The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 280: The French Reduction and Coup
The Ming city of Antwerp in the Netherlands gathered exiles from various French factions.

From traditional royal aristocrats to royalists, from constitutionalists to Girondists, as well as some traditional church members and the feminists who have emerged in the past two years.

There are also families of royal families, nobles and wealthy businessmen from other European countries.

The Ming Dynasty drove the invading French troops out of the Netherlands and then signed an armistice agreement with France. These people were both excited and regretful.

The reason for their excitement was that the Ming Dynasty was indeed powerful enough to defeat France and protect them from continuing to live a stable life.

Daming City's status as a refuge for European exiles became more solid.

Unfortunately, the Ming Dynasty had no interest in controlling France, so naturally it would not stand up for them and support them in returning to France to control the regime.

They could only seriously consider again and rely on their own strength to overthrow Robespierre's reign of terror and establish a normal new regime.

In France, the French government headed by Robespierre was filled with more regret, annoyance and worry.

Unfortunately, they were unable to defend the Southern Netherlands, and what was frustrating was that they should not have ordered an attack on the Ming Dynasty's vassal states in the first place.

The worry is that the failure of foreign wars will make the already unstable political situation in France even more unstable.

The Jacobin government headed by the Robespierre group came to power through a coup d'état, and its rule over France was not solid at that time.

There were many conflicts among the various factions within France. The radical and extreme Robespierre government constantly tried and executed those with different opinions, creating countless political enemies for itself.

The big capitalists and financiers were unwilling to be suppressed by the Jacobins, who were mainly small and medium-sized businessmen, and their policies were unfavorable to them.

The more moderate politicians of the old different factions all think that the current French government is a bunch of lunatics.

Opponents of Robespierre himself even formed a faction.

At the same time, the Robespierre government, which looked like madness to the moderates, was still considered not radical enough by some more radical factions.

Because Robespierre still adhered to the Catholic faith and did not support the more radical atheism.

At the same time, there was Thomas Paine, who participated in the American War of Independence and ran from Britain to support and participate in the French Revolution. He supported the abolition of the death penalty and private property.

In the era of Robespierre's government, when an average of fifty public figures were executed every day, abolitionism was considered another kind of radicalism.

At this time, France was a place where various ideas collided violently.

In view of the current situation, the Robespierre Group asked French scholars and craftsmen to work hard to crack the principles of Ming Dynasty's weapons and steam engines and try to imitate them.

At the same time, the country began to abolish local autonomous institutions and took the power to appoint local officials and military power back to the central government.

Robespierre wanted to centralize power and concentrate the power of the entire country, while also eliminating political factions with local backgrounds.

The political system in the early days of the French Revolution was actually somewhat similar to a federal system.

Officials of local agencies are directly elected locally rather than appointed directly by the central government.

Including the army, they are all "volunteer armies" organized by local areas.

Napoleon initially ran back to his hometown in Corsica, and participated in local elections through various means and became a captain of the Corsican Volunteer Army.

Whether the central government can mobilize local troops depends on whether local officials support the central government's decision.

Therefore, in the early days of the French Revolution, the size of the French armies participating in the war was not very large.

Most of the time, the number of participants is in the tens of thousands, and more often the number of participants is in the thousands to ten thousand.

Robespierre now wants to "reduce the power of the local forces", but the leaders of local forces are certainly unwilling to accept it.

Then the "Federalist" uprising broke out in France.

This is another thing that has a certain historical inertia and is something that has happened in the past.

The French Revolution broke out gradually across the country, and new local government agencies were established independently. The contradictions between the local and central governments objectively existed.

"Cutting down the feudal lords" will inevitably lead to local confrontation.

However, the opportunity and timing of the Federalist uprising were far from the original history.

Robespierre immediately dispatched troops to suppress the uprising.

When the British and Spanish discovered the civil strife in France, they became restless again and contacted the governor of the Ming Dynasty's garrison in Japan to inquire about joint intervention in France.

Li Anbang still insisted on Zhu Jianxuan's orders and stayed in the Southern Netherlands-Belgium region without any movement.

The British and Spanish were hesitant and completely disappointed with the Ming Dynasty's inclination, so they sent people to contact Prussia and Austria.

At the same time, Russia, Prussia and Austria completed the second partition of Poland.

