Brief History of Tripartite Alliance Earth
"Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.""
Napoleonic Wars (1803-1814)
The intervention of the United States in the Napoleonic Wars in 1805 as a by-product of the terms of the United States' 1803 purchase of Louisiana and American Anglophobia proved a crucial turning point in world history. Had the United States not warred with Britain from such an early date – on Marketplace Earth, for instance, the Anglo-American theatre of the Napoleonic Wars began in 1812 – it is quite possible that the young American republic would have had a pleasanter future. As it was, the United States looked to the France of Napoléon – initially the First Consul of the French Republic, and from 1804, Emperor of the French – as the only country in Europe that was organized along liberal (if authoritarian) lines. Many Americans also hoped that the United States could defeat Britain and acquire Canadian territories, so securing the northern frontier of the United States against British threats.
In Europe, Napoleonic France was concerned with expelling British influence from the European continent, and the construction of a mercantilist French empire in Europe and overseas. The Third Coalition, formed in 1805 by Britain, Austria, Russia, and Sweden, was soon defeated – the Austro-Russian armies were crushed, in December of 1805, at the battle of Austerlitz, while the Prussian army was defeated at Jena in October of 1806. The July 1807 treaties of Tilsit effectively created a French-led bloc in Europe, as the ancient Holy Roman Empire was destroyed and Napoléon began to install his relatives as king of puppet states while despite the British naval victory at Trafalgar in 1805, the distractions of the Anglo-American war allowed the French navy to maintain intermittant contact with its colonies in the Antilles, the Indian Ocean, and Louisiana. Following a failed Austrian resurgence in 1809, Napoléon worked to transform the Hapsburg empire into a satellite state, marrying the Hapsburg princess Marie-Joseph in 1810 and forcing Austria into an intimate French alliance.
Throughout this period, though Britain remained an opponent of Napoleonic France, while the Continental System – the French-mandated blockade of British goods – proved difficult to enforce. The beginning of the costly Peninsular War in Spain in 1808 soon demonstrated that Napoleonic France was not invincible, while the refusal of Russia's Tsar Alexander I to acknowledge the Continental System precipitated a disastrous French invasion of Russia in 1812-1813. Following his retreat to central Europe, a grand anti-French coalition was reformed, including Russia, Prussia, Britain, Sweden, and Austria. The Battle of Leipzig in October of 1813 broke the Napoleonic armies, and by March of 1814 Paris had been occupied. The decline of France left Britain free to turn the full might of its armed forces against the United States from 1812 on; by early 1814, the United States had suffered such heavy military losses and considerable economic disruption that it was willing to sign a humiliating peace treaty with Britain.