Watching Him Raise a Tall Building (2)

　As bad as Joseph's history was, he knew that Aunt Sophie was being overly optimistic. There was more to come.

　　On the 19th, the Constituent Assembly followed suit, leaving Versailles and returning to Paris.

　　The Constituent Assembly has just returned to Paris, Member of Parliament Mirabeau put forward such a proposal: "Let the king abdicate and pass the throne to the crown prince. Considering that the Prince is still young, so in accordance with the French tradition, you can let a great nobleman of noble status as Regent, to deal with political affairs for him."

　　Everyone knew who the great noble of honorable status was that Mirabeau mentioned. Both of the king's younger brothers were already in exile, and considering their attitude towards the revolution, it was naturally impossible for them to take up this position. Therefore, there was only one other candidate, and that was the Duke of Orleans.

　　This proposal was supported by quite a number of parliamentarians, for the parliament simply did not believe that the king, who had been forced to return to Paris, would sincerely support constitutional government. They felt that keeping such a man on the throne would bring all sorts of uncertainties to constitutional government.

　　For a time, Louis XVI's throne became so precarious that people could be heard shouting "Long live Louis XVII" in the streets.

　　According to the Duke of Orleans has been waiting for this day for a long time, but things suddenly changed, the Duke of Orleans suddenly accepted the advice of the Marquis de Lafayette, left France, went to London, served as ambassador to the United Kingdom.

　　According to the general idea, the Duke of Orleans could never have left France at this time, for it would have been almost equivalent to a kind of exile. But it was said that after a confidential talk with Lafayette, the Duke of Orleans accepted the request. Then rumors spread that the reason why the Duke of Orleans had accepted such a request was because he had done something unseemly behind his back and was discovered by the Marquis de Lafayette. It was said that a certain clerical friend of the Marquis de Condorcet had found evidence of some of his not-so-good activities and told this to Condorcet, who in turn provided this information to the Marquis de Lafayette. Only, Lafayette, being a generous man, was not willing to make these things public and bring the Duke's Highness to ruin. But he also believed that His Royal Highness the Duke's continued presence in the country would jeopardize the country, which is why he forced the Duke to leave France.

　　Of course there were other rumors, such as that His Royal Highness the Duke was so high-minded that he left France of his own accord, knowing that his status and influence, if he were to serve as Regent, might be a distraction to democracy.

　　Still, Joseph felt that the first rumor, perhaps, contained more truth.

　　Having dissuaded the Duke of Orleans, Lafayette then attacked Mirabeau. Using the same tactics, he tried to get Mirabeau to leave France and go to Constantinople as ambassador to Turkey. But Mirabeau stood his ground and he refused the request. Still, Lafayette dealt Mirabeau a heavy blow by agitating the Parliament to not only reject Mirabeau's proposal to suggest that MPs serve as ministers in the government, but also to pass a resolution banning MPs from serving as ministers. The way for Mirabeau to serve as a minister at the same time was completely blocked.

　　By this time, Lafayette seemed to be in complete control of the situation. There seemed to be only one problem in front of him that remained to be solved, and that was finance.

　　One of the main reasons why the king called for a three-tier conference was because of the unsolvable financial problems he encountered. Today's social situation is completely different from that of the past, but the financial problem is still very prominent.

　　Now that the royal family had left Versailles, some of the great nobles dependent on the royal family had fled abroad. The expenses on them have been greatly reduced. If in earlier years, the expenses of the royal family could be compressed to the point of today, then France really does not exist financial crisis. However, the situation is now very different, although the royal expenses were reduced, but a new problem has emerged.

　　Just like the problem revealed by the second law of thermodynamics summarized by Clausius and Kelvin in later generations, there does not exist a way to reduce the entropy value of part of the system without increasing the entropy value of the whole system. The royal family's expenditures were compressed down, but other expenditures suddenly increased.

　　First of all, conservative nobles who were not willing to lose their past positions were staging rebellions everywhere. To suppress them, more money was needed. For many years, France had been the boss on the European continent, but there were few countries that coveted its position.

　　The Austrian Habsburgs, for example, wanted to restore the glory of the so-called Holy Roman Empire. Although their empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, in addition to producing all kinds of princesses, there is no glory to speak of.

