WI: Britain pulls a Barbarossa on America from Canada?

Besides, where is Britain getting an army 5x the size of Napoleon's at its peak?
King George could easily convince the Prussian ambassador to sway his king over to his side and grant him several additional armies. By Prussian ambassador though I of course mean a potted plant.

EDIT: In fact it looks like the entirety of this plan has been formed through His Majesty's hard labours.
 

Asami

Banned
King George could easily convince the Prussian ambassador to sway his king over to his side and grant him several additional armies. By Prussian ambassador though I of course mean a potted plant.

EDIT: In fact it looks like the entirety of this plan has been formed through His Majesty's hard labours.

His squishy, purple hard labours.
 
Ok so realistically speaking, what's the largest possible army that Britain could muster to launch a surprise invasion against America and how soon after 1783?
 

frlmerrin

Banned
Ok so realistically speaking, what's the largest possible army that Britain could muster to launch a surprise invasion against America and how soon after 1783?

Aw please don't try and make it realistic. I was hoping that the Orcs, sorry I mean the British Army all 3,000,000 of them and the 4,000,000 French, Egyptian, Austrian and Spanish slave soldiers in HM Loyal Foreign Legion under the slave General Napoleon would rape, pillage and plunder the poor peace loving and helpless Hobbits of the Shire, the United States even, under a great cloud of loyal black dragons with an insatiable hunger for Yank flesh. Between the seried ranks of the hordes of perfidious Albion plodded giant artillery carrying dinosaurs and rabid elephant cavalry carrying depraved aristocratic revanants hell bent on ruining all of the innocent young Yankee maids and lads they can find. At the head of this mighty army the magically mutated giant zombie Duke of Wellington strides across the country crushing homes beneath his monstrous wellies.
 

Zek Sora

Donor
Aw please don't try and make it realistic. I was hoping that the Orcs, sorry I mean the British Army all 3,000,000 of them and the 4,000,000 French, Egyptian, Austrian and Spanish slave soldiers in HM Loyal Foreign Legion under the slave General Napoleon would rape, pillage and plunder the poor peace loving and helpless Hobbits of the Shire, the United States even, under a great cloud of loyal black dragons with an insatiable hunger for Yank flesh. Between the seried ranks of the hordes of perfidious Albion plodded giant artillery carrying dinosaurs and rabid elephant cavalry carrying depraved aristocratic revanants hell bent on ruining all of the innocent young Yankee maids and lads they can find. At the head of this mighty army the magically mutated giant zombie Duke of Wellington strides across the country crushing homes beneath his monstrous wellies.

No need to be an ass.
 
No need to be an ass.

After the bit where the OP said the British soldiers can handle living outside in the Canadian winter by wearing winter coats I'm not so sure. I'm sure none of them will mind dropping their pants to urinate and have their manhood get frostbite. :rolleyes:

Aw please don't try and make it realistic. I was hoping that the Orcs, sorry I mean the British Army all 3,000,000 of them and the 4,000,000 French, Egyptian, Austrian and Spanish slave soldiers in HM Loyal Foreign Legion under the slave General Napoleon would rape, pillage and plunder the poor peace loving and helpless Hobbits of the Shire, the United States even, under a great cloud of loyal black dragons with an insatiable hunger for Yank flesh. Between the seried ranks of the hordes of perfidious Albion plodded giant artillery carrying dinosaurs and rabid elephant cavalry carrying depraved aristocratic revanants hell bent on ruining all of the innocent young Yankee maids and lads they can find. At the head of this mighty army the magically mutated giant zombie Duke of Wellington strides across the country crushing homes beneath his monstrous wellies.

This is the best post in this disaster of a thread. Although you forgot the vampire Cossacks. ;)
 
Aw please don't try and make it realistic. I was hoping that the Orcs, sorry I mean the British Army all 3,000,000 of them and the 4,000,000 French, Egyptian, Austrian and Spanish slave soldiers in HM Loyal Foreign Legion under the slave General Napoleon would rape, pillage and plunder the poor peace loving and helpless Hobbits of the Shire, the United States even, under a great cloud of loyal black dragons with an insatiable hunger for Yank flesh. Between the seried ranks of the hordes of perfidious Albion plodded giant artillery carrying dinosaurs and rabid elephant cavalry carrying depraved aristocratic revanants hell bent on ruining all of the innocent young Yankee maids and lads they can find. At the head of this mighty army the magically mutated giant zombie Duke of Wellington strides across the country crushing homes beneath his monstrous wellies.

So the Britons have had the old Roman Empire reestablished with all of its practices, keeping the pracitce of homosexuality and young male concubines alive among the aristocrats?

Ye Jupiter, what have we done?
 
The British in 1814 managed just under 50,000 troops in North America. And they abandoned campaigns or judged further exploitation of them pointless due to logistical strain then.


The Americans fighting on home ground didn't manage more than 40,000.

North America is a paradox for warfare. So massive that you need large armies to keep your supply lines running because even a few hundred militia who know the ground can raise utter hell picking and choosing their fights. Yet at the same time so wild and undeveloped at this time that you can only field tiny forces (by European standards) scattered around the theatre.

I posted this hours ago in chat...:eek:
 
What if After the 1783 treaty of Paris Britain comes up with a secret decades long masterplan to pretend to be America's friend while secretly creating a 3 million man grand imperial army to launch a surprise invasion of America and recapture it.

First of all nobody, at the time, had the logistic means to sustain of run a 3 million men army. Even less to have it cross the Atlantic.

Secondly, why would Britain want to reconquer the 13 colonies ? It was not profitable to try holding against its will an immense territory with more than 3 million people (who did not want to pay taxes for a distant aristocracy) against their will.

AlEven with realistic figures, such a plan would be nonsense and ruin Britain.
 
Why is this not ASB? And IIRC there wasn´t even 3 million men in total fighting the ACW 1861-165 on both sides(Grant had 120,000 men in the Army of Potomac before the offensive in the vilderness)
 
just to add to the Brits' problems... they suffered a lot from desertion during the Napoleonic timeframe, and the War of 1812 in particular... the main reason being money. There was an acute labor shortage in the USA during this time, and workmen's wages were rather high... especially when compared to the dismal wage of a soldier. During the war, British POWs were not only treated pretty well, they were often allowed to leave their camps and find work in the towns nearby... unguarded (!). When the war ended and the POWs were supposed to be repatriated, some of them promptly disappeared into the countryside, and the rest had to be practically driven to Canada at gunpoint. The British army in the Americas had a steady trickle of desertion for this reason all through the war, and some before and after. It's been speculated that part of the reason the Brits gave in on so many parts of the peace treaty was the desire to get their army away from the seductive lure of high wages in the USA :) Of course, this state of affairs wasn't permanent, and the USA saw wages go up and down. Still, if the Brits are going to try to keep a large army permanently in Canada, they will have waves of desertion at various times...
 
Putting aside the many logistical impossibilities here, even the best-case scenario for Britain here is something like the Hundred Year's War, where they'd occupy some territory and then discover that they couldn't hold it in the long term. The Thirteen colonies alone were far larger than the UK and by 1783 the Loyalist population was rapidly shrinking as they either came to accept the new regime or emigrated.

Britain in 1775 could claim to be the legitimate governmental authority. After 1783 it could not make that claim. A British army that invades post-1783 is a foreign army and can only hold onto to parts of the U.S. by force, which it can't maintain forever. The main thing it can achieve is what it did in the War of 1812: make raids, burn a city, and so forth.
 
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