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Lately I've been toying with this (work in progress):



It's in very early stages; the thing is, I'm not an expert on the inner workings of the Napoleonic Empire and I haven't read the biographies of the great Marshals. I have, though, read extensively about the Diadochi and their time.

I got the idea from a book describing the conquest of Egypt by Napoleon and his Alexander-like intentions (or claims). The "what if he did pull off an Alexander" question swifly became "what if Diadochi, but with Napoleon".

This turned into a custom EU4 game, a free-for-all battle royale of the Napoleonic Marshals. But I've been thinking about it more and more. How can we get to a place in which the Napoleonic Empire is sufficiently well established (that is, without major enemies who can pick the Diadochi out one by one, or force them to join their stregth against a common enemy, say UK or Russia), but also weakly sewn together, so that it falls apart when the Marshals begin to fight amongst themselves, to show the ghost of Napoleon who's the worthiest. That is, the strongest.

So I imagine that, in all plausibility, if we want a scenario like this to develop, we need:

1- A total Napoleonic victory. One that leaves France without any opposition.
2- An earlier victory, one that ensures that Napoleon and his men are not bogged down in coalition wars for almost 20 years.
3- A wider Empire, stretching across Spain, France, Germany, Italy and probably also Austria, Hungary and Poland.
4- A more acute political reform that wipes out the Old World. This had already began with the French Revolution.
5- A discredit of revolutionary or liberal ideas in general, lest the peoples of Europe depose the new Napoleonic marshals. Or maybe not, this point is optional.
6- The discredit or death of most of the great royal houses of Europe. If the Habsburgs, the Hannovers, the Bourbons and the rest are still alive and kickin', then the instability can be too great for this to work.
7- Of course, Napoleon needs to die earlier, and no Napoleon II either. Probably in a very "Perdiccas and Antipater are killed and Cassander orders Roxana and Alexander IV poisoned and Olympias stoned to death" kind of way.

I also placed the Marshals a bit randomly, since they could be posted wherever we want, but they could also re-enact the Partition of Babylon in Paris and still be given positions and "satrapies". Some of it is for fun (like Junot the Mad, or Ney being driven to a life of decadence and piracy in Africa... a role in which I can imagine Murat much more readily than Ney), but this is not to see if my version of things is accurate (I know it's not), more to see what do your think would happen if this scenario could become true.

I'd like to read your input on the whole thing. Is it possible? Can it happen? Shoult it happen? Also, as you know, of the big winners of the Diadochi wars, Seleucus, Lysimachus, Cassander, Ptolemy and Philaretus of Pergamon, to an extent, only Ptolemy was in Alexander's inner circle, a Somatophylax, and the rest were underlings and middle commanders... so I guess we may see less Masséna, Berthier, St Cyr, and more Duke of Coigny, Marquis de Loriston, Maison, Bormont, Lamarck, Reille...

Thanks for reading!


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By the way, in my EU4 game, Oudinot took Paris and murdered Napoleon II, Soult kicked Joseph out of Spain only to be killed by Ney, and Augureau took Constantinople and then died of old age, and St Cyr, after having given his generals titles inspired by the Illiad, launched a conquest of Naples, but was stabbed in the back by Junot and Auguereau... In the end, Oudinot, Ney and Augureau were the top dogs, but they died soon after at their late 80's, and their empires went down from there, former nations popping out all over the place, conveniently around 1830.
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