their
interpretation.2 It is in this context that many of the comments
below must be understood.
It is difficult to know how to define the émigré novel and yet
it is impossible to begin without a definition. It could be argued
that émigré novels are those works of fiction which were written
by 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 armée
des Princes, was wounded during the siege of Thionville, and
escaped to England in 1793. It could therefore be said that
Atala and René are novels of Emigration – but, like so many
novels written by authors who emigrated, the tales do not
really have the sense of contemporary history which the term
‘émigré fiction’ surely implies. It might also be suggested that
memoirs, in which characters give a personal account of their
lives for the benefit of others, have a particular status. Surely
they underline the ambiguity of the fictional work. When
authors like Diderot (in the short story, ‘Les Deux amis de
Bourbonne’) and Mme de Staël, in her ‘Essai sur les fictions’
talk about the conte historique in the case of Diderot and the
roman historique in the case of Mme de Staël, they are in fact
referring to two quite different kinds of work. Diderot seeks in
his ‘history’ the ability of the author to persuade the reader of
the actual truth of the events described. Mme de Staël expects
151
152
authors to introduce into their fictions some elements of historical ‘truth’.
Where does this lead the authors of memoirs? It has sometimes been suggested that the distinguishing feature is the
actual existence of the ‘writer’ of the memoirs. But we know
only too well that authors who are real people are quite capable of modifying truth for their own purposes.3 Other authors
fall into the same category, for example, Mme de Flahaut who
emigrated to Surrey, in England, while her husband, the
Comte de Flahaut, was guillotined in 1794. Mme de Genlis,
whose husband suffered a similar fate in 1793, emigrated in
the same year, living both in England and in Switzerland.
However, it could hardly be proposed that she is remembered
today for her novels of Emigration, although one, Les Petits
Émigrés ou Correspondance de quelques enfants (1798) clearly
evokes the reality of life as an émigré. It was translated quickly
into English, appearing in 1799 as The Young Exiles or Correspondence of some juvenile emigrants. Edouard d’Armilly is one of
the young émigrés of the title who is exiled near Zurich and
who writes letters to friends and relations who, in turn, reply
to him. There is no doubt about the political allegiance of
the author in this account of life outside France. Edouard’s
father, at the beginning of the novel, sets the tone for the text
and gives an explanation of the accumulated correspondence:
Veux-tu vivre pour obtenir une grande réputation et
l’amour de tes concitoyens? Réfléchis à l’inconstance de la
multitude, porte tes regards vers Paris, vois l’inconséquence
et l’absurdité de ce peuple malheureux, et tu sauras apprécier
les couronnes qu’il distribue [. . . ]. Profite, mon ami des
événements terribles qui se passent sous tes yeux; ce ne sont
pas des historiens peut-être infidèles ou mal instruits, qui te
parlent; c’est ce tableau frappant de toutes les passions
humaines qui se déroule devant toi.4
During the period of Emigration other novels appeared which
more clearly highlighted the problems and conditions of existence for those authors who found themselves uprooted and
forced to adapt to life in a foreign environment. For the purposes of this chapter I intend to concentrate primarily on
those novels written in French which have a political message
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153
to impart about the process of Emigration and which, naturally, must be seen as novels of propaganda.
My first example, perhaps the first example, is Les Emigrantes
ou la Folie à la mode, par Mme** (Paris, 1792). The title suggests
that 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 je
suis obligée de le faire apercevoir,
but it remains true that the political message of the novel is far
from clear. A group of women decide to emigrate for different
reasons, mostly for fun. They tell each other stories about their
lives which explain why they want to join the party. The stories
are not without interest but it would be difficult to give the
work a political interpretation. This is unusual for a novel
which has such a precise and suggestive title. The novel was
reviewed in the Correspondance littéraire of June 1792 in what
was a fairly conventional style: the novel is briefly described
and the conclusion reads:
Voilà le cadre où l’auteur a fait entrer une douzaine de petites
historiettes dont le fond, sans être ni très-neuf ni très
ingénieux, 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 émigrés français poses similar problems of interpretation. Apparently published in Coblenz in 1792, the anecdotes give details
of the life of the émigrés in exile. The Discours préliminaire
points out:
le préjugé le plus injuste et le plus sot est de croire que ce
n’est que dans sa patrie qu’on peut trouver les seules jouissances de la volupté.
Mme de Mesgrigny, writing to her friend Mme de Saluces in
Paris, points out, provocatively, that life away from home is
not without its compensations:
Il n’est pas étonnant, ma chère amie, que la vie des émigrés
français soit si délicieuse; ils ont avant de quitter la France,
accaparé tout l’or de ce pays fortuné, ils en ont fait transporter les provisions les plus précieuses, au point qu’il ne
154
vous reste plus à Paris et dans toutes les provinces, que du
papier pour toute ressource. Cette contrée de l’Allemagne
est le dépôt des richesses de l’Europe, et (comme vous le
savez) les plaisirs et les jouissances ne sont réservés qu’aux
opulents capitalistes. Jugez donc, ma chère amie, des agrémens que nous goûtons ici, et comparez-les à la vie ennuyeuse et mesquine que vous menez à Paris, où l’on gémit
entre l’indigence et le chagrin (pp. 17–18).
This is a text which poses particular problems of interpretation. The descriptions of life in Coblenz are pornographic and
it would be easy to dismiss the novel as trivial. However, the
long 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 transfer
of such luxury and pleasure which Paris previously offered:
Coblentz est, en effet, devenue en proportion de son étendue, la rivale de Paris. Ses environs sont délicieux, ses maisons de campagne, dans le cœur de l’hyver annoncent les
plaisirs du printemps et de l’amour. Il ne faut pas s’imaginer
que les Mécontens françois qui se sont réunis ici dans la résolution de porter la guerre dans le sein de leur patrie ne
s’occupent sans cesse que de leurs intentions hostiles, que de
leurs préparatifs militaires; il est des heures et même des jours
consacrés uniquement aux délassemens du cœur. (pp. 9–10)
This is a text which is a puzzle. Is it intended to give a critical
description of a debauched and decadent aristocracy and
clergy (and thereby be a revolutionary novel) or is it written to
antagonise the Parisians living lives of hardship while the rich
émigrés 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 of
a servant from Coblenz, published anonymously in Paris and
entitled: L’Aristocrate converti ou le retour de Coblentz. He is a converted aristocrat because he has learned to question the opinions of his master with whom he emigrated to Coblenz. He
describes his previous condition:
Et réellement je la croyois bien malade cette patrie, l’objet
de ma sollicitude; je la croyois dans cet état désespéré, qui ne
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155
laisse de ressource que dans les remèdes violens. A travers le
voile fasciné que la séduction tenoit constamment sur mes
yeux, je la voyois peuplée de fous, tourmentée par les factieux, dévastée par les brigands, ensanglantée par des troupeaux de tigres, en proie, enfin, à tous les maux que peut
entraîner la plus affreuse anarchie; et tant de maux, il est
inutile de dire à qui je les attribuois, puisqu’on sait de quelle
sorte de gens j’étois innocemment l’écho. (pp. 23–4).
He has now learned the errors of his ways and returned to
Paris. The description of life in Paris is in stark contrast to that
given in the Délices. If this is an accurate account of life in Paris
in 1792, the capital must have been a very pleasant place in
which to reside. The people have been transformed by the
Revolution 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 leçons
les plus sublimes de politique, d’administration et de finance.
[ . . . ] Parcourez les promenades, et voyez si elles ne présentent pas l’aspect d’une foire continuelle et brillante. Les plus
jolies marchandises provoquent vos désirs, et s’y donnent à
si bas prix. (pp. 46–7)
This pamphlet, which is long at 61 pages, is worth serious
consideration. I have previously suggested that it is by the novelist, Gorjy, about whom very little is known but who wrote
one of the most remarkable novels of the French Revolution,
Ann’ Quin Bredouille, of 1792.6 The six volumes of the novel represent a severe and ironical attack on the Revolution. However, the sixth volume is completed by this pamphlet, acting as
a kind of antidote to the critical account which precedes it.
There is textual evidence to suggest that both texts are by the
same author, although the ‘libraire’ introducing the Aristocrate
converti, does not make any explicit statement about authorship. The novel finishes abruptly and the libraire claims that he
has had to seek material to complete the final volume. He
writes that he has ‘procuré la bagatelle suivante’:
Elle n’est pas du même genre que le reste mais elle nous a paru
avoir son mérite. Peut-être même cette diversité aura-t-elle
son prix pour le plus grand nombre des lecteurs. (vi, 143–4)7
156
It is difficult to understand what is intended by this introduction. Certainly the text of the Aristocrate is different from
what precedes but what is the libraire implying? The majority
of revolutionary novels pose no problems of interpretation.
Yet already we have seen two novels about emigration which
are far from clear.
Another novel of 1792, Liomin’s, La Bergère d’Aranville ou
l’Emigration, presents no such problems.8 This is a novel which,
unusually, describes the landscape of south-west France. It is
essentially a love story in which a young peasant woman falls in
love with a fleeing nobleman. The novel is full of revolutionary
discourse, with a series of arguments about the status of the
revolution and the relative merits of the various factions. Life
will be better if the fugitives can reach Spain. They do and the
novel finishes on a note of happiness.
It is a little surprising that novels like Liomin’s should be
republished as late as 1826. It reads so much like a product of
its time that it is difficult to believe that the overt political statements had much resonance for the readers of the next generation. One cannot say the same for Sénac de Meilhan’s major
novel, L’Emigré of 1797. This is the best known example of the
kind of fiction we are discussing and it is not difficult to understand why it has survived. Sénac left France in 1790 and visited
London, Aix-la-Chapelle, Rome, Saint Petersburg and Moscow.
He settled in Brunswick, composed his major novel in 1794 and
published it in 1797. In other words, it was already a historical
novel when he published it. He wrote in the avertissement:
On ne doit pas perdre de vue que les lettres qui composent
ce recueil ont été écrites en 1793. La plupart des tableaux et
des sentiments qu’elles renferment sont relatifs à cette
époque affreuse et unique dans l’histoire.9
Sénac’s novel has become reasonably well known in recent
times, thanks to Etiemble’s edition of 1965. It is a fine, wellwritten novel, in letter form, and describes the life and loves of
the Marquis de St Alban in Prussia. Of particular interest, perhaps, is the third-person account of the life of the hero before
and during the revolutionary crisis (pp. 1576–97). The King
and Queen are sympathetically portrayed and the revolutionary events are described as ‘une dissipation générale’ (p.
1588). Personal interest is seen as the guiding force (p. 1591) but
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157
the turning point for the marquis is the treatment by the people
of an aristocratic widow for whom he had a romantic interest:
elle fut inhumainement traînée dans un cachot, après avoir
vu brûler son chateau; [. . . ] elle y expira dans des convulsions 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 whose
house he is staying. However, throughout the text, we are
reminded of the situation in France and certain key events are
described 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 sentiment
d’horreur m’empêche de vous tracer les circonstances de sa
déplorable fin, qu’on a cherché à rendre plus affreuse que
celle du Roi, en y joignant l’ignominie des traitements.
(p. 1886–7)
The author seeks to make his major characters sympathetic
and, through them, to encourage the reader to share their
critical view of the revolutionary events. The picture of emigration and the émigrés is a sad one and the author uses his
entire palette to paint a picture of devastating sensibility:
Si le spectacle de l’émigration déchire le cœur , il est aussi
une source de réflexions profondes. On y voit souvent
l’homme rendu en quelque sorte à son état primitif, et réduit
à vivre de son industrie; on voit développer un grand courage
à des gens qu’on croyait faibles et pusillanimes; mais on
apprend aussi que les malheurs généraux, loin d’adoucir les
hommes et de resserrer les liens de l’humanité, les mettent
dans un état de rivalité et qui dégénère bientôt en hostilité.
(p. 1816)
Sénac’s novel is exceptional and powerful. It survives well and
can be read with interest today for the elegance of the prose
and the poignant observations it contains. Other novels too
are worth reading but, for reasons which would be too long to
go into, have not survived.
158
A striking example is Hubert de Sevrac, a romance of the eighteenth century by the English novelist, Mary Robinson.10 This
was soon translated into French and obviously appealed to the
French readership (the first French edition dates from 1796).
The mood of the novel is established from the beginning, as
the description of the perfect hero is contrasted with the terrible conditions in which he finds himself:
But, at that dreadful period, when the tumult of discontent
perverted the cause of universal liberty; when the vast multitudes were destined to expiate the crimes of individuals,
indiscriminate vengeance swept all before it and, like an
overwhelming torrent, engulphed every object that attempted
to resist its force. It was at that momentous crisis, that the
wise, the virtuous, and the unoffending, were led forth to
the scene of slaughter; while in the glorious effort for the
emancipation of millions, justice and humanity were for a
time unheard or unregarded. (I, 2)
The plot is extremely complicated, telling the story of the
Sevrac family who are obliged to leave France in the Summer
of 1792 to seek refuge in Tuscany. As they cross France they go
through a violent thunderstorm, which provokes Sevrac to say:
This is but a transient tempest; when will the storm subside
that pours its crimson torrents over my distracted country,
that strikes her children to the dust or scatters them over the
earth to beg for mercy? What is to become of her laws? Who
will afford an asylum to her exiled nobles? (I, 6)
The novel is full of sub-plots and mystification, and represents
a striking example of the way novels about the Revolution
move almost imperceptibly to Gothic novels, what the French
call ‘le roman noir’.
A similar interpretation can be offered for Bourlin’s Les
Amours et Aventures d’un Emigré (of An VI, 1797).11 It effectively
conveys the sense of horror and panic which was a feature of
people’s lives – the plot is a complicated one, taking the reader
outside France to see how émigrés lived in Hamburg and,
eventually, leading to the hero joining the army of Condé. The
picture of France is one of horror and instability – a common
perception, naturally, of émigré fiction. Here, uniquely I think
in 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 a
patriote the hero takes the dead man’s uniform and leads the
mob unwittingly to the room in which his loved one and her
father are sheltering. They survive, thanks to the intervention
of a young man who calms the mob, saying: ‘nous sommes
armés pour combattre la tyrannie, nous ne sommes pas des
assassins’ (I, 34).
Eventually the three survivors leave Paris to go to Hamburg,
whence the hero joins the army of Condé. At the end of the
story the hero returns to France to explain that he is not
against the Republic but that he hopes that, once established,
the example of France will serve as a model of freedom for
Europe and the world. The novel is lively and well written and
offers an exciting picture of the dangerous world inhabited by
the individuals of the period. As in a number of émigré novels,
there is significant geographical movement and much use of
coincidence as characters meet again in the most unlikely of
circumstances. The world of the émigré is dangerous and
exciting but, on the whole, it remains a relatively small one.
It is not surprising that émigré fiction should offer French
readers a new kind of novel in which the landscape is more
European and less parochial and where the sense of mystery
and the fear of the unknown become stock features. Perhaps
the finest example of such fiction, for a number of reasons, is
Louis de Bruno’s striking novel, Lioncel ou l’Emigré, nouvelle historique of 1800. The nouvelle is interesting not only for the details
of émigré life which it contains, but also because it includes a
quite remarkable preface which offers an analysis of what is
meant by the term ‘nouvelle’. The theme of the novel will
remind specialists of Balzac’s story Le Colonel Chabert. The hero,
thought dead, seeks to rediscover his past. The novel contains
some tragic stories of life in Paris during the Terror, so that the
political allegiance of the author is never in doubt. Here the
novel of the Revolution and the fashionable Gothic form a perfect union. European in scope, with a sense of the drama of the
Revolution and the excitement offered by a wider, European
landscape, Lioncel is a novel which can certainly be read with
interest and pleasure today. The same cannot be said for all
the novels which fall into this category.
It is possible in this short study to offer only a quick survey of
the kind of fiction which might be described as ‘émigré fiction’.
160
Concentrating essentially on texts which appeared during the
Revolution, I have necessarily had to give this chapter a certain emphasis: it is important to measure the effectiveness of
novels in giving an accurate account of the revolutionary reality and in particular, here, that of the émigré. It is the period
1800–20, so little known to literary critics and yet which saw
dramatic developments in French fiction, which needs further
analysis. If we take just one example, Corinne (1807) by Mme
de Staël, we can see to what extent the whole process of Emigration, and the unsettling and mixing of cultures, had led
European literature, art, music and fashion into a new era. In
the third chapter of Corinne Oswald, the male hero of the
novel, hears the story of a French émigré, called le comte d’Erfeuil. He agrees to offer Erfeuil the chance of accompanying
him to Italy, impressed as he is by Erfeuil’s generosity towards
an old uncle. Erfeuil has suffered as a consequence of the
Revolution, having spent time in Germany, been appreciated,
and yet, unable to speak the language, he had felt isolated and
outcast. Corinne paints a moving picture of the social disruption of its time and of the suffering experienced by sensitive
individuals. Erfeuil’s anguish in exile is typical, it would seem, of
that of many of his class who were unprepared for the turmoil
which was to face them in France and for whom emigration
meant alienation and isolation. What we see in Corinne, perhaps paradoxically, is that it is the Englishman abroad who
suffers the greater anguish. Erfeuil, the Frenchman, is able to
enjoy the pleasures of civilised society, while Oswald is keen to
savour the delights of melancholy which the images of nature
present to him:
Oswald prêtait l’oreille autant qu’il le pouvait au bruit du
vent, au murmure des vagues; car toutes les voix de la nature
faisaient plus de bien à son âme que les propos de la société
tenus au pied des Alpes, à travers les ruines et sur les bords
de la mer. 12
While the incidents of emigration may not be a major feature
of many novels which were written in the period immediately
succeeding the Revolution, it is clear that many novels allude
to emigration and suggest, I think, that images of the new
Romantic movement are linked to the process of travel and
movement across frontiers.
Malcolm Cook
161
As has been said, the concentration here has been on fiction
of the revolutionary period but it should be understood that
the subject is a much larger one. Many texts which would not
be defined purely as fiction have fictional elements which do
refer to the process of emigration. To exclude them entirely
from this study could be misleading. For example, the anonymous Journal of a French Emigrant of 1795 purports to be a
real account of a journey undertaken by a young French boy.
Curiously and unusually the text appears in what is now called
a bilingual format with the English translation of the French
account on the facing page. 13 We are given an insight into the
reality of an émigré’s life in what is now northern Belgium:
En attendant que notre cantonnement fut fixé, nous prismes
la résolution de venir habiter Spa, l’air y étant très sain, et le
séjour fort agréable. Un concours immense d’étrangers, de
princes, parmi les-quels il se trouve quelque fois des souverains, qui s’y rendent pendant la saison où se prennent les
eaux des différentes parties de l’Europe, font de Spa un
endroit unique. Les spectacles, le bal, le jeu, de jolies promenades y attirent plus de monde que le besoin de prendre les
eaux. (p. 12)
However, the threat of revolution is ever present and the
young writer of the diary leaves for Holland and then England
where, he promises, a second volume of the diary will be written.
There is no evidence that it was ever produced and I give this
example simply to show the variety of fictional forms which
were being produced.
If one looks further ahead there is, of course, the immense
resource of the memoirs produced during the following decades
and which give a lavish and colourful account of life as an émigré. The distinction between truth and fiction is a constant factor to bear in mind as we read these lively accounts which
prejudice and distance have coloured and modified. As Bourlin
says, 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 la
postérité à le faire sur les mémoires des contemporains, et à
démêler la vérité entre tant de récits contradictoires où l’esprit de parti dénature les faits; où le même homme célébré
comme un héros par les uns est traité de brigand par les autres. (I, 29–30)
162
There are other texts which a longer study of émigré fiction
might include: those novels in other languages in which French
characters figure as part of a local landscape and the many
French novels by novelists of the generation which succeeded
the Revolution, who call on their memories of the process of
emigration to give their creations local colour and a truly
European dimension. The influence of emigration on fiction is
difficult to assess: the travel and upheaval which was part of
the process seems to have encouraged novels in which characters seek to achieve happiness (an Enlightenment theme)
against the odds, overcoming social and physical obstacles.
The cultural mix which emigration naturally brought about is
similarly difficult to assess. The enormous success of the
Gothic novel in England was quickly imitated in France and
one senses that the very events which define the Revolution
also had an impact on the murkier aspects of the Gothic, with
the emphasis on blood and hiding, ruined castles and darkness. What one can assert with some certainty is that the novel
of the eighteenth century was transformed by the Revolution
to an extent which, ten years earlier, would have been unimaginable. French fiction took inspiration from England and
other neighbours and it also took account of the growing market for travel books as readers looked for spectacles of the
unknown in their popular reading.
Émigré fiction is, perhaps unavoidably, critical of the Revolution; it offers the reader a picture of France seen from the
safety of a neighbouring country which, itself, introduces new
landscapes and new ‘romantic’ images. Émigré fiction is perhaps
the motor which drives fiction into the new century. Its characters will be disabused and world weary. They will be confronted
by exile and foreign landscapes; they will ask questions about
the transience of life and the harmony of nature. Is it too much
to suggest that the fictional characters in these novels are the
Romantics of the next generation?
NOTES
1.
For full details of publication figures and for information concerning
reprints of novels, see R. Frautschi, A. Martin and V.G. Mylne, Biblio-
Malcolm Cook
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
163
graphie du genre romanesque, 1750–1800 (London and Paris, 1977). For a
study of the ways in which politics became the subject of fiction during
the 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 the
novel went into decline during the Revolution, it is necessary to
broaden one’s definition of fiction and understand the extent to which
the novel was modified by the events which, of course, form it.
