According to French censuses, 5784 Polish military refugees were expected to arrive in France between 1831 and 1837. To this number should be added civilians who were not registered when crossing the borders. The size of this first wave is estimated at around 6000–6500 people. The incoming emigrants could certainly count on the sympathy and compassion of the French, financial assistance from the French government, which, however, could not reach everyone (Pezda, 2018: 197). The vast majority of the émigrés were soldiers, hence the government of Louis-Philippe subordinated the decisions of the Ministry of the Interior and allocated special dépôts for them – places of accommodation where they were to stay organized in a military manner under the control of the French administration. These were established in Avignon, Châteauroux (for more see: Kuzicki, 2020: 42–45), Besançon (see: Tarkowska, 2021), Lons-le-Saunier, Salins, Bourges, Lunel, Le Puy and others. In 1832, the French parliament passed a law allowing for the payment of permanent support to Poles from the state budget, which made a modest living possible. In May 1833, the large establishments were dissolved, and Polish emigrants were dispersed in smaller groups throughout France (Żurawski vel Grajewski, 2015: 122). The chronological framework of the article is defined by the date of the founding of the Polish Ladies Benevolent Society and the first period of its activities until the outbreak of the January Uprising in the Polish lands.

As noted by French researchers Sylvie Aprile and Delphine Diaz, despite the heterogeneity of refugee groups in 19th-century Europe, especially after the Congress of Vienna, exile became socially selective. Forced emigration certainly affected more politicians, officers and students than workers, craftsmen or peasants. The above statement fully applies to the Great Emigration after the defeat of the November Uprising. In the 1820s, forced emigration was a consequence of the revolutions in the Apennine and Iberian peninsulas and was marked by the predominance of the elites. For example, out of approximately 1,000 Italian exiles from 1821, the profession of 737 of them is known. The vast majority of them, 59.4%, were former military personnel. The rest were students (91 people) and representatives of the liberal professions (208 people). The Polish emigration of 1831–1832, numbering around 8,000, consisted mainly of civilian and military elites (Aprile, Diaz, 2021: 139–144; Diaz, 2021).