WI: Surviving First French Republic

Hello everyone, I was wondering: how would the First French Republic survive as a stable and democratic great power. If it could keep its borders after the war of the first coalition that would be best.
Scipio
 
Wow everyone, great responses! But seriously, does anyone have any ideas on this? I've never seen it discussed before and I feel it is an interesting question, so come, comment!:confused:
 
I think it might be a fun discussion too.

However, my understanding of what did happen is that basically France was not particularly prepared to be a Republic. I have great enthusiasm for the myth of the people rising up as one, wakening to a new dawn of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. And all that. A lot of the naysayers against the French Revolution seem to have a certain aversion for one to all three of these watchwords.:(

Nevertheless, it seems that there wasn't much to stop the devolution from the idealism of the high spirits of simply doing away with the monarchy, to successive reigns of terror and the creation of a new monarchy, one that transformed the revolutionary energy into a spirit of chauvinistic conquest.

I'd say it is up to you to take a close look at what did happen OTL, and come with a convincing alternative flow of events that could somehow have preserved a sort of balance of power between the rival interests that instead, OTL, took power successively and abused it to try and suppress the other contenders once and for all.

A huge part of this dynamic was that, quite naturally and inevitably, the other regimes of Europe saw the revolutionary ferment in France as an existential threat and organized intervention. The threat of that intervention, and the nature of the way the French checked it--that is, with new forms of armies, which tended to give honor and authority to generals at the expense of other actors in the Republic, had a lot to do with why the First Republic devolved into a revolving door of rival terrors, then a de facto Caesarian military dictatorship, then finally a proclaimed, de jure Empire. Even before victory on the battlefield gave generals culminating in Napoleon the clout to terminate the Republic, the fear (which was well founded) of conquest by reaction led to forms of paranoia which were less than creditable; many people who fell to the guillotine were basically denounced falsely by their rivals, who sought to profit, and perhaps reasoned that if they did not strike first, sooner or later the other guy would be falsely denouncing them. Out of such ugliness it is hard to see how people would evolve norms of civil republican behavior without many generations of trial and error to teach them. Can you show how it could have been done?

As someone who keenly follows ATLs of left-wing revolution in general I've seen a lot of what-ifs for various French Revolutions including the Paris Commune, the Bolshevik revolution (or other Russian revolutions without actual Bolsheviks), possible revolutions in the USA and other OTL first world nations such as Germany. These are tricky waters to navigate!

One reason the American colonists were able to have a republican revolution and keep republican government was that they were long accustomed to representative government; one thing they had learned (imperfectly to be sure) is to tolerate rivals, that there were certain bounds one could not cross in trying to diminish them; that everyone is down and out sometime or other and it is best not to stomp too hard on whoever is down at the moment because someday you will be down and the ones you stomped 5 or 20 years before will probably remember and seek to settle scores. For another thing, the USA was rather broad and diverse; factions that ruled in one state would be on the outs in another.

Perhaps some sort of dynamic balance of power could evolve in the early French Republic that teaches these lessons early and comes in handy during the resistance to the Coalition and helps keep the heroes of the victory against that Coalition from riding too high and too roughshod over others?

I doubt one can achieve this at the cost of the French forces suffering more setbacks and losing more ground against the Coalition than they did OTL; too much of that and the Revolution gets crushed.

Now I've responded, I invite you to come out and say how you think it might have gone. Presumably you have some ideas or you wouldn't be calling for this discussion, right?

It has been a while since I last thought a lot about the Revolution of 1789; my ideas about it are probably too stale.
 
Wow, great response, thank! My thoughts are had the revolution been less bloody from the beginning, and had they not executed Louis XVI, and then created a constitution with both a stronger executive (that directory idea was horrible!) and a better way to cope with factions, stability could have been achieved. Less-radical republican leadership would have helped. After all the other states invaded and france kicked some ass like otl, there would be less anti-french fervor due to the revolution being seen as less radical and bloodthirsty. After France has achieved that beautiful Rhine border, puppetized the rest of the Netherlands and northern Italy, they stop, rebuild, stabilize and a some-what lasting peace set in with France as the most powerful country in Europe but not a total hegemon. It seems history's most successfulu conquests have taken some territory rather than a lot, then successfully incorporated it like Bismarck, Caesar (Rome generally), Louis VIX vs. Napoleon, Hitler, Alexander the great who took over a huge amount of land, went over the limit, and collapsed.
Scipio
 
Radicalism and revolution go hand-in-hand, though... the more conflict there is internally or via foreign intervention during the formative periods of the uprising, the more radical the government's going to get. Just as a general rule of thumb, of course. How are you proposing to moderate the Revolution anyhow? Including the aristocracy or clergy is out of the question, since the initial point of the revolution was about how pissed everybody was with those two groups in particular. The bourgeoise was less than a tenth of France's population-- giving them more power essentially means that the First French Republic becomes an oligarchy and is scarcely recognizable, assuming that they don't all rush to Jacobism. The peasantry is hardly more likely to be a moderating force, what with the sans-culottes and all. So, how do you propose to remove some of the First Republic's radicalism?

