French Preparations
From 1803 to 1805 a new army of 200,000 men, known as the Armée des côtes de l'Océan (Army of the Ocean Coasts) or the Armée de l'Angleterre (Army of England), was gathered and trained at camps at Boulogne, Bruges and Montreuil. A large "National Flotilla" of invasion barges was built in Channel ports along the coasts of France and the Netherlands (then under French domination as the Batavian Republic), right from Etaples to Flushing, and gathered at Boulogne. This flotilla was initially under the energetic command of Eustache Bruix, but he soon had to return to Paris, where he died of tuberculosis in March 1805.
Port facilities at Boulogne were improved (even though its tides made it unsuitable for such a role) and forts built, whilst the discontent and boredom that often threatened to overflow among the waiting troops was allayed by constant training and frequent ceremonial visits by Napoleon himself (including the first ever awards of the Imperial Légion d'honneur). A medal was struck and a triumphal column erected at Boulogne to celebrate the invasion's anticipated success. However, when Napoleon ordered a large-scale test of the invasion craft despite choppy weather and against the advice of his naval commanders such as Charles René Magon de Médine (commander of the flotilla's right wing), they were shown up as ill-designed for their task and, though Napoleon led rescue efforts in person, many men were lost.
Napoleon also seriously considered using a fleet of troop-carrying balloons as part of his proposed invasion force and appointed Marie Madeline Sophie Blanchard as an air service chief, though she said the proposed aerial invasion would fail because of the winds. (France's first military balloon had been used in 1794 by Jean-Marie Coutelle.) Though an aerial invasion proved a dead-end, the prospect of one captured the minds of the British print media and public.
These preparations were financed by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, whereby France ceded her huge North American territories to the United States in return for a payment of 60 million French francs ($11,250,000). The entire amount was spent on the projected invasion. Ironically, the United States had partly funded the purchase by means of a loan from Baring Brothers, a British bank.
Read more about this topic: Napoleon's Planned Invasion Of The United Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the words french and/or preparations:
“In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite the fact that the American Revolution was successful—realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime—while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.”
—Irving Kristol (b. 1920)
“At the ramparts on the cliff near the old Parliament House I counted twenty-four thirty-two-pounders in a row, pointed over the harbor, with their balls piled pyramid-wise between them,—there are said to be in all about one hundred and eighty guns mounted at Quebec,—all which were faithfully kept dusted by officials, in accordance with the motto, “In time of peace prepare for war”; but I saw no preparations for peace: she was plainly an uninvited guest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)