What if Louis XVI tried to disperse the Parisian mob with his mercenary regiments?

Interesting discussion. From what I just read on the Storming of the Bastille page on Wikipedia there were a lot more foreign regiments that being considered here. According to the Wiki page, "The Swiss and German regiments were among the foreign mercenary troops who made up a significant portion of the pre-revolutionary Royal Army, and were seen as being less likely to be sympathetic to the popular cause than ordinary French soldiers. By early July, approximately half of the 25,000 regular troops in Paris and Versailles were drawn from these foreign regiments."

So clearly mercenary regiments made up a significant section of the army if at least 12,000 troops in Paris and Versailles were foreign. Therefore, the idea of dispersing the mobs with foreign soldiers isn't completely unlikely, especially if they are ordered to garrison the Bastille. Keep the guns and ammo out of the mobs hands, enforce a curfew on the city and arrest a large amount of the various Parisian revolutionaries and you might have a chance of success.

Of course the idea is completely opposed to Louis XVI's personality and mindset at the time, so don't know how likely this is.
 
There's also the Irish brigade,which contains a number of regiments.It's led by Franco-Irish officers,but it's rank and file largely consists of Irishmen.There's actually more foreign regiments in the French army than 12 regiments of Swiss troops.
 
Foreign regiments? Most still had the name but men were French in 1789. It's a consequence of the 1770 reform.

I know it was a spontaneous movement to some extent,but there are people who gives the mob the wrong ideas,like Sieyes at this stage and folks like Danton,Marat and Robespierre etc latter on.

Completely false. You don't reall know that part of the story!

I
think in the event of a serious crackdown,members of the Third Estates of the Estates General would have to be exiled or executed.

rolf... Check who they are and why the king didn't date to act too strongly agains them.

Which is why the native units should be moved out.

Explanation again: if you try to move them , the population is going to react even faster...


And the King was able to send the army back to the border afterwards.I'm thinking more along the lines of sending the army back to the border but on the way to the border,order the Swiss regiments back to Paris secretly.

Secretly? Thousand of men ? Close to the largest city in the country? Come on!

You won't fight the whole 70k mob at one time.Most of the time,the mob is smaller than that.You only need to make an example out of a portion of the mob and bloody enough.I'm also talking about the King trying to disperse the crowd before before they got gunpowder from the Bastille and weapons from the Les Invalides.

the mob is smaller then that... Source ? And you had 70k in Les Invalides, not dispersed.
So you want to disperse a non existing mob (as before les invalides there is no mob!) and you want a crackdown against something that does not exist (yet). So you need time travel to get this insight.


Thgey are a regular army unit fighting against a mob as well as mutineers without their officers.As for the Maison du Roi,there were only three Maison du Roi units at the time,the Swiss Guard,the Bodyguard unit that's composed solely of aristocrats and the French Guards.The French Guards were the only ones that defected.

1/ they had their officers
2/ there were many more units than that in la maison du roi...
3/ the boduyguard unit was of little military value (good bodyguard unit, nothing else).
4/ the gardes françaises were the most important unit

Pretty sure they did not.The officers didn't even bother to attend their duties to the regiment most of the time and the day to day function of the regiment was mostly left at the hands of the NCOs.This is why when the officers tried to rally the troops after the defection,no one gave a f#$k about their orders.No one even bothered to turn up.

Source? You go on with unsourced claims while good sources don't agree with you: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k39949k
 
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