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Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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Then To the Invasion Be Defiance Given They
swear they'll invade us, these terrible foes; We'll
still make them fear, and we'll still make them flee, Hearts
of Oak, Circa Napoleonic Wars “I
do not say the
French can't come, I only say they can't come by sea”.
–Admiral Earl St. Vincent In 1804,
Napoleon was the master of the continent. He had reached France’s “natural
borders”, on the Rhine, annexing what we now call Belgium. Italy was
partitioned amongst puppet republics; Austria was neutral; only Britain, the
implacable foe of France, remained against him. And now he prepared to turn
against it. The problem,
of course, was the Royal Navy. Robert Fulton, an American inventor, had proposed
a submarine to use against the fleet. It had been turned down, on the basis that
“the English, so ingenious at creating destructive machines, would soon be
doing the same thing”. In 1803 he tested a steam vessel in the Seine. Indeed,
he ultimately proposed a fleet of steamboats to transport the Grande Armee
across the channel on a still day. Unfortunately, Napoleon, the Academie de s
Sciences, and Talleyrand turned him down. Proposals for tunnels under the
Channel, giant balloons, and bridges were also brought forward, but all
rejected. Nevertheless,
the plan went forward. In September, Bonaparte called for a complete order of
battle. There were 1400 vessels to carry men. The landing force would total
114,554 soldiers. This would include 11,640 cavalry, 3780 gunners, 3780
waggoners, and 17,467 non-combatants. This massive army was encamped around the
city of Boulogne. An army to attack Ireland was assembled at Brest, and the
world held its breath. Meanwhile, in
Britain, contingency plans were raised in the event of the invasion. The British
army, in particular Lord Keith, proposed that the invasion would occur near the
Weymouth Bay, but dismissed the threat to the Downs and eastern shore of Kent.
This would be the site of the French landings, and the lack of English defenses
would a mistake. The Duke of
York knew that London would be the target of the Corsican, and planned
accordingly. As the regular army returned, it ballooned to 80,000 soldiers in
England proper. The militia Act of 1802 established a conscription of 50,000
men, and together there was a standing army of 100,00 men on the isle. In addition, there were the
volunteers. They came to number a staggering 410,000, and on paper, the British
Isles had more than 500,000 men. While William Pitt toasted to a speedy
resolution of the conflict on England’s shores, the nation armed itself.
Napoleon anticipated a popular support for his cause; reality would prove far
different. “Every town was a sort of garrison”, remembered George Cruskhank,
a famous author after the war. Defenses The main British line of
defense, should Chatham fall, would be along the heights from Blackheath to the
Thames west of the capital. A stand was envisioned along Sussex Downs, and
beacons were established on hilltops. And in addition there was, of
course, the Royal Navy. As was stated by General James Craig, commander in
Essex: The Great Game Before the French could invade,
they must remove the Royal Navy from the channel, if only briefly. To achieve
this, there would need to be fifty or more ships of the Line in the Channel. The plan was for the main
Toulon squadron, under Admiral Villeneuve to run through the Straits, join the
squadron form Rochhefort, under Missiessy, and meanwhile, from Brest would sail
Ganteaume, with 18,000 troops for Ireland. This plan was scrapped when it
was pointed out that the seventeen sail of the line would not be enough to cover
the invasion. The new plan had Missiessy’s
squadron escaping from Rochefort, which it did on January 11, 1804. The British
blockading squadron was blown off-station, and he made a break for it. (POD is here. OTL Villeneuve
made a break for it, and tricked Nelson into sailing for Alexandria. The second
time around, Nelson didn’t fall for it). Villeneuve
unable to depart due to gales, and eventually Missiessy was forced to
return to Rocehfort. The Spanish Armada Meanwhile, Napoleon had entered
into alliance with France, by providing him with subsidies. Pitt’s response
was to attack the treasure ships from South America. The ships of the line did
not arrive, but the four British frigates managed to capture 3 of the 4 Spanish
treasure ships on October 5, 1804. On December 12, 1804, Spain declared war on
Britain. This altered the naval balance.
