Camp of Boulogne and the invasion project

The breakdown of the Peace of Amiens, in May 1803, brought back war with England. Unable to reach her otherwise, Bonaparte resolved to invade. The Army of the Ocean Coasts settled into a chain of camps from Holland to Brittany: Bruges under Davout, Utrecht under Marmont, Montreuil under Ney, and Boulogne, the central camp, under Soult.

It required a flotilla as much as an army: prames, gunboats and flat-bottomed craft accumulated by the thousand in the ports of the coast, whose basins were dug out and enlarged to receive them.

These two years of waiting were two years of continuous training. Divisions were grouped into permanent army corps, each with its own infantry, cavalry, artillery and staff, able to act alone for several days: this was the organisation that would fight the campaign of 1805.

The camp also became a stage. It was there, on 16 August 1804, that the great distribution of the crosses of the Legion of Honour took place before the assembled army; and there that the column of the Grande Armée was begun, at Wimille, above Boulogne.

The whole plan rested on a naval condition: to concentrate the French and Spanish squadrons off the Channel long enough to cover the crossing. Villeneuve, who was to draw Nelson to the West Indies and then come back north, fell back on Cádiz; the opportunity never came.

At the end of August 1805, with Austria and Russia now at war, Napoleon broke camp and launched his corps towards the Rhine. The march from the Channel to the Danube ended with the capitulation of Ulm on 20 October; the next day Trafalgar closed the question of invasion for good.