　　Although in the Seven Years' War, Austria and France "became friends", (and as a result, France suffered a great loss in the war. It is particularly interesting to note that France had previously been very successful in allying with pagan Turkey against the devoutly Catholic Habsburgs, and with Protestants against the Catholic Habsburgs in the Thirty Years' War. However, once they joined forces with the Catholic-believing Habsburgs, they lost. Evidently, God's will did want France to fight Catholicism. Well, although I, France, imprisoned the Pope, allied with pagans to fight Catholics, and with Protestants to fight Catholics, I know that I am a good child of God.) But I'm afraid the Habsburgs would be happy to take advantage of France while they could, if France showed a crack.

　　And the Low Countries, and Prussia and Russia ... What country on the continent wouldn't want to take advantage of France's problems while they lasted? Not to mention a European shit-stirrer to the west - Britain. They do not take the opportunity to pounce on France to tear off a few pieces of meat, then they do not deserve to be called never trouble John Bull.

　　So in order to defend itself against these neighbors, France had to overhaul its army. And the French army, well, just as King Louis XVI found the army unreliable, so Parliament could not trust the French army.

　　The senior officers in the French army were all aristocrats, and they were all related to the aristocrats who had run off abroad and were ready to serve as a bandwagon party for the Austrian, Prussian, or British armies, and it was as if the commander of the Republican Army, Quo Vinh, who was the nephew and grandson of the rebel commander, the Marquis de Rondenac, as the later Victor Hugo depicted in his Ninety-Three Years. In 1993, Guo Wen was very loyal to the ideals and the revolution. But in reality, who dares to guarantee that all those noble officers in the army are really loyal to the Parliament? Who dares to guarantee that once the Count of Provence or the Count of Artois comes back with a foreign army to kill, they will not turn against each other?

　　Some impatient councilors even proposed to replace all the noble officers with officers of the third rank. However, this kind of brainless proposal was not feasible at all. Because the so-called third grade officers were not only too few in number, but most of the time, they were only lieutenants at most - in fact, it was not easy to be a second lieutenant without the word "de" in their name. These men might be able to command a platoon or a company, but to ask them to suddenly command an army corps and go to war would be tantamount to sending them to their deaths.

　　As a matter of fact, even the legislator who proposed the motion himself realized that it was a motion that was too silly to be true. However, the legislators who proposed this motion are not fools, and when they proposed this motion, they knew that it would definitely be defeated. (If this were not the case, they would not have moved such a motion at all.) Such a motion is moved just to show the people who support them how loyal they are to the people.

　　It is a common fault of the electoral system that in order to gain the support of the voters, you have to be more radical than others, even in the future generations. For example, if the people care about the environment, you have to support shutting down dangerous nuclear power, tearing down coal-fired power that pollutes the air, blowing up hydroelectric power that destroys fish migrations and alters the stresses on the earth's strata, and chopping down wind power that causes infrasound pollution and threatens birds ... In the end, you'll just have to support the all-natural, non-polluting " Power with Love".

　　It still costs money to solve the problem of an unreliable military. First of all, it is necessary to ensure that the army earns revenue. That said, wasn't the reason why the king gradually lost control of the army because he was constantly in arrears with the army's paychecks? For the Parliament to really control the army, then at least it couldn't let the army starve.

　　The next step is to create a truly loyal military force. Isn't it true that the British parliament in the west has control because they have a "parliamentary" army? (Britain's navy, police, and later air force were all called the Royal Family, but only the army was not called the Royal Family, because it belonged to Parliament.) The British Army grew out of Cromwell's New Model Army. Today's National Assembly is eager to have a New Model Army of its own.

　　The closest thing to a "New Model Army" today is, of course, the National Guard. But the National Guard was still only a militia. Despite Lafayette's efforts, time is limited, and frankly, at least for the time being, the National Guard is still just a rabble. Turning this rabble into a "New Model Army" takes not only time, but also money.

　　There were all kinds of old and new national debts, which together amounted to four and a half billion livres. The interest alone was an enormous sum, and the Congress was almost out of breath.

　　Relying on the debt was impossible, because it was all borrowed from the richest of those third-class decent people who were now the foundation of the country.

　　Faced with the predicament, some members of Congress are already privately debating whether it's time to raise taxes on something that isn't politically correct. But no one has really raised the point. Lafayette was in no hurry, though, because his friend Bishop Talleyrand already had a solution.