Why Can't England be Invaded?!

[JedidiahStott]

Sail. You don't have motors. So you can only enter as the wind allows. Most English harbours have limited channels, you simply can't approach in line abreast.And without motors, the ships can't manoeuvre . So you have to try to force the harbour with a few leading ships, while those hundreds of ships bunch up behind waiting. And of course, any harbour large enough to handle a fleet that size will be well defended . Reducing and capturing the harbour (if you can) may take days. By then your fleet is scattered far and wide. At the mercy of the English fleet.And the English will know you are on your way, and it will be pretty obvious where the landing is to be. The harbour will be on full alert, rd hot shot ready and waiting, booms and chains across the channels, fire ships ready to go.

In short the answer to your question is, you can't land the overwhelming force until you have the harbour in your hands.But you can't get your hands on the harbour until the overwhelming force is safely landed. Catch 22.

 

[Beedok]

For people complaining about logistics issues, the armies sent off to the colonies were easily the size of the forces needed to invade Britain (the British had as few as 10 000 men at certain points during the 7 years war, while they were sending 26 000+ men to seige Louisbourg. Hostile forces might be a slight issue, but the British couldn't muster enough troops to make a serious defense.

 

[JedidiahStott]

But Louisbourg did not have the full resources of the country in the hinterland, it was an isolated fortress. And the coasting passage from Halifax to Louisbourg is much, much easier than the Channel. It's more like seizing Gibralter or the Germans capturing the Channel Islands.Or the French capturing Minorca

Even then it took three (or four?) attempts, the earlier ones all failed. Even the one that succeeded only did so because the French Navy was not of the same standard as the Royal Navy. If the french had sailed out and engaged, instead of remaining at anchor whimpering, the invasion would have failed (the french fleet would have been horribly battered, but that, after all, is what war ships are for.

So, perhaps, that example indicates the secret to invading Britain - just have the Royal Navy at your disposal

Edit:. It's worth noting that the reverse also applied. Why could not France be invaded from the sea.This was Britain's great problem during the Napoleonic wars.The few attempts at invasion (eg Walcheren) were dismal failures. They couldn't do it either. It wasn't until Bonaparte invaded Spain , so that Britain could get at him through friendly ports (Portuguese, and Cadiz) that the problem was resolved.

Amphibious operations are really hard. Really, really hard. 10000 men may be not much if you have 30000. But you can only land your 30000 a few at a time, in penny packets. 10000 is a lot if you only have 1000 seasick men ashore. Without horses or cannon. Next thousand, please. A land equivalent is an attack through a narrow defile. A small force can take on a huge one, because the huge one can only bring up a few of its men at a time. Think Thermopolae.

 

[Kevin C. Smith]

Generals talked lightly of invasion. Admirals knew better.

"I do not say the French cannot come, I only say they cannot come by sea." John Jervis, Lord St. Vincent, First Lord of the Admiralty

 

[Agatho]

It strikes me that an invasion of England should not be conflated with an invasion of Britain. The two are very different sea mammals. The stance of Scotland towards any invading force could potentially make the invasion of the southern half of the isle quite doable. Say for example Scotland beefed up its army, perhaps financed in part by Auld Alliance money. This would require England to divert more attention to its own army, arguably at the expense of its navy. In such a scenario, would not a French invasion with Scottish support then be plausible, assuming favorable weather conditions in the Channel?

 

[JedidiahStott]

Exactly so. And he would know.

An earlier age thought the same :

This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Shakespeare, speaking through John of Gaunt, Richard II

 

[JedidiahStott]

It strikes me that an invasion of England should not be conflated with an invasion of Britain. The two are very different sea mammals. The stance of Scotland towards any invading force could potentially make the invasion of the southern half of the isle quite doable. Say for example Scotland beefed up its army, perhaps financed in part by Auld Alliance money. This would require England to divert more attention to its own army, arguably at the expense of its navy. In such a scenario, would not a French invasion with Scottish support then be plausible, assuming favorable weather conditions in the Channel?

