France dismembered after the Napoleonic Wars; what happens next?

CaliGuy

Banned
Had the victorious powers--for whatever reason (for instance, perhaps as a result of feeling more angry towards France as a result of a Anglo-Prussian loss at Waterloo and the protracted war that followed)--decided to dismember France after the Napoleonic Wars, how would French and European politics throughout the 19th century have developed?

Also, I want to clarify what exactly I mean by a dismemberment of France here; what I mean is this:

-Occitania is completely split off from France and is turned into a separate kingdom (with a ruler from another royal family).
-What happens with Occitania likewise happens with Brittany. Indeed, it might be more justifiable (from a historical perspective) in the case of Brittany considering that Brittany was previously an independent state and then a duchy for several centuries.
-The Franco-Provencal areas are given to either Switzerland or Piedmont-Sardinia or are split between Switzerland and Piedmont-Sardinia.
-Prussia gets Alsace-Lorraine.
-The Netherlands gets French Flanders.
-The rest of France (rump France/northern France) gets turned into a Bourbon kingdom as in our TL.

Anyway, how does French and European politics throughout the 19th century develop in this TL?
 
They wanted to restore the old order not dismantle France.

Although splitting Brittany does have more justification than everything else you said. That one might actually be a plausible dismembering.

Given that this failed to restore the old order for more than a generation, I think ASBing the knowledge of OTL events into TTL's allies, they might decide to split off Brittany, a few townships to Sardinia (not the whole Provencal areas, just a few tiny bits) give Alscace-Lorraine to Prussia, make Navarre a separate kingdom and enlarge the Netherlands. I mean, OTL's attempts obviously failled dot restore the old order, they might as well give this a shot.
 
You need a POD way, way in the past for this to be vaguely plausible. It can't just be in 1815. They are not going to restore Louis XVIII and then be like "Sorry man, but half your kingdom's gone, sucks to be you"!

The Allies also don't know much about France's linguistic situation at this time. The French government itself didn't know anything about what languages people spoke until Abbé Grégoire's survey in the 1790s. Any sort of division of France would be based on historical borders, which generally had little to do with language. Creating new states based on language would also set a scary precedent for a lot of them.
 
You need a POD way, way in the past for this to be vaguely plausible. It can't just be in 1815. They are not going to restore Louis XVIII and then be like "Sorry man, but half your kingdom's gone, sucks to be you"!

If they knew OTL developments they might be like "sorry man, but 1/4 of your kingdom's gone, sucks to be you."

More seriously, 1802 POD? How about revolutionary France committing atrocities on surrendered enemies and maybe doing bad stuff to even the lowest peasant of the conquered nations? At that point, they might be getting sick of France.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
You need a POD way, way in the past for this to be vaguely plausible. It can't just be in 1815. They are not going to restore Louis XVIII and then be like "Sorry man, but half your kingdom's gone, sucks to be you"!

Do you have any ideas for a good PoD for this?

The Allies also don't know much about France's linguistic situation at this time. The French government itself didn't know anything about what languages people spoke until Abbé Grégoire's survey in the 1790s.

So, Abbe Gregoire's report wasn't public yet in 1815?

Also, how exactly did the French government handle things such as tax collection and law enforcement if it wasn't even sure what languages its subjects spoke?

Any sort of division of France would be based on historical borders, which generally had little to do with language.

So, it would be an even nastier dismemberment of France in comparison to what I have proposed?

Creating new states based on language would also set a scary precedent for a lot of them.

Very true, unfortunately. :(
 

CaliGuy

Banned
If they knew OTL developments they might be like "sorry man, but 1/4 of your kingdom's gone, sucks to be you."

More seriously, 1802 POD? How about revolutionary France committing atrocities on surrendered enemies and maybe doing bad stuff to even the lowest peasant of the conquered nations? At that point, they might be getting sick of France.
That would work but it might require someone more brutal than Napoleon coming to power in France in this TL.
 
How about Napoleon kicks the bucket, but a new super general with less charisma emerges? The Holy Roman Empire is humiliated. In the rural areas, peasants are butchered and raped. in France, the regime goes form Napoleon strongman to a hybrid of strongman and Republic. The elections end up with bloodthirsty leaders who want to destroy the Old Order (and since they are elected, you can blame the people too). Surrenered enemies are massacred. You can add Prussian Crown prince William being in a boarder Prussian city when it gets attacked (dumb, but he was actually in harm's way instead of berlin in OTL if the French army took a detour) and the French kill him when his caretakers tell the attackers there would be a handsome ransom to keeping him alive. It takes the allies more than a decade to bring France to its knees and they are pissed.
 
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If they knew OTL developments they might be like "sorry man, but 1/4 of your kingdom's gone, sucks to be you."

More seriously, 1802 POD? How about revolutionary France committing atrocities on surrendered enemies and maybe doing bad stuff to even the lowest peasant of the conquered nations? At that point, they might be getting sick of France.

But the Bourbons aren't responsible for that. Louis and his relatives have been on the side of the Coalitions the whole time. He's part of the club of European reactionaries. They did punish France to a certain degree (making his government pay 700 million francs in reparations and go back to 1789 borders) but they can't go too much further without seriously undermining his legitimacy.

