TILSIT, TREATY OF

The Treaty of Tilsit is the name of the document signed by Emperor Napoleon I of France and Tsar Alexander I of Russia on July 7, 1807, following a famous meeting between the two on a raft in the Niemen River. The treaty focused on three questions: (1) the peace terms between Russia and France; (2) how to handle a war that had erupted between Russia and Turkey; (3) the status of the defeated kingdom of Prussia, which had risen up against Napoleon only the year before. For Alexander, negotiating on behalf of the Prussian king, Frederick William III, Tilsit was a decisive moment. Not only had he experienced murderous military reversals at Danzig and Friedland in June, he was now confronted by the prospect of intrigue and disorder at home, and in this his brother, the Grand Duke Constantine, figured conspicuously and ominously. Most of all, Alexander desired in the most intimate way to bring peace to Europe, and he came to realize that this could only be done if Britain, alone now against Bonaparte, was brought to heel. The treaty was an extremely onerous instrument—a prize example, in fact, of the ruthless brutality of Napoleonic power. The treaty left Russia untouched, but it reduced Prussia to a makeshift territory east of the River Elbe, occupied by Napoleon's troops, and ringed by his puppet states old and new. It tore away one-third of Prussia's territory and placed it under the control of the king of Saxony in a new Napoleonic satellite called the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. It pledged Russia would go to war with Britain if the latter did not accept Napoleon's peace terms; it pledged Napoleon would do the same with respect to Turkey. It was at Tilsit that the whole of Napoleon's unconscionable ambition found its fullest and most virulent expression.

See also: alexander i; napoleon i

bibliography

Schroeder, Paul. (1994). The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

David Wetzel