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World history
Course: World history > Unit 5
Lesson 3: Napoleon Bonaparte- Napoleon and the Wars of the First and Second Coalitions
- Napoleon and the War of the Third Coalition
- Napoleon and the War of the Fourth Coalition
- Napoleon's Peninsular Campaigns
- French invasion of Russia
- Napoleon forced to abdicate
- Hundred days and Waterloo
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Napoleon and the War of the Fourth Coalition
Napoleon takes on Prussia and Russia and wins again. Created by Sal Khan.
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- What is White Russia?(28 votes)
- White Russia was the nickname for Russia under the Czars. During the Russian Revolution of 1917 the supporters of the Czar where called White Russians while the revolutionaries where called Red Russians or Bolsheviks.(25 votes)
- In the last 4ish videos Mr Khan has been talking about The Holy Roman Empire. In other videos when it talked about Charlemagne it also talked about The Holy Roman Empire and how Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of it. I am wondering what happened in between Charlemagne and now at the Fourth Coalition?(15 votes)
- highlight of Holy Roman Empire was Charles V. He was the most significant Germanic ruler, and created some interesting events. I suggest you look him up.(10 votes)
- Why does there have to be so many wars? Can't they just talk? If they could talk and make a deal there would not be so many people dead. They could just save the money they have been using for wars and give the people what they need.(10 votes)
- Many human societies are getting better at recognizing that, while rulers may sometimes gain from war, the people in general often lose, even if they are on the "winning" side. It is helpful to consider Western Europe. Countless wars have been fought on that land throughout history. There are many problems between countries, but it is unthinkable that today, say, Greece would go to war with Germany or France would go to war with Italy. Although the horror of WWII ended only 70 years ago, today they do talk to solve their problems among themselves, at least. It is a start.(8 votes)
- I can not understand what is the Economic Warfare and Continental System (no offence). Can someone please explain it? Please answer as soon as possible.(3 votes)
- Economic Warfare can take many forms, the basic idea is to weaken the enemy by weakening his economy. It can be the destruction of resources, like burning down crop fields or blowing up mines, it can be the destruction of infastructure like bridges, harbours or factories, or it can be the restriction of trade either by a blockade (using your army or navy so no cargo can get through) or in the form of a boycott (stop trading with the enemy)
The Continental System was Napoleons try to get the whole Continent of Europe to boycott Britain. The Problem with boycotts is they work well against small countries especially if they rely on sale of few products, but against a big trading nation like Britain it does hurt both sides, that is why it was not popular by the countries that were forced into it by France, and why Russia decided to leave the Continental System. I hope this makes things a bit clearer.(7 votes)
- What nation is takes the place of the kingdom WestPhalia?(3 votes)
- this is interesting because 90 years later their is a kind of fifth coalition BUT FRANCE is in the coalition but PRUSSIA/Germany is the enemy. crazy. how did this switch happen?I read somewhere that Queen Elizabeth met the French leader is that it??(1 vote)
- Basically, in Europe, every time a country gets too powerful, everyone either teams up with it or fights against it. In the early 1800s it was France. In the early/middle 1900s it was Germany/Prussia.(6 votes)
- During the time of the 4th coalition was France winning battles strictly due to the number of the French troops, or can one contribute most of the French victories of this time period to Napoleon's tactics?(2 votes)
- The French were winning because of both reasons. In another video Sal said that France made a law to get much more people in the military than the other countries but Napolean was also a reason because he was a very smart general ( you can have 1,000,000 soldiers and lose a war cause you don't have a good general ). By the way you answered my question " What is economic warfare?"(3 votes)
- At, Sal says that Napoleon has a stalemate at Eylau. What's a stalemate? 7:37(2 votes)
- Stalemate is a term in chess that occurs when the King of the player who's turn it is is not in check but the player has no legal move left, this finishes the game and it is counted as a draw, since this most often happens when both sides have very few pieces left it is used to describe a situation in battles where neither side can get a real advantage, often despite heavy losses on both sides.(3 votes)
- Where did napoleon die after he was abdicated?(3 votes)
- The Island of St Helena, where he was sent on his second exile.(1 vote)
- what is meant by a "satellite state?"
