How would France have been different if, the victorious anti-Napoleon coalition imposed Treaty of Versailles-type terms on France? Would there have been a Second French Empire if France would have been left weak?
How would France have been different if, the victorious anti-Napoleon coalition imposed Treaty of Versailles-type terms on France? Would there have been a Second French Empire if France would have been left weak?
Well. Basically what happened OTL after the Congress of Vienna then, so that doesn't really tell us much.You can expect a shitstorm a decade or three down the line when the French rise up against anti-republicanism and monarchial tyranny.
Well, if one starts thinking with the Napoleonic Empire, then the OTL was much, much worse than the Treaty of Versailles.
In Versailles, Germany had to give up important chunks of territory that they already had pre-war.
In Vienna, France got to keep all of their pre-wars territory (not counting colonies).
That's probably the big problem here. Britain is the only one that actually gets any benefit out of being harsh. What can the congress actually demand here?I guess the Brits would be unchallenged in taking pretty much all of France's colonies as 'mandates'.
In Versailles, Germany had to give up important chunks of territory that they already had pre-war.
In Vienna, France got to keep all of their pre-wars territory (not counting colonies).
Before the war France looked something like this.
The territorial losses were at least Versailles-grade, and this doesn't even begin to go into the matter of the loss of France's sphere of influence in Europe.
That was land they conquered not pre war core territory.
That was land they conquered not pre war core territory.
This thread, with roughly the same OP, may interests you
Allow me to crosspost.
It would have defeated the purpose of Congress of Vienna, that was about restoring pre-revolutionnary order. France was to be put back to his Ancien Régime borders in order to stress that and the victory of reactionary powers (Prussia, Russia, Austria) in Europe.
Furthermore in 1815, and critically after the 100 days, France wasn't really able to impose its terms, having irremediably lost but proven again that it could wage war relativly easily on its neighbours (even without real hope of definitive victory). At this point, it was about containing this potential....
One could say, furthermore, that Vienna powers wanted to avoid radicalizing french population against Bourbons or the Congress too much, critically when there was a clear tendency to pro-monarchism after 1814, to prevent making it an endless nest of troubles.
That was land they conquered not pre war core territory.
Even as early as 1802, when France and Britain signed a peace, France had obtained the Rhineland, Belgium and areas on the Italian borderland. So I believe it was pre-war territory. What constitutes core territory is a debatable matter. If you go back far enough you'd find Germany (or its earlier incarnation Prussia) had conquered just about everything it lost at Versailles.
The trouble is, the anti-Napoleon coalition was literally just that. Without Napoleon and his ambitions, and without French republicanism, Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia had no reason to be allies… and each of them wanted a strong France as a potential ally against one of the others.
So, as it's been said, the reason to just revert France to pre-1792 borders (and a few extras) was to:
1. keep the balance of powers in the continent
2. safeguard the position of the recently restored Bourbons
Now, what if...
France is even more punished in the overseas and is stripped out of everything. Surely this won't affect objective 1, France will still be strong enough to hold the balance of powers in the continent. With hindsight, how badly would it affect objective 2, though? IOTL they didn't last long...