PC/WI: Napoleon decides to preserve the Republic...

As President of France?

Clearly he had ambitions of consolidating power and keeping himself an absolute leader, but might things have been slightly different and he did everything he did OTL without declaring himself Emperor?

Instead opting to reform the Republic into a more centrally federalized version of the United States?

How would the Napoleonic Wars have been different and how would the U.S. policy towards France and the UK have been altered?*

*I'd always read that the U.S. withdrew a lot of French support when their Republic was abolished. The goal here is for France to become the ally that Britain was the become in OTL...

EDIT: And if this can't be done then, AHC: Reverse the OTL post-Revolutionary War U.S. relations of the UK with that of France...
 
This would depend completely on how power was divided or shared in this republic.
Napoleon’s Empire was largely a dictatorship, buttressed by secret police, censorship, the support of the army and the consent of the people for Napoleon offered stability and law and order after a decade of turmoil.

This allowed Emperor Napoleon to pursue dynastic ambitions and ruinous policies without checks & balances. Napoleon expanded beyond what would have been acceptable, incorporating territories with distinct cultures into metropolitan France and enforcing ruinous economic policies upon other nations.

If Napoleon was still pulling all the strings with just a rubber stamp parliament as a sop to republican sentiments, there would not have been an appreciable difference beyond some ambitious politician perhaps staging a parliamentary coup after the disaster of 1812.

A republic with a powerful parliament which could have influenced (foreign) policy would have put the brakes on the more outlandish schemes of Napoleon (annexing other countries, invading an ally, continental system). France historically wanted to expand to its ‘natural’ borders but not necessarily beyond. Had it stopped there and republican France just using its influence beyond the borders as a great power, this would likely have been accepted by the other great powers. After all, that was the game of kings as they knew it. A republic wasn’t intrinsically repugnant to them, Venice and Holland had been republics in good standing.

A real parliament, instead of the rubber stamping joke under Napoleon, would have had difficulty supporting heavy conscription (which OTL eroded Napoleon’s national support) and would likely have limited foreign wars (too expensive and too unpopular). This would have improved foreign relations as other countries wouldn’t be invaded or forced to pay for French garrisons.

Most likely, Napoleon would have been ‘president for life’ and tried hard to make France his personal fiefdom by ensuring his own son would become the next president, much like a North Korea or Syria. Again, the strength of the opposition to him, both within his own party and the other parties, would have determined if that dynastic ambition succeeded or not.
 
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