I M MIGRATION TO.
EMIGRgS, a-me-gre, a French term for those who have been compelled to leave their country on account of religious persecutions, as did the Huguenot, for instance, in the 17th cen tury, or for some other causes. The term, however, is now most commonly applied to those Frenchmen, many of them of noble family, who left France at the commencement of the first French Revolution. Princes, nobles and prelates crossed the frontier into Switzerland, Germany and Holland, and even penetrated as far as Italy. Their conduct made the position of Louis as a constitutional monarch untenable, for they were constantly plotting with the enemies of France. Proscription followed: be tween October 1792 and the dissolution of the convention more than 300 laws were passed against the emigres and their relatives. The relatives who remained behind were formed into an ostracised class, deprived of civil rights and obliged to live under police supervision, and exposed to all manner of special fines and exactions. In 1796 relatives were on the list of proscribed. Vast interests depended on the maintenance of the laws against them: their property formed part of the security on which the assignats had been issued, and the granting of an amnesty and reclamation would have made the assignats so much waste paper and brought the social fabric to ruin. At the head of the emigrants stood the royal princes of Condi, Provence, and Artois, the first of whom collected a part of the fugitives to co-operate with the allied armies in Germany for the restoration of the monarchy. At Coblentz a
particular court of justice was established to settle causes relating to the French emigres. But the invasion of the Netherlands by Dumouriez drove them from these provinces in mid-winter in a deplorable condition, while their number was daily increased by the system of violence and terror carried on in France. The corps of Condi was finally taken into the Russian service, and was disbanded in the Russo-Austrian campaign in 1799. When Napoleon became emperor it was one of his first acts of grace to grant permission to all but a few of the emigres to return to their country, but by the terms of the charter of 1814 they were precluded from regaining either their status or their ancient privileges. During the Restoration period they persistently petitioned Louis XVIII and subsequently Charles X for reinstatement and indeninification, but though a government grant was made for their com pensation, the measure was rendered abortive by the July revolution. One of the largest set tlements comprising several thousand acres near Towanda, Pa., was made at the place now called Rummersfield on the Lehigh Valley Railroad in Bradford (and formerly in Luzern) County. Here, from 1793 to 1800, was a centre of French refinement, to which luxury-loving parties from the coast cities came for the purchase of articles from Paris and students for the language. The place was called Azilum, Asylum or Frenchtown. Consult Murray, 'The Story of Some French Refugees and their Asilum) (1903).