Camp de Boulogne

Napoleon's invasion of England
Part of the War of the Third Coalition
Napoleon distributing the first Imperial Légion d'honneur at the Boulogne camps, on August 16, 1804
Date Planned from 1803 to 1805 Location English Channel and Dutch, French and English coasts Result Called off
Belligerents
France (land and naval forces)  Batavian Republic (invasion barges) Spain (as part of combined fleet)	United Kingdom
Commanders and leaders
Napoleon I Eustache Bruix Pierre-Charles Villeneuve Honoré Joseph Antoine Ganteaume	George III Robert Calder Cuthbert Collingwood Horatio Nelson
Casualties and losses
Many men were lost on the Boulogne flotilla during preparations

Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom at the start of the War of the Third Coalition, although never carried out, was a major influence on British naval strategy and the fortification of the coast of southeast England. French attempts to invade Ireland in order to destabilise the United Kingdom or as a stepping-stone to Great Britain had already occurred in 1796. The first French Army of England had gathered on the Channel coast in 1798, but an invasion of England was sidelined by Napoleon's concentration on campaigns in Egypt and against Austria, and shelved in 1802 by the Peace of Amiens. Building on planning for mooted invasions under France's ancien régime in 1744, 1759 and 1779, preparations began again in earnest soon after the outbreak of war in 1803, and were finally called off in 1805. Contrary to what many think, the invasion was called off before the Battle of Trafalgar.

From 1803 to 1805 a new army of 200,000 men, known as the Armée des côtes de l'Océan (Army of the Ocean Coasts) or the Armée d'Angleterre (Army of England), was gathered and trained at camps at Boulogne, Bruges and Montreuil. A large "National Flotilla" of invasion barges was built in Channel ports along the coasts of France and the Netherlands (then under French domination as the Batavian Republic), right from Étaples to Flushing, and gathered at Boulogne. This flotilla was initially under the energetic command of Eustache Bruix, but he soon had to return to Paris, where he died of tuberculosis in March 1805.

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