War of the Third Coalition 1805[edit]

Main article: Third Coalition

The British HMS  Sandwich fires at the

French flagship Bucentaure (completely dismasted) in the battle
of Trafalgar. Bucentaure also fights HMS  Victory (behind her)
and HMS  Temeraire (left side of the picture). HMS Sandwich did not
fight at Trafalgar and her depiction is a mistake by the painter. [81]
Britain gathered together allies to form the Third Coalition against
France.[82][83] In response, Napoleon seriously considered an invasion of
Great Britain,[84][85] and massed 180,000 troops at Boulogne. Before he
could invade, he needed to achieve naval superiority—or at least to pull
the British fleet away from the English Channel. A complex plan to
distract the British by threatening their possessions in the West
Indies failed when a Franco-Spanish fleet under
Admiral Villeneuve turned back after an indecisive action off Cape
Finisterre on 22 July 1805. The Royal Navy blockaded Villeneuve
in Cádiz until he left for Naples on 19 October; the British squadron
caught and overwhelmingly defeated the combined enemy fleet in
the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October (the British commander, Lord
Nelson, died in the battle). Napoleon never again had the opportunity to
challenge the British at sea, nor to threaten an invasion. He again turned
his attention to enemies on the Continent.

European strategic situation in 1805 before the War of the Third

Coalition
In April 1805, Britain and Russia signed a treaty with the aim of removing
the French from the Batavian Republic (roughly present-day
Netherlands) and the Swiss Confederation. Austria joined the alliance
after the annexation of Genoa and the proclamation of Napoleon as King
of Italy on 17 March 1805. Sweden, which had already agreed to
lease Swedish Pomerania as a military base for British troops against
France, entered the coalition on 9 August.
The Austrians began the war by invading Bavaria on 8
September[86] 1805 with an army of about 70,000 under Karl Mack von
Leiberich, and the French army marched out from Boulogne in late July
1805 to confront them. At Ulm (25 September – 20 October) Napoleon
surrounded Mack's army, forcing its surrender without significant losses.
With the main Austrian army north of the Alps defeated (another
army under Archduke Charles fought against André Masséna's French
army in Italy), Napoleon occupied Vienna on 13 November. Far from his
supply lines, he faced a larger Austro-Russian army under the command
of Mikhail Kutuzov, with the Emperor Alexander I of Russia personally
present. On 2 December, Napoleon crushed the Austro-Russian force
in Moravia at Austerlitz (usually considered his greatest victory). He
inflicted 25,000 casualties on a numerically superior enemy army while
sustaining fewer than 7,000 in his own force.

Surrender of the town of Ulm, 20 October 1805

The French entering Vienna on 13 November 1805

Austria signed the Treaty of Pressburg (26 December 1805) and left the
coalition. The treaty required the Austrians to give up Venetia to the
French-dominated Kingdom of Italy and the Tyrol to Bavaria. With the
withdrawal of Austria from the war, stalemate ensued. Napoleon's army
had a record of continuous unbroken victories on land, but the full force
of the Russian army had not yet come into play. Napoleon had now
consolidated his hold on France, had taken control of Belgium, the
Netherlands, Switzerland, and most of Western Germany and northern
Italy. His admirers say that Napoleon wanted to stop now, but was
forced to continue in order to gain greater security from the countries
that refused to accept his conquests. Esdaille rejects that explanation
and instead says that it was a good time to stop expansion, for the major
powers were ready to accept Napoleon as he was:
in 1806 both Russia and Britain had been positively eager to make
peace, and they might well have agreed to terms that would have
left the Napoleonic imperium almost completely intact. As for
Austria and Prussia, they simply wanted to be left alone. To have
secured a compromise peace, then, would have been
comparatively easy. But Napoleon was prepared to make no
concessions.[87]

War of the Fourth Coalition 1806–1807[edit]

Main article: War of the Fourth Coalition

After defeating Prussian forces at Jena, the French Army entered

Berlin on 27 October 1806.
Within months of the collapse of the Third Coalition, the Fourth
Coalition (1806–07) against France was formed by Britain, Prussia,
Russia, Saxony, and Sweden. In July 1806, Napoleon formed
the Confederation of the Rhine out of the many tiny German states
which constituted the Rhineland and most other western parts of
Germany. He amalgamated many of the smaller states into larger
electorates, duchies, and kingdoms to make the governance of non-
Prussian Germany smoother. Napoleon elevated the rulers of the two
largest Confederation states, Saxony and Bavaria, to the status of
kings.
In August 1806, the Prussian king, Frederick William III, decided to go
to war independently of any other great power. The army of Russia, a
Prussian ally, in particular was too far away to assist. On 8 October
1806, Napoleon unleashed all the French forces east of the Rhine
into Prussia. Napoleon defeated a Prussian army at Jena (14 October
1806), and Davout defeated another at Auerstädt on the same day.
160,000 French soldiers (increasing in number as the campaign went
on) attacked Prussia, moving with such speed that they destroyed the
entire Prussian army as an effective military force. Out of 250,000
troops the Prussians sustained 25,000 casualties, lost a further
150,000 as prisoners, 4,000 artillery pieces, and over 100,000
muskets. At Jena, Napoleon had fought only a detachment of the
Prussian force. The battle at Auerstädt involved a single French corps
defeating the bulk of the Prussian army. Napoleon entered Berlin on
27 October 1806. He visited the tomb of Frederick the Great and
instructed his marshals to remove their hats there, saying, "If he were
alive we wouldn't be here today". Napoleon had taken only 19 days
from beginning his attack on Prussia to knock it out of the war with
the capture of Berlin and the destruction of its principal armies at
Jena and Auerstädt. Saxony left Prussia, and together with small
states from north Germany, allied with France.

