Napoleon's invasion of Britain

I admit, I have never heard of Nappy's adventures in Catalonia. What happened?

As I understand it (this is from a variety of cobbled-together sources: passing mentions in various books, maps, and a friend of mine who is a Catalan nationalist, so I won't vouch for its unbiased truth), Napoleon in 1812 attempted to try and win the Catalans over by annexing the province directly and setting up the Catalan language alongside French as official, appealing to the revolt during the WSS; but because material conditions didn't improve, this only made people angrier.

Is that true of England? Nationalism certainly existed among you all...

True, but whereas I'm not saying Welsh identity didn't exist, Welshnationalism is even less likley to influence the geopolitics of Europe than, say, Czech nationalism.

Anyway, I am not as prepared to call this impossible as others here. But it won't get you anything like OTL's Napoleon, IMO.

Let's see. You start in 1797, when Hoche lands in Ireland. Oh, the hilarity. There's financial panic in Britain, and it takes over a year to subdue the Irish. It is not very pretty. At its extreme, IMO, it approaches the Vendee's messiness. But Britain has naval superiority.

Meanwhile, with the British distracted, Napoleon manages to secure his foothold in Egypt and Syria. (Bonus points if we can somehow get India to go worse for the British).

The place where things really hit the fan is Britain itself, which sees the censorship and police state apparatus of OTL (IBC is probably going to criticize me for calling it that :D) intensify. Fox and his Whigs blame the uprising in Ireland on British policies, and in response the Crown discovers ties between some leading Whigs and the United Irishmen. The run on the bank brought on by the Irish invasion triggers a nasty economic recession; while confidence is restored as things improve, this still leaves to waves of Luddism a few years earlier than OTL.

So, we've got the stirrings of... something. Any thoughts here?

I thought everyone knew I was vaguely fixated with the possibility of British revolution! :p Certainly I don't think the British establishment would be any more secure than the Dutch one if the military situation goes down the crapper.

I'm intrigued by this possibility, although you're certainly right that it would take changes in France to kickstart it.

(Although I do actually have to question "police state": secret police, yeah, but the aversion of 18th century Britain to organised law enforcement was somewhat hilarious.)
 
The moment I read the title of the thread I knew it was by blair. Problem is that as has been said before, the RN vastly outclasses the French Navy in every way, and outnumbers them to boot. Also, Napoleon was an excellent general, but a horrible admiral, plus the revolution got rid of most of the competent officer corps in the navy, thus eliminating the needed leadership in the event of war with Britain. Even assuming that the british sailors are as unhappy as you say, they are not going to simply let Napoleon invade their homeland, they weren't that stupid, plus the amount of success you attributed to the French navy is borderline ASB, plus you contradicted yourself by saying that at one point the entire French navy was sunk and then a year later they managed to capture half the RN, I guess if Napoleon stumbles upon cloning and replicator technology this can be accomplished, but otherwise not possible.

There is a reason why nobody has successfully pulled off a cross channel invasion of England in nearly a millenium.
 

Blair152

Banned
Point of fact here, Richard Sharpe, in Bernard Cornwell's novels, served in Arthur Wellesley's own 33rd Regiment and came to India in the British Army. He became the dogsbody to Hector McCandless, the chief of intelligence for the East India Company during his stay in India. Point being, British Army first - East India Company second.

Anyway, to the point, I think any Napoleonic invasion of Britain is doomed to failure. There is no plausable way for Napoleonic France to negate the Royal Navy, Napoleon's Navy is simply outclassed in every aspect - the revolution is in a large way resposible for this, and the feelings against the Corsican Ogre in Britain is, by and large, negative. So you have Napoleon miraculously getting his Army onto British soil only to have the Royal Navy cut him off completely from the European mainland, have to face not only the British Army present in Britain but also a hostile population who no more want him there than the Spanish or Portuguese want him in Iberia and this time there is no way he can wash his hands of the mess because he cant get back to France.

