o an uproar, but soon the rest of Corday’s left-Girondins had followed her and Danton’s Republicans – soon to be an official party, formed out of a formal alliance between of the New Cordeliers and Defenders of Equality – were the largest grouping in the Assembly. Brissot and Madame Roland were furious, but there was little they could do – there was no law or constitutional rule that prevented Corday’s action, and besides, between Corday and Danton, the vast bulk of the National Guard was on their side. There was brief talk of withdrawing the nomination to get Corday back onside, but it soon became clear that the split was permanent, and that Corday had formed a permanent alliance with Danton. Brissot’s majority in the Assembly was now gone and he had no Ministry, and under the structure of the constitution, that meant one thing: permanent deadlock in the Assembly.

The April Revolution

It was at this moment that Louis spied his opportunity. Stripped of all political power, he had stewed and vacillated in Versailles for almost a decade, urged by some advisors to take a harder stand against the leftover institutions of the Republic, urged by others to let politics be the business of the common people and enjoy the life of a King. Now, however, as 1805 ticked over to 1806 and the Assembly looked no closer to resolving its newfound constitutional crisis, those advisors telling him to try and reclaim his mantle as a true monarch implored him to take his chance now that the Assembly was falling into – in their eyes – inevitable division, chaos, and deadlock. Only the uniting force of a King, they argued, could give France the stability it needed and return the boom times to France.

Thus, in April 1806, Louis made another fateful decision, but not one that would see his full kingly authority restored. Instead, it would start a chain of events that would lead to a second Revolution and his final flight from France, never to return.

In fact, King Louis had been agonizing over what to do for months by that point. It had been obvious since November the previous year that France was in the grip of a constitutional crisis every bit as serious as the one in 1788 and 1789 that had preceded the first Revolution when the Paris?parlement?had refused to back the reform packages presented to them unless the Estates-General was called. To him, the fact that history seemed to be repeating in some degree was a deeply ominous omen, and as much a danger as an opportunity. On this, his instincts were to be proved correct, but his inner circle led by Queen Marie Antoinette, the Comte d’Artois, the Comte de Conde and other key members of his court urged him to seize the opportunity to, if not overturn the republican Assembly entirely, then at least regain?some?semblance of political power.

On the 5th of April, he finally gave in to the constant urgings of those around him and made his move. In the morning, decrees were printed, promulgated and circulated around Paris of the King’s shocking decision: Brissot had been dismissed as Prime Minister, on the basis that he clearly no longer had “the will of the people” behind him as he had no majority on the floor of the Assembly and no sign of obtaining one. That in itself was eyebrow-raising and likely would have provoked unrest, but Brissot was sufficiently unpopular by then that there was still a chance that the King could have been successful in his scheme, and Brissot would have gone quietly, had he not added a second, far more controversial clause to his decree.

Claiming that if Brissot didn’t have the “will of the people”, as the Constitution required the Prime Minister to have, then?no one?did, Louis declared that the decision to appoint Prime Ministers – and Ministers in general – thus defaulted back to the King, and he declared with this returned power that the Duc du Richelieu was the new Prime Minister, with other Ministers to follow in due course. Richelieu was a man of little public stature at that stage outside being a notable royalist and had no particularly standout qualities beyond one outstanding one: unswerving loyalty to the monarchy. A close confidant of the Queen’s, he had been a royal attendant from a young age and had been with Louis through thick and thin throughout the entire First Coalition War. It was, in short, a royal coup.

In Paris, the news hit like a case shot exploding over the city. After several hours of bewilderment in which people at first struggled to believe that the King had gone so far, realisation began to dawn that, yes, Louis had undertaken a coup right underneath their noses. Spontaneously, the various Anti-Monarchy Clubs – spearheaded by the New Cordeliers – began to meet and the dormant National Guard units of the city reactivated themselves. Fear of a royalist army marching on the city and a repeat of the Battle of Paris was thick in the air that evening, and the people of the city organized and collected?arms en masse?in preparation to defend themselves. Paris was mobilizing for a second Revolution.