In the original history, the second partition of Poland was a cooperation between Prussia and Russia. After the partition was completed, the two countries notified Austria, and Austria recognized its implementation.

Now Austria also participated in the second partition and obtained the Lutsk region.

If the Polish issue had ended like this, Prussia and Austria could have turned around and focused their main attention on dealing with the French.

The two countries have begun serious discussions on cooperation plans with the United Kingdom and Spain.

However, influenced by the Enlightenment, Polish nationalism was already brewing.

In recent years, inspired by the French Revolution and stimulated by foreign invasion, it broke out at this time.

Soon after the Second Partition of Poland, a nationalist uprising broke out in Poland.

Kościuszko led the insurgents, defeated the Russian occupation forces, and quickly took control of Krakow, Warsaw, and Virta.

Then they established the Polish Republic with reference to the French Republic and issued the Declaration of Emancipation of Serfs.

The monarchs of Russia, Prussia and Austria were furious when they received the news and immediately mobilized their armies to jointly suppress the Polish national uprising.

The three countries decided to completely wipe the entire country of Poland off the map, and thus the third partition of Poland began.

As for the plan to cooperate with Britain and Spain to jointly interfere with France, it naturally came to nothing.

Poland has once again won France a strategic opportunity.

A group of new generals in Robespierre's government quickly wiped out the Federalists who had no foreign support.

After completing centralization in the modern sense, the power of the French Republic increased dramatically, and it began to be able to organize wars involving more than 100,000 people.

However, this crackdown on local forces and factions has once again increased the strength of the opposition to the current government.

Robespierre's power reached its peak.

But the other factions finally couldn't stand it anymore and were finally ready to kill this madman.

At the end of 1794, the remnants of the various factions that had been attacked by Robespierre and the politicians who were worried that they would be beheaded by Robespierre united.

The coup d'état was launched on December 1794, 12, in the French Republican calendar.

The original Thermidorian coup in history became the Snowy Moon coup.

After the coup succeeded, Robespierre and his main confidants, who were extremely unpopular among the people, were publicly executed the next day.

Members of the various factions that presided over the coup formed the Snow Moon Party after the coup.

At this time, France had no external enemies and was at peace with all countries. The internal "tyrant" had also been executed. It seemed that the French Republic should have entered a period of peace and stability.

But that is not the case.

The Follies were united by Robespierre's opposition to Robespierre and the Jacobins. After they came to power, they naturally launched a purge of the Jacobins and the remnants of Robespierre.

But the Jacobins' supporters were mostly small urban merchants and workers, who were called "sans-culottes".

It means people who do not wear the tight chaps and stockings of the nobility, but wear ordinary loose trousers, which means they are ordinary commoners or people who consider themselves commoners.

The scope of retaliation against this class is inherently too large.

Many of the main members of the Snow Moon Party were losers in previous power struggles, and many were exiles after previous coups.

After they regained power, they became particularly sensitive about the control of power.

They now see everyone as an enemy, everyone as a remnant of Robespierre, and everyone as a radical Jacobin.

They began to use all kinds of idle people in society, searched and arrested various suspects through secret means, and then executed them directly without a thorough public trial.

Even during the rule of the Jacobins headed by Robespierre, when someone was to be executed, at least the trial process had to be followed.

At that time, at least a charge had to be given before the killing could be carried out publicly, but now it is simply false accusations, or even executed in secret.

The moral level of the entire ruling group has seriously declined compared to the previous periods of rule by various factions.

As a result, the original revenge action against Robespierre and the Jacobins quickly evolved into the "White Terror" that wantonly slaughtered progressive elements of the urban middle class.

In order to ensure that there would be no new coup and to control the supreme power that had been regained, the Snow Moon Party began to modify the original structure of the republic.

They even dissolved the National Assembly on their own initiative and organized the Directory of the French Republic to control the highest power.

The organizer of the coup, Paul-François-Jean-Nicolas Barras, served as First Director.

Since the Snow Moon Coup, the French Revolution entered a low point in terms of ideology and politics, and the nature of the entire revolution began to change.

Barras and many Directors believed that the French Republic was not safe at this time.

Not only is the domestic situation in France unstable, the international situation is also potentially dangerous at this time.

After Prussia and Austria have dealt with Poland, they may at any time cooperate with other traditional monarchs to interfere in the Republic again.

