Was the French Revolution inevitable by 1780?

So if the streak of bad luck had ended at any point, then the spiral of increasing radicalism would have been broken?

fasquardon

You forgot the incompetence, by the time the revolution began to happen France's problems were so massive that even a talented monarch/privy council would have been hard-pressed to solve them.

And France had Louis XVI at the helm...

This is why I think the only realistic way to offset the Revolution is if Louis had a hunting accident and broke his neck (hell, he was out hunting with the Bastille was stormed!), after that his young son would be King, but in need of a Regent, and more importantly a Regency Council.

As long as the right people were put in charge (even if Marie Antoinette had to be a figurehead Regent), the worst excesses of the Revolution could be avoided in favor of a radical program of reform, making France's monarchy more like Britain's.
 
You forgot the incompetence, by the time the revolution began to happen France's problems were so massive that even a talented monarch/privy council would have been hard-pressed to solve them.

I didn't forget it - I am trying to get a handle on just how important luck was to the course of events. To put my question another way, was the incompetence of the players during the Revolution sufficient to doom the country even if France had been blessed by better luck?

fasquardon
 

Redhand

Banned
It wasn't inevitable, reform certainly was as France was, like Tsarist Russia, a population bomb with an antiquated form of government and an indecisive ruler. A Constitutional Monarchy was doable if the crisis was handled better and the Parisian faction in politics stays on the side of law and order. Once the National Guard switched sides, things were over the ledge.

Louis may have actually been an OK Constitutional ruler as he seemed to actually care about the people when they weren't actively threatening him and his family.
 

Redhand

Banned
Lol no. The French countryside was one of the bedrock of the early revolution. The various pillaging terror in all of the countryside very quickly transformed into small local revolutions were the locals burned all the feudal symbols of power and the documents legalizing that power. The french farmers reclaimed violently feudal lands owned by noblemen. Tiers Etat representative from the countryside were sometime more radicals than the parisians ones. Hell, even the Vendée was for the revolution before the constitutional status of the priest was created and the draft.

Additionnally the other cities were also the seat of power of the Girondins and the federalists.

The peasant farmers were OK with changes in their overlords as long as it did not threaten the church and their basic livelihood. The church was not something to be messed with. It had its pitfalls in regards to owning land that was tax exempt, but it was a positive force in many communities as well.

The traditional feudal lords were simply replaced with revolutionary tyrants, most often corrupt bureaucrats, and Parisian merchants who attempted to impose 9 day workweeks instead of 6 day workweeks due to the revolutionary calendar and drafted a lot of people into the army. This did not go over well.
 

Neirdak

Banned
You forgot the incompetence, by the time the revolution began to happen France's problems were so massive that even a talented monarch/privy council would have been hard-pressed to solve them.

And France had Louis XVI at the helm...

This is why I think the only realistic way to offset the Revolution is if Louis had a hunting accident and broke his neck (hell, he was out hunting with the Bastille was stormed!), after that his young son would be King, but in need of a Regent, and more importantly a Regency Council.

As long as the right people were put in charge (even if Marie Antoinette had to be a figurehead Regent), the worst excesses of the Revolution could be avoided in favor of a radical program of reform, making France's monarchy more like Britain's.

When Louis XVI wrote in his diary Rien (“Nothing”) on July 14, 1789, it did not mean that the King was oblivious to the events in Paris. On the contrary he had taken measures to prevent the unrest, in particular by posting foreign regiments in and around the capital. Those measures proved unsuccessful, and even counterproductive, but it is undeniable that Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were extremely concerned.

The so-called diary was in fact a log, in which Louis XVI would record the number and species of the animals killed by the Royal Hunt on any given day and sometimes other brief notes on various topics. Louis XV never meant to express intimate political or personal thoughts in this log. The Nothing entry on the 14th of July simply means that there was no hunt on that day.

Furthermore, we should not forget that the storming of the Bastille occurred in the afternoon. Paris was in an uproar. Leaving the city was difficult and dangerous. The news did not reach Louis XVI and Versailles, ten miles away, until nighttime. By then, it must have been the least of the King’s worries to amend the entry in his diary.


