Napolean's Navy Wins Battle of Trafalgar, Armies Conquer Europe and Britain then US?

Yes, but in order to do that, you need to change the structure and training of the french imperial and likely revolutionary navy ( of course avoiding Aboukir would be a good idea ).

Assuming you don't want to postulate Nelson changing side and being an admiral in the french Navy :)) ), The best shot I see would be Suffren surviving ( until say 1805 qt leqst ) and being given the authority and ressources to rebuild the french Navy, And that's a long shot ( to begin with, he has to survive the Terror ).

For that matter, you might even want to go back farther and tinker with Colbert's reforms. They did a good job of modernizing the French Navy, but they turned into more of a bureauchratic force then a fighting one, and overall control over the fleet was overcentralized. This instilled a more defensive spirit in the French navy over the generations than the Royal Navy experienced. Note how French Admirals tended to put a specific mission first, and how the British ones were more willing to take risks to destroy the enemy battle fleet. Almost every major naval battle (certainly from barfleur on) saw the British attack the french, not the other way around. Orient the french more towards fleet actions, and maybe throw in a few more successful battles (Barfleur not reversed, Quiberton Bay a draw or better, a decisive victory at the Chesapeake Bay, Ushant, or somewhere) to break the losing tradition, and the french navy can (theoretically) take on the Royal Navy. And just as important, these changes and victories may move the british focus to more of a land war, either keeping with descents on the french coast to a larger degree, or a large standing army to repel invasion or fight on the continent, with the navy never truly becoming ascendent.
 
let's accept the (rather unlikely) POD that Napoleon invades and conquers England. Does he have any great reason to invade and conquer the US? Nothing I've read about that time says that Napoleon had any great dislike of the US or desire for a big empire in N. America. He seemed to want his hand all across Europe, but it seems to me that the US was scarcely given much thought by him..
 
I can only really see Napoleon showing up in North America after the start of his reign in one of two ways. The first is his mission to Haiti goes far better than in OTL, and maybe he fights a full fledged war in the Carribean which could potentially spill into the US proper. The other involves him never selling Louisiana. After he escapes Elba (assuming that he winds up on elba), he decides to take a new direction. metaphorically, the sun has set on his European empire, and it is time for it to rise in a new direction. So he somehow slips through to new Orleans and begins building an army. He might do a decent job of rallying the Americans to his cause, before Wellington and the Royal navy appear to put an end to this.
 
Almost every major naval battle (certainly from barfleur on) saw the British attack the french, not the other way around. QUOTE]


You're forgetting Suffren's campaign in India, here.

That's the main reason I see his surviving and acquiring power over the french navy as one possibility
 
I apologise for my fellow members. It's not the greatest way to be welcomed to the board, I'd agree. :eek::(

That said, though, the main thing about this topic is that, as most of the posters above have been saying (if impolitely) is that it's very, very hard to pull off. Invading across the Atlantic is allways hard-to-impossible - with the (possible) exception of New Orleans and the Potomac Campaign in 1812, I can't honestly think of a single time somebody's made a straight-up amphibious assault from Europe. Besides which, there is always the problem that Napoleon was more interested in Eurasia first anyways.

So guys, lay off the new guy, OK? As for mrld1630, I'd suggest you try looking further back than Trafalgar for your POD; it requires some big changes in the French Navy, at an absolute minimum, and 1807 is just too late to cut it. That said, if you think you can make a TL for this, go for it! As Thande "Steampunk French Sealion" has proved, you can get away with a lot if you start making changes early enough...

Not one of the posts responding to his original question was impolite. All laid out explanations for why it would be unworkable. Grey Wolf, in fact, went one step further and suggested an alternative which, for the record, was ignored. No one here was being hard on the new guy. To be fair to him, he did recognise this. I think Grey Wolf's suggestion might bear some investigation.
 
Yes, but in order to do that, you need to change the structure and training of the french imperial and likely revolutionary navy ( of course avoiding Aboukir would be a good idea ).

Assuming you don't want to postulate Nelson changing side and being an admiral in the french Navy :)) ), The best shot I see would be Suffren surviving ( until say 1805 qt leqst ) and being given the authority and ressources to rebuild the french Navy, And that's a long shot ( to begin with, he has to survive the Terror ).

The problem with the French navy was, according to my biography of Napoleon, the inexperience of French sailors. In ships, France actually was better, as was its guns. So, if we posit that a genius arose within the naval ranks (why not? Napoleon was good judge of men) and the sailors were only little bad instead of astrocious like at the time of Trafalgar, maybe France wins. Then the genius admiral uses the breathing room gained by the victory, not invade England, but train his sailors in seamanship on high seas and create the foundation for more skilled naval personnel, while Napoleon continues with his plans for building more ships.
 
The problem with the French navy was, according to my biography of Napoleon, the inexperience of French sailors. In ships, France actually was better, as was its guns. So, if we posit that a genius arose within the naval ranks (why not? Napoleon was good judge of men) and the sailors were only little bad instead of astrocious like at the time of Trafalgar, maybe France wins. Then the genius admiral uses the breathing room gained by the victory, not invade England, but train his sailors in seamanship on high seas and create the foundation for more skilled naval personnel, while Napoleon continues with his plans for building more ships.

Napoleon didn't get the Navy - he didn't understand the affect of time and tide, and especially wind on the ability of his Navy to carry out a complex plan.

And the 'ships were better' is a much repeated riff that, as usual is only partly true - the French ships were often better sea handlers (so faster) while being worse gun platforms, especially than the 74's such as Bellerophon. They were designed for different things, and the speed and sea handling characteristics are what the RN officers most often praised in logs, diaries, reports and articles in the Naval Chronicle. However, you are correct about the inexperience of the French crews - which was brought about by Egalite - the French naval gunners were an elite, and so destroyed by representatives on mission in the Terror, as were the Naval officers (mostly of noble rank). Once the ships were tied up alongside, the majority of men were taken to serve in the army - and so when Napoleon needed a fleet, he had to take men from the army to man it.

Possibly taking away the total radicalisation of the revolution will work in keeping French naval strength - but this changes so much else that it's a difficult PoD to use. Additionally, a French Navy that is equivelent to the RN would not have fought a Trafalgar like battle - it would be much more like WW1, with Nelson as 'the only man who could loose the war in a day'
 
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