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The Nazi Scheme to Bombard New York City With Rockets and Other Unfinished Military Plans

Khalid Elhassan January 16, 2020 32 min

South Vietnam - United States — American troops in South Vietnam. USA Today

28. The Collapse of Napoleon’s Plan to Invade England

1805 Battle Off Cape Finisterre – a French defeat that convinced Napoleon to abandon his plans for invading England. Royal Museums Greenwich

Upon its return to European waters, the French Toulon fleet was defeated off Spain in the Battle of Cape Finisterre in July, 1805. The survivors fled to Cadiz, where they were blockaded. With the plan to control the English Channel in tatters, Napoleon gave up on the invasion of England.

In August, 1805, he renamed the finely trained Army of England the Grande Armee, and marched it from the Channel coast to Central Europe to fight the Austrians and Russians. Two months later, the Franco-Spanish fleet was defeated decisively at the Battle of Trafalgar, but by then the army that had trained for years to invade England was fighting in Central Europe, hundreds of miles from the English Channel.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.