Forty Days Campaign (Napoleon's World)

The Forty Days Campaign, also referred to as the Conquest of England, was a military invasion orchestrated in May and June of 1815 by Napoleon Bonaparte of France against the British Empire, led at this point by the Lord Neville, commander of the remaining British Forces. Beginning with the Landing at Southhampton on May 21st, 1815 and ending with the surrender by King George III at York on June 30th, the campaign lasted exactly forty days.

Buildup to the Forty Days
In 1815, Napoleon was at the effective peak of his conquest of Europe. Austria and Italy had been conquered in rapid succession in 1813 and 1814 following the fall of Russia, and with the victory of France over the Spanish insurrection and Portuguese army in the Peninsular War, the only true enemies remaining were England and Sweden. Napoleon would deal with assimilating Scandinavia later; with Britain reeling from heavy losses in Italy and Spain, the French saw a narrow window of opportunity to defeat their most powerful enemy.

On September 14th, 1814, Napoleon called his inner circle for a meeting in Rouen. There, they spent the next fourteen days debating strategy regarding what was to be the greatest sea invasion in history, as Napoleon envisioned it. The arguments about the strategy for assaulting coastal England revolved around three key points: where to land the invasion force, how to coordinate troop movements once across the English Channel to move as effectively as possible, and how to move materiel safely and swiftly across the Channel during and after the initial landing, in regards to the powerful British Navy.

The general plan suggested by General David Savalier at the Rouen conference was the outline all other strategic plans would be based off of - sabotage throughout the winter of shipyards, the implementation of spies along the coastline, and to land the forces in three days, in waves, up and down the English Channel. Savalier's plan called for 300,000 soldiers to be moved in three days. It also called for the quick movement of the main force, to be landed between the Isle of Wight and Dover, towards London while the tail end of the invasion force would secure the Cornwall Peninsula in order to help move supplies across the Channel. The eastern flank of the army would secure the area around Dover and Hastings so that a secondary army, made up of 35,000 Dutch and German volunteers, could assault from Amsterdam two days after the initial force had landed.

There was a degree of disarray amongst Napoleon's younger generals Robert Legrange and Ricard Murburrien. Both products of the campaigns in Russia and Austria, they believed that a single decisive victory over the British between the coastline and London would be required to cut the British army in half. They're plan called for the establishment of forces on the coastline before any moves could be made northwards, fearing that they would be stranded without supplies.

Napoleon finally agreed to Savalier's estimates of troop requirements, calling up 175,000 reserves and mobilizing 150,000 additional forces in northern France for what was promised to be a swift campaign. Napoleon also pointed out to his generals that the goal of the campaign was to remove Britain's ability to wage war, not to conquer the island, for fear of insurrection and rebellion. The French were on the brink of finally realizing their ancient hope of demilitarizing their hated enemy and removing England from concerns on the European continent.