NAPOLEON’S INVASION OF RUSSIA IN 1812. PART ONE A united Europe with a common currency, a common language and a common legal system, with Britain, whose citizens had never considered themselves Europeans, refusing to join and concentrating ever more on global issues. No, not the United Kingdom of a post-Brexit-twenty-first century, but a possible early nineteenth scenario, but where the common language would have been French, the common currency the franc and the common legal system the Code Napoleon. All this might have happened had Napoleon Bonaparte resisted the temptation to invade Russia in 1812 and, by avoiding a defeat from which he could not recover, thus retaining his domination of Europe and the, albeit sullen, adherence of Prussia, Austria and the German states. A massive army, not frittered away in the snows of Russia, would have been well sufficient to prevent any possibility of an invasion by England, the only power now still in arms against him. Even if Russia had condemned the Treaty of Tilsit and declared neutrality, Napoleonic France would have survived, and Britain would, eventually, have had to accept that, while herself turning to Imperial rather than European, ambitions. It was not to be, and the decision to invade Russia was the tipping point of nineteenth-century European history.
NAPOLEON'S INVASION OF RUSSIA IN 1812. PART ONE
NAPOLEON'S INVASION OF RUSSIA IN 1812. PART…
NAPOLEON'S INVASION OF RUSSIA IN 1812. PART ONE
NAPOLEON’S INVASION OF RUSSIA IN 1812. PART ONE A united Europe with a common currency, a common language and a common legal system, with Britain, whose citizens had never considered themselves Europeans, refusing to join and concentrating ever more on global issues. No, not the United Kingdom of a post-Brexit-twenty-first century, but a possible early nineteenth scenario, but where the common language would have been French, the common currency the franc and the common legal system the Code Napoleon. All this might have happened had Napoleon Bonaparte resisted the temptation to invade Russia in 1812 and, by avoiding a defeat from which he could not recover, thus retaining his domination of Europe and the, albeit sullen, adherence of Prussia, Austria and the German states. A massive army, not frittered away in the snows of Russia, would have been well sufficient to prevent any possibility of an invasion by England, the only power now still in arms against him. Even if Russia had condemned the Treaty of Tilsit and declared neutrality, Napoleonic France would have survived, and Britain would, eventually, have had to accept that, while herself turning to Imperial rather than European, ambitions. It was not to be, and the decision to invade Russia was the tipping point of nineteenth-century European history.