La Bataille de Friedland et Danzig 1809

The World Surrounding Friedland in 1807

The world that Napoleon and Bennigsen inhabited was a rapidly changing place that was undergoing more than one revolution. By the time of Friedland, Napoleon had been Emperor of the French for only 30 months, and his hold onto power was by no means established. Napoleon had been a part of the political and military revolution which was continuing to sweep Europe and the Americas. His campaign to defeat Prussia in 1806 would lead to Prussia banning serfdom in 1807 . Bennigsen, on the other hand represented L’ancien regime . Trained in the Prussian army during the time of Frederick the Great, Bennigsen was a higher level soldier of fortune, working for the Russians for no particular reason other than getting paid by an autocratic regime desperately fighting to maintain serfdom and its control over dozens of ethnic minorities.

More importantly for the Romanovs in Russia, was the intrigue and in-fighting going on in the court between sympathizers to Bennigsen and supporters of his rival, Prince von Essen, an Estonian nobleman and general who had other ideas how to prosecute the war against Napoleon. This largely forgotten episode may have been the most important news of 1807. This was almost rivaled by the intrigue and in-fighting between the wives of the French Marshalate---each one trying to gain more influence at the Napoleonic Court.

Napoleon takes the French enlightenment to the backward and benighted Spain. In fact, one of the reforms that Napoleon introduced in Spain was the elimination of the Inquisition. This left the Dominican Monks largely unemployed. Montesquieu saw in Spain the perfect example of the maladministration of a state under the influence of the clergy. Voltaire had already said: “The Inquisition would be the cause of the ignorance of philosophy that Spain lives in, thanks to which Europe and "even Italy" had discovered so many truths.”

The British would elect a new prime minister in 1807, the Duke of Portland, who was really an old Prime Minister, having first served in that post in 1783 under the same king, George III. The British would violently attack the Danes in Copenhagen in 1807---destroying one-third of the city; the port; the Danish Navy and kill more than 2000 civilians. The Ottoman Sultan, Selim III is deposed and replaced by his nephew, Mustapha IV. In Egypt, the Khedive Muhammad Ali defeats a British invasion at Alexandria.

In the Americas, the British would fail a second time to take Buenos Aires in their invasion of Argentina.

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