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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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Napoleon’s
Empire A number of people have written
Alternate Histories based around Napoleon defeating his foes and mastering
Europe. However, there are two real
problems he needs to overcome; Russia and Spain.
Let’s tackle Spain first. Start before he invades.
The Spanish leader Godoy was hated by most of Spain, including the Heir
(Prince Ferdinand), and had plotted to stab Napoleon’s back before Tilsit.
Therefore, Napoleon can march in and declare that he’s come to punish
Godoy and place Ferdinand upon the throne.
The price he extracts is simple; Spain joins the Continental system, and
takes care of garrisoning Portugal. Godoy
flees to London and becomes reviled there too.
The price for this, of course, is that the British cut of Spain from its
empire. Napoleon can find Ferdinand
a bride from the Bonaparte family and add him to his family, therefore tying
Spain to France parmantly. The next step requires Napoleon
to show some consideration. The
Spanish must govern their own nation – French advice must be just advice. Basically, we have Spain with full internal autonomy, while
Napoleon controls her outside affairs. The
armies and navies are merged, although the Spanish navy is not in good condition
at all. Much of the Spanish empire
has fallen to Britain by this time, which makes the Spanish prepared to work
with the French for revenge, although the French army managed to retake
Gibraltar. So, in this TL, would we still
have Napoleon marching on Moscow? I
think that the Tsar would still try to assert his independence, so I think the
two emperors would fall out at some point.
But here, we have a Napoleon who has discovered its good to keep the
natives on your side. Napoleon
marches into Russia, with more limited aims, and frees the serfs as he goes.
This makes him more popular and he gets some help from them as he goes
into Russia. Without partisans
harassing him, he can hold more territory. Our more limited Napoleon does
not go for Moscow completely, although he does send raids towards it to panic
the Tsar. Instead, he works to set
up Poland, Ukraine and Byelorussia as independent puppet states, which support
him completely. This allows him to
survive the 1813 winter and build more forces from those states. This lets him conserve the Grande Armmie for next year, while
making it harder for the Tsar to recruit men.
The Tsar sues for peace in 1814, conceding the new states and setting
Russia’s course towards the east. This gives Napoleon a stable
Empire for a while, linked together by tolerance and the Bonaparte family
marrying into the older royal families. If
he’s clever, he’ll set up something reassembling a house of lords and
commons, which will put the choice of who becomes the next emperor in the hands
of the lords and real power in the commons, so that whoever decides that they
don’t like the lords verdict cannot simply revolt. What will happen to Britain here? If there’s no allied Spain (a dubious blessing), the British won’t be able to support a war front in Portugal, while the bulk of the Spanish empire would be up for grabs. This means that Louisiana could be British in this timeline, populated by émigrés, escaped slaves and other sources. Further, without the return from Elba and the hundred days, the British might decide to fight the war with the USA to a finish, which, given the bad American mishandling of the war, might well mean a disastrous defeat, leading to the collapse of America. |
