1801 – 1802
Lunéville, Copenhagen and Amiens
After Marengo and Hohenlinden, Austria signs the Treaty of Lunéville on 9 February 1801, for itself and for the Holy Roman Empire, with Joseph Bonaparte and Count Ludwig von Cobenzl as signatories. It largely confirms the Treaty of Campo Formio: France keeps the left bank of the Rhine and its client republics in Italy and the Netherlands, and Austria keeps Venetia and Dalmatia. Britain remains at war alone.
At sea Britain stops and searches neutral ships trading with France. Tsar Paul I answers with a League of Armed Neutrality of Russia, Sweden, Denmark–Norway and Prussia. A British fleet under Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, with Vice-Admiral Nelson as second in command, sails from Yarmouth on 12 March 1801 to break it up before the Baltic thaws and frees the Russian fleet.
On 2 April Nelson attacks the line of hulks and floating batteries moored before Copenhagen with twelve ships of the line, while Parker waits to the north with the heavier ships. Three of Nelson’s ships run aground, and at 13:30 Parker signals him to break off. Nelson holds his telescope to his blind eye, fights on, and by 14:00 much of the Danish line has fallen silent. He then offers Crown Prince Frederick a truce, and an armistice follows.
The Battle of Copenhagen, 2 April 1801, painting by Nicholas Pocock, 1806Wikimedia Commons, Nicholas Pocock, Public domain (The Battle of Copenhagen, 2 April 1801 RMG BHC0529.tiff)
Paul I has been murdered in Saint Petersburg on the night of 23 March, and under his son Alexander I the league breaks up. Russia makes peace with France in October 1801. On 25 March 1802 Joseph Bonaparte and Lord Cornwallis sign the Treaty of Amiens, in which Britain gives back most of its conquests except Ceylon and Trinidad and agrees to return Malta to the Knights of St John, and France agrees to evacuate Naples and Egypt.
The first kiss this ten years, Britannia and a French officer after the Peace of Amiens, caricature by James Gillray, 1803Wikimedia Commons, James Gillray, Public domain (Gillray - The First Kiss.jpg)
Sources
- Dudley Pope, The Great Gamble: Nelson at Copenhagen (1972).
- Frederick W. Kagan, The End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801–1805 (2006).
- Peter Wilson, Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire (2016).
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