French Revolution without the terror

Could a government based on manhood suffrage have emerged from 1789?

Could it have defeated outside terror?

Could ideas have spread without invading armies?
 
1) No. Censive suffrage was going to create a bourgeois/landowner gouvernement that would have an hard time following popular tendencies and requests. Either it'd radicalize itself, or it would be overrun by local clubs, municipalities, organisations.
And the very idea of having an universal suffrage was really far of most of 1789's revolutionnaries ideas.

2) Less "defeated" than imploding because of its inner contradictions and factional infighting. See 1).
The main problem with Terror for 90's France's opinion was less it happened (you had actually an important support even if it's hard to really quantify), than it was blown out of proportions (Jacobins being really far from an unified party, factional struggle was still pretty much a thing, especially after 1793, and before Enragés being crushed, you had regular really harsh if not bloody reactions), and that people didn't understand why it was maintained after the victories in Vendée and at the borders.

I could see Terror being shortened while using repressive arsenal for that (let's say Jacobin right-wing prevails, and Danton manages to crush both Enragés and centrist Robespierrists), but Robespierre was a convenient scapegoat for assuming collective responsabilities of the Terror's necessities, so...It would require a PoD with a more favourable military situation in 1793/94, a greater role of the army and Indulgents/Army alliance of interests.

Maybe a PoD where Charlotte Corday kills Robespierre instead of Marat could be interesting as well.

3) They did IOTL. Remember that Jacobins did quite less on imposing revolutionary principles than their successors, and never really had a plan of expansion (the majority actually opposing the war in 1792).
Now, would these ideas prevail? Most of revolutionnaries events outside France (United States of Belgium, Germans republics) were crushed under the boot of Prussian and Austrian armies : the question is probably more about the survival of these ideas.
 
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Could a government based on manhood suffrage have emerged from 1789?

Could it have defeated outside terror?

Could ideas have spread without invading armies?

Yes it could if Louis XVI had been clever. There would have been no terror and no revolutionary/anarchic escalade if Louis XVI had taken the General States at their word and decided "I agree. The People must the source of power. I will give them Universal and squale suffrage."

End of the revolution and of no bourgeois rule.
 
Yes it could if Louis XVI had been clever. There would have been no terror and no revolutionary/anarchic escalade if Louis XVI had taken the General States at their word and decided "I agree. The People must the source of power. I will give them Universal and squale suffrage."

End of the revolution and of no bourgeois rule.

I believe that according to some historians liberal/socialist French politicians of the late 1800s-early 1900s did not want to give women the vote because they feared the majority of women voters would vote for clerical (Church-backed) candidates. I can only imagine the reaction if Louis XVI had expanded the voting rolls to include all the peasant women (and men!) who opposed the Jacobins and their ilk.
 
A thing that is often overlooked in examining the French and Russian Revolutionary Terrors is the context in which they happened.

When the Committee of Public Safety got to work France was under attack simultaneously by Prussia, Austria, and the British while the Vendee reactionary revolt and other local revolts pushing for a decentralized French government were raging across the country. In the mix of this was the series of spontaneous actions taken by French peasants against their landlords, the anti-clerical campaign and seizure of Church lands (which was as much a spontaneous thing as it was Jacobin policy), and all kinds of internal squabbling in the revolutionary government between the parties and with the influential sans-culottes groups in Paris. On top of that most of the people running the Assembly in Paris had no actual experience in governing or anything approaching it, Robespierre for example was a country lawyer and the only member of the Committee with remotely relevant credentials was a former soldier. This is also in a time period when it was common practice in Europe to brand and sometimes hang thieves with some pretty brutal, bloody forms of punishment employed by the ancien regime as a regular matter of course. In a lot of ways it was a miracle the French Republic survived that year at all and it shouldn't be too surprising they resorted to the methods they were most familiar with and were par for the course for European states in that period.

