Everyone Treated the Same? New Methods of Surveillance of Foreigners During
the French Revolution in the Hereditary Lands of the Austrian Monarchy.
Lucie Michková
In my contribution, I describe the newly created or older but improved methods
used in tracking the movements of foreigners. Various methods were used and
applied to ‘suspect’ foreigners irrespective of their social class. Using various new,
globally applied documentary forms, the Austrian Monarchy – obsessed with
searching for proof of subversive activities of emissaries and spies in all social groups
but primarily among the French, and later also other émigrés – tried to document, in
as much detail as possible, even the slightest suspicion of seditious activities aimed
against the Monarchy.
The paper looks at the official surveillance of ‘suspect’ clergy and nobility which
gradually emigrated from France and French-occupied territories. Using several
examples, I demonstrate that even within these groups, the official rules were not
applied to everyone equally. Moreover, some émigrés secured a permission to stay
or an asylum simply on the basis of a recommendation or intercession by an
influential ‘protector’.
Using the example of registration forms in West Bohemian spas, I demonstrate that
everyone coming to the spa, without exception, was subject to registration. Yet
despite the Emperor’s earlier worries regarding suspect servants and governesses
accompanying the aristocratic spa guests and their systematic expulsion from the
lands of the Austrian Monarchy after 1793, it seems that during registration, officials
paid them little attention. In comparison with the various details recorded about
their aristocratic employers, forms regarding the auxiliary staff include only rather
general information.
In late 18th century, the taking of notes and excerpts from the correspondence of the
‘usual suspects’ was nothing new. Even so, the systematic natures of this practice
and the precision of its execution were unique. I include this method as the third
form of surveillance used during the period in question and one where ‘social
inequalities’ did play a role. Surviving materials show that the attention of police and
spa commissioners and postmasters was limited to the correspondence of high-born
individuals, both from the ranks of aristocracy and army officers. It was quite natural
because the views of these representatives of the elites were of crucial importance
and the Emperor showed great interest in acquiring as much information about
them as possible even from their private correspondence.
This is also why there survive, both in the Austrian State Archives and in the
collections of the National Archive in Prague, dozens of intercepts or excerpts from
letters of ambassadors and members of the Russian, Saxon, or Prussian royal or
imperial families.
In the conclusion of my contribution, I summarise the results of my research and
hypothesise about the extent to which the rules for incoming foreigners, in theory
‘egalitarian’, were actually applied equally to all groups and how often they were
‘bent’ in someone’s favour. Using the example of correspondence interception and
copying, I demonstrate the unequal attention paid to the most important
representatives of the elites.