Franco-CSA war in Mexico

The CSA drunk with "victory disease" try to take over Mexico in 1870. In TTL because the Union loses France remains in Mexico until that date. How screwed is the CSA? :D
 
How is France still in Mexico when a certain crisis with Prussia is underway? The new post-Napoleon regime will pull out of Mexico so fast...
 
Extremely. The CSA will have enough problems winning against the USA, against a European power it will be the fish in a barrel that European Power shoots for shits and giggles. Napoleon III's army, the victors of Solferino, are more than able to gut and fillet the Confederacy without it having so much as a means to respond to this.
 
Extremely. The CSA will have enough problems winning against the USA, against a European power it will be the fish in a barrel that European Power shoots for shits and giggles. Napoleon III's army, the victors of Solferino, are more than able to gut and fillet the Confederacy without it having so much as a means to respond to this.

Especially since the parts of the CSA nearest to Mexico are the least populous and most poorly defended. It would not be at all implausible for an established Maximilian to seize everything west of the Mississippi and the USA to steamroll the rest.

That said, the scenario is extremely implausable. IOTL France and the CSA were on friendly terms and both had their hands full already; the French with the Mexican insurgency and tensions in Europe, and the CSA with the Union invasion. Neither is likely to start anything which will add to their existing problems.

In the event of a successful Confederate bid for independence they still are looking over their shoulder at the USA and the French, even if they put down the revolt, will still be sitting on a powder keg; the moment the French get involved in a European war the Mexicans will come storming right back. Given that situation neither is is a position to be aggressive and both would refrain from annoying the other party.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
I think it's much more likely that the CSA will accept and support a pro-French imperial regime in Mexico, in exchange for French support in acquiring Cuba from Spain.

How is France still in Mexico when a certain crisis with Prussia is underway? The new post-Napoleon regime will pull out of Mexico so fast...

The causes of the Franco-Prussian War were so monumentally absurd that I think even the most minor change to the TL can easily butterfly it away.
 
The causes of the Franco-Prussian War were so monumentally absurd that I think even the most minor change to the TL can easily butterfly it away.

Wouldn't you be able to make an argument for the opposite. It was the result of two countries that were extremely eager to fight each other and so they will always find a provocation no matter how absurd it needs to be.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Wouldn't you be able to make an argument for the opposite. It was the result of two countries that were extremely eager to fight each other and so they will always find a provocation no matter how absurd it needs to be.

Bismarck wanted to fight, but nobody else really did. Napoleon III and the King of Prussia were standing side-by-side as good friends at a parade in Paris just three years before the outbreak of fighting. It was only the monumental stupidity of Napoleon III, combined with some amazingly fortuitous and unlikely events, that allowed Bismarck to trick Napoleon III into war.

If it hadn't happened and someone later wrote an AH.com TL abou a Franco-Prussian War in 1870, they would be laughed at and told to come up with a better POD, for the one they made up would have been considered ASB.
 
Especially since the parts of the CSA nearest to Mexico are the least populous and most poorly defended. It would not be at all implausible for an established Maximilian to seize everything west of the Mississippi and the USA to steamroll the rest.

That said, the scenario is extremely implausable. IOTL France and the CSA were on friendly terms and both had their hands full already; the French with the Mexican insurgency and tensions in Europe, and the CSA with the Union invasion. Neither is likely to start anything which will add to their existing problems.

In the event of a successful Confederate bid for independence they still are looking over their shoulder at the USA and the French, even if they put down the revolt, will still be sitting on a powder keg; the moment the French get involved in a European war the Mexicans will come storming right back. Given that situation neither is is a position to be aggressive and both would refrain from annoying the other party.


Probably, I admit it is a longshot. However, countries have done monumentally stupid things before. Look at WWII Japan! Any sane government would have backed down rather than go into a suicidal war with the US!
 
In addition to overconfidence in victory as a cause for invasion, I believe that soil exhaustion was already pushing the planters west. If they became a bit more paranoid about the amount of land remaining, that might cause a bit of rallying for expansion.
 
The CSA drunk with "victory disease" try to take over Mexico in 1870.
Highly unlikely. There's no realistic scenario for the CSA's independence that doesn't leave a still far larger and hostile Union arrayed against it. The CSA would spend the rest of its (probably short) existence guarding an armed northern border; it wouldn't have the time or resources to start a separate war. It probably wouldn't have the political coordination to do it, either. It lacked unity as a nation and authority as a government. But, if you really insist, then...

In TTL because the Union loses France remains in Mexico until that date. How screwed is the CSA? :D
Hosed beyond recognition. While the French were tying up (and probably chewing up) whatever the CSA could send south, the Union would see its opportunity and resume hostilities. It would be suicidal for the CSA, because they wouldn't be maintaining their independence with foreign support, including that of France, in the first place.
 
Probably, I admit it is a longshot. However, countries have done monumentally stupid things before. Look at WWII Japan! Any sane government would have backed down rather than go into a suicidal war with the US!

except the Japanese (and in fact the world) didn't know the military capabilities of the U.S. I don't even think the U.S. did.
 
except the Japanese (and in fact the world) didn't know the military capabilities of the U.S. I don't even think the U.S. did.

It was well known to the world that the US had a much larger economy than Japan in 1941. The Japanese did a study on it before the war broke out that showed the US had a crushing advantage in GDP before the war. They just ignored it and assumed the US wouldn't fight. If the US really fights Japan is doomed.
 
except the Japanese (and in fact the world) didn't know the military capabilities of the U.S.

They should have. Yamamoto spent plenty of time in the US and knew what kind of industry they possessed. Great Britain certainly knew what the potential was; I bet there was champagne pouring at 10 Downing Street when we entered the war. Well, maybe something with more bite, come to think of it. Churchill after all :)
 
Probably, I admit it is a longshot. However, countries have done monumentally stupid things before. Look at WWII Japan! Any sane government would have backed down rather than go into a suicidal war with the US!

Japan was all out of options not due to insanity but due to its inability to reign in its officer corps. The invasion of French Indochina was yet another instance of Japanese generals acting against the wishes of the high command in Tokyo and enough government by assassination had already existed to the point that Japan's leaders literally had to do or die. For its part the US idea of how not to escalate a situation or put Japan in a corner from which it could not back down was to try to provide a bomber fleet that would not be available until 1942 and cut off the entirety of Japan's oil supplies. :rolleyes:

except the Japanese (and in fact the world) didn't know the military capabilities of the U.S. I don't even think the U.S. did.

Well, given the USA was more of the paymaster/quartermaster of the Allied forces, it's no surprise that they didn't.
 
Top