See my Fictional France: Social Reality in the French Novel, 1775–1800
(Providence and Oxford, Berg, 1993), in which I argue that that historians pay insufficient attention to pictures of social reality contained in
different types of fiction. Novelists, on the whole, attempt to provide
settings which will be familiar to contemporary readers. It is likely
therefore that social conditions, physical conditions of environments
and language will bear some resemblance to the prevailing reality.
A good example of this kind of literature can be found in Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’outre-tombe in which the author, writing his memoirs
some years after the event, gives the reader a picture of emigration
which reads like an adventure novel. For example: ‘Nous traversámes
des blés parmi lesquels serpentaient des sentiers à peine tracés. Les
patrouilles françaises et autrichiennes battaient la campagne; nous
pouvions tomber dans les unes et dans les autres, ou nous trouver sous
le pistolet d’une vedette. Nous entrevîmes de loin des cavaliers isolés,
immobiles et l’arme au poing; nous ouîmes des pas de chevaux dans
des chemins creux; en mettant l’oreille à terre, nous entendîmes le
bruit régulier d’une marche d’infanterie.’ (Mémoires d’outre-tombe (Paris,
Librairie Générale Française, Livre de Poche, 1973, 3 vols), I, p. 363).
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 a
general picture of the French reality and concentrates on the plight of
her young heroes. News from Paris is consistently bad and serves as a
backcloth to the fiction. The plot is slight and the characters fail to
interest sufficiently to allow the reader any kind of sympathy. According
to Feller’s Biographie universelle (Paris, Gauthier, 1834), Mme de Genlis
was at first sympathetic to the Revolution: ‘En partant pour l’exil, elle
s’était donné le titre d’émigrante jacobine. Mais lorsque la cause du duc
d’Orléans fut absolument perdue, et surtout depuis que ce prince eut
porté sa tête sur l’échafaud, elle changea de sentiment et de langage, et
prit la révolution en horreur. Partout où elle passa les émigrés français
la repoussèrent comme une ennemie’. She was eventually allowed to
return to France under Bonaparte and was given a state pension and
an apartment in the Arsenal.
Correspondance littéraire, ed. by M. Tourneux (Paris, Garnier, 1882),
XVI, p. 152. A footnote on the same page reads: ‘Nous n’avons pu voir
un exemplaire de ce livre dont l’auteur nous est inconnu’.
See my ‘Politics in the fiction of the French Revolution’, pp. 287–9 for a
discussion of the relationship between the novel by Gorgy and the
pamphlet referred to here.
164
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
J.-C. Gorgy, ‘Ann’ Quin Bredouille ou le petit cousin de Tristram Shandy
(Paris, Louis, 1792), 6 vols.
L.-A. Liomin, La Bergère d’Aranville ou l’Emigration, par M.L***. The
novel 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).
All references are taken from the edition prepared by Etiemble for the
Gallimard-Pléiade edition of Romanciers du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1965),
II, 1541–1912 (p. 1547). While it is true that L’Émigré has been the
subject of a good deal of recent criticism (see, for example, F. Laforge,
‘Illusion et désillusion dans L’Émigré de Sénac de Meilhan’, Dixhuitième siècle, 17 (1985), pp. 367–75 and Elizabeth Zawiska, ‘Une
vision romanesque de la Révolution: L’Émigré de Sénac de Meilhan’,
Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 2 (1990), pp. 141–50, the relationship
between the novel and other works by Sénac remains to be studied in
detail. Of particular interest too is the largely unknown oriental tale
by Sénac, Les Deux Cousins, histoire véritable, of 1790.
Quotations are taken from the copy in the British Library (CUP 407.f.
39), printed in Dublin (Smith, Browne and Colbert), 2 vols, 1797. The
first edition dates from 1796.
The author’s name is a pseudonym for A.J. Dumaniant.
Mme de Staël, Corinne ou l’Italie (Paris, Gallimard, 1985), p. 37.
Anonymous, Journal of a French Emigrant (Londres, Lewis et Fienes,
1795).
11 Danloux in England
(1792–1802): an Émigré
Artist
Angelica Goodden
On 4 March 1791 the Public Advertiser announced that,
three celebrated French artists, in different ways, have lately
come to this kingdom, M. Mesnier [sic] in oil, M. de Creux
[sic] in crayon, and M. Gratis [sic] in miniature painting. The
little encouragement given to the arts in the present state of
their country has made them emigrate.
Gratise, or Gratitien, had not in fact come from France, but
from Germany, where he was employed as miniature painter
and pastellist to the Elector of Cologne. Mosnier was the artist
best known to British audiences, and stayed six years: although
he was fairly successful, his portraits were often dismissed by
English critics as laboured and over-polished, as Danloux’s
and Mme Vigée Le Brun’s would be after him.1 He moved to
Hamburg and Saint Petersburg, and must have been happy to
find himself in countries where high finishing was not regarded
as a vice.2 Ducreux, who is probably most familiar for his caricatural self-portraits, 3 stayed only six months before returning
to Paris, where his past as Marie-Antoinette’s First Painter
seems never to have counted against him; apparently the protection of David, effectively master of the arts under the Revolution and an extremely important political figure, was enough
to guarantee his safety.
Henri-Pierre Danloux arrived in London a year after these
three. He did not enjoy the protection extended to Ducreux,
and may have been glad to escape the enmity of David: they
had fallen out in the mid-1770s, when David, the winner of the
Prix de Rome in 1774, was a pensionnaire at the Académie de
France.4 Danloux’s resentment does not seem to have lessened
with the passage of time. His journal reveals that he disliked
hearing David praised by his fellow-countrymen, objecting
165
166
that, ‘lorsqu’un homme a la vogue, ce qu’il ferait serait-il détestable, n’importe, c’est de lui’.5 Sincerely or not, he expressed his
preference for Mme Vigée Le Brun, because, ‘pour le portrait
elle a une grâce qui convient à ce genre que jamais David ne
pourra avoir’.
If the royalist convictions he shared with Vigée Le Brun
made departure from France advisable in 1792, so too did his
family connections. Danloux, a bourgeois, had in 1787 married
into the nobility. His wife, Antoinette de Saint-Redan, was the
illegitimate child of the Baron d’Etigny, and his widow had
brought her up as her own daughter. His marriage, to which
the d’Etignys had agreed on condition that he never practise
his art professionally in France,6 thus gave Danloux access to
an aristocratic and courtly clientele from which he was bound
to profit.
It was a clientele he must have hoped to be able to rebuild in
Britain. True, few of the émigrés came with enough money to
pay for luxuries like paintings, though as Danloux would discover to his cost, impecuniousness rarely stopped them commissioning or sitting for portraits they could not afford.
During his ten years in Britain Danloux painted about 135
portraits, of which 44 were of British sitters and the majority of
the remainder French. On the whole the British preferred
native portraitists like Hoppner, Romney and Beechey, whom
Danloux was annoyed to find enjoying the kind of voguepatronage for which he envied David: someone told him, for
instance, that Lady Massereene had decided to be painted by
Beechey instead of Danloux simply because she had recognised the faces of so many friends among the canvases in
Beechey’s studio.7 Still, in May 1792, after f ive months in England, he was able to write to his wife in France that, ‘je commenc[e] à avoir du travail, et [ . . . ] l’avenir sembl[e] s’offrir à
moi sous un jour meilleur’.8
The ‘best’ light would be the one cast by the nobility, and
Danloux was quite unabashed about explaining to influential
patrons like the Marquess of Lansdowne that he wanted to
paint a well-born lady, ‘à n’importe quel prix’, in order to
make his reputation. 9 There were inevitable disappointments.
The great beauty Lady Charlotte Campbell, who had seemed
a likely client, in the end decided on Hoppner,10 just as Lady
Massereene had decided on Beechey, and despite winning
Angelica Goodden
167
commissions to paint a few aristocratic Englishwomen during
his exile Danloux never attracted any of the iconic females
who helped establish the fame of Romney, Lawrence and their
like. Mrs. Fitzherbert had seemed a possible sitter at one stage,
but eventually declined.11
Grand male sitters proved elusive too. The courtesan Mrs
Huntley told Danloux that she would try to procure her occasional lover the Prince of Wales for him,12 but failed to do so
(although Danloux did paint his brother Prince Augustus, and
exhibited 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, which
Danloux hoped would lead to a commission to paint the Prime
Minister himself, but again his hope was vain.14 French contacts
could disappoint too. The disgraced contrôleur-général des
finances, Calonne, made vague promises to sit, but kept evading
actual sittings,15 and the former Grand Fauconnier de France,
Vaudreuil, stopped coming when he decided that Danloux’s
portrait made him look too old. 16 Still, some promises of patronage did yield results. Another courtesan, Mlle Duthé, took
the credit for persuading her former lover the Duc de Bourbon – the father of the murdered Duc d’Enghien – to sit for
Danloux,17 though according to Mme Danloux the Marquis
de Montazet had also offered to arrange the commission.18
Courtesans in fact provided Danloux with much of his clientele, both as subjects themselves and as intermediaries; and
members of the creole community filled some of the gaps. The
courtesans had few inhibitions about showing themselves, and
the creoles, on the whole, were wealthy. Three portraits Danloux did in London – of Mlle Duthé (1792), of the creole Mrs
Boyd (1796) and of the wealthy planter Hosten (1795) – illustrate the theme of absence that def ines the émigré in a particularly effective way, and so turn the commemorative function of
portraiture to new account. All do so by way of symbols: the
first through the picture the subject is hanging in her boudoir,
and the others through letters the sitters are holding in their
hands 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 courtesan was to have been sacrificing was that of her admirer Perregaux, a wealthy Swiss banker (and a future Régent of the
168
Banque de France) with numerous English clients. He was
also an art-collector of some note, and had expressed a desire
for Duthé’s portrait early in 1792. Duthé had herself apparently
selected the pose in Danloux’s picture, but it was subsequently
decided to show her hanging not a sacrifice to friendship, but
an allegorical image of Hope looking out to sea at a departing
vessel and presumably longing for its return. The change was
no doubt wise: Duthé never sacrificed in the course of her phenomenally successful career as a kept woman, but rather accumulated. Her attitude in Danloux’s portrait bears a distinct
resemblance to that of Reynolds’s, Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces, a symbolic image of perfect friendship, yet
appears more playful.21 The inventive Duthé tried unsuccessfully to have details of the portrait altered – she did not like the
blue taffeta background, for instance 22 – but Danloux’s own
instincts for arranging it effectively appear to have prevailed.
It is a very French-seeming picture in its innocent gaiety, and
sums up both the frivolity and the generosity of the sitter’s
character.
Danloux had arrived in England with an introduction to
Duthé from the actress Mme Dugazon, and she was expansively
welcoming. He called her an excellent creature,23 and was
grateful to her both for offering to model nude (a favour he
was also granted by other courtesans she introduced him to)
and for bringing work his way. Well before painting the Duc
de Bourbon he did a portrait of her lover Robert Lee (1792),
possibly the ‘faithful Englishman’ with whom Vigée Le Brun
records seeing her in the early 1770s in the Palais-Royal gardens,
and whom she was amused to see still her companion 18 years
later in London. 24 She had retained her charms: Mme Danloux remarked in 1795 that even at the age of 50 she was a
pretty woman.25 According to Vigée Le Brun she had run
through millions, and Danloux too was struck by her extravagance. Slightly guiltily he enjoyed her hospitality until his
wife joined him in England in 1793, but managed to avoid a
proposed, and perhaps rather compromising, trip to Naples
with her late in the previous year.26 She seemed to find English
life dull, especially when she accompanied her lover to his
country estate,27 and Danloux’s friendship, as well as the hope
of re-establishing old friendships which his portrait encapsulated,
were apparently welcome supports.
Angelica Goodden
169
Danloux clearly felt uneasy in such company and after
a walk from Vauxhall with her and another kept woman,
Mme Nauzières – whose portrait by Danloux would later be paid
for by the generous and prosperous Duthé28 – he reflected that,
‘je n’étais pas à ma place au milieu de ces femmes; elles sont
gênées et moi aussi’. 29 Although Mrs Huntley flatteringly
told Danloux that he inspired confidence, and although he
sometimes allowed himself to become free in his behaviour
with them, he was rather priggish when they seemed to forget
their position: he disliked the courtesan-harpist Mlle Mérelle’s
affectation of familiarity with his wife, for example, telling her to
mind her place.30 He found her type amusing, sometimes exciting 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 herself
the airs of a ‘grande dame’. 31 Portalis’s 1910 monograph on
Danloux is altogether too respectful of this creature, and he
seems to have been misled by the then owner of the portrait,
the Baronne de Férussac, into believing her better than she
was. She had not, in fact, married the banker Walter Boyd in
Paris in 1790, but had lived with him there until he was
obliged to return to England in November 1793 on account of
his counter-revolutionary activities, including arranging for
Boyd & Ker’s Bank to circulate false assignats in Paris on behalf
of the émigré Princes.32 Although the Baronne de Férussac
alleged that Mrs Boyd – alias Nicole de Vignier-Montréal – had
‘remarried’ Boyd in London after the loss of the original marriage-certificate, 33 in 1796 she was despairing of ever persuading Boyd to make an honest woman of her and legitimising the
baby she was bearing. According to Danloux’s friend and patron Mme Digneron, whose planter husband was related to
Nicole’s father, she had herself been born out of wedlock of a
negro or mulatto mother in the colonies, shown her waywardness early, been sent to live with a respectable lady in Paris,
run off with a young man at the age of 16, and walked the
streets 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 the
Law of Suspects. She told Danloux that she was already in jail
when she received, via a chambermaid, the letter Danloux’s
picture shows her clutching, and which she claimed might
170
have led to her execution: 35 she was suspected of corresponding with foreigners,36 as emerges from the records of the
Comité de sûreté générale. Boyd was said to be delighted with
the commemorative image of her languishing in her cell.37 She
is depicted in the attitude of a supplicating vestal, perched on
her mean pallet, holding the letter to her heart and gazing soulfully towards the light filtering in through the barred window.
But however flattering this Greuzian scene may have been
to the lovers’ vanity, Mrs Boyd was difficult to please as a sitter.
She annoyed Danloux (who was already finding her casual
and high-handed) by demanding radical changes to the composition, and more than one angry scene passed between
them. 38 And even if she occasionally expressed satisfaction
with his work to Danloux’s face,39 she openly declared her
reservations to others.40 She was, for instance, explicit about
her displeasure to her friend Hosten, who had probably
introduced her to Danloux in the first place. He may have
known her from his planter days, but – being an acknowledged
man of pleasure – he could also have met her in Paris, either
before Boyd became her lover or after: Boyd was one of the
frequent banker visitors to Hosten’s house in the rue SaintGeorges.41
Whatever the case, he took an almost proprietorial interest
in the portrait, and urged Danloux to hurry on when, becoming discouraged, he was predicting that he would never finish it.
Partly for this reason, perhaps, Danloux came to dislike Hosten
intensely, observing that ‘il n’avait jamais que des choses
désagréables à dire’, 42 and that he seemed a parvenu, ‘qui ne
manque pas d’esprit mais qui perd la mesure à chaque
instant’,43 – an intemperateness which Danloux would successfully capture in his portrait of Hosten.
Admittedly, he helped Danloux out of financial difficulties
on more than one occasion, and he was flamboyant with
money: he boasted that the drawing-room alone of his splendid house – part of a development designed for him by the
architect Ledoux – had cost over 60 000 francs.44 But he had a
mean streak, and proved unwilling to pay the agreed sum for
the magnificent portrait Danloux painted of him in 1795,45
despite criticising Mrs Boyd for employing similarly evasive
tactics herself. 46 And he shamelessly had Danloux pursued by
his agents over a debt for £200 in 1797.47
Angelica Goodden
171
Hosten had moved back to Paris from Saint-Domingue
because his wife disliked the climate there,48 but returned to his
plantations – a wedding-present from a cousin – after the great
slave rebellion of 1791 to try to salvage his fortune. Finding
this difficult, he had joined the deputation which Malouet led
to England in 1792 to offer the island to the protection of the
British Crown. Malouet’s efforts at that time were unsuccessful,
and Hosten probably went back to the colonies with him before
settling in London in 1794 or 1795. (He appears to have become
suspect to the French authorities in the meantime.) Left alone
in Paris, his wife had been arrested on charges of being noble,
married to an émigré and holding suspicious assemblies in her
Paris house (referred to in her denunciation as being in the
rue Favart, the other side of the boulevard des Italiens from
the rue Saint-Georges)49. Although Mme Hosten’s submissions to the comité de sûreté générale denied that she was
guilty of any of these offences, the fact that foreign financiers
like Boyd were known to frequent her house cannot have
helped her case. Since all her ‘crimes’ were punishable under
the Law of Suspects passed in 1793, she was jailed at the prison
of Port-Libre in Paris, and it was as a result of events which
took place there that Hosten conceived the rage he wished
Danloux’s portrait of him to eternalise.
Mme Hosten’s daughter Pascalie, a beautiful young woman
whose melancholy appearance led the Duchesse de Coigny to
remark that ‘elle avait mangé sa soupe trop chaude’, 50 visited
her mother daily at Port-Libre, and there met the young aristocrat Gabriel d’Arjuzon, who had been imprisoned under
suspicion of assisting the King and Queen’s flight to Varennes
in 1791.51 They fell in love and were betrothed with Mme Hosten’s blessing, marrying on 28 April 1795 after both mother
and bridegroom had been released.52 It seems scarcely thinkable that they had not tried to obtain Hosten’s permission, but
Hosten told Danloux that he had not been consulted over
their plans. On 12 June 1795 he asked Danloux to paint him in
the state of fury induced in him by letters he had received
from 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 informed
Danloux that Mme Hosten and Pascalie ‘avaient de grands
torts avec lui’,54 and clearly felt that his indignation – which he
172
also wished to disseminate among his acquaintances by having
the portrait engraved and circulated, though characteristically
he thought the engraver Dickinson’s price too high 55 – was
justified. In fact his own life had been far from blameless: he
had ‘kept’ Mme Nauzières in London,56 and in Paris had a
mistress, Marie Collard-Arnould, who during his exile in England embarrassed him by deciding to visit him in his Fitzroy
Square house (bringing with her their enchantingly pretty
daughter Rose, whom Danloux would also paint).57 Whether or
not 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 one
of Greuze’s scenes of paternal malediction, and gloried in the
notion of having been ill used.
Portraiture was what the natives wanted, and Danloux had
to stick to it. He may have said in a moment of discouragement
that he despised English artists for their materialism, and
agreed with a visitor to his studio who said that, ‘ils travaillent
pour l’argent, et vous pour l’art’;58 but he could never afford
to treat art as disinterestedly as his relations by marriage had
intended. His development of a virtual engravings industry –
from the map of Saint-Domingue he had engraved to sell to
creole émigrés,59 through the prints of the picture of the
leader of the émigré priests’ cause, the Bishop of Saint Pol de
Léon,60 and of the portraits done in Edinburgh of the Comte
d’Artois and the Duc d’Angoulême, to the huge image of
Admiral Duncan victorious at Camperdown61 – showed his keen
economic sense; and his close involvement with the actual preparation, as well as the marketing, of the prints reveals the
practical nature of his attitude to art. On the other hand, he
was never free from financial worries in Britain, and he never
earned what he thought was his due. He charged a great deal
less than Beechey, Hoppner and Lawrence and infinitely less
than Mme Vigée Le Brun (who outcharged everyone) would
do when she arrived in England;62 but friends advised him to
pitch his prices still lower. Mlle Duthé, whose own portrait was
done for 50 guineas, told him that the English disliked spending heavily on paintings, and he asked more or less what his
auctioneer friend John Greenwood suggested: 15 guineas for
a bust, 25 for a half-length and 50 for a full-length.63 He despairingly responded to Duthé that he must needs observe the
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173
mercantile conventions of the country he was living in: ‘il me
faudra demander combien on veut y mettre, et je les ferai en
conséquence’.64
He quoted a prospective client 200 guineas for a life-size
family portrait with five figures,65 and charged Lord Petre 80
guineas for painting Lady Petre together with her two children,66 but usually earned considerably less. In mid-1796 he
began to do rapid portraits which required only two sittings,
and asked six guineas for them;67 but still he could not make
ends meet. To an émigré friend he spoke of the, ‘misère qu’on
éprouve dans ce pays-ci en travaillant beaucoup’, 68 and complained of being crippled with debt. 69 He even considered
emigrating to Russia until the Comte d’Artois signalled his displeasure at the idea: 70 Danloux was too valuable a worker for
the counter-Revolutionary cause in London to be let go easily.
His work for the French royal family ought to have earned
him money as well as prestige, but in fact he was never paid
what he thought was due to his efforts. The diaries give a vivid
description of Danloux’s employment first as a producer of
royalist images to be sent to the commanders of the Princes’
army – essentially adaptations of existing portraits of Louis
XVIII and Artois, engraved for the purposes of wide circulation – and then as the preferred portraitist of Artois, his son
the Duc d’Angoulême and eventually the latter’s brother the
Duc de Berri. Dating the various portraits of Artois, all based
on an original done during his exile at Holyroodhouse, has
been much complicated by the confused account of the commission in Portalis, but the original itself and at least some of
the many replicas were clearly painted in late 1796. (The
Angoulême portrait was done immediately after that of Artois,
but Berri’s much later – probably after he arrived in Edinburgh in February 1798.) Artois gave copies to friends and
supporters, particularly Scottish nobles and officials who helped
to ease his time at Holyrood, but the primary purpose of the
enterprise seems to have been to disseminate French royalist
engravings among the Princes’ allies in Europe: although
Danloux himself bought back the plates and began to circulate
the prints under his own name from 1799, the project was
initially paid for by the French Crown.71 Artois, however, was
remarkably reluctant to settle his account with Danloux, whose
otherwise surprising unwillingness to travel to Edinburgh to
174
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 untypical, and the diaries reveal recurrent worries about money.
