Many generals and admirals who were loyal to the French Bourbons suffered a terrible fate under Napoleon. However, if he decides to let them live how would this affect history?
Napoleon Allows Pro-Bourbon Generals and Admirals To Live
- Thread starter TickTock The Witch's Dead
- Start date
Alcsentre Calanice
Gone Fishin'
The TL " Rise of Imperial France: Through the 19th Century and Beyond V2 deals with this problem."
From what I recall, it's mostly the French Revolutionnaries before Napoleon that executed a lot of Royalist Generals and Admirals...RandomWriterGuy said:
Anyway, you're probably giving the French Royalists a better military staff. Aside from that, I don't really know: more surviving Royalists Generals and Admirals doesn't necessarilly mean that they will actually be given the command of armies and navies. During the Napoleonic Wars, there weren't that many Emigrés regiments fighting alongside the Coalition: you saw that mostly in the early days of the French Revolution.
It might have consequences later on, after Napoleon's fall, as you would have part of the army more loyal to the Bourbons. That said, 15 years would have passed and many of said generals and admirals could be close to retirement so maybe that wouldn't change things that much.
I think the issue here is--and Im not certain about this--that a lot of the Admirals at least IIRC were *really* Royalist, so it could be said that even should all of them or even *most* of them survive, they could end up despising everything Napoleon stood for and either self-exiling or otherwise leading a counter-(ancien regime)counter(Revolotionary/Robspieren/Terror) (counter?--Napleon) revolulution....BUT if none of that *Does* happen, well, maybe it leaves Napoleon with more/better capable Admirals. If that helps.
First off, the reform of the army and navy that removed many of the high command was well before the rise of Napoleon - indeed he would never have come to prominence without it. Much of the driving force was not anti royalist (remembering the revolutionary state was a constitutional monarchy until the flight to Varennes) but egalitarian, and reducing this changes the nature of the revolution and impacts on all sorts of things, from the redistribution of property to the corps of naval gunners.
More directly, retaining the royal army generals will hinder the rise of some if the great talents if the revolutionary and Napoleonic army - only one of Napoleons Marshals would be anywhere near in this TL, a ratio which continued into the (in many cases more talented) generals. And Napoleon himself is cut out - no rise for the minor noble from Corsica.
More directly, retaining the royal army generals will hinder the rise of some if the great talents if the revolutionary and Napoleonic army - only one of Napoleons Marshals would be anywhere near in this TL, a ratio which continued into the (in many cases more talented) generals. And Napoleon himself is cut out - no rise for the minor noble from Corsica.
Napoleon don't execute any Ancien Regime generals and admirals, most of them had deserted and fled in 1790-1791 to become the so-called Emigrés who often fought against Revolutionnary France. Some Regiment lost almost all their high level officers and many low levels also.
This is why many Marechal d'Empire were former NCO in Royal Army (Massena, Ney...) or have no military experience before joining National Guard in 1789-1791 (Gouvion Saint Cyr...). But almost half of the Marechal d'Empire were of aristocratic families (Davout, Marmont...) and some had high level commission in the Royal Army (Berthier was Colonel, Kellermann was General...).