AH Challenge: First French Republic Survives

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have the First French Republic survive until at least the 20th Century - by any means necessary.

+10 points if they keep all OTL's territory.
+20 points if they can retain American colonies.
+50 points if they survive until 2007.
 
The problem is that 'first french republic' cover a lot of actual regimes, between the fall of the monarchy and the establishment of the empire.

In order to keep a first french republic alive today, it needs to stay alive in its first years ( keeping it alive is just a matter of butterflies ).

There are two difficulties to that.

The first is internal revolt/coup. However, have basically anyone other than Napoleon succeed at a coup and the republic will be retained, if a restoration can be avoided. Coups by Hoche, Moreau or Massena are the usual suspects for these TL.

More interesting, IMO, are TL which avoid the need for these coup. OTL, the coup was a reaction against the excess of the directoire, which were, in turn, a reaction to the Terror. The most interesting PoD here, I think, are either the girondins win the power struggle ( which may require no invasion of France, or at least a delayed one ) or Robespierre stays in power ( he doesn't hesitate and sends the sections to arrest his foe instead of waiting and let them disperse ).

The second point is to avoid the kings retrun dans les fourgeons de l'ennemi. Avoiding this requires avoiding a successfull invasion of France. That is sucessfully uniting the whole of europe against France for a decade and fritting away all of the army for nothing. Just avoiding Napoleon will do this, I think.

Then, everything is up in the air.

You're coming up against the usual trouble with PoD during the french revolution ( and the reasons lazy author always get a french revolution exactly as OTL even with an earlier PoD ); it was nearly inevitable, but its OTL course was a very low probability course. Change anything and you change everything. And europe is no longer recognisable afterward, so you don't really have anything to build the rest of your TL upon.
 
Best shot is to have Napoleon's Consulate system stay in power, and he settles for what he's got in 1804.
 
I've got something similar rolling about in my head, although the the PoD is in 1791, 15 months before the FR is technically declared, when the escape attempt of the royals is still stopped, but far more quietly; Marie Antoinette is separated from the king, and is herself allowed to quietly flee to Austria. This has the butterfly effects of:

a) not having demonstrations that lead to the Massacre of the Champ de Mars, so that LaFayette is still very popular, and poised to take

b) delaying the Declaration by a couple of years, at least, meaning that when the National Convention convenes, the country is still at peace; this would make it more likely that they perform the task assigned them, which was to draw up a Constitution

Combine (a) and (b) and you have new elections (with the intention of making them regular), and a popular military figure (with ties to the United States and George Washington). Assume the Constitution drawn up adopts a Presidential system, LaFayette could be the first.

(And yes, this post has been dead for years, but I had been intending to do the above as a PC anyway, I figured putting it in this context couldn't hurt)
 
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