One problem was that he often had to pay large bills before he
himself had earned anything from his work. The fastidious (or
over-principled?) Danloux seems not to have adopted the English habit of charging a client half the agreed price of a portrait when the facial likeness had been captured,73 though at
least one sitter, Lord Moira, assumed that this would be his
practice.74 Danloux used models extensively, especially when
painting important (and busy) sitters, and models usually had
to be paid on the nail.75 Engravers’ bills, too, generally needed
settling before the earnings on their work had begun to accumulate: advance subscriptions could help here, of course, but
the money owed might be as difficult to extract as Mme Danloux found it to be when she travelled to Scotland to act as her
husband’s agent in connection with the engraving of Lord
Duncan.76 Another problem was self-imposed: Danloux was
often unwilling to charge enough for his work, 77 or even to
charge at all if the client was impoverished or had aroused his
sympathy. When a client was both impoverished and associated
with royalty, like Artois’s mistress Mme de Polastron, he was
even 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 have
prevented Danloux from pressing his financial claims. He told
the valet of the Duc de Bourbon that he would ask nothing,
‘pour ce moment-ci’ for painting his master, ‘mais qu’il espérait
voir ce prince en France’. 79
The picture was done in 1797, but the fee of £25 was paid
only in 1802.80 Lord Malden kept him waiting for the best part
of two years for 24 guineas, and treated him high-handedly
when he eventually requested the money;81 Lord Valentia was
four years late in paying the 15 guineas he owed; 82 Artois and
his courtiers haggled undignifiedly over the money due for
the portraits done during Artois’s exile in Holyroodhouse and
other works Danloux had contributed to the Royalist cause;
and the Boyds kept ‘forgetting’ to settle.83 Some clients would
pay only part of what they owed, like Mme d’ Amécourt 84 and
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175
Prince von Starhemberg (whose behaviour Danloux called
‘malhonnête’, an abuse of his position and power).85 Others
never paid at all. Vaudreuil had originally told Danloux that,
being short of money, he would give him what he could in London and leave the rest for Paris,86 but disliked his unflattering portrait so much that he simply left it in the artist’s studio.
It is hardly surprising, then, that the tone of the diaries is
often one of despair. Danloux was obliged to maintain a smart
establishment to impress visitors and sitters, because this was
the English way, but could not really afford to do so.87 (He was,
incidentally, tricked into taking out a 17-year lease on an
expensive house in Charles Street (now Mortimer Street),88
which caused further sleepless nights.) But the Danloux lifestyle was modest, and he and his wife bitterly disapproved of
émigré extravagance when they saw it. They refused to economise on a few things, it is true: they carried on wearing hairpowder even after the introduction of the powder-tax in 1795,
because they considered it a mark of devotion to Ancien Régime
ways, though they much resented having to pay a guinea every
year for the privilege;89 but in other respects it seemed impossible 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 for
patrons (as with the various versions of the Artois portraits),
and certainly not when he had to spend time supervising
the production of engravings, but undoubtedly when he was
asked to copy another artist’s work. Mme de Polastron, for
instance, wanted him to do another version of Vigée Le Brun’s
posthumous portrait of the Duchesse de Polignac, her aunt by
marriage, which seemed to Danloux a wretched diversion
from more worthwhile activities;90 but he needed the money,
and so complied with the request. Nor did he feel that the British always treated him as he deserved. Not only were some
well-born patrons insufferably rude, but the Royal Academy, to
which he had rather painfully gained access,91 seemed to ignore
basic courtesies. Like Mosnier, 92 he was sure that his work was
being hung disadvantageously (and probably suspected that
anti-French prejudice was the cause), though Benjamin West,
the President, assured him that this was not the case.93 Northcote, in any event, told him that xenophobia had nothing to do
with it, and that British artists suffered as badly:
176
lui-même, quoiqu’académicien, ils l’ont on ne peut plus mal
traité en différentes occasions [ . . . ] ils n’ont rien de ce que
devraient 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 the
looseness of the English style: to him it betrayed carelessness
(his verdict on Romney) and a reprehensible reliance on inborn
aptitude.96 British painters, in his view, had huge talent, but
were less well trained than French, and so subordinated everything to easy effect.
Plus j’étudie la peinture anglaise, moins je l’aime. Ses maîtres
se permettent tout pour parler aux yeux, mais ils n’ont
aucune idée des convenances, et ne dessinent pas.97
He did begin to paint more quickly, it is true,98 admitting the
justice in Calonne’s criticism of his ‘heaviness’:99 of his works
he wrote that, ‘je les travaille trop à force de vouloir bien faire’
(exactly the judgement Vigée Le Brun would pass on her own
paintings when her style was attacked in England). 100 He did,
too, abandon the kind of detail that characterised his 1791
portrait of the baron de Besenval sitting in his ‘salon de
compagnie’ surrounded by all his objets de luxe, where the
whole is almost like a Dutch cabinet picture in its minute rendering of individual objects.101 The portrait of Hosten is bare
in comparison, reflecting the greater simplicity of English
taste and style. And he could say with a degree of truth that he
had become ‘very English’. The child-portraits he painted in
Scotland for the Buccleuch family, for instance, belong to a
tradition made familiar by Reynolds,102 while the Romantic
dash of certain pictures draws him close to Romney, Lawrence
and even Raeburn. But there was also truth in the verdict
which the Portuguese Viería passed on his work in 1800: ‘Ce
n’est pas là la manière anglaise’.103 He was referring to the English obsession with money and Danloux’s disinterested pursuit
of art, but the remark is apt in another respect. Danloux never
did become completely naturalised.
Angelica Goodden
177
When he returned to France in 1802, with the signing of
the Treaty of Amiens, he belatedly submitted some work to
the Salon. One critic, while calling the style of the 1798 picture
of Viscount Keith ‘French’, actually mentioned features
more usually associated with the English mode of portraiture
– incorrect draughtsmanship, a murky tone, and a reliance on
crude effects.104 The lack of patriotism implicit in the glorification of British naval victory (Keith had defeated the
Dutch, allies of the French, at Muizenberg) was generally noted,
and the removal of the portrait of the Bishop of Saint-Paul de
Léon from the exhibition because of his counter-Revolutionary
activities was applauded.105 In other words, the royalist Danloux
had made an unwelcome return. (The equally fervently royalist
Vigée Le Brun was treated altogether more gently when she
exhibited some work done during her own recent exile at the
same Salon.) Most critics either ignored Danloux’s offerings at
the 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 ancien
régime rococo in Napoleonic times. Fittingly enough for an artist
just returned from England, however, Danloux was considered
to paint dogs well.
One critic’s conclusion that, ‘le climat nébuleux de l’Angleterre [ . . . ], les brouillards de la Tamise [sont] funestes aux arts
d’imitation’107 was both typical and symptomatic. Actually Danloux had found the dank climate trying because – or so he
claimed – the light was often too bad to paint by. But French
criticism of the émigré’s work owed as much to nationalist rancour as to genuine aesthetic perceptions. The range and quality
of the paintings he did during his British exile scarcely supports the contention that his art had ‘suffered’ during the ten
years spent away from France, although it had certainly
changed. Danloux’s lofty attitude to the money-mindedness of
British artists should theoretically have made it hard for him
to adapt to the conditions he found prevailing in the country: 108 claiming to paint for art’s sake, he must have found the
need to adapt his style for purely material reasons repugnant.
In fact, of course, he could not afford to be an aesthete; he had
to treat his art as a business enterprise,109 however much the
necessity would have shocked the aristocratic d’Etignys. But
they had set their conditions before the Revolution, and could
178
never have anticipated the poverty that Revolutionary events
would create for their kind. And in any case one suspects that
Danloux’s adaptation was not quite as unwilling as his diary
entries often make it sound. Admiring British painting as he
sometimes did, he may have wanted occasionally to emulate its
style.
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
On Mosnier’s technical inferiority to British artists see Edward Edwards,
Anecdotes of Painters (London, 1808), p. 255.
However, on the ‘vice’ of careless finishing in the English school see,
for example, Conversations of James Northcote R.A. with James Ward on Art
and Artists (London, 1907), p. 67.
See Alan Wintermute, The French Portrait 1550–1850 (New York,
1996), p. 59.
According to a Danloux family tradition, they quarrelled over an
agreement to share the funding of their planned journey around Italy,
which ended in Danloux’s subsidising David’s trip and David claiming
that he could not support Danloux’s. See Papiers Baron Portalis, MS.
‘Henri-Pierre Danloux’, Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris), boîte III.
Journal de Pierre Danloux, private collection, 2 August 1792.
See Baron Roger Portalis, Henri-Pierre Danloux et son journal durant
l’émigration (Paris, 1910), p. 28.
Journal de Mme Danloux, private collection, 8 August 1796; also Portalis,
op. cit., p. 327. Lady Massereene was the daughter of the governor of
the Châtelet, and was known as ‘the beautiful Countess of Massereene’.
Journal de Danloux, 8 May 1792.
Ibid., 30 January 1793.
Journal de Mme Danloux, 19 February 1796. Mme Danloux, who initially
expressed great admiration for Lady Charlotte Campbell’s looks, later
declared them to be overrated (7 April 1796). See also Portalis, p. 327.
Journal de Danloux, 23 June 1792.
Ibid., 22 July 1792.
The archives of the Royal Collection contain no record of this commission, and the present location of the picture is unknown.
Journal de Mme Danloux, 21 February 1796; also Portalis, p. 274.
For example, Journal de Danloux, 29 October 1792. Calonne also
offered to display Danloux’s paintings of Mlle Duthé and the abbé
de Saint-Far, the natural brother of Philippe-Egalité, in his own house
(he was a noted collector and connoisseur, and still owned many outstanding pictures).
Journal de Mme Danloux, 23 February 1796.
Angelica Goodden
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
179
Ibid., 8 September 1795 and 10 September 1795.
Ibid., 4 September 1795.
Another notable portrait of this kind is the picture of the duc de Choiseul reading a letter from his aunt: see Journal de Danloux, 5 July 1800
et seq., and Portalis, p. 424 ff.
Journal de Danloux, 2 July 1792.
See Nicholas Penny ed., Reynolds (catalogue to exhibition at Royal
Academy of Arts, London, 1986), p. 224. In fact there is a mock-heroic
levity 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 at
Brighton’ (loc. cit.).
See Journal de Danloux, 16 July 1792. Danloux had obtained the taffeta
– for the curtains and sofa – from his laundrywoman Mme Fichu (see
ibid., 6–7 August 1792).
Ibid., 25 April 1792.
Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Souvernirs, ed. Claudine Herrmann, 2 vols
(Paris, 1984), I.40 (see also Portalis, p. 130). Lee may have been too
young to fit this rôle, however. Vigée Le Brun’s assertion incidentally
supports the notion that she came to England for the first time in the
early 1790s, something suggested at the time in French and Italian
journals – which alleged that she had crossed the Channel to be with
Calonne – but which her own memoirs never mention. Danloux’s
journal reports the rumour that Vigée Le Brun has arrived in England (24 December 1792); Mrs. Papendiek’s Court and Private Life in
the Time of Queen Charlotte, ed. Mrs. V. Delves-Broughton, 2 vols (London, 1887), II. 253, reports of the year 1791 that ‘Mme Le Brun had
lately come to England’ and painted the Prince of Wales. According to
Vigée Le Brun herself, she was in Italy from late 1789 until 1792,
when she moved straight on to Vienna.
Journal de Mme Danloux, 4 September 1795.
Journal de Danloux, 1 August 1792.
Journal de Danloux, 1 August 1792.
Ibid., 23 May 1792.
Journal de Mme Danloux, 22 March 1796.
See Arnaud de Lestapis, ‘Emigration et faux assignats’, Revue de Deux
Mondes, 1955, pp. 462–3.
See Portalis, p. 273
Journal de Mme Danloux, 16 December 1795 and 15 February
1796.
Ibid., 23 October 1795.
See Portalis, p. 273
Journal de Mme Danloux, 29 March 1796.
Ibid., 9 November 1795; 10 December 1795.
Ibid., 24 December 1795.
See Oliver Blanc, Madame de Bonneuil (Paris, 1987), p. 93.
180
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
Journal de Mme Danloux, 11 August 1795. On Hosten’s badgering of
Danloux over the portrait see ibid.,7 December 1795 and 31 December
1795: ‘il fallait que le tableau de Mme Boyd fût fini dans dix jours
parce qu’elle partait pour la campagne. Cela nous tourmenta d’autant
plus qu’ayant toujours les ouvriers dans la maison, il n’y avait aucune
chambre où mon mari pût travailler’.
Ibid., 16 June 1795.
Ibid., 9 June 1795; 20 July 1795.
Journal de Danloux, 8 July 1797, 11 August 1797.
See Portalis, p. 266. She was, however, a native of Saint-Domingue.
Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, MS. 766 (Révolution-JusticePolice), document 75. Apparently Mme Hosten had let the rue SaintGeorges house and moved to the rue Favart to save money.
Her portrait by Vestier (private collection), done in about 1790 when
she was 15, reveals all her beauty (and a slight haughtiness which is
perhaps simply a muted version of the arrogance Danloux captures in
his picture of her father), but makes her look twice her age.
See Jacques d’Arjuzon, Histoire et généalogie de la famille d’Arjuzon
(Paris, 1978), p. 110, who quotes from Caroline d’Arjuzon, ‘Fragment
du journal d’un prisonnier à Port-Libre en 1793’, Magasin pittoresque,
30 June 1889.
D’Arjuzon in fact exchanged Port-Libre for house arrest, and the
betrothal took place the day before he left prison. Portalis wrongly states
(p. 267) that the letter merely announced the betrothal, and that the
marriage itself occurred on 18 April 1796.
See Portalis, p. 271.
Journal de Mme Danloux, 12 June 1795.
Ibid., 28 October 1795; 7 March 1796.
Journal de Mme Danloux, 6 May 1796; also Portalis, p. 270. Rose Arnould
was the great-niece of the famous actress–courtesan Sophie Arnould.
Journal de Danloux, 17 July 1800; also Portalis, p. 431.
A diary entry of Mme Danloux’s for 10 January 1795 notes that the
maps were to sell at 3s. apiece.
The picture (at present in the Louvre) was painted in 1793, but the
engraving produced only in 1797. On Danloux’s engravings see the
unpublished thesis by Susan Adams, ‘Henri-Pierre Danloux: An Emigré
Painter’ (University of London, n.d. – c. 1990).
Danloux’s diary for 1800 records his wife’s trip to Scotland to collect
the subscriptions due on the engraving (for example, 13 June £103,
19 June £32, 24 June, 1 July £11, 17 July). The picture itself was on
display in Danloux’s studio.
The Telegraph of 29 April 1796 reported Hoppner’s prices for a fulllength as one hundred guineas, Beechey’s as 120, and Lawrence’s as
160. 200 guineas for a full-length was not a remarkable sum for the
end of the eighteenth century. In the last decade of his life Reynolds
(who died in 1792) had countless commissions for a 200–guinea full-
Angelica Goodden
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
181
length (see Gerald Reitlinger, The Economics of Taste, 3 vols (London,
1961–70), I. pp. 59–60). By 1806 Lawrence was charging 200 guineas
for a full-length, and Hoppner probably the same. But Vigée Le
Brun’s Duchess of Dorset, painted in England, sold in 1804 for £525. On
this general matter see also David H. Solkin, Painting for Money: the
Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England (New
Haven and London, 1993).
See Portalis, p. 80, p. 102.
Ibid., p. 136.
Journal de Mme Danloux, 21 October 1795.
Ibid., 31 March 1796.
To Mme Ferrière, wife of an émigré Swiss miniaturist (Journal de Danloux, 4 July 1797).
Ibid., 7 July 1797. He twice mentions going to the pawnbroker’s
(ibid., 11 July 1792 and 19 December 1792).
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 de
Danloux, 14 June 1800. See also Portalis, p. 274 f.
In vol. I of his manuscript notes on printers Thomas Dodd, the early
nineteenth-century dealer, writes that Audinet did plates of portraits
of several members of the French royal family, engraved at the
expense of Louis XVIII from paintings by Danloux (British Museum,
Department of Manuscripts, Add Mss 33394, p. 258). I am most grateful to David Alexander for this information.
Danloux was told that he should expect to receive 300 guineas for his
royal pictures, and was anyway sure of 250 (Journal de Mme Danloux, 9
November 1796); but Artois, deducting 25 guineas already paid by an
agent (Journal de Danloux, 3 September 1796), claimed that he could
only pay another 100 guineas at most (Journal de Mme Danloux, 14
November 1796). Apart from the Edinburgh portraits of Artois and
the Duc d’Angoulême, Danloux did one of Louis XVIII flanked by
Justice and Clemency and of Artois at the head of the royalist troops in
the Vendée (Journal de Danloux, 22 June 1795). He also prepared a
profile study of Louis XVIII for some counterfeit currency that was to
be minted (Journal de Mme Danloux, 14 July 1795).
See Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Form in
Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven and London, 1993), p. 50.
Female models were better paid than male, though their social standing was lesser: males earned 5s. per week and 1s. for each two-hour
sitting, females half a guinea per sitting in the 1770s in London. See
Ilaria 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 de
Danloux, 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 Courtin
for modelling hands (ibid., 25 September 1797), but £10 to the marquis himself – possibly for his daughter – for ten days’ modelling
182
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
(ibid., 8 October 1797). The Journal shows that Danloux’s grasp of the
complexities of English currency was uncertain, however, and some of
these figures may be incorrect.
However, Mme Danloux may have had the help of an agent of Danloux’s in Edinburgh, conceivably the Marnoch who framed at least
some of Danloux’s Scottish portraits and whose Princes Street shop
also dealt in prints and paintings. It seems unlikely that she would
have been left entirely to her own devices in Scotland, especially as
some of the subscribers she had most difficulty with lived as far afield
as Dundee. I owe this suggestion to Helen Smailes.
He reduced his fee for Mme Digneron, a popular hostess in the creole
émigré circle ( Journal de Mme Danloux, 27 August 1795), who paid 180
guineas rather than 200 for a four-figure portrait, charged only three
guineas for a child portrait because he was touched by the mother’s
love (Journal de Danloux, 3 October 1792), and otherwise occasionally
reduced his rates for the poverty-stricken provided they did not
advertise his generosity (ibid., 8 February 1793).
He painted both her and her son for nothing (Journal de Mme Danloux,
16 September 1795).
Ibid., 22 September 1795; also Portalis, p. 292.
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 sword
and holding a plumed hat. Both are in the Musée Condé at Chantilly,
but the half-length was originally given by the duke to his friend
Mr. Crawfurd, in whose London house he was a frequent guest, and only
subsequently purchased from a descendant by the Duc d’Aumale for
Chantilly. Danloux’s receipt of £25, apparently for this portrait, is
mentioned by Macon in Les Arts dans la maison de Condé (Paris, 1903),
p. 144, but cannot be traced in the Musée Condé archives.
Journal de Mme Danloux, 1 February 1795.
Journal de Mme Danloux, 15 May 1796, 24 June 1796, 29 July 1796.
Ibid., 3 September 1796.
Journal de Danloux, 9 July 1797, 17 July 1797.
Journal de Danloux, 3 July 1797, 6 July 1797.
Journal de Mme Danloux, 5 May 1795. She wrongly puts the charge at
25s.
Not being a member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (or of any other foreign academy), he had to submit a drawing
before being allowed to attend the Royal Academy’s life classes (Portalis,
pp. 90–1).
See Edwards, p. 255.
Journal de Danloux, 17 May 1792.
Ibid., loc. cit.
Ibid., loc. cit.
Angelica Goodden
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
183
Ibid., 1 August 1792; also 24 July 1792, and Portalis, p. 93.
See Portalis, p. 151.
Hoppner violently criticised her polish in the preface to the Oriental
Tales (London, 1805), p. x, and Sir George Beaumont thought that
her paintings resembled waxwork (see Joseph Farington, Diary, ed.
James Greig, 8 vols (London, 1922–8), II. 219). Vigée Le Brun herself admitted that ‘je quitte difficilement mes ouvrages. Je ne les crois
jamais assez finis’ (Souvenirs, II. 133).
See An Aspect of Collecting Taste (Stair Sainty Matthiesen, New York,
1986), pp. 48–9.
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.
Journal de Danloux, 17 July 1800; see also Portalis, p. 431.
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 Nationale, Paris), XXVIII, no. 769, p. 178.
For example, in Dernières Observations sur cette exposition, ibid., vol.
XXX, no. 815, p. 77. The portrait was not re-exhibited until 1814.
Le Pausanias français: état des arts du dessin en France à l’ouverture du dixneuvième siècle, ibid., vol. XXXIX, p. 270.
Ibid., p. 271.
On this general point see Martin Warnke, introduction to ‘Künstler
der Emigration’, Künstlerischer Austausch (Akten des XXVIII. internationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte, Berlin, 15–20 July 1992),
3 vols (Berlin, 1993), I. p. 161.
See Marcia Pointon, ‘Portrait-Painting as a Business Enterprise in
London in the 1780s’, Art History, 7 (1984), and Hanging the Head,
op. cit.
