The New French Republic
Introduction
The mighty empire once known to all as France was dissolved in 1938 following a successful communist uprising. Today the new nation is known as The French Republic of the Grand Revolution, The People's Republic of France, or the French Commune. The France of today is very different from how it looked only eleven years ago, with the power of the government being firmly seized by the people. The nation is home to one of the most important interstellar colonies, a vast population, and a revolutionary spirit spanning two centuries.
History
Sunset of the Monarchy: The Death of Louis the 14th
The death of Louis the 14th is marked by many French historians as the most significant shift away from the totality of the power of French monarchs. Following the death of the Sun King, his five year old great grandson Louis the 15th ascended to the throne. Power ultimately landed to Philippe of France who ruled as regent until the young Louis ascended to the throne at the age of thirteen. Lacking the clever political skill of his great grandfather, Louis the 15th’s reign was plagued by scandal, military failures, and a dissolution of much of the absolute power held by his predecessor. He was thought by many to be incompetent, and generally uninterested in politics. As a result, the French State at the time of his reign was led mostly by both parliaments.
Louis XV followed the same ritualistic court life as his father, but he was far less equipped to make use of his daily life at Versailles to make any significant gains in France. He was much more content with spending his time with his many concubines at the grand feasts he would host at Versailles. Despite his disdain for running the country, together with his chief mistress Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV was a great patron to the arts and sciences. Louis was chiefly interested in bringing some of the innovations of steam power to Versailles, and after seeing the construction of the first railroad in 1752, Louis commissioned rail lines to be built leading from Versailles to Paris. He would not live to see the completion of this project however.
In 1753, King Louis was brutally murdered by a French commoner by the name of Robert-François Damiens, who stabbed him to death with a pen knife. Damiens claimed his killing was an act of divine punishment for the sinful French king and that he would be rewarded in the afterlife. The king's death was a great shock to both the people of France and the nobility at court. He was inherited by Louis Ferdinand, crowned Louis XVI.
The new king fared much better than his playboy father. Seeing the many exploits of his late king, Louis XVI thought of his father as a sinful man, and was much more devout in his religious beliefs. As a child the newly crowned king spent much of his time being educated by Jesuit clergymen, as the king languished with his many concubines. Louis XVI felt a great debt to the Jesuit order and began incorporating their traditions into French court life in an effort to bring the French monarchy and its nobility back in line with Catholic doctrine. Being an educated man, and continuing in the tradition of his father, the new king invested heavily in the modernization of France and was also a notable patron of the arts. He was beloved by the people, and managed to resolve many of the issues parliament had with the French throne at the time by loosening the power of the monarchy to the first and second estates. Louis 16th notably modernized the French army and fleet, leading to the French success in the Seven Years War in 1756. He saw the potential for the implementation of steam powered vehicles and rail use in military campaigns, and as a result developed the first plans for military use of railroads. After the war, French industry began producing steam trains domestically in large quantities. These innovations in French society came at a large cost to the treasury. The French crown was in a state of financial ruin by the king’s death, largely due to his heavy investments in the rail and military industries. King Louis XVI died in 1765 of tuberculosis, leaving the throne to his son Louis Auguste, crowned Louis XVII.
Economic Instability and Reform
Although Louis XVII took the death of his father hard, he felt well prepared for his rule. Before his death, Louis' father had arranged a fortuitous marriage to Marie-Antoinette, the youngest daughter of Maria-Theresa of the Habsburg family. This marriage came to fruition in 1770, when the two were wed in Vienna. The Hapsburgs had helped negotiate peace arrangements between the British and French during the Seven Years War, and felt unjustly left out of the spoils in the new colonies. As a result, the marriage did much to strengthen the strained relationship between France and The Holy Roman Empire. To further cement a lasting peace between the two nations he sent Charles Gravier as the French diplomat to the HRE, rather than sending his wife, as the king preferred to keep the queen close at hand for advice on French politics.
Aside from the political value of the marriage, the pairing between the two was quite good, as both quickly fell in love with each other. The young Louis had inherited much of his father’s Jesuit values, and took no concubines during his reign. This was unusual for French monarchs at the time, particularly considering the scandalous court life of his grandfather and great grandfather. Marie-Antoinette became Louis' trusted confidant, and helped him navigate the difficult situation the French nation was in. Marie Antoinette was not well liked at court due to her Hapsburg heritage, but the young queen was exceptionally influential in winning over academics and business leaders outside of court, as she was beloved by members of the third estate.