It wasn't inevitable, reform certainly was as France was, like Tsarist Russia, a population bomb with an antiquated form of government and an indecisive ruler. A Constitutional Monarchy was doable if the crisis was handled better and the Parisian faction in politics stays on the side of law and order. Once the National Guard switched sides, things were over the ledge.

Louis may have actually been an OK Constitutional ruler as he seemed to actually care about the people when they weren't actively threatening him and his family.

I agree


The peasant farmers were OK with changes in their overlords as long as it did not threaten the church and their basic livelihood. The church was not something to be messed with. It had its pitfalls in regards to owning land that was tax exempt, but it was a positive force in many communities as well. The traditional feudal lords were simply replaced with revolutionary tyrants, most often corrupt bureaucrats, and Parisian merchants who attempted to impose 9 day workweeks instead of 6 day workweeks due to the revolutionary calendar and drafted a lot of people into the army. This did not go over well.

I agree again, but may add that the peasants weren't really interested by the form of the monarchy. The deputies to the Third Eastate weren't even peasants, but mainly bourgeois. The reading of the cahiers de doléances (the lists of grievances drawn up by each of the three Estates in France, between March and April 1789) show that peasants didn't give a F about politics and more interesting that an agreement was possible.

Cahiers of the First Estate (clergy)
The Cahiers of the First Estate reflected the interests of the parish clergy. They called for an end to bishops holding more than one diocese, and demanded those who were not noble be able to become bishops.In return they were prepared to give up the financial privileges of the Church..They were not, however, prepared to give up the dominant position that the Church held over the other two Estates. They did not intend to allow Protestants to practice religion, and under the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by King Louis XIV, wanted to keep Roman Catholicism the only official religion in France.

Cahiers of the Second Estate (Nobility)
Among the three Estates, the Second Estates cãhiers were possibly the most surprising. Many of them proved to be quite liberal in their opinions, 89% voting that they were willing to give up their financial privileges.Where up until now, they had been against the idea of the commoners entering their ranks (as shown by the Segur Ordinance) they were finally accepting of the fact that Academic Merit, rather than the position held by a man because of his birth, should be the requirements to hold certain offices (the offices included Military, Administrative and Venal Offices). They also attacked the government for being out of date, and the injustice of the Ancien Regime.

Cahiers of the Third Estate (people)
Many of the cahiers of the Third Estate were composed using models sent from Paris. The cahiers were also highly variable in tone depending on where they came from, meaning that while they are often summarized as raising more sweeping and general complaints about French society at the time, many of the grievances shared were highly specific, such as Parish of St. Germain d'Airan asking "That dovecotes be destroyed...and that it be ordered that those remaining shall be closed in such a way that pigeons may not leave during the times of planting and harvest." The cahiers of the Third Estate spoke out mainly against the financial privileges held by the two other Estates. They were both exempt from most taxes such as the church tithe and the taille (the main direct tax). They also wanted to have a fair voting system in the Estates-General. At the moment, they would be outvoted by the other two orders, who would combine their votes on any issue that suited them. They had double representation (600, rather than 300 members representing them), but each estate had a single vote, and thus having double the representative would only be effective if they were voting by head, and not by order.


The Third Estate had been granted "double representation"—that is, twice as many delegates as each of the other estates—but at the opening session on May 5, 1789 they were informed that all voting would be "by estates" not "by head", so their double representation was to be meaningless in terms of power. They refused this and proceeded to meet separately. Crisis -> National Assembly.
 
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I didn't forget it - I am trying to get a handle on just how important luck was to the course of events. To put my question another way, was the incompetence of the players during the Revolution sufficient to doom the country even if France had been blessed by better luck?

fasquardon

Again, it all depends on what you're counting as "revolution". You need to think of each of the stages:

- The fiscal crisis not being resolved
- The calling of the Estates-General
- The declaration of the National Assembly
- The mutiny of the French Guards
- Forming of citizens' militias and the violence in Paris
- The Great Fear
- Storming of Versailles
- Day of Daggers
- The Flight to Varennes
- Etc.