Letting Louis XVI live is probably going to increase radicalism, as an exiled or imprisoned king can serve as a mighty good bogeyman for hardliners in the Republic.

Another problem with what you're proposing is that France already was the most powerful country in Europe. Them having a revolution and then going on an expansionistic rampage even just to the Rhine is going to cause many of the other powers-- Austria and Great Britain in particular-- to flip their shit and decide to intervene against the French revolutionaries.
 
Hello everyone, I was wondering: how would the First French Republic survive as a stable and democratic great power. If it could keep its borders after the war of the first coalition that would be best.
Scipio

Two factors made France fail to stay stable and democratic:
Instability was provoked by iacobins and lose of democracy by one person called Napoleon.
You cant contain the radicals taking over if u dont eliminate them from start.
Stability is more important than democracy on long term.
Lets say the king takes care to execute all the major Iacobin figures.
So when he is removed from power only the moderates still exist.

Or the king take the initiative and proclaim the Peoples Republic of Frace with him as leader and request public suport again nobles.
A multi party parliament exist but iacobins never take power and neighbours never atack France.

For this you need to eliminate the figure of the hated queen and give a stronger position to the king against both sides nobles and republicans(all factions)
Nobles reject to pay taxes as everyone else and republicans ask population to stop work and something like this....
King remains a strong balance factor in this story.

Finally we must make sure Napoleon is killed in Egypt.

So as my plan is ready i only need a time machine :)
 

Vitruvius

Donor
Terms like Moderate and Radical and even Jacobin are relative to the phase of the revolution being discussed. The Girondins for example started as radicals and many were members of the Jacobin Club, like Brissot, but by the time they were ousted they represented the most conservative faction still in power. Indeed the Girondins (aka Brissotins) are a good example of the problems with the Revolution. Initially in favor of democracy and, to varying degrees, of a Republic they waited too long to call depose the King and call the National Convention. By then the momentum of the revolution exceeded their ability to control it and power passed to more radical elements, especiallly once France was invaded.

Ironically it was the Brissotins who led the charge for war, believing that a common enemy would help unite France. Later when the war went badly they were in favor of abandoning Paris and moving the government to the Loire or even Bordeaux. This is also partly reflective of there ambiguous position on federalism. Sometimes for it sometimes for centralization. They also had little support among the masses in Paris (compared to more radical elements). Unsurprisingly they were ousted with the help of the mob and the backing of the Paris Commune.

Thus you see several problems that have to be overcome. For one, the French state had both strong centralizing forces and yet was a collection of provinces with different degrees of autonomy, laws, customs etc. Paris is far larger than any city in the US and has a large population of urban poor. Thus once the government is brought to Paris from Versailles it becomes vulnerable to anyone who can excite the Mob. This helps to explain the power of the Paris Commune, which is the urban, city government of Paris vs the national government embodied by the National Convention. Indeed many figures alternated between the two. Danton, for example, was prohibited from sitting in the Legislative Assembly that succeeded the National Assembly and so took office in the Commune before returning to the National government when the Convention was established. The Commune and the Sections (assemblies in based in different districts of Paris) became the power base for the forces opposing the Girondins.

And of course as has been pointed out none of the factions were very willing to compromise or conceded defeat with grace. Either they went into exile (abroad like the emigres or in the provinces like the Girondins) to foment rebellion or they were imprisoned or executed. The idea that in Democracy sometimes the other guy wins is not at all something they understood. Nor was there ever a George Washington, a person who willing relinquished power once he overcame a crisis.

