[Sidenote: Austerlitz, 1805]
Wasting no tears or time on the decisive loss of sea-power, Napoleon hastened to follow up his land advantages. Occupying Vienna, he turned northward into Moravia where 1805 Francis II and Alexander I had gathered a large army of Austrians and Russians. On 2 December, 1805, the anniversary of his coronation as emperor,—his "lucky" day, as he termed it,—Napoleon overwhelmed the allies at Austerlitz in one of the greatest battles in history.
[Sidenote: Defeat of Austria: Treaty of Pressburg, 1805]
The immediate result of the campaign of Ulm and Austerlitz was the enforced withdrawal of Austria from the Third Coalition. Late in December, 1805, the emperors Francis II and Napoleon signed the treaty of Pressburg, whereby the former ceded Venetia to the kingdom of Italy and recognized Napoleon as its king, and resigned the Tyrol to Bavaria, and outlying provinces in western Germany to Württemberg. Both Bavaria and Württemberg were converted into kingdoms. By the humiliating treaty of Pressburg, Austria thus lost 3,000,000 subjects and large revenues; was cut off from Italy, Switzerland, and the Rhine; and was reduced to the rank of a second-rate power.
[Sidenote: Napoleon vs. Prussia]
[Sidenote: Jena (1806) and the Humiliation of Prussia]
For a time it seemed as if the withdrawal of Austria from the Third Coalition would be fully compensated for by the adhesion of Prussia. Stung by the refusal of Napoleon to withdraw his troops from southern Germany and by the bootless haggling over the transference of Hanover, and goaded on by his patriotic and high-spirited wife, the beautiful Queen Louise, timid Frederick William III at length ventured in 1806 to declare war against France. Then, with a ridiculously misplaced confidence in the old-time reputation of Frederick the Great, without waiting for assistance from the Russians who were coming up, the Prussian army—some 110,000 strong, under the old-fashioned duke of Brunswick—advanced against the 150,000 veterans of Napoleon. The resulting battle of Jena, on 14 October, 1806, proved the absolute superiority of Napoleon's strategy and of the enthusiastic French soldiers over the older tactics and military organization of the Prussians. Jena was not merely a defeat for the Prussians; it was at once a rout and a total collapse of that Prussian military prestige which in the course of the eighteenth century had been gained by the utmost sacrifice. Napoleon entered Berlin in triumph and took possession of the greater part of the kingdom of Prussia.
[Sidenote: Napoleon vs. Russia, Friedland]
[Sidenote: Treaty of Tilsit (1807): Dissolution of the Third Coalition]
The Russians still remained to be dealt with. Winter was a bad season for campaigning in East Prussia, and it was not until June, 1807, at Friedland, that Napoleon was able to administer the same kind of a defeat to the Russians that he had administered to the Austrians at Austerlitz and to the Prussians at Jena. The Tsar Alexander at once sued for peace. At Tilsit, on a raft moored in the middle of the River Niemen, Napoleon and Alexander met and arranged the terms of peace for France, Russia, and Prussia. The impressionable tsar was dazzled by the striking personality and the unexpected magnanimity of the emperor of the French. Hardly an inch of Russian soil was exacted, only a promise to coöperate in excluding British trade from the Continent. Alexander was accorded full permission to deal as he would with Finland and Turkey. "What is Europe?" exclaimed the emotional tsar: "Where is it, if it is not you and I?" But Prussia had to pay the price of the alliance between French and Russian emperors. From Prussia was torn the portion of Poland which was erected into the grand-duchy of Warsaw, under Napoleon's obsequious ally, the elector of Saxony. Despoiled altogether of half of her territories, compelled to reduce her army to 42,000 men, and forced to maintain French troops on her remaining lands until a large war indemnity was paid, Prussia was reduced to the rank of a third-rate power. Tilsit destroyed the Third Coalition and made Napoleon master of the Continent. Only Great Britain and Sweden remained under arms, and against the latter country Napoleon was now able to employ both Denmark and Russia.
[Sidenote: Humiliation of Sweden]
Early in 1808 a Russian army crossed the Finnish border without any previous declaration of war, and simultaneously a Danish force prepared to invade Sweden from the Norwegian frontier. The ill-starred Swedish king, Gustavus IV (1792-1809), found it was all he could do, even with British assistance, to fight off the Danes. The little Finnish army, left altogether unsupported, succumbed after an heroic struggle against overwhelming odds, and in 1809 the whole of Finland and the Åland Islands were formally ceded to Russia. Finland, however, did not enter Russia as a conquered province, but, thanks to the bravery of her people and not less to the wisdom and generosity of the Tsar Alexander, she long maintained her free constitution and was recognized as a semi- independent grand-duchy with the Russian tsar as grand-duke. Thus Sweden lost her ancient duchy of Finland, and she was permitted to retain a small part of Pomerania only at the humiliating price of making peace with Napoleon and excluding British goods from all her ports, In the same year, Gustavus IV was compelled to abdicate in favor of his uncle, Charles XIII (1809-1818), an infirm and childless old man, who was prevailed upon to designate as his successor one of Napoleon's own marshals, General Bernadotte. Surely, Napoleon might hope henceforth to dominate Sweden as he then dominated every other Continental state. Of course, Great Britain, triumphant on the seas, remained unconquered, but the British army, the laughingstock of Europe, could expect to achieve little where Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Sweden had failed.