The victory the French had over the British during the Seven Years War was a costly one. Steps to reform the French army and navy taken by his father had all but emptied the French treasury. The colonial provinces in New France were severely damaged by the war, and were still rebuilding. As a result, the colonial territory was bleeding money. Louis was a shrewd king, in matters he was ignorant of the king would often defer to those he felt were more knowledgeable. He recruited both Jacques Necker, and Anne Turgot to help steer the French economy back in the right direction. Although the two advisors bickered over ideological issues, both agreed that in order to save France from bankruptcy radical reforms would have to be put in place severely limiting the power of the clergy and nobility. Necker and Turgot were hated by the court at Versailles, but Louis showed great interest in the reforms proposed by the economists, seeing it as a way to potentially curtail the power of the first and second estates.
The first major reform taken by Louis, to the dismay of the nobility at court, was the abolition of serfdom. Under the reign of his father, France had begun industrializing quickly. As such a new class of wealthy capitalists began to rise and had a substantial impact on the French economy. The newly created factories all over France were in desperate need of workers, but many people were still bound to the farmland of their ancestors. The abolition of serfdom allowed for a mass migration of French citizens out of farms and into cities. This greatly angered the French nobility, but caused industry in France to boom.
Louis the Enlightened
Louis was no stranger to the Enlightenment ideas spreading about Europe during the time of his reign. He was exposed to many of them through his Jesuit education, and later through his economic advisors, but the monarch was not quite convinced of their application, and what the ideas of fraternity and liberty might mean for his position as monarch. Louis was well aware of his own family history. On one hand his great grandfather was the supreme ruler of the state, commanding total control of the nation, yet on the other hand he was well aware of his distant cousin King Charles I of England who had been executed a century prior during the English civil war. The tension between whether or not he should consolidate power or acquiesce to his nobles troubled Louis, nearly paralyzing him with indecision as to what he ought to do about some of the more radical suggestions of his economic advisors. The question of what kind of king he ought to be was at stake, a question that would be answered by a chance encounter of great significance in Louis' life.
In 1775, Louis was touring colleges and universities across the French countryside in an attempt to get well acquainted with academics who might assist in his personal court. As was tradition when a member of the royal family visited, the Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris selected Maximilien Robespierre to read flattery poetry to the king during his visit. Instead of reading the assigned poetics to flatter the king however, Robespierre instead presented an essay on Enlightenment ideas, much to the horror of the French court in attendance with Louis. Louis however was quite struck by the passionate and brazen speech, and quickly recruited the young man to be his personal advisor.
The two became fast friends, as Robespierre began to convince the French king of the values of the Enlightenment. When the American colonies declared independence in 1776, it was under the advice of Robespierre that France would provide aid to the fledgling democracy. When the war in America ended, Louis invited Benjamin Franklin to come visit Versailles and discuss democratic reforms in France, in hopes to peacefully transition France into a constitutional monarchy, represented by the will of the people. During his visit, Franklin promised that the United States would pay back its debt to France for the aid provided during the war. When Franklin became president in 1797, he made good on this promise, cementing French and US relations, and helping to alleviate the French financial crisis.
The Fall of Louis, and the Tennis Court Oath
As Louis became more entrenched in the intellectual movements of the Enlightenment the French court became quite concerned, particularly members of the first and second estates. Louis' decision to abolish serfdom was met with two failed assassination attempts by members of the nobility. Louis was constantly threatened, and slandered in his court at Versailles. Due to the danger of staying in court, Louis, his wife, and his ever growing entourage of academics traveled across France in an attempt to both avoid the dangers at court, as well as assess the needs of the French people. Louis became one of the most publicly recognizable kings in history as he traveled across the country speaking with merchants and former serfs about the troubles facing the nation. His wife Marie-Antoinette, was adored in the public image as a compassionate and well educated queen, eager to help the needs of the people. She was especially concerned with the famines of 1788 and the inadequate supply of bread coming into France. To help mitigate this she founded a number of charitable organizations in order to help alleviate the suffering of the French lower class.