Yes, that absolutely is a different matter.Before the union, an invasion from Scotland was always possible, and did happen . But of course the insertion of French troops into Scotland was not an invasion, they were landing on friendly ground.So the actual invasion was across a land border, just as on the Continent.

The balance of naval and land forces then was a tricky decision.Fortunately, this was still feudal times in the North, and the Royal armies could be augmented by the (quite effective) forces of the magnates, and by the drengs of the border, both of which were permanently on the spot, on duty, so to speak. That union of the crowns occuring just before professional armies took over was a lucky thing for England

 

[Maniakes]

There's also economic factors:

1. Britain's economy from the Renaissance onwards was disproportionately based on overseas trade, which both requires a significant navy for commerce protection and generates a very large pool of experienced sailors from whom to recruit the personnel for a wartime navy. The latter is a huge part of why Napoleon failed to invade Britain: France+Spain could build a fleet to rival Britain's, but they lacked the experienced sailors and naval officers required to use the ships effectively.
2. Britain was the first big country to industrialize, and navies are expensive. It wasn't until the late 19th century that Germany and the United States started to overtake Britain's ability to spend on naval construction, and neither really did because they had other priorities (Germany attempted to catch up in the years leading up to WW1, but Britain was always able to dig deeper into their pockets to stay ahead). Post-WW2, the US Navy does outclass the Royal Navy, but the two countries have consistently been firm allies during this time period.

 

[Agatho]

Yes, that absolutely is a different matter.Before the union, an invasion from Scotland was always possible, and did happen . But of course the insertion of French troops into Scotland was not an invasion, they were landing on friendly ground.So the actual invasion was across a land border, just as on the Continent.

The balance of naval and land forces then was a tricky decision.Fortunately, this was still feudal times in the North, and the Royal armies could be augmented by the (quite effective) forces of the magnates, and by the drengs of the border, both of which were permanently on the spot, on duty, so to speak. That union of the crowns occuring just before professional armies took over was a lucky thing for England

That could certainly work, but I meant a land invasion by Scotland and a French invasion across the channel, or do you think the magnates up north would be able to bog down a Scottish invasion enough for any advantages it brought to be neutralized?

 

[JedidiahStott]

Probably need to talk to a Plantagenet king for a good answer, but my own guess would be yes, basically that. Given a naval invasion in the south and a land invasion in the north, I'd go with a defense in depth in the north, while dealing with the south.

We need to remember, this is prior 17C. So

• There are no navies in the modern sense, princes simply hired merchant ships
• Ships are small. 50 to 100 ton
• There are no professional armies, at most small royal bodyguards
• Castles are still effective, and the North of England has a lot of castles.So does the South.
• We are probably talking feudalism, so armies can be raised quickly
• There was a well equipped and long standing defense system at the border (the Wardens of the Marches)
• The Scots kings never had much luck attracting long term military backing.Typically the Scots were happy to join up, but were only interested in doing as much looting as possible.Once they had as much loot as they could transport, they simply went home.

All in all, I'd think it would be better strategy to insert troops through Scotland rather than try for an opposed landing in the South, even with a Northern border incursion as a distraction.

 

[Zorqal]

The last, eh, 500 years or so are the ones you are speaking about. The last real invasion was William the Conqueror, but that's a fair bit before.

England has had the worlds largest navy, really since they beat back the Spanish Armada. As long as England's Navy was big enough to ward off France, and their Army big enough to knock around the Scots and Irish, they will have control over the Isles, therefore making them rather powerful.

And Hitler had a plan to fully invade Britain, using paratroopers and such, but that never went through, obviously.

