Was the French Revolution inevitable by 1780?

So, I am working on a TL with a PoD in 1780. Said PoD doesn't effect France very much (the biggest impact might be from the lack of a revolution in Belgium in 1789). But still, this is only a decade before the French Revolution.

So, was some sort of French Revolution likely to happen? Or was the revolution something of a black swan event? And how likely would a French Revolution be to happen around a similar time? For example, could the revolution happen in 1783? 1787? 1795? (Dates picked at random for the sake of discussion.)

Just trying to figure out how to handle the storm brewing in France in a realistic way. All insights would be very welcome.

fasquardon

fasquardon said:

So, I am working on a TL with a PoD in 1780. Said PoD doesn't effect France very much (the biggest impact might be from the lack of a revolution in Belgium in 1789). But still, this is only a decade before the French Revolution.

So, was some sort of French Revolution likely to happen? Or was the revolution something of a black swan event? And how likely would a French Revolution be to happen around a similar time? For example, could the revolution happen in 1783? 1787? 1795? (Dates picked at random for the sake of discussion.)

Just trying to figure out how to handle the storm brewing in France in a realistic way. All insights would be very welcome.

fasquardon

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With a PoD in 1780? Ya, it's pretty close to inevitable. The government was running out of money big time, which meant the King had to call the Estates General, and there was bad weather which meant people starved and were even more upset than usual.

Could you butterfly it away? Probably. Have the King call the Estates General early - before the bad harvests, and he'd do better. Have the Estates not meet as a single body, and the 3rd Estate doesn't swamp the other two.

But.
The situation, especially the financial, was dire and getting worse. Louis kept installing reformist finance ministers to fix finances - and then firing them, because people didn't like the increased taxes, etc.

Spending a goodly chunk of money supporting the ARW didn't help the coffers any, and that money is gone by 1780.

Especially if your PoD is elsewhere, I doubt there's likely going to be enough change in France to head off the Revolution. Change its form? maybe. Head it off? I doubt it.

fasquardon said:

So, I am working on a TL with a PoD in 1780. Said PoD doesn't effect France very much (the biggest impact might be from the lack of a revolution in Belgium in 1789). But still, this is only a decade before the French Revolution.

So, was some sort of French Revolution likely to happen? Or was the revolution something of a black swan event? And how likely would a French Revolution be to happen around a similar time? For example, could the revolution happen in 1783? 1787? 1795? (Dates picked at random for the sake of discussion.)

Just trying to figure out how to handle the storm brewing in France in a realistic way. All insights would be very welcome.

fasquardon

Click to expand...

It is argued that the roots of the Revolution started with the Sun King - Louis XIV, so it's perhaps harder to change, and specially with a so close POD... maybe a different rule of his great-son, Louis XV, may have done it. Or not.

fasquardon said:

So, I am working on a TL with a PoD in 1780. Said PoD doesn't effect France very much (the biggest impact might be from the lack of a revolution in Belgium in 1789). But still, this is only a decade before the French Revolution.

So, was some sort of French Revolution likely to happen? Or was the revolution something of a black swan event? And how likely would a French Revolution be to happen around a similar time? For example, could the revolution happen in 1783? 1787? 1795? (Dates picked at random for the sake of discussion.)

Just trying to figure out how to handle the storm brewing in France in a realistic way. All insights would be very welcome.

fasquardon

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Which part of the revolution?

The revolution began as a struggle between the nobility and the crown, that part was probably inevitable, but if Louis agreed to a constitutional monarchy that probably would have pre-emptied the radical Jacobin part of the revolution for example

Dathi THorfinnsson said:

....
Spending a goodly chunk of money supporting the ARW didn't help the coffers any, and that money is gone by 1780. ....

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Maybe if the new US reapaid part of the debt it would buy more time for the French crown?

Well I read in one of Marie Antoinette's biographies that there was an incident a few weeks prior to the revolution in which Louis suffered a fall that he was lucky to have walked away from unscathed.

What if he had broken his neck and died? Leaving his young son as King and the nation in need of a regency? There's a POD that could mitigate the revolution into a crisis of more manageable proportions.

No, not even close. The French Revolution was an extraordinary event in human history, its instigation was brought about by the culmination of hundreds of different factors converging in a particular time and place. The French Revolution could have been stopped right up until, and immediately after, the formation of the National Assembly. Dr. Robert Bucholtz repeatedly made this point when describing narrative that led up the revolution.

scholar said:

No, not even close. The French Revolution was an extraordinary event in human history, its instigation was brought about by the culmination of hundreds of different factors converging in a particular time and place. The French Revolution could have been stopped right up until, and immediately after, the formation of the National Assembly. Dr. Robert Bucholtz repeatedly made this point when describing narrative that led up the revolution.

