Editing Industrial Revolution (section)

==Napoleonic Wars==
{{topquote|All in all, French armies wrought much suffering in Europe, but they also radically changed the lay of the land. In much of Europe, gone were feudal relations; the power of the guilds; the absolutist control of monarchs and princes; the grip of the clergy on economic, social, and political power; and the foundation of ancien régime, which treated different people unequally based on their birth status. These changes created the type of inclusive economic institutions that would then allow industrialization to take root in these places. By the middle of the nineteenth century, industrialization was rapidly under way in almost all the places that the French controlled, whereas places such as Austria-Hungary and Russia, which the French did not conquer, or Poland and Spain, where French hold was temporary and limited, were still largely stagnant.|Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, ''Why Nations Fail''}}

{{topquote|In early life he may have been a sincere republican; but he hated anarchy and disorder, and, before his campaign in Italy was over, he had begun to plan to make himself ruler of France. He worked systematically to transform the people's earlier ardor for liberty into a passion for military glory and plunder.|Willis Mason West}}

Imagine a world where Tom Cruise succeeded in killing Hitler and then Rommel proceeded to do all the conquering that Hitler promised to do except without all the genocide, only to lose it all by invading Russia in winter. Replace Hitler with Maximilien Robespierre and Rommel with Napoleon Bonaparte and that's basically the Napoleonic Wars. 

France was a shit place to live if you were a peasant and always had been, but the 1790s were particularly shitty. Like "why is my bread made of sawdust" shitty (no, really, that happened). Seeing that America had done all right for itself after throwing out the [[monarchy]], a bunch of French people decided they had nothing to lose and tried the same. Things got a little [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror out of hand] as they [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bartholomew%27s_Day_massacre tend to in France] and before long a young military officer decided that the best course of action was to shoot some protesters with cannons, and the country loved him for it.

Now that he was in control, [[Emprah|Emperor Napoleon]] had a relatively short to-do list: Lead and shape <s>Man</s>Frenchkind <s>into a psychic race</s> and surpass the <s>Eldar</s> '''Romans''' by learning from their mistakes, unite Humanity under one aegis and allow for <s>instant</s> communication and travel <s>across all human inhabited worlds</s>, kill literally every <s>Xenos</s> Brit(is there really much of a difference?) and most importantly, prevent another calamity like the Age of Strife or Fall of the <s>Eldar</s> '''Roman Empire'''.

Five coalitions were raised against the Emperor's Great Crusade, and each was smashed to pieces by his <s>Astartes</s> '''Horse Artillery''' and the <s>Solar Auxilia</s> '''Garde Impériale'''. This went on until the Emperor was betrayed by <s>Horus</s> '''the weather'''. In the disastrous invasion of <s>Isstvan V</s> '''Russia''', the Grand Army would suffer 80% losses, many due to freezing to death.  

While Napoleon would fight against two more coalitions against him, the defeat in Russia would prove to be the beginning of the end. 

To fund these wars Napoleon sold the United States a '''huge''' chunk of land that's now known as the Louisiana Purchase. This was actually controversial in the United States at the time since it wasn't ''explicitly'' allowed by the Constitution of the United States. The sheer size of the acquisition surprised nearly everyone except Napoleon; the negotiators sent by President Jefferson were only looking to acquire New Orleans and access to the Mississippi. Napoleon was eager to divest himself of his New World holdings because they were more trouble than they were worth (a lesson Spain never took to heart and the British only after a very long time); this was shortly after France embarrassingly lost Haiti to the world's first (and so far only) successful large-scale slave revolt. Ultimately, the argument that the power to make treaties was sufficient to make a treaty exchanging money for land won out and American settlers soon flooded the largely undeveloped land. Another lasting consequence was that Napoleon's government offered a large reward for anyone who could develop a cost-effective method of preserving food. Nicolas Appert claimed this prize when he discovered that food cooked in sealed jars would last for a long time (even though he admittedly had no clue why it worked). This would eventually be refined into canning.