Some of these things turn on luck, some of them are somewhat inevitable once the preceding events have occurred. But certainly I think there are individual decisions that could have changed things dramatically. If the King had brought more pressure/diplomacy on the Assembly of Notables, maybe the Estates-General could have been avoided. If he hadn't had double the members from the Third Estate, it wouldn't have made sense for them to form a National Assembly. If the King hadn't fled, the events wouldn't have turned republican, etc...
 
While militarily not as degenerated as the Janissaries at the end of their history the Gardes Françaises were no longer worthy of their seniority over all 'line' infantry regiments : still adequately drilled by their NCO for parades, but having repeatedly broken during the War of Austrian Succession at Dettingen, at Fontenoy... And the Gardes Françaises at turned to a political hazard: instead of being barracked they were individually billeted in Paris, married to their landlord's daughter or in the neighbourood, moonlighting in their father-in-law's shop... : members of the lower classes of the Parisian population with arms and military training. To restore their discipline one would have first to build them barracks, and if a mutiny doesn't follow it would take a decade to forget the 'bad habits'. Probably more expeditive and safer to disband the regiment?

As for a POD preventing the French Revolution... French people love to love their ruler, and as long as they love their king (even if deemd under the bad influence of evil counselors) the monarchy is safe. And the last really popular French king was Louis XV, so a POD keeping him as 'beloved' as at the beginning of his reign would answer the 'Was the French Revolution inveitable' part of the OP - I feel that by 1780 it was already far too late to change more than minor details. And inded he was immensely popular at first: when he fell ill in Flanders the population spontaneously asked the priests for masses and public prayers for his recovery (poor Damien understood that, whose -symbolic- aggression was explicitely intended to trigger a burst of renewed popular love); and after Fontenoy he was really 'the Beloved'. Now Louis XV is among the most maligned French rulers. He had a deep interest in politics and rather good (if sometimes quixotic) ideas, but simply lacked the self-confidence to impose them to the Counsel. To the point of creating his own personal, diplomatic and spying network, the Secret du Roi - a service that realized some brilliant operations, such as having the French candidate to the Polish crown crossing hostile Germany masquerading as a merchant's clerk while a look-alike openly tried to reach Dantzig by sea. When did his popularity start to regress? Withhe Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Louis XV was a pacifist (on the evening of Fontenoy he took the Dauphin for a tour of the battlefield, telling him among the corpses 'The blood of the enemy too is human blood... there is no greater glory for a king than to spare war to his subjects.'): judging ignominious to garb land by war he asked only for a return to the satu quo ante. 'As dumb a sthe peace' was a popular expression for decades and 'To fight for the king of Prussia' is still used. Some territorial gains in the Austrian Netherlands (Catholic Wallonie, away for the seashore to be tolerable to the British) would have kept his popularity intact. Then -and worse- there were the defeats of the Seven Years War - that some used to make the marquise de Pompadour (a pawn in the 'great game' between French cliques) impopular, an impopularity spreading to the king. With a more positive outcome of the SYW, no such impopularity; and, without the humiliation of the SYW, would France bankrupt itself supporting the American 'rebels' as a revenge? Of course a victory of the Austro-French side (Prussia losing the Eight Years War instead of winning the Seven Years one?) would give birth to Mothra-sized butterflies.
 
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Neirdak

Banned
While militarily not as degenerated as the Janissaries at the end of their history the Gardes Françaises were no longer worthy of their seniority over all 'line' infantry regiments : still adequately drilled by their NCO for parades, but having repeatedly broken during the War of Austrian Succession at Dettingen, at Fontenoy... And the Gardes Françaises at turned to a political hazard: instead of being barracked they were individually billeted in Paris, married to their landlord's daughter or in the neighbourood, moonlighting in their father-in-law's shop... : members of the lower classes of the Parisian population with arms and military training. To restore their discipline one would have first to build them barracks, and if a mutiny doesn't follow it would take a decade to forget the 'bad habits'. Probably more expeditive and safer to disband the regiment?