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True for it's OTL form, but even if all the stars don't align perfectly to recreate the narrative that it most familiar to us, some sort of major political upheaval was unavoidable.

A large young population, mass starvation, systemic corruption, political repression and elitism on various levels. This is a very dangerous and potent mix. If it didn't go one way, it would certainly surface in another, probably similar, form.

BMN said:

True for it's OTL form, but even if all the stars don't align perfectly to recreate the narrative that it most familiar to us, some sort of major political upheaval was unavoidable.

A large young population, mass starvation, systemic corruption, political repression and elitism on various levels. This is a very dangerous and potent mix. If it didn't go one way, it would certainly surface in another, probably similar, form.

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The thing about this event though is that its heart was in Paris, its birth, growth, and perpetuation was eternally linked to that city. All of those starving peasants in the farmlands were fighting against the revolution. The revolution existed because of wealthy middle class people working inside of the capital city under the influence of a group of people endemic to Paris.

I mean, if you take a step back, you are currently describing a situation that has occurred virtually everywhere in the world many different times and nothing came from it. Corruption was everywhere in this time period, France was no different. Political repression and elitism? France was a step above most of the world at this time. Less than England, better than most of Europe. Young population? That's the law of the era. Mass famine and starvation are regular occurrences, they happen almost every decade in different parts of Europe and the world.

The only thing that made this particular situation unique was Paris and the Paris culture, as well as the complete mishandling of the estates general and national assembly.

Now I wouldn't say that a civil war is outside of the realm of possibility, nor some kind of reform in the aftermath of that occurrence, but the kind of revolution that France experienced is something else entirely. It was this event that made a revolution possible. It was this event that forever proved that things like this could happen, and may even be aimed for. That the American Revolution was not a fluke caused by the intervention of great powers, and that even the heart of a country can be torn asunder and turned into something else.

IMHO it cannot be avoided.
The aspirations of the bourgeoisie cannot be repressed forever.
The French finances cannot be mended by reforms: too many aristocratic and clerical estates are exempt from taxation and I cannot see a French king with the will -much less the power - to cut this Gordian knot. Reforms were attempted by a number of finance ministers and always failed.
And then there is Paris: a great city with a dangerous mix of intellectuals, bourgeois and laborers. How long can any king keep a lid on it? And obviously a king who loses the control of Paris cannot stay a king for long.

I've never understood why the King didn't do a Lit de Justice, which forces the parlements to pass his reforms. That could have been instead of calling the Estates, surely?

Because Louis XVI was one of the most incompetent kings France ever had.

Louis XV enacted the reform in 1771 with his Chancellor Meaupou. He dismissed the parliaments (false friend meaning judiciary courts held by nobles and recently enoblished burgesses, not the house of the commons or the house of the lords) and changed all the judiciary and legal system.

But in 1774, when he became king, Louis XVI cancelled Meaupou's reforms and called back the ancient parliaments that blocked any reform in the country. That was his doom.

Something was going to happen. France was broke, its financial institutions were broken, and it's antiquated political system had become incapable of dealing with the power of a rising bourgeois class. Something was going to give, and hard.

Now, was it inevitable that it was going to happen in 1789 or that Louis XVI was going to lose his head or that the Reign of Terror was going to happen or that a Napoleon was going to end up taking power.? No. Butterflies could have easily have prevented any of those. But something big was going to happen, because France was a powder-keg.

scholar said:

The thing about this event though is that its heart was in Paris, its birth, growth, and perpetuation was eternally linked to that city. All of those starving peasants in the farmlands were fighting against the revolution. The revolution existed because of wealthy middle class people working inside of the capital city under the influence of a group of people endemic to Paris.

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Lol no. The French countryside was one of the bedrock of the early revolution. The various pillaging terror in all of the countryside very quickly transformed into small local revolutions were the locals burned all the feudal symbols of power and the documents legalizing that power. The french farmers reclaimed violently feudal lands owned by noblemen. Tiers Etat representative from the countryside were sometime more radicals than the parisians ones. Hell, even the Vendée was for the revolution before the constitutional status of the priest was created and the draft.

Additionnally the other cities were also the seat of power of the Girondins and the federalists.

fasquardon said:

So, I am working on a TL with a PoD in 1780. Said PoD doesn't effect France very much (the biggest impact might be from the lack of a revolution in Belgium in 1789). But still, this is only a decade before the French Revolution.