Charge of the Russian Imperial Guard cavalry against French

cuirassiers at the Battle of Friedland, 14 June 1807
In the next stage of the war, the French drove Russian forces out of
Poland and employed many Polish and German soldiers in several
sieges in Silesia and Pomerania, with the assistance of Dutch and
Italian soldiers in the latter case. Napoleon then turned north to
confront the remainder of the Russian army and to try to capture the
temporary Prussian capital at Königsberg. A tactical draw
at Eylau (7–8 February 1807), followed by capitulation at Danzig (24
May 1807) and the Battle of Heilsberg (10 June 1807), forced the
Russians to withdraw further north. Napoleon decisively beat the
Russian army at Friedland (14 June 1807), following which Alexander
had to make peace with Napoleon at Tilsit (7 July 1807). In Germany
and Poland, new Napoleonic client states, such as the Kingdom of
Westphalia, Duchy of Warsaw, and Republic of Danzig, were
established.
By September, Marshal Guillaume Brune completed the occupation
of Swedish Pomerania, allowing the Swedish army to withdraw with
all its munitions of war.
Scandinavia and Finland[edit]
Main articles: Gunboat War, Finnish War, and Dano-Swedish War of
1808-09

The Battle of Trangen during the Dano-Swedish War, 1808–1809.

The Norwegians fought bravely and defeated the Swedes.
Britain's first response to Napoleon's Continental System was to
launch a major naval attack against Denmark. Although ostensibly
neutral, Denmark was under heavy French and Russian pressure to
pledge its fleet to Napoleon. London could not take the chance of
ignoring the Danish threat. In August 1807, the Royal Navy besieged
and bombarded Copenhagen, leading to the capture of the Dano-
Norwegian fleet, and assuring use of the sea lanes in the North and
Baltic seas for the British merchant fleet. Denmark joined the war on
the side of France, but without a fleet it had little to offer, [88]
[89]
 beginning an engagement in a naval guerrilla war in which small
gunboats attacking larger British ships in Danish and Norwegian
waters. Denmark also committed themselves to participate in a war
against Sweden together with France and Russia.
At Tilsit, Napoleon and Alexander had agreed that Russia should
force Sweden to join the Continental System, which led to a Russian
invasion of Finland in February 1808, followed by a Danish
declaration of war in March. Napoleon also sent an auxiliary corps,
consisting of troops from France, Spain and the Netherlands, led by
Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, to Denmark to participate in the
invasion of Sweden. But British naval superiority prevented the
armies from crossing the Øresund strait, and the war came mainly to
be fought along the Swedish-Norwegian border. At the Congress of
Erfurt (September–October 1808), France and Russia further agreed
on the division of Sweden into two parts separated by the Gulf of
Bothnia, where the eastern part became the Russian Grand Duchy of
Finland. British voluntary attempts to assist Sweden with
humanitarian aid remained limited and did not prevent Sweden from
adopting a more Napoleon-friendly policy.[90]
The war between Denmark and Britain effectively ended with a British
victory at the battle of Lyngør in 1812, involving the destruction of the
last large Dano-Norwegian ship—the frigate Najaden.
Poland[edit]
Main article: Duchy of Warsaw

Polish cavalry at the Battle of Somosierra in Spain, 1808

In 1807 Napoleon created a powerful outpost of his empire in Central
Europe. Poland had recently been partitioned by its three large
neighbours, but Napoleon created the Grand Duchy of Warsaw,
which depended on France from the very beginning. The duchy
consisted of lands seized by Austria and Prussia; its Grand Duke was
Napoleon's ally the king of Saxony, but Napoleon appointed the
intendants who ran the country. The population of 4.3 million was
released from occupation and by 1814 sent about 200,000 men to
Napoleon's armies. That included about 90,000 who marched with
him to Moscow; few marched back.[91] The Russians strongly opposed
any move towards an independent Poland and one reason Napoleon
invaded Russia in 1812 was to punish them. The Grand Duchy was
dissolved in 1815 and Poland did not become a state until 1918 (and
only then because of the Bolshevik Revolution). Napoleon's impact
on Poland was huge, including the Napoleonic legal code, the
abolition of serfdom, and the introduction of modern middle class
bureaucracies.[92][93]