Possible invasions of England/Britain

Seeing how 1066 was alstsucessfull invasion of England, I was wondering how often could this island be invaded with not-that-big PODs. Armada comes to mind. Anything else? how realstic was Napoleon's one?

And I'm thinking about direct invasion, not landing in Scotland then marching south.
 
I've got an ATL involving a failed Napoleonic invasion of Britain where he uses Robert Fulton's steam engines to cross the Channel when the winds are bad and the British fleet can't stop him.

The winds return faster than he anticipates and the Emperor and his army have to bolt.

So, POD is that Napoleonic doesn't have his "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" level of knowledge (he rejected Fulton on the grounds that setting fires on a wooden ship is bad) and he accepts the design?

Whether the invasion succeeds could depend on the timing re: the wind, the level of regular troops in Britain, etc.
 
I've got an ATL involving a failed Napoleonic invasion of Britain where he uses Robert Fulton's steam engines to cross the Channel when the winds are bad and the British fleet can't stop him.

The winds return faster than he anticipates and the Emperor and his army have to bolt.

So, POD is that Napoleonic doesn't have his "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" level of knowledge (he rejected Fulton on the grounds that setting fires on a wooden ship is bad) and he accepts the design?

Whether the invasion succeeds could depend on the timing re: the wind, the level of regular troops in Britain, etc.

That sounds like part of the plot of LTTW
 
That sounds like part of the plot of LTTW

I think my idea came before LTTW because I used it as a background for a parallel-worlds project I started in 2004.

(The British government gets really repressive as a result, there's an 1848 in England that gets put down, the survivors end up crossing over through a random hole in space-time and end up on another planet, and one of the survivors' descendants is a major character.)

Plus I haven't read LTTW beyond the exiled son of the British king taking control of British North America and then using it as a base to take the whole Empire.

I guess great minds think alike. :)
 
Seeing how 1066 was alstsucessfull invasion of England, I was wondering how often could this island be invaded with not-that-big PODs. Armada comes to mind. Anything else? how realstic was Napoleon's one?

And I'm thinking about direct invasion, not landing in Scotland then marching south.

The problem with Napoleon's plans were that he planned from the end-goal and made up the details to make it work, rather than working with what he had. That is to say, in this case, that Napoleon decided he needed a huge force to invade Britain so he massed something like 120 regiments in the north of France. Then he needed to transport those regiments but he knew the RN was a huge problem so he made a plan to transport them all at once. Then he had to transport more troops than he had ships for so he commissioned designers to come up with ideas for how to transport those troops outside of ships. All in all the end result was that he planned to have 104,000 men sailing in little 20-50 men circular dinghies at night in rough conditions when the RN would be "caught off guard". If you can't see the problem with this you need to think harder about it. To point out that some historians have estimated that 1/3 of his army would drown from capsized dinghies gives a pretty good estimation of his chances of success - and remember that when Napoleon was planning this, the British army was not engaged on the continent, it was (I believe) waiting in the UK to be sent out again. Even if he did somehow succeed it would probably be at great cost in life, and would be a contender for a military tragedy.
 
The French had decent chances in 1744, were it not for a bad storm. They also made plans during the seven years war that might have been good if implemented.
 
Well what if King Louis of France somehow managed to maintainhis hold in England during the reign of King John- somehow he secures the Northern Marches and has himself crowned King.

Another possibility would be a surviving Danelaw, which would require the extermination of Wessex, which is pretty doable.
 
The French had decent chances in 1744, were it not for a bad storm. They also made plans during the seven years war that might have been good if implemented.
They also had a few workable plans in 1779. If the French had had a little bit more luck, better planning, and so forth, Britain could have seen French forces landing in the south in the summer of 1779.
 
They also had a few workable plans in 1779. If the French had had a little bit more luck, better planning, and so forth, Britain could have seen French forces landing in the south in the summer of 1779.

Yeah, 1779 is definately a good bet. I've heard it said that it was the only time between 1756 and 1960 that somebody had a real chance of an invasion of Britain.
 
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I think in 1996 the germans actually invaded england succesfully.
The deciding battle was at Wembley stadium where general Möller shoot the final penalty into the net. Afterwords he humilated the crowd by imitating the arrogant pose of the english general Gascoine.
 
I think in 1996 the germans actually invaded england succesfully.
The deciding battle was at Wembley stadium where general Möller shoot the final penalty into the net. Afterwords he humilated the crowd by imitating the arrogant pose of the english general Gascoine.

And then two years later we counter-invaded Munich to the tune of 5 goals to one. ;)
 
Weatley's contribution

During the War the novelist Charles Weatley was asked to draw up a scenario for a possible German invasion of Britain, which he did--I read the book about 40 years ago.
 
the dutch

william of oranje bought over an army when he came to the english throne.
even though he was invited, couldnt that be considered a successful invasion?? even though there was the invitation. just a thought.
 
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