That doesn't excuse the actions of the Committee of Public Safety but it is very important to remember these larger points of context. The Reign of Terror was something that if it was avoidable would have been best averted but that doesn't mean it was that extraordinary for its time. The British suppression of the Irish Revolt four years later, frex, killed less people but wiped out a much larger percentage of the total Irish population than the Terror did in France. This was a pretty violent time with a lot of people that held ideas we'd consider abhorrent today. What made the Terror so shocking to its contemporaries is the same thing that made the Parliamentarians' execution of King Charles so horrific: it was a very direct, vocal challenge to the foundations of European state power in its day. Furthermore it was happening in FRANCE, the example par excellance (in theory) of a modern absolute monarchy and the most powerful country on the European continent excluding Russia. That would be comparable in terms of shock to the popular consciousness as the United States or Britain undergoing a communist revolution in 1920.

As far as stopping it goes you need to remove the circumstances that created the French Republic's entirely justified siege mentality. They genuinely were under attack from all sides and within though the extent they went to in "finding" and punishing the accused went to inexcusable extremes and tended to feed factional infighting more than anything else once the Vendee was thoroughly crushed. You'd need a better military situation, more decisive defeats of the Great Powers, and best case scenario getting Britain (who was the warchest for all this) to back off. The best way to do that is if Louis XVI doesn't pull a runner for Austria. That was stupid.
 
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Yes but you need to take into account how things started. You are right saying that foreign war drove to more extremism and violence in the revolution. But historians have shown that there was intrinsic violence and extremism in the revolution. Violence did not start in 1792. The best historians have demonstrated it : the best of all being François Furet.

The point in the revolutionary process was : who was going to embody the new legitimacy ? The king or the assembly dominated by bourgeois ?

Consider England. Though a parliamentary regime and a real democracy the king is still called the sovereign.

In France, the assembly wanted to embody the principle of sovereignty. The king could and would have taken it back if he had become aware of the consequences of the new principles. By rident the horse of Universal male suffrage, he would have shown that the revolutionaries were not true to the principles they proclaimed but just wanted to take power and to take for themselves the "national (church) properties" because they did not want to make an effort to recovery public finances.

If he had established equality Universal male suffrage, Louis XVI would have exposed many of the revolutionaries under a very unfavourable light.
 
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The best way to do that is if Louis XVI doesn't pull a runner for Austria. That was stupid.

What happens if they don't run? If Louis stays in place? Does he still get executed? Does Marie-Antoinette (and if Louis's trial was not a show trial, hers with all the fake incest stuff definitely was)? How about Madame Elisabeth? Does the Dauphin still get mistreated to death? Do things turn out differently?


Somehow I doubt it. Reading about some of the Reign of Terror, particularly in the Vendee and how it was put down and in the indiscriminate killing of people who nobody in their right minds could think were able to harm the state (like the Nuns of Compiegne) and some of the behavior of the representatives on mission like Fouche who seemed to enjoy killing people and the whole De-Christianization mania, THAT was like nothing the rest of Europe had seen before. You can't explain it away as something that was par for the course.
 
Yes but you need to take into account how things started. You are right saying that foreign war drove to more extremism and violence in the revolution. But historians have shown that there was intrinsic violence and extremism in the revolution. Violence did not start in 1792. The best historians have demonstrated it : the best of all being François Furet.

Which as I said is not as surprising as it would seem. The stuff the ancien regime did to its opponents was just as brutal, in some cases far worse. It's the cycle of abuse write large; when you have a population that's been living under the yoke of cruel landlords if they get the chance to rise up and exact something they would call justice should it be surprising if they lash out with the same things they've been forced to endure? It doesn't excuse it but a lot of the violence of the French Revolution was mirroring the violence in French society and under the ancien regime.

What happens if they don't run? If Louis stays in place? Does he still get executed? Does Marie-Antoinette (and if Louis's trial was not a show trial, hers with all the fake incest stuff definitely was)? How about Madame Elisabeth? Does the Dauphin still get mistreated to death? Do things turn out differently?

They didn't manage to get the support to take out Louis until AFTER he tried to flee for Austria. Louis wasn't in a good position staying but leaving was what got him killed; it was used as the crux of the charges against him to argue that he was attempting to conspire with the Austrians and overthrow the Revolution. In the atmosphere of the times and circumstances even appearing to do so was an incredibly dangerous thing to do and given the noises the Austrian Emperor was making I think it would be credible to assume that Louis making it to Vienna would have led to Louis coming back at the head of a foreign army. Even if he didn't plan on doing it the Hapsburgs certainly would have done so.

