If the Napoleon militia defeated Russia could he keep the empire and run it?
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Napoleon conquers Russia
- Thread starter claybaskit
- Start date
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- it/its (you'll get used to the third person thing)
ah, welcome back. good to see you again.
You know, I didn't even think about what Napoleon's goal in Russia was. Was he wanting to put a new person on the throne and keep the structure? Did he want to fracture it with things like independent cossack state, independent Ukraine, and a super Duchy of Warsaw etc etc? I'm assuming the former but did he have someone in mind to put on the throne? Surely not another Bonaparte.
napoleon IV
Sheer Animal Cunning of the Groundhog
- Location
- Washington, Douglass Commonwealth
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- he/him
From what I understand Napoleon's main goal was to force Alexander I to the negotiating table and bring Russia back into the Continental System. He didn't have any interest in putting a new person on the throne or annexing vast swaths of territory (there would have almost certainly been some territorial changes but it would have been way smaller than say Brest-Litovsk a century later). Napoleon's strategy reflected this: he was going to smash the Russian army in a decisive battle and then impose peace. Napoleon only went to Moscow because the Russian army chose to keep retreating rather than let him have a decisive battle (even at Borodino the Russian goal was to hold the line and keep the French from gaining a decisive victory so the retreat could continue).You know, I didn't even think about what Napoleon's goal in Russia was. Was he wanting to put a new person on the throne and keep the structure? Did he want to fracture it with things like independent cossack state, independent Ukraine, and a super Duchy of Warsaw etc etc? I'm assuming the former but did he have someone in mind to put on the throne? Surely not another Bonaparte.
napoleon IV
Sheer Animal Cunning of the Groundhog
- Location
- Washington, Douglass Commonwealth
- Pronouns
- he/him
I would also say that if Napoleon achieves his war goals in Russia it probably leads to a couple years of relative peace (with Iberia being the big exception) but there's two basic problems with the Franco-Russian relationship:
1. The Continental System is not going to bring Britain to its knees, at least in the short term. Meanwhile the Russian economy is also going to be hurt by the loss of British trade, and Napoleon's anti-British stance is just generally too militant to be in Russia's best interest.
2. Russia doesn't want superpower France dominating Europe. Russia doesn't want to be forced into a subservient position to another power, and it also doesn't want there to be a superpower controlling most of the western border (the natural invasion route into Russia).
As a result after these few years of peace Russia will try to withdraw from the Continental System/welch on their treaty obligations in general and Napoleon will respond with another war. That war could in and of itself end like OTL's invasion, but even if Napoleon is able to win another decisive battle he has to deal with the bigger problem that he can't destroy Russia and living with it isn't possible long term. Attempting to put a puppet Tsar on the throne or destroying Russia as a nation would mean having to occupy a huge chunk of European Russia, which is extremely difficult to support logistically and would require a ton of troops. It also would require more than one decisive battle, because if the Tsar and nobility think Napoleon is going to try and remove them they'll fight to the bitter end. Imagine the Spanish Ulcer, but way bigger. But if Napoleon doesn't destroy Russia then they'll wait for the right time and try again (incidentally the same is true of Prussia and Austria; no other great power really wants superpower France dominating Europe). Eventually one of these wars will go badly for the French, who honestly were on a ridiculously lucky streak prior to 1812. Now, I do think it's possible for France to retain more of their empire than they did IOTL, but there's enough forces working against a pan-European empire that it will eventually be pushed back even if Napoleon defeats Russia in 1812.
1. The Continental System is not going to bring Britain to its knees, at least in the short term. Meanwhile the Russian economy is also going to be hurt by the loss of British trade, and Napoleon's anti-British stance is just generally too militant to be in Russia's best interest.
2. Russia doesn't want superpower France dominating Europe. Russia doesn't want to be forced into a subservient position to another power, and it also doesn't want there to be a superpower controlling most of the western border (the natural invasion route into Russia).
As a result after these few years of peace Russia will try to withdraw from the Continental System/welch on their treaty obligations in general and Napoleon will respond with another war. That war could in and of itself end like OTL's invasion, but even if Napoleon is able to win another decisive battle he has to deal with the bigger problem that he can't destroy Russia and living with it isn't possible long term. Attempting to put a puppet Tsar on the throne or destroying Russia as a nation would mean having to occupy a huge chunk of European Russia, which is extremely difficult to support logistically and would require a ton of troops. It also would require more than one decisive battle, because if the Tsar and nobility think Napoleon is going to try and remove them they'll fight to the bitter end. Imagine the Spanish Ulcer, but way bigger. But if Napoleon doesn't destroy Russia then they'll wait for the right time and try again (incidentally the same is true of Prussia and Austria; no other great power really wants superpower France dominating Europe). Eventually one of these wars will go badly for the French, who honestly were on a ridiculously lucky streak prior to 1812. Now, I do think it's possible for France to retain more of their empire than they did IOTL, but there's enough forces working against a pan-European empire that it will eventually be pushed back even if Napoleon defeats Russia in 1812.