So now it is necessary to build an external barrier for the Republic, establish other sister republics around France, and at the same time spread the ideas of the revolution to the whole of Europe.

Based on such considerations, France should support the Polish revolutionaries at this time. The revolutionary Polish Republic is the natural sister republic of France.

In terms of a practical strategic plan, it is to expand the sphere of influence, establish vassal states with similar systems, and protect the homeland.

The more important problem is that France's finances have not been good since the Revolution.

The key is that France’s most important overseas sources of revenue, French Haiti and its Caribbean colonies, have now all been taken away by the Ming Dynasty.

This created a huge hole in France's already tight finances.

In order to fill the financial hole, after being helpless in domestic affairs, the Snow Moon Party decided to launch a foreign war to plunder the wealth of other countries.

After excluding the "sans-culottes", that is, members of the urban middle class, the Snow Moon Party was not very averse to plundering.

But at this time they still had to use the banner of revolution, so this purpose could not be stated publicly.

After a series of discussions, the Directory of the French Republic formally decided at the end of 1795 to take the initiative to liberate the European people.

Barras and Napoleon had once worked together in Toulon and established a relatively good personal relationship. After the coup, Napoleon married Barras' former mistress Josephine.

So after Barras came to power, he immediately entrusted Napoleon with important tasks.

Napoleon was appointed commander of the Southern Army, with orders to march through the Kingdom of Sardinia, attack Austrian territory in Italy, and even directly attack Austria itself.

The actual task was to seize the land in the northern part of the Italian peninsula, establish a vassal state there, and control local taxes and major fiscal revenues.

At the same time, he ordered Jourdan to lead the Northern Army to attack the German states in the Rhine River basin and then attack Prussia.

The actual task was to control the states in the Rhine River basin, establish vassal states, and then find ways to make money.

If France attacks these places, it will definitely be able to contain the power of Prussia and Austria. In theory, the Polish insurgents will definitely be able to catch their breath.

But the French did not have the direct goal of rescuing Poland.

Barras even hoped that the Poles could hold out a little longer so that the French army could occupy more land.

The main Russian force attacking Poland will not be affected either.

After France completed centralization, the size of the two armies eliminated this time was far greater than before, both reaching a terrifying 100,000 people.

Operations began in the spring of 1796, with Jourdan and Napoleon's offensive going quite smoothly.

The traditional kingdoms in Italy and Germany, especially the small feudal states, were no match for France after the Revolution.

The forces that both sides can mobilize are simply not on the same order of magnitude.

The key point is that France at that time also had picric acid grenades. Although the output was far from comparable to that of the Ming Dynasty, it was enough to play a role on the battlefield.

The two French armies captured cities in Italy and Germany, abolished the local monarchs of small states, and seized the lands of local churches.

At the same time, a new French-style republic was also established, bringing the systems of the French Revolution to these places.

However, the Polish insurgents had already disappeared by this time.

Russia, Prussia and Austria finally completed the suppression of the Polish uprising at almost the same time as France sent troops.

When Prussia and Austria learned that France had taken the initiative to attack Italy and the German states, they immediately dispatched troops to support the two places with astonishment and anger.

Both countries immediately arranged diplomats to contact Russia, Britain, Spain, Germany and Italy, calling on them to form an alliance to fight against the crazy France.

Britain and Spain had already had this intention. If the German and Italian states did not resist, they would be waiting for death, so a new round of anti-French alliance was quickly established.

The British and Spanish navies launched an attack, blockading France's already limited overseas shipping routes and sending troops from the two countries to occupy France's coastal ports.

The main forces of the Prussian and Austrian armies directly participated in the war, and after coming into contact with the French army on the northern and southern fronts, they finally slowed down the French offensive momentum.

France, which was fully mobilized, once again began its confrontation with the traditional European monarchies, and a new round of European war finally began.

The Ming Dynasty's military, political and intelligence officials in Europe finally got their wish and could sit on the wall and watch the show.

Senior politicians from the anti-French coalition countries, as well as the legions on the battlefield, all felt that there was no suspense in this war.

With so many countries working together to deal with France, the war will end soon.

But after they actually fought with the French army, they realized that their previous assumptions were extremely wrong.

At this time, the French army seemed to be full of lunatics. They could actually fight against the whole of Europe alone.

The top leaders of European countries finally remembered the reminders given by Ming officials.

(End of this chapter)