Take note his trial didn't happen until after they arrested him for his attempted flight. That's a very critical detail in the whole situation.



Somehow I doubt it. Reading about some of the Reign of Terror, particularly in the Vendee and how it was put down and in the indiscriminate killing of people who nobody in their right minds could think were able to harm the state (like the Nuns of Compiegne) and some of the behavior of the representatives on mission like Fouche who seemed to enjoy killing people and the whole De-Christianization mania, THAT was like nothing the rest of Europe had seen before. You can't explain it away as something that was par for the course.

Are you familiar with what the French monarchy consistently did to suppress peasant and noble revolts going back at least as far as the Fronde? You can denounce revolutionary violence all you want but in its context the only thing the French state was doing that truly went beyond the pale was regicide. The kind of violence they unleashed on the Vendee and the federalist revolts was no different from what the King would have done, what French Kings have done, and what the British did four years later in Ireland. It doesn't excuse any of it but acting as if the violence of the French Revolution was somehow spectacularly beyond the pale misses that the contemporary critics of it were horrified by the upending of social structures more than anything else and used the violence to prove their point. The British had no problem after they finished the Napoleonic Wars turning their troops loose on their own people at Peterloo in a fashion not unlike Napoleon's use of military force to maintain the Directorate government or the suppression of Marseilles.

And that's before we get into what would happen if you fell into the tender mercies of Austria, Prussia, or Gods forbid the Russian Empire. What was visited on the rebels during Pugachev's Revolt was easily as bad, if not worse, than the Vendee.
 
LHB said:
They didn't manage to get the support to take out Louis until AFTER he tried to flee for Austria. Louis wasn't in a good position staying but leaving was what got him killed; it was used as the crux of the charges against him to argue that he was attempting to conspire with the Austrians and overthrow the Revolution. In the atmosphere of the times and circumstances even appearing to do so was an incredibly dangerous thing to do and given the noises the Austrian Emperor was making I think it would be credible to assume that Louis making it to Vienna would have led to Louis coming back at the head of a foreign army. Even if he didn't plan on doing it the Hapsburgs certainly would have done so.

Take note his trial didn't happen until after they arrested him for his attempted flight. That's a very critical detail in the whole situation.
Even if Louis XVI hadn't left, I'm not sure he would have been spared by the Revolution. He was more of a burden to the Revolutionnaries than an asset: remember that he was called "M. Veto" at the time because he kept using his veto on the laws established by the Assemblée Nationale. On many issues, he wasn't willing to cooperate with the Revolution, mainly because it was a new way of governing he didn't understand and hadn't been prepared for, coupled with a personnal disagreement on certain issues (such as the Constitution Civil du Clergé). I also believe the Assemblée was starting to shift to Republicanism though I think it needs to be checked.

There is also the whole problem of the Armoire de fer and what it contained. If word ever gets out about it, Louis could be in serious trouble. The armoire did contain a number of compromising documents after all, that were used in Louis' trial.
LHB said:
The kind of violence they unleashed on the Vendee and the federalist revolts was no different from what the King would have done, what French Kings have done
Allow me to disagree on that. Are you familiar with the Colonnes Infernales led by Turreau? The basic principle was to have armies walk through Vendee, burn every village they found on their travel and kill absolutely every person (Man, Woman or Child) living in said villages. Now, maybe I'm wrong but I don't think that such kind of violence had ever seen before in terms of revolts. Sure, you probably had a few villages burned and a few people slaughtered in the past during rebellions, but not on that scale. And it certainly wasn't considered to be the normal procedure... Among the authorities, there really was the idea of conducting a purge in Vendée.