So basically as long as Napoleon still intends to make Britain his mortal enemy, he's pretty much doomed to defeat at some point? Or maybe if he was willing to throw out the Habsburgs and end Prussia and go full Liberal Emperor and Breaker of Chains, he could make it work? But that also requires a very different Napoleon, probably one who never made himself emperor and wanted to join the nobles as one of them.I would also say that if Napoleon achieves his war goals in Russia it probably leads to a couple years of relative peace (with Iberia being the big exception) but there's two basic problems with the Franco-Russian relationship:
1. The Continental System is not going to bring Britain to its knees, at least in the short term. Meanwhile the Russian economy is also going to be hurt by the loss of British trade, and Napoleon's anti-British stance is just generally too militant to be in Russia's best interest.
2. Russia doesn't want superpower France dominating Europe. Russia doesn't want to be forced into a subservient position to another power, and it also doesn't want there to be a superpower controlling most of the western border (the natural invasion route into Russia).
As a result after these few years of peace Russia will try to withdraw from the Continental System/welch on their treaty obligations in general and Napoleon will respond with another war. That war could in and of itself end like OTL's invasion, but even if Napoleon is able to win another decisive battle he has to deal with the bigger problem that he can't destroy Russia and living with it isn't possible long term. Attempting to put a puppet Tsar on the throne or destroying Russia as a nation would mean having to occupy a huge chunk of European Russia, which is extremely difficult to support logistically and would require a ton of troops. It also would require more than one decisive battle, because if the Tsar and nobility think Napoleon is going to try and remove them they'll fight to the bitter end. Imagine the Spanish Ulcer, but way bigger. But if Napoleon doesn't destroy Russia then they'll wait for the right time and try again (incidentally the same is true of Prussia and Austria; no other great power really wants superpower France dominating Europe). Eventually one of these wars will go badly for the French, who honestly were on a ridiculously lucky streak prior to 1812. Now, I do think it's possible for France to retain more of their empire than they did IOTL, but there's enough forces working against a pan-European empire that it will eventually be pushed back even if Napoleon defeats Russia in 1812.
heraclius
Well-known member
- Location
- New Forest, Hampshire, England, UK
The main war aim of Napoleon during the invasion seems to have been to catch and beat Alexander's main army and force or intimidate him into signing up to a legally enforceable membership of the Continental System, not to conquer let alone take over the administration and army of Russia. It was coercion rather than conquest, though occupying a major city as a negotiating tactic was a possible means of carrying this out - albeit one that could easily go wrong given how far the major Russian cities (either Moscow or St P) were from the frontier of the French empire. The climate also made an occupation longer than one for a few months, in the summer, very dangerous for the occupation troops - though less so if N had just stopped at, say, Smolensk and refused to be drawn further East by the retreating Russian army. Ever since reading 'War and Peace' (written in the 1860s within the lifetime of participants and , if biased by Tolstoy's quirks, an invaluable look at the ground-level view of events) as a teenager I have been struck by how N seemed to lack basic strategic sense in this campaign, let alone enough caution about potential pitfalls, and pushed on and on with the graph of possible disasters piling up. Was he 'losing it' as a master-strategist, or too surrounded by yes-men?
The war aims were thus different from the situation in Spain; putting a new ruler on the Russian throne, from the Romanov family let alone the Bonaparte family as N had tried to do in Spain, was not part of the war aims and there was no candidate lined up. Alexander's (a) refusal to negotiate and (b) the careful avoidance of battle with its risk of humiliating defeat (A seems to have been more reluctant to avoid battle than Kutuzov and been impatient with him for his prolonged retreat, and to have insisted on a fight before the enemy reached Moscow) could both have gone drastically wrong, (a) if Napoleon was able to hold onto a major strategic point over a mild winter and keep it supplied and (b) if the Russian army had been mauled too badly at Borodino to challenge a French occupation force holding Moscow over a mild winter and stalemate had resulted into 1813. In either of these cases, if N could keep his men in the field and keep up reinforcements into 1813 then the strain on Russian resources and the humiliation of enemy occupation might just have sparked off an elite coup to replace a stubborn Alexander with a more accomodating new Czar if the Russian army seemed unable to have a chance of driving the French our (or had been scared off by defeat in sporadic clashes). Presumably his next brother Constantine (b 1779) rather than one of the younger Grand Dukes, Nicholas (b 1796) or Michael (b 1798) as a puppet of a generals' and nobles' junta. Or the mercurial and sporadically erratic Alexander, a man of mystic impulses and alleged to be religious due to guilt over his foreknowledge of his father's murder in 1801, could have given up and abdicated in a depressed fit and the new regime had little option but to negotiate (unless a lot of British money arrived via the Baltic at St P to prop up their govt, unlikely due to the drain of the recession and the Peninsular War) to keep them in the war. With N's army still intact, his own allies would have stayed loyal - though losses could well have stored up trouble for later.
