I'm mainly asking two things here, for further clarification:
Were there any beach landings during this period that matched the 50,000+ of the aforementioned famous landings?
Were they as catastrophic in their bloodshed?
Thanks for the help!
Napoleon's The Directory's extremely ill-fated Expédition d'Irlande in the winter of 1796 attempted to land about 15,000 soldiers on the coast of Ireland, in the hope of linking up with United Irish rebels and causing enough of a ruckus that England would release Ireland from the United Kingdom.
At least...that's what Wolf Tone and the boys thought would happen. Turns out the weather was so phenomenally rough that the French couldn't land, after loitering off the coast for almost two weeks. Between the bad weather and Royal Navy harrassment, over 2,000 Frenchmen were lost without a boot setting ashore, along with over a dozen ships.
Almost. We almost had one. Napoleon wanted to, and even largely planned a large scale invasion of England. He had well over 200,000 troops that he wanted to maneuver toward england on the longest night of the year. he had plans, and could very well could have mustered this movement in only eight hours. He also had commissioned some landing craft to accompany the armada across the Channel. He even went so far as to try and get Ireland to join the fight, and to pledge 20,000 men for this purpose. Of course, the channel was very hard to cross, given its infamous unpredictability and the multitude of unsuccessful campaigns. He also had Admiral Nelson to worry about, who was at the time double timing back up the coast from Spain, I believe. There are many other reasons why this didn't happen, but by God, this would have been one of the most amazing battles to ever happen in history, and would have likely changed the future of Europe. Though, I believe it wouldnt work. Napoleon was very good at using the Core system in his military. While he employed brilliant maneuvers before with strategy, despite the odds, his ability to mount a front using Core would have been exceptionally difficult once ashore the beaches of Britain, let alone the cliffs they would inevitably have to face. This is substantiated by the fact that his only two defeats other than the very early on defeat in Corsica, were tied to the fact that he failed to employ Core adequately.
If successful, the brilliance in the maneuver would have rivaled Normandy.
Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life (2014)