The key to Napoleons success on the battlefield was mainly due to two factors. The first was that he abolished the system of purchasing military ranks, which was the norm for all other European states at the time. It didn't matter if you never even saw a musket in your life, if you laid down 10.000 Francs, you were a General of his majesty now, congratulations. Napoleon abolished this entirely, granting ranks and the prestige that came with them exclusively through merit. If you were a compentent commander, it didn't matter how high your birth or how thick your briefcase was, you could rise all the way to the top to become of Napoleons famous Marshals (although that didn't stop Napoleon from engaging in some dubious nepotism here and there - in the end, two of his brothers ended up becoming Marshals too and his son-in-law not just a Marshal, but also King of Naples). This in turn not only guaranteed that his armies and divisions were lead by the crème dé la crème of his Generals, but also increased the morale and motivation of his troops dramatically, beyond just the patriotic fervor of the years prior. Whereas the soldiers of Russia, Prussia or Austria were mostly impoverished farmhands or unlucky vagrants, pressed into uniforms and drilled until the last vestiges of humanity were stripped away, Napoleons soldiers were proud, willing to take risks and hungry for glory and promotions. 

The second was that he revolutionized logistics and offensive tactics. Napoleon can arguably even be credited with inventing the basic concept of modern maneuver warfare from whole cloth. To give some context: Armies during the tail end of the 18th century usually moved in large, single formations, which mainly served the purpose of stopping any of the aformentioned pressganged sods from deserting too early. The thought of splitting up into smaller forces didn't really occur to the strategists of that time since the sense of honour put an emphasis on big, decisive single battles with little room for skirmishes. Such a big, central force had to be upkept, so they carried a sizeable chunk of civilians with them (it wasn't unheard of that the total amount of people moving in an army were at least half of the fielded manpower): metalworkers to repair cannons, smiths to make nails and horseshoes, the actual wives and children of many soldiers in the army and also, what might seem utterly bizarre to us today, people that could only be described as tourists. Napoleon did away with the civilians in his armies entirely, keeping only a number of specialists like sappers and engineers on hand, preferring to instead aquire (yes, aquire, civilians that had their possessions lifted in this system were entitled to compensation after the fighting was over and looting was heavily punished) their supplies from the cities and countryside he marched through. This gave him a massive advantage in operational flexibility and allowed him to march quicker into advantageous positions or exploit the flanks of his enemies. Another advantage of this system was that it allowed Napoleon to split his forces up into smaller divisions and corps that had permission to act independently from the main force and when opportunity arose. A common theme of diary entries of Generals that fought against Napoleon was how he always managed to take them by surprise in places they least expected attacks from. It has to be said though that Napoleons massive skill as a micromanager was often the single part that kept this machine going; in theaters were he wasn't personally involved, it generally fell apart when less competent commanders tried to do the same and felt overwhelmed in the face of the flow of information and constant decisionmaking they had to process, like in Spain and during the retreat out of Russia.  

===The War of 1812===
The young USA would engage in its own concurrent fight against the British. In 1812, the U.S. declared war on the British over press-ganging of American sailors... two days after the British put a stop to it (transatlantic communication at the time could go no faster than transatlantic ships, which took roughly two months). The official ''casus belli'' aside, the real reason the United States declared war on Britain was in retaliation for British support of Tecumseh's Shawnee Confederation and a desire to conquer Canada. Despite terrible results for the US on land, which saw the White House burned down by Canadians, the U.S. did better than expected on the naval front. Even with Napoleon tying up most of the Royal Navy, the hastily raised and underfunded U.S. Navy matching them was a serious accomplishment. 

One especially notable U.S. vessel was the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_floating_battery_Demologos United States floating battery ''Demologos''] (retroactively renamed the ''Fulton'' after its creator), the first documented steam warship. However, the principle muscle of the USN was the nation's first six frigates, originally constructed to fight the Barbary pirates. Although they were relatively old ships by the start of the war, they were still well armed, sturdy, exceptionally fast for their weight and virtually cannon-proof due to their composite-armor-like hulls, built from American live oak instead of comparatively flimsy European wood. This is where USS ''Constitution'' got her nickname of "Old Ironsides"; during a battle with HMS ''Guerriere'', one of her crewmen watched shot after shot bounce off ''Constitution'''s hull like a Tau punching a Space Marine and famously shouted "Huzzah! Her sides are made of iron!" After a string of high profile defeats the Royal Navy forbade their captains to engage them with less than a two-to-one advantage.

In December 1814 both sides declared peace since they weren’t getting anywhere and the original cause for the war was no longer applicable. On 8 January 1815 [sic] the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_New_Orleans Battle of New Orleans] was fought and ended in an overwhelming U.S. victory, despite the war already being over (see the above point of communication being slow).