Also what is meant by "embargo Great Britain"(2 votes)- A satellite state is a country that is subservient to another. (Like the Vichy French government to Hitler) An embargo is like a boycott of trade. embargoing Great Britain would be refusing to do trade with it.(3 votes)
Video transcript
Where we left off in the last
video, Napoleon was doing pretty well. In 1804, just as a bit of
review, he declared himself Emperor Napoleon I. And then, the whole last video
was about the Third Coalition that formed in 1805. And we saw that at the end of
1805, after the Battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon was able to
crush the Third Coalition, which was mainly made up
of Russia and Austria. And this is all review. We saw this in the last video. And the big by-product of that,
other than the fact that it just made everyone think gee,
this Napoleon guy, he's pretty formidable, is that it
ended the Holy Roman Empire. Which you remember was
neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. It was really just
a collection of German speaking states. But it ended the official
Holy Roman Empire. And Napoleon felt so good about
himself at this point, especially after crushing the
Austrian and Russian forces at Austerlitz, that he had the Arc
de Triomphe, which if you go to Paris right now,
it's one of the things you should see. He had this built. And now it's to commemorate all
of the soldiers who have died for France. But it was originally built
by Napoleon, or it was commissioned by Napoleon, to
celebrate his victory at Austerlitz. So this is the Arc
de Triomphe. My spelling is always
a little weak. But it's especially weak
when I'm spelling something in French. And that's right there. So Napoleon was doing
pretty well. Now, on the other side of the
equation, you could imagine that the other major powers of
Europe were kind of licking their wounds. They weren't sure what was
going on and they were starting to feel threatened. And in particular, this guy
started to feel especially threatened. This is Frederick-- once again
my spelling is not the strongest, especially when I'm
doing something in German-- Frederick Wilhelm III. It actually took me a long time
to realize that Wilhelm and William are the
same names. And William is just the
English version of it. But this is Frederick
Wilhelm III and he is the King of Prussia. And he stayed out of the action during the Third Coalition. And even now, Prussia is
a major European power. And he gets threatened by this
rising power of Napoleon, who was able to break up, or almost
take away Austria's influence from the Holy
Roman Empire. And now it kind of becomes this Confederation of the Rhine. Let me show you the map. So this whole area over here. All of this right over here,
which is now mainly modern day Germany, that used to be the
Holy Roman Empire, it's emperor was the King of
Austria, who wasn't necessarily in it, but it kind
of implies some type of allegiance. This is France right here. Once he was able to trounce
Austria in Austerlitz-- Austria and Russia-- then
this becomes the Confederation of the Rhine. Let me highlight this
a little bit better. So this general area. Holy Roman Empire no
longer exists. And it now becomes kind of a
satellite region of France. France has a huge amount
of control. So you could imagine that the
King of Prussia starts getting a little bit threatened. France is on its borders, it has
shown itself to be able to defeat other great
powers with ease. So this guy gets a little
paranoid whether he feels that France might kind of threaten
Prussia's power. Or maybe on the other side of
the equation, that he just didn't like this upstart who was
not related to all of the other royalty of Europe. He maybe wanted to put
him in his place. So Frederick Wilhelm
III declares war. We're now in 1806. We have Prussia declares
war on France. And you're going to see this
pattern multiple times. And the one thing to kind of
remember, if you just want to remember kind of major themes. We're always talking about the
First Coalition, Second Coalition, Third Coalition,
Fourth Coalition, all of these. And it's always some combination
of Britain. And Britain has kind of already
dominated the ocean. So when we talk about these
battles on land, we're not talking about Britain much. But this whole time, Britain is
in the background trying to be a pain in France's neck. And then all the other
coalitions are some combination of Prussia,
Austria, and Russia. And some other countries
here and there. But you see one after another
that they keep challenging Napoleon up to this point. And Napoleon keeps trouncing
them, takes more and more land and territory and
power from them. And they get even more insecure
and then they want to form other coalitions. So this happens again. And this is the start of
the Fourth Coalition. In the last video,
it was the third. This is now the formation
of the fourth. And essentially, the coalition
forms as soon as someone else other than Great Britain
joins the fight. Because Great Britain is kind
of in a continuous war with Napoleon over this entire
time period. So we've got this Fourth
Coalition that forms. We've got Prussia, we've got Great
Britain, and Russia wants to join the fight again. So as you can imagine, the end
of the Third Coalition didn't keep Russia out of the
fight for long. Let me write it down. You have Prussia, Russia,
and Great Britain. There's always some other
actors, but these are the major ones. And it was kind of silly
on the part of Prussia. Because Prussia would've been in
a much better situation if it had helped the
Third Coalition. Maybe that would have
changed the outcome. But now they're kind of taking
on Napoleon, at least initially on their own. Because Russia is always kind of
behind Austria or Prussia, depending which coalition
you're talking about. So Prussia and Austria
are always the first line of offense. In this case, in the Fourth
Coalition, it's Prussia. And they get trounced
in Jena-Auerstedt. Let me show you where that is. So this is actually Napoleon
getting the troops together at Jena-Auerstedt. This right here is a charge of
the French troops there. Let me write this down. Two cities close by each
other in Germany. They are roughly around here. Let's see, this map is a little
difficult to read. But they're roughly in that
area right there. Napoleon, once again,
he trounces Prussia. So Prussia is just
out of the way. That's in October of 1806. And then Napoleon essentially
chases the Russians through most of what's now Poland. He has this hugely bloody