 

[katchen]

If I had to look for a theoretical construct of a nation that could match Great Britain in the 17th Century, I would have to say that nation would be a unified Scandinavia in terms of the potential to create both a navy the equal of the Royal Navy and a first class army. Let's say for a POD that King Eric succeeds in conquering Norway and Denmark and recreating the Union of Kalmar under the House of Vasa. If King Carol puts the energy into building up the Royal Scanian Navy at the Norwegian ports like Stavenger, Bergen, Andalsenes, Trondheim, Oslo, Goteborg, Aalborg, Aarhus, Copenhagen and Stockhom, there's a good chance that Gustav Adolph may be able to conquer Britain if he lands in Scotland and add Britain to his Corpus Evangelicorum if he is so inclined (which he probably isn't).

 

[HARRY]

Once there was a Britain not just an England Scotland & Wales with descent Navy it was nigh on impossible to invade without and invitation. See William of Orange becoming William III of England Ireland Scotland and (yes we know they were kicked out already) France, with the Glorious Revolution. The trick is to not change anything and let parliment run the country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_III_of_England.jpg

 

[LHB]

If I had to look for a theoretical construct of a nation that could match Great Britain in the 17th Century, I would have to say that nation would be a unified Scandinavia in terms of the potential to create both a navy the equal of the Royal Navy and a first class army. Let's say for a POD that King Eric succeeds in conquering Norway and Denmark and recreating the Union of Kalmar under the House of Vasa. If King Carol puts the energy into building up the Royal Scanian Navy at the Norwegian ports like Stavenger, Bergen, Andalsenes, Trondheim, Oslo, Goteborg, Aalborg, Aarhus, Copenhagen and Stockhom, there's a good chance that Gustav Adolph may be able to conquer Britain if he lands in Scotland and add Britain to his Corpus Evangelicorum if he is so inclined (which he probably isn't).

That would only come after the Vasas have turned the Baltic into their private swimming pool and at that point they won't have the resources to go after England AND hold all that down unless of course you end up with someone on the throne who decides it would be a FANTASTIC idea to be Knut 2.0.

 

[Tyr]

Let's not forget that prior to the 16th/17th centuries England is a bit shit. There's not much reason to invade when there's so many better places (e.g. Italy) to fight over.

 

[JamesHunter]

Let's not forget that prior to the 16th/17th centuries England is a bit shit. There's not much reason to invade when there's so many better places (e.g. Italy) to fight over.

Hey thats not fair, we were a major european power from the 11th-13th centuries, and one again from the mid 14th-15th. We just had a couple of poor Kings (John and Henry VI) who cost us continental holdings, at the end of each period. After the angavins we were mostly busy killing scot, welsh and irish for a century, as england tried to take the whole island, and after we got kicked out of france for the last time we decided to spend thirty years killing each other before starting to rise again under Henry VII.

Also during the middle ages England almost always either controlled (or in the early middle ages was part of) large areas of continental territory, including much of the french coast, which meant many of the best locations for lauching an invasion had to be taken first.

On those occasions when england was weak then yeah the local powers usually had bigger fish to fry, that offered better rewards than an invasion of a defended island.

By the time we were without continental allies or pocession, we'd assimulated Wales, settled or differences with the scots, and got lucky...

 

[Xgentis]

You just need to make a good alliance. If the Dutch and the French would have been allied in the 17th century, the English would have been doomed.

And before the 18th century the English navy wasn't that strong. Only in the 19th century and early 20th century the British were basicly safe from invasion.

If France turned protestant an alliance with the dutch could have been possible.

 

[wietze]

It actually has a number of times,

the Celtic Invasion (and if you believe myths many times before that)

the Romans Conquest

the Great Heathen Army

the William the Conqueror

the First Baron War (the actual invasion was a success)

and everybody forgets to mention the last successful invasion of britain - the Glorious Revolution. the british nicely masked it as a revolution, but in reality it was a successful Dutch invasion of britain, and had they resisted that William would become king, they would have been doomed.

 

[pompejus]

If France turned protestant an alliance with the dutch could have been possible.

I see no reason why a catholic France and a protestant Netherlands couldn't have become allies. the Netherlands cooperated with catholic France in the later years of the Dutch revolt and when the French (and English) invaded in 1673 the Dutch allied themselves with catholic Spain and Austria.