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 émigré
press to influence ideologies, allied policy and strategy, business
confidence and opinion. Above all perhaps they feared its
power to shape the image of the Republic in the eyes of their
émigré and European elite audience. As a result they watched
the content of émigré journals with interest.
In late 1795 Charles Alexandre de Calonne’s Tableau de
l’Europe raised a storm of controversy in émigré circles.1 The
Tableau, which first appeared in the émigré newspaper, Le
Courier de Londres, argued that the revolutionary government
would invent new financial resources to replace the failing
assignats, that royalism had little popular appeal in France, and
that the French monarchy had never had a true constitution.
To many émigrés these arguments seemed sacrilegious.2 They
implied that the old regime was despotic; that the republic was
not about to collapse; and internal counter-Revolution was
unlikely. But more was at stake than the sensibilities of the
émigrés, for each of Calonne’s points had policy implications.
If the old regime lacked a constitution, royalists needed to
convince France that a restored monarchy would establish
safeguards against despotism. If royalism lacked popular appeal
inside France, the Bourbons and allied powers had little to
hope for from ballot box or insurrection. And, if Calonne’s financial assessment was correct, only a vigorous and successful
military offensive could hope to achieve victory. This was the
opposite of the policy urged by Francis d’Ivernois, a rival expert
on French finances, who, like Calonne, had access to the British
government. D’Ivernois contended that France’s resources
were exhausted, and hence a mere holding operation would
184
Simon Burrows
185
bring the allies victory through attrition.3 Is it surprising then
that one French diplomat blamed d’Ivernois for the breakdown
of 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 and
periodicals of the London émigrés was highly political and
often bitterly contested. Yet although the émigré press was to
become a significant propaganda arm of British foreign policy
after 1803, the exile journalists of the 1790s wrote with considerable freedom. The British government showed scant interest in what they wrote, and offered the barest of patronage
opportunities and, while the émigré journalists aligned themselves with various political camps within the Emigration, financial support from this quarter was meagre.5 Instead, the
émigré journalists were supported by subscriptions from the
émigré public and British and European élites, on circulations
varying from several hundred to several thousand.6 Thus
although several political persuasions were represented in the
émigré press, most London-based émigré journalists wrote
from conviction, rather than as hired hands, and several
among them were important political actors in their own right.
The moderate monarchiens had two journals, Montlosier’s
Journal de France et d’Angleterre (January–June 1797), and Mallet
Du Pan’s Mercure britannique (1798–1800). The intransigent
purs had their own Mercure de France from April 1800–April
1801. The splenetic, prolific Jean-Gabriel Peltier produced a
series of titles: initially relatively moderate in politics if not
style, he was recruited by the purs in 1797.7 Finally there was
the Courier de Londres (1776–1826).8 In the 1790s it was a
mouthpiece for its co-proprietor Calonne under the editorship of Verduisant (April–October 1793) and the abbé Calonne
(1793–1799). Over time the Calonne brothers became estranged
from the pur camp, and in July 1797 Montlosier was recruited
as the abbé’s co-editor. 9 In June 1802 editorship passed to
Jacques ( James) Regnier, who turned it into an outspoken and
vitriolic pur organ.10
Jeremy Popkin has shown how the revolutionary press
scripted the revolution in advance by creating the tensions
and expectations which gave rise to the great revolutionary
journées and retrospectively by giving or denying symbolic
meaning to events.11 The émigré press also defined new realities
186
by imposing patterns on events. Thus, in 1792 Peltier insisted
that his role was to disabuse Europe of the version of events
propagated by the revolutionaries, and to justify the king and
his Swiss guards in the face of their calumnies.12 More significantly, he offered the first extensive and detailed eyewitness
accounts of the September massacres not to be produced ‘sous
l’influence de la faction dominante’.13 In Peltier’s narrative the
Republic was born amidst murder and blood.
According to most of the émigré journalists, the Republic was
not truly ‘popular’ and, despite appearances, the government
did not enjoy widespread support. They were basing their
argument on the revolutionary principle of popular sovereignty
rather than traditional absolutist and legitimist theories. On
one level, this was pragmatic – they hoped to undermine the
revolution’s main claim to legitimacy and to promote foreign
political or military intervention by convincing their readers
that support for royalism was widespread. On another level, it
indicates the extent to which revolutionary political culture
had penetrated. The émigré journalists were suggesting that
political power must be based on popular consent. They differed from the revolutionaries only about which side enjoyed
that consent.
Hence the overthrow of the monarchy was portrayed as
neither easy nor popular. Peltier claimed that the 10 August
insurrection was the work of a hundred factious individuals.
Even though the people were blind instruments, it had required
months to gather sufficient force for the coup.14 Moreover, the
insurgents had been either fédérés summoned from Marseilles,
or members of the urban under-class, seduced by cash and the
hope of pillage, and enflamed by alcohol and the prospect of
an orgy of destruction.15 Peltier also offered statistical proofs
that popular opinion opposed the revolution claiming that in
1789 counter-Revolutionary newspapers outnumbered revolutionary ones by three to one and outsold them by 35:2.16 Likewise, the abbé Calonne argued that the menu peuple had been
deceived into supporting the revolution. In a patronising article
addressed (somewhat improbably) to the French people, he
explained how they had been duped and that their true interest lay in the re-establishment of the monarchy.17
By late 1795, following the débacles of Quiberon and
vendémiaire, some émigré journalists were questioning the
Simon Burrows
187
popularity of the Bourbons inside France. Calonne’s Tableau
de l’Europe, for example, argued that the émigrés misunderstood the discontent in France. Rather than indicating royalist
sympathies it stemmed from fear of arbitrary or anarchic
government, concern for property, worries about the nation’s
finances and a desire to conserve religion. Mallet Du Pan
agreed that Frenchmen did not favour royalism. If offered liberty, property and the exercise of their religion, they would
rally to the Directory.18 In 1799 he added that royalists needed
to persuade Frenchmen that Louis XVIII’s maxims were not
those of some ‘choleric, absurd and vindictive émigré’, and
provoked a new storm in the process.19 His remarks indicate a
growing belief that the Republican government was not inherently unpopular, weak or short-lived, despite continuing discontent in France. Moreover, the bitter polemical debates
sparked by Calonne and Mallet Du Pan’s remarks helped to
create and perpetuate the image of an emigration which was
simultaneously divided and intransigent.
Republican leaders and revolutionaries were portrayed in
the émigré press as divided, ambitious, immoral plotters. Their
power derived from their ability to dupe the people and from
a general confusion in ideas. Peltier remarked that philosophes
and revolutionary writers had attached the words ‘liberté’ and
‘patriote’ to men and objects worthy of scorn. 20 He also maintained that the Constitution of the Year I was produced by
Necker’s pride and destroyed by Robespierre’s rage.21 The
revolutionary leaders were bloodthirsty rogues, or worse, as was
proved once and for all by the September massacres and
Terror. Thus, when the Girondins were executed, Peltier
explained that they died for being ‘un peu moins scélérats’ than
their accusers and the Courier de Londres said Brissot’s silence
on the scaffold seemed to indicate that he was still plotting.22
Other revolutionaries were more criminal still. When Bentabole
attacked Hébert’s patriotism in the Convention, Peltier
expressed surprise at the content of his speech. He claimed
Bentabole had been expected to reproach Hébert for not
denouncing his own brothers, killing his father, poisoning his
mother and raping his sisters.23 The abbé Calonne, reviewing
the satirical novel Confessions of Jean-Baptiste Couteau,24 found
the logic and morality of its absurdly bloodthirsty hero perfectly resembled those of the real Jacobin innovators.25 Such
188
stereotypes were reinforced by reports of the excesses of dechristianisation and the revolutionary cults, including Peltier’s gleeful description of the ‘prostitutes’ chosen to represent the new
deities Reason and Liberty. 26 Nevertheless, Peltier contradicted those who heralded the advent of a new order after the
purges 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 Thermidor
made little difference to portrayals of revolutionary politicians. The abbé Calonne reminded his readers that Tallien,
though in appearance more moderate than Robespierre, was
nevertheless a regicide and Peltier argued that the coup was
only the replacement of one faction by another.28 The Thermidorians’ apparent honesty was a calculated survival strategy.
It was the minimum possible concession to popular outrage.29
Like the republican leadership, Republican culture was portrayed as morally deformed and explicitly and implicitly contrasted with the literature and arts of the old regime. This was
intended as a political and moral point as well as a literary one.
For just as de Bonald argued ‘la littérature est l’expression de
la société’, so Peltier commented ‘le spectacle est le tableau des
mœurs d’un peuple’.30 Naturally, his depiction of revolutionary theatre was scathing and the dramatist Marie-Joseph
Chénier was described as an ‘insecte de la littérature et de la
politique.’31 Republican literature was the product of a process
of 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, harmonieuse sans fatigue, précise sans obscurité, élégante sans
afféterie, la véritable expression d’une nature perfectionée,
devenait brusque, dure, courte, sauvage, hyperbolique, parce
qu’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 of
revolution and as symptomatic of the republic.
Counter-revolutionary writers were among the first to
attempt to explain the revolution and the émigré journalists
were no exception. In October 1789 Peltier had been among
the first to propose that the revolution was the result of an
Simon Burrows
189
Orleanist conspiracy, an idea he repeated in exile.33 Peltier’s
journals and the Courier de Londres also endorse Barruel’s conspiracy theories and accuse the philosophes of preparing revolution by undermining religion and morality.34 In contrast, Mallet
Du Pan and Montlosier both denied the existence of either a
masonic or philosophe conspiracy. Yet even they accepted
that the enlightenment had contributed to the outbreak of
revolution by breaking down social bonds and the mechanisms
of moral control.35 Exile journalists also offered providential
interpretations of the Revolution. In late January 1793 the
Courier de Londres threatened the regicides with celestial justice
and, as the Terror progressed, Peltier, Verduisant and the
abbé Calonne expressed awe at the swiftness of divine retribution whenever a revolutionary leader went to the scaffold.36
The Republic was thus the instrument of heaven’s punishment and hence a temporary phenomenon. This rhetoric was
less common after Thermidor but providential explanations
of the revolution remained implicit in the émigré journals’
vocabulary and presentation.
However, in time a new, more pressing question had to be
answered: how had the republic survived in the face of massive
internal and external opposition? Economic causes seemed to
offer the best explanation. The revolution had gained huge
resources by seizing Church property and minting countless
assignats. Moreover, the Revolution opposed all property and
was hence a threat to European society. Thus, the Courier de
Londres questioned the wisdom of the supposed predilection of
the merchant classes for revolution, citing Danton’s rhetorical
question ‘de quel droit voulez-vous qu’on respecte vos propriétés, acquises très souvent par des moyens injustes et vexatoires?’ and in late 1793 Peltier remarked that the merchants
of Bordeaux, Lyon and Marseille and bankers of Paris had
been executed for being rich.37
The Republican threat to property justified the émigré journalists’ support of war. As early as 1793 they were arguing that
the Republic threatened all society, all states, all religion and
all property and therefore required a universal response, and
a new, more energetic form of warfare. 38 It was impossible to
have a just and lasting peace with the revolution. The only
answer to the French threat was to extinguish republican
government and restore the legitimate Bourbon monarchy.39
190
While this argument was ultimately self-interested, the émigré
journalists had acknowledged the huge military potential
unleashed by the revolution long before allied governments,
which persistently under-estimated French strength.
By late 1795, although hopes of military victory over the
Republic were fading, the Constitution of the year III, which
enfranchised only a relatively small propertied elite, provided
hope of victory by the ballot box. Thus the decision of the Convention that one third of the new legislature should be elected
annually and that in the first instance two thirds of the
members of the Convention should remain sitting in the new
assembly, came as a rude shock.40 The failure of the vendémiaire
coup (3 October 1795) finally dashed remaining royalist hopes.
These two events seemed to confirm that the constitution
was designed to perpetuate the power of the Convention.41
Since the 1795 elections showed a clear preference for moderates and royalists, the Two Thirds Decree violated the
expressed wishes of the political nation. Moreover, it was
probable that whenever royalist, moderate, or Jacobin gains
threatened the conventionnel hegemony, the constitution
would be violated.42 This realisation led to a new interpretation of the revolution’s momentum. An endless procession of
factions, each temporarily in control of the government,
would be unable to master the revolution because the destruction of legitimacy in turn legitimised successive coups. This
view of the revolution was to remain fundamental to Peltier’s
conception of its continuing dynamic even after 1814. The
argument was self-fulfilling, and allowed no compromise. Only
the return of the legitimate monarch could break the cycle.
Thus, the 18 Fructidor coup was part of a predictable pattern
of violence, as Peltier insinuated ironically:
Encore une révolution; encore une fois le régime de la terreur substitué à celui de la constitution! Puis fiez-vous à
toutes ces constitutions de 1791, 1793 & 1795! 43
The period between September 1797 and November 1799 was
one of disillusionment for the émigré journalists, who renewed
their attempts to convince Europe and its sovereigns of the
same basic set of propositions they had advanced during the
Terror. Mallet Du Pan argued that experience had proven
that 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 soldier and a doctrine to spread worldwide. It was thus on a permanent war footing with the rest of the world. Peace would
only be possible ‘when the rights of man shall cease to conspire against the rights of man in society’ or when the Directory
had renounced tyranny, disorder, rapine, and set about
restoring a balance of power.45 This was unlikely to happen as
the republic could only subsist by plunder:
She revolutionises Nations that she may plunder them; and
she plunders them to enable her to exist. The circle of her
philosophy extends no further. She would exchange all the
characters of the Rights of Man for a good bag of crown
pieces, were not those Republican characters and trappings
in her hands what a drowsy potion is in the hands of
robbers. . . . 46
The French Republic had become a military oligarchy.47
Tragically, it had ceased to be monarchical without becoming
truly republican. It had no fixed laws, religion or institutions,
and created a new constitution for every crisis.48 France was
ruled by a monstrous hybrid of republicanism, anarchy and
despotism and the Revolution had become synonymous with
destruction – 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, generally favourable to Bonaparte. Mallet Du Pan believed his was ‘a
more tolerable government’, which would rest on the support
of ‘moderates’, ‘mild constitutionalists’, and ‘mild royalists’
and secure the middle ground abandoned by the intransigent
royalists. 50 Mallet du Pan praised Bonaparte for restoring the
Church, releasing political prisoners, improving the treatment
of émigrés and securing the rule of law, adding:
Surely this enumeration renders it unnecessary to prove
that, however there may be a continuance of usurpation,
there is certainly no continuation of the former system; and
that nothing can differ more than the regulations and policies adopted by Bonaparte and those invariably observed
by his predecessors.51
Mallet Du Pan died before he could give a definitive judgement on the new regime, but his friend Montlosier rallied to
192
it. 52 Montlosier believed Napoleon had neutralised egalitarian
forces, and his genius was thus ‘de conserver les établissemens
révolutionnaires en faisant cesser la révolution’.53
He approved of the new regime’s concentration, centralisation and bureaucratisation of power and believed the constitution of year VIII established a monarchie limitée, based on three
great political truths:
[1] la nécessité d’une intervention aristocratique comme
ingrédient nécessaire à la conservation d’un grand état et par
conséquence l’absurdité d’une démocratie absolue . . . [2] la
nécessité de concentrer l’autorité. . . . il y a dix fois plus de
monarchie dans la république actuelle que dans la monarchie constituée de 1791 . . . [3] qu’on ne gouverne point le
peuple par le peuple. 54
For the purs however the consulate was just another phase of
the revolution: Bonaparte was an usurper and tyrant, and his
government revolutionary in both origins and dynamic. It was
driven by cupidity and egoism and hence unjust and inherently
unstable as well as illegitimate. Napoleonic France would continue to seek internal stability by external pillage and thus represented a permanent threat to Europe. The Mercure de France
castigated Napoleon as a military despot surrounded by
republican forms, maintaining that the French people rallied
to him through desperation. The forms were changed but
revolutionaries still held power.55 Peace would therefore only
perpetuate a government without regular form ruling over a
people 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 ses
attentats; . . . un sujet audacieux et rebelle, monté de crime
en crime jusque sur le trône de son bienfaiteur.57
Peltier, too, saw Bonaparte as the incarnation of revolutionary
principles. Compromise had been forced upon him because
his rift with his natural allies, the Jacobins, had become unbridgeable, but his character was base and hideous.58 Moreover, the return to monarchic forms would not restore
stability: the ‘charme’ to bind millions to the commands of one
man could only stem from legitimacy.59 Without their legitimate
monarch, the French were slaves to force.60 Their government
Simon Burrows
193
did not even guarantee fundamental rights such as the integrity of posts, freedom of thought, liberty of the press, and
security of the person.61 The same men, armed with the same
principles, remained in power. ‘Des philosophes bouchers’
had replaced ‘des bouchers philosophes’. 62
By 1799 émigré journalists had models of revolution against
which to interpret Bonapartism. A mixture of political calculation, ideology and genuine perceptions, their images of the
Republic offer insights into changing émigré mentalities, and
perhaps even into British policy. For some, Bonaparte remained
the personification of a revolution driven by cupidity, spoil,
usurpation and ambition, with which there could be no compromise. But for others his government combined many positive features of the old regime with popular support. Who can
wonder therefore that Montlosier rallied to Bonaparte, and
that 90 per cent of all émigrés, weary of exile, had returned to
France by May 1803. Moreover, in denying that the republic
enjoyed widespread popular support, the émigré journalists
had 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 prepared to invoke the theory of consent and the general will to
legitimise their case. Paradoxically, they were embracing the
very democratic political culture they sought to anathematise.
The highly contested image of the Republic in the émigré
press therefore both highlighted, perpetuated and exaggerated
political divisions within the ranks of the emigration, and
demonstrated the potency of the principle of popular
sovereignty from which the Republic drew its strength.
NOTES
1.
2.
Charles Alexandre de Calonne, Le Tableau de l’Europe en novembre
1795; 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 appendix
appeared in Courier de Londres vol. 39, no. 2 (5 January 1796).
The most significant reply to Calonne was A.J.B.R. Auget de Montyon’s Rapport fait à sa majesté, Louis XVIII sur le livre intitulé Tableau de
194
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
l’Europe (1796). The debate between them was discussed at length in
the Parisian press, for example, Les Nouvelles politiques (15 August
1796), and by Peltier in Paris pendant l’année 1796, nos. 64 (23 July
1796) and 70 (27 August 1796). Émigré attacks on Calonne forced
him to publish an appendix as early as 5 January 1796.
See especially Francis d’Ivernois, Réflexions sur la guerre (1795) and
Coup d’oeil sur les assignats (1795). Both works were translated into
English.
See Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris, Correspondance politique/Angleterre, 589, fos. 330–1, Nettement to Delacroix de Contaut,
Londres, 9 thermidor IV (27 July 1796).
S. Burrows, ‘The Exile Press in London, 1789–1814’, (unpublished
DPhil thesis, Oxford, 1992) pp. 168–96.
Burrows, op. cit., pp. 147–61.
Between 1792 and 1818 Peltier published Le Dernier Tableau de Paris
(1792–1793); L’Histoire de la restauration de la monarchie française, ou la
campagne de 1793 (1793); La Correspondance politique (1793–1794); Le
Tableau de l’Europe (1794–1795); Paris pendant l’année (1795–1802);
L’Ambigu (1802–1818). On Peltier see H. Maspero-Clerc, Un journaliste
Contre-révolutionnaire: Jean-Gabriel Peltier (1760–1825), Paris, Société
des Etudes Robespierristes), 1973.
The paper is better known under its earlier title, Le Courier de l’Europe.
On its early history see Gunnar and Mavis von Proschwitz, Beaumarchais 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 de
l’Europe (1776–1788)’, Annales historiques de la révolution française
(1976), pp. 572–94.
François-Dominique Reynaud, Comte de Montlosier, Souvenirs d’un
émigré (1791–1798) publiés par son arrière petit-fils le comte de LarouzièreMontlosier et par Ernest d’Hauterive (Paris, Hachette, 1951), pp. 247–9.
Courier de Londres, 42 (9), (1 August 1797).
Public Record Office, Kew, FO 27/70 fos. 624–625, ‘Note of Regnier’
(undated); Archives Nationales, Paris, F7 6330 dossier 6959, ‘Rapport
de M. Lamberte’. On Regnier: S. Burrows, ‘British Propaganda
for Russia in the Napoleonic Wars: the Courier d’Angleterre’, New
Zealand Slavonic Journal (1993), pp. 85–100.
Jeremy D. Popkin, Revolutionary News: the Press in France, 1789–1799
(Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1990), pp. 96–168.
Dernier Tableau de Paris, especially I: iv–vi, 66–8, 140–5.
Dernier Tableau de Paris, I, avertissement, p. i.
Dernier Tableau de Paris, I: p. 81.
Dernier Tableau de Paris, I: pp. 143–4.
Dernier Tableau de Paris, I: p. 44. A review of titles suggests these
numbers are sheer fantasy. However, subscription information for
pro-revolutionary titles is hazy, and it is certain that the leading counter-revolutionary papers were among the best supported papers of
the period 1789–1792.
Courier de Londres, 35 (31, 32 and 37), (18 and 22 April and 9 May 1794).
Simon Burrows
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
195
British Mercury, no. 11 (30 January 1799), pp. 166–7 [R.G. Dallas authorised English translation which regularly appeared five days after the
French edition.].
British Mercury, no. 26 (15 October 1799), p. 88.
Paris pendant l’année 1796, no. 62, (9 July 1796), pp. 612–13. The statement is copied from an article by a right-wing Parisian journalist Adrien
de Lezay Marnézia which Peltier reprinted with a strong endorsement.
