The Austrian army played a crucial role in Napoleon's decisive defeat during the War of the Sixth Coalition. Often considered a staid, hidebound institution, the army showed considerable adaptation in a time that witnessed a revolution in the art of war. In particular, changes made after defeat in the War of the Fifth Coalition demonstrate the modernity of the army. It embraced the key features of the new revolutionary way of war, including mass mobilization, a strategy of annihilation, and tactics based on deep echelonment, mobility, and the flexible use of varied formations. While the Austrians did not achieve the compromise peace they desired in 1814, this represented a political failing rather than a military one. Nevertheless, the Austrian army was critical in securing the century of general European peace that lasted until the dawn of the Great War.

This dissertation explores the influence of late eighteenth-century British imperial and global paradigms of thought on the formation of British policy and strategy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It argues that British imperial interests exerted a consistent influence on British strategic decision making through the personal advocacy of political leaders, institutional memory within the British government, and in the form of a traditional strain of a widely-embraced British imperial-maritime ideology that became more vehement as the conflict progressed. The work can be broken into two basic sections. The first section focuses on the formation of strategy within the British government of William Pitt the Younger during the French Revolutionary Wars from the declaration of war in February 1793 until early 1801. During this phase of the Anglo-French conflict, British ministers struggled to come to terms with the nature of the threat posed by revolutionary ideology in France, and lacked strategic consistency due to acute cabinet-level debates over continental versus imperial strategies. The latter half of the work assesses Britain’s response to the challenges presented by Napoleonic France. Beginning with the debates surrounding Anglo-French peace negotiations in late 1801, the British increasingly came to define Napoleonic France as a regime harboring imperial aspirations that represented an explicit threat to British imperial interests. By defining the Napoleonic regime as an aspirational imperial power, British opponents of the Peace of Amiens provided the intellectual framework for the hegemonic struggle between land and sea powers that would define the Anglo-French struggle until its conclusion in June 1815. While Britain ultimately proved successful in defeating France in Europe, the expanse of the conflict also exposed the strengths and weaknesses of British force projection outside of Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. / History

This study seeks to illuminate the Swedish propaganda effort during the first years of Swedish participation in the Napoleonic wars, known as the Pomeranian War (1805-1807) in Swedish historiography. This is accomplished by analysing the reporting off the Swedish war effort in the official newspapers Stockholm Post-tidningar and Inrikes tidningar with a model of wartime propaganda previously put forward by Anna Maria Forssberg. The sources used, classified as “official Swedish war reporting”, are the published materials written either explicitly by official Swedish sources or other texts from an entirely Swedish perspective. A classification motivated by the heavy press regulations and state censorship of the late Gustavian era. The study covers the entirety of the period of Franco-Swedish warfare in northern Germany up to and including the evacuation of Swedish forces from Rügen in September 1807 but ends before the formal conclusion of peace in 1810. During this period several other important themes besides the fighting are covered in the official propaganda. These include a conflict with Prussia in 1806 and the Swedish alliances with Russia, Britain and, later, Prussia. The role of the image of the king in the authoritarian Gustavian political system and the way that the propaganda tries to paint a positive picture of Swedish military endeavours, mostly setbacks, with great emphasis on the preservation of military honour is also discussed.

Between 1790 and 1830 the Whig party in Britain championed the rights of continental European peoples to determine their governments free of outside interference. The universal right to national self-determination became an important part of their own domestic, partisan effort to oppose the ministries of William Pitt the younger and his acolytes—ministries which they believed were undermining the independency of the House of Commons by allying Britain with the despotic governments of the continent in their war against the French Revolution. By casting the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France as an attack against the right to national self-determination, the Whigs were better able to maintain their party’s cohesion and unity. But as a result of their decision to interpret the revolutionary conflicts of this era as a struggle for national liberty, the Whigs faced unique challenges when continental events failed to fit the predictions of the national model. Instead of abandoning their interpretational archetype, the Whigs broadened their definition of who could rightfully claim to participate in the struggle for national liberty. The study that follows demonstrates how these broadened definitions were instrumental in enabling the Whig party to pass Parliamentary Reform in 1832.

