One of the more famous real estate sales in human history was the Louisiana Purchase. Not only was it an enormous sale, but also all sides involved got what they wanted from the deal. In 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte sold the French colonies of Louisiana to the young United States for a sum of $15 million (estimated to be roughly $309 million today). There are a few different reasons for the purchase.

From the French perspective, they had colonised Louisiana and the surrounding areas in 1699, but lost control of the area to the Spanish in 1762. French ownership was only re-established in 1800, but French overseas territories appeared problematic. Far away, with little monetary value and coupled with revolts; Napoleon realised it might be best to sell to the United States. Not only would this give him a viable war-chest to spend on the conflicts everyone saw on the horizon, but it would also put France on good terms with the young United States, who themselves were eyeing up British Canada.

From the United States’ perspective, they were not only purchasing Louisiana, but they were purchasing the pre-emptive rights to expand West into Native American territory (with most of the land given to the US in the Louisiana Purchase not being directly owned by the French but by the Natives). It would also provide them the strategically crucial Mississippi River port of New Orleans. The United States at the time was not even 50 years old yet, but already it had a young generation coming of age who had not seen the war with Great Britain, and who were jingoistic glory hunters, looking at the map of America - their ‘Manifest Destiny’ - and all the potential for expansion. Sure, that land was currently occupied by Canadians and Native Americans, but to many in the Democratic-Republican Party, such as John Adams Harper, Richard Mentor Johnson, Peter Buell Porter and ambitious sons of founding fathers such as William Henry Harrison; these barriers were there to be overcome. In-fact, the only reason the US had not already expanded was both opposition from the Federalist Party who were more concerned with their commerce and maritime trade with the various European powers and didn’t see a potential war in the Americas as helpful, many Southern landowners who didn’t want to see an imbalance in the number of slaves, and the British presence in the area, with the British Empire providing protection to and support of the Natives who Britain felt had a right to live in the area.

One of the most fascinating things about the Louisiana Purchase, however, is how the US paid for it. A large number of the banks which provided the money were, in-fact, British. This is somewhat interesting because this purchase sparked two different attempted invasions of Britain and its empire:

It funded Napoleon’s ‘Grande Armée’ which he planned to use to cross the channel and conquer Britain, after the island nation had declared war on him in 1803 (once again) with the failure of the Treaty of Amiens. By 1805, Napoleon had his army standing on the Northern French coast ready to invade, and only abandoned these plans when the now United Kingdom (following the Acts of Union 1800) paid the Austrian Holy Roman Empire, Russian Empire and Kingdom of Sweden to declare War on France, and Austrian troops attacked Napoleon’s ally in Bavaria; it is the fact that the French Army was so far away from Bavaria that makes the Ulm campaign of that October - the speed with which Napoleon managed to force the entire Austrian army under Mack to surrender without a fight, by simply outmanoeuvring them - all the more impressive.

The other attempted invasion that was caused by the Louisiana Purchase was the failed US invasion of Canada in 1812. As stated, the US had been eyeing up lands in Canada and many in the country were looking for any excuse for war. Some historians today will keep up the lie that the war was started because of British impressment of American sailors into the Royal Navy. This is not true. Not only were the British not impressing Americans, but rather stopping American ships to search for British stowaways who were themselves attempting to avoid impressment, but also the British government realised this was causing tension with the US and, keen to avoid a war whilst also fighting France in Europe, agreed to stop these actions long before the War of 1812 occurred. The idea that the War of 1812 was anything other than an attempt by the US to invade a Canada that they incorrectly assumed would be as enthusiastic about ‘independence’ as the Thirteen Colonies were, would be demonstrably false and likely the result of American historians trying to avoid painting themselves as imperialists.

So, by providing money for the US to purchase Louisiana from France, the British indirectly funded two separate invasions of itself. However, this was not a problem. Both of the invasions failed.

In Europe, any chance of a French invasion of the United Kingdom was thwarted when on the 21st October 1805, Vice-Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson gave his life in the Battle of Trafalgar to ensure that Britain defeated the much larger combined Franco-Spanish fleet, thus ensuring total British naval superiority for the next century and paving way for the Pax Britannica.

This crushing news to Napoleon came to him just a day after his own astonishing victory at Ulm where he opened the road to Vienna after he, to use his own words “[had] defeated the Austrian army by simply marching”. Trafalgar was utterly devastating for Bonaparte, as the British would not stop declaring war on him and funding other major European powers to fight him on the continent, and he now had no way of invading them. That is not to say that it was all bad for him - he was about to March into Vienna, after that he would mastermind his greatest victory at Austerlitz which would “end the war with a thunderclap”, thus forcing the Third Coalition to sign the Treaty of Pressburg, ceding large swathes of Germany to create the Confederation of the Rhine - a French buffer state - and an indemnity to France of 40 million Francs, but also leading to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire 1000 years after its creation; the war ended in a French victory.

The War of 1812 would also be a failed invasion. The British Empire was, at the time, focused on the much more important conflict against Napoleon and so was unwilling to commit any more than (at the absolute most during the entirety of the war) 7% of Britain’s army to the conflict (remembering that Britain had a small army by the standards of the day as it was). This tiny British force was overwhelmingly successful. Not only were the Americans repeatedly repelled at battles such as Queenston Heights, but also the strategically important city of Detroit was captured by a much smaller force after surrendering without a fight, the entire American economy was blockaded into bankruptcy and insolvency, and a small force of British marines successfully invaded the American capital and set fire to many strategically important government buildings such as the White House.

The British had no interest in gaining anything from this minor sideshow of a conflict and sought to end it without any hassle, whilst the US after a series of embarrassments eventually agreed to sign the Treaty of Ghent in 1814. The peace deal was formally a white peace, but given the context of the US war aims this can be considered an overwhelming British victory. In-fact, there is an argument to be made that this was the most humiliating military disaster in American history - not only had they, a nation barely 50 years old, declared war on the largest maritime power in human history which sat an ocean away, failing to achieve their objective in the war, but they had repeatedly suffered military humiliations, faced economic bankruptcy and all the while only faced a tiny fraction of British reserves. It is no wonder that American propaganda in the years to follow would focus on things such as the Battle of New Orleans, a strategically unimportant American victory that occurred after the peace treaty of Ghent had been signed, or the victories of the USS Constitution, ignoring that they were against much smaller, totally outclassed British vessels and that it was Britain that overwhelmingly won the naval war.

All in all, the Louisiana Purchase managed to provide some sort of victory for all parties involved. For the US it provided them with their justification for ‘Manifest Destiny’ and Westward expansion into Native lands. For the French, it provided them with the necessary funds to create La Grande Armée which would come to control Europe from Lisbon to Moscow. For the British, it provided two invasions which failed, resulting in the United Kingdom becoming the unopposed maritime power of the age, ushering in an era of hegemony that would set the stage for the second industrial revolution.