Chapter 22: King Louis XVI's Miracle Years
Chapter 22: King Louis XVI's Miracle Years
After the signing of the Treaty of Vienna, the French had reasons to be proud of their investment in the American rebels. They had won a complete victory, recovered Gibraltar for their Bourbon cousins in Spain, had won a decisive victory at Boston, reclaimed New France, and had their navy break the line in a historical first.
Despite France having had all of those successes, they had come at a cost. The national debt had skyrocketed to 10 billion livres thanks to funding their participation in the Revolutionary War through loans. It was clear that something needed to be done to attempt to lower that number, and grumblings over bread prices meant that King Louis XVI and his ministers would have to handle things delicately in order to protect the successes of their intervention in America. But little did the monarchy know that the tides of prosperity had turned in their favor.
The first blessing was that the harvest of 1785 had been a success, which meant that the price of bread dropped by 10 percent. For the rest of the decade, each harvest would be good to very good, and the resulting taxes were able to go towards repayment. The grumbling among the lower classes was less vocal then before, and that meant that a rumored calling of the Estates General was put on the backburner. It has been speculated by historians that had the harvest of 1785 been a bust like it had been the previous year, the monarchy would have faced a crisis that could have rocked the institution to it's very core, and even caused an untold wave of destruction throughout the country.
But before the famine ended, there was one minor event in 1783 that made news because of who was involved. In the spring of 1783, there was a house fire in the city of Arras. Maximilien Robespierre was a young lawyer who had resigned as a local judge after his discomfort over the death penalty being a constant feature in the cases he was presiding over. Robespierre died in the house fire, and a man who was rumored to have ambitions beyond Arras, and had become someone who was expected to move onto greater challenges. But what his death meant was that a voice that could have been important in any reform of the French political system never got much of a chance to advocate for those changes that he was rumored to support.
But what ended up helping the French begin to pay their debts back was a simple invention. Honoré Blanc had been taking the concept of interchangable parts that had been seen in bullets and trying to work towards bringing that system to artillery. One night in 1788, Blanc realized that there could be uses in the civilian world, and decided to test if machines and mechanisims that were used in farming could benefit from having interchangable parts. It turns out that Blanc was right. He set up the Blanc Company, which ended up selling interchangable parts for farming mechanisims throughout France. As a result, the durablity of tools increased and the farmers were able to replace individual parts at a lower price than before. With more money in their pockets, the French economy entered a boom period, and the technology quickly spread to New France. In New France, agricultural output increased, and immigration to Montreal and Quebec increased at a steady if unspectacluar rate.
The 1780s were called the Wonder Years for King Louis XVI. Talks of reform were at a lower boil, the national debt was slowly going down, and the populace was much happier. It was a good time to be a French subject, and as the 1790s dawned, the decision to support the Americans looked like it was the right bet.
Author's Notes: So France is in a far better spot than OTL. By butterflying OTL's French Revolution and increasing the agricultural output of France, King Louis XVI comes out a lot better in TTL than in OTL. There will be an analogue to the French Revolution, but that is for a different chapter and a different monarch. Using Blanc's ideas in the civilian realm is something that I was toying with, as it wouldn't be too much of a stretch. Thanks again for your continued feedback, and for reading this timeline. I also want to congratulate all of the people who were nominated for the Turtledoves this year, as there has been a lot of great and interesting timelines on this fourm in the past year. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to share them.
After the signing of the Treaty of Vienna, the French had reasons to be proud of their investment in the American rebels. They had won a complete victory, recovered Gibraltar for their Bourbon cousins in Spain, had won a decisive victory at Boston, reclaimed New France, and had their navy break the line in a historical first.
Despite France having had all of those successes, they had come at a cost. The national debt had skyrocketed to 10 billion livres thanks to funding their participation in the Revolutionary War through loans. It was clear that something needed to be done to attempt to lower that number, and grumblings over bread prices meant that King Louis XVI and his ministers would have to handle things delicately in order to protect the successes of their intervention in America. But little did the monarchy know that the tides of prosperity had turned in their favor.
The first blessing was that the harvest of 1785 had been a success, which meant that the price of bread dropped by 10 percent. For the rest of the decade, each harvest would be good to very good, and the resulting taxes were able to go towards repayment. The grumbling among the lower classes was less vocal then before, and that meant that a rumored calling of the Estates General was put on the backburner. It has been speculated by historians that had the harvest of 1785 been a bust like it had been the previous year, the monarchy would have faced a crisis that could have rocked the institution to it's very core, and even caused an untold wave of destruction throughout the country.
But before the famine ended, there was one minor event in 1783 that made news because of who was involved. In the spring of 1783, there was a house fire in the city of Arras. Maximilien Robespierre was a young lawyer who had resigned as a local judge after his discomfort over the death penalty being a constant feature in the cases he was presiding over. Robespierre died in the house fire, and a man who was rumored to have ambitions beyond Arras, and had become someone who was expected to move onto greater challenges. But what his death meant was that a voice that could have been important in any reform of the French political system never got much of a chance to advocate for those changes that he was rumored to support.
But what ended up helping the French begin to pay their debts back was a simple invention. Honoré Blanc had been taking the concept of interchangable parts that had been seen in bullets and trying to work towards bringing that system to artillery. One night in 1788, Blanc realized that there could be uses in the civilian world, and decided to test if machines and mechanisims that were used in farming could benefit from having interchangable parts. It turns out that Blanc was right. He set up the Blanc Company, which ended up selling interchangable parts for farming mechanisims throughout France. As a result, the durablity of tools increased and the farmers were able to replace individual parts at a lower price than before. With more money in their pockets, the French economy entered a boom period, and the technology quickly spread to New France. In New France, agricultural output increased, and immigration to Montreal and Quebec increased at a steady if unspectacluar rate.
The 1780s were called the Wonder Years for King Louis XVI. Talks of reform were at a lower boil, the national debt was slowly going down, and the populace was much happier. It was a good time to be a French subject, and as the 1790s dawned, the decision to support the Americans looked like it was the right bet.
Author's Notes: So France is in a far better spot than OTL. By butterflying OTL's French Revolution and increasing the agricultural output of France, King Louis XVI comes out a lot better in TTL than in OTL. There will be an analogue to the French Revolution, but that is for a different chapter and a different monarch. Using Blanc's ideas in the civilian realm is something that I was toying with, as it wouldn't be too much of a stretch. Thanks again for your continued feedback, and for reading this timeline. I also want to congratulate all of the people who were nominated for the Turtledoves this year, as there has been a lot of great and interesting timelines on this fourm in the past year. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to share them.
