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Hey all. Being British I know only the basics about the American Civil War so I'm looking for a little help with seeing how realistic or do-able a couple of changes are for the era. The PoD in this case is a modified Trent Affair whereby Mason and Slidell hop a French ship (lets call her the FS Rhone) rather than the RMS Trent - during the boarding Lt. Fairfax pushes her confrontational Captain away who then trips, bangs his heads and dies a few days later. Cue much public anger back in France. How likely was Napoleon III to intervene if the British stayed out of things? IIRC he was fairly scared of public opinion and was already planning his Mexican outing so maybe he realises or someone advises him that the US will never allow his grand scheme unless they're distracted.
The main question I have though is how likely is Russia to intervene militarily if the French recognise the CSA and send their navy to break the Union blockade but not ground troops? I know relations were fairly dire after the Crimean War, tensions over Russia's actions in the Bosphorus and a short time later the January Uprising but if push came to shove would they really fight? Most information I've found says they were rather cynically simply using New York and San Francisco to make sure that their navy wasn't iced in or bottled up in the event of conflict with other European powers like Great Britain, France or Austria. I've read a few sources claiming that when the sailed over during the winter of 1861-2 they had sealed orders telling them to fight if other European powers became involved but I'm having a hard time finding out what the actual orders, if they existed, actually were. Anyone able to point me to a credible source for them?
This is all working towards the French eventually losing their colony of New Caledonia, what would become the protectorate and later colony of Wallis and Futuna, and the protectorates of Tahiti and Tahuata which later became French Polynesia to the Russian Empire. Mainly because the Tsar of all the Russias and King of the Pacific Islands amuses me. That and a modern day Russian Empire run as a constitutional monarchy that refused to recognise the USSR and claimed to be the true successor to the Russian Empire effectively becoming a Russian Pacific Taiwan during the Cold War makes me smile even more.