I think, had Napoleon ever gotten across the Channel, it would be regarded as Napoleon's biggest mistake.
All right, I get it. My point regarding Richard Sharpe, and the East India Company, is that the East India Company, and you can look it up if you don't believe me, had its own private army. When the British Raj took over, after the Sepoy Rebellion, the East India Company was put out of business. You're assuming that the Royal Navy would have been able to recover from the mutinies that plagued it in 1797, including the Nore Mutiny, which had it continued, probably would have weakened the Royal
Navy. Don't forget the Mutiny of 1800.
 

Blair152

Banned
One reversal of the French Navy's poor record vis a vis the RN without an explanation would be extremely dubious. An entire series of such changes over a ten year period without the slightest explanation while also pretending the British Army doesn't exist isn't a POD, it's garbage.

Blair152, when you post threads I would put the ratio at less than one in ten being of some merit, at least half as pointless repeats of topics done to death already which you should never have posted and the rest being so factually worthless that it would be charitable to consider them fit for the ASB section.

At this point I can't see that you've brought anything of value to the board. Ignore list.
Grimm, the outcome of Trafalgar, OTL, was uncertain. The British people didn't know the Royal Navy had won until a day later because of the weather. A message was sent and then the fog rolled in. The fog moved out the next day and confirmation of the victory at Trafalgar finally came.
I was trying to come up with plausible timeline, based on the events of
1797. 1797 wasn't called the Year of Mutinies for nothing. The mutinies at
Spithead, and the Nore, were similar to the Invergordon Mutiny of 1931.
Plus, in the Mutiny of 1800, the crew of one British ship, brought it over to
the French. You add to the mix impressed American seamen, and you have a situation that's downright volatile. So ASB, I think not. What would be ASB is having Sky News, or Fox News Channel, or CNN, at Trafalgar.
What would be ASB, would be having Reuters, at Trafalgar.
 

Blair152

Banned
One reversal of the French Navy's poor record vis a vis the RN without an explanation would be extremely dubious. An entire series of such changes over a ten year period without the slightest explanation while also pretending the British Army doesn't exist isn't a POD, it's garbage.

Blair152, when you post threads I would put the ratio at less than one in ten being of some merit, at least half as pointless repeats of topics done to death already which you should never have posted and the rest being so factually worthless that it would be charitable to consider them fit for the ASB section.

At this point I can't see that you've brought anything of value to the board. Ignore list.
I said "on land and sea." So wasn't pretending the British Army didn't exist.
 
I was trying to come up with plausible timeline, based on the events of
1797. 1797 wasn't called the Year of Mutinies for nothing. The mutinies at
Spithead, and the Nore, were similar to the Invergordon Mutiny of 1931.

But the crews at Spithead said they'd sail out if there was a French invasion threat.
 
But the crews at Spithead said they'd sail out if there was a French invasion threat.

And they cheered ship for the King's Birthday. Hardly the Gallatinite Jacobite Republican Revolutionary Many-Headed Hydra Freedom Fighters of legend.

Read Dudley Pope's Life in Nelson's Navy. The mutineers wanted a pay raise and some improvements in the ration scale.

Invergordon was not a Bolshevik Sail on London either. The Admiralty had cut pay because of the Depression and they had done it in a manner that affected the lower decks hardest.
 
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Blair152

Banned
But the crews at Spithead said they'd sail out if there was a French invasion threat.
True. The crews at Spithead did say that. The crews at the Nore, OTOH, didn't, and called themselves "The Floating Republic," or the "Republic at Sea," and said they'd fight with Napoleon.
 
True. The crews at Spithead did say that. The crews at the Nore, OTOH, didn't, and called themselves "The Floating Republic," or the "Republic at Sea," and said they'd fight with Napoleon.

Hrmm, cite for that? I hadn't heard that about Nore, though I knew there had been a greater concern about a serious mutiny there.
 
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