A couple of things could be helpful. One would be an initially more radical position that lead to a quicker depositon of the King. This might allow a broad coalition of OTL Brissontins and Montagnards to govern. Probably avoiding a declaration of war might help. Foreign powers may intervene but provoking them didn't really help OTL. War only led to a radicalization that including suspending the Constitution indefinitely -before it even went into effect. Likewise the exportation of the Revolution is problematic because it encourages foreign powers to intervene it what might otherwise be seen as an internal French problem. I have mixed feelings about a strong executive. Without leaders willing to relinquish power it could be very dangerous. Interesting the Constitution of 1793 -the one that was never used- called for a 24 member Executive Council indirectly elected by electors chosen by Citizens. It had veto powers of the Assembly, which was a unicameral body. It was similar to but not exactly the same as the Directory.
 
...Including the aristocracy or clergy is out of the question, since the initial point of the revolution was about how pissed everybody was with those two groups in particular.

Well, the Revolution of 1789 was a process. It actually started--insofar as the "start" wasn't the root grievances people had going back years, decades, generations (and that isn't the "start" since people somehow survived, accepted, or were ground under by these issues all those generations)--with Louis XVI calling the Estates General, and he did that because he needed money. The old system of raising funds--tax farming, sale of offices, and borrowing on the security of these (tax farming was a form of borrowing--the king didn't collect the taxes, he took a lump sum from the tax farmers who then had a license to recoup their losses with profit in the king's name) and all that--had reached their limits. He was hoping the EG, roughly corresponding to the British Parliament, would legitimize a more rational and sustainable system of finance. Basically he wanted them to rubber-stamp his plans, and then go home again and start paying the new taxes and resume obeying his orders like good subjects.

But the nobles-the First Estate--understanding they would have to be taxed in order to carry out these plans (the lower orders being already pretty well squeezed) wanted to turn the EG into a permanent, standing body that they figured they would dominate. Some among them were idealists of various kinds who figured that of course the lower estates would have a just place at the table too; they had all sorts of schemes for a proper constitutional monarchy. This opened the door for the Third Estate representatives to chime in that hey, they had been paying for the glorious French kingdom all along, you bet they'd have something to say...and it spiraled from there. Bastille Day is considered the beginning of the Revolution proper, and it sprung from the King deciding enough was enough and that he'd better rein in this Frankenstein's monster he created, and the people of Paris showing him that actually it was too late for that. But don't forget, the King didn't call the Estates General on a whim--he called it because he was desperate. And in the beginning of this process, the nobility darn well did intend to make a revolution--their revolution, analogous to the British "Glorious Revolution." They had no intention of doing without a king, but they may well have considered not having a Bourbon king.

The bourgeoise was less than a tenth of France's population-- giving them more power essentially means that the First French Republic becomes an oligarchy and is scarcely recognizable, assuming that they don't all rush to Jacobism.

Of course the myth of the common people (ie everyone who wasn't a noble or clergyman, with the more admirable of these classes joining in too) rising as one was (and perhaps still is; it sure is with me but I may be behind the times:eek:) a powerful myth of the French nation and for democrats the world over in general. Lower orders may well have identified with their richer compatriots of the Third Estate; the rich bourgeoise--bourgeois in the Marxist sense--could plausibly pose as men of the people since the nobility despised them all alike, the more so the richer they were.

The peasantry is hardly more likely to be a moderating force, what with the sans-culottes and all. So, how do you propose to remove some of the First Republic's radicalism?

Wait a minute--as I said it has been some time since I last went over the detailed history of the Revolution. Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't sans-culottes refer to the plebians of the cities, especially Paris?

The peasantry proper, who still lived in the countryside, were a mixed bag. In some regions they were loyalists of the Old Regime, more or less; in others they had risen up themselves in the wake of the radical events in Paris and overthrown their local landlords--which did not make them automatic followers of any urban faction but did mean they had burnt their bridges to the Old Regime.

Marx asserted, make of it what you will, that a peasantry can't rule itself in its own behalf, and will wind up supporting some strong man--king or emperor, perhaps some other kind of autocrat--whom they conceive as being "of them" in some mystical sense, and whom they gift with great power because they see their problems coming from the local elites, and see the dictator as a countervailing power who sees the true interest of the land (which they trust is their true interest) against the narrow ambitions of their local landlord or moneylenders. Thus the rise of Napoleon I and eventually, Napoleon III.

All your stuff I snipped out is what I agree with!
 
Two factors made France fail to stay stable and democratic:
Instability was provoked by iacobins and lose of democracy by one person called Napoleon.
But isn't it obvious that the factors at work went a lot deeper than this or that supposedly villainous individual, and that if you strike one down others will take their place, because both the radicals and the new breed of military reactionaries were representative of deep trends of modernity in France and Europe in general? "One person called Napoleon" indeed! Use your time machine to strangle him at birth, and some other general would clearly step in to his vacated place instead.

