Invading Napoleon

What would happen after Napoleon tried to invade Britain? would Britain launch an couterinvasion? or would they just keep to their 'we aren't interested in Continental Europe'-thoughts?
 
What would happen after Napoleon tried to invade Britain? would Britain launch an couterinvasion? or would they just keep to their 'we aren't interested in Continental Europe'-thoughts?

Well...It's a bit Sealion-scale, or "Otarie" if I would dare.

Napoléon wanted, really, to invade Britain, he even gathered an army for than in the Atlantic, the "Grande Armée" (which he'll send in Russia, as it was, admiteddly, less insane than Britain).

He just didn't have enough ship to fight the Royal Navy (let alone loading all his forces), not enough good commanders, not enough GOOD ships...
 
If Napoleon did try to invade Britannia proper, then he would most likely have lost, since British naval superiority would've led to difficulty supplying the invasion force, and the British would not easily let their homeland fall to the French. Furthermore, even if Le Grande Armee succeeded in taking over the British Isles, they would still have to deal with guerrilla warfare, like in Spain. At the very best, it's a very Pyrrhic victory for France. Much more likely, it'll fail, and leave France vulnerable to a more successful invasion by British and their allies.
 
Could the French Republic cultivate the English Democrats and other Jacobins and sympathizers in Britain? Could Lazare Hoch reach Ireland successfully and assist the United Irishmen revolt? Could French sympathy among British republicans withstand that and thus benefit from now supplies and information being much more easily smuggled between them? Possibly. Presbyterian Jacobins in Ireland might not scare off British republicans too much.

Could Napoleon's Empire maintain these connections? Maybe, maybe not.

But without an earlier POD building up that in the first place, by the time of the Napoleonic Wars you aren't going to have the seeds of support in Britain, and even with that POD it would be hard for British republicans to justify support for a continental emperor even if French republicans were able to. And even those aren't enough to effect an invasion, they'd just make it possible to strike at the heart of Britannia without an invasion.

But a POD creating UI Ireland but not butterflying away the Empire, resulting in one of Nappy's relatives being put in place as King of Ireland after retiring the UI directory, would certainly be an interesting and perhaps maybe theoretically possible alternative to a Napoleonic invasion of the island of Britain.
 
As I asked in another recent thread on this subject, how long after the French "liberation" of Ireland would it have been before their army there requisitioning of supplies pushed the rural Irish into guerilla warfare against them?
 
As I asked in another recent thread on this subject, how long after the French "liberation" of Ireland would it have been before their army there requisitioning of supplies pushed the rural Irish into guerilla warfare against them?

Two thoughts. First, they can take supplies from the loyalists.

Second, Ireland probably can feed them; it fed a larger number of British troops who were later garrisoned there, after all.
 
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