Emigration in Politics and Imaginations

Emigration during the French Revolution has many different layers of historical reality, but the most defining of these was the legislation that condemned émigrés to death in 1793, and that was not altered until after Napoleon came to power. This legislation was not without its critics from its inception, and it is important to challenge the very inflexible notion that all émigrés were automatically traitors. The problems of getting émigré protests heard, and the imaginary aspect of their ideal France—usually a constitutional monarchy—was harder to convey while the legislation was in place. Furthermore the issue of justice for a significant minority group tests the principles of the revolutionaries inside France, and has a context that concerns not only the émigrés, but what the Republicans imagined as well. This chapter deals with the elaboration of the legislation and the difficulties of overcoming a very uncompromising stance on the guilt of the émigrés as a collective. These émigrés were in fact genuine refugees, and like any refugees their plight was the worse for the length of time the conflict lasted.