I'm not sure about that. Of course, what I know about the British army in this period is sketchy at best - but it seems to have done a good job in Spain.
Napoleaon gets his 6 hours
- Thread starter Georgie Porgie
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I'm not sure about that. Of course, what I know about the British army in this period is sketchy at best - but it seems to have done a good job in Spain.
But it wasn't fighting against Napoleon himself in Spain. And it was helped enormously by the Spanish guerrillas.
Please. The British army in Spain had numerous advantages on its side: it was a very small army which made it easy to manage; had the British navy to supply them; and, most important of all, had the support of the Spanish guerillas and population. Statistics show that the guerillas inflicted far more casualties on the French forces in the Pennsiular war than the British army there.
1. Ships are a large capital investment.
2. Ships cost a lot to maintain.
3. Ships carry a lot of artillary, which is expensive to aquire... at Waterloo the French army had 250 guns; a squadron of 4 3rd rate Ships of the Line will match that! Consider the British maintained upwards of 50 Ships fo the Line (many larger than 3rd Rate) in active service for most of the Napoleonic Wars plus hundreds of lighter vessels...
And the British army in defending Britain has British navy interfering with Napoleon's supply lines, the support of the population even more so than it could ever hope for in Spain, and is fighting on its home turf (as opposed to in Spain).
Having the advantages it did in Spain was certainly valuable and I'm quite willing to accept the point that without them it was hopeless - but treating it as if the British Army did nothing except loot and drink its way through the country while everyone else did the real work . . . and Prussia's accomplishments are any better than that standard?
Slydesertfox: "Napoleon himself" lost to Wellington, lost to the forces of the second-to-last coalition, and had a stiff fight from just everyone's favorite target of mockery (Austria).
I don't think that Napoleon should be taken lightly, but he wasn't invincible.
It might be worth noting that part of the reason land based armies had relatively few guns is that artillery's landward mobility is so poor. You can sail further a 74 in two or three hours than you can move as much artillery in a whole day.
Eh, Austria put up way more of a fight than Prussia anyway. But the British ended up relying on the Prussians in the "lost to Wellington" episode, so you know
Napoleon was far from at his height when he lost to Wellington. His grand armee was gone. Wellington occupied an excellent defensive position, and more importantly he was sick IIRC.
Even with all that, he nearly beat Wellington until Blucher saved the day.
Eh, Austria put up way more of a fight than Prussia anyway. But the British ended up relying on the Prussians in the "lost to Wellington" episode, so you know
Yeah. But Prussia's efforts in general are hardly living up to its reputation.
Admittedly, I'm an Austrophile, so I like having an excuse to criticize Prussia.
But as relates to this - Napoleon has a fair sized task ahead of him if the British don't collapse right away, and things are not set up to favor him.
Slydesertfox: Not being at his height doesn't change that he lost. And given that the plan specifically involved Wellington and Blucher together, I hardly think it was a matter of someone saving the day.
Ships have huge initial costs but the operating costs are much lower than armies. Ships, when built, can be used over and over again at low cost, until it is sunk or made obsolete by new technology. Not only does armies have huge initial costs, but they also have huge operating costs because as long as an army is on the field, its soldiers has to be equipped, fed, and housed daily.
Artillery is expensive, but it goes for both ships and armies. And considering that there are far fewer naval battles than land battles, ships don't have to replace or supply their artillery as much as armies do. Carrying artillery over land also has costs than carrying artillery over sea.
It matters because all his veterans from the Grande Armee AFAIK weren't there (or most weren't anyway). He was very much desparate with a sub par army. Here he is fighting with 200,000 veterans against a relatively untested British force.
If memory serves, it's been said that - given returnign POWs - Napoleon actually had a pretty good army at Waterloo.
But even if he didn't, 200,000 veterans are facing what? Someone mentioned earlier a fairly good sized force of regulars and near-regulars, plus militia in the sense we usually think of the term.
Given the difficulty of transporting horses (especially with only a short window), Napoleon is going to be at a disadvantage relative to what would be the case if this was purely overland in cavalry and artillery - which hurts him quite a lot.
I agree. I didn't say that if the French managed to land an army in Britain, that it is a fait accompli. Just that it is doable. One of the major advantages that Britain had in Spain which they won't have on their home turf is the scorched-earth policy which helped starve the French and reduced their effectiveness. Would the British be willing to burn their own land and cities in order to fight the French? I don't think so. Hence, the French would be able to scavenge for food and maintain their army much longer in Britain than they were able to do in Spain.
Actually, here's my two cents on this: while I think the capabilities of the British Army are massively overrated given the few times they participated in operations with someone else's army (other than Spain's because the Spanish were starting from the ground up) on the continent...armies are not a magical solution to everything. Even for l'Empereur.
First of all, Napoleon would move relatively slowly because as unprotected as England was, guns take time to travel around.
Second of all, even though he magically had his (realistically a few days while the British navy was tied up somewhere by the ASBs) to land, the situation wouldn't persist forever.
The British navy will return and cut him off.
That means that Napoleon would have to occupy port cities, one by one, to deny them safe anchorage.
The British might have ample time to raise militia and reserves. While on the field they might well get smashed, they would make taking every location more costly, being more useful in defense.
French army would also land without much supplies. They would need to capture food and stores before they can conduct operations.
So since we keep talking about Prussia: how long did it take Napoleon to beat Prussia in the 4th coalition? About a year. This is with Russia and other supporting Prussia, but with Napoloen having uhindered supplies.
The situation is reversed (England alone, Napoleon needs to forage), but all of GB falling with determined resistance may really take that long, in the worst case.
