What if Napoleon invaded Sydney Cove, Australia?

[A Piece of History]

Between 1800 and 1803, Nicolas Baudin led a French expedition to Australia to catalogue new species from the continent. While in Port Jackson, he took note of the area's infrastructure and strategic value.

When he returned to France, he sent a 160 page document to Napoleon, recommending a attack on Port Jackson and the capture of Sydney. He believed that the French would find allies in the native Aborigines, who were suffering oppression by their British overlords. Napoleon liked the idea, but this invasion never happened due to Napoleon's naval war with the Royal Navy in Europe, which kept the French Navy busy. Said naval war ended disastrously for the French at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

But what if Napoleon was able to subdue the Royal Navy, thereby freeing up enough men to invade Sydney?

Personally, I don't believe this is feasible. If the Japanese couldn't invade Australia during World War II, I don't see how the French, a country farther away from Australia than Japan, could invade it during the Napoleonic Wars.

 

[Avrorrange]

How does Napoleon subdue the RN?Napoleon doesn’t have a single chance of doing that.

 

[DracoLazarus]

How does Napoleon subdue the RN?Napoleon doesn’t have a single chance of doing that.

I guess having the sailors actually practising would make Trafalgar a disaster. After all, they attacked the flank of the Franco-Spanish fleet, which exposed all the broadsides at the same time. The British should have been torn apart if the Franco-Spanish fleet had been up to scratch.

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Without ASBs, and seeing as you posted here, it is impossible. Not just logistically, but politically as well.

If Napoleon wants to invade Sydney, he will need bases between Brest or Bordeaux and Australia. Every single base is in the hands of his enemies, and ships of the era simply don't have the ability to stay at sea for that long. Food would run out, scurvy would happen and people would die. Even the First Fleet that colonised Australia stopped in a couple of ports in Africa, I'm not totally sure, but they might have passed through India/Ceylon too.

Also, if Napoleon wins Trafalgar (let's say a storm wrecks the British fleet a few days before the battle to save time), he won't waste his time on Sydney. He'll invade England. If he takes it, he can demand Sydney in a peace conference. The whole time period between Trafalgar and the final peace conference would probably be less than the time to sail halfway around the world anyway, so a landing in Sydney would just be wasteful and silly.

But, if Napoleon for whatever reason able to take the place, what he has gotten himself is basically a big prison in the middle of the Pacific that is eight months sailing away from anything. There's nothing there, and there wouldn't really be anything there until well after Napoleon's death. I think Sydney's population was something on the order of 10k during this period. The places in Tasmania in the early 1800s were even smaller than that, and basically everything else was unexplored.

What happens from there? Assuming the Napoleonic Wars go roughly as OTL, Napoleon will still get beat in 1814 and 1815, Britain will just take it back. If the Napoleonic Wars go some other crazy way (like a French invasion of England), then that change will have far greater effects on history than the Australian expedition would anyway, and it is meaningless to talk about French Australia without knowing what version of 'Napoleon wins scenario' we are using. In my TL, Napoleon winning simply means Britain takes all the overseas stuff anyway (and then basically forgets about most of them). Others might disagree with me, but I think in that regard it is the most likely outcome.

- BNC

 

[Avrorrange]

I guess having the sailors actually practising would make Trafalgar a disaster. After all, they attacked the flank of the Franco-Spanish fleet, which exposed all the broadsides at the same time. The British should have been torn apart if the Franco-Spanish fleet had been up to scratch.

They couldn’t practise because the British were constantly blockading the coast.

 

[DracoLazarus]

They couldn’t practise because the British were constantly blockading the coast.

Not the entirety of the coast. The point of the 1805 escape was to manoeuver in the high seas, and to distract the RN just enough to be able to invade England.

 

[Byzantion]

Between 1800 and 1803, Nicolas Baudin led a French expedition to Australia to catalogue new species from the continent. While in Port Jackson, he took note of the area's infrastructure and strategic value.

When he returned to France, he sent a 160 page document to Napoleon, recommending a attack on Port Jackson and the capture of Sydney. He believed that the French would find allies in the native Aborigines, who were suffering oppression by their British overlords. Napoleon liked the idea, but this invasion never happened due to Napoleon's naval war with the Royal Navy in Europe, which kept the French Navy busy. Said naval war ended disastrously for the French at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

But what if Napoleon was able to subdue the Royal Navy, thereby freeing up enough men to invade Sydney?

Personally, I don't believe this is feasible. If the Japanese couldn't invade Australia during World War II, I don't see how the French, a country farther away from Australia than Japan, could invade it during the Napoleonic Wars.

Maybe Sumatra as a Base to build Up troops ?