What would be a good post-Napoleonic French wank pod?

[PoeFacedKilla]

And ASB too boot.

Care to explain before dropping the A-bomb?

France. FRANCE, the country that has tried to dominate Europe for centuries invades Prussia while it is at war with Austria (a German affair) and tries to partition it? IDK if you know this but the Great Powers of Europe took the balance of power pretty fucking seriously (Kinda funny that Prussia slapped the shit out of the Vienna Conference, however they did so without annihilating other nations) and Prussia was Russia's friend. Also, I’m not quite sure France could conquer and partition Prussia the populations have evened out by then and the Prussian's had much more industrial power.

Not that Prussia would win, but they'd be counter-attacking no doubt and Austria and France would get territorial concessions at most. Prussia beat France to a pulp yet all they got was Alsace-Loraine (which many considered German).

Look wat that territory cost a nation much stronger than France...

I think the POD needs to be immediate postwar France. If the French can make Algeria its Siberia and gain a threshold in the Pacific early on I think France can compete with Britain globally after Napoleon.

But without Belgium and lots of industry or 1940s technology France isn't going to dominate Europe.

(posted while drunk)

 

[carlton_bach]

How about the 1848 revolution goes worse for the Prussian monarchy? Not to the point of a republican constitution, but so much worse that they need to call on Russian troops to restore the old order the way the Austrians did in Hungary. That takes them out of the picture for cracking down on revolution in the other German states, which have a much better chance of succeeding. Since the revolutionaries want a unified Germany, they will work to that end, making it radioactive for both Prussia and Austria to touch. Maybe they end up calling their bundle of states 'Germany', even. But they will need a strong protector against Prussian and Austrian aggression, and that protector will be France.

With the French and their German sastellites bordering the Prussian Rhine province, tensions are guaranteed. Austria is likely still going to decline militarily, and may simply accept the fact that Bavaria is a French ally on its doorstep, why not? But Prussia is unlikely to do so, with its richest (and restive) provinces on the line.

If the French are smart, they can get aligned with Austria. That would require them not to interfere in Italy, but that's not a bad thing as such - more unipolarity around the Mediterranean, maybe a French LIbya in the end. The big confrontation of the 1850s would be the Franco-Austrian bloc with its satellites and the Russo-Prussian Holy Alliance with its minor allies.

I suppose Franco-British friendship can still happen. The continental balance is not threatened. But Russia, being governed as it is, cannot win this confrontation. If a great war happens, the Prussians will find that Russia is a broken reed, and there goes the Rhine Province. If, more likely, it does not, the alliance simply dwindles in power. Prussia will be plenty big enough to keep France's mind occupied, but not powerful enough to endanger it on its own.

France dominates Europe, the guarantor of the liberty of small nations.