WI: Napoleon killed at Schonbrunn, 1809?

So the main debate seems to be whether or not everyone is going to be loyal to Joseph-


Assuming of course that Joseph accepts in the first place.

Rather than face an uncertain future on a shaky throne, he might well opt to pack the Spanish Crown Jewels into his suitcase, and make tracks for America, as he would later do OTL.
 
Joseph proposed Napoleon to give up Spain and the spanish crown because hé knew he could not keepsake it : most spanish hated him.

This was real politics. Not the Napoleon total war game where the french can rule England and Russia can rule Italy 3 rounds after conquest.
 
Let's face it - it is 1809 and France is the pre-eminent power in Europe. Prussia is gutted, Austria is defeated, Russia is "on-side" for a while at least.

There is no real incentive for any of the Marshalls to organise a coup apart from personal ambition and to be honest most of them were loyal to the Army to the last. That wouldn't preclude Joeseph from being advised by his senior Marshalls of course. Joesph as a convienient figurehead

The real question is what France would do about Spain. Already an embarrassment it had not yet become the Spanish ulcer. If Joeseph could be persuaded to employ Talleyrand as his ambassador (and Talleyrand to accept) it is possible that some longer lasting post Napoleonic state might endure

But it would be horribly unstable. The first sign of weakness or military setback could trigger either a restoration of the monarchy or mopre seriously a civil war
 
Let's face it - it is 1809 and France is the pre-eminent power in Europe. Prussia is gutted, Austria is defeated, Russia is "on-side" for a while at least.

There is no real incentive for any of the Marshalls to organise a coup apart from personal ambition and to be honest most of them were loyal to the Army to the last. That wouldn't preclude Joeseph from being advised by his senior Marshalls of course. Joesph as a convienient figurehead

The real question is what France would do about Spain. Already an embarrassment it had not yet become the Spanish ulcer. If Joeseph could be persuaded to employ Talleyrand as his ambassador (and Talleyrand to accept) it is possible that some longer lasting post Napoleonic state might endure

But it would be horribly unstable. The first sign of weakness or military setback could trigger either a restoration of the monarchy or mopre seriously a civil war

The problem with Joseph is that no one liked him or ever did and those who supported him were equally hated by the population. The Bourbons had this populist streak that endeared them to the population that Joseph (who was accused of being a drunk, a gambler and worse things) could not even dream of having.

If Ferdinand or Charles return, by that time there are already Juntas led by prominent liberals (like Floridablanca & Jovellanos) and the authority of the Royal Council is discredited, so who knows, perhaps on their return, a mixture of French and Juntas' pressure forced the Bourbons to grant liberal reforms of some kind.

IIRC at this point the South American juntas still accepted the supreme authority of the Supreme Central and Governing Junta of the Kingdom so it's have interesting consequences in the Spanish colonies.
 
Spain didn't hate Joseph; he had the support of the Church and the Spanish nobility, both of which regarded him (rightly) as an enormous improvement over his predecessor. Spain hated the French army. Napoleon had garrisoned 300,000 of his worst men there, because the "good" men would be needed at the "real" front - so the French army in Spain was a pack of robbers and rapists who couldn't be bothered to (or lacked the capacity to) learn Spanish. Joseph understood this and wrote a couple of letters to his Imperial brother asking him to remove the troops (which were of course ignored). Point being, Emperor Joseph can pull the troops out of Spain and still propose his daughter and/or Lucien as King of Spain, and it's not a ridiculous proposition to the Spanish. (Which doesn't mean it will ultimately succeed, but hey, it's worth a shot.)

I wouldn't count on die-hard British opposition; they've been subsidizing continental powers for 20 years against France and have nothing to show for it. The end of Napoleon is the fig leaf they can use to stop frittering away their money. Besides, it's not as if they've never heard of this Joseph fellow - Britain knows he's a non-aggressive milquetoast, which is the sort of French Emperor they can live with.

The problem, if the Emperor was murdered on his way to sign a peace treaty, will be restraining the Marshals and soldiers on the ground. The one Frenchman with a vested personal interest in the survival of Austria is dead; fair odds they kill every man, woman and child named Habsburg, leave no stone upon stone and salt the earth where Vienna used to be in retaliation. And Austria is defeated again; they won't be able to protect themselves. Although if it goes that way, Britain will still be trying to find allies against France...
 
The problem, if the Emperor was murdered on his way to sign a peace treaty, will be restraining the Marshals and soldiers on the ground. The one Frenchman with a vested personal interest in the survival of Austria is dead; fair odds they kill every man, woman and child named Habsburg, leave no stone upon stone and salt the earth where Vienna used to be in retaliation. And Austria is defeated again; they won't be able to protect themselves. Although if it goes that way, Britain will still be trying to find allies against France...


Even though the killer was not an Austrian?

Friedrich Staps, iirc, came from Saxony, which was one of Napoleon's allies.

More appropriate to court-martial some of Napoleon's guards, for ever letting Staps get near enough to do it. He had a knife, not a gun.
 
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In the absence of actual evidence that the Hapsburgs did it, I think that the Marshals would be too preoccupied with trying to get back to France to secure the secession for Joseph/themselves/whoever to take revenge that they aren't sure they need. They might threaten to, which could be the motivation for Austria to sign the treaty as planned.
 
In the absence of actual evidence that the Hapsburgs did it, I think that the Marshals would be too preoccupied with trying to get back to France to secure the secession for Joseph/themselves/whoever to take revenge that they aren't sure they need. They might threaten to, which could be the motivation for Austria to sign the treaty as planned.


Though the treaty may be less severe in these circs.

With Austria temporarily knocked out, the big danger is a Russo-Prussian alliance. With any luck, if Prussia doesn't go to war, the Tsar won't either. So the top priority for France is to buy off Prussia, which at a minimum means giving her back her pre-Tilsit borders - including the Duchy of Warsaw.

If Prussia is to regain the DoW, clearly the question of expanding it at Austria's expense does not arise. So she keeps West Galicia. OTOH she might lose a bit more of East Galicia to Russia, who also needs to be mollified. In general, though, I'd guess she loses less territory but pays a bigger indemnity, as any Marshal with political ambitions will want a big war chest.
 
Prussia can't go to war. It is occupied by a strong french army which holds the main fortresses of the country. The prussian state had the blade on its throat : Napoleon made it clear that if the prussians ever attacked again, he would dismantle their State.

That is why the prussians waited that the russian army entered Silesia in 1813 before changing sides and turning against the french.

The french would never have massacred the Habsburgs. They were not barbarians nor butchers. At worst they would have them chased from the throne and give back independance to Hungaria. But they were not stupid either and understood that their interest was to use the Habsburgs as a barrier to contain the russians.

A french empire without Napoleon would of course be less strong and be more focused on internal matters. Well, that was exactly what Europe wanted : it was a condition for a sincere and sustainable peace.
And it was also what the french people and elite wanted too.
 
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