The emigres and conspiracy in the French Revolution, 1789-1799

The spectre of the emigre conspirator, the most implaccable enemy of the Revolution, stalked the revolutionary imagination throughout the 1790s and beyond. In many ways this was natural. The emigre conspiracy represented the antithesis of the revolution's transparent, public politics. It was also the linear descendant of the despised court cabal the hidden motive force of a secret, factional politics conducted behind closed doors of Versailles. While the legitimacy and triumph of the Revolution was based upon popular sovereignty, emigre conspirators seemed intent on ushering in a counterrevolutionary regime by the machinations of a self-interested few. The emigre conspirator was all the more chilling and ambiguous because he could not succeed in isolation. He needed assistance from foreign powers and/or influential collaborators inside France to achieve his ends, and this in turn implied the existence of sinister networks of agents to link conspirators abroad to activist cells inside the country. Thus, by its very extstence, the emigre conspirator fed fears of enemies within and without France, and promoted suspicion, paranoia and political instability.