page_title: Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom
section_title: French preparations
hierarchical_section_title: Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom / French preparations
caption_attribution_description: English: Inspecting the Troops at Boulogne, 15 August 1804
context_page_description: Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom at the start of the War of the Third Coalition, although never carried out, was a major influence on British naval strategy and the fortification of the coast of southeast England. French attempts to invade Ireland in order to destabilise the United Kingdom or as a stepping-stone to Great Britain had already occurred in 1796. The first French Army of England had gathered on the Channel coast in 1798, but an invasion of England was sidelined by Napoleon's concentration on campaigns in Egypt and against Austria, and shelved in 1802 by the Peace of Amiens. Building on planning for mooted invasions under France's Ancien Régime in 1744, 1759 and 1779, preparations began again in earnest soon after the outbreak of war in 1803, and were finally called off in 1805. Contrary to popular belief, the invasion was called off before the Battle of Trafalgar.
context_section_description: 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 d'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 Étaples 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. The part of the flotilla built by the Batavian Navy was under the command of vice-admiral Carel Hendrik Ver Huell.
  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 50 million French francs ($11,250,000). The entire amount was spent on the projected invasion. The United States had partly funded the purchase by means of a loan from Baring Brothers, a British bank, which essentially meant that the British were funding an invasion of themselves.
  For his planned subsidiary invasion of Ireland Napoleon had formed an Irish Legion in 1803, to create an indigenous part of his 20,000-man Corps d'Irelande.
caption: Inspection of troops at Boulogne, 15 August 1804
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