With Cadiz and Cartagena, as well as Ferrol, Corunna, and Vigo, the French had
bases on the Atlantic. More dangerous were the thirty Spanish ships of the line,
divided between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. There were also twenty-one
ships of the line at Brest, six at Rochefort and eleven at Toulon. Masters
of the Channel…. Now
came the final plan. Villeneuve was to evade Nelson, which he did on 29 March,
1805. Nelson sailed for Alexandria, believing that the French fleet was heading
for Egypt. Villeneuve had made his break. But
the Admiralty had enough ships to meet any contingency. There were twelve ships
of the line with Nelson, six off of Cadiz with Sir John Orde, eight off of
Ferrol with Vice-Admiral Robert Calder, Cornwallis, commanding seventeen fleets
off of the French Atlantic ports, and Lord Keith in the channel with eleven
ships. The British, then, had 46 ships of the line at sea. Additional ships were
ordered to sea as well. It
was not until the 28th of April that Nelson learned that Villeneuve
had made his break for the Atlantic. Nelson decided that the French had set sail
for the Spanish ports, but it was not until a Portuguese merchant man reported
that the fleet had been sighting west did Nelson pursue. Upon
arriving in the Caribbean, the Admiral, Alexander Cochrane, explained that he
had sent four of his ships to Jamaica to avert an impending attack. The general
on Barbados reported that the French had gone south to attack Trinidad, and
Nelson sailed for there. Upon arrival, on the 17th, he did not find
the French fleet. Villeneuve
had sailed for Martinique, however. With one more French ship, and six Spanish
sail from Cadiz, he had eighteen ships to Nelson’s ten. The fleet from Brest
did not arrive, however, and on the
21st he set sail for Europe, fearful of the British fleet. Villeneuve
had no desire to repeat the Nile. Nelson informed the Admiralty that “every
line of battleship that can be spared from hence may be wanted in the
Channel”, and set sail for the Azores. The fleets almost made contact on the 1st
of Guaust, but Villeneuve entered Vigo. The bulk of the Franco-Spanish fleet
were in Atlantic ports. On the 14th, after Nelson departed for
England (without the fleet, of course), a combined Franco-Spanish fleet of
twenty-nine set sail north to join Ganteaume and his twenty-one off of Brest,
and more than fifty warships set sail for the channel. Nelson, for his part,
rallied the fleet to pursue Villeneuve; but again he was too late. Linking up
off of Brest on the 7th of September, the fleet entered the channel. England
Is Ours Nelson,
with 27 ships, was in the Atlantic; that left a mere 19 ships on active duty in
the channel. The battle of the Downs was a long, and drawn out affair, costing
the French and Spanish twenty-seven ships; but Lord Keith’s force was broken
as well. The invasion began on September 7th. The
French invasion force, under the Emperor, immediately ran into problems. Namely,
the barges used for the expedition were not capable of crossing the channel.
Approximately 20,000 men died on the barges alone, and most of those men were
irreplaceable gunners and cavalrymen (You think I’m kidding? Read up on what
happened when they actually tested the invasion barges. Which were modified off
of ones used for crossing canals and the Seine). Major
Genreal John Moore opposed Napoleon, and as the plans had discussed, the
offensives were launched against the landings, within 24 hours. The French
soldiers, water logged from an exhausting trip across the channel, wet powder
and no cavalry, were defeated in every engagement. The Emperor himself was
captured on September 12th, in one of the last battles of the
invasion. And
that still left Nelson. He had caught up with the French fleet on the 11th,
and defeated it in the Channel. Clearly, Napoleon’s six hours were useless.
The
End of the Republic The
rest, of course, is history. With the loss of 100,000 men and their emperor,
Paris underwent a coup to restore the Bourbon king; Austrian armies rapidly
invaded Italy in Veneto, and the Congress of Vienna confirmed the
post-Revolutionary Order. Perhaps
Pitt was right, then, to toast a “speedy resolution to the Conflict on our
Shores.” Comments:
The most valuable Source was The Terror Before Trafalgar. The French
Barges all sunk a few hundred meters off the coast, but I felt like giving them
some slack and merely having 1/5 sink was acceptable. I’m probably fudging the
numbers in favor of the Franco-Spaniards a bit; there’s no other way to get
them across. And yes, the British army’s numbers are accurate. |
