A Protestant France?

sbegin said:
Maybe do away with Cardinal Richelieu? Wasn't he the one who persuaded Louis XIV to repeal the Edict of Nantes? I.


Shall I suggest you try reading some history before posting here, just to avoid coming across as ignorant of what you are speaking about?

Richelieu was prime Minister for Louis XIII, not Louis XIV. In 1685, for the edit of fontainebleau ( revocation of the edit de Nantes ), Richelieu ( 1585-1642 ) was long dead. So was Mazarin ( 1602 -1661 ), Richelieu's sucessor.

Richelieu did indeed attack the protestants to get rid of the 'places de suretés', which was part and parcel of his campaign to reinforce the royal authority. However, at the edit of Ales, which stripped the protestant of their fortresses, he spitulated the liberty of cult for the protestants.
 
Faeelin said:
To the parts of the revolution dependent on ironworking, yes. But to the rest of it? I'm not so certain.

Yes... it's certainly intereting, could it mean some sort of 'joint revolution' maybe?

Faeelin said:
Besides, what else are the coal and iron fields of the Low Countries for?

:D Very well put...

Faeelin said:
Canada didn't fall until the 18th century; had it contained several tens of thousands of Hugenot immigrants, with a population growing as rapidly as in OTL, the French might very well have pinned the English against the Atlantic.

Oh yes, but maybe Wolfe still wins? or the emigration does not happen for some reason...


Faeelin said:
What about Ruled Britannia?

Which has Englnan/Britain occupied from the start?

btw... are you the Faeelin from Paradox forums? there seemas to be a lot of us about here... :)
 
I have a couple PoD to propose for protestant France, which are more original that the Henry IV ones :

+ The Guise take up the flags of protestantism instead of radical catholicism. At one point they were thinking about it and it would have enabled them to size considerable church properties. OTL, the Guise chose to come to power by being more catholic than the king; What if they choose the other way. Of course, by reaction, it will cause for OTL protestant lords to become catholicism's champions. But the Guise main lands and center of powers were to the east of france, so they can link much more easily to the german and dutch protestants.

+ Francois II's court converts to protestantism. The Guise at one point tried to kidnapp the young king, to raise him under their influance rather than the one of his mother. OTL, the conspiracy was discovered before it happened, so the guise were exiled from court for a time, but nothing was said overtly. Now, suppose that the conspiracy had gone and the king being kidnapped, only to be released by an attack on his captors ( maybe by a loyal protestant lord? ). The backlash against the League would have to be public and extreme. It could well be to make protestantism the court religion. At this time, the sides were still fluid enougth that this would likely have tipped the scales for the whole of France.

+ As a third, and less interesting possibility, go back to the very beginning. If the 'affaire des placards' does not occur, Francois I isn't angry with protestantism and his sister is still protecting protestants and presenting them. Given the problems Francois had with the various popes, a solution comes immediately to mind...
 
Faeelin said:
To the parts of the revolution dependent on ironworking, yes. But to the rest of it? I'm not so certain.

Besides, what else are the coal and iron fields of the Low Countries for?
Or Lorraine, come to that.

Beside, the biggest bar to a french IR OTL, was not the lack of materials, it was 1) the social structure whith a nobility gaining money by royal favor and a bourgeoisie which had little possibility of social advencement 2) an archaic or inexistant banking system ( due to Law's bankrupcy ) and 3) the Paulette, which led the bourgeoisie to spend capital to buy charges instead of investing.

All three are likely to disapear in a protestant France
 
Akiyama said:
I was wondering the other day . . . you know how Catholic nations tend to have a more relaxed attitude to work than Protestant nations . . . well, what if France were Protestant and Germany were Catholic?
The Rhineland, where German industrialization started, is Catholic.
Would this lead to the Germans working 35 hour weeks, long weekends, two-hour lunch breaks, all the workplaces are deserted in August etc. while the hard-working French are busy designing, engineering, manufacturing and exporting?
Instead of religion, I would look at the Northern, mediterrean split of Europe.

Or else you have to explain countries like Ireland, Poland and the Czech Republic, all at least nominally Catholic.
 