Peltier, Correspondance française ou tableau de l’Europe, no. 1 (2 November
1793), thereafter entitled Correspondance politique.
Correspondance politique, no. 5 (12 November 1793); Courier de Londres,
34 (39), (12 November 1793).
Correspondance politique, no. 23 (24 December 1793).
Robert Jephson, Confessions of Jean-Baptiste Couteau, Citizen of France,
written by himself: and translated from the French by Robert Jephson, 2 vols.
(1794).
Courier de Londres, 36 (2), (4 July 1794).
Correspondance politique, no. 12 (28 November 1793).
Correspondance politique, no. 76 (26 April 1794).
Courier de Londres, 36 (16), (22 August 1794) and Tableau de l’Europe, I:
34.
Tableau de l’Europe, I: 50.
Paris pendant l’année 1798, no. 171 (31 December 1798), p. 149.
Paris pendant l’année 1797, no. 100 (18 February 1797) p. 605.
Paris pendant l’année 1798, no. 160 (16 July 1798), pp. 37–8.
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, salvum
fac regem (Paris, 1789); Dernier Tableau de Paris, II: pp. 10–23; 98–9n.
Correspondance politique, no. 7 (16 November 1793); Paris pendant l’année
1795, no. 9 (1 August 1795) pp. 3–10n. See also Maspero-Clerc, Peltier,
pp. 17–26.
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 (30
November 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).
British Mercury no. 14, (15 March 1799), pp. 335–63; Journal de France
et d’Angleterre, no. 12 (7 April 1797), pp. 161–84 and no. 14 (22 April
1797), p. 290.
Courier de Londres, 33 (9), (29 January 1793) and Correspondance politique, nos.5, 7, 68, (12, 16 November 1793, 8 April 1794); Courier de
Londres, 34 (8, 40), (26 July, 15 November 1793); Dernier Tableau de
Paris, I: appendix, p. 72.
Courier de Londres, 34 (25), (24 September 1793). The speech was
made on 31 August 1793 and Correspondance politique, no. 12, (28
November 1793).
See Dernier Tableau de Paris, I: 149, 179; Tableau de l’Europe, I: iii; Correspondance politique, no. 2 (4 November 1793); Courier de Londres, 33 (10,
12), (1, 8 February 1793).
196
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
See Histoire de la restauration, letter 2, (dated 6 April 1793), p. 38; Correspondance politique, no. 27 (2 January 1794); Courier de Londres, 40 (29),
(7 October 1796).
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.
Paris pendant l’année, no, 25 (21 November 1795), pp. 3–11.
See, for example, Paris pendant l’année 1797, no. 132 (9 September
1797), p. 57 ff.
Paris pendant l’année 1797, no.132 (9 September 1797), p. 61.
British Mercury, no. 4 (15 October 1797), pp. 271–98.
British Mercury, no. 6 (15 October 1708), p. 449.
British Mercury, no. 11 (29 January 1799), p. 130.
British Mercury, no. 6 (15 November 1798), p. 413. The same view was
expressed by the abbé Calonne, Courier de Londres, 42 (22), (15 September 1797), and Montlosier, Courier de Londres, 42 (52), (29 December
1797).
Courier de Londres, 42 (52), (29 December 1797); British Mercury, no. 11
(29 January 1799), p. 131. Courier de Londres, 44 (16), (24 August
1798).
Courier de Londres, 44 (25), (25 September 1798).
British Mercury, no. 30 (11 December 1799), pp. 340, 346–7 and 372.
British Mercury, no. 35, (10 March 1800), p. 170.
On Montlosier’s rapprochement with the Consulate: H. de MiramonFitzjames, ‘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 économique et sociale de la révolution française, année 1975 (1977), pp. 81–
103.; Robert Griffiths, Le Centre perdu: Malouet et les ‘monarchiens’ dans
la révolution française (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble,
1988).
Courier de Londres, 46 (52), (27 December 1799).
Courier de Londres, 46, (52), (27 December 1799).
Mercure de France, no. 1 (10 April 1800), pp. 35–65.
Mercure de France, no. 10 (10 July 1800), pp. 253–4.
Mercure de France, no. 4 (10 May 1800), p. 319.
Paris pendant l’année 1800, no. 195 (15 January 1800), p. 103.
The image is Peltier’s own. See Dernier Tableau de Paris, I: 10.
Paris pendant l’année 1799, no. 193 (30 November 1799), p. 479.
See Dernier Tableau de Paris, vol. 1, avertissement, p. ii.
Paris pendant l’année 1799, no. 194 (24 December 1799), p. 610.
Dernier Tableau de Paris, I: 14n.
13 Burke, Boisgelin and the
Politics of the Émigré
Bishops
Nigel Aston
We may have some diversity in our opinions, but we have no
difference in principles.
(Burke to Boisgelin, 1791)
Crossing hastily to England during 1791 and 1792, often in
disguise, many French bishops found themselves undertaking
their first ever maritime journey, to a country none of them
had previously visited. What possible cause for hope could
England offer these reluctant but steadfast opponents of the
Civil Constitution of the Clergy, as they came ashore at the
channel coast ports of Kent, Sussex and Hampshire and tried
to make sense of their fate? Most immediately, there was the
consolation of meeting fellow exiles, often clergy from their
home dioceses.1 There were also touching displays of active
sympathy and charitable relief from most sections of the British propertied élites; these sprang from a sense of pity, shame,
and incredulity at the mistreatment of fellow Christians by the
Revolutionaries. Finally, there was the comfort of knowing
that their cause had been taken up before their arrival by one
of the outstanding public figures and political campaigners of
the late eighteenth century, Edmund Burke, MP for Malton,
and leading Portland Whig, the opposition grouping increasingly, by the early 1790s, working in conjunction with Pitt the
Younger’s administration. To the non-juring clergy and the
émigrés generally, his name had a resonance and an interest
unequalled by any other Briton thanks to his Reflections on the
Revolution in France, first published in November 1790.
On the basis of this support, it might have been thought that
Burke would have the émigré bishops in his pocket, but such a
prediction would have been false. Burke’s view of the bishops
– and his intended role for them as the spiritual leaders of the
197
198
counter-Revolution – generated its own distinctive tensions
throughout the next few years, because it conflicted with the
more pragmatic reality. They could admire and usually endorse
his general case against the Revolution, but that shared sentiment was never translated into effective joint action. Before
their arrival in Britain, Burke had praised what he saw as the
bishops’ uncompromising attitude to Revolution which he
assumed would remain as inflexible in exile as it had been at
home. It was a misreading of the situation. In fact many prelates had done their utmost to come to terms with the revolutionary settlement of 1789–91, until the imposition of the Civil
Constitution without the Church’s consent made their position
intolerable. Burke’s failure to register such tokens of episcopal
moderation would persist after the bishops left France. He was
reluctant or unable to admit the complexities of the situation
confronting the French episcopate, and the result of his wishful
thinking would be a turbulent and more distant alliance
between the bishops and their parliamentary champion than
many commentators could have predicted in 1791. This chapter
examines these mutual misunderstandings by focusing on the
relationship 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-Revolutionary comrades with shared politico-religious hopes for the
future of France and Europe. Yet the association of these two
gifted men was destined never to pass beyond the stage of respect into a warmer amity.
The advent of the French Revolution when Burke’s career –
and his morale – were at their nadir, gave him a completely
new cause, and it was one that, together with Ireland, sustained and engaged him for the last seven years of his life.2
Believing, as he did, in the supreme importance of religion as
‘the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and all
comfort’ and the Church as consecrating the life of the state,
Burke maintained that the Revolution represented a decisive
challenge to the Christian basis of European civilisation, and
that it could only be successfully counter-acted by imbuing
opposition to Revolution with a predominantly Christian
character.3 It would be a contest which overrode the traditional
confessional divisions. Burke relied on the bishops – Anglican
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199
as much as Gallican – to concede as much and to act as the keystone in this pan-Christian front he had dedicated himself to
proclaiming.
In the Reflections, Burke identified the Gallican episcopate
as leaders of a Church polity remarkable both for its principles
and its purity, but one which faced an impoverished and
uncertain future having ‘patriotically’ given up its income and
its juridical identity to the demands of the Revolution:
Who but a tyrant . . . could think of seizing on the property
of men, unaccused, unheard, untried, by whole descriptions,
by hundreds and thousands together.
He acclaimed the Church’s steadfastness in adversity, its unwillingness to put prosperity before principle, as articulated
in the Exposition des principes of October 1790, presented by
Boisgelin in the name of all the bishops in the National Assembly (except for Talleyrand and Gobel) only a month before the
Reflections was published.4 Burke deplored these revolutionary
inflictions, though he was joining a chorus of Anglican laments
which dated from the October Days. Events in France confirmed Burke’s recently developed awareness that Church
affairs were far less settled than he could have wished and that
a very real threat to ecclesiastical establishments was gathering
strength on both sides of the Channel. From his point of view,
it was no coincidence that English dissenters had made further
moves in Parliament towards achieving repeal of the Test and
Corporation Acts in 1788–90 just as the French revolutionaries
had dispossessed the Gallican Church. 5 The loss of its tithes
and landed possessions was a terrible warning of the confiscations that would assuredly happen in England if the Anglican
order was not defended from enemies like Priestley, Price and
the ‘rational dissenters’.6 Behind these restless men, Burke
imagined he detected the hand of malcontent noblemen like
the Marquess of Lansdowne or Earl Stanhope, conspiring, like
their French equivalents, to overthrow the monarchical state
and the religion which validated participation in its life. 7
By 1789, Burke was taking pride in British tenacity in adhering in crisis to ‘the old ecclesiastical modes and fashions
of institution’. 8 He insisted that corporate integrity marked
any legitimate branch of the Church and that it was the task of
the state to uphold that hallmark rather than subvert and
200
subordinate it, as he believed the National Assembly was trying
to do. He did not deny that there were aspects of Church life in
France which needed reform, but he believed that it was for
the Gallican Church to address its own problems and not endure
solutions foisted on it by the revolutionaries. We have a clue to
his approach in an important letter of September 1791 when,
at the request of Calonne (then acting as chief minister of the
émigré government), Burke had sent his son Richard to
Coblenz to consult with the émigrés regarding the promotion
of a military alliance with Britain for intervention in France.
The letter elaborates at length on possible changes in a restored
monarchy which would include a canonical synod of the Gallican Church ‘to reform all abuses’ (left unspecified).9
Such a proposal was broadly in line with the approach articulated in the Exposition of October 1790, but there were differences, especially in attitudes towards any sovereign elected
assembly. The irony was that it never seems to have occurred
to Burke that much influential opinion among the French
bishops was, throughout 1790, keen to reach an accommodation with the politicians in the National Assembly, ready even
to adhere to the Civil Constitution so long as the Church was
allowed a formal consultative role through the suitably Gallican device of a national council. 10 Such a stance was more
flexible than Burke’s insistence that Church reform should
procede primarily from a council rather than from the politicians in the Assembly. Yet the opportunity for compromise
was lost, the Constitutional Church was created in France, and
only three of the existing diocesan prelates felt able to retain
office within it. The rest chose – or were impelled into – exile
during 1791–92. This early difference of emphasis prefigured
future tensions between Burke and the émigré bishops. It suggests, before most of them had even left France, that it was not
their policy preferences but what the episcopate symbolised as
an essential component of France’s historic identity that most
mattered to Burke. For him the bishops were an essential leadership cadre, a rallying point in the crusade that Burke wanted
the British government to unleash against the Revolution in
conjunction with the other European powers. He found it
hard to accept the reality that, for the most part, the bishops
were demoralised, impoverished, and only too aware of the
limited scope for political initiative in exile. Besides nursing
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201
resentment at a sudden exclusion from public consequence,
they brought to Britain a range of divergent views about the
way forward for Church and State in France which Burke was
reluctant to register.
The destruction of the old ecclesiastical order entailed the
abandonment of pre-Revolutionary political ambitions for the
overthrown Bishops, unless they were willing to be flexible as,
notoriously, Loménie de Brienne and Talleyrand were. Most
put principle before further hope of government office. This
exclusion 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 of
Languedoc before 1789. But loss of political prospects fell on
no one harder than on Jean de Dieu-Raymond de Cucé de
Boisgelin (1732–1804), archbishop of Aix since 1770. Here
was an immensely able and intelligent prelate, known and respected across Provence for his administrative competence; in
the General Assembly of the Clergy of France (which met periodically down to 1788) he had proposed reforms to clerical
taxation, increasing the revenues of the lower clergy, and a
fairer system of appointments to benefices. None of these
achievements satisfied him. He remained a frustrated politician, denied the appointment he coveted at the highest levels
of the state. He was elected to the Estates-General in the spring
of 1789 and quickly emerged as the de facto leader of the former
First Estate deputies once their order had been submerged
within the National Assembly.
The contrast between the undeviating conduct in difficult
circumstances which Burke expected of the Gallican episcopate
and the lingering pragmatism displayed by some of the bishops
in the National Assembly is nowhere better illustrated than in
a brief survey of archbishop Boisgelin’s involvement in its constitutional deliberations between 1789 and 1791. 11 As a prominent member of the centre-right Monarchien grouping,
Boisgelin fought hard to give the Gallican Church an independent voice in determining its future and the chance of responding freely to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.12 In his
major speech of 29 May 1790, while declaring that kings and
civil authorities had to obey the Church in matters of salvation,
he conceded:
202
It is possible that some retrenchments might be made in the
Church; but the Church must be consulted. . . . We think
that the ecclesiastical power must do everything possible
to conciliate your wishes with the interests of religion. . . .
Therefore, we propose that you consult the Gallican Church
in a national council. There lies the power which must watch
over the trust of the faith; there, instructed in our duties and
your wishes, we shall conciliate the interests of the people
with those of religion.13
His politics reflected a commitment to reform typical of the
great majority of politicians during those two years including,
whatever their personal misgivings, a high proportion of fellow
members of the centre-right.14 If pressed, Boisgelin like many
of the French bishops in 1790, would have found it as hard to
subscribe unreservedly to Burke’s full-blown presentation of
the destruction of the French polity in the Reflections as his
British critics did.
From a royalist angle, some of Boisgelin’s actions were
embarrassingly open to misconstruction. At one point, the
archbishop appeared to be aligning himself with Dr Richard
Price, whose sermon Discourse on the Love of our Country was,
notoriously, the catalyst for Burke’s Reflections.15 Boisgelin was
president of the National Assembly in December 1789 when
deputies required that he should, as representative of them
all, offer their fraternal thanks for greetings received from
the Revolution Society of London. Mirabeau insisted that the
archbishop as president could not delegate that duty to another
deputy. That was not the last of the matter. In March 1790, the
Revolution Society published a summary of its doctrine. It
included among the documentation, along with Price’s notorious sermon, a fraternal letter of the Duc de La RochefoucauldLiancourt, and Boisgelin’s reply in the name of the Assembly.
As Burke reported, ‘The whole of that publication, . . . gave me
a considerable degree of uneasiness’.16
He would have been still more disquieted if he had been
aware of the unsollicited advice senior French churchmen
were offering the Vatican throughout July and August 1790.
They argued that, even without a national council, there was
more to be gained by working with the new ecclesiastical order
than lost by rebelling against it. Boisgelin felt so strongly on
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203
this point he was ready to travel personally to Rome to press
the case.17 Indeed, in a memorandum of early December
1790, Boisgelin was still pressing Pius VI to accept the reforms
or risk schism. Such temporising conduct had no place in any
Burkean agenda.
Along with the majority of episcopal deputies, Boisgelin
retained his membership of the National Assembly until its dissolution in September 1791. He took a leading and constructive
part in its proceedings, despite the passage into law of the Civil
Constitution. Despite his irregular attendance, the archbishop’s studied moderation and attempts at compromise
played their part in achieving some concessions for the refractories, like the law of 7 May allowing them the hire of church
buildings for their own ceremonies, and the decision to exclude
the Civil Constitution from the overall provisions of the
national constitution of September 1791.18 Boisgelin was one
of those episcopal deputies who defended their work on the
new constitution and the principles of liberty to which they
were committed against implied papal criticism in a collective
letter of 3 May. They insisted their view of liberty was not
incompatible with Pius VI’s recently published Brief Quod aliquantum.19 This oblique proclamation of Gallican independence
was a brave gesture that was appreciated more by many lay
deputies than by their clerical colleagues, not to mention the
Pope, but the majority of prelates in the Assembly were undeterred. They made up an unofficial steering committee that
would not accept the preferences of Rome uncritically, by for
instance, holding up the publication of Pius’ condemnatory
Briefs.20 Nevertheless, those bishops who were not members
of the Assembly and who had not taken the oath were leaving
for exile from spring 1791 onwards and Burke immediately
started to organise help for those who came to Britain. For this
work, he received the thanks of Boisgelin speaking for all his
fellow episcopal deputies, and there was a heartfelt, public
exchange of compliments between Burke and the archbishop in
July.21
Other French clergy had their doubts about the principles
underlying the archbishop’s conduct. His conspicuous moderation and his suspicion of émigré schemes appeared distasteful set against the suffering of dispossessed non-jurors.
Simply by remaining in the Assembly, he and the other
204
episcopal deputies were sanctioning the legitimacy of Revolutionary actions whose fury fell on their colleagues. There
followed an attempt to reveal to Burke how much he had
mistaken his man if he deemed the archbishop principally
responsible for preserving the integrity of the Catholic religion.
There was, according to Boisgelin’s critics, a much seamier
reality, with the archbishop ready to make every sort of concession throughout 1790–91 in his indefatigable search for an
eleventh-hour compromise. Boisgelin and Bishop Bonal of
Clermont were condemned by Claude-Constant Rougane, a
curé from the Auvergne, for taking the civic oath of 4 February
1790 without a murmur – ‘au lieu de rougir, il avait souri’.
They and all the prelates had to accept their share of the blame
for the constitution, and repent. Criticism was directed in
particular towards the archbishop of Aix, whose lifelong
endorsement of religious tolerance Rougane execrated – the
curé even blamed him for writing to a Protestant and ended his
own letter to Burke by abjuring the politician to convert! The
resulting mini-controversy has two points we might note. First,
Boisgelin’s French critics were anxious to alert Burke directly
about episcopal conduct he might find unacceptable. To
quote from Rougane’s letter:22
Il faut, Monsieur, que vous n’ayez pas lu en entier les ouvrages
de M. d’Aix, ou que vous ne les ayez lus qu’à travers la plus
grande prévention pour l’auteur.
Secondly, whatever the flexibility shown by the French episcopate either in the National Assembly or in local government,
the passing of the Civil Constitution and the oath required to
it, was a watershed. It became desirable for the bishops to project back on events since 1789 an image of their uncompromising political rectitude, precisely the version depicted in the
Reflections.23 The compromising spirit of a Boisgelin was essentially alien to Burke’s emerging crusading mentality.24 The
fact was that Boisgelin’s character and commitment to a moderate reformism – well displayed in his Coronation sermon of
1775 at Reims when he commended a limited monarchy to the
young Louis XVI – was, as Rougane had correctly surmised,
scarcely known to Burke.25 While there was no taint of theological heterodoxy attached to the archbishop, he had been associated from his student years at the seminary of Saint-Sulpice
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205
in the early 1750s with kindred spirits like Brienne, JéromeMarie Champion de Cicé, Morellet and Turgot who were by no
means unsympathetic to the modernising vision commended
in the Encyclopédie.26 Boisgelin was subtle in his diplomacy,
capable of dissimulation, with an equal facility for writing
funeral orations and licentious verse, alert to the beauties of
Ovid as well as Bossuet.27 Burke took cognisance of none of
this. Had he been better acquainted with the diversity of character and outlooks among the exiled bishops, Burke’s assessment of their viewpoints both in the Reflections, the subsequent
writings, and his day-to-day politics might have been more
nuanced. It should not be forgotten that in 1791–92 it was not
the bishops who were known to Burke (except in a corporate
sense), but Burke who was known to them, through the electrifying impact of the Reflections after translation and publication in France.28
To all his readers of whatever nationality, Burke stood forth
as the defender of the historic order in Church and State in
France and, indeed, in the whole of Europe. Yet, like the
majority of educated Britons, Burke’s first-hand familiarity
with religious politics in France during Louis XVI’s reign was
restricted. This was predictable if, following scholars like C.P.
Courtney, James Boulton and Marilyn Butler, one accepts
that Burke knew little in detail about public affairs in France.29
He had not even visited it since his well-known journey of
1773, an occasion which prompted Mme du Deffand to confide in Horace Walpole the halting character of Burke’s
spoken French.30 So Yves Chiron’s recent claim that ‘Edmund
Burke connaît bien la France’ requires qualification.31 As
Burke’s writings show, he was in command of much accurate
information about the organisation and working of the First
Estate in France, but none of his correspondents from France
in 1789 or immediately before – Decrétot, Third Estate deputy
for Rouen, Charles Jean-François de Pont, the Paris parlementaire, or Mme Parisot, Richard Burke’s landlady – had access to
informed sources inside the Church. 32 There was no one who
could pass on rumour and opinion in the manner that the abbé
Morellet did for Lord Lansdowne. The one prelate Burke did
know at first-hand, Jean-Baptiste-Marie Champion de Cicé,
bishop of Auxerre, who had befriended him in 1773 and
taught his son Richard the rudiments of French, he took as
206
representative of the whole episcopal bench. The fact that
Champion de Cicé was regularly absent in Paris, a fiery antiJansenist, and an ambitious politician, either did not impinge
or was not taken into account. There was, then, every need for
the first of the exiled prelates to arrive in Britain, JeanFrançois de La Marche, bishop of Saint Pol de Léon, to correspond with Burke in 1791, about some of the misconceptions
he entertained about the French clergy.33
Once the other episcopal exiles reached Britain, Burke had
his first opportunity to meet them personally or offer greetings
and messages of support. He quickly, to quote Dominie Aidan
Bellenger, ‘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 constitutional order he wished to see restored in France’.34
But the immediate priority after the September Massacres
and the overthrow of the monarchy was to bring practical
assistance and comfort to the exiled clergy gathering in the
Channel Islands and the southern ports. Burke did more than
merely lend a prestigious name to fund raising. He wrote his
Case of the Suffering Clergy of France which first appeared in The
Evening Mail (17–19 September 1792), was translated, distributed in pamphlet form, and reprinted in The Annual Register.
