Dilandu wrote:But it look like we deviated from the line. My point is, that Japanese made some assumption - and was partially right - and defeat the overwhelmingly superior Russian Empire.
Why the France can't made some assumptions of her own?
Let's recall the 1898.
The main french naval strategy, as i could reconstruct it, were based on few assumptions:
- The Royal Navy would prefer to act, not to passively stay in defense
- The Royal Navy wouldn't left the metropoly undefended
- The mobilisation rate of british naval reserve is inferior to the french
Which were kept at a sufficiently reliable facts, not just assumptions. For example, before the Fisher's reforms, the Royal Navy really didn't have something like sufficient number of "core crews" for the reserve ships, and the rates of UK naval mobilization in 1890-early 1900 were poor.
The french navy was in 1898 mostly concentrated in Mediterranian. For 1898, they have here:
- Four-to-five modern "Charles Martell" class battleships (the "Massena" arrived lately)
- One "intermediate" battleship "Brennus"
- Three older (by design) "Marceau"-class battleships
The opposite side - the Mediterranian Navy of Great Britain - have in 1898:
- Two modern "Majestic"-class battleships, HMS "Caesar" and HMS "Illustrious"
- Six "Royal Sovereign"-class battleships; HMS "Royal Sovereign", HMS "Hood", HMS "Empress of India", HMS "Ramilles", HMS "Revenge", HMS "Royal Oak"
- Two still comissioned "Admiral"-class battleships
So, theoretically the Royal Navy surpassed the french navy in mediterranian as 10 battleships to 8. But of the ten Mediterranian Fleet battleships, only two were modern, and the two "Admirals" was clearly outdated and unfitted for 1890th naval warfare.
So, actually the french navy in Mediterranian was superior to the british. Due to the french more powerfull artillery (long-barreled guns, reloaded at any train), more powerfull ammunition (the french already have HE with melinite, that would be immensely effective against the old, citadel-armoured "Royal Sovereign"'s), more modern tactic (the Royal Navy still used the old "turn at flagship's command", when the french adopted more simple and effective "do what the flagship done") and some other things - the french were perfectly able to inflict the Mediterranian-type Tsusima against RN.
Of course, the Royal Navy have a lot of battleships in metropoly (and some on Far East). But the problem was, that actually they have only six more "Majestic" and two more "Royal Sovereign" (not counting the second-rates on China Station, because they were too far)of Channel Fleet in comission. And the RN was unable to send the significant part of Channel Fleet without the weakening the defense of metroply. The Briain was actually not greatly loved on the continent; the relations with Germany were bad, and the Russia was the french ally.
So if the french would be able to inflict some serious damage to the RN in Mediterranian, the RN would found itself unable to compensate. At least until the reserve would be recomissioned, that may take more than a half of the year. During that time, the french navy would be able to do anything they want on Mediterranian - probably even seize the Malta and Gibraltar - and effectively leave the RN without any base in region.
I will not say that in practice it would have gone so well, but it would require a lower of assumptions than for the Japanese to defeat the Russian Empire!
The biggest difference between the Russo-Japanese War and a hypothetical Anglo-French war in 1898 is the difference in what some analysts would call their "geostratic" positions. That is, geography favored the British in any reinforcement/redistribution of forces much more than it favored Russia in the Far East. While it's true that France had the edge in the Med, did they really want to kick off a war against England in which they might enjoy short-term successes but would ultimately find themselves up against not a somewhat ramshackle continental empire with a (by European standards) very limited industrial base (that's Russia; sorry! ) but rather against what was overwhelmingly the greatest industrial power in the world at that time? I'm not entirely certain that the differential between France and England at that time wasn't at least close (proportionately) to the difference between Japan and Russia, though I haven't tried to go and pull out any research data to support that. When you couple that with the fact that in 1898 the Brits had 15 more battleships under construction (counting the last 3 Majestics and reaching a little to bring in the 3 Formidables which had only just been laid down), whereas the French had only 6 (counting Bouvet, the 3 Charlemagnes, Henri IV and Iena. At least the remaining Majestics and Ocean, Goliath and Canopus could almost certainly have been rushed to completion by mid-1899 (don't forget; this is the same nation that rushed Dreadnought through to completion in one year from a standing start) and would have constituted a much greater reinforcement of British naval strength than the French (whose ability to accelerate construction was much lower, anyway) could have looked for in the same time period. Moreover, I think it's highly likely the Brits would have done in 1898 what they'd done repeatedly in earlier wars and risked reducing their strength in home waters to reinforce the Med if that was the critical theatre. When you combine that with how much more rapidly the Brits would be able to redploy from distant stations, compared to the way the Baltic Fleet moved to the Far East (rather in the nature of a snail with severe arthritis, I'm afraid ), the French time window would have been even narrower.
Finally, unlike Japan in the Far East, England had a potential ally, very close to home, with an extremely powerful army: the German Empire. The Second Boer War didn't start until October 1899 and Germany didn't pass the First Naval law until 1898, so the two most vexatious pre-WWI issues between Germany and England really wouldn't have been factors at this time, and there was always that lingering Anglo-Russian animosity to consider as an additional motivator for cooperation and Russophile France. I think it's highly likely that if France had initiated a war in the Med and Foreign Secretary Salisbury had gone to Chancellor Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst and Naval Minister von Tirpitz and suggested an alliance (accompanied by a naval understanding and possibly some postwar overseas territorial adjustments at French expense), Germany might just have been prepared to rattle a few sabers along her eastern frontiers. Russia didn't have anyone it could get to do that in Japan's case.
What I'm saying, in other words, is that in many ways the Russo-Japanese War took place in a vacuum as far as the other Great Powers were concerned. No one else's fundamental interests or territorial integrity were threatened in any way, and it was highly unlikely that Russia could offer any of the other Great Powers sufficient inducement to join up with her. England and France already had just about everything they wanted in China and Indo-China, and it was very unlikely Russia (especially after the battering her prestige had taken) could possibly have reassembled the coalition which compelled Japan to give up Korea after the Sino-Japanese War. That was distinctly not the case in Europe and it's extremely unlikely France (a) could have organized a "bolt from the blue" (i.e., sudden, surprise attack) against the British Empire without the Brits realizing it was coming and taking rather more effective steps than were taken at Port Arthur and Vladivostok (or in St. Petersburg) or (b) have risked a war which could have had major implications for her own territorial integrity if the Brits started cozying up to Imperial Germany. And if England had demonstrated anything over the last 300 years or so (from the time of William and Mary on) it was that she understood how to play the balance of power game and cut pragmatic deals even with people she really, really didn't like (like Austria and Russia during the Napoleonic Wars) when her fundamental security was on the line. So despite all the traditional animosity between the "Frogs" and the "Limeys" and the lunatics of the Jeuene Ecole notwithstanding, the probability of an Anglo-French War in the second half of the 19th century was never really in the cards.
If such a war had begun, there would probably have been an Admiral Pierre Yammomoto or Isoroku Courbet who would have said "«Dans le cas d'une guerre dans la Méditerranée, je peux courir sauvage pendant six mois ... après ça, je dois sans espoir de succès."