Turgot and the French Revolution

I'm listening to an actual audio recording by Teddy Roosevelt here, and he mentions some dude with a girl's name in his speech-

All the woes of France for a century and a quarter have been due to the folly of her people in splitting into the two camps of unreasonable conservatism and unreasonable radicalism. Had pre-Revolutionary France listened to men like Turgot, and backed them up, all would have gone well. But the beneficiaries of privilege, the Bourbon reactionaries, the short-sighted ultra-conservatives, turned down Turgot; and then found that instead of him they had obtained Robespierre. They gained twenty years' freedom from all restraint and reform, at the cost of the whirlwind of the red terror; and in their turn the unbridled extremists of the terror induced a blind reaction; and so, with convulsion and oscillation from one extreme to another, with alternations of violent radicalism and violent Bourbonism, the French people went through misery toward a shattered goal.
Upon skimming the article, it seems as if Turgot was one of those Burkean? Lockean? classical liberal types of the era. Anyways, what if TR had his way, and the moderate liberal reformers had been the prominent once in France?
 
I'm listening to an actual audio recording by Teddy Roosevelt here, and he mentions some dude with a girl's name in his speech-


Upon skimming the article, it seems as if Turgot was one of those Burkean? Lockean? classical liberal types of the era. Anyways, what if TR had his way, and the moderate liberal reformers had been the prominent once in France?

Turgot had some interesting ideas, but like the Teddy quote says, the ultra-conservatives wouldn't allow it. Your best bet might be Artois (Charles X) becoming King. He was absolutely an ultra-conservative reactionary, but at the same time, it appeared that he knew the state of affairs pre-Revolution was not good, and serious reforms were needed. He just believed that the King had to carry them out, without any participation from the commoners.

I was actually thinking that an assassination of Louis XVI either right before, or in the opening months of, the French Revolution, could create the right kind of situation for this. Louis XVII needs a regency, and Provence (OTL Louis XVIII) is seen as far too accepting of the growing liberalism of the Estates-General. Artois leads a palace coup against his brother and quickly establishes control over the regency, then he orders the Army into Paris and crushes the Estates-General. The military action prompts widespread violence, and Artois responds harshly, carrying out what will later be known as the "White Terror". To retain peasant support however, he allows some things to stand, like the abolition of feudal obligations and privledges.

Under Artois' regency limited reforms are carried out, while Louis XVII is excluded from government by his uncle. Growing tension between Atrois, the reactionary aristocracy, and Louis XVII nearly boil over when Louis XVII, at the prompting of the ultra-reactionaries claims his majority. XVII ends up as a reformer, seeing the middle-class as the counterweight to the ambitions of the reactionary nobility. An "Enlightened Despotism" reigns under XVII, while he maintains and strengthens the Austrian alliance as a defense against rising liberal-nationalist sentiments within Germany and Italy.
 
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