More than any other publication, it generated public support
for French émigrés and facilitated the creation of John Wilmot’s
Emigrant Relief Committee to co-ordinate charitable work
among them.
But Burke’s primary concern was always war on the Republic
and its destruction. It was no coincidence that the Case of the
Suffering Clergy was published in the same month (September
1792) as Burke drew up a memorandum for ministers, Heads
for Consideration on the Present State of Affairs, the nearest he
comes to grand strategy, urging the liberation of the European
nations from the Jacobins. The French émigrés and royalists
still in arms were to be the vanguard of the liberating armies,
backed by British might. 35 As for the émigré bishops, they
were identified as a cohesive force which could both mobilise
counter-Revolutionary opinion and give it the religious
rationale appropriate in a battle for the survival of Christendom;
he presumed, all too easily, that the notion of a crusade would
have an immediate appeal to them.
Nigel Aston
207
It was not the first of Boisgelin’s concerns when he finally
reached London in September 1792 to join up again with former Monarchien colleagues, among them Malouet and LallyTollendal. He was one of the last bishops to reach Britain.
During the winter of 1791–92 he had briefly visited Brussels
and Mainz, before returning to Paris to resume his difficult
role as unofficial head of the bishops’ committee in the capital.
His arrival in England coincided with the imposition of a new
oath on the non-juring clergy (the so-called ‘Liberty–Equality’
oath) which he reluctantly accepted. So did the majority of
other London exiles, but their choice conflicted with the preference of French bishops elsewhere in Europe.
Once in London, Boisgelin’s restless political drive gave him
an involuntary supremacy in the committee of French bishops
already in operation. Bishop La Marche’s pre-Revolutionary
familiarity with policy-making was minimal by comparison
with Boisgelin’s: he had not even been a member of the
National Assembly. Yet it was La Marche who was identified as
leader of the exiles in the host community. He was an early
arrival in Britain, possessing a stability of character and purpose
and lack of worldly ambition not to be found in the archbishop
of Aix: to the pastoral respect of most exiled priests, including
the non-Bretons, he added the confidence of Pitt’s administration. The two prelates actually worked together constructively
for the rest of the 1790s. They pursued a moderate policy
intended to preserve a spirit of Gallican collegiality among
colleagues, putting pastoral care before political militancy.
Boisgelin was more anxious than La Marche to influence British
policy towards revolutionary France but scope for unilateral
initiatives was restricted.
Burke had only restricted contact with Boisgelin or, indeed,
the other prelates between 1792 and 1797. Disagreements
over policy meant that only weeks after he had helped summon
it into existence, Burke ceased to attend meetings of the Emigrant Relief Committee regularly. It would be an exaggeration
to say that Burke thereafter lost interest in their cause, but he
was denying himself an important official forum in which to
air his views among the Gallican leaders. He still acted as a
fundraiser for the exiles, and entertained them on his estate at
Gregories near Beaconsfield in south Buckinghamshire.36 But
Gregories was small; the revenue it generated barely enough
208
for Burke to maintain his status as a minor country gentleman.
Though individual émigrés like the young and then unknown
Chateaubriand travelled 30 miles north-west out of London to
enjoy Burke’s table, his company and his temporary accommodation, Boisgelin felt no such compulsion.37 He eventually
visited in the autumn of 1793 and helped to brief Burke about
developments in France, much of it reaching him via clandestine
contacts with clergy under persecution in Paris and Provence.38
Whatever their difference of emphasis on policy details, the
exiled archbishop could not neglect the influence of Burke
and his circle on the government. Burke may have left Parliament in the summer of 1794 just as the Portland Whig allies
joined Pitt’s government, but he maintained his international
prestige for the last three years of his life, not least by polemical contributions like the Letters . . . on a Regicide Peace. His
cordial relationship with the new Secretary-at-War, William
Windham, was potentially of vital consequence to the fortunes
of the émigré bishops, despite the setback their cause sustained
at Quiberon in 1795. 39 Boisgelin was desperate to have influence in these circles. Shortly after Burke had retired from the
House of Commons in favour of his son, Richard, Boisgelin
drew up a memorandum on the problems of a peace, an
unpublished tract written in a relatively informal style, almost
certainly sent initially to Richard Burke, to be passed on to the
young man’s father. Yet its suggestion that, in the aftermath of
the Thermidor coup which had deposed Robespierre, Britain
stood to gain little from imposing a severe peace and that
‘l’ Angleterre en relevant la France, relève son commerce’ was
hardly the sort of advice likely to win ministerial endorsement,
particularly as Boisgelin tactlessly if prophetically argued that
the popularity of Pitt was likely to plummet if the war continued.40 The predictably cool official reception of this document
did not deter Boisgelin from further efforts.41
Burke’s practical usefulness to Boisgelin and the other émigré
bishops in the last three years of his life was limited. He remained well disposed to the émigré cause, though increasingly
preoccupied with Ireland, and in deep mourning for the premature death of his son Richard. Burke was respected for such
initiatives as the Penn school for the education of émigré
children, but he was not loved, and the relationship between
himself and the French bishops in London had become
Nigel Aston
209
progressively more distant since 1794. In particular, he had
grown to disapprove of the bishop of St Pol de Léon’s influence: his role as trusted go-between for the Wilmot Relief
Committee and the cosy relationship he had with some government circles.42 This might, in other circumstances, have
represented an opening for Boisgelin, but the archbishop was
disinclined to break rank, and spent much of the later 1790s
with those members of his family sharing his London exile and
taking solace from his literary studies, not Ovid this time but
an appropriately penitential translation of the Psalms.43
For Burke, the unpalatable fact was that most bishops were
more comfortable with the pragmatic approach of Pitt and
Dundas towards the conduct of the war (and the minimal role
for the exiled clergy within it) than with his own ideologically
driven crusading schemes. The realisation that only a minority
of the prelates such as Hercé of Dol (who perished on the
sands of Quiberon Bay in 1795) were disposed either to take
on the role of latter day knights templar and act as chaplains to
the counter-revolutionaries in arms, or lend their skills and
polemical talents to furthering the great cause was only slowly
admitted by Burke. Burke was unprepared for compromise
with any aspect of the French revolutionary state; Boisgelin
was much more adaptable, as one might have expected from his
reputation as a prélat administrateur before the Revolution.44
After Burke’s death, he would accept the Concordat, and
resume his ecclesiastical career during the Consulate as archbishop of Tours (1802), a cardinal, and a Napoleonic senator
(1803). Such a move was symptomatic of deep-seated differences towards the conduct of political life held by Burke and
Boisgelin. However much mutual respect they entertained for
each other, this divergence worked against bringing the two men
into a close working alliance in their resistance to Revolution.
NOTES
1.
Dominic Aidan Bellenger, The French exiled clergy in the British Isles after
1789, Bath, 1986, pp. 4–5; ‘The French exiled clergy in England and
national identity’, Studies in Church History 18 (1982), pp. 397–407.
210
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
Frank O’Gorman, Edmund Burke. His Political Philosophy, London,
1973, p. 108.
Harmondsworth, 1969, 186; C.R. Cragg, Reason and Authority in the
Eighteenth Century, Cambridge, 1964, pp. 273–4; Nigel Aston, ‘A “lay
divine”: Burke, Christianity, and the Preservation of the British State,
1790–1797’, in Religious Change in Europe 1650–1914. Essays for John
McManners, Oxford, 1997, pp. 185–211.
The extent to which Burke drew on the Exposition des principes in
Reflections is invariably overlooked. The episcopal declaration masked
the extent to which the bishops had in 1789–90 been prepared to
accept the end of the ‘old Order’. Significantly, Boisgelin’s final bid to
have the Civil Constitution accepted by the papacy occurred a month
after Reflections appeared.
Albert Goodwin, ‘The Political Genesis of Edmund Burke’s Reflections
on the Revolution in France’, Bull. of the John Rylands Library, 50 (1968),
pp. 336–64.
Burke, Reflections, pp. 263–4. He also accepted that ‘The robbery of
your church has proved a security to the possessions of ours’, ibid.,
p. 204.
Frederick Dreyer, ‘The Genesis of Burke’s Reflections’, Journal of
Modern History 50 (1978), pp. 464–6; cf. O’Gorman, Edmund Burke,
pp. 110–11, 136–7.
Burke, Reflections, p. 198.
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 Jennifer
M. Welsh, Edmund Burke and International Relations. The Commonwealth of
Europe and the Crusade against the French Revolution, Basingstoke, 1995,
pp. 118–19.
Nigel Aston, The End of an Elite. The French Bishops and the Coming of the
Revolution, 1786–1790, Oxford, 1992, pp. 238, 241–2.
See Jacques Le Goff & René Rémond, eds, Histoire de la France
religieuse, vol. 3, Du roi Très Chrétien à la laïcité républicaine, Paris, 1991,
90. See generally E. Lavaquery, Le Cardinal de Boisgelin, 1732–1804, 2
vols, Paris, 1921.
Boisgelin’s letters of spring 1789–spring 1790 to the Comtesse de Gramont (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, Le
Centre perdu. Malouet et les ‘monarchiens’ dans la Révolution française,
Grenoble, 1988.
B.-J.-B. Buchez and P.-C. Roux, Histoire parlementaire de la révolution
française, 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 Revolutionary Culture (1789–1790), Princeton, NJ, 1996, p. 290.
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 continues to do. . . . Nothing could be more stupid. They understand neither
circumstances nor human nature’. A.N. M 788.
Nigel Aston
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
211
Goodwin, ‘The Political Genesis of Edmund Burke’s Reflections’,
348–50. See generally D.O. Thomas, The Honest Mind: the Thought and
Work of Richard Price, Oxford, 1977.
Burke, Reflections, p. 198; Lavaquery, Boisgelin, II. pp. 50–1. By 1791,
Burke gave the archbishop an honourable mention among other predominantly clerical deputies who had resisted the Revolution. See
Burke to the Comtesse de Montrond, 25 Jan. 1791, Correspondence,
VI. pp. 211–12.
Maurice Vaussard, ‘Eclaircissements sur la Constitution civile du
clergé’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française 42 (1970), pp. 286–
93, 292.
Bernard Cousin, Monique Cubells, René Moulinas, La pique et la croix.
Histoire religieuse de la Révolution française, Paris, 1989, pp. 151–2.
J. Chaunu, Pie VI et les Evêques français. Droits de l’Eglise et de l’Homme. Le
bref Quod aliquantum et autres textes, Limoges, 1989.
A. Mathiez, ‘Les Divisions du Clergé Refractaire’, La Révolution
française 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.
See Boisgelin to Burke, n.d., Northamptonshire Record Office,
Fitzwilliam MSS. A. xviii. 6 enclosing a missing copy of the Exposition
des principes, and Burke to Boisgelin 15 July 1791, Correspondence, VI.
pp. 293–5 (originally pub. London Chronicle, 30 Aug.–1 Sept. 1791). On
17 Aug., Boisgelin sent Burke a copy of his Considérations sur la Paix
publique, adressées aux chefs de la Révolution, Paris, 1791. Burke told
Boisgelin: ‘I will not examine scrupulously, by what motives men like
you have thought it your duty to support all that you have done’, 15
July 1791, Correspondence, VI. 294. The Reflections contains a single
passage (p. 223) criticising Boisgelin for offering (12 Apr. 1790), on
behalf of the Clergy, an excessively large loan of 400 million livres to
meet the fiscal needs of the state as an alternative to the land appropriation earlier decreed.
C. Rougane, ancien curé d’Auvergne, Plaintes à M. Burke sur la lettre de
M. l’archevêque d’Aix, Paris, 1791, B.L. F.R. 142 (10).
Burke had told Boisgelin: ‘Your Church, the intelligence of which was
the ornament of the Christian world in its prosperity, is now more
brilliant, in the moment of its misfortunes, to the eyes who are capable
of judging it’. 15 July 1791, Correspondence, VI. p. 293.
Discussed most recently in Welsh, Edmund Burke and International Relations, pp. 141–66.
John McManners, ‘Authority in Church and State. Reflections on the
Coronation of Louis XVI’, in Christian Authority. Essays in Honour of
Henry Chadwick, Oxford, 1988; Bernard Plongeron, La Vie quotidienne
du clergé français au 18e siècle, Paris, 1974, 228. See also Boisgelin’s
pamphlet of 1785 arguing that every political organisation should be
founded in reason and the republican ideal of vertù. Lavaquery, Boisgelin, I. pp. 299–304.
Edna Hindie Lemay, Dictionaire des Constituants, 2 vols., Oxford, 1991,
II. p. 105.
212
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
See the lucid contemporary character sketch cited in Louis Guimbaud, Un Grand Bourgeois au dix-huitième siècle. Auget de Montyon (1733–
1820), Paris, 1909, p. 142.
The first 2500 copies translated into French sold out in two days. William B. Todd, ‘The Bibliographical History of Burke’s Reflections on the
Revolution in France’, The Library, 5th ser., 6 (1951–2), pp. 100–8.
C.P. Courtney, Montesquieu and Burke Oxford, 1963, pp. 36–8; James
Boulton, The Language of Politics in the Age of Wilkes and Burke, Oxford,
1963, p. 95; ed. Marilyn Butler, Burke, Paine, Godwin, and the Revolution
Controversy. 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 analysis
of the French Revolution’, Historical Journal, 25 (1982), pp. 331–49.
Burke’s library certainly contained an extensive collection of works on
France and its history. See the Catalogue of the Library of the Late
Right Hon. Edmund Burke (London, 1833).
Sir Philip Magnus, Edmund Burke. A Life, London, 1939, speaks more
aptly of Burke’s ‘fluent but atrocious French’. The details of the 1773
visit are given in Courtney, Montesquieu and Burke, pp. 32–5.
Yves Chiron, ‘Edmund Burke’, pp. 85–97, in Jean Tulard, ed. La ContreRévolution. Origines, Histoire, Postérité, Paris, 1990. See also his Edmund
Burke et la Révolution française, Paris, 1987.
Jean Dumont, La Révolution française ou les Prodiges du Sacrilège, Paris,
1984, p. 234. Dumont is another who overstates Burke’s ‘connaissance directe du clergé français’. Cf. Burke’s own words in Reflections,
pp. 252–3.
Burke, Correspondence, VII. pp. 207–10.
Bellenger, The French exiled clergy in the British Isles, p. 13.
Russell Kirk, Edmund Burke. A Genius Reconsidered, Peru, Illinois, rev.
edn, 1988, pp. 186–7.
C.P. Ives, ‘The Gregories Today’, The Burke Newsletter, 4 (1962–3),
pp. 188–9.
There is useful material on Burke’s relations with the émigrés generally
in S. Skalweit, E. Burke und Frankreich, Köln and Opladen, 1956.
Burke to Richard Burke, 11 Nov. 1793, Correspondence, VII. p. 483.
The Burke-Boisgelin tie was held up for censure by one British radical
as indicative of ‘the polluted source whence his [Burke’s] intelligence
is derived’. Charles Pigott, Strictures on the New Political Tenets of the
Right Honourable Edmund Burke, London, 1791, p. 59.
Jacques Godechot, The Counter-Revolution. Doctrine and Action 1789–
1804, trans. Salvator Attanasio (Princeon, 1971), pp. 254–60.
Ar. Aff. Etr. Fr. 623, f. 130. A copy was also sent to the Regent (the
future Louis XVIII).
In late 1794 he was trying to interest ministers in information about
the Midi and Provence based on his own knowledge as well as observations on the émigré cause generally. He had little to show for his efforts.
Lavaquery, Boisgelin, II. pp. 200–1. Boisgelin was averse to Fox and
his politics. Declaring the leader of the Whig opposition to be a ‘Demagogue and Rebel’, he stated on 29 June 1793 that ‘Fox seems to be in
Nigel Aston
42.
43.
44.
213
universal contempt both as a man & a politician all over the Continent’.
To Lady Wharncliffe, in ed. C. Grosvenor, The First Lady Wharncliffe
and Her Family (London, 1927), I. p. 33.
Burke, Correspondence, IX. p. 11.
Lavaquery, Boisgelin, II. pp. 203–4.45 and First pub. as Le Psalmiste
(London, 1798).
For Boisgelin’s politics in the mid-1790s, see his unpublished Projet de
déclaration royale intended for Louis XVIII, and recommending that
the king should have all power in his hands to ensure public peace
and security. He would be ‘ . . . le garant et la sauvegarde de la tranquillité publique. D’immenses ressources seront données au monarque
français pour rendre l’état florissant’. The Projet is in Archives des
Affaires étrangères, fonds Bourbon, vol. 589, f. 567. It is a very much a
product of the royalist high tide of 1795–7.
14 ‘Fearless resting place’:
the Exiled French
Clergy in Great Britain,
1789–1815
Great Britain provided a refuge for several thousand exiled
French clergy following ‘the moral tempest’ of the French Revolution. 1 Most of these clergy had left France following the
Civil Constitution of the Clergy and its attendant and consequent oaths.2 A few clergy, mainly from the aristocratic
classes, had made their move to British territory before 1792,
but the numbers who came in the latter months of that year
were on an unprecedented scale. The refugees of the 1792–93
generation were not the last. There was a continuous trickle
throughout the decade, and on two occasions there were further floods. These were in 1794–95, following the successful
French invasion of Germany and Holland and the decision
to isolate the Channel Islands, and in 1797, when the coup d’état
of Fructidor stopped a royalist reaction and drove many clergy
who had returned to France, thinking the worst was over, back
into exile. The two latter waves were diverted from the South
of England to the North: on one day, 5 October 1796, 295
clergy were landed at South Shields as the northern part of
the country was placed on a war footing.3
The various dates of arrival, the dispersal of the clergy, and
a certain amount of travelling back and forth to and from Europe, make it difficult to asses the numbers of the clergy who
found refuge in the British Isles, although the extant records
of the Emigrant Relief Committee, founded by voluntary subscription, and later financed by government, to succour and
administer the exiles, suggest some estimates.4 By September
1792 there were already 1500 exiled clergy in England and
1000 in Jersey.5 By December, the numbers had increased to
6000 or 7000 in the British Isles – 3000 in England and 3400
214
215
in Jersey and the other Channel Islands. 6 Throughout the
period 1793–1800 there was a mean figure of some 5000 exiled
clergy on the English mainland – 4008 were receiving state aid
at the end of 1793, 5621 in 1800. After the Concordat of 1801
between the French government and the Papacy, the numbers
began to dwindle. By 1802 there were 800. After the restoration of the French monarchy in 1815, the numbers had fallen
still further and of the 450 or so who were still receiving relief,
90 were marked as ‘returned’. Thus by 1815 only 350
remained. 7 By that date as many as 1000 had died in exile,
although the obituaries in the English Catholic review, The
Laity’s Directory, suggest a figure nearer 700. Few, beside the
dead, remained in England after 1815. John McManners, in
his study of Angers, has indicated that all the surviving parish
clergy exiled from their city on the Loire returned as soon as
possible to their native soil. 8 Many had grown old in exile,
although the gloomy pages of the Treasury records, with their
requests for medicines, hide from view the fact that most of the
priests 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 before 1730
Born 1760-70
22%
9%
Born 1730-40
16%
28%
25%
Born 1740-50
Born 1750-60
Figure 14.1
Age indications of émigré priests in Britain.
216
and only two of this sample of 23 were over 60 years.10 Another
group (of 12) resident in 1798 in the vicinity of Hexham in
Northumberland, had an average age of 48 – the youngest was
37, the oldest 71.11 Priests too old to be deported were often
overlooked, and the really sick were frequently given compassionate dispensation ‘cette mesure est sans doute contraire aux
lois; mais l’humanité semble l’exiger’.12
Most of the 30 or so bishops exiled in England chose London
as their home. They were accompanied by many other dignitaries of the Church: vicars-general, canons, university professors.