So, was some sort of French Revolution likely to happen? Or was the revolution something of a black swan event? And how likely would a French Revolution be to happen around a similar time? For example, could the revolution happen in 1783? 1787? 1795? (Dates picked at random for the sake of discussion.)

Just trying to figure out how to handle the storm brewing in France in a realistic way. All insights would be very welcome.

fasquardon

Click to expand...

In my opinion no it wasn't. Hell it wasn't even inevitable in 1789! Sure people can argue that it was inevitable considering France's financial situation, but considering that the national debt had existed since the early 1700s and that the government basically ran on a deficit budget for almost a century, I'd say that that argument flies out the window. Really the French revolution was a bit of a perfect storm, a combination of the series of bad harvests in the mid 1780s, its declining position in Europe vis a vis Britain, its continuing debt and getting screwed over by America after the revolutionary war. If even one or two of these things went different then there's no reason to think that the French revolution would still occur.

Imladrik said:

Lol no. The French countryside was one of the bedrock of the early revolution. The various pillaging terror in all of the countryside very quickly transformed into small local revolutions were the locals burned all the feudal symbols of power and the documents legalizing that power. The french farmers reclaimed violently feudal lands owned by noblemen. Tiers Etat representative from the countryside were sometime more radicals than the parisians ones. Hell, even the Vendée was for the revolution before the constitutional status of the priest was created and the draft.

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While the distinction may escape you, there is a fine line between rebellion and revolution. The practice of peasant rebellions so that they could storm the estates of their landlords and burn their documents was very common. Why? Not to abolish the functions of the state. Once France started doing that and going after the Church the countryside ran from them at any chance they had. It was to make sure that their landlords did not know how much they were expected to pay, who paid what, itemizing the population. This was not an attack on feudalism, only the educated classes from Paris or influenced by them used such dialogs. So, while the entirety of the country was rife with rebellion, actual revolution was far more limited and once that revolution started spreading and its dogma started tearing away at the older nature of society you get people getting uncomfortable and looking back towards their nobility and their clergy.

And so the Church and those noblemen that escaped Paris were significant thorns in the side of the Revolution and would only, eventually, get overrun by the levee enmasse. Even then, they would only be totally quelled when Napoleon took over.

I think this is pretty sound:

Sucrose said:

Something was going to happen. France was broke, its financial institutions were broken, and it's antiquated political system had become incapable of dealing with the power of a rising bourgeois class. Something was going to give, and hard.

Now, was it inevitable that it was going to happen in 1789 or that Louis XVI was going to lose his head or that the Reign of Terror was going to happen or that a Napoleon was going to end up taking power.? No. Butterflies could have easily have prevented any of those. But something big was going to happen, because France was a powder-keg.

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France had 27 million people, the vast majority of whom had no voice in their governance, and yet France was a post-enlightenment society and in an age of revolution. Change was in the air, and incremental change would not be sufficient...

Best,

Shiva said:

Well I read in one of Marie Antoinette's biographies that there was an incident a few weeks prior to the revolution in which Louis suffered a fall that he was lucky to have walked away from unscathed.

What if he had broken his neck and died? Leaving his young son as King and the nation in need of a regency? There's a POD that could mitigate the revolution into a crisis of more manageable proportions.

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Hm, how likely would Marie Antoinette be to try and escape the country without Louis, as they both did in OTL in June 1791? My impression is that Louis XVI was by far the stronger will in the pair, and Marie Antoinette alone could well be too cautious to run.

No flight of the royals would be a big change to the revolution.

Getting back to the larger question, how about I break it down a bit?

How likely do people think it was that the Estates General were called in 1789?

My impression is that this depends very much on when de Calonne decides that he needs to stop paying for everything with borrowed money - if he bites the bullet earlier or later depending very much on how his internal debate goes. When de Calonne decides he needs to raise more revenue, given the character of the King, the Estates General meeting is pretty much inevitable.

Once the Estates General is called, how likely is it to melt down into chaos?

My impression is that as long as Louis XVI is still king and Necker is still alive, things are very likely to melt down, though the exact events of the melt-down could be very different.

How likely is the chaos to get ideological (that is, for rioters to start thinking about "liberte egalite et fraternite")?

My impression is that these were ideas whose time has come, and that any large disturbance was likely to accumulate ideological trappings - witness the parallels in Leige, Belgium, Poland and the United States during their revolutions in the same period. So a big melt-down in public order in France is, in my view, very likely to gain a republican or constitutionalist rational+liberal+secular ideology.

How likely is an alt-French Revolution to spawn an alt-French Revolutionary war?