There are even a few historians of the Wars of Vendée that are ready to use the terms "Genocide" or "Populicide" to talk about it. It's a big controversy to use such terms, but if people are willing to use them for what happened in Vendée, then I don't think you can say it was standard for the time.
LHB said:
It doesn't excuse any of it but acting as if the violence of the French Revolution was somehow spectacularly beyond the pale misses that the contemporary critics of it were horrified by the upending of social structures more than anything else and used the violence to prove their point.
While what you said is true, that doesn't mean that the violence were way beyond what the contemporaries were used to.
 
Which as I said is not as surprising as it would seem. The stuff the ancien regime did to its opponents was just as brutal, in some cases far worse. It's the cycle of abuse write large; when you have a population that's been living under the yoke of cruel landlords if they get the chance to rise up and exact something they would call justice should it be surprising if they lash out with the same things they've been forced to endure? It doesn't excuse it but a lot of the violence of the French Revolution was mirroring the violence in French society and under the ancien regime.



They didn't manage to get the support to take out Louis until AFTER he tried to flee for Austria. Louis wasn't in a good position staying but leaving was what got him killed; it was used as the crux of the charges against him to argue that he was attempting to conspire with the Austrians and overthrow the Revolution. In the atmosphere of the times and circumstances even appearing to do so was an incredibly dangerous thing to do and given the noises the Austrian Emperor was making I think it would be credible to assume that Louis making it to Vienna would have led to Louis coming back at the head of a foreign army. Even if he didn't plan on doing it the Hapsburgs certainly would have done so.

Take note his trial didn't happen until after they arrested him for his attempted flight. That's a very critical detail in the whole situation.





Are you familiar with what the French monarchy consistently did to suppress peasant and noble revolts going back at least as far as the Fronde? You can denounce revolutionary violence all you want but in its context the only thing the French state was doing that truly went beyond the pale was regicide. The kind of violence they unleashed on the Vendee and the federalist revolts was no different from what the King would have done, what French Kings have done, and what the British did four years later in Ireland. It doesn't excuse any of it but acting as if the violence of the French Revolution was somehow spectacularly beyond the pale misses that the contemporary critics of it were horrified by the upending of social structures more than anything else and used the violence to prove their point. The British had no problem after they finished the Napoleonic Wars turning their troops loose on their own people at Peterloo in a fashion not unlike Napoleon's use of military force to maintain the Directorate government or the suppression of Marseilles.

And that's before we get into what would happen if you fell into the tender mercies of Austria, Prussia, or Gods forbid the Russian Empire. What was visited on the rebels during Pugachev's Revolt was easily as bad, if not worse, than the Vendee.

You are caricatural and without foundations on historical facts when you way that the revolution was some kind of fair revenge for the previous violences of the monarchy against peasant of noble revolts.

This is not what the revolution was. This what political propaganda said afterwards.

The revolution initially was due to the king's inability to overcome the nobility's obstruction to reform.
Then it became an alliance of bourgeoisie and nobility to save the rotten debt they held on the treasury by swaping them against the public real Estate that financed what was the public healthcare, basic education and charity unefficient system. Think of eltsinian privatizations. And at the same moment, the Masters that worked in the courts (called "parliaments") went in. They made the legal and bourgeois revolution. A minorité biffer than the nobility, but a small minorité. But the électoral system (with several levels of vote) had produced the result that, as the sole structured kind of party (the clubs) they got almost all the seats in the Tiers Etat.
Then the peasants who hated the tax farmers (high nobles and high burgesses) went in to get did of the last symbols of Feodality, to destroy debt proofs and to get their share.

There were almost no serfs. Forget the big landlord concept too. The french nobility had its very rich nobles but was very different from the english nobility. The problem was legal unequality, peasants' piverts, and the suite many impoverished nobles that often opposed reform.
 
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You are caricatural and without foundations on historical facts when you way that the revolution was some kind of fair revenge for the previous violences of the monarchy against peasant of noble revolts.

This is not what the revolution was. This what political propaganda said afterwards.

