While the Court and the Army of the _émigrés_ were being organized at Coblentz and Worms, under the direction of Monsieur, Comte de Provence, of the Comte d’Artois, and of the Prince de Condé, and while rivalry and jealousies and a thousand other causes of dissension were already cropping up in that environment (so often and always so unfavourably depicted), other troops of similar fugitives were leaving the eastern coast and, embarking from the Channel port, or stopping first on the islands of Jersey and Guernsey, were gradually arriving on English soil, there to find an assured refuge. In the last months of 1791, and in the beginning of 1792, they came thither in thousands. Bretons, Normans, nobles, ecclesiastics, journalists, young officers, fleeing persecution, pillage, arbitrary arrests, came hastening to enjoy the hospitality of Great Britain. London was soon full of refugees; but the majority of these unfortunate folk, despite their illustrious names, were in a state almost of destitution. The more prosperous ones, those who had been able to rescue something from the shipwreck, succeeded in finding homes in the suburbs--modest boarding-houses, or little cottages--where they installed their families. But these were the exceptions; and in every street French gentlefolk were to be met with who had no property but what they carried on their backs. Many of them knew no English; and still overwhelmed by the dangers they had passed through, and thus suddenly plunged into strange surroundings, without resources, without even a handicraft, went wandering despairingly about the city, in search of bread. They were not allowed to starve. Most admirably did English charity accept this influx of new inhabitants. The last years of the reign of Louis XVI., together with the War of Independence in the United States, had markedly chilled the relations between France and her neighbours across the Channel. Revolutionary ideas from the frontiers had at first met with some sympathy amongst this favoured people, who had been in the enjoyment of true liberty for a century. But when English folk came to know of the excess which these ideas had resulted in, of the anarchy which had been let loose in all directions, of the violence which was the order of the day--their distrust, indignation, and horror effaced that earlier sympathy. King George III., supported by his Minister, Pitt, felt from that time an aversion which grew to implacable hatred for anything even remotely connected with the French Revolution.[29] On the other hand, he (and, indeed, almost the whole of the aristocracy) welcomed the refugees, and encouraged their sojourn in the kingdom--glad, no doubt, of the opportunity for displaying his opinion of the new ideas, by helping on the exodus of a part of the inhabitants of France, an exodus which would contribute to the weakening of that country.