Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Continental Blockade (French: Blocus continental), or Continental System, was a large-scale embargo by French emperor Napoleon I against the British Empire from 21 November 1806 until 11 April 1814, during the Napoleonic Wars.
Napoleon Bonaparte [b] (born Napoleone Buonaparte; [1] [c] 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led a series of military campaigns across Europe during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars from 1796 to 1815.
Berlin fell 15 days after the beginning of the war. The French Emperor Napoleon entered the city after three days, from which he issued his Berlin Decree implementing his Continental System. Large-scale plundering of Berlin took place. [2]
The military machine Napoleon the artilleryman had created was perfectly suited to fight short, violent campaigns, but whenever a long-term sustained effort was in the offing, it tended to expose feet of clay. [...] In the end, the logistics of the French military machine proved wholly inadequate. The experiences of short campaigns had left the French supply services completed unprepared for ...
Napoleon responded with economic embargoes against Britain, and sought to eliminate Britain's Continental allies to break the coalitions arrayed against him. The so-called Continental System formed a League of Armed Neutrality to disrupt the blockade and enforce free trade with France.
Napoleon also forced Alexander to enter the Anglo-Russian War and to instigate the Finnish War against Sweden in order to force Sweden to join the Continental System. More specifically, Alexander agreed to evacuate Wallachia and Moldavia, which had been occupied by Russian forces as part of the Russo-Turkish War.
At the Congress of Erfurt (September–October 1808) Napoleon and Alexander agreed that Russia should force Sweden to join the Continental System, which led to the Finnish War of 1808–1809 (meaning Sweden played no role in the next coalition against Napoleon) and to the division of Sweden into two parts separated by the Gulf of Bothnia.
May 3: Napoleon's soldiers retaliate for uprising by brutally executing Spanish citizens (famously depicted in Goya's The Third of May 1808) July 7: Joseph crowned King of Spain after Portugal revolts against the Continental System/blockade Napoleon had put in place.