The revolution initially was due to the king's inability to overcome the nobility's obstruction to reform.
Then it became an alliance of bourgeoisie and nobility to save the rotten debt they held on the treasury by swaping them against the public real Estate that financed what was the public healthcare, basic education and charity unefficient system. Think of eltsinian privatizations. And at the same moment, the Masters that worked in the courts (called "parliaments") went in. They made the legal and bourgeois revolution. A minorité biffer than the nobility, but a small minorité. But the électoral system (with several levels of vote) had produced the result that, as the sole structured kind of party (the clubs) they got almost all the seats in the Tiers Etat.
Then the peasants who hated the tax farmers (high nobles and high burgesses) went in to get did of the last symbols of Feodality, to destroy debt proofs and to get their share.

There were almost no serfs. Forget the big landlord concept too. The french nobility had its very rich nobles but was very different from the english nobility. The problem was legal unequality, peasants' piverts, and the suite many impoverished nobles that often opposed reform.

Umm no.

There's lots of records of spontaneous actions taken by peasants against landlords, groups of landlords against powerful lords, breakaway regions advocating for a more decentralized system, and of course the Vendee. The general historical consensus is France was, in a lot of ways, coming apart at the seams between the domestic upheaval outside of Paris and multiple foreign invasions and it was a miracle the French Republic survived 1793 and 1794.

And more to the point you're shoving words in my mouth. Show me where I said the violence was justified. I certainly said it was understandable given circumstances but that does not justify it. Please do not buy into the Whiggish whitewash; even Palmer in Twelve Who Ruled gave considerable time to these smaller details and all he did was follow the Committee of Public Safety for its entire existence. The French Revolution was a lot more than just what was going on in Paris and Versailles.

Either way that doesn't change the punishments that would be visited upon the revolutionary leaders if they lost were just as steep as if they were peasants, in many ways worse. Rebellion and treason were great ways in ancien regime France to die very slowly and painfully before you start committing regicide and inviting attack by every great power in Europe. The people running, such as one could given how limited Paris' reach actually was beyond the Isle de France as of June of 1793, the French Revolution when the Terror began were fighting for their lives, backed into a corner, and the only way out they could think of given what they had to work with involved killing a whole lot of people. It doesn't, I repeat, in any way justify what was done.

What it does is explain why it was done and what, based on that, would be necessary to prevent that. A more stable domestic situation or a better military/foreign affairs one would be the most effective ways to avert such a siege state though getting either is tricky and after Louis XVI makes his escape attempt to Austria, succeed or fail, it becomes nearly impossible.
 
Even if Louis XVI hadn't left, I'm not sure he would have been spared by the Revolution.
The Revolution wasn't doomed to evolve in a really precise way. Louis fleeing to Varennes represented an important change in mentalities, for what matters to the king and as well to the assembly (critically with the ludicrous official tale about the king being kidnapped).

Without Varennes, republicanism would have an harder time imposing itself and Louis remaining a token figurehead; inner restrictions on movements would probably be delayed; and Feuillants holding more power and critically, no Champ de Mars massacre that radicalized Jacobins and decredibilized Feuillants.
It doesn't mean revolutionary violence would disappear but it would be turned to other focuses.

He was more of a burden to the Revolutionnaries than an asset: remember that he was called "M. Veto" at the time because he kept using his veto on the laws established by the Assemblée Nationale.

First, it's worthwhile noticing that there was not National Assembly in June 1791, and that the National Assembly, and the constitution, appeared in September. After Varennes. I'm not that sure arguing of something happening in September is wise when it comes to an event in June.
That Louis demonstrated his opposition is a thing, but the royal "strike" mostly happened after June.

While convenient, treating the National Assembly as an unified body is probably not really useful historically. The diverse parties in presence had different views and objectives, Feuillants, Jacobins, Démocrates (in the old sense of "populists", "agitators", "leftists") without counting Marais that gathered the majority of the assembly and without real defining ideology (and usually served interest of the most popular party).
Again, without massacre of Champ de Mars, Jacobins would radicalize more slowly, and probably have inner divisions between their center-right and left appearing more obviously.

There is also the whole problem of the Armoire de fer and what it contained. If word ever gets out about it, Louis could be in serious trouble. The armoire did contain a number of compromising documents after all, that were used in Louis' trial.
It's to be noted that it wasn't discovered before late 1792, mostly because it wasn't even a thing before being build in mid-1792, and by denounciation in a climate where royal figure was not only discredited but as well being overtrew by the proclamation of the Republic.

