Which could have been the consequences for Europe if after the defeat of Napoleonic France there would have been any Congress of Vienna or similar treaties, and every victorious power would have tried to impose their 'solutions' to the other? I.e. Prussia/Austria restoring 1795 borders in Poland against Russian will, no UK Netherlands or Switzerland restored, no continental balance under UK supervision, no Swedish neutrality, no Norway passed to Sweden etc. etc.
WI: No Congress of Vienna after the defeat of Napoleonic France
- Thread starter Mario
- Start date
Immediate war. UK would sit in their island, losing their money and influence because they were unable of solve all the mess which Europe was after Napoleon.
How do you determine what happens to France itself without some sort of international treaty?
There could be an ad-hoc agreement among the major allies around the disposing of France itself without a general European settlement. This is considerably easier if Napoleon were to accept peace earlier on more generous terms, such as the post-Leipzig "Frankfurt Proposals" that would have left Napoleon on the French throne and allowed France to retain the Rhineland, Belgium, and Savoy. This would leave much less territory that must be divided up in the peace treaty with France, and wouldn't require inter-allied negotiations over the details of a new French regime. Napoleonic allies and client states such as Bonaparte Spain and the Duchy of Warsaw could then be dealt with separately (presumably by the British unilaterally restoring the Spanish Bourbons and Russia either unilaterally annexing Warsaw of negotiating a bilateral or trilateral partition treaty with Prussia and maybe Austria as well).
The problem with the above is Napoleon himself, who seems to have been constitutionally incapable of accepting defeat when he still had any military leverage at all. Nor did he seem to be capable of restraining himself from trying to alter the deal in his favor the instant he spotted an opportunity to do so. Perhaps the best POD would be for Napoleon to be killed near the end of the Battle of Leipzig, leaving a regency for his young son as the government that would be accepting and adhering to the Frankfurt Proposals.