An emergency meeting of the Assembly was called that same afternoon, but few paid heed to the stern speeches and defiant decrees passed on the flood of the chamber that day. Everyone to the right of the Girondins was laying very low, not wanting to get caught up in the increasingly febrile mood of the city, and everyone to their left was out on the streets of Paris and many no longer recognized his authority as Prime Minister. In truth, no one inside the chamber did so either, as after a few perfunctory denunciations and registrations of concern as to the King’s blatant power-grab, focus on the Assembly floor soon turned to the question of who was to replace Brissot as Prime Minister, with various Girondin candidates putting up their hand. However, out in the streets, these were not the questions that were animating the ever-growing crowds and mobilizing the Anti-Monarchy clubs to act as the tocsin bells rang throughout the city. It was time for action.

The increasingly well-armed mob only grew in size throughout the evening, and by seven o’clock, an enormous crowd had filled the Place du Hotel de Ville – the same site that had seen the heaviest fighting during the Battle of Paris seventeen years before – and overflowed onto the surrounding streets. Estimates vary wildly in size, but credible ones put it at well north of a hundred thousand people who had poured out onto the streets of Paris. Spontaneous rounds of?La Marseillaise?– no longer the national anthem – and cries of “down with the Bourbons!” dominated the air, but those later became mixed with “down with the Gironde!” and even “death to the compromisers!”. With the mood growing increasingly heated in the city and the National Guard quite clearly on the side of the mob, nerves inside the Tuileries grew about the intentions of the mob. Someone needed to take control.

At eight o’clock, someone did.

There were two notable absentees from the debates in the chamber: Danton and Corday. Unbeknownst to almost all, they were in fact inside the Hotel de Ville, holding secret conversations with, of all people, the American Ambassador, who had indicated to them early in the afternoon that he wished to meet urgently with them. Like the famous secret meeting with Lafayette, this meeting has been the fodder for many conspiracy theories down the years about American involvement in French republican history, but in truth, this meeting was far less secret: Danton and Corday had resolved that Brissot needed to go and the monarchy had to fall, and they had agreed that in that event, Danton would take the Presidency and Corday would become Minister of Defence. All that changed on the 5th of April was that both now had assurances that the Americans would actively support the new Second Republic in any war declared on France, so long as France was not the aggressor.

By eight, however, that meeting was finished, and an excited hush fell over the massive crowd as a door opened and out strode two giants of the First Republic: Georges Danton and Charlotte Corday. Both were dressed in full National Guard uniform, complete with decorations in Corday’s case, and were wearing tricolour cockades. Two horses were quickly found for the pair, as it was obvious now that they would be leading this makeshift army. In a moment often-reproduced and dramatized since, Corday is said to have mounted her horse and held the bloodstained tricolor flag from Lyon aloft – although it is not at all clear how it was brought to her – and called:

“Citoyens, le Boucher du Marseille essaie de nous prendre notre liberté. Alors, Gardes et Gardées, marchons!”?[4]

Thus, by eight-thirty, somewhere between a hundred and two hundred thousand men and women, armed with everything from the new cartridge-firing breechloader muskets to shovels and rocks, marched out of the center of Paris and southwest, with Danton and Corday at their head. Their destination: Versailles..

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[1] Of course OTL history clearly demonstrates otherwise; the successful women’s march on Versailles in October 1789 was one of the great turning points of the Revolution that set in motion all the forces that would push it to ever-increasing radicalization for the next four and half years. But the author doesn’t know that.

[2] This is the original OTL name of the guillotine, which has hung around here rather than being attached to poor old Joseph Guillotin. Without the Terror, the guillotine/louisette is seen as the honorable and humane method of execution that it was always intended to be (certainly much more humane than what it replaced), without the horrible political connotations attached to it in OTL.

[3] These economic reforms are basically the same as the Directorate’s reforms from 1796 – 1799 OTL that had a similar stabilizing effect on the French economy and provoked similar public ire, I don’t know enough about that period to craft something more novel.

[4] “Citizens, the Butcher of Marseille is trying to take away our liberty. Therefore, National Guards, march!”