Sure, you probably had a few villages burned and a few people slaughtered in the past during rebellions, but not on that scale. And it certainly wasn't considered to be the normal procedure... Among the authorities, there really was the idea of conducting a purge in Vendée.
The official estimations, in lack of proper statistics, were heavily based on wishful thinking from both monarchists and republicans, each side tending to blow out numbers in order to point monstruosity or determination of republican side.

Around 150 000 deaths (including non-Vendeans and including undirect causes, as starvation, diseases WITH the republican Vendeans death) for the whole Vendée militaire (meaning more than just Vendée strictly speaking), with a similar death rate among Republican troops points an harsh and bloody war, but not really an obviously unbalanced conflict (if the length of the war didn't pointed out that already).

That the idea existed among some circles (I'd tend to think that the Assembly was divided as it always was on it, Enragés tending to blow everything out, Robespierristes and Indulgents being themselves divided between giving room to popular opinion and radicals to vent off their rage; participating actively or not caring much).
Without an unified political rule, the revenge fantasy of radical terrorists (in the political sense) had an hard time making it a thing (and if we have to use the comparison with Fouché's treatment of Lyon, or Trueau's destution in 1794, may have importantly weakened their position if really tried).

Again, treating the Assembly and political power as unified in political rule is a really heavy mistake, because this desunion is another explanation : the army itself was poorly managed and the conflict was often the war between plundering Vendeans (they weren't the last ones to plunder and raid non-Vendeans (the definition blurry at best) places and plundering Republican troops.

There are even a few historians of the Wars of Vendée that are ready to use the terms "Genocide" or "Populicide" to talk about it. It's a big controversy to use such terms, but if people are willing to use them for what happened in Vendée, then I don't think you can say it was standard for the time.
Allow me to intervente, there. The qualification of "génocide" is controversial because the people using it are usually politically motivated : Reynald Secher is a catholic hardliner and close to Action Française (far-right monarchist political movement), for exemple.
Pierre Chaunu, former chronicler in Radio Courtoisie (far-right radio station).

It doesn't automatically led to a refusal of their thesis, but pointing out that the main proponents of these are either far-righters or close to them is still relevant to the whole discussion, critically giving that the whole crushing masse of historians disagree with them on this.

It's essentially a french issue, meaning there that past a vocal minority in France, you have none to very little support for these thesis internationally among historians.

And of course, it's not because one is running circles shouting "Genocide" that it gave the concept used as such any credibility.
Hell, even François Furet, someone that it would be really hard to paint as a leftist, argued in favor of distinguishing crimes, slaughters from a genocide.
 
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Umm no.

There's lots of records of spontaneous actions taken by peasants against landlords, groups of landlords against powerful lords, breakaway regions advocating for a more decentralized system, and of course the Vendee. The general historical consensus is France was, in a lot of ways, coming apart at the seams between the domestic upheaval outside of Paris and multiple foreign invasions and it was a miracle the French Republic survived 1793 and 1794.

And more to the point you're shoving words in my mouth. Show me where I said the violence was justified. I certainly said it was understandable given circumstances but that does not justify it. Please do not buy into the Whiggish whitewash; even Palmer in Twelve Who Ruled gave considerable time to these smaller details and all he did was follow the Committee of Public Safety for its entire existence. The French Revolution was a lot more than just what was going on in Paris and Versailles.

Either way that doesn't change the punishments that would be visited upon the revolutionary leaders if they lost were just as steep as if they were peasants, in many ways worse. Rebellion and treason were great ways in ancien regime France to die very slowly and painfully before you start committing regicide and inviting attack by every great power in Europe. The people running, such as one could given how limited Paris' reach actually was beyond the Isle de France as of June of 1793, the French Revolution when the Terror began were fighting for their lives, backed into a corner, and the only way out they could think of given what they had to work with involved killing a whole lot of people. It doesn't, I repeat, in any way justify what was done.