By 1789, Louis and his entourage had crafted a new constitution for the French government that would officially create a constitutional monarchy. To achieve this, Louis called the estates general to session to formalize the transition. During the meeting, he proposed the new constitution and put it to a vote. The first and second estate voted against the new constitution, while the third estate voted in favor. After the vote was cast Louis rose from his chair and demanded a recount, and proclaimed that as the monarch his will must be done and the constitution must be ratified. While he shouted, an unknown assailant pulled a revolver from their surcoat and fired a shot through the enraged king's heart.
The panicked assembly quickly fled the chambers, members of the third estate gathered outside at a nearby tennis court in shock. Maximilien Robespierre rose above the crowd giving a speech urging the members present to avenge the death of their beloved king. Together they swore the Serment du Jeu de Paume to avenge their king and install a democracy.
The French Revolution of 1789
Louis and Marie-Antionette failed to have any children during their reign, so the successor to the French throne was unclear after the king's assassination by the hands of the nobility. An interregnum government was established by the French nobility shortly after the king's death. Marie-Antionette was imprisoned at Versailles by the new government, and serfdom was quickly reinstated with a mass order for all former serfs to return to the farms of their familial origins.
This order by the government was met by public outrage. People flocked to the streets of Paris from across the country to participate in what would later be called the bread riots of 1789. The riots began as a protest in which the French citizens threw bread at the carriages and homes of rich nobility in a symbolic protest against serfdom. This was met by the deployment of the French army to occupy Paris and arrest French protesters. The deployment of the military quickly turned to chaos in the streets as militia began to defect to the side of the protesters, leading to a large-scale riot. Together with this rebel militia, the rioters stormed the Bastille, a large prison in Paris where many of the protestors had been taken. The Rioters killed the French forces loyal to the nobility, and liberated the prisoners in the Bastille. They then began tearing down the fortress brick by brick. This act symbolized to the rioters the dismantling of the oppressive French systems.
After the storming of the Bastille the rioters organized under the leadership of a group of market women and began marching to Versailles to demand the release of Marie-Antioinette. As the mob approached Versaillies, The nobility threatened to kill the queen if the rioters did not disperse. A shot was fired by an unknown gunman at one of the nobles, and the queen was dragged out of the palace and murdered in front of the crowd. In a fury, the mob rushed into the palace and murdered everyone present, parading the nobles' heads on pikes back to Paris. Marie-Antionette died a martyr to the cause of the revolution.
As the riots across France continued, a new revolutionary government was established that was similar in its structure to the revolutionary government of the United States. By December of 1789 Maximilian Robespierre was elected the first president of France, and the interregnum government of the nobility was dissolved.
War of the Coalition
Word of the establishment of the First French Republic spread quickly across Europe, to the concern of many of the monarchs ruling at the time. Charles Gravier was away from France at the start of the revolution, and returned to France in January of 1790. He had not heard the news of the queen's death, and his allegiance to the newly installed French Republic was uncertain. After a very brief visit to the French parliament he was ordered to return to Austria to negotiate a formal recognition of the new government. He returned to emperor Leopold II. Upon hearing about the death of Marie-Antionitte, Leopold blamed the new revolutionary government, and publicly denounced the new French Republic as illegitimate. Other countries began following Leopold’s example, with embargos and denouncements of the new republic from England, Spain, the Papal States, and many of the Italian city-states. Together these countries formed a coalition against the French Republic.
The French economy began to suffer from the sanctions imposed by the coalition. Domestically, the new revolutionary government began dissolving Catholic churches and banishing bishops believed to be in collusion with the Papal states. The church had voted against the constitutional monarchy at the meeting of the estates general, and as such Robespierre believed that the Catholic faith had no place in the new French Republic. The persecution of the clergy in France only furthered tensions with surrounding nations. The economic sanctions worsened, and ships going to and from the French colonies began to be attacked by the British and Spanish navies.
By 1792 tensions were so high after the sinking of a French colonial ship by British forces that the French government had no choice but to declare war on the coalition forces. In the two years leading up to the war the French government had managed to organize an army as they anticipated an attack. Revolutionary business leaders were keen to the idea of a war, and a mass production of rifles and military vehicles occurred in the two years before the war. When war was formally declared, the coalition forces were ill prepared for the level of modernization and organization of the new Republican military.
To the surprise of much of Europe the French army was a formidable force. They were split between an eastern and western front as they came under attack from both Spain and the HRE in the early stages of the war. Under the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte, the French army on the western front quickly blitzed through Spain, utilizing the railway to advance the military timetable, seizing Madrid in 1793, and immediately forcing a Spanish surrender and the establishment of a puppet Spanish Republic. The eastern front suffered as Italian and German forces had begun pushing into France by the time General Bonaparte returned to Paris to report his success in Spain.