Personally, I am of two minds on this. Firstly, the exact progression from French Revolution to French Revolutionary war seems very vulnerable to being derailed by a different international situation, or a different political situation within France. For example, with an earlier French Revolution, or a world where Mirabeu simply lives longer, I could well see the French peace camp winning the debate. Or, for example, in a world where Prussia and Austria do not experience a rapprochement, we may see no Reichenbach Treaty, and thus no casus belli for the French war hawks.

But then, during this period, there were regular major wars, and France was about due to get into another major war with Britain. So even if the doves in France win, we may well see a new Franco-British war in a year or two of the alt-Revolution and then the ideologies will work their alchemy turning this Franco-British war into a Revolutionary War (tm).

fasquardon

fasquardon said:

Hm, how likely would Marie Antoinette be to try and escape the country without Louis, as they both did in OTL in June 1791? My impression is that Louis XVI was by far the stronger will in the pair, and Marie Antoinette alone could well be too cautious to run.

No flight of the royals would be a big change to the revolution.

Getting back to the larger question, how about I break it down a bit?

How likely do people think it was that the Estates General were called in 1789?

My impression is that this depends very much on when de Calonne decides that he needs to stop paying for everything with borrowed money - if he bites the bullet earlier or later depending very much on how his internal debate goes. When de Calonne decides he needs to raise more revenue, given the character of the King, the Estates General meeting is pretty much inevitable.

Once the Estates General is called, how likely is it to melt down into chaos?

My impression is that as long as Louis XVI is still king and Necker is still alive, things are very likely to melt down, though the exact events of the melt-down could be very different.

How likely is the chaos to get ideological (that is, for rioters to start thinking about "liberte egalite et fraternite")?

My impression is that these were ideas whose time has come, and that any large disturbance was likely to accumulate ideological trappings - witness the parallels in Leige, Belgium, Poland and the United States during their revolutions in the same period. So a big melt-down in public order in France is, in my view, very likely to gain a republican or constitutionalist rational+liberal+secular ideology.

How likely is an alt-French Revolution to spawn an alt-French Revolutionary war?

Personally, I am of two minds on this. Firstly, the exact progression from French Revolution to French Revolutionary war seems very vulnerable to being derailed by a different international situation, or a different political situation within France. For example, with an earlier French Revolution, or a world where Mirabeu simply lives longer, I could well see the French peace camp winning the debate. Or, for example, in a world where Prussia and Austria do not experience a rapprochement, we may see no Reichenbach Treaty, and thus no casus belli for the French war hawks.

But then, during this period, there were regular major wars, and France was about due to get into another major war with Britain. So even if the doves in France win, we may well see a new Franco-British war in a year or two of the alt-Revolution and then the ideologies will work their alchemy turning this Franco-British war into a Revolutionary War (tm).

fasquardon

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Let's play with the notion that Louis XVI suffered a fall from his horse during a hunt and broke his neck a few days after he had called the Estates General together.

The nation is facing a royal funeral and the ascension of a Boy-King, Louis XVII (and was generally well-liked since he was a kid), and while most French Royal tradition would place the Regency in the hands of his mother, Marie Antoinette is not a popular figure and she has very little political skill or experience.

Meanwhile France is facing food shortages, a credit crunch, and even attempts to cut costs at the funeral is still very much 'conspicuous consumption' for the funeral (and noble life in general).

I predict riots, followed by behind the scenes maneuvering to create a Regency Council that will create (on the surface) a Constitutional Monarchy, but will really be a dictatorship with the Regent (NOT Marie Antoinette) in charge.

scholar said:

While the distinction may escape you, there is a fine line between rebellion and revolution. The practice of peasant rebellions so that they could storm the estates of their landlords and burn their documents was very common. Why? Not to abolish the functions of the state. Once France started doing that and going after the Church the countryside ran from them at any chance they had. It was to make sure that their landlords did not know how much they were expected to pay, who paid what, itemizing the population. This was not an attack on feudalism, only the educated classes from Paris or influenced by them used such dialogs. So, while the entirety of the country was rife with rebellion, actual revolution was far more limited and once that revolution started spreading and its dogma started tearing away at the older nature of society you get people getting uncomfortable and looking back towards their nobility and their clergy.

And so the Church and those noblemen that escaped Paris were significant thorns in the side of the Revolution and would only, eventually, get overrun by the levee enmasse. Even then, they would only be totally quelled when Napoleon took over.

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The Great Fear wasn't just another peasant revolt. The French peasantry entirely overturned feudalism over the course of the event, destroying records and seizing land.