You can get Bavaria into the club by simply waving money before Ludwig II's face - he was bankrupting the kingdom with his castle building spree.
I see what you did here. Although, Operation Sealion is traduced in French as Opération Otarie.If only the French Ministry of War had assigned a catchy name (after a maritime mammal, maybe) to the not really existing war plan.
Then generations of althist newbies would go "If only Opération Ouate de Phoque had been attempted in 1870, then the French navy would have landed in Usedom, taken Stettin and marched the zouaves to Berlin in just a week!" with all the althist veterans gently or exasperatedly corrcting that.
which is what happened IOTL, more or less: obviously the money was waved in the face of Ludwig's ministersYou can get Bavaria into the club by simply waving money before Ludwig II's face - he was bankrupting the kingdom with his castle building spree.
Speaking of possible French reforms, the most needed one was a complete overhaul of the army and finding a way to attract educated people to improve the officer corps (in Prussia a career in the army was an attractive one, providing status and career prospective; all the officers and a large portion of the NCOs were well educated. In France the army was not an attractive career, and the prospects for most officers were quite dismal). Solving this problem would have helped a lot, provided that it would be followed by some rational thinking in terms of training, logistics and mobilisation.
Well, you have to admit France repeatedly had issues with its high command in both 1940 and 1914. It having issues with its high command in 1870 doesn't seem much of a stretch.I've seen two things on that topic: that the High officer corps was rotten to the core (good ol' "not one button missing") but the field officers were pretty great. They were however not trained for pitched battles but used to colonial wars, which is another beast entirely.
I don't know how correct that is. It sounds plausible but it also sounds like a French stab in the back.
I've seen two things on that topic: that the High officer corps was rotten to the core (good ol' "not one button missing") but the field officers were pretty great. They were however not trained for pitched battles but used to colonial wars, which is another beast entirely.
I don't know how correct that is. It sounds plausible but it also sounds like a French stab in the back.
Officer promotions were a lot based on seniority, so it is very possible that the High officer corps had either been directly appointed or been just made of the old survivors who weren't really made for that.That sounds weird. They had fought in the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859, after all, against Austria. Not exactly a colonial war.
Officer promotions were a lot based on seniority, so it is very possible that the High officer corps had either been directly appointed or been just made of the old survivors who weren't really made for that.
The Crimean War and the Italian war would have been 11 years before the Prussian war so I'd imagine there would have been a lot of new faces in the soldiers and officer corps, especially sous-officiers.There was also the Crimean War in 1853-1856. Does the Pastry War against Mexico count? Or the French Intervention in the 1860s?
The most likely result of a unification without a Franco-Prussian War would have been a federal state along the lines of the 1866 Prussian federal reform plan with the presidency either perpetually held by the King of Prussia, as proposed by the Prussian representative Karl Friedrich von Savigny, or a revolving presidency as e.g. preferred by the Bavarian Minister-President Baron Karl Ludwig von der Pfordten (in his case between just Prussia and Bavaria). The resulting rather unwieldy title of the head of state of this country may have thus been: His Excelleny the President of the German Federation, His Royal Majesty King Wilhelm of Prussia / King Ludwig II of Bavaria.