Oh, I see you think of all this from a very different angle than I do...

You cant contain the radicals taking over if u dont eliminate them from start.
Stability is more important than democracy on long term.{emphasis mine--Shev}
Lets say the king takes care to execute all the major Iacobin figures.
So when he is removed from power only the moderates still exist.

Or the king take the initiative and proclaim the Peoples Republic of Frace with him as leader and request public suport again nobles.
A multi party parliament exist but iacobins never take power and neighbours never atack France.

Um, wow. In the name of stability, that's quite a lot of bloodshed there. Let's see, first the king identifies and kills the radicals--presumably he is very prescient since many of these radicals actually would evolve, becoming radical only gradually, but he's the king, so he foresees who the ringleaders will be and has them killed? And this cows everyone else? But he doesn't begin with the nobles (who, see my previous reply to Ofaloaf, were the immediate problem he actually faced before Bastille Day). So presumably the nobles, sheltering under the King's Herodian massacre, walk into power and the same king who unleashed deadly terror on the masses meekly falls in with their schemes?

But then, the nobles (or is it somehow the high bourgeoise who, being rich and respectable (for commoners:() I guess escape the noose (swords/axes for decapitation were for nobles; commoners were hanged, and this is one reason the guillotine was invented--to equalize execution for all!) and outmaneuver the lords and the king)--either way, they get tired of their toy king and kill him, or bring him to heel completely, so they can get on with the respectable business of running a respectable commonwealth or whatever they call it without any of those really lowly folk sticking their ignorant noses in where they don't belong?

Oh wait, it gets better:

For this you need to eliminate the figure of the hated queen and give a stronger position to the king against both sides nobles and republicans(all factions)
Nobles reject to pay taxes as everyone else and republicans ask population to stop work and something like this....
King remains a strong balance factor in this story.

Finally we must make sure Napoleon is killed in Egypt.

So as my plan is ready i only need a time machine :)

So bottom line--your idea of a "continued First Republic" is to abort it before it gets started and restore the absolute monarchy immediately?

Because what you have outlined is the theory of absolutism as expounded by the monarchists; it's essentially Hobbes. The monarch stands above the general population--both the muddy lower orders and their more glittering betters--only he embodies the nation as a whole, and so he both can and should prevail over all, playing all against all for the good of the whole.

For good or for ill, that just wasn't an option in 1789 any more. But to attempt it, your monarch must indeed wade knee-deep in as much blood as Stalin or Hitler shed, at least in proportion to the population.

It makes the Terror and the Napoleonic wars look moderate in comparison, and emphasizes the point made by Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee--come weeping to me of the evils of the Terror of the Revolution, and I will point to two thousand years or more of Terror it sought to end.

You know that bit I mentioned about certain critics of the Revolution disdaining in some combination Liberty, Equality, Fraternity?

This is the kind of thing I meant by that.:(
 
And a more general reply, on two points:

First of all, any sudden evolution in France, even if had stopped at say what the nobles assembled at the Estates General had wanted and they had checked the more plebian movements before they "got out hand," giving France some kind of standing parliamentary body limited to the nobles, the clergy, and those Third Estate commoners these deemed most "respectable"--presumably the rich--would have been an opportunity for rival powers--notably Austria and Britain--to intervene anyway. (But note, if it did retain a monarch in any form, however checked by some sort of semi-representative body, it would hardly be the First Republic, which is the OP stipulation--it would be a constitutional monarchy like Britain).

If it advances to a republic, that is an existential threat in itself to the crowned heads of Europe, however "moderate" and restrained the Republic would offer to be. The opportunity becomes a crisis--I'm told the Chinese ideogram for "crisis" can be parsed as "unavoidable opportunity";). They can't sit back and do nothing, but if they act they can possibly gain. Intervention is not an option, it is an inevitability, and the question is how can the regime--radical by its nature, however early the success of the reactionaries in checking it--survive that challenge.

Second point--I hardly care whether France survives or has glorious conquests or whatever, except insofar as I care to avoid unnecessary, pointless violence to anyone. What I care about is the very thing so many seek to maneuver around or brutally suppress at the outset--the myth of the common people rising up and taking their own destiny into their own hands. I love the Revolution itself, and figured this thread was an opportunity to talk about how it could sustain itself and reach for its potential. As I said up front, I soberly think that the process of social evolution was not yet advanced enough in Europe in general and in France in particular for this to be a realistic hope, but that's kind of what I was thinking we might explore.