What it does is explain why it was done and what, based on that, would be necessary to prevent that. A more stable domestic situation or a better military/foreign affairs one would be the most effective ways to avert such a siege state though getting either is tricky and after Louis XVI makes his escape attempt to Austria, succeed or fail, it becomes nearly impossible.

I did not mean you justified those behaviours. This is not a question of morals of opinion on who was right or wrong or had good reasons to act violently.

I meant that your explanation was wrong.

If the would-be revolutionaries had been confronted to a determined and ruthless king (like Charles V, Louis XI, Henri III, Henri IV, Louis XIII, Louis XIV of Louis XV), they would not have dared make a fourth of the decisions they made nor a tenth of the violence they resorted to.

They did it precisely because they were almost sure that Louis XVI was so weak and so unable to take strong measures that they actually did not risk much.

Young Napoleon called Louis XVI the "gran coglione" and said that a good shooting on the mob would have calmed things and people down and would have avoided 10 years of chaos, ruin and civil war.
He knew what he talked about. He did it in 1795 in Paris. And in 1799, Murat sent the grenadiers to disband the rebelling assembly of the 500 council.
 
Charles V
Jacqueries, Etienne Marcel, later peasant revolts.
Ligue du Bien Public
Henri III
Sainte Ligue, was murdered.
Sainte Ligue, hard-line Protestants was murdered after several attempts.
Louis XIII
Dévots, endless revolts from nobility and Protestants
Louis XIV
Fronde, Camisards
Almost murdered. Largely responsible of the ongoing crisis in 1789.

The point is less to make an amusing list of revolts, but to point out that because a king is strong it doesn't mean he doesn't have to face revolts, uprisings, huge troubles (in fact, being strong often caused these).
The main difference was the ability of these kings to fight back : Louis XVI, already not helped by his psychology, didn't had enough political room to manoeuvre.
Empty treasury (it was the point of gathering EG in first place), growing ideological opposition since Louis XV, stunch refusal of reforms from high aristocracy and Versailles court...Even if Louis XVI was a behemoth of strength and resolution, he wouldn't have the very grounds to crush the ongoing changes.
 
Allow me to disagree on that. Are you familiar with the Colonnes Infernales led by Turreau? The basic principle was to have armies walk through Vendee, burn every village they found on their travel and kill absolutely every person (Man, Woman or Child) living in said villages. Now, maybe I'm wrong but I don't think that such kind of violence had ever seen before in terms of revolts. Sure, you probably had a few villages burned and a few people slaughtered in the past during rebellions, but not on that scale. And it certainly wasn't considered to be the normal procedure... Among the authorities, there really was the idea of conducting a purge in Vendée.

1. Colonnes Infernales massacres are greatly over estimated
2. The Vendée was mostly evacuated at that point, as most republicans had already flew or were killed by the insurgents. The first massacres in Vendée were done by the monarchists who killed everyone who supported the republic and didn't flee.
3. It was standard practice in this era. Alsace lost a third of it's population in one war, and it wasn't due to famine or epidemics. It was due to armies basically burning every village they marched upon.

There are even a few historians of the Wars of Vendée that are ready to use the terms "Genocide" or "Populicide" to talk about it. It's a big controversy to use such terms, but if people are willing to use them for what happened in Vendée, then I don't think you can say it was standard for the time.
While what you said is true, that doesn't mean that the violence were way beyond what the contemporaries were used to.

Far right historians ? Yeah, good sources.
 
If there hadn't been foreign armies involved (and that is an awfully big ask given Marie Antoinette was Austrian royalty) could the French revolution developed into something like the Commonwealth that developed in Britain 150 years earlier with Napoleon (or someone else given knockons and butterflies) being the Cromwell figure?
(Or was Britain saved from a French style revolution because it was an island?)
 
Jacqueries, Etienne Marcel, later peasant revolts.

Ligue du Bien Public

Sainte Ligue, was murdered.

Sainte Ligue, hard-line Protestants was murdered after several attempts.

Dévots, endless revolts from nobility and Protestants

Fronde, Camisards

Almost murdered. Largely responsible of the ongoing crisis in 1789.

