AHC/WI: Napoleon Escapes to the New World

Assume that Bonaparte never developed cancer and was never poisoned and give him a longer natural lifespan, into his sixties or seventies.

*After Waterloo, Bonaparte attempted to flee to the USA, but was obstructed by the British fleet's presence at all ports.
*There were plans to rescue him from St. Helena and bring him to revolutionary Brazil, revolutionary Chile, or (by Grand Armee exiles) Texas to establish a new empire on the mainland. They never came to fruition because of his death.

  • Will he stick to warfare to expand his empire, or will he be content to focus on development, political freedom, and enforcing his Napoleonic Code?
  • Will Guerilla Warfare frustrate his efforts, or can history's "most competent human being" and penultimate strategic/tactical genius adapt and overcome the challenges of his new setting?
  • How will Napoleon's New World empire interact with the young United States?
  • Will an 8th Coalition invade the New World?
 
I just can't see Napoleon ever being content to settle in a position that would reduce him to the level of a colonial governor no matter how well he could do the job. I think that the moment he arrived in the new world he'd begin plotting his return to France. A return that Britain would never allow. I could maybe see a new French colony run by Napoleon being tolerated as a way for Europe to get rid of his more radical supporters and later as a dumping ground for anyone France didn't want.

Napoleon would run his colony well and probably fairly peacefully since the scale of the Americas and the small numbers at his command make conquests unlikely. He'll spend the rest of his days plotting a glorious return to France that will never happen with dozens of schemes and promises of foreign backing that never seems to materialize. With his death the colony mourn his passing and will peacefully rejoin France.
 
Napoleon wasn't intentionally poisoned: the large amounts of arsenic found in his body was the result of the green wallpaper in his room that contained arsenic. It was unfortunately common at the time.
 
Brazil wasn't revolutionary in 1815

neither the portuguese or the spanish were particularly fond of the French, so I doubt there's automatic support. The Argentines had already run a French vice regal out of town (Santiago de Liniers). The church was still quite powerful in south america, and Nap had proven himself to be no friend of the church. People like to imagine Nap simply landing in the New World, yelling follow me, and an empire magically springs up.

However, say he does gather support. all of south america is a backwater pretty much devoid of industry. While some smuggling might go on, at a bare minimum, the old world is going to shut down all trade to N's empire, fund anyone who opposes him, possibly, if not probably send troops to bolster the opposition, and N's going to find hes a master general with troops and subordinates who, to be generous, are of questionable quality, and have no supplies. If they don't get their arses kicked, everyone pretty quickly gets tired of this usurper who is more interested in personal conquest and less interested in the well being of the country he's running (which was a big problem for him in France, too). If he doesn't get set afloat in the ocean in a rowboat, he ends up shot. Spanish America endured endless cycles of dictators not because they liked dictatorship, but because any given dictator had a base of power, which N would lack. They might like him initially to kick out the spanish, but then they'd be done with him. That's IF N doesn't take one look at the conditions and decide he's better off on Helena.
 
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