AHC/WI: Revolutionary France Doesn't Go To War, IS Semi-Accepted by Europe

Inspired by a bit of reading on the Revolution:

This idea isn't as outlandish as it may appear at first glance. Revolutionary France was not instantly dogpiled by the rest of Europe, nor was it completely inevitable that it would declare war on the other European powers. Britain actually was overjoyed at the Revolution at first: much if the intelligentsia was delighted to see Britain's nemesis, the evol reactionary Bourbon monarchy, overthrown and replaced with British-style democracy. Austria, Prussia, Spain, et al were obviously less enthusiastic, but were by no means eager for a war with France: even after things really started to turn ugly in the summer of 1791, all that resulted was the Declaration of Pilnitz , which basically said "Don't do anything naughty, or you'll be sorry! I'm serious! Stop laughing!". Heck, as you can read in the Wikipedia page the Holy Roman Emperor even threw in a weasel clause that basically would have prevented Austria from declaring war on France.

So why did the war start? For many reason: partly because it provided the Mountain a convenient enemy to rally France around and justify their assumption of powers; partly because of a genuine wave of xenophobia that swept through France; partly because Louis XVI was caught with a letter requesting a Prussian army to help put him back on the throne; and partly because the French government was certain war was inevitable, so why let the enemy get the jump?

My rough idea for avoiding was goes something like this:

-Selective PoDs in the early 1780s killing off and otherwise indisposing the more radical leaders of the Jacobins (Robespierre, Marat, Danton, etc.).
-Much of the early Revolution goes as per OTL
-In July 1790, the Assembly passes the Civil Constitution of the Clergy as per OTL, perhaps slightly less extreme than its OTL counterpart. Pius VI, after a lengthy deliberation, decides to accept the constitution as he came surprisingly close to in OTL. Though the Papacy remains hostile to France, there will be no cataclysmic break between them as there was IOTL.
-Somehow engender far more opposition to war among the Girondists (not sure hoe to do that), and/or have the Feulliants have more influence on the Assembly.
-By early 1792 have it become clear that the monarchy is doomed; have a deal cut where the monarchy is abolished, Louis is put under a comfortable house arrest, and the new constitution is fairly moderate (not sure if this is workable?)
-Have Leopold II, who was far less belligerent than his successor, Francis II, survive longs past March 1792 (he died at age twenty-five, so this should be doable)

Feel free to tell me if any of this is unworkable. I'm also willing to hear and suggestions, and I'd love to hear any thoughts about the short-term ramifications of a revolutionary Republic in Europe.

EDIT: I have no idea how that smiley got in the title.

How about a Constitutional Monarchy with Louis XVI as a figurehead.

Any revolution which involves the dethroning of the King of France is going to end up with a European war, if only because the rest of Europe accepting it without so much as a finger-wag sets a dangerous precedent suggesting that republicans in other countries could topple their own Kings and get away with it, and that's going to leave every monarch in Europe looking over their shoulder...

It's possible to have the revolution accepted if it can win a war or two and then act non-aggressively so that it doesn't get dragged into another war (i.e. by the UK, who will take any opportunity to pick a fight with a revolutionary France). I'm just not convinced it can be done without warfare in the first place.

Falastur said:

Any revolution which involves the dethroning of the King of France is going to end up with a European war, if only because the rest of Europe accepting it without so much as a finger-wag sets a dangerous precedent suggesting that republicans in other countries could topple their own Kings and get away with it, and that's going to leave every monarch in Europe looking over their shoulder...

It's possible to have the revolution accepted if it can win a war or two and then act non-aggressively so that it doesn't get dragged into another war (i.e. by the UK, who will take any opportunity to pick a fight with a revolutionary France). I'm just not convinced it can be done without warfare in the first place.

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Why would a war be inevitable? After all, when Charles I was executed by Parliament all of Europe was shocked but they didn't declare war on them.

Emperor Constantine said:

Why would a war be inevitable? After all, when Charles I was executed by Parliament all of Europe was shocked but they didn't declare war on them.

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Because when that happened, England was a peripheral country in terms of importance on the centre stage, and had a history of Parliamentary interference in monarchical affairs. In the Tudor era less so, but for centuries the English Kings had needed to butter Parliament up to fund their wars and ambitions, and consequently England had been looked down upon by those more important Kings who could essentially dictate policy to their bureaucracies. When the Commonwealth was instituted, both Spain and France saw it more as an opportunity to reset their stuttering attempts at turning England into little more than a northerly extension of their own military stratagem against their rivals than anything else - they were both convinced they could control their Estates/Cortes', and they were pretty much right. Not only that, but the English Civil War boiled down to whether a Parliament had the right to veto crown policy. The French Revolution was about whether the common peasant had the right to topple an entire government.

