When revolutionary France remade Georgian Britain
After their country fell to nefarious revolutionary forces in the 1790s, French émigrés saw Britain as a safe haven. Here’s how they impacted its culture.
Image: The death of Louis XVI marked the end of the French monarchy and led to émigrés arriving in the UK | Public Domain
On 10th September 2026, the Bayeux Tapestry went on public display at the British Museum, arriving on English soil for the first time in almost one thousand years. The blockbuster exhibition, running until July 2027, is a real symbol of the close friendship between Britain and France in the modern era
Of course, cross-channel relations didn’t always used to be this way. After the French Revolution erupted in 1789, the two neighbouring nations were famously at loggerheads for decades. However, as the radicalised powers that be in France started chopping heads left, right and centre, Gallic refugees flocked to the sanctuary of Britain.
As these ‘émigrés’ started assimilating into British society, is this where the seeds were sown for the warm Anglo-French ties we see today? There’s a strong argument for it. Many of these French immigrants did eventually return to their homeland, but Georgian Britain was left positively transformed, as we at Sky HISTORY have found.
Revolution comes…and changes everything
As the French state tottered perilously close to bankruptcy in 1789, Louis XVI recalled the ‘Estates General’ in the desperate hope of breaking the impasse. Over the next few years, radical elements in this parliament eroded more and more of the king’s authority. By 1793, the French monarchy was gone, Louis’s body lay decapitated in a makeshift grave, and the ‘Reign of Terror’ had begun.
The revolutionaries were now in charge, and if they picked up even a faint whiff of disloyalty to the new regime, heads could literally roll. Fearing that their own heads could be next, French citizens fled to Britain in their thousands. Contrary to what popular perceptions of the French Revolution might lead you to think, not all of these refugees were aristocrats. Many were also members of lower orders represented by the Estates General’s Third Estate.
How did the émigrés cope in Britain?
French republican authorities took a dim view of these escapees, and punished them by confiscating their property in France. This left the more aristocratic émigrés unable to take much of their landed wealth with them across the English Channel. So, how were they going to make ends meet in Blighty? By getting traditional jobs, harnessing talents they never knew they had.
It wasn’t unusual for these aristocrats to take up work in such pursuits as hatmaking and dance instruction. A French dancing master even featured in a political cartoon from 1803 mocking the émigrés. The future French king Louis Philippe I worked as a teacher in the west London suburb of Ealing. Meanwhile, female émigrés resorted to dressmaking and embroidery, making clothes for their newfound British customers.
While on the subject of clothes, émigrés were also influential in shifting the British fashion profile away from ostentatious to austere. In their rush to escape the guillotine, many of them understandably hadn’t made a big priority of bringing their best attire. Besides, since members of the nobility had been especially brutally targeted by the revolutionaries, it was no longer fashionable to look too posh.
Georgian London takes on a new look
Not all the émigrés bound for Britain gravitated straight to London. The Bourbon dynasty’s pretender to the French throne, Louis XVIII, instead settled at Hartwell House, a Buckinghamshire country house outside the capital. Nonetheless, particular London areas, like Soho, Marylebone and Somers Town, did become hotspots of French immigrant activity.
Though émigrés in Britain were financially supported by various charitable initiatives, they were also looked upon with suspicion. Could at least some of them have been undercover revolutionaries aiming to ferment social unrest on British shores? Such fears prompted lawmakers to introduce the Aliens Act 1793, requiring immigrants to register their details with a justice of the peace.
Did French chefs working in London do their bit to keep their native cuisine popular? One Leeds Beckett University study reveals that, even when Britain and France were war adversaries in the 1790s, British royals kept tucking into French-inspired dishes. As George III’s culinary tastes appeared rather humdrum, it seems likely that they aligned with those of his middle-class subjects.
In December 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup d’état in Paris that made him France’s new leader. Shortly afterwards, he granted an amnesty to émigrés, and many answered this call to return. Others waited until after Napoleon’s fall from power in the 1810s.
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