Abstract
The Emigration, like the Revolution, began in July 1789.2 And, like the Revolution, it began slowly and steadily gained momentum. The constant trickle in the latter months of 1789 became a flow toward the end of 1790 but did not burst the banks until late 1792. Moreover the Revolution took place during the summer months when a month or two in the country or in Italy or at one of the fashionable bath towns of Europe presented no great hardship.3 Europeans and the French in particular were accustomed to spending periods of time abroad, sometimes quite lengthy, visiting friends and relatives or simply enjoying the fresh air away from the city.
Only in the casual chat of letters or diaries has this first year (1789) of the emigration in England left any trace. It was politically insignificant, it was generally believed to be temporary, and the only problems it posed were such as might arise in the ordinary intercourse of society.1
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Notes
E. M. Wilkinson, ‘French Emigrés in England 1789–1802: Their Reception and Impact on English Life’, unpublished B. Litt thesis, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, 1952, p. 8.
Donald Greer, Incidence of Emigration during the French Revolution, Cambridge, Mass., 1951, pp. 44–5.
Living nobly was a precondition of obtaining noble status and nobles were therefore reliant on income from landed property or investment. Infringement of these rules or involvement in retail trade carried the risk of withdrawal of title. See. G. Chaussinand Nogaret, The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century, London, 1985.
See: William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution, Oxford, 1989, chapter 6, pp. 151–8.
This can be demonstrated by the surge in newspaper space allocated to political affairs. A comparative study of the Morning Chronicle in the first six months of 1791 and 1793 revealed that the amount of space measured in print columns devoted to coverage of speeches in the House of Commons rose by 42 per cent and that of the French National Assembly rose by 66 per cent. J. M. Carver, Editorial Liberty: Presenting the French Revolution to the British Public, Massey University, unpublished B. A. Honours exercise, 1996. pp. 36–7.
For examples of writing on these and other contemporary British political issues, see Gregory Claeys, ed., Political Writings of the 1790s, London, 1995.
This was stated by H. T. Dickinson in 1989 (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.)
A. Bardoux, La duchesse de Duras, Paris, 1898, p. 45.
For legislation of 9 November 1791, see J. Hall Stewart, A Documentary Survey of the French Revolution, New York, 1951, pp. 272–4.
Hélène Maspero-clerc, Un journalist contre-révolutionnaire: Jean Gabriel Peltier, 1760–1825, Paris, 1973.
See. T. C. W. Blanning, ‘The French Revolution and Europe’, in Colin Lucas, ed., Rewriting the French Revolution, Oxford, 1991.
Bellenger, The French Exiled Clergy, Bath, 1986, p. 4.
See L. Kerbiriou, Jean-François de la Marche, Quimper, 1924, pp. 285–347.
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© 1999 Kirsty Carpenter
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Carpenter, K. (1999). 1789–92: a Prolonged Vacation. In: Refugees of the French Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230501645_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230501645_2
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