This might have given N the edge in forcing Russia, temporarily, into the Continental System as a cowed but unreliable ally like Prussia was - but not for more than a few years. And N has inevitably lost men and supplies in a semi-deadlocked war in the huge expanses of western Russia over months if not a full year, and at best - ie with supremacy in the field as shown by a major battle - has had a technical victory but huge losses of men at the OTL Borodino or an equivalent, due to the massive cannonades and slog of fighting over redoubts (the truth of which will come out once his men get home). This adds to the running sore of the Spanish imbroglio - and the British are still holding out behind the protective wall of their navy. Given N's obsessive and risk-taking character, and refusal to back down or treat his dependant states more carefully, he could still try for a permanent solution to the Spanish problem in 1814 or 1815 with a personal campaign there - leading to a major clash of armies like OTL Leipzig, but this time with himself and his vassals (some of them, eg Austria and Prussia not to mention any coerced Russian contingent , ready to defect if the chance arises) versus the British army. Given the terrain plus the long supply-lines and local guerillas plus the caution and strategic canniness of Wellington, I can see W doing a Kutuzov and drawing N far across the country into a trap well away from his supply-bases, possibly on the Portuguese frontier. Result, a Spanish equivalent of Borodino or even an outright French defeat. That would then start to unravel the French empire, as N has no goodwill from his vassals left and his allies are likely to turn on him.
Unless N can force Russia into a sullen and unreliable but legally monitored alliance by a stalemate or victory in better weather in Russia in 1812 or 1813 and then gives up on Spain c. 1813, pulling out in favour of the Bourbons (very unlikely if strategically wise), the French empire looks doomed in the long run - if only once the finances finally collapse and sections of the military elite get fed up with N's refusal to compromise and restrict his aims , perhaps after another 5 years or so. Arguably a more cautious and politically 'conciliatory' N who tires of long and risky campaigns after around 1807 and spends more time on his (highly capable ) admin work and legal reforms once he's in his forties might well have kept his empire in being for far longer, by not pushing his luck or alienating so many of his potential challengers. The usual CF question here is 'what if he hadn't gone into Spain' or 'what if he had been content to prop up a puppet Ferdinand VII with troops and administrators not put yet another Bonaparte on the throne of a culturally hostile ultra-Catholic country'. But this would arguably need a character transplant - as with Alexander the Great, the risk-taking and never knowing when to stop was the 'down' side of his genius.
Arnold Toynbee had Alexander 'calmed down' in June 323 by his serious illness which was in OTL fatal, and relying more on his top generals and admin men as a sort of advisory board from then on with e reduced number of campaigns. The same might apply to Napoleon? Possibly a similar sort of 'shock to the system' for him, such as being caught out by the prolonged Russian withdrawal when he reaches Smolensk, not going further or being lured into a march on Moscow, managing to keep his army supplied over a milder winter, and as N has the larger and still intact army forcing a patched-up treaty out of Alexander for a few years - then N's health declining after the rigours of the campaign so he can't manage any new campaign in Spain. Britain can't finance another Coalition for a few years either, due to the costs of the Peninsular War, the War of 1812, and the loss of European markets - and N has to accept a British-run Portugal and a technically pro-French but unreliable Spain , which might then fall into civil war with a liberal military revolt against the repressive and politically inept Ferdinand (with GB backing the rebels to undermine N's ally Ferdinand) . A new 'Amiens 1802' treaty is signed with Britain, or the two enemies just stay at titular war but without major fighting. The French empire might still be brought down within a decade by a new Coalition as the vassal-states turn on a weakening N , or N dies on schedule (was he poisoned or not in OTL?) and his under-age son's accession or sheer military exhaustion causes peace (subject to breakaway revolts in Italy and western Germany/ the Netherlands which France might be unable to stop). Arguably if N II succeeds, his Habsburg relations have a stake in preserving a strongish France as an ally to keep an eye on the threat posed by Russia - so F can keep its empire as far as the Rhine plus N Italy? And Joseph B or Murat in Naples if the British can't evict them due to a Habsburg veto ?