150-odd years later, France is the centrepiece of European strategy and one of the countries which historically had a King who absolutely dominated his government and could pretty much ignore anything and anyone if he didn't agree with them. Whereas everyone had dismissed the English Civil War as a King who let his Parliament get too powerful, the French Revolution was proof that anyone was vulnerable if they didn't watch their backs like a hawk. I mean, yes, there were factors like bankruptcy and food shortages involved in it too, but these were factors which every country faced, and really quite often. The French Revolution was a far more credible threat of actually spreading to foreign countries than the English Civil War ever was.

Falastur said:

Because when that happened, England was a peripheral country in terms of importance on the centre stage, and had a history of Parliamentary interference in monarchical affairs. In the Tudor era less so, but for centuries the English Kings had needed to butter Parliament up to fund their wars and ambitions, and consequently England had been looked down upon by those more important Kings who could essentially dictate policy to their bureaucracies. When the Commonwealth was instituted, both Spain and France saw it more as an opportunity to reset their stuttering attempts at turning England into little more than a northerly extension of their own military stratagem against their rivals than anything else - they were both convinced they could control their Estates/Cortes', and they were pretty much right. Not only that, but the English Civil War boiled down to whether a Parliament had the right to veto crown policy. The French Revolution was about whether the common peasant had the right to topple an entire government.

150-odd years later, France is the centrepiece of European strategy and one of the countries which historically had a King who absolutely dominated his government and could pretty much ignore anything and anyone if he didn't agree with them. Whereas everyone had dismissed the English Civil War as a King who let his Parliament get too powerful, the French Revolution was proof that anyone was vulnerable if they didn't watch their backs like a hawk. I mean, yes, there were factors like bankruptcy and food shortages involved in it too, but these were factors which every country faced, and really quite often. The French Revolution was a far more credible threat of actually spreading to foreign countries than the English Civil War ever was.

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Well, we have an expert! If I understand what you're saying correctly, there are two basic options for the scenario in the OP: either the Revolution results in a constitutional monarchy and peace is maintained, or a less belligerent republic wins a smaller war quickly and then stays at peace. Both are interesting, but I'm more interested in the second for the purposes of this thread.

In this case I wonder if it wouldn't be better for Francis to take the throne from Leopoldo earlier, and thus have it be the Austrians who first declare war: after all, it will be hard for the British to sell an aggressive war to restore their arch nemesis to absolute power after his own people threw him out of his country! Especially since pro-revolutionary sentiment in Britain will presumably be stronger due to the less radical nature of the Revolution.

So basically you're looking at a whole multitude, a legion, of PODs leaving a carpet of dead butterflies as far as the eye can see, and then asking what happens next?

wolf_brother said:

So basically you're looking at a whole multitude, a legion, of PODs leaving a carpet of dead butterflies as far as the eye can see, and then asking what happens next?

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Where the hell did that come from?

I have two things I want from this thread: help fleshing out a scenario, and ideas about how the scenario wild go on to unfold. Basically, "what would the future f Europe look like if there was, by 1795, a more moderate than OTL but still radical French Repubic at peace with the rest of Europe" and "how can we get such a republic into existence?" The former is an honest question; the latter I'm open to help on, but I think I gave a fairly good starting point for in my OP. I don't se how I'm killing butterflies; the earliest of these PoDs would be in the early 1780s, and in my scenario France would be almost completely diverged from OTL by 1792; by 1800 Europe would be massively different with butterflies spreading out across the rest of the world.

Well, first say you want to remove all of the Jacobin leadership before the revolution kicks off. As I doubt you're going to be able to get all of them in one small room together prior to the revolution and then throw a bomb in, that's going to require multiple PODs right there. Then you're going to need a POD to change Pius VI's mind regarding the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, as the one doesn't spring forth from the former. Then you want to change the opinions of either the majority of the Girondists or the Feuillants in regards to war with Austria, which itself is going to require at least one POD in and of itself, if not more. Then, you want some sort of arrangement whereby the monarchy is revoked but Louis XVI keeps his head and there's still no war with Austria, which is again going to require another POD or some sort of awkward bridging between one of the former PODs into a mutant butterfly thing to pull off. Finally, you're going to need a POD all its own to get Leopold II to live longer than he did.

So basically you're asking us to pull all of this out of our hats and ignore the swarm of butterflies you just murdered in the process. It's ASB, and that's putting it politely.

EDIT: If you're looking for a successful First Republic that moderates I'd look into a successful Plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise. Even without Napoleon after late 1800 the Coalition forces were already smashed in Italy, and a dead Nap isn't going to change Hohenlinden, so you're still going to see something like the Treaty of Lunéville. The Second Coalition is effectively shattered, and France only needs to bring Britain to the table in an analog to Amiens to end the war altogether. I've done some preliminary research on the matter looking into possibly doing a TL on this myself, because I think it can certainly be done to end the war early and have a republican, if conservative, France stabilize. You don't need to rewrite the entire latter half of the 18th century in Europe to do this properly; use the surgeon's scalpel instead of the butcher's cleaver.

Falastur said:

Because when that happened, England was a peripheral country in terms of importance on the centre stage, and had a history of Parliamentary interference in monarchical affairs.

