WI: Feuillants prevail in the French Revolution

[PsihoKekec]

And existing Poland.Still strong if France send some help in 1792,or rump state if they not.

Unlikely, Prussia was still looking for expansion to the East, it's likely that upon the death of Pontiakowski, his lack of legal issue would be used as pretext for partition.

 

[Circle of Willis]

Firstly, no, as I mentioned, French engagement in N.America was systemically different than English engagement historically. Changing the outcome of the French Revolution like this does not mean that policy is going to change, and given that this is explicitly a moderate to conservative regime that means pre-revolution policies are MORE LIKELY, not LESS LIKELY to be continued, which includes non-colonization of N.America. To claim otherwise you'd need to show that those involved in this alt-timeline EXPLICITLY wanted to increase colonization into N.America in opposition to all French policy both of the Monarchy and later Empire.

. . . You really have no idea of the sheer scale of the Irish migration to N.America, do you? The French fleet, as it was, could in no way support that level of immigration, and New Orleans and the Louisiana territory could also in no way support or absorb the level of immigration we saw in the OTL. We're talking over a million Irish immigrating to the US in a few decades, and a depopulation of Ireland to the extent that in modern times there are more people of Irish decent in the United States THAN IN IRELAND. And again, there's literally NO REASON for said Irish to immigrate to Louisiana. There's no jobs. The farmland there is not suited to the type of farming they're used to, and you're dealing with an area where white migrants tended to die by the tens of thousands due to malaria (one of the major reasons for African slaves being so valued in the American south and Caribbean was their genetic resistance to malaria that EUROPEANS LACKED). And bear in mind, large parts of Louisiana where they would be initially migrating to IS A SWAMP which is prime breeding ground for mosquitoes. Oh, and did I mention that New Orleans periodically gets hit by hurricanes, as in, almost yearly? That's a BIG DAMPER on building up a city especially before the advent of modern weather forcasting.

Basically put, there is literally no reason to migrate to Louisiana when you can migrate to New York or Boston. Weather is better and more familiar there, farmland in the New England, Mid Atlantic and Old Northwest more familiar, and there's way more job opportunities from the new factories opening up in those regions. None of which Louisiana has, nor would the French develop there as Louisiana is piss poor for industrialization with no good fall lines for pre-steam powered mills, and far removed from any coal reserves for steam powered industrialization of the later half of the 19th century. There's a REASON Louisianan is a agricultural and shipping state IRL, and it's because it's one of the WORST PLACES for industrialization on the continent, between swamps, hurricanes periodically destroying everything, disease, and yeah. Frankly, if it wasn't the mouth of the largest navigable river system in the world, New Orleans would never have been settled where it was.

Long story short: there is literally no advantage to France to hold onto the Louisiana territory in this timeline. It doesn't have access to good raw materials, it doesn't provide access to good farmland that generates valuable crops. To develop it would cost continual money and need continual rebuilding from regular large storms that other locations do no suffer from, and to really develop it would require a level of commitment and population pressure that France, even in this timeline, likely does not have...

And finally, after doing more research on it, this entire point is moot. France doesn't even control Louisiana. It was under Spain's control per the 1763 Treaty of Paris and the Treaty of Fontainebleau. After the American Revolution the the Peace of Paris, north America looked like this:

Note who's nowhere on the map as a major player: France.

So the question becomes would this French government pursue a similar arrangement to Napoleon and the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800, that saw the return of Louisiana to the French for territory in Italy. The events leading up to these territory exchanges are all part of the complicated fallout of the French Revolution, so it seems unlikely that the EXACT same exchange takes place. As such, it might end up that there's a Spanish-American War sometime around 1810s over Louisiana rather than the Quasi War and Britain vs US War of 1812...

I did mention Louisiana was Spanish in the OP. The problem I see with America wanting to make a grab for it (especially if they choose violence) is that not only is Spain not wrecked by the Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars ITL, but they would still have their solid alliance with a France that hasn't overthrown & killed Louis XVI - both kingdoms were ruled by branches of the House of Bourbon and had fought on the same side in literally every major war of the 18th century since the War of the Spanish Succession, including the American Revolutionary War itself (the 1718-20 war wasn't really a major conflict AFAIK and also featured the secondary extreme outlier of France & Britain fighting together against Spain very, very briefly).

