Peace of Bucharest.

Russo

War of

soff, and, after his army was reduced to twenty-five thousand men, was obliged to capitulate, December 8, 1811.

In the meantime an armistice had been concluded between Russia and Turkey, and negotiations for peace had been opened at Bucharest, but for months the Ottoman Porte refused to make the slightest cession of territory. Finally the mediation of Great Britain overcame the Porte's obstinacy; and the Peace of Bucharest was signed May 28, 1812, by which Turkey ceded the province of Bessarabia and one-third of Moldavia, with the towns of Ismail and Kilia and the fortresses of Kotzim and Bender, to Russia, and granted an amnesty to the Servians. As the British expedition against Copenhagen in September, 1807, Swedish caused the Emperor of Russia to declare war against Great Britain, November 7, 1807, that monarch entered very decidedly into the Continental System and demanded that the King of Sweden should enforce the principles of the Armed Neutrality of 1780 and 1800 by which the Baltic was declared a closed sea, in order to prevent British ships from entering. King Gustavus IV. replied that the principles of the Armed Neutrality had been abandoned by the treaty of June 17, 1801; that the surrender of the Danish fleet to Great Britain had changed circumstances, and that the British had effected an entrance into the Baltic through the Great Belt independently of the Sound. The Swedish king's refusal to comply with the demand of the Czar Alexander I. involved him in a ruinous war with Russia.

18071809.

Russian Invasion

of

A Russian army under General Buxhowden marched into Swedish Finland, February 21, 1808. General Buxhowden announced to the Swedish inhabitants that the Emperor Alexander I. had considered it necessary Finland. to occupy that country in order to have a pledge that the King of Sweden would accept the peace proposals which France had offered him. The Russians soon drove the few Swedish troops into East Bothnia. The Russian forces occupied Helsingfors; and Sweaborg, the bulwark of Finland, hitherto considered impregnable, also surrendered to them, April 6, 1808, after a siege of several days by ViceAdmiral Kronstadt. The Czar Alexander's manifesto had already declared the Grand Duchy of Finland to be annexed to the Russian Empire. The Russian invasion of Finland so incensed King Gustavus IV. of Sweden that he caused M. d'Alopeus, the Russian ambassador at Stockholm, to be arrested.

Sweden's

Denmark

The imbecile King Christian VII. of Denmark died March 13, 1808, and was succeeded by his son FREDERICK VI., who had been regent since in 1808. 1784. As Denmark had also declared war against Sweden, February 29, 1808, a Swedish army of twenty thousand men under General Armfield attempted to conquer Norway, but was driven back with heavy loss, and the Danes even invaded Sweden.

A Swedish army under Field-Marshal Klinspor at Uleaborg began to act on the offensive in the North of Finland; while another Swedish army under General Vegesack landed at Abo, June 8, 1808. After a campaign of various success the Russians again held possession of Finland. A British force of ten thousand men under Sir John Moore arrived at Gottenburg to aid the Swedes, March 17, 1808; but King Gustavus IV. refused to permit these British auxiliaries to land, as he could not come to an agreement as to their employment nor even as to the command. The eccentric King of Sweden even ordered Sir John Moore, who had proceeded to Stockholm, to be arrested; but that British general escaped, and returned with his troops to England. Mr. Thornton, the British ambassador at Stockholm, who had remonstrated against the Swedish king's arbitrary action, was recalled.

Russo

Swedish Campaign

of 1808.

King

Gustavus
IV.

and His

British

Allies.

Swedish

and

British

The Russian fleet under Admiral Chanikoff attempted to burn the Russian, Swedish fleet under Admiral Nauckhoff in Virgin Bay, August 18, 1808; but the Swedish fleet was reinforced at Baltic Port by the British squadrons under Sir James Saumarez and Admiral Hood, thus thwarting the Russian design by a very effective blockade of almost two months.

Fleets.

An

The British Ministry

An armistice was concluded between the Russian and Swedish commanders in Finland, in September, 1808; but the Emperor Alexander I. Armistice. refused to ratify it. Another armistice was then concluded at Olkioki, November 19, 1808, by which the Swedish army was to evacuate Uleaborg and to retreat beyond the Kemi. Near the end of 1808 the British Ministry under Mr. Canning's direction advised the King of Sweden to make peace; but Gustavus IV. obstinately refused to do so, and even demanded additional subsidies from Great Britain for a vigorous prosecution of the war. As the British Cabinet refused to grant any subsidies unconditionally, the King of Sweden was on the point of an open rupture with Great Britain; but his indignation soon abated, and he concluded a new treaty with Great Britain at Stockholm, March 1, 1809, by which he received a British subsidy of three hundred thousand pounds sterling by quarterly installments.