That's why you need a really distant POD, well before the Revolution. You need to go way back and have Louis XVI act more like Louis XIV and try to dominate Europe, so the rest of Europe hates his guts and wants him to suffer. To do this you probably need a different man reigning than the OTL Louis.
 
Wait, I thought Louis XVI, Maria Antionette and the Dauphin were the reactionaries and the rest just sort of idly watched their family meet the guillotine.
 
Wait, I thought Louis XVI, Maria Antionette and the Dauphin were the reactionaries and the rest just sort of idly watched their family meet the guillotine.

They were. That's why you need a really distant POD to give France a king who wasn't like that. The monarch needs to be the bad guy. Not the people who overthrew him.

From the perspective of an absolute monarch, "France" is the king of France. The subjects who upset the divine order and overthrew Louis XVI were not the real France, they were usurpers.
 
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As I said, the rest of the family (the ones the allies are trying to restore) I didn't see as reactionaries but just idle spectators.
 
As I said, the rest of the family (the ones the allies are trying to restore) I didn't see as reactionaries but just idle spectators.

And that's why the POD needs to butterfly them away and a nastier guy be on the throne.

A lot of men could have been king of France but weren't. Louis XV was the great-grandson of Louis XIV. Louis XVI was the grandson of XV.
 
Would it be possible for France to just collapse into civil war without a partition? One general sets himself up in the Vendee, another in the Massif, another in Gascony, the Vosges, Brittany, the Meuse-Argonne region, etc., and Northern France just lacks the strength to deal with all these contenders, who are getting intermittent subsidies from Great Britain?
 

CaliGuy

Banned
But the Bourbons aren't responsible for that. Louis and his relatives have been on the side of the Coalitions the whole time. He's part of the club of European reactionaries. They did punish France to a certain degree (making his government pay 700 million francs in reparations and go back to 1789 borders) but they can't go too much further without seriously undermining his legitimacy.

That's why you need a really distant POD, well before the Revolution. You need to go way back and have Louis XVI act more like Louis XIV and try to dominate Europe, so the rest of Europe hates his guts and wants him to suffer. To do this you probably need a different man reigning than the OTL Louis.
OK; I get where you're going with this. Indeed, I agree with this.

However, could you please answer my question(s) above about patois and knowledge? Indeed, I am still curious as to how exactly people in high places could be so ignorant about which languages their subjects spoke.
 
But the Bourbons aren't responsible for that. Louis and his relatives have been on the side of the Coalitions the whole time. He's part of the club of European reactionaries. They did punish France to a certain degree (making his government pay 700 million francs in reparations and go back to 1789 borders) but they can't go too much further without seriously undermining his legitimacy.

That's why you need a really distant POD, well before the Revolution. You need to go way back and have Louis XVI act more like Louis XIV and try to dominate Europe, so the rest of Europe hates his guts and wants him to suffer. To do this you probably need a different man reigning than the OTL Louis.
They were responsible for bringing these people to power through sheer incompetence(TWICE) as well as for pushing revolutionary France into declaring war in hopes that France would be overrun by the coalition.
 

longsword14

Banned
One general sets himself up in the Vendee, another in the Massif, another in Gascony, the Vosges, Brittany, the Meuse-Argonne region, etc., and Northern France just lacks the strength to deal with all these contenders, who are getting intermittent subsidies from Great Britain?
Neither the directory, the consulate or the empire ever allowed individual generals such leeway. Things were too centralised for any one to attempt that; the army would not follow. Got to have a drastic POD way back (the only place you could do would be the Vendee and it alone cannot do what is being asked).
Create a great internal upheaval before Napoleon to create factions backed by armies; after Napoleon it is not going to happen.
 
So, Abbe Gregoire's report wasn't public yet in 1815?

Also, how exactly did the French government handle things such as tax collection and law enforcement if it wasn't even sure what languages its subjects spoke?

Under the ancien régime, French was the language of administration, and any nobleman of repute would speak it (as was true of much of the aristocracy of Europe at this time). Royal functionaries from outside the Île-de-France would probably also speak the local "patois", or at least, someone beneath them on the chain of command would. So the king would issue his decree in French and eventually, the common people would hear it in their own language. It didn't matter too much to the king what his subjects spoke, as long as they obeyed his laws and paid their taxes.

During the Revolution, the Assemblée nationale did care what they spoke, though, since if they couldn't speak French, they couldn't participate in the national discourse. The principal goal of Grégoire's survey was to determine how many people actually spoke French. He also catalogued the patois (counting 30 in all) although his methods were not all that scientific. By the time he finished (it took four years), the Convention was in power and it was surprised how much linguistic diversity there was. His report concluded that barely one Frenchman in five could speak the language "as it was used in the Convention and in Paris".

They were responsible for bringing these people to power through sheer incompetence(TWICE) as well as for pushing revolutionary France into declaring war in hopes that France would be overrun by the coalition.

You or I might see it that way, but a fellow European monarch who believes in absolutism certainly would not.
 
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