On the eastern front, French losses were numerous, as enemy troops began pouring into France from their northern and southern borders. A policy of mass conscription was implemented by the constitutional government, consequently desertion rates were high. The first year on the eastern front was one of extreme attrition as French forces dug in for a brutal defensive war. Factories in Paris churned out equipment for the Republic's war machine, but the French army and logistics networks were sorely mismanaged by General Dumouriez. Their navy was all but crushed by the British fleet, and a blockade had cut off support from the colonial forces.
The failures of the French army at the start of the war were compounded by institutional issues in the new republic. Former nobles, and clergymen had been severely persecuted, and many leadership positions in French politics were occupied by inexperienced bureaucrats, many of which were former serfs. Democratic reforms were slow, and internal bickering and politicking further hampered the efforts. As the government suffered, a popular newspaper “L'Ami du Peuple” written by secretary of state Jean-Paul Marat, created a rising feeling of paranoia amongst the populace as he levied acquisitions of foreign spies, and traitors to the revolution who wanted a return to the interregnum government.
By 1794 President Robespierre declared a state of emergency and established the committee of public safety, led by himself and former members of the Jacobin club that staffed his cabinets. This committee was created as an effort to expedite the judicial process for traitors of the First French Republic. President Robespierre publicly announced that “terror is the order of the day”, as mass executions of ‘spies’ and ‘dissenters’ occurred.
After Napoleon’s return from the western front in late 1793, he proposed a counteroffensive focusing on the capture and use of rail networks as a means to reinforce and resupply the Republic's troops on the eastern front. Napoleon had tested this method in Spain, and was sure it would work even better against the more established rail networks of The Holy Roman Empire and Italy. The counteroffensive was a gamble however, as it required French forces to hold Paris from the advancing Hapsburgs as Napoleon's expeditionary army flanked the Italians from the south in hopes of pushing into Italy proper.
The counteroffensive was a great success, and the Italians were quickly cut off in the south and pushed back across the border. Paris struggled under siege, but was saved by Napoleon and his forces, who quickly shipped troops back into Paris using the French rail system. After a decisive defense of Paris, General Bonaparte began repelling the Austrians out of France.
By 1795, the French counteroffensive had pushed the Hapsburg forces all the way to the Rhine river. Revolutionary soldiers forced the surrender of many of the warring Italian states and began pushing further south. Coalition forces suffered a number of humiliating defeats, and Napoleon Bonaparte had proved himself a brilliant and formidable general to the French people.
Back home, Robespierre’s reign of terror raged on. Political officials, business leaders, and innocent civilians were put to the guillotine en masse. Marat’s newspaper continued to produce lists of traitors who were then tried and executed by the committee. In 1794 a French spinstress assassinated Marat in his bathtub, which turned him into a martyr for the committee, and many of the more radical revolutionaries. By 1795 however, members of the French Congress captured President Robespierre and brought him to trial, ultimately leading to his execution. The reign of terror subsided briefly after the execution of many of Robespierre’s supporters. The new president of the French Republic was Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, who was a close ally of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleonic Reign
As the war of the First Coalition raged on, Napoleon had established a number of sister republican governments as puppet states for France as he advanced through Italy and The Holy Roman Empire. By 1796, coalition forces were exhausted and defeated, and a peace was signed. Though peace was not to last, and war resumed in 1804, with coalition forces attacking French defenses on the western side of the Rhine.
After the peace was signed Napoleon returned to Paris a legend. Together with President Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, and Napoleon's brother Louis Bonaparte, Napoleon began accumulating power in government and weakening the Jacobin party. By December, the president stepped down and appointed Napoleon First Consul of France. Napoleon went on to declare himself Emperor of France in 1799, seizing full control of the country and its territories.
Although Napoleon's success in the European war was astounding, the French Navy had not recovered from the crushing defeats it had faced against England. The British did not surrender with the other coalition members, and its naval blockade of the colonies had continued. The French economy was suffering greatly after the coalition war, and its western colonial possessions continued to make them no money. Napoleon knew it was only a matter of time before tensions in Europe would boil over into another war. As such, Napoleon struck a deal with his allies in the United States.