The point is less to make an amusing list of revolts, but to point out that because a king is strong it doesn't mean he doesn't have to face revolts, uprisings, huge troubles (in fact, being strong often caused these).
The main difference was the ability of these kings to fight back : Louis XVI, already not helped by his psychology, didn't had enough political room to manoeuvre.
Empty treasury (it was the point of gathering EG in first place), growing ideological opposition since Louis XV, stunch refusal of reforms from high aristocracy and Versailles court...Even if Louis XVI was a behemoth of strength and resolution, he wouldn't have the very grounds to crush the ongoing changes.

I may have misunderstood you. But if you think that the king had less means in the time of Louis XVI than 2 centuries earlier, you are wrong.

France was much richer in 1789 than a century earlier.

Historians like Frenand Braudel have even shown that though different, the economic growth of France in the 18th century was not weaker than Britain's.

Estimated rates compared to "GDP" were twice as big in England as in France.

The debt problem was perfectly fixable. It had already been fixed in other past occasions. The key factor was the king's incompetence. Louis XVI, though a highly educated MAJ and certainly a really good and kind person, was the wrong man in the wrong place in the wrong moment. Such coïncidences happen very rarely in History. But when they do, it's the total crash.
 
If there hadn't been foreign armies involved (and that is an awfully big ask given Marie Antoinette was Austrian royalty) could the French revolution developed into something like the Commonwealth that developed in Britain 150 years earlier with Napoleon (or someone else given knockons and butterflies) being the Cromwell figure?
(Or was Britain saved from a French style revolution because it was an island?)

I don't think so. The military part of the Revolution really develloped itself after 1792, so you could easily rule out a military takeover that early (putting aside that avoiding entierly foreign intervention would be relativly hard to do at term).
Critically with Napoléon that was basically nothing but a skilled student and second lieutnant with a bad reputation when it comes to taking regular leaves. Without a similar revolutionnary progression, it's not a given he'd rise that easily.

A really important factor, again, was the division of revolutionaries parties outside "Something have to change". Even the declaration of war divided and gathered parties along weird lines : Feuillants (center-right) and Montagnards (left) and Démocrates (far-left) were all opposed for different motives (essentially seeing it as diverting from national issues, and being adventurist); while Girondins (center-left/left) and Royalists (right-wing, far-right) favoured it, hoping it would discredit and provoke the fall of each other.

Contrary to the ECW, French Revolution was more civily-wise politized, on overlapping lines (Jacobins could gather Montagnards, Girondins or Démocrates as well) due to the absence of formal political party structure. If something have to change compared to IOTL, it should rather happen either in Assembly, Clubs or municipal sections of Paris and more generally the popular stance heated by liberalisation of news, political platforms and ideologies.

France was much richer in 1789 than a century earlier.
I won't quote the entierty of your post, as I generally agree with.
Where I beg to differ is about confusing and mixing general wealth of France, with the state treasury.

The debt problem was perfectly fixable. It had already been fixed in other past occasions.
Indeed, but never at this scale. Philippe d'Orléans and Louis XV managed to deal with an important fiscal legacy from Louis XIV (essentially the War of Spanish Succession), that was still dwarfed by the 1789 debt (more than 100% of the income), in a time where royal treasury couldn't count as much on direct revenues and didn't beneficied from a favourable financial background as Britain.

It's not as Louis XVI didn't tried, and his ministers, to deal with. But the cristallisation of Ancien Régime society in face of its contradictions, bogged down these attempts from whatever side : financial and market investment on loans or colonial production, Necker's plan, Turgot's plan, etc.

More than "Louis XVI being an idiot" as an answer for everything (that was the favourite position of Artois and ultra-royalists as it prevented them to chellenge their conceptions) an analysis of Ancien Régime society and its contradictions (between sclerosed social order and new conceptions) as blocking an inner reform of the state may be preferred.

Not that the debt problem would have been easily resolved if one of these plans would have been magically accepted. Eventually, even the French Revolution failed to deal with, and went in bankrupcy in 1797 trying the assignat policy and limitation of prices.
 
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