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.