Entre o período de 1801-1820, Portugal sofreu diversas agitações políticas causadas pelas Invasões Napoleônicas (1807-1813). Tais agitações influenciaram os rumos de Portugal enquanto um Estado pois além de repartir seu território com tropas napoleônicas, inglesas e espanholas que compunham as duas forças ocupantes e conflitantes, e causar uma divisão entre seus ideais e por conseguinte uma ruptura entre parte de seus cidadãos ora favoráveis aos franceses ora aos ingleses, mudou ainda a configuração administrativa interna e externa do Império Português, pois a Família Real e parte da Corte foram transferidos ao Rio de Janeiro. Como conseqüência em Portugal houve a Revolução Liberal de 1820, e em 1822 o Brasil deixa de ser colônia portuguesa para ter sua Independência proclamada. Foi nessa situação conturbada que Vicente José Ferreira Cardoso da Costa, um contemporâneo desses fatos, escreveu sua obra Considerações Políticas sobre a Revolução Portuguesa de 1808, que retrata essa época, e a Oclocracia que se estabeleceu em Portugal. / Between the years 1801-1820, Portugal suffered several political disturbances caused by the Napoleonic Wars (1807-1813). Such disturbances moved the directions of Portugal such as a State because the troops divided the territory full of french, british and spanish troops that served both conflicting sides, as well divided its citizens between two ideals (british and french), and at last changed the internal and external administrative setup, because the Royal Family and the Court left for Rio de Janeiro. As consequence to theses acts, there was a Liberal Revolution in Portugal 1820, and in 1822 Brazil declared independence. It was in this troubled situation that Vicente José Ferreira Cardoso da Costa a contemporary man of these facts wrote Considerações Políticas sobre a Revolução Portuguesa de 1808, that describes these time, and the Ochlocracy thats established in Portugal.

Entre o período de 1801-1820, Portugal sofreu diversas agitações políticas causadas pelas Invasões Napoleônicas (1807-1813). Tais agitações influenciaram os rumos de Portugal enquanto um Estado pois além de repartir seu território com tropas napoleônicas, inglesas e espanholas que compunham as duas forças ocupantes e conflitantes, e causar uma divisão entre seus ideais e por conseguinte uma ruptura entre parte de seus cidadãos ora favoráveis aos franceses ora aos ingleses, mudou ainda a configuração administrativa interna e externa do Império Português, pois a Família Real e parte da Corte foram transferidos ao Rio de Janeiro. Como conseqüência em Portugal houve a Revolução Liberal de 1820, e em 1822 o Brasil deixa de ser colônia portuguesa para ter sua Independência proclamada. Foi nessa situação conturbada que Vicente José Ferreira Cardoso da Costa, um contemporâneo desses fatos, escreveu sua obra Considerações Políticas sobre a Revolução Portuguesa de 1808, que retrata essa época, e a Oclocracia que se estabeleceu em Portugal. / Between the years 1801-1820, Portugal suffered several political disturbances caused by the Napoleonic Wars (1807-1813). Such disturbances moved the directions of Portugal such as a State because the troops divided the territory full of french, british and spanish troops that served both conflicting sides, as well divided its citizens between two ideals (british and french), and at last changed the internal and external administrative setup, because the Royal Family and the Court left for Rio de Janeiro. As consequence to theses acts, there was a Liberal Revolution in Portugal 1820, and in 1822 Brazil declared independence. It was in this troubled situation that Vicente José Ferreira Cardoso da Costa a contemporary man of these facts wrote Considerações Políticas sobre a Revolução Portuguesa de 1808, that describes these time, and the Ochlocracy thats established in Portugal.

Existing studies of popular culture and popular politics in the long eighteenth century over-favour either the ‘culture’ or the ‘politics’. This thesis contributes to debates on the making of both national and class identity in Britain via intensive analysis of popular song culture, in the context of the Napoleonic Wars. Portrayals of Napoleon himself are used to shape the thesis’ source material and the forms of discussion. It argues for the necessity of sympathetic, informed contextualisation of political issues within contemporary cultural processes: that an understanding of the composition/production and performance/ consumption of song is a prerequisite of determining songs’ relevance and reception. In so doing, it uncovers a nuanced array of attitudes towards both Napoleon and British patriotism, of unsuspected breadth, assertiveness, and idiosyncrasy. The thesis is divided into two stages of argument. Part I consists of a close and contextualised reading of songs as literary and musical objects. Chapter One, after close historiographical engagement that moves to a focus on Colley’s Britons and revisionist arguments about British society, discusses those songs originating after Waterloo. Chapter Two considers songs from 1797-1805. Chapter Three considers songs from 1806-15. Part II builds upon the themes and conclusions of Part I by situating these songs within a lived context. Chapter Four looks at the role of songwriters and printers; Chapter Five at singers; Chapter Six at audiences and reception. Chapter Seven elaborates the overall argument in a synoptic case study of Newcastle. The conclusion is followed by an appendix, listing the songs most pertinent to the thesis, giving additional bibliographical information. A hard copy (USB) of recordings of a representative selection of these songs is also included. These appendices reinforce the thesis’ methodology: to consider songs, not as passive evidence of expression, but as active, dynamic objects.