The Kingdom of Sweden was now threatened with invasion on every side. The Russians were already approaching the Swedish capital, and the Danes and the Spanish troops under La Romana in Napoleon's service were on the Swedish frontiers. The Swedish army and military affairs were in the most wretched condition, and the heavy taxes could not be raised from the exhausted land; but still King Gustavus IV. obstinately rejected all proposals of peace. His severity in punishing his troops, not only when they had committed faults, but even when they were unsuccessful, had alienated the soldiers, especially the guards, from him.

and King

Gustavus

IV.

Threat

ened

Invasion

of Sweden.

Obsti

nacy of

King Gustavus

IV.

Dethronement of

IV.

Accordingly a conspiracy was formed in the Swedish army and Gustavus in the Swedish capital, under the leadership of Lieutenant-Colonel Adlersparre and Colonel Skioldebrand. Adlersparre and the Swedish army of the West marched against Stockholm; and they had arrived at Orebro when Field-Marshal Klinspor, who had been disgraced, advised King Gustavus IV. to change his conduct. As the obstinate king refused to do so, General Adlercreutz arrested him in his palace in the name of the Swedish people, March 13, 1809; and the king's uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, was proclaimed regent. Gustavus IV. was conveyed to Drottingholm, and thence to Gripsholm, where he formally abdicated the Swedish throne by signing a deed to that effect. The regent immediately convened the Swedish Diet, which Charles offered him the crown of Sweden. The regent declared his willingness to accept the crown when the Diet had revised the Swedish constitution. The Diet accordingly revised the constitution by greatly restricting the royal power, declared Gustavus IV. and all his posterity to have forfeited the Swedish crown, and proclaimed the Duke of Sudermania King of Sweden with the title of CHARLES XIII., June 5, 1809. As the new king was childless, the Swedish Diet elected Prince Christian Augustus of Holstein-Augustenburg, the commander of the Danish army in Norway, who had secured the esteem of the Swedes, as the successor of Charles XIII. on the Swedish throne. The dethroned Gustavus IV. and his family were permitted to leave Sweden; and near the end of the year a new fundamental law was published, regulating the order of succession to the Swedish crown.

XIII. of

Sweden,

A. D.

18091818.

The Swedish

Succes

sion.

Russian

of

An Armistice.

In the meantime, while the revolution just related was in progress in Invasion Sweden, a Russian army of twenty-five thousand men under General Sweden. Knorring had crossed the Gulf of Bothnia on the ice to the Aland Islands, and took possession of those islands, March 17, 1809; the Swedish troops which had been stationed there retiring to the mainland of Sweden. General Knorring granted an armistice to the Swedes to give them time to make overtures of peace. Upon hearing of this armistice, Count Barclay de Tolly, who had crossed the Gulf of Bothnia on the side of Vasa with another Russian army and occupied Umea, evacuated West Bothnia and returned to Finland. A third Russian army under Schouvaloff invaded West Bothnia by way of Tornea, and forced the Swedish army under Gripenborg to surrender at Seiwis, March 25, 1809. This event occurred through ignorance, as the news of the armistice granted by General Knorring had not yet reached that remote northern latitude.

Peace of

The war between Russia and Sweden was ended by the Peace of Frederik- Frederiksham, September 17, 1809, by which Sweden ceded Finland, East Bothnia and part of West Bothnia to Russia and joined in the

sham.

ܙ܂

Continental System, but reserved to herself the importation of salt and of such colonial produce as was an absolute necessity. The ceded territory had formed the granary of Sweden and contained a population of nine hundred thousand, and was therefore an irreparable loss to Sweden, which had less than two million four hundred thousand inhabitants left. Sweden concluded the Peace of Jonkoping with Denmark, December 10, 1809, and the Peace of Paris with France, January 6, 1810. By this last treaty Sweden renounced the importation of colonial produce, reserving to herself only the privilege of importing salt as an absolute necessity; as it was on that condition only that she could recover Pomerania, which the French had conquered during the

war.

Peace of Jonkoping and of Paris.