I don't see France taking sides in such a conflict since they're on good terms with both the US and Spain, and while the latter's horribly protracted decline throughout the 19th century is a meme this really was not something that could have been predicted in 1789 (and arguably wouldn't have happened at all, or at least been delayed significantly, without the Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars). The Spanish had just enjoyed the reign of Carlos III (the king who committed Spanish help to the Americans during the latter's revolutionary war against the UK), considered one of the great Enlightenment monarchs, up until one year before and actually seemed to be in a really strong position - the largest the Spanish Empire had ever been, in fact - as of 1789-90. Without Napoleon gutting Spain itself I really wouldn't fancy the Americans' chances in an 1810s war against Spain while lacking international support, they're probably better off waiting for the French to buy Louisiana for them or something.

Anyway, the most interesting prospect related to Spain I can think of originating from the Feuillant victory POD has little to do with the USA. Spain's great prime ministers in this period, the Count of Aranda and the Count of Floridablanca, were both Enlightenment liberals - their rivalry seems to have been personal in nature & centered on their own power and ambition, not ideological. Aranda (who historically came out on top only for the French Revolution to make liberalism unpopular, resulting in him getting replaced by the Queen's legendarily inept lover Manuel Godoy in a hurry) had some cool ideas in regard to the Spanish Empire: believing that independence for the New World colonies was inevitable after the American Revolution, he wanted to get out ahead of these developments and turn the Spanish colonies into a commonwealth of kingdoms run by yet more Bourbon cadet branches which would recognize the Spanish king as their 'emperor'. (That map divides the Spanish possessions in the Americas into just three super-kingdoms but they had enough spare princes to go for more as of 1789 - Carlos IV's second son, who will become the first Carlist claimant historically, had just been born as of the POD; he & his wife would later go on to have a third son, and even if that guy isn't born due to the butterfly effect, he also had a nephew and brother still alive & well as of 1789)

If Aranda gets the time to realize this project (due to there being no French Revolution and thus pressure to give him the boot) then I do believe we'd be looking at a very different future for Latin America in general. The 'Carolingian problem' - cadet branches telling their overlord in the senior branch to screw off - is probably inevitable, especially if the Spanish succession still looks anything like it did IRL by the 1830s, but avoiding the upheaval of the Latin American wars of independence (tied to the Rev/Napoleonic Wars), caudilloism, balkanization and associated myriad social problems in favor of a much more orderly transition to autonomy & then full independence can only improve their position compared to OTL. If the US insists on going for Louisiana by force because Spain wouldn't sell it before or w/e, an earlier Mexican-American War against that giga-Mexico stretching from the Dakotas to Costa Rica after it secedes from Spain because its king doesn't recognize Ferdinand VII's daughter as Empress seems a less impossible task than fighting the whole & undamaged Spanish Empire in ~1812, as well.

 

[S'task]

I did mention Louisiana was Spanish in the OP. The problem I see with America wanting to make a grab for it (especially if they choose violence) is that not only is Spain not wrecked by the Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars ITL, but they would still have their solid alliance with a France that hasn't overthrown & killed Louis XVI - both kingdoms were ruled by branches of the House of Bourbon and had fought on the same side in literally every major war of the 18th century since the War of the Spanish Succession, including the American Revolutionary War itself (the 1718-20 war wasn't really a major conflict AFAIK and also featured the secondary extreme outlier of France & Britain fighting together against Spain very, very briefly).

To be perfectly honest I don't think the US would choose violence as a first resort here, rather you'd likely see them mostly interested in buying up sections of the Louisiana territory piecemeal.

In the OTL there were two major driving factors on westward expansion, the first is up in the air if it will take the same form, that of the mass emigration from Europe to the US in the first half of the 19th century. Prior to about 1820 emigration to the US was very low, and there was plenty of expansion space for the US in the territory it gained in the Peace of Paris (basically the East Coast to the Mississippi River) for it's natural population growth.

However the second force driving people west, especially in the south, was more pernicious and that was soil exhaustion. This was especially prevalent in the Tobacco and Cotton growing regions and is what drove the western expansion of the plantations. This issue was beginning to set in well before the immigration of the 1820 and 30s began.

Anyway, Spain was mainly interested in maintaining their control and security of the Caribbean Sea. The inland regions of the Louisiana territory have little interest to them, but considerable interest to the US. I honestly could see the US buying up the northern parts of the Louisiana territory from Spain for relatively cheaply. The only flashpoint I really see between them would potentially be navigation from New Orleans and around Spanish Florida (as well as the already contested western Florida regions).

