Britain allying with Revolutionary France?

It is often said, that Britains main motivation for involving in continental wars was to preserve an endangered balance of power.

This implicates, that if the European monarchs had been more successful during the war of the first coalition (before it got "personal" after Napoleons rise to power) Britain might have an interst in supporting France.

An more successful allied campaign against Revolutionary France is hardly impossible, just give Spain more competent monarchs or Prussia better generals or make the counterrevolutionary uprising slightly worse or ...

There might also be some "realpolitical" reasons for Britain to support France, as it would have allowed them to attack the Spanish and Dutch colonial empires while these nations were tied up in an war back home.

Britain was also more liberal than most of its OTL allies and wiki claims that public opinion was intially somewhat friendly toward the revolution. This only changed after the execution of the king, which could easily be butterflied away.

Just imagine Napoleon and Wellington fighting on the same side at Belle Alliance (or where ever they would have met the Prussian-Russian force)
 
The problem was also the symbolism - REAL democracy (in a way), anti-monarchism, etc... Britain would not stand for this, and felt threatened... What if brits rised, too?
 
The problem was also the symbolism - REAL democracy (in a way), anti-monarchism, etc... Britain would not stand for this, and felt threatened... What if brits rised, too?

I think it could go the other way, that a Britain allied with revolutionary France could shape the new French government towards a parliamentary system or even soften the anti-monarchy sentiments towards constitutional monarchy depending on timing this might be Bourbon or Napoleonic.
 
I think it could go the other way, that a Britain allied with revolutionary France could shape the new French government towards a parliamentary system or even soften the anti-monarchy sentiments towards constitutional monarchy depending on timing this might be Bourbon or Napoleonic.

The national assembly ruled as a parliamentary system. Restauration France had a parliamentary system. The only iterations of the french republic with strong presidential systems either disappeared in a few years (second, fourth) or were de facto parliament-run after a while anyway (third).
 

Thande

Donor
The political consensus in Britain at first was a welcoming of the French Revolution: even radical republicanism was preferable to the absolutism it replaced, was the thinking. This view sort of went away when, you know, revolutionary France declared war on us.
 
The political consensus in Britain at first was a welcoming of the French Revolution: even radical republicanism was preferable to the absolutism it replaced, was the thinking. This view sort of went away when, you know, revolutionary France declared war on us.

Actually on Austria, not on Britain. Britain jumped in out of misplaced "monarchist solidarity".
 

Thande

Donor
Actually on Austria, not on Britain. Britain jumped in out of misplaced "monarchist solidarity".

That's not true. France declared war on us, not the other way around. There was little appetite in Britain for war at the time.
 
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