The reason French and Dutch relations soured was because the Dutch republican rulers more or less abondened the French when they made peace with the Spanish and ignored stadholder Willem II who wanted to cooperate with France and because Louis XIV hated Dutch republicanism. If we have a POD near the end of the Dutch revolt, which lead to better relations between France and the Netherlands, you can have a very interesting timeline, which could prove disasterous for England. I can easily see the Dutch and French beat the English and take over some important English colonies, for example a French India and a Dutch Malaysia (and Ceylon) are certainly possible, combined with a smaller English presence in Northern America and the Carribean. I would go so far that in this case an invasion of England is a very real danger.

 

[Perfidious Albion]

I will say that although everyone is broadly correct about the 19th century, the 20th century is a very different affair. IOTL, of course, there was never a coalition of European powers allied against the United Kingdom with sufficient naval power to invade it. (Please don't give me absurd situations about the United States Navy somehow linking up with the German High Seas Fleet to launch Sealion, or I'll just laugh.) But this was not predestined to be the case. It's actually quite strange that the powers of mainland Europe never united against the British Empire when it had such dominance in colonial affairs. That event was determined, basically, by the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Take away that, and you take away the reason why France and Germany are bound to be enemies… and, possibly, in an alternate 20th century, you open the door to a successful invasion of Great Britain.

In some circumstances, you don't even need a continental coalition. If you get an Austrian-dominated Großdeutschland rather than a Prussian-dominated Kleindeutschland (which shouldn't be too difficult to do with an alternate 19th century) you might well construct a huge German-Hungarian-Balkan empire under the Habsburgs that might be strong enough to defeat the Royal Navy on its own. The most famous example of this approach is, of course, Decades of Darkness.

But in any 20th century after the OTL 19th century? Not a chance. The Royal Navy used the threat of a German invasion as a propaganda tool but the threat never existed; not only did the Royal Navy have a lead in the dreadnought race against Germany, it was actually increasing that lead in 1914. Simply, Britain was outbuilding Germany. In fact, the British government was so confident that the German navy posed no major threat of invasion that they actually declined a German offer to stop building German dreadnoughts in exchange for nothing more than a British guarantee of neutrality if Germany was attacked by an aggressive Franco-Russian Alliance (a pointless guarantee, since Britain can just say whoever it thinks is the aggressor) because they didn't need Germany to let them the arms race, they already knew they were winning anyway.

the Glorious Revolution. the british nicely masked it as a revolution, but in reality it was a successful Dutch invasion of britain, and had they resisted that William would become king, they would have been doomed.

It was a successful Dutch invasion of Great Britain, yes. It was also an invasion with a great deal of internal support from lots of important people in England; the Jacobites were never very popular in England, and it's because England was loyal to William III that he managed to keep the rest of Great Britain.

The statement that I think is perhaps a little over-optimistic is this:

had they [the British] resisted that William would become king, they would have been doomed.

Angry mobs rose up all over England and helped William III to seize the throne. If William III hadn't been enthusiastically supported by the population (and also much of the army and navy), he may well have landed in Great Britain but I'm not sure that he could have held it; at the very least it would have diverted lots of Dutch troops to Great Britain, which would weaken the Dutch Republic's position on land against the French army.

The following fact is useful: William III's army to invade Great Britain consisted of only 15,000 fully equipped men. In addition to this, he brought 20,000 sets of weapons to equip his supporters in Great Britain. I agree itt wasn't a purely internal affair where the British people rose up to overthrow a tyrant, but it wasn't an invasion where a foreign army took power over an unwilling British population by force.

So I would characterise the Glorious Revolution as a Dutch invasion but one that was enthusiastically supported by the people being invaded—somewhat like the North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam.

By the way, thank you for invading us in 1688, it all turned out rather well for both of us. Except the French, of course. My heart bleeds for them.