That said, without the Napoleonic Wars and the subsequent weakening of Spain, there's a good chance that the US never ends up annexing what in the OTL is the Southwest US. No Texas or California and the region in between, rather, those might stay under Spanish domain OR set up as their own Kingdoms as Willis suggests.

 

[stevep]

Its likely that the US will become a great power and probably the dominant one in N America but not certain if it clashes with one or more of the other great powers. Which is a possibility without the chaos that were the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Although in turn without the revolutionary conflict its likely that the greater populations and the lack of experience of those bloodbaths mean that more dynastic wars are likely to occur although their likely to be less destructive unless somewhere else goes through the OTL French experience.

Good point people are making that in this TL Spain might have a much better time and a slower rate of decline, especially if the Carlist idiots aren't continually tearing things apart for their power grabs.

If Aranda's plans were to come off, it would also depend on how well the new nations, most especially this mega-Mexico, manages to stay reasonably stable and also avoids too violent and destructive a separation from Spain. [Just because Aranda might favour such a move doesn't mean that the monarchs at the time things come to a head will agree with those ideas and the peninsula Spanish are likely to oppose such a move which which basically destroy their power-base.]

As well as soil exhaustion in the south wasn't there an issue that the plantations were so successful economically that they crowded out a lot of would be smaller farmers who couldn't compete and hence had to either settle for poorer and less favourable farmlands or head west or north out of the 'natural' slave territory? - Mind you this assumes that the cotton gin is still developed which while likely is not certain.

 

[ATP]

Firstly, no, as I mentioned, French engagement in N.America was systemically different than English engagement historically. Changing the outcome of the French Revolution like this does not mean that policy is going to change, and given that this is explicitly a moderate to conservative regime that means pre-revolution policies are MORE LIKELY, not LESS LIKELY to be continued, which includes non-colonization of N.America. To claim otherwise you'd need to show that those involved in this alt-timeline EXPLICITLY wanted to increase colonization into N.America in opposition to all French policy both of the Monarchy and later Empire.

. . . You really have no idea of the sheer scale of the Irish migration to N.America, do you? The French fleet, as it was, could in no way support that level of immigration, and New Orleans and the Louisiana territory could also in no way support or absorb the level of immigration we saw in the OTL. We're talking over a million Irish immigrating to the US in a few decades, and a depopulation of Ireland to the extent that in modern times there are more people of Irish decent in the United States THAN IN IRELAND. And again, there's literally NO REASON for said Irish to immigrate to Louisiana. There's no jobs. The farmland there is not suited to the type of farming they're used to, and you're dealing with an area where white migrants tended to die by the tens of thousands due to malaria (one of the major reasons for African slaves being so valued in the American south and Caribbean was their genetic resistance to malaria that EUROPEANS LACKED). And bear in mind, large parts of Louisiana where they would be initially migrating to IS A SWAMP which is prime breeding ground for mosquitoes. Oh, and did I mention that New Orleans periodically gets hit by hurricanes, as in, almost yearly? That's a BIG DAMPER on building up a city especially before the advent of modern weather forcasting.

Basically put, there is literally no reason to migrate to Louisiana when you can migrate to New York or Boston. Weather is better and more familiar there, farmland in the New England, Mid Atlantic and Old Northwest more familiar, and there's way more job opportunities from the new factories opening up in those regions. None of which Louisiana has, nor would the French develop there as Louisiana is piss poor for industrialization with no good fall lines for pre-steam powered mills, and far removed from any coal reserves for steam powered industrialization of the later half of the 19th century. There's a REASON Louisianan is a agricultural and shipping state IRL, and it's because it's one of the WORST PLACES for industrialization on the continent, between swamps, hurricanes periodically destroying everything, disease, and yeah. Frankly, if it wasn't the mouth of the largest navigable river system in the world, New Orleans would never have been settled where it was.

Long story short: there is literally no advantage to France to hold onto the Louisiana territory in this timeline. It doesn't have access to good raw materials, it doesn't provide access to good farmland that generates valuable crops. To develop it would cost continual money and need continual rebuilding from regular large storms that other locations do no suffer from, and to really develop it would require a level of commitment and population pressure that France, even in this timeline, likely does not have...

And finally, after doing more research on it, this entire point is moot. France doesn't even control Louisiana. It was under Spain's control per the 1763 Treaty of Paris and the Treaty of Fontainebleau. After the American Revolution the the Peace of Paris, north America looked like this:

Note who's nowhere on the map as a major player: France.