Alas, the House of Guise yearned to usurp the House of Navarre, the rightful heirs, which left them little alternative but to support the Church in return for aid against Henry of Navarre.

Richeliu did indeed battle the Protestants, to put down what was literally a state with the state but would never have approved the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

In G. Tuckman's The March Of Folly this was listed as one of the classic examples of folly in government, whereby it was universally seen as disastrous and wrong, perhaps even beyond the actual serious affects, once it was too late yet somehow no one save the Dauphin thought to oppose it at the time.
 
SirCliveWolfe said:
Canada... but for how long ;)
It took four wars to get to an English Canada. These include the war of Spainsh Secession, the War of Austrian Sucession, and the Seven years war. I'd say there are no abosolute garentees on an English Canada, depending on the POD.
 

Faeelin

Banned
SirCliveWolfe said:
Oh yes, but maybe Wolfe still wins? or the emigration does not happen for some reason...

Ah, but even in OTL, the conquest of New France was a near run thing. In a Timeline with hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen along the St. Lawrence, it seems much more difficult.

Which has Englnan/Britain occupied from the start?

btw... are you the Faeelin from Paradox forums? there seemas to be a lot of us about here... :)

Sorry, I'm high on cold medicine. I meant "What about the Two Georges?"

And yes, yes I am.
 
Grimm Reaper said:
Alas, the House of Guise yearned to usurp the House of Navarre, the rightful heirs, which left them little alternative but to support the Church in return for aid against Henry of Navarre.

Actually, I was proposing a much earlier conversion, way before Henty of Navarre was even in consideration
 

Faeelin

Banned
fhaessig said:
Beside, the biggest bar to a french IR OTL, was not the lack of materials, it was 1) the social structure whith a nobility gaining money by royal favor and a bourgeoisie which had little possibility of social advencement 2) an archaic or inexistant banking system ( due to Law's bankrupcy ) and 3) the Paulette, which led the bourgeoisie to spend capital to buy charges instead of investing.

All three are likely to disapear in a protestant France

But you had plenty of protestant states in Germany where the nobility gained money by royal favor, and the bourgeioisie had little possibility of social advancement; it's not clear to me that sweden's banking system was more advanced than, say, Genoa's, and, I'm not sure why the Paulette would dissapear.

And, as you point out, Law's attempts at establishing a bank were tried in France; they just didn't pan out.
 
A Glorius Revolution, like Englands, in France might help get rid of those things though...hmmm, Thande's scenario is seeming more and more intrigueing...
 
Clearly it's all the damn Papists fault :rolleyes:

I think the problems were more with the French government, which would probably stay autocratic even with a Protestant King, simply because of the autocratic tradition...
 

Faeelin

Banned
Othniel said:
A Glorius Revolution, like Englands, in France might help get rid of those things though...hmmm, Thande's scenario is seeming more and more intrigueing...

Perhaps the Estates General are called in 1715, out of desperation?
 
Faeelin said:
Perhaps the Estates General are called in 1715, out of desperation?
Hmm, how about 1682 instead? They had just gained Franche-Comte, Alsace, and Stasbourg. Certainly influenced by French Culture, but as newly aquired territories they are certain to have caused Paris some more internal problems than before... but thats right after the Franco-Dutch war...however I'm looking up some of this as we go, so I'm sure you have a better grasp on what is going on...it certainly seems possible to trigger the French revolution earlier if we could only find the match...
 
Thande said:
I must say, I have my doubts about Henri IV-who-decides-that-France-isn't-worth-a-mass actually converting France to Protestantism. I suspect the end result would be more like the reign of Mary I in England - a few years of an unpopular top-down-imposed faith, enforced possibly with atrocities, and then after he dies it all goes back to Catholicism, possibly with popular reprisals against the Huguenots et al.

Is there any particular reason why this scenario is less likely than a Protestant France?

I think it's more likely.