A Napoleon who stays firm to the principles of the French Republic and does not make himself Emperor but stays as 'First Consul', at the head of a technically republican and semi-democratic but really rigged political system (cf modern authoritarians in some of the ex-USSR lands?), might well have a wider base of support and be less controversial - but that would require greater idealism from him and less 'family mafia piles up loot and crowns' style tactics in how he ruled. More of a 'Caesar' (cultural influences from David and other Classicist fans of the Revolution?) , or even an 'Augustus', and less of a Charlemagne or a family dynast? Keeping up the 1790s traditions of creating vassal republics, not vassal kingdoms? (Given the present debates, there is also the question of how N turned on the ex-slave republic in Haiti, putting cool political/ strategic ambition and calculation above idealism; cf Beethoven giving up on him when he made himself Emperor.) Given his restlessness and his initial rise to glory in N Italy as a republican scourge of the old monarchies in 1796-1800, he could use Italy as a springboard after c. 1804 to start meddling in the Greek lands (assisting a carve-up of the Ottoman Sultanate as a 'friend of liberty' in the long Classicist cultural admiration tradition) with Greece, Crete, Cyprus and Egypt for himself and the Balkans for a bought-off Alexander I and Francis II. Then we have a prolonged clash with Britain in the Levant but no major wars in Europe unless or until France is militarily worn out in its Eastern wars, and a Napoleon who makes more of his 'Roman' heritage as a new sort of Caesar and Paris as a 'new Rome'. Whether this would end in another prolonged war with a coalition of his enemies, economic exhaustion, and defeat once the British navy wrecked his Levantine ambitions is another matter.
The war aims were thus different from the situation in Spain; putting a new ruler on the Russian throne, from the Romanov family let alone the Bonaparte family as N had tried to do in Spain, was not part of the war aims and there was no candidate lined up. Alexander's (a) refusal to negotiate and (b) the careful avoidance of battle with its risk of humiliating defeat (A seems to have been more reluctant to avoid battle than Kutuzov and been impatient with him for his prolonged retreat, and to have insisted on a fight before the enemy reached Moscow) could both have gone drastically wrong, (a) if Napoleon was able to hold onto a major strategic point over a mild winter and keep it supplied and (b) if the Russian army had been mauled too badly at Borodino to challenge a French occupation force holding Moscow over a mild winter and stalemate had resulted into 1813. In either of these cases, if N could keep his men in the field and keep up reinforcements into 1813 then the strain on Russian resources and the humiliation of enemy occupation might just have sparked off an elite coup to replace a stubborn Alexander with a more accomodating new Czar if the Russian army seemed unable to have a chance of driving the French our (or had been scared off by defeat in sporadic clashes). Presumably his next brother Constantine (b 1779) rather than one of the younger Grand Dukes, Nicholas (b 1796) or Michael (b 1798) as a puppet of a generals' and nobles' junta. Or the mercurial and sporadically erratic Alexander, a man of mystic impulses and alleged to be religious due to guilt over his foreknowledge of his father's murder in 1801, could have given up and abdicated in a depressed fit and the new regime had little option but to negotiate (unless a lot of British money arrived via the Baltic at St P to prop up their govt, unlikely due to the drain of the recession and the Peninsular War) to keep them in the war. With N's army still intact, his own allies would have stayed loyal - though losses could well have stored up trouble for later.
This might have given N the edge in forcing Russia, temporarily, into the Continental System as a cowed but unreliable ally like Prussia was - but not for more than a few years. And N has inevitably lost men and supplies in a semi-deadlocked war in the huge expanses of western Russia over months if not a full year, and at best - ie with supremacy in the field as shown by a major battle - has had a technical victory but huge losses of men at the OTL Borodino or an equivalent, due to the massive cannonades and slog of fighting over redoubts (the truth of which will come out once his men get home). This adds to the running sore of the Spanish imbroglio - and the British are still holding out behind the protective wall of their navy. Given N's obsessive and risk-taking character, and refusal to back down or treat his dependant states more carefully, he could still try for a permanent solution to the Spanish problem in 1814 or 1815 with a personal campaign there - leading to a major clash of armies like OTL Leipzig, but this time with himself and his vassals (some of them, eg Austria and Prussia not to mention any coerced Russian contingent , ready to defect if the chance arises) versus the British army. Given the terrain plus the long supply-lines and local guerillas plus the caution and strategic canniness of Wellington, I can see W doing a Kutuzov and drawing N far across the country into a trap well away from his supply-bases, possibly on the Portuguese frontier. Result, a Spanish equivalent of Borodino or even an outright French defeat. That would then start to unravel the French empire, as N has no goodwill from his vassals left and his allies are likely to turn on him.