SECTION IX.-NAPOLEON AND THE PENINSULAR WAR (A. D. 1808-1814).

INTOXICATED by his successes and impelled by his overmastering ambition, Napoleon aimed at uniting all Western and Southern Europe into one vast empire under the supremacy of France, in imitation of Charlemagne, who had done the same thing a thousand years before and whom the great French Emperor adopted as his model. He was already master of Germany and Italy through his annihilation of the power of Austria and Prussia, and he now sought to bring the Spanish peninsula also under his sway, as well as the still-unconquered provinces of Italy. To further his designs upon Spain and Portugal, he negotiated with the weak and dissolute Bourbon court of Spain, through the infamous Don Manuel Godoy, the "Prince of Peace," the unprincipled and ignorant favorite of Spain's weak Bourbon monarch, King Charles IV., and his wicked queen. The wretched condition of Spain under her weak royal family and their unscrupulous and ignorant favorite, Godoy, who, as Prime Minister, had become virtually the real ruler of the kingdom, had made that monarchy contemptible in the eyes of all nations.

As a preliminary step in his designs upon the Spanish peninsula, Napoleon now determined to deprive Great Britain of her commerce with Portugal; and, for, the accomplishment of this object, he negotiated with the weak and dissolute Bourbon court of Spain, through Godoy, whom he bought over to his project by promising him a principality in Portugal, as his reward for his aid in the unprincipled scheme of the French Emperor. When the Prince-Regent of Portugal refused to renounce his alliance with Great Britain and close the Portuguese ports against British vessels, Napoleon published a decree declar

Napoleon's

Designs on Spain

and Portugal.

His

Seizure of

Portugal.

Flight of the

Portuguese Royal Family.

Napo

leon's Seizure

ing that "the House of Braganza has ceased to reign"; and a French army under Junot was sent to take possession of Portugal. The cowardly royal family of Portugal, instead of offering any resistance to the invaders of their dominions, fled in British vessels to Rio Janeiro, the capital of the Portuguese colony of Brazil, in South America. On the 30th of November, 1807, three days after the Portuguese court had left the shores of their European dominions, the French army occupied Lisbon, the Portuguese capital, without resistance.

Having Portugal under his sway, Napoleon next proceeded to make himself master of Spain also, which object he accomplished through of Spain. Godoy, who practically delivered his country into the French Emporer's hands, and Spanish troops under La Romana entered Napoleon's service and fought on the islands of Denmark against the Swedes, while French soldiers in large numbers were occupying Spain, February, 1808.

Overthrow of

Godoy and Charles

IV. of

Spain.

Godoy, as well as King Charles IV. and his queen, was exceedingly unpopular with the Spanish people; and his abject subserviency to the French Emperor and his design to remove the Spanish royal family to the Spanish colonies in South America caused intense commotions among the Spanish people, and violent insurrections broke out in Aranjuez and in Madrid, in which the mob plundered and destroyed Godoy's palace and deprived him of political power, at the same time threatening the detested royal favorite with death, March, 1808. Intimidated by this menacing attitude of the Spanish populace, the imbecile King Charles IV. abdicated the throne of Spain in favor of his eldest son, Ferdinand, Prince of Asturias, who, as Godoy's enemy, was intensely hated by his parents, but dearly loved by the Spanish people, who immediately hailed him as King FERDINAND VII. The deposed Charles IV. declared that his abdication was an involuntary act and invoked the French Emperor's aid in his behalf. To gain Napoleon's consent to his elevation to the Spanish throne, Ferdinand VII. affected the utmost sycophancy and sought a queen from the Bonaparte family. Napoleon sent his brother-in-law, Marshal Joachim Murat, to take military possession of Madrid. On May 2, 1808, a frightful insurrecBayonne and Depo- tion in Madrid against the French cost the lives of twelve hundred of Murat's soldiers. Murat quelled the insurrection, and disgraced his Bourbons name by a bloody massacre of the insurgents. By a series of intrigues, in Spain. Napoleon induced father and son, Charles IV. and Ferdinand VII., to

Intrigues

of

sition

of the

refer their disputes to his decision, and enticed them, along with Godoy and the queen, to Bayonne. Ferdinand did not dare to resist Napoleon's summons, although warned by his friends and though the Spanish people endeavored to prevail upon him not to undertake the hazardous journey. When he once had the Bourbon royal family of Spain in his