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Europe 1815

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Europe: 1765 to 1815

To pay for the Seven Years War, the British Parliament in London passed laws to raise taxes from their colonies. But one group of 13 colonies began to organize and protest the taxes on the basis that Parliament lacked the right to tax the colonies.

By April 1775 a state of war existed in the colonies after shots were fired at the battles of Lexington and Concord. Then in July 1776 the colonies announced that they were an independent nation, the United States of America. The key moment was the battle of Saratoga in October 1777, which convinced the French that the Americans were a worthy ally. The French soon dragged in their allies, Spain and the Netherlands, to assist in the struggle for American Independence. The war ended in 1783 with the Peace of Paris, confirming American independence and giving Minorca back to Spain.

The loss of the American colonies was a psychological punch to the gut for Great Britain. The British were forced to look to Canada and elsewhere for goods that the 13 colonies had once provided. The first colonists landed in Australia in 1788.

In France the situation looked increasingly bleak. Hunger and starvation were rampant after a series of bad wheat harvests. The economy was strained by the enormous cost of the war and preparations for another. The king was forced to convene the Estates General, a feudal political body that represented the taxpayers, to try to pay the national debt. The Estates were organized into three: the Church, the Nobles and the Commons. The Commons resolved at the Tennis Court Oath [link] to establish a constitution for France. The Parisians rioted, storming the Bastille on July 14, 1789. On August 26 the National Constituent Assembly issued The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. [link] .The ideals of the Enlightenment and the American Revolution had become law in Europe.

But the causes of the Revolution, the poverty and hunger, still remained. To distract the people from these issues, France declared war on Austria in April 1792. The Prussians soon joined the fight on the Austrian side. Both were defeated by the French at the Battle of Valmy on September 20th. The next day in Paris, France became a republic. The Austrians and Prussians then began to claim that they were fighting to restore the Bourbon monarchy. The French responded by guillotining Louis XVI on the 21st of January 1793.

The Jacobin faction then seized the central government in Paris and began to execute [link] all who opposed them. The Reign of Terror ended in July 1794 [link] . The new government of France, the Directory, now applied itself to winning the ongoing war.

While France was undergoing its revolution, their ally Poland was being partitioned. By October 1795 Poland ceased to exist.

By 1796 the French had prepared a three army offensive to defeat the remaining Austrian armies. The Army of the Rhine under Moreau and the Army of the North under Jourdan were stalled by the Austrians on the Rhine. It was the Army of Italy under general Bonaparte that busted through the Austrian positions in Lombardy and threatened Vienna itself. General Bonaparte himself made peace with Austria [link] in October 1797.

General Bonaparte then lead an expedition to Egypt in 1798. On the 9th of November 1799 [link] he returned to France and seized power as part of a military coup making himself First Consul. Lead by Napoleon himself, the armies of France again defeated the Austrians in Italy at the Battle of Marengo in June 1800. On December 2nd, 1804 Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French. Napoleon’s greatest victory came at the Battle of Austerlitz in December 1805, where the Russian and Austrian armies were decisively defeated.

As long as the French army was supreme on the field, Napoleon’s Empire was secure. But the disastrous 1812 invasion of Russia devastated that army. At the October 1813 Battle of Leipzig [link] Napoleon’s Grande Armée was defeated outright on the field of battle. By March 1814 hostile armies had surrounded Paris and Napoleon was forced into exile.

One year later Napoleon broke out of exile, regrouped his army and marched toward Belgium. On the 18th of June 1815 Allied armies under the command of the Duke of Wellington and Field-marshal Blücher defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.

With Napoleon gone the question Europe asked was ‘what now?’

The Congress of Vienna [link] now met to answer that very question.

-France was restored to Bourbon control
-Russia received the Duchy of Warsaw
-Prussia received various German territories
-The Holy Roman Empire was semi reincarnated as the German Confederation
-Belgium and Luxembourg were bundled with the Dutch to create the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
-Austria was given Lombardy and Illyria, Austrian Habsburg princes were sent to head the governments of several northern Italian states
-The Kingdom of Sardinia received Genoa

Europe would now be governed by a concert of the 5 strongest powers [link]

-----Europe Series-----
1550 [link]
1618 [link]
1648 [link]
1765 [link]
1815
1914 [link]

2/19/12 EDIT:
map base source [link]
map base created by Alex:D [link]
Image size
3872x2761px 1.22 MB
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