This middle rank of clergy was sizeable. The pre-Revolutionary chapter of Bayeux, for example, was a foundation of 62,
consisting of a dean, 12 office holders and 49 canons – with a
corporate wealth equal to that of the bishop.13 Such men were
used to the routine of administration and were prepared to
continue such a role in exile, thus retaining their diocesan
solidarity, one of the chief marks of the Gallican church.14 At
Scarborough in 1796 there was a heavy concentration of Bretons among the clergy (61 as compared to 33 from elsewhere)
but what was more striking was that 53 of these came from the
diocese of Rennes, one of whose ‘ci-devant’ vicars-general,
Fayolle, acted as paymaster and coordinator of relief.15 At
nearby York, where all the known exiled clergy were Bretons,
a vicar-general for the Bishop of Saint Pol de Léon acted as
linkman with the London administration whose presiding
genius was his ordinary, Mgr de la Marche, Bishop of Saint Pol
de Léon.16
The ease with which diocesan uniformity was maintained was
facilitated by the predominance of priests from Normandy
and Brittany among the exiles. An analysis of the priests
remaining in Jersey in March 1797 shows what dioceses they
came 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 no
further south than the Loire and mostly on the western seaboard. The Normans and Bretons clung to their identity;
when the great hostel for the French priests in the King’s
House, Winchester, was dispersed, the clergy there were
rehoused according to region – the Normans to Reading, the
217
Bretons to Thame.18 The survival not only of ecclesiastical loyalties but also of regional attachments helped to increase the
isolation 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 the
clergy, was set up in 1792, a quasi political body supported by
collections.19 Its chairman was John Wilmot, MP for Coventry,
who had previously administered the committee to relieve the
plight of the American Loyalists, who had backed Britain during the American War of Independence. 20 Wilmot was to be
the dominant influence until his resignation in 1806.21 but,
to give the committee’s money-raising activities maximum
effect, Wilmot was supported – on the printed appeal and in the
early policy meetings – by a formidable panel of celebrated
names.22 These included leading figures from political, civic,
commercial and church life. The political figures were largely
drawn from the Anti-Jacobins, like Burke, the Marquess of
Buckingham, Earl Fitzwilliam and the Duke of Portland – men
politically associated with the Portland Whig faction. Perhaps
the most influential of the group was William Windham, Secretary at War (1794–1801), who was to become the linchpin in
the governments’s dealing with the French émigrés, although
he was never able to convert Pitt’s administration to the ‘ultra’
cause.23 It was never Wilmot’s intention to give the committee
an ‘ultra’ political complexion and Wilmot must have been
pleased by William Wilberforce’s membership of the committee, even if the opponent of the slave trade, no lover of
Catholics, accepted membership mainly, or at his own understanding ‘partly’, to wipe out the ‘French citizenship’ with
which the Republic had honoured him in 1792, and which he
thought identified him with supporters of revolution.24 Wilmot must also have been pleased by the presence of the Lord
Mayor of London whose own committee he had absorbed.25
The Bishops of Durham and London sat on the committee
alongside several of the leading London clergy, including Dr
Walker King, Preacher of Gray’s Inn and afterwards Bishop of
Rochester, who was later to administer Burke’s school for
exiled French children at Penn in Buckinghamshire. 26 Minority interests were not neglected. Charles Butler, a leading
Roman Catholic layman and lawyer, was to be among the most
218
active of the sponsors and one of the least objectionable representatives of his community. 27 Sir William Pepperell, a dispossessed baronet from New England who had benefited from
the American Loyalists’ Commission, added a touch of institutional continuity.28
Thus supported, Wilmot set his appeal under way, and in
late September and early October 1792, advertisements asking
for support appeared in local and national papers. Newspapers
appealed to public pity and charity in the face of the suffering
of the clergy who had been ‘deprived of their property, and
driven from their habitations, many of them imprisoned without
cause, and all of them exposed to every species of insult’. France
was presented as a salutary reminder of what civil disorder
could 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 the
World’. England was eulogised as the home of Christians whose
national character is generous compassion and they surely
have the strongest claims on us who suffer persecution for
conscience sake. The clergy of France have been persecuted
. . . merely because they were Christians.29
The stirring words of the appeals carefully glossed over the
Roman Catholic convictions of the French clergy and made
little mention of the complexities of the revolution in France.
They called directly on benevolence and charity. They made no
overt avowal of political stance, although they implicitly condemned the Republic of ‘pretended philosophy’.30 Such printed
notices were highly successful in bringing in cash, collected
locally, and sent to the central committee’s office at the residence of Dorothy Silburn, a widow from Durham who dedicated her life to the exiles and gave hospitality to the Bishop of
Saint Pol de Léon,31 in Little Queen Street, Bloomsbury.32
The formidable French Bishop was to be the leader of the
ecclesiastical exiles. 33
The main subscription books survive and the names of
donors reveal the wide public sympathy for the victims of revolution.34 The tales of the Terror caught the imagination of
the public and loosened its purse-strings. It was not only the
rich and influential who contributed. Laurence Neil, ‘a common
weaver’, gave 2s 6d as did ‘a protestant servant’: two ‘work
219
people’ presented £1.1s a ‘respecter of conscience and an enemy
of persecution’ donated £3.3s, the ‘agents of the Leicester and
North Canal’ gave £7.7s.35 But, admittedly, it was the more
prosperous sections of society, and especially the aristocracy
who gave the most. Buckingham, Fitzwilliam, Portland and
other noble members of the Committee encouraged their fellows in the House of Lords.36 The Administration was slower
in coming forward with donations but Lord Hawkesbury (later
created Earl of Liverpool), President of the Board of Trade,
gave £50 before the end of 1792 and Henry Dundas, Home
Secretary, £100 on March 4 1793.37 Some of the donors were
unexpected: Charles James Fox, no hater of revolutions or
admirer of priests, gave £10. 38
The monies received were considerable, but outgoings were
large. The payment of the clergy was now settling down to a
regular system which needed more than a successful appeal to
finance it. Before the end of October 1792 the everyday running of the committee was in the hands of the Bishop of Saint
Pol de Léon.39 who, with his wide personal knowledge of the
exiles, along with his trusted ‘Grand Vicars’, provided not only
an efficient accounting system but also a reliable agency of
scrutiny.40 The bishop relied on his network of local paymasters,
many of whom – like Postel, Pénitencier de Séez at Canterbury
and Aprix de Bonnière at Winchester, who had been procurator of Evreux Cathedral, had gained their knowledge of
practical matters as officials in the diocesan chapters of preRevolutionary France. 41 The income of the committee – apart
from the small cost of hiring a room, a clerk of two, and stationery – 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 bureaucracy
or unjust distribution of resources to eliminate.42
The Established Church backed up the state. Bishop Samuel
Horsley drew comparisons, on 30 January 1793, in his sermon
at Westminster Abbey to commemorate the anniversary of the
execution of Charles I, between the events of 1649 and the
‘foul murder’ and barbarities of the unfolding French Revolution.43 Horsley’s sermon met with a thunderous reception at
Westminster and later won him preferment.44 The Critical Review
regarded it, not without justification, as an exaggerated case.45
And, like The Analytical Review, compared its lack of moderation
220
unfavourably to the pronouncement of the Bishop of Saint Pol
de Léon.46 The Critical Review further declared that
while respecting on the whole the bishop of St David’s
talents . . . truth and justice oblige us to confess that his ideas
upon politics are neither clear nor distinct, and that in this
science at least he is far from being an adept.47
The Critical Review attempted a brief response to what it regarded as ‘new-modelled Jacobitism’ in the bishops’ arguments.48
Criticism notwithstanding, Horsley’s propositions found
general acceptance among his colleagues on the episcopal bench
who sensed in criticisms of the bishops’ writings a confirmation
of the tendencies which Horsley had exposed. Such endorsement was shown in the widely voiced (and frequently printed)
pronouncements of the bishops in the months and years following January 1793. Beilby Porteous, Bishop of London, in his
1794 Charge to the clergy of the diocese of London, waxed eloquent on the dangers of infidelity, atheism and dissent. He wrote,
Though there is not ground for apprehending the introduction of atheism among us, yet we must not think ourselves secure from the inroad of every species of infidelity.
He acknowledged the necessity of ‘some religion, some acknowledgement of a supreme Governor’, some sort of belief necessary for, ‘the security of this and every other government upon
earth’.49
Like Horsley, the Bishop of London recognised the necessity of a religious dimension in society – a conscience of the state
– like Horsley, he saw the Revolution as creating in France an
unacceptable lacuna in this compartment. Like Horsley, too,
the Bishop of London gave active support to the French exiles
as exemplars of his theories, and became a member of the
relief committee. 50 He encouraged the Bishop of Saint Pol
de Léon in his work for emigrant relief. 51 He supported Hannah More, the educator and popular writer, in her efforts for
the ‘émigrés’.52 In the north, the Bishop of Durham, Shute
Barrington, normally no supporter of ‘Romanism’, not only
encouraged 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
221
St Austell, Cornwall, and overcame through them some of his
prejudice against the French.54 The Bishop of Ely, James
Yorke, suggested the setting up of an ‘émigré’ school to the
Wilmot Committee for Emigrant Relief, while John Moore,
Archbishop of Canterbury, was forthcoming not only with
funds but even with practical advice as to how funds should be
collected. 55
The clearest indication of the ‘politick’ charity of the episcopate, and other leading clergy, is provided by the subscription lists for the relief committee. The sums given by the
bishops were considerable; few gave less than £50 and many
gave more.56 The Cathedral foundations were particularly
benevolent. The Dean and Chapter of Durham gave £52.10s
on 11 October 1792 and the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury
£50 on 10 December 1793. 57 Both universities were more than
generous.58 A sum of £500 was received from the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford in November 1792 and considerable sums
flowed in from Cambridge.59 The latter is overlooked by most
commentators on the exile, perhaps because the Cambridge
collection came in gradual instalments, perhaps because Oxford was more openly connected with the exiles not only
because its Vice-Chancellor was a founder member of the relief
committee but also because its university press was responsible
for an edition of the Vulgate (of which two thousand were
produced) for distribution to the French priests. 60 As with the
bishops, the universities were prepared to give occasional
practical assistance to individual exiles. Thomas Ingle, Fellow
of Peterhouse, proved an invaluable friend to abbé Martinet,
chaplain to the Huddlestons at Sawston, when the abbé was in
some difficulties with the local authorities. At Oxford, it seems,
many exiled priests were able to make a living from teaching
French to undergraduates, and some were patronised by university society. 61 Abbé Thoumin des Valpons, formerly Archdeacon and Vicar General of Dol, was buried in Dorchester
Abbey at the expense of the Warden of New College.62 The
reception of the ‘émigrés’ by the Church of England reflected
Horsley’s analysis of the nature of society and the impact of
the French Revolution. The holders of office and influence
within the Church appreciated the essential union of the Church
and State in the Warburtonian perspective: they realised
the use the emigrants could have not only in a demonstration
222
of the catastrophic effects of the Revolution but also in the witness of suffering for conscience’s sake. They realised, too, and
this should not be overlooked, the imperatives of Christian
charity.
It was the imperatives of Christian charity which led to the
first contacts between the clergy charged with parish duty and
the exiled priests of France. The parish clergyman was the
established purveyor of charity in the locality and an obvious
leader of local community action. The sudden influx of immigrants gave the clergy little time to think out the implications.
Theirs was primarily a pastoral duty. What would now be
called ecumenical relations were marginal, although a few
spectacular defections from Rome to Canterbury were noted.
Conversions to Rome were already discouraged and any signs
of Catholic proselytism were stamped out.63 The English Roman
Catholic community was somewhat ill at ease with the exiled
clergy. It had suffered greatly during the French Revolution
from the closure of its seminaries, monasteries, convents and
schools on the continent. It was an under-resourced body with
a network of missions and chaplaincies which depended on its
gentry patrons in the same way its houses in Northern France
had depended on French charity. Urban Catholicism was
strengthening but the administrative structure, based on vicars
apostolic rather than diocesan bishops, made the English
Catholics the poor relations of the once great Gallican
Church.64
London provides an example of the development of a separate French Catholic community in parallel to the English
community.65 The Laity’s Directory listed eight French Catholic
chapels in London in 1800.66 Abbé Tardy, whose guide for the
French in London appeared in the same year, listed nine.67
Most of the priests who came to England through the southern
ports drifted towards London. Some came to see the sights,
others to find a permanent base. 68 The number of French
clergy in London at any one time in the 1790s hovered around
1500; 1719 in November 1795, 1605 in January 1796, not a
large number in a city whose population was already not far
short of a million. 69 Their numbers seemed exaggerated,
however, by their tendency, common for displaced persons, to
move around in groups, and by a look of desolation, characteristics captured by a caricaturist in a print of 1792 depicting
223
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 were
attracting unfavourable attention. ‘It is impossible to walk a
hundred yards in any public street here in the middle of the
day without meeting two or three French priests’.71 There
seemed no end to their numbers. They ‘swarmed into the
streets of London’, where, in great distress, ‘they led some of
the population to fear the worst’. 72 The ‘very great number’,
in a city full of rumours of war, seemed to confirm threats of
imminent invasion.73 Such feelings were largely dispelled
when the exiled clergy settled down to become a familiar, selfsufficient, and particularly quiescent section of London’s cosmopolitan population.
The newly arrived exiles found temporary accommodation
in the ‘emigrant’ hotels which prospered as a result of the
Revolution. Tardy recommended ‘Chez Guédon’ in Leicester
Square, or ‘Chez Saulieu’, on the corner of Gerrard Street and
Nassau Street, Soho, as a cheap and welcoming rendezvous
for the newcomer, although English visitors to such places
found them sordid.74 Sometimes the clergy found themselves
in strange company. Abbé Petel, a curé from the diocese of
Lisieux, wrote of the Hôtel du Canon where a motley crew was
accommodated,
Cette auberge, dont le Maitre parlait Français, était pleine
de Liègois, jacobins forcenés et propagandistes, qui nous
connurent de prime abord.75
Abbé Jean Baptiste Henry, a Premonstratensian canon, met
less threatening company at the ‘Hôtel Suisse’, ‘Chez Danton’,
Panton Square, where he paid ‘36 sols’ for each meal and the
same for a bed.76 The effect on the prosperity of the hotels
caused by such customers was short-lived, however, because
the majority of the priests sought more permanent and economical lodgings.
Petel, who only stayed in London for four months, found a
place in the house of a Mr Adams in Portman Square at a cost
of half a guinea a week.77 Some could not afford so much. La
Cour, a young Norman priest from Bernay, found lodgings at
the house of a ‘marchand épicier’ in Margate Street, where for
‘3 livres 12s’ a week a share in a bed was available.78 Thomas
224
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 partition
in between) ensuring that ‘not a snore’ escaped him. 79 Some
lived in community, like the seminarists from the Foreign Missions Society, who were able to live on 30 sous a day.80 A few managed to retain something of their accustomed lifestyle. The
archbishop of Narbonne, Arthur Dillon, lived in ‘a modest
house’, but was none the less able to employ a personal servant,
and offer open house to six aged bishops, who included several
of his suffragans from Languedoc.81
The exiles gravitated to the areas where cafés and ‘hôtels
garnis’ provided suitably ‘French’ material comforts, and
encouraged a ‘ghetto’ mentality. An address book preserved
in the Treasury records suggests that Somers Town, on the
northern fringes of Central London, a speculative building
estate with much vacant property in the early 1790s, was the
favourite residence for the clergy.82 It had many advantages.
It was cheap, but convenient for most of the exiles’ needs; the
Bishop of Saint Pol de Léon’s relief office, where the national
funds for the French clergy were distributed, was in nearby
Bloomsbury 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 the
French.83 The principal chapel, the Annunciation, King
Street, Portman Square, was opened in 1799. Many celebrations and still more funerals were held there.84 Mrs Larpent
commented on the funeral of the Bishop of Montpellier.
The whole scene was extremely interesting, the chapel filled
with old venerable distinguished clergy and tottering yet
fine-looking men with their crosses and stars . . . faded
grandeur, such a melancholy remnant of their prosperous
days.85
But not all was so poignant. The ‘Annonciation’ was the centre
of religious formation for a group of Suplicians who hoped to
work in Canada, having been refreshed by the ‘grande tranquillité’ of London. 86 There was catechism for children, religious instruction for adolescents and a variety of ‘self help’
activities, concentrated in the ‘Association de Prières et de
Charité’. 87
225
Frequently, however, they found themselves reliant on the
generosity of their hosts. Talma, cousin of the great actor, who
practised 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, near
Charing Cross, who was prepared to give ‘surgical assistance’
to any poor exile in distress.89 Hospitals, too, offered their
facilities. The Middlesex Hospital was particularly helpful. Two
wards were made available for the French clergy from 1793 to
1814. In the hospital, the French were self-catering, and in
this setting, as elsewhere, chose to keep to themselves, living as
separately as possible from their English fellow patients.90
In the world of education, into which many of the clergy
were drawn, both by economic necessity, and by the desire for
French tutors, the exiles also preferred to remain their own
masters. 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 future
Prime Minister Robert Peel among his pupils – were able to
build up a considerable reputation as private teachers. Many
other exiles, however, clubbed together and started schools
both for the children of lay emigrants and for any English
person who might like to make use of them.91 The pages of The
Laity’s Directory over the years include numerous notices for
schools 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 or
40 boys, and for 15 or 20 girls.92 Some of these schools were to
have 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 encouraged by their environment. Many of the exiles were from the
countryside, and found adjustment to urban life difficult, losing
something of the status and influence they had held in their
village communities. They found the climate – especially the
London fog – a constant cause for concern, and unfavourable
comparison.93 Others found the fog less disagreeable than the
people of the city. Overt dislike was combined with casual misunderstandings, like that which prompted an English woman
to ask a priest, ‘What have you done with your wives?’.94 Poverty emphasised isolation and depression. ‘There was no view
226
. . . except the Catholic churchyard, the last resting-place of
our poor fellow countrymen. The dismal bell and the tears that
were shed on these modest tombs, often wrung our hearts’.95
Although, as we have seen, the life of the French émigré
clergy in London was largely a life apart, it nevertheless had an
influence in the London population, especially on the Catholic
minority. The French chapels soon opened their doors to
wider congregations. One of those – St Mary’s, Holly Place,
Hampstead, opened in 1816 by Abbé Jacques Morel from
Normandy – remains in use in a much altered state, but several
London Catholic parishes, including St Aloysius, Somers
Town and St Mary’s, Cadogan Street, Chelsea, which both
retain contemporary monuments to thier respective founders,
Carron and Voyaux de Franous, owed their foundation to an
emigrant priest.96 One émigré cleric, Charles Adrien Langréney, was among the first to minister (in modern times) to
the Catholics in the area now served by Westminster Cathedral.97 The French also assisted the English (and Irish) priests
in existing chapels. At St Patrick’s, Soho, Anne René le Sage,
who later settled and died in Staffordshire, was a frequent
administrator of the sacraments in the 1790s. 98 Abbé Pierre
Alexis Massot was priest-sacristan at the Spanish Chapel while
abbé Bargelon acted as an assistant-priest at the Bavarian
chapel.99 To the wider London community, the French émigré
clergy contributed information on France, French lessons and
a healthy reminder of the existence of a wider European society
during a period when xenophobia was all too obviously the
order of the day. Without this forgotten community, London
life, as well as the life of the wider nation, would have been
very 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
227
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
The phrase comes from an ecclesiastical sonnet, first published in
1827, by William Wordsworth.
See D.A. Bellenger, The French Exiled Clergy in the British Isles after 1789,
Bath, 1986, p. 2.
J. Sykes, Local Records, Newcastle, 1866, p. 381.
PRO T93 1–89; BL addI MSS 18591–18593.
BL addl MS 18591, fol 3.
Foreign Ministry Archives, Paris. AAE 616 (France et divers stats, 263)
1801–1815. Liste générale des ecclésiastiques existant en Angleterre
lors de la rentrée du Roi, fols 230–42.
Archives Nationales, Paris. ANF 19 (Cultes) 3219, le clergé Français en
Angleterre.
J. McManners, French Ecclesiastical Society under the Ancien Regime, Manchester, 1960, p. 298.
The following table draws on data complied by Bellenger for The French
Exiled 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.
PRO T 93, 43, 292–93.
Northumberland Record Office, Allendale MSS, Hexham Manor
Papers, Box 60.
ANF 19 (Cultes) 1006. Département de Cantal. Directoire au Ministre
de la Police, unfoliated.
O. Hufton, Bayeux in the late eighteenth century, Oxford, 1967, pp. 21–2.
B. Plongeron, La vie quotidienne du clergé français au XVIII siècle, Paris,
1974, p. 93.
PRO T 93, 44, pp. 254–5.
Ibid, pp. 259–60.
PRO T 93, 42, pp. 575–80.
See Bellenger, op. cit., Chapter 5, pp. 73–9.
Ibid, for the Committee, Bellenger, Chapter 2, pp. 11–20.
See M.B. Norton, The British-Americans. The Loyalist Exiles in England,
London, 1974.
PRO T 93, 6, p. 285.
BL addl MS 18591, unfoliated; PRO T 93 89 (Printed émigré documents).
F. O’Gorman, The Whig Party and the French Revolution, London, 1969,
pp. 215–16.
R. Furneaux, William Wilberforce, London, 1974, pp. 319 and 107.
Margery Weiner, The French Exiles 1789–1815, London,1960, p. 57.
BL addl MS 45, 723 (Penn School Papers) La Marche to Walker King,
1798, fol 3.
PRO T93, 2, p. 270.
J.E. Wilmot, Historical View, London, 1815, p. 18.
The Reading Mercury, 15 October 1792.
Ibid.
PRO T93, 13, Testimonial of Mrs Silburn, pp. 302–4.
228
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
PRO T 93, 1, 6 November 1794, unfoliated.
See Bellenger, Chapter 7, pp. 99–104.
PRO T 93, 8, 24, 25, 50.
PRO T 93, 8.
Ibid, pp. 3, 25 and 60.
Ibid p. 36 and PRO T93 26, Wilmot to Audit Office, January 1807,
unfoliated.
Ibid, Wilmot and Glyn to Audit Office, 21 February 1807.
PRO T 93, 40, Canterbury.
Archives départmentales de L’Eure, G 1816.
PRO T93, 1, 6 November 1794, and S Horsley, Sermon 44 Sermons
III, Dunlee, 1813.
