Flee or Face the Guillotine!

This was the horrifying choice for those loyal to French King Louis XVI in 1793. And so it was that dozens of refugees came to this place called French Azilum, located on a horseshoe bend along the Susquehanna River in northeastern Pennsylvania. Mostly nobility and gentry, they lived here for 10 years, until Napoleon Bonaparte granted repatriation rights to those who had fled to escape persecution. Harboring the history of the refugees and their descendants is the French Azilum Historic Site.