So the question becomes would this French government pursue a similar arrangement to Napoleon and the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800, that saw the return of Louisiana to the French for territory in Italy. The events leading up to these territory exchanges are all part of the complicated fallout of the French Revolution, so it seems unlikely that the EXACT same exchange takes place. As such, it might end up that there's a Spanish-American War sometime around 1810s over Louisiana rather than the Quasi War and Britain vs US War of 1812...

So,it would remain spanish.Good,but freed slaves from Haiti would still go there.And Spain would have no reason to sell anything to USA.
You need USA winning war with them first.Possible in 1898,not in 1820 or even 1850.
Even if they support spanish rebels in South America,it would not work.
Becouse all indians and blacks would fight for Spain.

@PsihoKekec ,if our King do not surrender in 1792/with french help unlikely/ we would survive with modernized state and army,allied with France and Austria.
There would be no partitions in this TL.

Unless our cowardly King surrender in 1792 - then we have rump Poland.

 

[raharris1973]

I do not interact enough with @Circle of Willis - I know I am late to the game here, but he has some interesting ideas, and I have some responses that might be interesting. I've mostly been talking with the Circle of ATP and Buba.

I think the key to Barnave prevailing is to have the radicals escalate their goals into open conflict before the Flight to Varennes. The only way the likes of Robespierre, Marat, Danton and the like can be stopped is through violence, as they will just continue escalating to achieve their increasingly radical goals, so the sooner conflict erupts, the better.\

Have the radicals escalate their goals into open conflict against whom? Opponents domestically, or abroad? My first guess would be domestic opponents, because Robespierre and his Jacobins or his Montagnard type actually opposed the idea of foreign wars initially. On the other hand the Girondin radicals supported foreign war.

And you must think early conflict would end up better for the Feuillants because the radicals' enemies, either domestic (Feuillants I guess) or foreign, would be most likely to simply defeat the radicals at an earlier stage of confrontation?

Ehh, I could still see France selling it to the US.

don't see how this prevents the rise of the US. There's no reason to expect the US to not expand into what would be the Louisiana purchase, heck there's no reason to not expect them to buy up large chunks of that from France anyway, though perhaps not Louisiana itself.

Regarding all of this France selling Louisiana to the US or otherwise losing it, that is skipping an important step. France would need to get Louisiana back from *Spain* first which was from a guaranteed idea, and indeed probably not a wise priority for any French government of any type.

As such, it might end up that there's a Spanish-American War sometime around 1810s over Louisiana rather than the Quasi War and Britain vs US War of 1812...

Ah, and here you acknowledge, that detail.

-------But, working with @Circle of Willis original idea, and recycling elements @S'task includes, including French Louisiana and earlier conflict (in this case for conflict), I had earlier come up with an idea that ends up helping the constitutional monarchist Feuillants, saves the monarch and family personally, and punctures the growing radicalism of the revolution, by distracting/redirecting its energy into a *foreign* conflict early.

The *solution* I had in mind is to have the French National Assembly in 1790 come around to the idea of supporting France's ally in the Nootka Sound Crisis against Britain, instead of voting/signalling to wash its hands of it. And the tipping point factor, persuading the French National Assembly government to support the Spanish ally, rather than ignore it, is Spanish agreement to retrocede Louisiana to the French nation right about this time, creating a bond of mutual national obligation. This Franco-Spanish vs. British war becomes a broader coalition war bringing in each side's allies, and the French King, National Assembly, and Sans-Culottes pause on hating each other while hating on the British and Prussians instead for the duration. The scenario is labeled # 3 at the link:



It concludes at the second link, and then an alternate scenario for using a war to save the King's neck and deflate revolutionary passions is provided. This time by having Feuillant Constitutional monarchical France ally with Constitutional monarchical Britain, underlining the new regime's constitutionality, and against unpopular-in-France Austria, underlining the King isn't under the Queen's thumb, and absolutist Russia. France is able to do this, because the earlier tipping point in 1791, where British PM Pitt is not outmaneuvered and is able to launch the war he wanted to that year against Russia, while in alliance with Prussia and the Dutch Republic. Austria would be fair game for the enemies of Russia in that war because of its alliance with Russia at the moment, and Prussia's desire to humble it, which would mesh well with what would be popular in France.