I've noticed alot of threads here postulating how one of the Napoleon created satellite kingdoms, under a Napoleonic relative, could have survived the fall of Napoleon.
IOTL, the only one that did so, sort of and not really, were the Bernadottes in Sweden. But there is a thread further down on Louis in the Netherlands, and I've seen these on Eugene and Murat.
Thinking over how do this, I think there are two common denominators that DO NOT involve Napoleon winning in the end and his system surviving. Actually with Napoleon winning some of the satellites would have been absorbed into the empire as Holland was anyway.
Pretty much you have to do two things:
1. Remove Napoleon himself from the scene. This is both needed to make the Coalition powers less nervous about keeping more elements of the Napoleonic system, and to keep Napoleon himself from eating the satellites. It is also sort of needed in a scenario where Napoleonic France loses to the Coalition.
2. Have Napoleonic France fight the Coalition to enough of a stalemate that France does better in the post-war settlement than getting (mostly) its 1789 frontiers back, so some satellites will survive.
You almost certainly would have to kill off Napoleon about a decade earlier than IOTL, but after his heir is born, so there is still a Bonapartist regime in France. And then have the marshals be able to keep a good part of the empire.
So the key to get Eugene, Louis etc. surviving or reinstated (in the case of Louis) as kings is to have one important Napoleonic kingdom survive, in other words get Napoleon II on the throne of France. Very likely Eugene is running France in this scenario so this butterflies away his own kingdom. But at that point in our alternative Congress of Vienna (not necessarily held in Vienna) you may get a compromise where France draws back to its 1789 frontiers, though it probably keeps what became Belguim, but surrounded on its borders by smaller satellite kingdoms, reinstated Holland, something in the Rhineland, something in northern Italy, Naples and Catalonia are possibilities though less likely. Beyond that the coalition powers would organize things however they wanted.
Really this is the only way I see of getting this.
IOTL, the only one that did so, sort of and not really, were the Bernadottes in Sweden. But there is a thread further down on Louis in the Netherlands, and I've seen these on Eugene and Murat.
Thinking over how do this, I think there are two common denominators that DO NOT involve Napoleon winning in the end and his system surviving. Actually with Napoleon winning some of the satellites would have been absorbed into the empire as Holland was anyway.
Pretty much you have to do two things:
1. Remove Napoleon himself from the scene. This is both needed to make the Coalition powers less nervous about keeping more elements of the Napoleonic system, and to keep Napoleon himself from eating the satellites. It is also sort of needed in a scenario where Napoleonic France loses to the Coalition.
2. Have Napoleonic France fight the Coalition to enough of a stalemate that France does better in the post-war settlement than getting (mostly) its 1789 frontiers back, so some satellites will survive.
You almost certainly would have to kill off Napoleon about a decade earlier than IOTL, but after his heir is born, so there is still a Bonapartist regime in France. And then have the marshals be able to keep a good part of the empire.
So the key to get Eugene, Louis etc. surviving or reinstated (in the case of Louis) as kings is to have one important Napoleonic kingdom survive, in other words get Napoleon II on the throne of France. Very likely Eugene is running France in this scenario so this butterflies away his own kingdom. But at that point in our alternative Congress of Vienna (not necessarily held in Vienna) you may get a compromise where France draws back to its 1789 frontiers, though it probably keeps what became Belguim, but surrounded on its borders by smaller satellite kingdoms, reinstated Holland, something in the Rhineland, something in northern Italy, Naples and Catalonia are possibilities though less likely. Beyond that the coalition powers would organize things however they wanted.
Really this is the only way I see of getting this.