suggest that the projected descent on England was always a feint,
designed to mask continental ambitions. According to this view, the huge
army assembled at Boulogne was actually used against Austria and
Russia, so this must have been the emperor's intention all along. Besides,
he never abandoned his Italian ambitions and actively pursued them
when he was supposed to be concentrating on the problem of England.
And if he truly wanted to invade England, would he really have provoked
Austria and Russia to the point where they were likely, had he crossed the
Channel, to launch themselves on France's undefended flank? Moreover,
Desbriere, the great student of Napoleon's invasion plans, detected a
number of strange discrepancies and oversights in both the detailed
planning at Boulogne and the overall strategy, leading him to doubt the
seriousness of Napoleon's intentions.
The 'feint' view was always encouraged by Napoleon when Emperor,
as part of the propaganda image of his invincibility and infallibility. Since
he had failed lamentably at Boulogne in r8o3--o5, it was in his interest to
pretend that he had never seriously intended to invade England. But on
St Helena he finally admitted the truth: he was in deadly earnest but had
bungled things. All relevant circumstantial evidence bears this out. Even
if he had been willing to spend millions of francs on z,soo invasion craft
he knew would never be used, how do we explain the agonizing about the
need fo r covering fleet action? A feint to deceive European powers would
have worked perfectly well without ordering Villeneuve, Ganteaume and
the other admirals to the West Indies to draw off defending squadrons. If
Napoleon was merely feinting, he must have been the greatest actor of all
time, and his terrifying rage when he learned of Villeneuve's retreat to
Cadiz the cheap trick of a thespian and charlatan. Besides, if he was
feinting, Napoleon was certainly playing with fire. It was certainly
possible that Ganteaume and Villeneuve could have combined and
entered the Channel while Nelson was still far away in the Atlantic. If
that had happened, the alleged 'bluff at Boulogne would have been called
in truly spectacular fashion.
However, it is certainly true that the assembly of a huge army at
Boulogne turned out to be an act of serendipity from the viewpoint of the
general political and military crisis - one that Napoleon confronted in
r8os as the result of his centrifugal fo reign policy, where no one clear aim
was ever pursued to the exclusion of others. Even as he assembled the
Grand Army at Boulogne, his thoughts often turned to the occupation of
the Italian ports of Taranto, Otranto and Brindisi as springboards fo r an
assault on Turkey. Was this the Promethean mind of a genius or simply a
marcin
(Marcin)
#1