I was wondering, is that true without a successful American Revolution to "inspire" it, the French Revolution would be doomed to failure, to the point that France itself will be dissolved into several smaller states...?
I will use some part of Monarchy World Timeline as an example, in this TL the French gained Canada, Lousiana, and Australia after Seven Years War, thus ARW never happened and France undergoing dissolution after a failed revolution:
I will use some part of Monarchy World Timeline as an example, in this TL the French gained Canada, Lousiana, and Australia after Seven Years War, thus ARW never happened and France undergoing dissolution after a failed revolution:
So, what do you think? Did a successful ARW absolutely needed to make France revolutionize successfully?1798 - THE DISSOLUTION OF FRANCE
Although they have had good trade with China, France still has problems with its rising national debt and with unrest in the country caused by the high level of taxation on the productive classes, and the unwillingness of the privileged classes to sacrifice any of their perks to help the county. This is not helped by the effort involved in administering the large areas of Australia, Canada and Louisiana [Although France had avoided the expense of helping to free America from British rule] and the general excesses of the French crown and government. This leads to increased taxation, poverty and unrest in France, and therefore repression and harsh punishments. French America and Canada suffered from under-funding.
In 1798 the government's coffers are empty, and there is a bad harvest. The French Director-General of Finances, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, calls an Assembly of Notables, hoping to avert national bankruptcy by inducing the privileged classes to share in the financial burden. They refuse in an effort to protect their economic privileges. King Louis XVI calls an Estates-General to gain the country's consent to a general fiscal reform. Each of the three estates - clergy, nobility, and the third estate, or commons - presents its particular grievances to the Crown. There are so many of these that the situation has become so bad as to drive even the most disparate groups together, and it becomes clear that sweeping political and social reforms, far exceeding the object of its meeting, are expected from the Estates-General.
With the Estates-General refusing to disband, the King is unable to act. The people rise up and storm the Bastille. Filled with hope, and alarmed by food shortages an economic depression, common people across France pillage and burn the apparatus of government, killing many of the nobility and people associated with the government. The nobles and clergy in the Estates-General renounce their privileges in the hope that this will help to stop the unrest, and perhaps save their own lives too, but in the process undoing France's feudal structure. The Estates-General attempts to chart a course for the new France. But with no American revolution to inspire it there is no overall driving force.
The Estates-General becomes factionalised, with many factions surfacing. Groups from all walks of life are polarised against the Crown and the state as it stands, but because their interests are so diverse they cannot agree on a plan, or what to do if they do get things to change for the better. Some want a new King; some the old King under a new constitution; some an Athenian democracy; some turn to foreign powers; some want a new state run on scientific or pseudoscientific principles, and so on. Unable to agree on the way forward, the factions begin to fight, and civil war quickly erupts across all of France. A Corsican officer named Napoleon Buonaparte performs good, if inevitably doomed, service to the French Royalist cause.
There is a bloodbath, as factions fight one another and destroy the remains of the old order. Those members of the French royal family who have not fled the country are wiped out. The Louvre is burned to the ground, along with much of the rest of Paris. The various armies (often little more than mobs) loyal to the various factions rampage about the country. Refugees flood out of the country, to wherever will take them. Large numbers flee into Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Russia, with lesser numbers travelling overseas to begin new lives.
France's neighbours (Spain, Prussia, the UK, the Netherlands, the Italian states) act to secure their borders and grab land. British forces under the command or Horatio Nelson act to regain 'traditionally British lands', such as Calais, Brittany and Bordeaux and to protect its vital trade routes up the English Channel. The British throne does claim the Throne of France (the British monarch is traditionally the monarch of France), but it is quickly realised that taking control of all of France at this point is impractical, to say the least.
The local French forces resist these invasions, but are too disorganised to put up much of a fight, often more interested in fighting one another than the invaders. However, this resistance does convince the foreign nations that they did not want to touch France itself, and eventually the situation there simply stagnates, leaving what was France as a collection of small states controlled by various factions, all mistrustful of each other and foreigners too, with a wide variety of different governments and political systems. Some parts of France are taken by the European powers.
AFTER THE DISSOLUTION
Following the Dissolution, the French states remain opposed to one another, with entrenched views generally being the order of the day. However they have, with time, come to see common interests against outside nations, so that some of them have a loose mutual defence pact, even if they co-operate on very little else, often having closed borders and restrictive taxes and import/export duties on goods to and from French states which they do not get on with. This has not been helped by the appearance, every now and again, of pretenders to the French throne, and the efforts of various intelligence agencies to prevent France re-forming.
Paris becomes a free city, not quite lawless but with very few restrictions on anything. This makes it a magnet for the underworld and libertines from all over Europe. It has been described as 'a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah'.
By the end of the Dissolution, the new French states have stabilised into The Duchy of Auvergne, Normandy, Berry, The Duchy of Paris; ruled from the rebuilt Louvre, Poitou, Savoy, Saintonge, Limousin, Champage, Picardy, Alcase-Lorraine, Provence and Burgundy.
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