By 1800 the United States of America and France were close economic and political allies. Due to internal stress in the States and the British blockade, the US was unable to provide support for the French Republic during the coalition war. They did however work to disrupt British interests in the colonies, in support of France. Napoleon saw the potential of his US allies and struck a deal with President Jefferson in 1801 to create a military pact with the United States. Napoleon also sold Jefferson the rights for American settlers to move into French colonial possessions in the Louisiana territory in 1803, so that the US could continue their expansion westward, and so that the French could stabilize their economy. Napoleon used part of the money from this sale to begin the mass production of Ironclad warships in preparation to crush the British navy in a future conflict, in hopes of invading England.
Trafalgar, Austerlitz, and Peace in Europe
In 1805 a French fleet reinforced by American privateers met the British Blockade led by Admiral Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar. This naval battle was catastrophic for both sides, and was the first time in history where Ironclads were used. The results of the battle were inconclusive as all sides took extreme casualties, however it may be considered a narrow strategic victory for the British. Trafalgar caused Napoleon to abandon his plan for an invasion of England, however the loss of so many ships forced the English to dissolve their Atlantic blockade. The USA, lacking the naval capacity to send troops into Europe to support Napoleon's war against the coalition, instead begin rebuilding their fleet and shipping war materials to France on civilian ships, to the ire of the British.
The same year at the battle of Austerlitz, King Frederick Wilhelm III of Prussia was killed by Napoleonic forces. His death, along with the injury of Kaiser Francis and the crippling defeat in the battle caused the HRE to consider lasting peace terms. In 1806, Napoleon negotiated a Partition of Northern Europe, in which the HRE took land east of the Rhine, and France took land west of the Rhine. This peace was seen as agreeable, and the coalition war came to an end once again. As part of the treaty, France declared the independence of Poland from Russia, installing Frederick Augustus I as King.
Refusing surrender, the British continued to wage naval war on the French. This ultimately lead to the Peninsular War of 1807, where a massive British force landed in Spain in an attempt to liberate the puppet government set up by the French. There were heavy casualties on both sides, but eventually a peace agreement was made. As part of the peace, the British were banned from commerce with France and Habsburg Europe, and Spain was partitioned with a Bonaparte king installed in northern Spain, and a Pro-English king installed in southern Spain. With the coalition wars finally at an end, Napoleon began plotting his next move against France's oldest enemy.
War of 1812
Under the orders of Napoleon, the French Ambassador to America passed on a secret bargain to President James Madison, telling him that in exchange for an invasion of British Canada and naval support against the royal navy, America would be granted ownership of the territory of Louisiana, allowing the U.S. to officially expand to the West. Due to their political closeness, many American settlers had long since moved into these French lands, but the transition of ownership would cement U.S. control in the region. The deal was accepted, and the United States invaded British Canada as part of the War of 1812.
The Invasion of Canada lasted three years, with the American military quickly suppressing the bulk of the British standing army. The Franco-American coalition’s navy blockaded the colony, preventing large-scale reinforcement. The Americans also possessed upgraded military hardware, such as repeating rifles, and early recoil operated artillery, outgunning the out-of-date colonial militia. Only pockets of scattered resistance stalled the conquering army from completely wiping out the British presence. The American support of the navy also allowed France to dominate the English Channel, preventing the British from launching an amphibious assault on Normandy.
The British eventually gave up on reclaiming Canada, with the regional governors surrendering in 1815. The majority of British Canada was yielded to France, and in turn America received the territory of Louisiana.
Colonial Wars in North Africa
After the War of 1812, the French enjoyed a relatively long period of peace and prosperity. Napoleon continued to rule, but his ambitions for European expansion dwindled. By 1825 Emperor Napoleon was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Wanting to expand French influence in the Mediterranean, and craving one last military campaign before his death, Emperor Napoleon invaded North Africa in 1830. With the Balkans war of independence raging, the Ottoman Empire had been in decline for some time, so Napoleon sensed he could seize much of Africa with little interference. France quickly seized most of Morocco and Tunis. The British denounced the French invasion and intervened in defense of the Ottomans, beginning a conflict that lasted two years. The British managed to stop the French advance at El Alamein in 1833 and negotiated a peace agreement. France was given everything east of El Alamein in Northern Africa, and the British, as a "defensive force" began a decades long occupation of large parts of the former Ottoman Empire.