As for a POD preventing the French Revolution... French people love to love their ruler, and as long as they love their king (even if deemd under the bad influence of evil counselors) the monarchy is safe. And the last really popular French king was Louis XV, so a POD keeping him as 'beloved' as at the beginning of his reign would answer the 'Was the French Revolution inveitable' part of the OP - I feel that by 1780 it was already far too late to change more than minor details. And inded he was immensely popular at first: when he fell ill in Flanders the population spontaneously asked the priests for masses and public prayers for his recovery (poor Damien understood that, whose -symbolic- aggression was explicitely intended to trigger a burst of renewed popular love); and after Fontenoy he was really 'the Beloved'. Now Louis XV is among the most maligned French rulers. He had a deep interest in politics and rather good (if sometimes quixotic) ideas, but simply lacked the self-confidence to impose them to the Counsel. To the point of creating his own personal, diplomatic and spying network, the Secret du Roi - a service that realized some brilliant operations, such as having the French candidate to the Polish crown crossing hostile Germany masquerading as a merchant's clerk while a look-alike openly tried to reach Dantzig by sea. When did his popularity start to regress? Withhe Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Louis XV was a pacifist (on the evening of Fontenoy he took the Dauphin for a tour of the battlefield, telling him among the corpses 'The blood of the enemy too is human blood... there is no greater glory for a king than to spare war to his subjects.'): judging ignominious to garb land by war he asked only for a return to the satu quo ante. 'As dumb a sthe peace' was a popular expression for decades and 'To fight for the king of Prussia' is still used. Some territorial gains in the Austrian Netherlands (Catholic Wallonie, away for the seashore to be tolerable to the British) would have kept his popularity intact. Then -and worse- there were the defeats of the Seven Years War - that some used to make the marquise de Pompadour (a pawn in the 'great game' between French cliques) impopular, an impopularity spreading to the king. With a more positive outcome of the SYW, no such impopularity; and, without the humiliation of the SYW, would France bankrupt itself supporting the American 'rebels' as a revenge? Of course a victory of the Austro-French side (Prussia losing the Eight Years War instead of winning the Seven Years one?) would give birth to Mothra-sized butterflies.

You are absolutely right about the Gardes Françaises. I don't understand why they weren't dissolved during the last military reforms, but I still think that they would have been dissolved later, after the Estates General, if the situation hadn't degenerated.

From what I understand, the libels and the hate against Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette really began after the publication of the Compte rendu au roi (report to the king) in February 1781 by Jacques Necker, finance minister to the King, in which he presented the state of France's finances. It's became worse when he was remplaced by Calonne and began to suffer from a Messiah's complex in 1783. It became horrible, when he published his Traité de l'administration des finances de la France (1784) in order to discredit Calonne, indirectly the King became a collateral victim of this duel of economists. In 1787, Necker had to be banished by the lettre de cachet 40 leagues from Paris for his very public exchange of pamphlets and memoirs attacking his successor as minister of finance, Calonne. Those pamphlets ignited the population and revealed the real deepness of the financial crisis.

Before those publications, the people had never considered governmental income and expenditure to be their concern, but the Compte rendu and the Traité de l'administration des finances de la France made them more proactive. It destroyed the reputation of the monarchy. During the Necker-Calonne crisis, many libels about Madame Déficit were published and the King was showed as a pig eating the wheat of the Kingdom. The licencious drawings showing the Queen as a whore also dated from this era.

Necker supported the American Revolution, and he carried out a policy of taking out large international loans to reduce deficit instead of raising taxes. When this policy failed miserably, Louis dismissed him, and then replaced him in 1783 with Charles Alexandre de Calonne, who increased public spending to "buy" the country's way out of debt. Again this failed, so Louis convoked the Assembly of Notables in 1787 to discuss a revolutionary new fiscal reform proposed by Calonne. When the nobles were informed of the extent of the debt, they were shocked into rejecting the plan. This negative turn of events signaled to Louis that he had lost the ability to rule as an absolute monarch and had to call the Estates-General.