Which gives Britain's European allies opportunity to try their luck at getting back at the French on the continent.
If it was a choice of "burn the fields" or "lose", I think England is going to see quite a lot of crops being burned.
And I agree Napoleon has a chance - but I'm not convinced it's a very good one.
If he really had swept the Royal Navy out of the picture that's one thing, but with it coming to mean his supplies are "what he brought with him" and what he can forage, he's in a position that makes extensive fighting (burning up lots of gunpowder) a bad idea.
RGB: That sounds like quite a problem for Napoleon, since he can't fight Austria and Britain at the same time - that is, he, the man himself can only be in one place at a time.
As far as Prussia is concerned, it took only a few weeks to annihilate the prussian army. What took a year is the total submission and surrender of Prussia which required to defeat the russian army.
But you have to take into account is the geography.
As I previously mentioned, it was at the time almost impossible for the French to cross the Channel given the superiority of the RN.
But if we are in WI in which the French get their time to cross, then they cross. They manage to cross with the logistics that had been gathered for example at the camp of Boulogne. Which means horses, food, ammunitions, ...etc.
And, coming back to geography, once you are in England, there absolutely is not the same topography that favours defence and guerilla warfare as there is in Spain.
England is not either Spain in cultural and economic terms. It of course had a strong patriotism but there was no religious fanaticism. England was the most advanced and richest country of the time. When you are the most advanced and developed country, you don't inflict on yourself the same damages and violence as the Spanish did.
The people accepted to fight as long as victory was almost certain. But if the French crossed the Channel with 200 000 troops, what would be their reaction ? Would they fight for a corrupt oligarchy ?
There was a strong feeling feeling of solidarity between the nobility, the trading-financial-business groups, and to sum-up quickly, the ones whowhere closely enough associated to them. But did they represent more than 10/15% of the population.
And do you think this ruling class was prepared to let its properties destroyed or taken by the invader and hide I don't know where ?
If a big french army had landed, I a not even sure Napoleon would have needed to take control of all the main british harbours so to starve the RN. The english ruling groups would have almost unanimously sued for immediate peace. They would not have said "Let's burn everything down, win that damn war. We'll build it from from scratch if and when we defeat those damn frogs."
I guess it would rather have been : "Let's save/spare as much as we can."
Other questions :
- How many guns where there in England at the time ? Did every citizen have a gun ? This was England, not America.
- What do you think would have been the reactions in Ireland when they learnt about the french invasion ?
- and the reaction in Scotland ?
As far as the british land army is concerned, it took very specific conditions and a very long time for Wellesley-Wellington to train a good and small land army : the spanish and portuguese quagmire and narrow passes.
Where do you build build the Torres Vedras fortifications in England ?
You ask about food ? Well, the english population needeed to eat to. An invader lives on the country as far as he needs to.
If there were 200 000 french troops campaigning in England, don't you think it would very seriously damage and disorganize the food supplying chain necessary to sustain life in towns 2 centuries ago ?
Contrary to Russia, they had nowhere to flee.
So if (and I do agree that it is an enormous if) the french army landed in England, the war is lost for England as certainly as Achilles was almost invincible but would die if seriously wounded at the heel.
And since England and the british ruling class were all but suicidal, they would have sued for peace. They would have kissed goodbye Ireland, probably Scotland too, a good part of their Navy and of their colonies.
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People forget this now, but there was considerable domestic opposition in the UK to the wars with France, especially in the period from 1808-12 when the British economy was facing a serious downturn. Imagine you're a British subject in 1810. You see your economy in shambles while your government has been fighting for most of 17 years in an obsessive quest to restore an old monarchy to France - an absolute, fanatically Catholic monarchy that had constantly gone to war against Britain in the past - why would you want to support that? And at that point, there's no good reason to believe Napoleon is going to be ultimately defeated, or at least not without many more years of national sacrifice.
The British government simply ignored the domestic opposition (having very little democratic accountability back then helped), but if there had been actual French troops on British soil, marching on London, it'd have been a lot harder to do that. The pressure to sign an armistice would have been intense. (And in France, too, there was mounting opposition to the wars as well. It would have been in Napoleon's best interests to conclude the British campaign quickly.)
I don't know exactly how Napoleon would have crossed the Channel - that's obviously the trickiest part for him - but if he'd made it, I think he'd have gotten a pretty quick peace settlement. Now, I don't think this settlement would have involved incorporating the UK into his empire or anything like that. I suspect it would have been similar to Amiens, but with the British forced to turn over the Bourbons they harbored, recognize Napoleon as France's emperor, and pay reparations.
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I strongly doubt Napoleon can do anything in six hours let alone land 200,000 men and cannon and horses.
Give him a week and he could have his 200,000 men.
Give him a day and he may get 25,000.
Which still might be enough but will be a damned closed run thing.
Give him a week and he could have his 200,000 men.
Give him a day and he may get 25,000.
Which still might be enough but will be a damned closed run thing.
If he got 200,000 across - I doubt it.
Ignoring the 50,000 regular troops usually stationed in the UK between 1803-5, there were an additional 35,000 men trained in the Reserve but not available for overseas service plus an extra 40,000 militia. Volunteers similar to the Prussian Freicorps in 1813 amounted to another 200-400,000 - there were so many that the government actively discouraged volunteers in counties where they outnumbered the militia by more than 6:1.
Of course the volunteers and to a lesser extent the militia would suffer from a lack of training and modern weapons but their military value would not have been zero.
Don't discount the British will to stand up to Napoleon.