How Could Napoleon Win at Waterloo?

[usertron2020]

By this time everybody but the Ottomans were ready to march against Napoleon, regardless if things had gone south at Waterloo. Not sure about Wellington surviving the battle though...

 

[SlyDessertFox]

The best option would be to have Napoleon win at Leipzig not Waterloo.

 

[Westphalian]

France must also be in good enough shape to keep fighting after Waterloo; there is also no French invasion of Russia ITTL, so Napoleon has at least 685,000 more soldiers than IOTL

You do have a general understanding of the events that happened between his defeat in Russia and Waterloo? The Sixth Coalition, the Battle of Nations, the invasion of France, Napoleons exile, his return from Elba, the Seventh Coalition, the British, Prussians and Dutch armies already west of the Rhine with the Austrian and Russian almost a month away - and finally Napoleons decision to beat the B, P & D in single battles before they can unite with each other and the A & R?
All this has to happen before a march toward Brussels and Antwerp and thus a battle near Waterloo makes much sense. And it is still implausible that Wellesley and Blücher will be the commanders at this battle. Wellesley might be still in Spain or over in America, and instead of Blücher there might be Yorck, Tauentzien, Prince August or whoever.

tl;dr: Scrapping the invasion of Russia and then having a Battle of Waterloo with the OTL participants is silly.

 

[Anaxagoras]

there is also no French invasion of Russia ITTL, so Napoleon has at least 685,000 more soldiers than IOTL

As others have pointed out, no French invasion of Russia would introduce so many butterflies into the TL that the Battle of Waterloo would not take place.

But even setting that aside, only about a third of the troops with which Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 were actually French. The rest were Germans, Italians, Austrians, Prussians and Poles. Most of these soldiers would have been aligned against Napoleon in 1815, if you intend to keep the general situation that year unchanged.

 

[oshron]

i did write up a Waterloo-victory for the TL yesterday, but with all this new input i think i might go back and rewrite it to focus on Leipzig instead

 

[Anaxagoras]

i did write up a Waterloo-victory for the TL yesterday, but with all this new input i think i might go back and rewrite it to focus on Leipzig instead

I'll tell you the biggest possible POD from the Battle of Leipzig. On the evening of October 15, the night before the battle actually begin, a troop of French cavalry out scouting the Allied position almost captured a group of Russian and Prussian officers, who fled with all haste. The French made little effort to pursue, as they did not think it worth the trouble. Had they known the identities of the men, they probably would have reconsidered, for it had been Czar Alexander of Russia, King Fredrick Wilhelm III of Prussia and most of their closest advisors. Imagine how much history would have been transformed if THAT group had been brought before Napoleon as helpless prisoners that night!

 

[SlyDessertFox]

NAPOLEON WOULD REIGN SUPREME!!! My dreams would have came true!!!!!

 

[oshron]

I'll tell you the biggest possible POD from the Battle of Leipzig. On the evening of October 15, the night before the battle actually begin, a troop of French cavalry out scouting the Allied position almost captured a group of Russian and Prussian officers, who fled with all haste. The French made little effort to pursue, as they did not think it worth the trouble. Had they known the identities of the men, they probably would have reconsidered, for it had been Czar Alexander of Russia, King Fredrick Wilhelm III of Prussia and most of their closest advisors. Imagine how much history would have been transformed if THAT group had been brought before Napoleon as helpless prisoners that night!

PERFECT!!! i can see this leading to a Waterloo analogy elsewhere, which works into the rest of my TL