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Historical thread1783–1815

Russia at the turn of the 19th century

The last years of Catherine the Great, the reign of Paul I and the first fifteen years of Alexander I: wars with the Ottoman Empire, Sweden, Persia and Napoleon, the partitions of Poland, the first Russian voyage around the world and Russian America.

28 events · 7 regions · Central and Northern Asia, Eastern Europe, Balkans and Anatolia, East Asia, Western and Central Europe, North America, Middle East and Egypt

The thread covers the last years of Catherine the Great, the short reign of Paul I and the first fifteen years of Alexander I’s rule. Russia was almost continuously at war — with the Ottoman Empire (1787–1792, 1806–1812), Sweden (1788–1790, 1808–1809), Persia (1804–1813) and Napoleonic France — and substantially expanded its borders: it gained the lands between the Southern Bug and the Dniester, Bessarabia, Finland, eastern Georgia, Dagestan and the khanates of northern Azerbaijan, and, through the partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the decisions of the Congress of Vienna, Lithuania, Belarus, Right-bank Ukraine and the Kingdom of Poland.

Russian sailors and soldiers operated far beyond the empire’s borders: Ushakov drove the French from the Ionian Islands, Suvorov fought in Italy and Switzerland, the Billings–Sarychev expedition surveyed Chukotka and the Aleutian Islands, the embassies of Laxman and Rezanov tried to open Japan to Russia, the sloops of Krusenstern and Lisyansky made the first Russian voyage around the world, and the Russian-American Company reached as far as California. On the empire’s Orenburg frontier, the uprising of the Kazakhs of the Junior Zhuz went on for a decade and a half.

The climax of the era was Napoleon’s invasion of 1812, known in Russia as the Patriotic War — Borodino, the fire of Moscow and the destruction of the Grande Armée — followed by the campaigns abroad of 1813–1814, which ended with the Allied entry into Paris. Alexander I became one of the arbiters of the Congress of Vienna and the moving spirit of the Holy Alliance.

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Events

Key participants

Russian EmpireAlexander IKingdom of PrussiaNapoleon ICatherine the GreatFirst French EmpireGrande ArméePyotr BagrationMikhail KutuzovAlexander SuvorovAustrian EmpireMichael Andreas Barclay de Tolly

Sources

  1. Wikipedia (English): Russian Empire
  2. Wikipedia (English): Catherine the Great
  3. Wikipedia (English): Paul I of Russia
  4. Wikipedia (English): Alexander I of Russia
  5. Wikipedia (Russian): Российская империя
  6. Wikipedia (Russian): Екатерина II
  7. Wikipedia (Russian): Павел I
  8. Wikipedia (Russian): Александр I
  9. Madariaga I. de. Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great. — New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.
  10. Эйдельман Н. Я. Грань веков. Политическая борьба в России. Конец XVIII — начало XIX столетия. — М.: Мысль, 1982.
  11. Троицкий Н. А. 1812. Великий год России. — М.: Мысль, 1988.
  12. Lieven D. Russia Against Napoleon. — London: Allen Lane, 2009.

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