Death of Napoleon
Metropolitan France went through many changes during the Napoleonic era. Notably, this period included the addition of many territories in Northern Iberia and all the lands to the west bank of the Rhine. The French government spent many years putting down revolts in these new sister republics in Flanders, the Rhineland, and North-Eastern Iberia, which remains a dangerous borderland between French and British puppet governments. In 1812, revolts broke out in the French client states in the Rhineland and Flanders as locals protested French rule and petitioned the Emperor of The Holy Roman Empire for official protection and admittance into the Empire. Citing the official treaty of friendship between the HRE and France, this application was refused, and the English, still exhausted from the conclusion of the peninsular war five years earlier, only sent equipment but did not intervene militarily. Once defeated personally by Emperor Napoleon, the prevention of autonomous rule as sister republics was abolished. These rebellious provinces were given statehood, resulting in La Grande Métropole stretching for nearly 250,000 square miles in Europe alone.
The French government continued under the Napoleonic system, with the gradual consolidation of power in the state's multiple parliamentary assemblies, the Council of State, the Legislative Assembly, the Tribunate, and the increasingly radical senate. Emperor Napoleon’s death in 1840 shocked his supporters, as his illness had been well hidden from the public. His body lay in state in Paris for an entire month. During this time representatives from most nations, friend or foe of the republic, visited to pay their respects. The following decades would see the diplomatic triumph of the newly formed French socialist party in more elections as they began to slowly develop a majority in all parliamentary bodies, while the senate and the office of the Emperor held by members of the Napoleonic family remained relatively conservative forces.
Napoleon III and the Italian Wars
After Napoleon's death, his grandson Napoleon III ascended the throne as Emperor. He inherited a relatively stable France, but his legitimacy as Emperor was immediately questioned by the ever growing liberal factions. As such, most of Napoleon III’s reign was spent trying to secure political dominance for the Bonaparte family, which he did to some success.
In 1855 The revolutionary Neopolitan government declared war on the Papal States and its Imperial benefactors, quickly pushing through Central Italy. This war, officially known now as the "War of the League of Ravenna" sparked a period of conflict that came to be known as the Italian Wars. Initially, the French sought to stay out of the conflict, as they did not wish to enter into a war with the HRE after having a longstanding peace over the last 50 years. In 1856 however, due to pressure from the three bodies of the French government, and the senate, Napoleon III was forced to sign The Genoa Compact of 1856, which would see a formal alliance between France and the newly-christened Republic of Italy, causing immediate war with the Empire and the Papacy. The war was at a standstill until French soldiers crossed the Rhine and began setting up revolutionary courts. They executed Imperial nobility in Frankfurt and other border cities after show trials. The Italian Wars raged on, and, due to the implementation of new military technologies from all sides involved, became one of the bloodiest wars in history. The French defense of the Neapolitan government was costly, and the war waged for another three years.
In 1859, The threat of coalition marines sacking Naples induced a peace conference wherein the Revolutionary armies agreed to withdraw south of the Po River. Despite this being satisfactory to Imperial forces, Papal legates refused to agree to the terms of the treaty and only agreed to a “temporary” armistice. Papal control was effectively limited to the borders of the city of Rome and the port of Ostia. The Neapolitan government celebrates victory and re-christened itself the Republic of Italia, although some circles within its revolutionary council still dream of “An Italia for all Italians”, and swear to one day liberate the population of the remaining provinces of Rome, Milan, Venice, and Dalmatia.
Due to their support during the revolution, France signed a military alliance with the new republican government, but received little in the way of compensation for their help in the war. The war was devastating to the French economy and the French people. The radical left was blamed for the nation’s devastating losses in the war, and this was followed by a dramatic shift to the right. The next 10 years were spent in a period of economic recovery, as the Bonaparte family consolidated more power and the French government became more conservative. Napoleon III died in 1874 leaving the throne to his son Napoleon IV.
Failures in Aether travel
After the Italian wars, the French economy suffered greatly, and efforts were made to steer the French financial situation back in the right direction. Unfortunately for France, strict spending policies and freedom of speech restrictions imposed on universities by the Napoleonic government stifled France's ability to innovate, and caused them to lag behind in the Aether race that occurred between 1875 and 1916. The opening of the American Jump Gate in 1876, sparked worldwide academic interest in interstellar aether travel. The Bonaparte monarchy had little interest in involving the French in such explorations however, as they believed that travel from intergalactic colonies would be slow, and too much of a gamble to warrant significant investment. In 1880, after seeing the Americans establish an Interplanetary system to travel between the Concord System and Earth, the opinions of the French government started to shift.