During Estates-General Necker advocated doubling the representation of the Third Estate to satisfy the people. But he failed to address the matter of voting – rather than voting by head count, which is what the people wanted, voting remained as one vote for each estate. Also, his address at the Estates-General was terribly miscalculated: it lasted for hours, and while those present expected a reforming policy for finance and fiscality to save the nation, he gave them financial data ... showing the terrible crisis, instead of solving it.

then ...

1. Introduce voting by head count during Estates-General in order to satisfy the Third Estate. -> no Tennis Court Oath
2. Accept the demands of the First and Second Estate so they will accept to give up their financial privileges, which they were ready to do.
3. Forbid Necker to speak in front of the Estates-General !!!
4. Keep your foreign regiments outside Paris. By the way, they won't be called, if the Tennis Court Oath is avoided.


Again, it all depends on what you're counting as "revolution". You need to think of each of the stages:

- The fiscal crisis not being resolved
- The calling of the Estates-General
- The declaration of the National Assembly
- The mutiny of the French Guards
- Forming of citizens' militias and the violence in Paris
- The Great Fear
- Storming of Versailles
- Day of Daggers
- The Flight to Varennes
- Etc.

Some of these things turn on luck, some of them are somewhat inevitable once the preceding events have occurred. But certainly I think there are individual decisions that could have changed things dramatically. If the King had brought more pressure/diplomacy on the Assembly of Notables, maybe the Estates-General could have been avoided. If he hadn't had double the members from the Third Estate, it wouldn't have made sense for them to form a National Assembly. If the King hadn't fled, the events wouldn't have turned republican, etc...

Socrates is right, you need to choose a pivotal event.
 
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When Louis XVI wrote in his diary Rien (“Nothing”) on July 14, 1789, it did not mean that the King was oblivious to the events in Paris. On the contrary he had taken measures to prevent the unrest, in particular by posting foreign regiments in and around the capital. Those measures proved unsuccessful, and even counterproductive, but it is undeniable that Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were extremely concerned.

The so-called diary was in fact a log, in which Louis XVI would record the number and species of the animals killed by the Royal Hunt on any given day and sometimes other brief notes on various topics. Louis XV never meant to express intimate political or personal thoughts in this log. The Nothing entry on the 14th of July simply means that there was no hunt on that day.

Furthermore, we should not forget that the storming of the Bastille occurred in the afternoon. Paris was in an uproar. Leaving the city was difficult and dangerous. The news did not reach Louis XVI and Versailles, ten miles away, until nighttime. By then, it must have been the least of the King’s worries to amend the entry in his diary.




I agree




I agree again, but may add that the peasants weren't really interested by the form of the monarchy. The deputies to the Third Eastate weren't even peasants, but mainly bourgeois. The reading of the cahiers de doléances (the lists of grievances drawn up by each of the three Estates in France, between March and April 1789) show that peasants didn't give a F about politics and more interesting that an agreement was possible.

Cahiers of the First Estate (clergy)
The Cahiers of the First Estate reflected the interests of the parish clergy. They called for an end to bishops holding more than one diocese, and demanded those who were not noble be able to become bishops.In return they were prepared to give up the financial privileges of the Church..They were not, however, prepared to give up the dominant position that the Church held over the other two Estates. They did not intend to allow Protestants to practice religion, and under the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by King Louis XIV, wanted to keep Roman Catholicism the only official religion in France.

Cahiers of the Second Estate (Nobility)
Among the three Estates, the Second Estates cãhiers were possibly the most surprising. Many of them proved to be quite liberal in their opinions, 89% voting that they were willing to give up their financial privileges.Where up until now, they had been against the idea of the commoners entering their ranks (as shown by the Segur Ordinance) they were finally accepting of the fact that Academic Merit, rather than the position held by a man because of his birth, should be the requirements to hold certain offices (the offices included Military, Administrative and Venal Offices). They also attacked the government for being out of date, and the injustice of the Ancien Regime.

