What if the Coalition had crushed the French Revolution?
In 1793 the Republic was invaded on every front and torn by civil war. What if the allies had reached Paris and restored the monarchy?
What actually happened
France went to war with Austria and Prussia in April 1792. After the victory at Valmy in September the Republic was proclaimed, and Louis XVI was executed in January 1793. By spring 1793 France faced Austria, Prussia, Britain, the Dutch Republic, Spain and Sardinia, while its own general Dumouriez defected, the Vendée rose in a royalist revolt and cities such as Lyon and Marseille rebelled. In August Toulon handed its fleet and harbour to the British.
The Republic survived by extreme measures. The Committee of Public Safety and the Terror crushed internal opposition, and the levée en masse of August 1793 mobilised the nation for war. Toulon was retaken in December, with a young artillery officer named Napoleon Bonaparte playing a key role. On 26 June 1794 Jourdan's army won at Fleurus, opening Belgium to the French.
A month later, on 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794), Robespierre fell. The Republic went on to win the war, and in the years that followed Bonaparte rose to command the Army of Italy.
The turning point
1793 was the Republic's most dangerous year. Historians such as T. C. W. Blanning stress that the Coalition's failure was as much political as military: Prussia and Austria were distracted by the partitions of Poland, the allies distrusted one another, and they never combined their armies for a single march on Paris. The Duke of York's army in Flanders and the Austrians failed to coordinate.
A determined combined offensive in 1793, linked with the Vendée and the federalist cities, might have reached Paris. Whether it could have held France is another matter; the threat of foreign invasion did more than anything to rally Frenchmen to the Republic.
The world that might have been
In Crown & Plough the alternative reads: the Vendée revolt and the allied advance came together; Paris opened its gates and the boy king from the Temple tower sat on the throne; the Revolution ended after five years, not twenty-five, and the Corsican artillery officer remained a nameless captain. The game then removes the scripted Napoleonic events: the end of Venice and of the Holy Roman Empire, the Russian campaign and Waterloo.
Beyond the game, a restoration in 1794 under Louis XVII, a sickly child who in reality died in prison in 1795, with a regent such as the Count of Provence, would have faced a deeply divided country. The land sold off from the Church and nobles, the abolition of feudal rights and the new administration would have been hard to undo. A constitutional settlement, or renewed revolt, seem as likely as a return to the old regime.
Europe without Napoleon would have kept the Holy Roman Empire and many small states longer, and the spread of the Napoleonic legal codes and administration across Europe would not have happened in that form. The ideas of 1789, though, had already crossed borders.
Ripples through time
Without a revolutionary France, there is no Napoleonic empire: in the game the Russian campaign and Waterloo do not happen at all.
Carried into the Victorian era (1850), France is a Bourbon kingdom and Bonaparte is just the name of a Corsican family. That also changes the setting of the Victorian turning points that depend on a Bonapartist France.
- Shapes What if Napoleon had won in Russia in 1812?, What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo?
- Carries into the next era Victorian Era
Play this turning point
Start in the Age of Revolution (1789), or take the scenario The Bakery by the Bastille, which begins in Paris in 1789. In the Currents of History story French Revolution you can be a revolutionary, a constitutionalist or a royalist; the royalist side pushes for the alternative.
History is strongly weighted toward the Republic's survival. A royalist lord, an émigré who joins the invading armies or a ruler at war with France can shift it most.
Play this turning point → Start the scenario “The Bakery by the Bastille” →
Questions and answers
Why did the First Coalition fail to defeat Revolutionary France?
The allies were divided and distracted, especially by the partitions of Poland; they never mounted a combined march on Paris, while France mobilised its whole nation through the levée en masse and crushed internal revolts.
What was the Battle of Fleurus?
A French victory over the Austrians on 26 June 1794 that opened the Austrian Netherlands to French conquest; a reconnaissance balloon was used there for the first time in battle.
What happened to Louis XVII?
The son of Louis XVI was held in the Temple prison and died there in 1795 at the age of ten. DNA tests on his preserved heart in 2000 confirmed his death.
Sources and further reading
Modern accounts: T. C. W. Blanning, The French Revolutionary Wars; William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution; Timothy Tackett, The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution.
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