Radio Birdman

Radio Birdman
Radio Birdman logo
Background information
Origin	Sydney, Australia
Genres	Punk rock garage rock proto-punk surf rock
Years active	1974–1978, 1996–2008, 2014–present
Labels	Sire Records (1976–1978) Crying Sun Records (1996–present)
Members	Rob Younger Deniz Tek Jim Dickson Phillip 'Pip' Hoyle Nik Rieth Dave Kettley
Past members	Chris Masuak Russell Hopkinson Carl Rorke Warwick Gilbert Ron Keeley
Website	radiobirdman.com

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of conflicts fought between the First French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte (1804–1815) and a fluctuating array of European coalitions. The wars originated in political forces arising from the French Revolution (1789–1799) and from the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) and produced a period of French domination over Continental Europe. The wars are categorised as seven conflicts, five named after the coalitions that fought Napoleon, plus two named for their respective theatres: the War of the Third Coalition, War of the Fourth Coalition, War of the Fifth Coalition, War of the Sixth Coalition, War of the Seventh Coalition, the Peninsular War, and the French invasion of Russia.

The first stage of the war broke out when Britain declared war on France on 18 May 1803, alongside the Third Coalition. In December 1805, Napoleon defeated the allied Russo-Austrian army at Austerlitz, thus forcing Austria to make peace. Concerned about increasing French power, Prussia led the creation of the Fourth Coalition, which resumed war in October 1806. Napoleon soon defeated the Prussians at Jena-Auerstedt and the Russians at Friedland, bringing an uneasy peace to the continent. The treaty had failed to end the tension, and war broke out again in 1809, with the Austrian-led Fifth Coalition. At first, the Austrians won a significant victory at Aspern-Essling but were quickly defeated at Wagram.

Hoping to isolate and weaken Britain economically through his Continental System, Napoleon launched an invasion of Portugal, the only remaining British ally in continental Europe. After occupying Lisbon in November 1807, and with the bulk of French troops present in Spain, Napoleon seized the opportunity to turn against his former ally, depose the reigning Spanish royal family, and declare his brother King of Spain in 1808 as José I. The Spanish and Portuguese thus revolted, with British support, and expelled the French from Iberia in 1814 after six years of fighting.

Concurrently, Russia, unwilling to bear the economic consequences of reduced trade, routinely violated the Continental System, prompting Napoleon to launch a massive invasion of Russia in 1812. The resulting campaign ended in disaster for France and the near-destruction of Napoleon's Grande Armée.

Encouraged by the defeat, Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Sweden, and Russia formed the Sixth Coalition and began a new campaign against France, decisively defeating Napoleon at Leipzig in October 1813. The Allies then invaded France from the east, while the Peninsular War spilled over into southwestern France. Coalition troops captured Paris at the end of March 1814, forced Napoleon to abdicate in April, exiled him to the island of Elba, and restored power to the Bourbons. Napoleon escaped in February 1815 and reassumed control of France for around one Hundred Days. The allies formed the Seventh Coalition, which defeated him at Waterloo in June 1815, and exiled him to the island of Saint Helena, where he died six years later in 1821.

The wars had profound consequences on global history, including the spread of nationalism and liberalism, advancements in civil law, the rise of Britain as the world's foremost naval and economic power, the appearance of independence movements in Spanish America and the subsequent decline of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, the fundamental reorganization of German and Italian territories into larger states, and the introduction of radically new methods of conducting warfare. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna redrew Europe's borders and brought a relative peace to the continent, lasting until the Revolutions of 1848 and the Crimean War in 1853.

Overview

[edit] Napoleon seized power in 1799, establishing a military dictatorship. There are numerous opinions on the date to use as the formal beginning of the Napoleonic Wars; 18 May 1803 is often used, when Britain and France ended the only short period of peace between 1792 and 1814. The Napoleonic Wars began with the War of the Third Coalition, which was the first of the Coalition Wars against the First French Republic after Napoleon's accession as leader of France.

Britain ended the Treaty of Amiens, declaring war on France in May 1803. Among the reasons were Napoleon's changes to the international system in Western Europe, especially in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Historian Frederick Kagan argues that Britain was irritated in particular by Napoleon's assertion of control over Switzerland. Furthermore, Britons felt insulted when Napoleon stated that their country deserved no voice in European affairs, even though King George III was an elector of the Holy Roman Empire. For its part, Russia decided that the intervention in Switzerland indicated that Napoleon was not looking toward a peaceful resolution of his differences with the other European powers.

The British hastily enforced a naval blockade of France to starve it of resources. 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. The British responded by capturing the Danish fleet, breaking up the league, and later secured dominance over the seas, allowing it to freely continue its strategy.