A.P. Stanley, Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey, 2nd edn, London,
1868, p. 535.
Ibid, p. 536.
The Critical Review VII, p. 215.
The Analytical Review XV, p. 232.
The Critical Review VII, pp. 219–20.
Ibid., p. 473.
B. Porteus, Change, London, 1794, pp. 19–31.
BL addl MS 18591. Printed list of Committee.
Lambeth Palace, London, M S 2102 Diary of Beilby Porteus, 3 April
1791.
H. More, Life and Correspondence II, London, 1834, p. 368.
G. Townsend, (ed.) The Theological Works of the First Viscount Barrington
I, London, 1828, pp. XLVIII–XLIX.
W.S. Childe-Pemberton, The Earl Bishop, II, London, 1924, pp. 433–4.
BL addl MS 18592, fol 105.
PRO T 93, 8, p. 61, and BL addI MS 18591, fol. 87.
PRO T 13, 8.
Ibid., pp. 33 and 53.
L. Stone, ed., The University in Society I, Princeton, 1975, p. 285.
PRO T93, 8, pp. 47, 42, 50, 51, 52, 58. 61, 67, 71, 74.
B L addI M S 18591. Printed list of Committee and Weiner, op. cit.,
pp. 65–6.
Cambridge Record Office, Sawston Papers, Martinet to Richard Huddleston, 17 October 1798, 488 C.3 M 27 and L. Stone, op. cit., p. 285.
B. Stapleton, Catholic Missions in Oxfordshire, 1906, pp. 247–8.
See Bellenger, Chapter 3, pp. 31–43.
For the British establishments on the European mainland see P. Guilday, 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.
For the place of London in the clerical emigration see Bellenger, Chapter
5, pp. 67–73.
The Laity’s Directory 1800, p. 6.
Abbé Tardy, Manuel du voyageur à Londres, London, 1800, p. 221.
Abbé Barston, Mémoires, II, Paris, 1898, p. 9.
BL addl MS 18592, fol. 66 and 97.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
229
Printed by S.W. Fores of 3 Piccadilly, London.
S. Romilly, Memoirs, II, London, 1840, p. 11.
Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, Memoirs, II, London, 1853–55,
p. 215.
Earl of Minto, Life and Letters II, London, 1874, p. 91.
Abbé Tardy, Manuel du Voyageur à Londres, London, 1800, p. 16 and
The European Magazine 39 (1801), pp. 441–3.
S.J.H. Petel, Sur les routes de l’exil, Rouen, p. 16.
J.B. Henry, ‘Journal d’emigration’, Analectes pour servir à l’histoire ecclésiastique de la Belgique 26 (1896), pp. 207–72.
Petel, p. 16.
Ibid., p. 24.
T. Moore, Memoirs I, London, 1853, p. 73.
See E.M. Wilkinson, ‘French Emigres in England’, unpublished Oxford
BLitt, Dissertation (1952), pp. 239–40.
Marquise de la Tour du Pin, Memoirs, ed. F. Harcourt, London, 1969,
pp. 315–16.
PRO T 93 (Clergy Payments), D, Ecclesiastics receiving aid, circa
1803, unfoliated.
D. Newton, Catholic London, London, 1950, p. 276 and G.F. Barwick,
The Reading Room of the British Museum, London, 1929 p. 47.
See Bellenger, pp. 68–70.
R.M. Bradley, ‘Mrs Larpent and the French Refugees’, The Nineteenth
Century, 75 (1914) p. 1329.
Archives of Saint-Sulpice, Paris, Fonds Canada. Dossier 55. Bourret,
Lettre 14, 5 August 1799.
J. de Boisgelin, Discours, London, 1799, p. 29.
Weiner, p. 128.
PRO T93, 52, p. 56.
D. Bellenger, Healing and Expiation, London Recusant NSI (1985,
pp. 6–12.
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.
The Laity’s Directory 1793, p. 11 and ibid., an 1812 advertisement.
Petel, p. 23.
Ibid., p. 32n.
Duchesse de Gontaut, Memoirs I, London, 1894, p. 51.
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.
H. Keldany, ‘In the steps on the Abbe Langreney’, Westminster
Cathedral Chronicle (December 1972) p. 12.
Baptismal Register of St Patrick’s, Soho Square, London, 1790–1807,
especially 1803–1807.
Baptismal Register of St James, Spanish Place, London, 1761–1815
and Baptismal Register of the Assumption, Warwick Street, London,
1793–1819 especially 1812.
Index
Adams, John 146–7
agents and spy networks 7, 38
Aix-la-Chapelle 7
Alexander, Boyd 96
Alexander I, Tsar 10, 12, 17
Alexander Leopold, Archduke,
death 75
Aliens Acts (1798 and 1800) 59,
114
Alsace 35
Angoulême, Duc d’ 19, 29,
109, 117, 118
in Edinburgh 111, 112
portrait by Danloux 172, 173
armée de Condé 6, 34–6,
36–7, 39, 74
British financial assistance 38
dissolution 41
proposed employment in
British colonies 39
proposed incorporation into
Russian army 39–40
and William Pitt 36
armée des Princes 33, 34
army of the émigré government 1, 6
desertion from 72
Artois, Comte d’ (Charles X) 5, 8–9,
11, 12, 14, 16, 19, 29, 54, 109
appearance 115
arrival in Edinburgh 108–9
at Portsmouth 110
escape from Valenciennes 69
estate at Wittmold 10
in Holyrood 110–14, 115–16,
117–20
in London 9, 52, 54, 117
in Paris 117
portrait by Danloux Plate 1,
172, 173–4
Assemblée Nationale 69
‘ateliers’ 54–5
Austria 3, 4, 18, 34, 37–8
Austro-Prussian Alliance
(1792) 101
Azilum, Philadelphia
140
Barruel, Abbé, conspiracy theories
of 180
Batthyány, Count Théodore 70
‘Sentiment d’un patriote
hongrois’ 76–7
Beaumetz, M. de 139, 141
Beckford, William 84, 89, 90, 95
Berchény, François Antoine 68,
71, 72, 73
Berchény, Maréchal Ladislas
de 68, 71
Berri, Duc de 14, 19, 29, 40, 109
in Edinburgh 114, 115
marriage attempts 10–11
portrait by Danloux 173
Berstheim 35
Besenval, Baron de, portrait by
Danloux 176
Biberach, battle 39
Blacas, Comte de 15, 16, 18
Blankenfeld 11
Boigne, Comtesse de 47, 113
Boisgelin, Jean de Dieu-Raymond
de Cucé de, Archibishop of
Aix 54, 198, 201–2, 203, 204
arrival in London 207
and Burke 206–7
character and reformism
204–5
Exposition des principes 199
Bombelles, Marc-Marie, Marquis
de 84, 88, 89, 90
bookshops, in London 50–1
Bordeaux 19
Bordeaux, Duc de 117, 119, 120
Boufflers family 48, 104
Bourbon, Duc de 28, 33, 34
wounding at Berstheim 35
Bourlin, Les Amours et Aventures d’un
Émigré 158–9, 161
Boyd & Ker’s Bank 169
230
Index
Boyd, Mrs 167, 169–70
Boyd, Walter 167, 169, 170
Brabant 33
Braganza court 94
Brazil 83, 94
Brillat-Savarin, Anthelme
Physiologie du goût 142
in the United States 138
Brisgau 35, 38
Britain 9, 15–16, 18–19, 37
Brumaire 191
Bruno, Louis de, Lioncel ou l’Émigré,
nouvelle historique 159
Brunswick, Duke of 3, 35
Buccleuch family 112, 176
Burke, Edmund 198–9, 205
Case of the Suffering Clergy of
France 206
contact with Boisgelin 206–7
and exiled clergy 206–7
Heads for Consideration on the
Present State of Affairs 206
Letters . . . 208
Reflections on the Revolution in
France 197, 199
Burke, Richard 200, 205, 208
Burney, Fanny 48, 50
Calonne, Charles Alexandre
de 167, 176, 185
Tableau de l’Europe 184, 187
Canning, George 13, 14
Carrère 87, 88
Castries, Maréchal de 3, 4, 5, 6
La vie quotidienne des émigrés 96
Catherine II, Empress of Russia
2, 3, 34, 36
Catholic Church, in the United
States 145
Châlons, Comte de 86, 90
Champion de Cicé, Jean-BaptisteMarie, Bishop of
Auxerre 205–6
Channel Islands, and exiled
clergy 206, 214–15
Chantilly 30
Chapel of the Annonciation, King
Street (Portman Square),
London 53–4, 224
231
Charles X see Artois
Charleston, South Carolina 144
Chateaubriand, François René,
Vicomte de: Atala 151
and Burke 208
Essai historique sur les révolutions
anciennes et modernes 51
René 151
in the United States 138, 139
Chaves, Castelo Branco 92–3
A emigraçao francesa em portugal
durante a Revoluçao 96
church property, confiscation 125,
134, 189, 199
Civil Constitution of the
Clergy 197, 198, 200,
203, 204, 214
Cobbett, William, le Tuteur
anglais 140
Coblenz 2, 31, 33, 153–5, 200
Coigny, Duc de 90–1, 95, 117
Coigny, Duchesse de 92
Condé, Prince de 11, 33, 35,
37, 38, 40–1
at Rastadt 36
at Worms 31
Journal d’émigration 30
journey to Brussels 28
in Marylebone 52
portrait by Sophie de Tott
Plate 5
qualities 29–30
Condé, Princess Louise de 119, 120
Confessions of Jean-Baptiste
Couteau 187
confiscation, of émigré goods 134
Congress of Chatillon 17
Constance 40
Convention, the 190
Council of War (1787) 69
Courier de Londres, Le 51,
185, 187, 189
Courrier français 139, 142–3,
147, 148
Craufurd, Colonel Charles
38, 39, 41
‘Creed of the Lombard Republic’ 86
Crissé, General Lancelot Turpin de,
Essai sur l’art de la guerre 72
232
Index
Damas, Comte Roger de 32, 120
Danloux, 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; engravings
172; 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 Plate
2; 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 53
David 165, 166
De Boffe (bookshop) 51
Declaration of Brunswick 3
Declaration of Calmar (1804) 11–12
Declaration of Hartwell (1813)
15–16
Delices de Coblentz, ou anecdotes libertines
des émigrés français 153–4
Dessoffy, Canon Ladislas 74–5
‘Mes adieus à Korompa’ 78
Diesbach, Ghislain de, Histoire de
l’émigration 1789–1814 96
Dillon, Arthur, Archbishop of
Narbonne 201, 224
Directory 8, 146, 191
D’Ivernois, Francis 184, 185
Dulau 50–1, 140
Dumouriez 72
Duthé, Mlle 167–9, 172
Edinburgh
arrival of Artois 108–9
arrival of Polignac family 112
see also Holyrood
Emigrant Relief Committee 206,
207, 209, 214, 217–19
Les Emigrantes ou la Folie à la
mode 153
Emigration 29, 44, 105, 126
émigré bishops 206
in England 197, 216
and ‘Liberty-Equality’ oath
207
émigré clergy 77, 93, 94–5, 225
in Britain 206, 214; age
indications 215–16; from
Normandy 216–17;
isolation 217;
numbers 214
in Hungary 74–5
in London 222–6
and parish clergy, in
England 222
in Prussia 103, 105
émigré craftsmen, in Prussia 105
émigré government 1–8
archives 5–6
army 6
calibre 5–6
and European politics 20–1
and Russia 2–4
subjects of 6–7
émigré novel 151–8
émigré press 184–93
émigrés
bookshops 50–1
crossing the channel 46–7
financial losses 134
in Hungary 76–8; political
activity 75–6; as prisoners
of war 73–4
Index
indemnification 124–33
in London 43–9, 53; life in poor
areas 56–7; literary
activity 51–2; music 55–6;
poverty 51–2; socioeconomic composition
44–5; Soho 43, 49–51;
work 54–6
mémoires 134–5
and Napoleon’s downfall 18
outside France 7
in Portugal 84–6, 87–8, 94–6;
financial problems 88
in Prussia 101–5
petitions to king 103–4; and
servants 105–6
transfer of money from
France 105
in United States 138–9;
isolation 140–1; language
problem 139–40; trades
and professions 143–4
Encyclopédie 205
Enghien, Duc d’ 12, 28, 34, 35, 40
execution 41
Esterhazy family 33, 71, 72
Esterhazy, Ladislas Valentin
Comte d’ 68, 73
military career 68–9
plans for King’s escape 70–1
royalist 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, 152
Adèle de Senange 51, 52
Flaschlanden, Baron de 5, 6, 36
Fonds Bourbon 5
fonds commun de réserve,
abolition 126, 127, 128
food, influence of the French in
the United States 144–5
France
aristocratic society 95
expansion in Europe 12
233
and Portugal 83–4
religious revival 95
war against 33–4
war against Austria 3
Franche-Comté 38
Francis II, Emperor of Austria 34
Francophobia, in the United
States 145–8
Frederick William II 3, 104
French army, emigration and
desertion 72
French deserters, and Condé’s
forces 35
French nobility, as soldiers 36–7
French Revolution 7–8
émigré press on 188–9
and foreign governments 2
Fructidor 214
Garnier-Pagès, Louis
Antoine 128–30
Gauthier brothers 130–1
General Assembly of the Clergy
of France 201
Genlis, Comtesse de
Les Petits Emigrés ou Correspondance
de quelques enfants 152
literary works 104
Gontaut, Madame de 111, 114
Gorce, Pierre de la 124, 133–4
Gordon, Lord Adam 108, 110, 116
Gorjy, Ann’ Quin Bredouille 155–6
Grenville, Lord 8, 38, 110
Hamm 3
Harcourt, Duc d’ 36, 110
Hartwell House, near
Aylesbury 14
hat-making, in London 54–5
Henry of Prussia, Prince 104
Herheim 35
Holy See 103
Holyrood 108, 109, 110
Artois at 110–14, 115–16, 118–20
improvements 115–16
proposed as residence for Louis
XVIII 116–17
Hosten, M. 170–2
234
Index
Huet Villiers, François, portrait of
Louis XVIII Plate 7
Hugo, Victor 109
Hungary
attitude to French émigrés 76–8
émigré priests 74–5
migrations 68
political activities of émigrés
75–6
prisoners of war 73–4
Indemnity Bill (1825) 124, 125,
127–8, 130, 132, 134
Inquisition 86, 93, 94
international relations 1792–97
37–9
isolation
of émigré clergy in Britain
217, 225–6
of émigrés in United States 140–1
Jay’s Treaty (1795) 146
Journal de France et d’Angleterre 185
Journal of a French Emigrant 161
Junot, Laure, Duchesse d’ 92
Memoirs 89
Keith, Viscount, portrait by
Danloux 177
Kreutznach 33
La Ferronays, Comte de 16, 91
La Marche, Jean-François de,
Bishop of Saint Pol de
Léon 172, 206, 207, 209,
216, 218, 224
portrait by Danloux Plate 2
La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Duc
de 140–1, 142, 143, 202
Prisons de Philadelphie 139
La Rochefoucauld, Comte François
de 70
la Tour du Pin, Marquise de 43
la Tour du Pin, Mme de 56, 138,
139, 141, 142, 143, 145
la Tour du Pin Montauban, René,
Marquis de 91–2
Laffitte, Jacques 126–7
Lagrange 131
Landau 35
Langeron, 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 35
Lee, Robert, portrait by
Danloux 168
Lézay-Marnésia, Marquis de
Lettres écrites des rives de l’Ohio 139
‘Liberty-Equality’ oath, and émigré
bishops 207
Liomin, La Bergère d’Aranville ou
l’Emigration 156
Lisbon 83–4, 88, 90–1
literary activity, of émigrés in
London 51–2
London
arrival of émigrés 43–9
development of French Catholic
church 222–8
émigré poverty 51–2, 56–7
Marylebone, émigré
population 45, 52–6
Saint George’s Fields 57, 58
Soho 43, 49–51, 223
Louis XVIII 4
at Mittau 8, 10, 12
in Britain 13–16
council 4–5
in Essex 117
portrait by François Huet Villiers
Plate 7
right to the crown of France 11
in Verona 38
see also Provence, Comte de
Loyal Emigrant Regiment 6
Maison Militaire du roi 1
Mallet du Pan, Jacques 85, 185,
187, 190, 191
Manique, Pina 86–7, 91, 93
Index
Marialva, Marquis de 84, 89, 90
Meilhan, Senac de, L’Émigré 51
Melo e Castro, Martinho 83, 85
mémoires, of émigrés 134–5,
151–2, 161
Mercure britannique 185
Mercure de France 185
Mesgrigny, Mme de 153–4
milliard des émigrés 124–32
Mirabeau, Comte de 29, 32, 202
Mittau 8, 10, 12
Montlosier, Comte de 185,
191–2
Moreau de St-Méry 146–7
bookstore in Philadelphia 140
in the United States 138–9
Voyage aux États-Unis de
l’Amérique 139
Napoleon I 17, 18
defeat at Waterloo 117
defeat in Russia 15
émigré press on 192–3
National Assembly 201, 203
Nauzières, Mme 172
Neuilly, Comte de 72–3, 134–5
Noailles, Duc de 5
Noailles, Vicomte de 140
Northcote, Mr 175, 176
Ober-Kamlach, battle 39
Oliveira Ramos, Luís A. de
88, 91, 96
Orléans, Duc d’ 9, 138, 141–2
pamphlet literature,
anti-French 76
Paris 19–20, 155
Paul I, Emperor of Russia 8,
9–10, 39
Peltier, Jean-Gabriel 56, 185,
186, 187, 190
Perregaux, M. 167–8
Petre, Lady, portrait by
Danloux 173
Pillnitz, conference of 2
Pitt, William 36, 167
Pius VI, Quod aliquantum 203
235
Polastron, Louise d’Espartès
Vicomtesse de 54, 109, 111,
113, 117
and Danloux 174, 175
Polignac, Duc de 74, 112
Pomerania 16
Pontgibaud de Moré,
Chevalier 139, 143–4
Portland, Duke of 110, 116
Portugal
aristocratic society 95
attitudes to governance 83
émigrés 87–8, 94–6; émigré
priests 93; financial
problems 88; Portugese
perception of émigrés
84–6
and France 83–4
French priests in 93, 94–5
nobility 89–90
social life 89–91
women 89
Pradel de Lamase, Paul 41, 134
Pressburg, community of priests
at 74
Price, Dr Richard, Discourse on the
Love of our Country 202
priests see émigré clergy
prisoners of war, in Hungary 73–4
professions, emigration 49
property, Republican threat
to 189
Provence, Comte de (Louis
XVIII) 1, 2, 3, 31, 38
Provisional Government, and
financial reform 128–9
Prussia
émigrés: émigré clergymen 103,
105; government policy
towards 101–5;
servants 106; trades
105–6
legislation to control immigration
into 102, 106
secret archives 101
Public Advertiser 165
Quiberon Bay, expedition to
57–8, 109
236
Index
Reflections 204, 205
Republic, image in émigré
press 185–8
Revolution Society 202
Rivarol, Antoine 10, 49
Robinson, Mary, Hubert de Sevrac,
a romance of the eighteenth
century 158
Rochechouart, Comte de 16,
17, 18, 19, 89
Romanzov, Count 2, 16
Rothemburg 35
Russia 2–4, 9, 12, 16–17, 39–40
Saint-Priest, Comte de 5, 6
Saint-Domingue 144, 171
Salaberry, Charles-Marie d’,
Comte de 75–6
Sardinia 14, 29
Second Coalition, war of 9
Sénac de Meilhan, L’Émigré 156–7
Staël, Mme de 151–2
Corinne 160
Steinstadt, battle of 39
Sweden 13
Talleyrand, Charles-Maurice de
7, 19, 115
Mémoires 141
in the United States 138, 139,
143, 145
territorial expansion, French 7, 16
The Critical Review 219, 220
Thermidor 188, 189, 208
Third Estate émigrés 44, 45, 105
Thugut, Baron 4, 38
Tott, François Baron de 68,
70, 76
Tott, Sophie de 70
portrait of Louis Joseph de
Bourbon, Prince de Condé
Plate 5
Toustain, Comte de 90, 95
trades and professions, of
émigrés 105–6, 143–4
Treaty of Amiens (1802) 115
Treaty of Bâle (1795) 102
Treaty of Westphalia 34
Turin 29
Two Thirds Decree
190
United States
Catholic Church 145
émigrés 138; trades and
professions 143–4
Francophobia 145–8
French influence on food
144–5
Vaudreuil, and Danloux 167, 175
Vaudreuil, Joseph-HyacintheFrançois de Rigaud 112, 113,
114
Varennes, flight to 31
vendémiaire coup (1795) 190
Verona 38
Vidalenc, Jean, Les émigrés français
1789–1825 96
Vigée Le Brun, Mme 165, 166,
168, 177
portrait of Count Stroganov
Plate 4
Vignier-Montréal, Nicole de see
Mrs Boyd
Vioménil, Charles-Gabriel
Baron de 91–2
Volhynia 39
Volney
Tableau du climat et du sol des
États-Unis 142, 147
Voltaire, Candide 84
Walpole, Horace 90, 205
War of Independence
(Hungary) 68
Warsaw 10
Wellington, Duke of 19, 118
Wickham, William 30, 38
Wilmot Committee 55, 59, 60
Wilmot, John 206, 217, 221
Windham, William 208, 217
women
experience as émigrés 46, 57
in Portugal 89
Worms 29, 31
XYZ affair
142, 146

The French Émigrés in Europe and the Struggle against Revolution

Transcription

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