Cahiers of the Third Estate (people)
Many of the cahiers of the Third Estate were composed using models sent from Paris. The cahiers were also highly variable in tone depending on where they came from, meaning that while they are often summarized as raising more sweeping and general complaints about French society at the time, many of the grievances shared were highly specific, such as Parish of St. Germain d'Airan asking "That dovecotes be destroyed...and that it be ordered that those remaining shall be closed in such a way that pigeons may not leave during the times of planting and harvest." The cahiers of the Third Estate spoke out mainly against the financial privileges held by the two other Estates. They were both exempt from most taxes such as the church tithe and the taille (the main direct tax). They also wanted to have a fair voting system in the Estates-General. At the moment, they would be outvoted by the other two orders, who would combine their votes on any issue that suited them. They had double representation (600, rather than 300 members representing them), but each estate had a single vote, and thus having double the representative would only be effective if they were voting by head, and not by order.


The Third Estate had been granted "double representation"—that is, twice as many delegates as each of the other estates—but at the opening session on May 5, 1789 they were informed that all voting would be "by estates" not "by head", so their double representation was to be meaningless in terms of power. They refused this and proceeded to meet separately. Crisis -> National Assembly.

What I don't get about the nobles is that they blocked any changes to their privileges in the Assembly of Notables, but then were willing to give them up in the Estates as long as they didn't lose out elsewhere. If they'd have just accepted the stuff in the Assembly, nothing else would have been threatened, so why on Earth did they encourage the calling of the Estates?
 

Neirdak

Banned
What I don't get about the nobles is that they blocked any changes to their privileges in the Assembly of Notables, but then were willing to give them up in the Estates as long as they didn't lose out elsewhere. If they'd have just accepted the stuff in the Assembly, nothing else would have been threatened, so why on Earth did they encourage the calling of the Estates?

Simply because the Assembly of Notables isn't exactly the Second Estate and because you had two different Finance Ministers and policies.

- Assembly of Notables (1787) : 144 Notables including Princes of the Blood, archbishops, nobles, important judges and other people from privileged positions in society, and they did not wish to bear the burden of increased taxation suggested by Calonne.

- Second Estate (1789) : The Second Estate represented the nobility, which consisted of 400,000 persons at the time. Most of the doléances/grievances were written by poor or fallen nobles. Keep in mind that about a third of the 282 deputies representing the Second Estate were nobles with minor holdings. Those were neither rich nor powerful. An egalitarian tax, as proposed by Necker and the King, was better for them than the current system and they weren't able to use their current privileges to become powerful.

There was a really small and privilegied high nobility and a huge number of, what I would call, middle or low class nobles. In the Second estate, you had 70 members of high nobility, 94/95 members of very poor/low nobility and 118 of what I would call middle nobility. Among the Assembly of Notables, almost all nobles were from high nobility, the reste were middle nobles.

And nobility in France was very complex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_nobility#Classes_of_French_nobility ...
 
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Simply because the Assembly of Notables isn't exactly the Second Estate and because you had two different Finance Ministers and policies.

- Assembly of Notables (1787) : 144 Notables including Princes of the Blood, archbishops, nobles, important judges and other people from privileged positions in society, and they did not wish to bear the burden of increased taxation suggested by Calonne.

- Second Estate (1789) : The Second Estate represented the nobility, which consisted of 400,000 persons at the time. Most of the doléances/grievances were written by poor or fallen nobles. Keep in mind that about a third of the 282 deputies representing the Second Estate were nobles with minor holdings. Those were neither rich nor powerful. An egalitarian tax, as proposed by Necker and the King, was better for them than the current system and they weren't able to use their current privileges to become powerful.

There was a really small and privilegied high nobility and a huge number of, what I would call, middle or low class nobles. In the Second estate, you had 70 members of high nobility, 94/95 members of very poor/low nobility and 118 of what I would call middle nobility. Among the Assembly of Notables, almost all nobles were from high nobility, the reste were middle nobles.