To get a Protestant France, the best bet is probably a POD quite a bit earlier than Henri IV. Perhaps sometime in the reign of Francis I, before the lines have been sharply drawn, and particularly before Calvin has become the dominant influence on French Protestants - because I don't think Calvinism was ever going to have a really broad appeal to the French temperament. Even Lutheranism would have had a better chance; Luther did reputedly say "He who loves not wine, women, and song, remains a fool his whole life long." :D

I can't pinpoint a POD, but in the 1520s and 1530s, reform was still just a fashion among intellectuals and court ladies. Shuffle a mistress or two around, and you could get Francis I going in a more strongly Gallican direction, even taking a cue from across the Channel and breaking with Rome. A Gallican Church would still be Catholic, but once you break off from Rome, it is much easier for it to slide in a Protestant direction, as the Church of England did.

The end result might indeed be rather like Anglicanism - a Gallican Church that remains semi-Catholic in ritual while becoming Protestant in its underlying theology.

-- Rick
 
Rick Robinson said:
The end result might indeed be rather like Anglicanism - a Gallican Church that remains semi-Catholic in ritual while becoming Protestant in its underlying theology.

-- Rick

If France had achieved an Anglican-style Catholic church, at least to the extent that Louis XIV refrained from revoking the Edict of Nantes, what chance poor old Denis Papin would have got the funding - royal funding, even - to pursue his researches into steam engines and hundreds of thousands of happy Huguenots would have gone on to help make France the leading industrial nation in Europe?
 
Thande said:
I must say, I have my doubts about Henri IV-who-decides-that-France-isn't-worth-a-mass actually converting France to Protestantism. I suspect the end result would be more like the reign of Mary I in England - a few years of an unpopular top-down-imposed faith, enforced possibly with atrocities, and then after he dies it all goes back to Catholicism, possibly with popular reprisals against the Huguenots et al.

Is there any particular reason why this scenario is less likely than a Protestant France?

I'm under the impression Henri IV was a more mild personality than Mary. He might succeed with persuasion and strategic bribes where Mary failed with brute force.
 
MerryPrankster said:
I'm under the impression Henri IV was a more mild personality than Mary. He might succeed with persuasion and strategic bribes where Mary failed with brute force.

Especially as he wouldn't try to force any conversion. He would just let it be known that protestants would be favored by the crown. It would be enougth to bring in most of the noble and bourgeoisie;
 
Hypa said:
If France had achieved an Anglican-style Catholic church, at least to the extent that Louis XIV refrained from revoking the Edict of Nantes, what chance poor old Denis Papin would have got the funding - royal funding, even - to pursue his researches into steam engines?

It is not a sure bet that Papin's steam research would have come to anything. Even if he came up with a good working model, applications for a first-generation steam engine were limited. Forget ships, for example; it took a couple of decades of extensive practical experience with the Watt engine before it was successfully adapted to a steamboat.

This isn't to say that there was no chance for Papin to have a transformative effect, only that the technology as such is not enough; there also have to be readily usable applications for a new technology to catch on. Compare to the development of railroads. England in the 18th and early 19th century invested very heavily in canals and coach-roads, both of which - to paraphrase the old National Lampoon - are crude attempts by proto-industrial people to build a railroad. The demand for transport and willingness to invest in it were there, so once the technology was available it was quickly applied.


As an amusing contrast point, some 17th century Frenchman came up with the idea of regular scheduled carriage service around Paris, i.e., an omnibus system. This isn't a gadget, but it was an important "software" innovation with the potential to transform urban life. Alas, the service was limited to nobles, the people who needed it least. It ran for a while as a novelty, but once all the nobles had ridden it once or twice the traffic evaporated, and the service was ended. Omnibuses didn't reappear till sometime around 1800.

-- Rick
 
MerryPrankster said:
I'm under the impression Henri IV was a more mild personality than Mary. He might succeed with persuasion and strategic bribes where Mary failed with brute force.

The flip side is that Henri's personality is exactly why he decided that Paris was worth a mass. :D I doubt that his Protestantism had been totally cynical (he did establish the Edict of Nantes, after all), so he must have concluded that his chances of holding the throne without turning Catholic were fairly grim.

-- Rick
 
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