Tournai

Tournai had been part of the Austrian Netherlands since the end of the War of Spanish Succession in 1714. It was a popular place for French émigrés to settle, but in 1794 the French Republic's armies conquered the territory. Tournai became part of the new French Department of Jemappes and France retained it until the end of the Napoleonic Empire in 1815.

Appears in these Letters:

1791

3 October: Life as an Émigré. Part 1

The duchess recounts her departure from France for Tournai in the Austrian Netherlands, which had become a rallying post for the expanding French...

7 November: Life as an Émigré. Part 2

The duchess gives a more positive report of life in Tournai than in her Letter of the previous month, comparing the fear she would have been enduring...

1792

25 May: Revolutionary France Faces Military Disaster

After much triumphalist rhetoric in Parisian political circles ahead of France's declaration of war against Austria on 20 April 1792, the harsh...