And nobility in France was very complex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_nobility#Classes_of_French_nobility ...


Thanks for the information! That explains the difference in views, but why on Earth did the Assembly of Notables suggest giving power over to the Estates? Did they not realise that the Second Estate was a lot more liberal than they were? Did they foolishly belief the poor nobles were on their side?

Also, could you explain in a bit more detail the difference between Calonne's plans and Necker's plans?
 
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Nothing can save the Bourbon monarchy, the best Louis XVI could do was to flee the country wait till enough blood being shed, let the revolutionaries take the blame of butchering the clergy and the nobles.
 
Just a post from another thread in which the Comte de Mirabeau surviving were discussed.

Widukind said:
Necker tried to "solve" the huge deficits by increasing the debt on a massive scale, adding the problem of interest payments to the deficits in the mid- to long-term. France was already in debt when he took office, but reforms could still have saved the country - even with the expense of the involvement in the American revolutionary war. Instead, Necker financed eveything through huge and wildly irresponsible loans.

When he took office the second time, he actually encountered his own mess, which no-one had solved in the meantime. By that point, thanks largely to Necker, France was basically bankrupt. Still, a willingness to reform could have improved matters greatly. Necker instead made the existing problems worse, and then blamed all problems on others. Finally confronted with his errors during his third stint in office, he cooked the books, created a completely false representation of the kingdom's financial situation, and pretended that there was a huge surplus. When called before the Estates-General, he refused to admit that he had made any mistakes, even though it was evident by that point that he was a fraudulent charlatan. Expected to humbly announce the much needed reforms, he instead gave another hours-long presentation full of mostly made-up numbers and figures, wherein he again tried to "prove" that he was a genius and there was no deficit. That speech was one of the deciding moments in the short stint of the Estates-General, and greatly contributed to the radicalization that eventually led to its dissolution.

But Necker, who had always avoided the tough decisions and blamed others for his own numerous mistakes, was still popular with the public. They had read his false reports, and assumed their contents to be true. (He was actually very popular at most times... before it was discovered that he was a fraud, his reports were faked, and he'd covered the deficits with borrowed money, leading to a huge public debt and even greater deficits. Calonne, who was in charge between Necker's first two stints in office, had previously done the same thing. When he realized what Necker had been up to, he tried to warn people... and was dismissed. It was later said: "Calonne was cheered when lighting the fire, and damned when sounding the alarm". Necker never even went for the alarm: he just kept pouring fuel on the fire.)

Even after the National Assembly had already given way to the National Constituent Assembly, Necker was still under the frankly delusional impression that he would be the genius to save France. His last great act was... urging Louis XVI to accept the proposal that the king's right of veto be reduced to a "suspensive veto," meaning Louis could only delay laws and not block them. With this, the king surrendered his chief prerogative, which directly led to him not being able to prevent the adoption of a terribly foolish decree that determined that members of the new government could not be chosen from the Assembly. This ruled out pretty much every capable man in France. Thanks, Necker! Great job!

So... you call that "the only person in the entire country interested in making the country financially viable"? I'm afraid you've been hoodwinked. Jacques Necker was basically the Bernie Madoff of his day, and he did it to an entire country. So, yes: he was a distaster. A complete, utter, unmitigated disaster.

Calonne would have been perfect for the job. Formerly as bad as Necker, he had since completely reversed his stance and had a sound plan for reform. But he had been exiled because these reforms were vastly impopular with the aristocracy. The revolutionary era would have been the time to implement them quickly and without too much resistance. But when Calonne attempted to return to France in 1789, in the hope of offering himself for election to the Estates-General, he was forbidden to enter the country. Embittered, he joined the émigré faction.
 

Neirdak

Banned
Thanks for the information! That explains the difference in views, but why on Earth did the Assembly of Notables suggest giving power over to the Estates? Did they not realise that the Second Estate was a lot more liberal than they were? Did they foolishly belief the poor nobles were on their side?

