1812 : Napoleon goes south-east

[Hecatee]

I'm no expert on Napoleon, that's about 2000 years too late for me, give or take a few centuries, but I wondered : what if, for whatever reason, the Russian Empire back off from any confrontation with Napoleon after Tilsit. Alexander does not break the blocus and sells to France and its vassals and allies in exchange for their manufactured goods instead of going toward England. Let's even posit that Napoleon maries Alexander's sister Catherine instead of Marie-Louise of Austria, as a way to make Russia tolerate the enlarged Grand Duchy of Warsaw that just received Galicia.

So the Eastern front is quiet and has no chance of going badly, freeing Napoleon... Oh, sure, he's got some trouble in the peninsula, but thrusts his marchals to solve the issue for him. He thus sets his eye on an old foe whom he severly shaked earlier in his career, the Ottomans, so recently defeated by his brother in law...

Where does that take him ? All of the Balkans fall under his rule ?

 

[longsword14]

Napoleon had no reason to go and attack the Ottomans when his focus was in Europe. Tilsit was not going to last, with Poland and the Continental system being the two issues that could not be resolved.
Too many issues stand that cannot be removed by superficial changes (he either prepares for clearing the Peninsula, or most likely fighting Russia).

 

[Hecatee]

While Tilsit would have ended eventually, it did not need to end so soon. Napoleon could also have been interested in going south-east in order to reinforce it, for instance by helping two allies (Austro-Hungary and Russia) achieve some goals and then have them too busy trying to keep on the Balkans to be a threat for the near future. It also deprieved the British of an ally in the Med', and would be seen as a way to relaunch the strategy that had seen him visit Egpyt a few decades earlier...