What the other countries want to do & what the National Assembly fear the other countries are going to do are not necessarily the same thing.
The people's opinions about the Church bureaucracy & their local parish priest aren't necessarily the same either. And the Assembly was going after both. Yes, most of the counterrevolutionary movements don't appear until after the levée en masse, but the more thing that happen in close succession the closer the Assembly is to having a problem.
It is very much Parisian led radicalism. Look at how the Parisian mob dealt with the Girondists when their interests diverged from the Southern provinces?
There was no fear of invasion in 1791 in France before the king's attempted flight. It was his attempt, which was painted into an attempt to flee abroad which whipped up hysteria about Louis XVI colluding with France's enemies.
Attempts to curtail the non-jurors only began to pick up pace in 1792, after the monarchy was abolished. In early 1791 they were banned from preaching in public (ie. baptisms and marriages) but they weren't prevented from celebrating mass. Many did continue to celebrate mass and drew large crowds, because the assembly in 1791 wasn't prepared to act against them because a) they feared the chaos it would create and b) the assembly wasn't sure how it could effectively deal with them. Most of the priests who were non-jurors weren't even replaced until August 1792, almost two years after the original law was passed and more than a year since the oaths were first taken. It was only in November of 1791 (after the king's failed flight) that the Legislative Assembly attempted to act against the non-jurors by ordering them arrested.
The Girondin Party laid the seeds for their own demise in their vacillation. It's worth remembering that in ~1792 they were one of the largest groups within the assembly and also held the governmental ministries. Their inability to deal with the troubles of the period meant that the Montagnards sought an alliance with the Sans-Coulettes.
Perhaps. Fact remains that the Parisian mob decided to impose their will over the rest of the country through violence. The move was not only illegal but undemocratic.
Decisions that may be expedited, & Philippe Égalite would have done nothing to counter.
Or -- alternatively -- the "Paris Mob" isn't some essential overarching menace that will always stalk any attempt by the French state or society to evolve from one thing to another, but is something that emerges in particular circumstances, circumstances this scenario very well may avert. For example, you might imagine a scenario where the flight succeeding means there's no panic surrounding a German army storming Paris, meaning the populace isn't so freaked out that they clash with the National Guard for the purpose of threatening the government.
PoD is well before said Reign, you’ll notice; I would say it’s far less likely to happen TTL.
To be fair, most of the French Revolution would be considered illegal if we go that route. The Estates General wasn't exactly summoned to draw up a constitution for France or oversee it's transition from an absolute monarchy into a constitutional one. The Parisians acted in conjunction with the Montagnard and other segments of the Jacobin party. Their actions bein undemocratic means little when France up until this period has had absolutely no tradition of democratic practice: it's little difficult to chide people two hundred years ago for doing something illegal and democratic when France was in completely uncharted territories regarding it's government, the path it might take, the future of the crown in said government, ect.
It was all illegal yes but up until that point, they tried to live up to the spirit of democracy.And democracy is very much the principle that all sides tried to legitimize all of their excesses with. If you are gonna apologize for the Parisian mob, what is the point of even having this discussion? It's just classic might is right. And it is irrelevant to the disucssion of whether the Parisian mob was trying to impose it's will on the rest of the country.
That conclusion would be pretty much at odds with the events of the Revolution up to the proposed PoD; the mob was hardly the main driver behind the Third Estate forming the National Assembly or the election of the initial Legislative Assembly. It really isn't until 1792 that "the Paris mob" became anything like a driving factor in the French state, and even then it didn't last.
It very much was. The Third Estate was able to form the National Assembly thanks to the threat of violence by the Parisian mob. The storming of the Bastille a few days later on rumours of the king shutting the institution down illustrates this.The French Royal family next lost almost all of their powers thanks to the Parisian mob storming the Versailles and taking them to the Tuileries. The decision by Louis XVI to actually flee to Varennes was actually directly influenced by repeated harassment of the Royal Family by the Parisian mob. The mob was always there and was a key player in events, it’s just that prior to 1792, the interests of the mob aligned with the rest of the country as well as more moderate leaders.
Yes & no, while the mob was the bludgeon that forced king in agreement with the changes, the mob wasn't fully acting on it's on accord. It was being nudged, by a bunch of "disgruntled" lawyers & low level bureaucrats.
I don’t think the mob was really as directed as you believed. Several historians actually wrote quite extensively that the mob was largely spontaneous. There were people you could call leaders, but at the same time, the ‘leader’ of these mobs could only channel their energy as opposed to having any solid control over them. Lafayette, Danton etc was very popular with the mob at one point or another, but due to various circumstances, they were ditched after being insufficiently radical to the mob.
Directed is probably too strong a word. Nudged is probably better & I'll edit it.
My question is, then what?
It is extremely unlikely who they could take him once he is safe and well protected and with a good way out of the country in the worst case. Plus I do not think who Louis would keep Antoinette and their children there with him but is likelier who they (and Elisabeth) will be sent in Austria so whatever happened to Louis his son would not be imprisoned
I agree.