Also, could you explain in a bit more detail the difference between Calonne's plans and Necker's plans?

They didn't decide to give power to the Estates. The King called the Estates-General to bypass the Assembly of Notables and to get broader legitimacy for his decisions. I will try to sum up te financial and fiscal policies, but the post above is totally true. Necker destroyed France financially.


The statistics given in the Compte rendu were completely false and misleading. Necker wanted to show France in a strong financial position when the reality was much worse. He "cooked the books", hiding the crippling interest payments that France had to make on its massive £520 million in loans (largely used to finance the war in America) as normal expenditure. When he was criticized by his enemies for the Compte rendu, he made it avaiable to the citizens, which appeared to show that France had fought the war in America, paid no new taxes and still had a massive credit of £10 million of revenue.
:eek:


-> more info here http://www.wzaponline.com/FrenchRevolution.pdf
 
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Nothing can save the Bourbon monarchy, the best Louis XVI could do was to flee the country wait till enough blood being shed, let the revolutionaries take the blame of butchering the clergy and the nobles.

Louis XVI was a weak man (that hurt him in the Revolution because he would not be as brutal as the Jacobins/Bonapartes would be to keep power) but would have made a good constitutional monarch - especially in a post-Terror and post-Napoleon France that was sick of blood-letting. I can see him ruling as his brother Louis XVIII did and take a moderate course and if he and his family survive then presumably Charles X never takes the throne and there is no revolution of 1830. You could say Louis XVI and a surviving Louis XVII would turn out to be like Madam Royale (Marie-Therese) but if the royal family flees and is successful then the imprisonment and judicial executions of Louis, M-A, and Madam Elisabeth and the horrific nature of the treatment of the Dauphin (all of which turned Marie-Therese cold and ultra-conservative) would never have taken place.

It's easy to forget that there were still a lot of monarchists in France in the 19th century and the monarchy could have survived as late as 1870. The Revolution itself may not be avoided but the monarchy could easily have survived.
 
Necker is indeed one of the people who stands out to me as one of the great villains of the Revolution as I read up on this.

I am coming to the viewpoint that basically the revolution had three major factors - Necker, Louis XVI and the bad harvests of 1788/89. If those three are true in my TL, I will get a French Revolution, even if more moderate voices end up having more influence during the formative months of the Revolution, and even if France somehow handwaved its financial troubles away during the 1780s (which is of course, about as likely as pigs flying).

Since Necker is already ensconced in high office before my PoD, and I am not planning on butterflying weather according to my whim. I think that just leaves accidental deaths for either Necker or Louis as things that could really change the descent into Revolution. Perhaps also if Necker didn't publish his cooked books for the French public? I admit, from my reading of his character, that seems unlikely, to me he comes across as a vain power-seeker who believed that appeals to public opinion could help him in his vain power-seeking.

fasquardon
 
So what if Neckler is outed as a fraud before he can presented the 'cooked books' so to speak?
 
So what if Neckler is outed as a fraud before he can presented the 'cooked books' so to speak?

He published his Compte rendu au roi in February of 1781, so very soon after my PoD. I would assume that he had the idea for the book, if not a manuscript in 1780.

So if he falls in 1780 (I expect he would not be in any significant personal danger if he did), my bet is that he publishes Compte rendu au roi anyway, but with slight differences in that he'd be trying to re-start his career, rather than defend his career with the book.

If he falls before 1780, well, then Compte rendu au roi may be very different, but given his character and past history, I have a feeling that he would write something similar in any case.

But I'm not sure that being exposed for fiddling the finances before he published the book would have resulted in his dismissal. One of the reasons why Necker was fiddling the books is that the King refused to consider the reforms he wanted to make. And after Necker was dismissed OTL, his replacement did exactly the same things until he too went to the King and said taxation needed to be reformed. So up until Necker started publishing fraudulent political propaganda, he was doing exactly the job that seems to have been expected of the comptroller of France...

fasquardon
 
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