WI: Britain backs the Union, France backs the Confederacy

It's not possible Napoleon III would not go against Britain. You would need to change his personality for that to happen.
 
The only kind of peace Britain could accept is a fragmented Europe, the best France could do was to take the land west of the Rhine.

Pardon?

More significant is the level of UK investment in mainly the Union states(1) and a desire not to get involved in a war to protect slavery which is was from any pov until the emancipation proclamation.(2)

1) That's correct. The British had significant investment in the Union at this time and were quite unlikely to do anything to threaten that unless provoked. The US also realized this and were keen to insure they kept access to British assets and trade (their major trading partner was the UK, if war starts most of the commerce raiding they would be doing would hurt them almost as much as the British!).

2) I think you mean until after the Emancipation Proclamation. Before that propaganda or simple twisting of the facts can couch the campaign in terms of defending states rights and protecting a smaller state from a larger bully. Slavery is an issue sure, but not an insurmountable one since the war has not yet been couched in terms of one side abolishing slavery and the other enforcing it. After Lincoln's emancipation proclamation it became completely impossible for the British to even think about recognizing the CSA.
 
Why in the seven hells would the French support the Confederacy, and the British the USA? If they were going to be directly involved it would be the other way around, but with France not being on the side opposite of Great Britain.
 
Have the Napoleonic Wars end in a draw.


That's how back you'll need to go for it to happen I think. And even that's a stretch.

With Napoleon III at the helm, France WILL NOT fight Britain, as one of N3's main foreign policy planks was rapprochement and alliance WITH Britain.


But any ways, in the ASB scenario that history and the geopolitical situation in Europe relatively closely as OTL, the Union still wins if it's in anywhere near the shape it should be (because the Union significantly dwarfs the capacity of any major European power to project on the North American continent by the 1860s: I'd recommend TFSmith121's Burnished Rows of Steel TL for an understanding of that), the Mexican adventure ends for Napoleon III (or never occurred) and France loses her most far-flung colonies, eg. in the Pacific, and...France and Britain stare daggers at each other over the channel. Prussia and Austria are too busy preparing for a fight over the supremacy of Germany; Italy had recently gained independence in no small part to the assistance of France, while Russia is looking inwards after the Crimean War (and is otherwise embroiled in The Great Game with Britain), so there is no continental interest in fighting France at the time.

Plus the British Empire is markedly stretched in its army and naval deployments maintaining the empire, so...nothing really happens.

Again, France and Britain fighting it out in the 1860s is massively ASB unless you go REALLY far back. To a point where the ACW is probably not recognizable.
 
Not really. They honestly couldn't have cared less. The much-touted goodwill visit of the Russian fleet had nothing to do with the war. The Russians just wanted their ships out to sea in case the Polish troubles led to war in Europe.

Truth here. As an interesting aside I swore I read that the commander of that fleet recognized what the Union thought, and played to that, though (with the happy, if clearly very local) side-effect of the fleet's men at least getting some genuine goodwill to Americans when they were feted and celebrated.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Thanks for the kinds words re BROS

Have the Napoleonic Wars end in a draw.


That's how back you'll need to go for it to happen I think. And even that's a stretch.

With Napoleon III at the helm, France WILL NOT fight Britain, as one of N3's main foreign policy planks was rapprochement and alliance WITH Britain.


But any ways, in the ASB scenario that history and the geopolitical situation in Europe relatively closely as OTL, the Union still wins if it's in anywhere near the shape it should be (because the Union significantly dwarfs the capacity of any major European power to project on the North American continent by the 1860s: I'd recommend TFSmith121's Burnished Rows of Steel TL for an understanding of that), the Mexican adventure ends for Napoleon III (or never occurred) and France loses her most far-flung colonies, eg. in the Pacific, and...France and Britain stare daggers at each other over the channel. Prussia and Austria are too busy preparing for a fight over the supremacy of Germany; Italy had recently gained independence in no small part to the assistance of France, while Russia is looking inwards after the Crimean War (and is otherwise embroiled in The Great Game with Britain), so there is no continental interest in fighting France at the time.

Plus the British Empire is markedly stretched in its army and naval deployments maintaining the empire, so...nothing really happens.

Again, France and Britain fighting it out in the 1860s is massively ASB unless you go REALLY far back. To a point where the ACW is probably not recognizable.


Thanks for the kinds words re BROS.

Best,
 
Why in the seven hells would the French support the Confederacy, and the British the USA? If they were going to be directly involved it would be the other way around, but with France not being on the side opposite of Great Britain.

Well, France supported its puppet empire in Mexico which was directly at odds with the interests of the USA. The argument would be that a disunited USA would help ensure the survival of the Mexican Empire. Britain, on the other hand, was anti-slavery, and heavily invested economically in the Union.

Now, the fact of the matter is that Britain was not going to support the South over the North. France was not going to go against Britain.
 
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