"Louis XVI" Topic

If Louis XVI didn't try to flee France do you think the Monarchy would have been saved in some form?

Marie Antoinette kept plotting with Royalists outside France and the government was reading her mail. Louis had a bad habit of trying to make deals that were at least 6 months past their use by date. Hard to see them staying on the throne.

Mais, Non!

He doomed himself when he joined the Radicals in pushing for the Austrian war. The war quite naturaly strengthened the radicals vs. the moderates. The radicals wanted him gone.

I believe the Jacobins didn't want war. They were afraid the Austrians would depose them. The moderate Girondins wanted war to unify the nation behind them. Louis supported war because he hoped the radicals' fears would come true. Everyone guessed wrong.

Good question – had Louis been a bit more on the ball, maybe not but I don't see him as being in touch enough with the various elements in play in the various factions to pull off a constitutional monarchy

Vtsao, with Radicals I am referring more to Marat and company (the Reds if you will). I am basing my arguments on Schroeder (1994) "Transformation of European Politics". But yes Louis XIV made one of the worst bets in history. Worked great for Russia though ;)

The monarchy was saved when Napoleon mowed down the Paris rabble with canon. Different monarch though. If if Louis XVI had done it, his descendants might still be ruling. Who cares what lawyers and fishwives think.

He could have changed his name to Louis XIV.

1. People would think he was imortal being 150 years okd.
2. Louis XIV was respected and feared, nobody chops his head off.

oh I noticed i made that mistake just now :p

But Ottoathome, that rabble was actually a monarchist rabble (you are reffering to the whiff of a grapeshot affair? That was a monarchist popular demonstration he opened fired on). I guess you can save a monarchy shooting the monarchists.

Otto's point I believe was that the King should have let the Bastille guns open fire on the mob, in which case the Revolution would probably have been short-lived. Instead, he shrunk back from the responsibility of killing his revolting "children" – who had no such compunction in his regard…

I think if Louis abdicated in favor of his son and let a liberal family member like the Duc d'Orleans become regent the convention might have took it as good faith and that would save the monarchy and France from the brutal terror.

If your read Schama's "Citizens" you find that all of the riots and demonstrations by the Paris Mob had one purpose. It was not to affect political ends, (no matter the will of its perhaps leaders) but to vandalize and burn the houses of the well to do, or the particular targets of "revolutionary ardor." That is, vandalism, looting and violence. It's what they did on Saturday night Denunciation fever. For years the revolution was held in their thrall. Any regime that holds a periodic extermination of such population guarantees its own stability.

Paris is worth a massacre.

the King should have let the Bastille guns open fire on the mob

The Bastille did open fire on the mob and killed about 100. News of this spread and many of the Gardes Francais led by their NCOs arrived with artillery. That's when the Bastille commandant surrendered. His head was soon on a pike.

Broglie had been massing troops around Paris to put down the revolution. After the Bastille he told the king that he could not depend on the loyalty of the troops. The suppression was called off.

Schama thinks there was no reason for the revolution. Others disagree.

The garrison fired back with muskets when the attack began, but did not use its 8pdr cannon. Grapeshot would have made short work of the tightly packed mob.

My two cents:

By 1789 it is probably already too late for the king to salvage things on its own. The traditional elements that the crown relied upon, including the military, bureaucracy and nobility, were largely disaffected. If the king could last a couple of years until harvests return to normal and the different elements started falling out with each other, he could play off one element against the other.

Musketier, my point is that the mob was driven back. It was the Gardes Francais that captured the Bastille, regardless of the propaganda paintings.

Point taken, V. – my misreading.