In 1989, I read an essay by some French political leader or pundit or whatever published in Time or Newsweek for Bastille Day, that apologized for the Revolution and tried to make out why it was all a big mistake. I was pretty mad about it, the silly hypocrisy of it all. For good or for bad, the world we live in, France especially, is the product of that revolution, and I hardly see how it could have been avoided--or if it could somehow have been, how France could have done better in the long run than she did OTL.

I disdain Napoleon mainly because I see him as the executioner, or perhaps merely the undertaker, of the grand dream of 1789. But certainly Napoleonic monarchy was at any rate more progressive than Bourbon; he propagated and spread many of the essential reforms of the revolution and thus laid the groundwork for a deeper and broader fruition of the goals. At any rate he left France on a more sound, modern basis.

I guess it looks very different to others. I just wish more of us would remember, most of us are after all the children of peasants, not the nobles. However cool it seems to us today to imagine ourselves in the shoes of the higher orders moving the lowers around like pawns, chances are in such a world we would be the peons.
 
....
I guess it looks very different to others. I just wish more of us would remember, most of us are after all the children of peasants, not the nobles. However cool it seems to us today to imagine ourselves in the shoes of the higher orders moving the lowers around like pawns, chances are in such a world we would be the peons.
Slightly off topic but this may need a few caveats. It is or was true over a single generation but if the rich have more reproductive success, then over time their genes should dominate. An extreme example is the 11% prevalence of a Y chromosome in Central Asia probably deriving from Genghis Khan http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1180246/?tool=pubmed.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
I was simply arguing that we are genetically the children of the rich and powerful. Probably accounts for our aggressive characters:mad:.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
I was simply arguing that we are genetically the children of the rich and powerful. Probably accounts for our aggressive characters:mad:.

Except inheritability of aggression is not very high for humans.

That said knowing my family I know I do descend from the rich and powerful (and see it everytime I dine with my father or grandparents) :rolleyes:
 
I was simply arguing that we are genetically the children of the rich and powerful. Probably accounts for our aggressive characters:mad:.

Again--this is basically a world-view argument.

In mine, I pretty much discount genetics as a factor in who is where in the social hierarchy. I don't believe for a moment that the people who are running the show in any particular generation are doing so because they are smarter, more aggressive, or any behavioral characteristic you care to name thanks to their genes. Human beings are, genetically speaking IMHO pretty much a wash; what matters in terms of outcomes is the sort of society they have.

I'm saying--switch a royal baby with a peasant baby at birth, doing so in a manner so than no one notices; the outcome will make no practical difference. There are smart people, stupid people, mean people, hesitant people, decisive people, emerging from every bloodline.

Which is why I agree with archaeogeek--that's a non sequitur.

The point is, I value a society that values the rhetoric of 1789--liberty, equality, fraternity. Human beings are at their best if they first of all respect the freedom and dignity of every person--that's Liberty. And they recognize that no one has by their nature (including their genetic heritage, whatever that may mean) the right to override the interests of others--Equality. And that it is human nature that we must and should be concerned with the welfare of others, because, if you are going to frame this discussion in a Darwinian light, the great human survival trick is that we have developed intelligent cooperation to a degree no other species has. We communicate; we share; we coordinate our actions, and this has for good or ill put us right on top of the global food chain (well, unless we blow it--which is within our capability as well!) This is Fraternity.

No society has realized these ideals (more like wishes or aspirations) perfectly of course. The French of 1789 inherited a society many light-years from this; along the way these notions have gotten perverted into what looks to me like their very polar opposite. The point is, this is the sort of thing that the people who rose up thought they were trying to achieve; this is the yardstick they used to measure their progress.

Not conquest of empires, not duration of some royal dynasty.

If we see society as mainly an instrument for concentrating human ability into the control of a few hands, so they can carry out whatever project strikes them as grand and worthy and most people are simply means to their ends, we delude ourselves if we think this is OK because we think of ourselves as the guiding elite. Chances are, no matter what genes we have, most of us won't be, by the sheer statistics. There will be lots more losers than winners. The only way everyone is a winner is if society is about helping everyone win.

I think this is a sane as well as a pretty world-view of mine, that we should favor the latter, because after all this is the great evolutionary trick that put our species on top (well, from our perspective anyway)--intelligent cooperation.
 
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