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This is certainly true, but another key point was exceptionalism, a point which EdT has raised in his Civil War TL: the French popular reaction to England overthrowing and executing Charles was one of smugness, 'those barbarous rosbifs, that could never happen here'. Sounds made up, but true. So they didn't view an English king being killed as a dangerous precedent that could be applied elsewhere. Arguably there was less of an international 'European system' than 150 years later, as a consequence of both economic integration and the advent of the Grand Alliance and Stately Quadrille meaning there was more of a sense of nation states and their monarchs interacting, collaborating and warring on such terms. And so an event of this type in one country was not necessarily regarded as applying to others.

Gosing said:

Inspired by a bit of reading on the Revolution:

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Maybe your reading should be a little bit longer my friend.

This idea isn't as outlandish as it may appear at first glance. Revolutionary France was not instantly dogpiled by the rest of Europe, nor was it completely inevitable that it would declare war on the other European powers. Britain actually was overjoyed at the Revolution at first: much if the intelligentsia was delighted to see Britain's nemesis, the evol reactionary Bourbon monarchy, overthrown and replaced with British-style democracy. Austria, Prussia, Spain, et al were obviously less enthusiastic, but were by no means eager for a war with France: even after things really started to turn ugly in the summer of 1791,

Gosing said:

all that resulted was the Declaration of Pilnitz , which basically said "Don't do anything naughty, or you'll be sorry! I'm serious! Stop laughing!". Heck, as you can read in the Wikipedia page the Holy Roman Emperor even threw in a weasel clause that basically would have prevented Austria from declaring war on France.

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Except that the declaration of Pilnitz was seen as a quasi-declaration of war by the Parisian populace which provoked fear in the hearts of the french people. These fear first quenched the revolutionnary spirits but quickly infuriated the people who then asked for war.

Gosing said:

So why did the war start? For many reason: partly because it provided the Mountain a convenient enemy to rally France around and justify their assumption of powers;

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No. The Montagne wasn't even close to being in power. In fact they only had around 7 deputies (less than 1% of the Assemblé Nationale). It was the Lafayette fraction of the feuillants that wanted war for their own reasons (probably a mix of Lafayette cesarism and a will to strengthen the throne and the constitutional monarchy by a quick victory). The other fraction of the club was the laméthistes who were opposed to war as they wanted to end the revolution and keep the constitutional monarchy as it was. The Girondins in the jacobins who wanted the war despite the opposition of the left of the club (the future Montagne) led by Marat, Robespierre, Desmoulins and Danton. Robespierre warned them about the danger of trying to expand the revolution by strength (no one likes missionaries in uniforms) and the risk of cesarism (he was right). The plaine (the center of the assembly) was indecisive until the dismissing of the laméthistes ministers by the king and the death of Leopold II when they begin to support the belicist views of the Girondins. The king was also a supporter of the war for his own reason. He despised the revolution and wanted to go back to being an absolute monarch and wanted to destabilize the country by declaring war to Austria.

Gosing said:

partly because of a genuine wave of xenophobia that swept through France;

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Which was supported by the fact that the émigrés were building an army in Trier.

Gosing said:

partly because Louis XVI was caught with a letter requesting a Prussian army to help put him back on the throne; and partly because the French government was certain war was inevitable, so why let the enemy get the jump?

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My rough idea for avoiding was goes something like this:

Gosing said:

-Selective PoDs in the early 1780s killing off and otherwise indisposing the more radical leaders of the Jacobins (Robespierre, Marat, Danton, etc.).

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Congratulation, you killed the anti-war group in the Jacobins. War happen earlier.

Gosing said:

-Much of the early Revolution goes as per OTL
-In July 1790, the Assembly passes the Civil Constitution of the Clergy as per OTL, perhaps slightly less extreme than its OTL counterpart. Pius VI, after a lengthy deliberation, decides to accept the constitution as he came surprisingly close to in OTL. Though the Papacy remains hostile to France, there will be no cataclysmic break between them as there was IOTL.

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Civil constitution of the clergy wasn't extreme and was accepted by most priests until the papal bull. Papacy will denounce the civil constitution of the clergy as soon as France annex Avignon, which will happen sooner or latter. Papal opposition was about temporal power, not about a stupid oath.

Gosing said:

-Somehow engender far more opposition to war among the Girondists (not sure hoe to do that), and/or have the Feulliants have more influence on the Assembly.

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The girondists will want war no matter what you do, as they thinked that war would direct the sans-cullotes wrath against someone else. It didn't work. The feuillants couldn't have more influence in the Assembly : the king loathed them (he hated constitutionnal monarchy), they were disunited, opposed by the royal court and the parisian mob hated them as they were mostly nobles.

Gosing said:

-By early 1792 have it become clear that the monarchy is doomed; have a deal cut where the monarchy is abolished, Louis is put under a comfortable house arrest, and the new constitution is fairly moderate (not sure if this is workable?)

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New constitution was fairly moderate, Louis XVI death could be avoided, but he would still be exiled at the end of the war (the second option in the assembly after his treason).