stalemate at Eylau. I don't even know
how to say that. It's right around there. If I read my maps correctly. So a stalemate. This is in 1807. Stalemate, February 1807
at-- let me get the spelling right, E-Y-L-A-U. Super bloody. They actually win the battle. But they aren't able to
decisively defeat the Russian troops, or the Russian army. And there are estimates that
in that one battle, there's anywhere from 15,000 to 25,000
casualties on both sides. Which was huge at that time. Even now, if you think about
even modern wars, that's a major amount of casualties
to have in just one single battle. But Napoleon persists, and
he's eventually able to decisively meet the Russians at
Friedland, which is right about there. That is in June of 1807. And then he's able
to decisively defeat the Fourth Coalition. So here we we're kind of
at the summer of 1807. We're talking about June is
when Friedland occurs, Russians decisively defeated. The Prussians were already
trounced several months ago. And then in July of '07, July
of 1807, you have France signing the Treaties
of Tilsit. And it's called the Treaties
of Tilsit, instead of the Treaty of Tilsit, because he
signed separate treaties with Russia and Prussia. At this point, Napoleon
had kind of lost all respect for Prussia. And he wanted to show it. So he had a separate treaty with
Prussia and a separate treaty with Russia. The one with Russia was a
lot more respectable. It had all this language about
how Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I are now friends. This is Tsar Alexander
I right here. And as you'll see, this
friendship is very temporary. As you could imagine, I mean
this is the guy Napoleon defeated at Austerlitz
not too long ago. So all this friendship should
probably be written in quotes. But the treaty with Russia
was very friendly. And I think Napoleon still
respected Russia's power. So friendly with Russia, it
declared them allies. But the other Treaty of Tilsit
with Prussia carved it up. Carved up Prussia. And the main thing it did, if we
look at this map here, this is a map of central Europe. Or I guess Prussia and Austria
and France at the end of the Third Coalition. The main thing it did, it took
the territory west of the river Elbe from Prussia. So this is the river
Elbe right here. The blue is Prussia after
the Third Coalition. So all of this stuff gets
taken away from Prussia. And most of it turns into a
French satellite kingdom called the Kingdom
of Westphalia. So this is part of the Prussian
Treaty of Tilsit. So you have the Kingdom
of Westphalia. And to really emphasize,
it really is a French satellite state. And to add insult to injury to
the Prussians, Napoleon puts his brother Jerome as king. So it really is a satellite
state of France. So here at the end of this,
the other powers in Europe haven't learned that this
Napoleon character with his grand army, this huge army that
he's been able to raise and his military tactics, really
is someone formidable to deal with. So they keep, Third Coalition,
and then they lose territory. Then the Fourth Coalition,
then they lose even more territory. So what happens at the end of
this Fourth Coalition, and actually during the Fourth
Coalition, after Napoleon defeated Prussia, he realized
gee, you know what? I have, I'm in either direct
control or indirect control of a significant part of Europe. And at the same time, he knew
that Britain had complete domination of the oceans. And it was this kind of rising
industrial power. It was the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution. So Napoleon's ideas, well I
can't defeat Great Britain on the waters. Did I say Russia? No I've been saying-- the whole
point is that Great Britain is dominant
on the oceans. And Napoleon realizes
that he can't invade Great Britain by sea. He can't do anything in the
water with Great Britain kind of pestering him. So what he tries to do is
declare economic warfare on Great Britain. And he institutes at
the end of 1806, the Continental System. So I'll put this right here. This is in November of 1806. So this is right after he
trounces the Prussians at Jena-Auerstedt. This is in November of 1806,
where he's feeling really good about his strength on the
actual continent. He institutes what he calls
the Continental System. And this is really just the
notion of economic warfare with Great Britain. That hey, if you are either a
part of the French Empire, controlled by the French Empire,
or aligned with the French Empire, you embargo
Great Britain. This little island, it controls
the waters, but it is dependant on trade. So Napoleon's idea through this
Continental System is to embargo the United Kingdom of
Great Britain, whatever we want to call it. Embargo Great Britain. And one thing he got out of
the Russians, this was actually a huge concession,
because Russia was a major power at the time. He got them, through the Treaty
of Tilsit, to also join the Continental System. Let me write that in a color
that'll actually show up. And in return, he also got some
land, some islands, the Ionian Islands off the western
coast of Greece. And some of the land off the
Dalmatian coast. Let me show you right there. So this area over here. And Russia in return, and it's
pretty good because Russia essentially lost the war, but in
return they were allowed to do whatever they want with
the Ottoman Empire. And we'll talk more about the
Ottoman Empire in future videos, but if you want to have
a general view of what the Ottoman Empire is, I guess
the last remnant of it is what is today modern Turkey. But obviously it was an
empire at that time. But Russia and the Ottoman
Empire were kind of that at odds with each other. So it was great for Russia to
say hey, I'm going to be able to do whatever I want with
the Ottoman Empire. Because before this, Napoleon
was nominally aligned with the Ottomans. So this was actually a big
concession for Russia. So at the end of this, we have
a situation once again, I guess the other powers
don't realize it. Over and over, Third Coalition,
Napoleon, he really takes care of the Russians
and the Austrians. Destroys the Holy Roman
Empire, makes it the Confederation of the Rhine
under Napoleon's control. Prussia wants to put
down Napoleon. Declares war again,
Fourth Coalition. The only by-product of that is
now they lose this land. Napoleon becomes
even stronger. Puts his brother as king in
the kingdom of Westphalia. And now he has Russia
as an ally to help his embargo on England. So really, after the end of the
Fourth Coalition, a lot of historians view this as kind
of the height of Napoleon's power in Europe.