[1][2] Although the French Revolution began in 1789 as a bourgeois-led drive for increased political equality for the Third Estate, it soon turned into a violent popular rebellion.
To escape political tensions and sometimes in fear for their lives, some emigrated from France, settling in neighboring countries, chiefly Great Britain, Spain, Germany, Austria, and Prussia.
Poles struggled for independence in a series of failed uprisings, which resulted in many having to seek refuge in Western Europe (known as the Wielka Emigracja) in order to avoid reprisals, such as being forcefully sent to the vast and harsh emptiness of Siberia.
Marx and Engels, drafting their strategy for future revolutions in The Communist Manifesto, suggested confiscating the property of émigrés to finance the revolution—a recommendation the Bolsheviks followed 70 years later.
Aristocrats of some European countries were forced to leave their native lands by political upheavals from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of World War II opting to emigrate elsewhere such as the Serbs and Romanians in 1945 and after, Hungarians in 1956 and the Czechs and Slovaks in 1968.