Unless N can force Russia into a sullen and unreliable but legally monitored alliance by a stalemate or victory in better weather in Russia in 1812 or 1813 and then gives up on Spain c. 1813, pulling out in favour of the Bourbons (very unlikely if strategically wise), the French empire looks doomed in the long run - if only once the finances finally collapse and sections of the military elite get fed up with N's refusal to compromise and restrict his aims , perhaps after another 5 years or so. Arguably a more cautious and politically 'conciliatory' N who tires of long and risky campaigns after around 1807 and spends more time on his (highly capable ) admin work and legal reforms once he's in his forties might well have kept his empire in being for far longer, by not pushing his luck or alienating so many of his potential challengers. The usual CF question here is 'what if he hadn't gone into Spain' or 'what if he had been content to prop up a puppet Ferdinand VII with troops and administrators not put yet another Bonaparte on the throne of a culturally hostile ultra-Catholic country'. But this would arguably need a character transplant - as with Alexander the Great, the risk-taking and never knowing when to stop was the 'down' side of his genius.
Arnold Toynbee had Alexander 'calmed down' in June 323 by his serious illness which was in OTL fatal, and relying more on his top generals and admin men as a sort of advisory board from then on with e reduced number of campaigns. The same might apply to Napoleon? Possibly a similar sort of 'shock to the system' for him, such as being caught out by the prolonged Russian withdrawal when he reaches Smolensk, not going further or being lured into a march on Moscow, managing to keep his army supplied over a milder winter, and as N has the larger and still intact army forcing a patched-up treaty out of Alexander for a few years - then N's health declining after the rigours of the campaign so he can't manage any new campaign in Spain. Britain can't finance another Coalition for a few years either, due to the costs of the Peninsular War, the War of 1812, and the loss of European markets - and N has to accept a British-run Portugal and a technically pro-French but unreliable Spain , which might then fall into civil war with a liberal military revolt against the repressive and politically inept Ferdinand (with GB backing the rebels to undermine N's ally Ferdinand) . A new 'Amiens 1802' treaty is signed with Britain, or the two enemies just stay at titular war but without major fighting. The French empire might still be brought down within a decade by a new Coalition as the vassal-states turn on a weakening N , or N dies on schedule (was he poisoned or not in OTL?) and his under-age son's accession or sheer military exhaustion causes peace (subject to breakaway revolts in Italy and western Germany/ the Netherlands which France might be unable to stop). Arguably if N II succeeds, his Habsburg relations have a stake in preserving a strongish France as an ally to keep an eye on the threat posed by Russia - so F can keep its empire as far as the Rhine plus N Italy? And Joseph B or Murat in Naples if the British can't evict them due to a Habsburg veto ?
A Napoleon who stays firm to the principles of the French Republic and does not make himself Emperor but stays as 'First Consul', at the head of a technically republican and semi-democratic but really rigged political system (cf modern authoritarians in some of the ex-USSR lands?), might well have a wider base of support and be less controversial - but that would require greater idealism from him and less 'family mafia piles up loot and crowns' style tactics in how he ruled. More of a 'Caesar' (cultural influences from David and other Classicist fans of the Revolution?) , or even an 'Augustus', and less of a Charlemagne or a family dynast? Keeping up the 1790s traditions of creating vassal republics, not vassal kingdoms? (Given the present debates, there is also the question of how N turned on the ex-slave republic in Haiti, putting cool political/ strategic ambition and calculation above idealism; cf Beethoven giving up on him when he made himself Emperor.) Given his restlessness and his initial rise to glory in N Italy as a republican scourge of the old monarchies in 1796-1800, he could use Italy as a springboard after c. 1804 to start meddling in the Greek lands (assisting a carve-up of the Ottoman Sultanate as a 'friend of liberty' in the long Classicist cultural admiration tradition) with Greece, Crete, Cyprus and Egypt for himself and the Balkans for a bought-off Alexander I and Francis II. Then we have a prolonged clash with Britain in the Levant but no major wars in Europe unless or until France is militarily worn out in its Eastern wars, and a Napoleon who makes more of his 'Roman' heritage as a new sort of Caesar and Paris as a 'new Rome'. Whether this would end in another prolonged war with a coalition of his enemies, economic exhaustion, and defeat once the British navy wrecked his Levantine ambitions is another matter.