Imagine you are reincarnated back on January 1, 1789, as Louis in Versailles.
What would you do to keep your crown, and as much power as possible?
Or are you doomed under the wheels of history by this point?
Propose an alliance with Britain, making clear to them that without a big investment of British capital, radical revolution may be flowing across the English Channel soon. Promise them 20 years of cheap sugar in return. Eventually you will have to reorganize your own tax system, but that’s a long-term task.
Proclaim a new national assembly of commoners, to participate, vaguely, in government. Use whatever intelligence information you have to stuff the assembly with royalists and compliant moderates. Quietly arrest Robespierre, Marat, etc. Play for time until things cool down and you can dominate the assembly.
Pick a commoner sergeant and make him a general, in charge of a new Armee Ordinaire, answerable to you. Co-opt the unrest in the streets by creating an army of the people out of the discontented. This army will also help you put down resistance from the nobility when you begin reorganizing your government’s finances and taxing their land. You may have to forge this army’s loyalty at some point by invading Belgium, but wait until you have the British money first.
Open a new hospital in your wife’s name. Let her be seen opening the building, and feeding the sick.
Probably still too late.
I’m pretty sure I could. AFAIK at the Estates-General’s opening ceremony which was still to come, the King received a standing ovation. Even after the Fall of the Bastille most people favoured a (constitutional) monarchy. Even Robespierre might have still been a monarchist at the time. It’s only after the King opened negotiations with Austria and tried to flee France that the people turned against him. And even then the decision to execute him wasn’t unanimous.
So I’m quite sure that by keeping an open ear to the people’s concerns during the Estates-General, I could be able not only to keep my head, but maintain the Kingdom of France. The main risk is that a few nobles may think I’m going too far and try to depose me. Tom Tildrum’s suggestion of putting part of the army under commoner leadership could become helpful here.
Become the Commoners’ King. Institute reforms. Assuming I know then what I’d know now about how the next few months are going to fall out, I’d rather diminish/share some power than have myself and my family executed and the utter horrors of the Reign of Terror come about.
Repudiate Grandpere. That “L’etat c’est moi” crap ain’t gonna fly now. Hustle Marie off to a convent or something, call it a religious retreat. Just get her out of the public eye for a while, preferably doing something pious.
Have certain people very quietly done away with.
In other words, try like hell to pacify the mob and dissipate the power of the rabble-rousers.
Say the hell with the Catholic Church and distribute its vast holdings in France to the people. Louis can then become the head of a constitutional monarchy quite easily; he would have been quite popular had he sided with the commoners and not the church heirarchy.
Part of the trouble (IIRC) was that France was close to bankruptcy at the time. I’d say that by 1789 Louis was probably screwed, but maybe he could try and sell all of the French holdings in the US to raise some quick cash the way Napoleon did. Use the money to lighten the burden on the lower classes, offer similar reforms to those the English monarchs did to put limits on the monarchs power, form a similar parliament to the English, and generally eat less cheese and surrender less (;))…either that, or get out while the getting was good. That’s what I’d do if I were suddenly transported to the body of Louis in 1789. Look into what was possible, but prepare to bolt to some other country and live in exile with as much loot and boodle as I could manage to squirrel away…
-XT
I don’t speak French, so I think I’d be hosed…
That might just be the wisest course of action from the get-go. Once you realize you’re in Louis’s body, immediately start sewing gold into your clothes and flee one night for Martinique.
My understanding of the French Revolution was that it was being “stuck between two stools” that cost Louis his life. He was too autocratic to agree to meaningful reforms, but he wasn’t autocratic enough to crack down on the protesters when he could have done so.
So yeah, depending on what kind of mood I was in, I’d either institute widespread liberal reform, or crack down on the revolutionaries with an iron fist (much as Napoleon did, successfully, later on when called upon by the Directory to put down a Royalist counter revolution).
First I change the design on the front of the ecu, and make sure that Mirabeau is supplied with antibiotics and antiinflammatories.
But beyond that, I don’t know. I know some people have suggested a constitutional monarchy, but that’s not acceptable. I am the divinely ordained king of France, and it would be a betrayal of my duty, my family, and my country to turn over power to a bunch of peasants and merchants.
I’d do my best, begging, borrowing, and stealing, to increase grain imports to counter the bad harvests. If I can keep the price of bread down, and make sure that people get fed, that will prevent the bread riots, which will stop the radicalism.
Err…this is more or less what got him executed, isn’t it?
I agree with Hynpnogogic Jerk, the Revolution wasn’t particularly anti-Monarchist to start with, and if Louis had been more willing to play ball, it probably would’ve stayed that way and he would’ve ended up as the head of a limited Constitutional Monarchy similar to the system in Britain at the time.
Then I’d start a war with someone, as that usually shuts the Plebs up for a few years.
Constitutional monarchy doesn’t necessarily mean like the UK in 2010 (or even Britain in 1789). Even calling the Estates-General was in a way the act of a constitutional monarch. There are reforms that I could grant while still keeping my position as the legitimate head of the French state.
Request a state visit to England or the US and then leave with pomp and a royal guard of some size and a fleet of ships, with every appearance of coming back, leaving lots of material items behind, and then never coming back. I think 16 is doomed and the only hope a better executed escape. At a minimum, send MA off to visit her mother alone.
Maria Theresa died in 1780, so that wouldn’t work.
Hmm, then my idea is not much better than the revolutionaries sending her to visit Mom.
Well, that would have been a much longer visit, to tell the truth.
If I choose to summon the Estates-General, then that’s my choice as a good King to listen to the needs of my subjects. But if I agree to something requiring that they be summoned at regular intervals, then I turn that power over to the agreement.
If I agree to a constitution, then I’m bound by the constitution, and then there’s a secular law above me. And while God’s law is above me, obviously, no secular law can be above me. There is no French State without the French King.
Her brother was still alive and sitting on mom’s throne. Make sure she takes the Dauphin too.
One problem I recall reading was that the aristocracy still had most of the money but were exempt from taxes. A series of finance ministers came and went with the same solution - tax the nobles, where the money is. Louis was unwilling to do that - I think the nobles advised him to look for other sources of revenue. The revolutionaries (tea-baggers?) decided to chop expenses instead.
The trouble is, trying to ‘soak the rich’ at that point wasn’t really a viable alternative either, since it might have equally lead to a revolt and overthrow. Louis was fucked no matter which way he turned…he had simply spent to much (especially on the American revolution), and the cupboard was bare, with no easy, short term fixes. France was a rich nation, but even a rich nation can draw down to far. Add in a couple of crop failures, heavy taxation on the peasant class, and periodic wars, uprisings and general mayhem, and things can get ugly fast.
Knowing how history played out, I think that were I Louis I would have just cut my losses, perhaps moved to my overseas possessions with a large army and as much of the treasury as I could get away with for an extended ‘holiday’, then left my ministers and the nobles to face the music and set myself up as a vest pocket king in exile over seas. Not Haiti though…that I would have tried to sell off to the Spanish for some quick cash.
-XT