This dissertation defines aspects of Russian culture which bear the marks of French influence and explores the historical origins of that influence. While it is generally acknowledged that Russia’s culture has been influenced by France, no systematic history of the origins of this influence has been written. Previous research has dealt only superficially with the topic, focusing almost exclusively on the Francophile preferences of society’s elite. The present study examines Russian society more broadly and explores those elements of French cultural influence still relevant today through an historical analysis of the Russian language. French loanwords found in dictionaries from the time of Peter the Great to the present are analyzed chronologically and topically, yielding the conclusion that the most significant period of long-lasting French influence was the turn of the nineteenth century and was primarily cultural in nature—including the areas of fashion, cuisine, the arts, interior design and etiquette—but was also in areas related to technology and official administration. Following this lexical analysis, other primary sources—archival documents, military memoirs, and periodical publications from the resultant period—are searched for influences in these areas, especially during the period’s two major Franco-Russian events: the wave of immigration to Russia following the French Revolution and Russia’s war with Napoleon. The former facilitated deep cultural enrichment as native Frenchmen and French women, engaged in various occupations, acted as cultural mentors to the Russian nobility. The latter facilitated broad cultural immersion as tens of thousands of Russian troops—noble and common alike—marched into France and experienced French culture firsthand. This dissertation concludes that both of these explosive events, though by no means the beginning of French influence, were unique in the depth and permanence of their mark upon Russia’s culture.

No description available.

The Finnish War 1808-1809 started in February 1808 by a Russian attack on Finland and ended by the peace treaty of Fredrikshamn in September 1809. The peace meant the dissolution of the six-hundred-year old Swedish-Finnish realm. The Finnish War 1808-09 was fought in the poor and isolated areas of the north of Sweden and Finland. This thesis deals with the preconditions for the supply of an army and warfare in the northern parts of Finland and Sweden in the period 1808 – 1809. The problems of the supply service and the role of local civilian society within the military supply system are the focus of attention. The thesis aims at posing new questions as well as supplying a new perspective on the nature of warfare at this period of time. A modified picture of the Finnish War of 1808-1809 will also be presented. Three areas of problems are addressed: 1) The resources in the war zone, war plans and supply organization; 2) Logistical problems; 3) The role of civilian society as a resource within the military supply system. Both the Swedish Army and the Russian Army are examined. Geographically the scope of the thesis is restricted to three counties in northern Sweden and Finland, namely Västerbotten in Sweden, Oulu and Vaasa in Finland. The most significant findings of this thesis are that the preconditions for supply during the Finnish War 1808-1809 are to a large extent equal to the ability and the will of the local population to offer provisions and render services. It can also be shown that supply was instrumental in the warfare during certain critical periods, especially in the summer of 1808. The difference between the Russian and the Swedish supply systems is to a large extent indicative of the outcome of the war. The Russian decentralized supply system proved more flexible than the Swedish did, despite an apparently superior organization of the latter. Additionally, it is an important realization that supply as a key factor in warfare is not made up of just delivery of food stuff and forage but also comprises vital functions like grinding of flour and baking of bread. From a European perspective the issue of supply proves to be a difficult one in Finland as well as in other peripheral states, e.g. Spain. When the local resources are sparse a supply system based on storage is required on the one hand and systematic co-operation with the local population on the other. Keywords: The Finnish War 1808-09, logistics, war and society, war, supplies, military supply system, artels, farmers, civilian administration, burghers, Sweden and the Napoleonic Wars. / digitalisering@umu