The initial opinion of the French government after the linking of the Concord and Sol systems was that aether expansion outside of the home system was still too costly, and ultimately was just a symbolic act of power projection by other nations. As a result, while other nations were establishing their Jump Gates, the critically underfunded French aether program began establishing colonies on the moon in 1885, with ambitious intentions to establish a mining base in the asteroid belt by 1906.This was an abysmal failure for several reasons. Although the colonies on the moon were fully functional by 1895, the colonies were functionally useless. The French found little raw materials they could actually use on the moon, and the ambition to reach the asteroid belt using diesel power was deemed mathematically impossible. As a result, early French efforts in Aether exploration ended up being a colossal waste of money and resources.
These early failings came to a head in 1905 when the Japanese began construction on their jump gate. Not wanting to be embarrassed by not having a jump gate before an eastern power, France turned to its academics for a solution. The Napoleonic government lifted its restrictions on the freedom of speech and began pouring money into French universities in an effort to beat the Japanese in the aether race. It was decided that the new French colony would establish the first interplanetary university. Due to the freedom of funding and abundance of positions, Academics from across the globe flocked to France in the years leading up to the launch of the gate, which created controversy among many global powers, as they believed the establishment of such a university was a ploy to drain academics from competing nations. This culminated in late 1916 when the first French colonial ship took off to discover the Napoleon system (later renamed the Germinal system). Unfortunately for the French image, the Japanese gate opened in 1915, thus embarrassing France on the world stage, and severely weakening image of the Napoleonic Government. The conservative party in France began losing many seats to socialists, who demanded reforms in the French governing systems.
The Great Famine of 1920
The French economy had been on the downturn since the end of the Italian wars in 1874. Failures to invest in aether travel early only ballooned the French deficit. The economy took a major hit on Black Tuesday in 1917 when the stock market crashed. This day marked the start of a global depression that would last for the next ten years, but the French were particularly affected. To make matters worse, a global famine gripped the world by the start of 1920.
The causes for the famine were twofold. Global farmland had been shrinking significantly since the start of the industrial revolution in 1724. The increase in diesel, and coal power throughout the 1800s and early 1900s also severely affected the climate on Earth. As a result, the famine caused in mass starvation across the world, as nearly every nation on Earth struggled to feed its booming population. People began migrating off-world en-masse.
To combat the famine, the French government increased the power of the increasingly socialized Ministry of Agriculture. Efforts were made to reform French farmland, but tensions between the elites in the French business sector, and regulations imposed by the ministry of agriculture stifled the reforms. The situation created by the famine was grim, but ultimately the global disaster would come to an end thanks to the lucky location of the French colonial world.
Unbeknownst to the wider world until the construction of the return gate in 1922, the colonial world of Étoile Chérie would become the crown jewel of the French empire. The first ship returning to Paris in 1922 brought home tales of a temperate climate, rich soil, and most importantly bushels of freshly grown wheat, which was particularly favored to grow on the alien world. Shipments of food began pouring out of the Napoleon Gate, and by 1923 the French were able to ignore the mass famine around them. Unfortunately for the French people, the profits made from France’s colonial crown jewel did not benefit the common worker. Wealth inequality grew sharply, and tensions between the rich and poor were at an all time high. The amount of socialists with political power grew immensely in the post-famine period, and by 1928, the conservative Bonapartian party held few seats in any of the three houses of the French government.
The New Revolution of 1928
In 1928, tensions between the Bonaparte family, and the French governing institutions reached a boiling point. A vote was put forth to depose the French monarchy and install a new republic. This vote passed almost unanimously. In response, the Bonaparte family mobilized the French military in anticipation of a coup. The decision to utilize the military and undermine the House and Senate vote enraged the French people, and a mass protest began outside of Emperor Napoleon V’s home in Versailles.
Remarkably, violence was avoided, and the Emperor reached a compromise with representatives from the House and Senate. A new constitutional monarchy was created with the Bonaparte family acting more as an executive branch with veto power, than a true monarchy. The democratic reforms made during this revolution were great, but the French Emperor and his supporters in the military continued in their attempts to undermine the authority of the new constitutional government up until the establishment of the Second French Republic after The Grand Revolution of 1938.
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