Napoleon won the War of the Third Coalition at Austerlitz, forcing the Austrian Empire out of the war, and formally dissolving the Holy Roman Empire. Within months, Prussia declared war, triggering a War of the Fourth Coalition. This war ended disastrously for Prussia, which had been defeated and occupied within 19 days of the beginning of the campaign. Napoleon subsequently defeated Russia at Friedland, creating powerful client states in Eastern Europe and ending the Fourth Coalition.

Concurrently, the refusal of Portugal to commit to the Continental System, and Spain's failure to maintain it, led to the Peninsular War and the outbreak of the War of the Fifth Coalition. The French occupied Spain and formed a Spanish client kingdom, ending the alliance between the two. Heavy British involvement in the Iberian Peninsula soon followed, while a British effort to capture Antwerp failed. Napoleon oversaw the situation in Iberia, defeating the Spanish, and expelling the British from the Peninsula. Austria, eager to recover territory lost during the War of the Third Coalition, invaded France's client states in Eastern Europe in April 1809. Napoleon defeated the Fifth Coalition at Wagram.

Plans to invade British North America pushed the United States to declare war on Britain in the War of 1812, but it did not become an ally of France. Grievances over control of Poland, and Russia's withdrawal from the Continental System, led to Napoleon invading Russia in June 1812. The invasion was an unmitigated disaster for Napoleon; scorched earth tactics, desertion, French strategic failures and the onset of the Russian winter compelled Napoleon to retreat with massive losses. Napoleon suffered further setbacks: French power in the Iberian Peninsula was broken at the Battle of Vitoria the following summer, and a new alliance began, the War of the Sixth Coalition.

The coalition defeated Napoleon at Leipzig, precipitating his fall from power and eventual abdication on 6 April 1814. The victors exiled Napoleon to Elba and restored the Bourbon monarchy. Napoleon escaped from Elba in 1815, gathering enough support to overthrow the monarchy of Louis XVIII, triggering a seventh, and final, coalition against him. Napoleon was then decisively defeated at Waterloo, and he abdicated again on 22 June. On 15 July, he surrendered to the British at Rochefort, and was permanently exiled to remote Saint Helena. The Treaty of Paris, signed on 20 November 1815, formally ended the war.

The Bourbon monarchy was once again restored, and the victors began the Congress of Vienna to restore peace to Europe. As a direct result of the war, the Kingdom of Prussia rose to become a great power, while Great Britain, with its unequalled Royal Navy and growing Empire, became the world's dominant superpower, beginning the Pax Britannica. The Holy Roman Empire had been dissolved, and the philosophy of nationalism that emerged early in the war contributed greatly to the later unification of the German states, and those of the Italian peninsula. The war in Iberia greatly weakened Spanish power, and the Spanish Empire began to unravel; Spain would lose nearly all of its American possessions by 1833. The Portuguese Empire also shrank, with Brazil declaring independence in 1822.

The wars revolutionised European warfare; the application of mass conscription and total war led to campaigns of unprecedented scale, as whole nations committed all their economic and industrial resources to a collective war effort. Tactically, the French Army had redefined the role of artillery, while Napoleon emphasised mobility to offset numerical disadvantages, and aerial surveillance was used for the first time in warfare. The highly successful Spanish guerrillas demonstrated the capability of a people driven by fervent nationalism against an occupying force.^{[page range too broad]} Due to the longevity of the wars, the extent of Napoleon's conquests, and the popularity of the ideals of the French Revolution, the period had a deep impact on European social culture. Many subsequent revolutions, such as that of Russia, looked to the French as a source of inspiration, while its core founding tenets greatly expanded the arena of human rights and shaped modern political philosophies in use today.

Background

[edit] See also: French Revolutionary Wars

The outbreak of the French Revolution had been received with great alarm by the rulers of Europe's continental powers, further exacerbated by the execution of Louis XVI, and the overthrow of the French monarchy. In 1793, Austria, the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Kingdom of Naples, Prussia, the Kingdom of Spain, and the Kingdom of Great Britain formed the First Coalition to curtail the growing power of revolutionary France. Measures such as mass conscription, military reforms, and total war allowed France to defeat the coalition, despite the concurrent civil war in France. Napoleon, then a general of the French Revolutionary Army, forced the Austrians to sign the Treaty of Campo Formio, leaving only Great Britain opposed to the fledgling French Republic.

A Second Coalition was formed in 1798 by Great Britain, Austria, Naples, the Ottoman Empire, the Papal States, Portugal, Russia, and Sweden. The French Republic, under the Directory, suffered from heavy levels of corruption and internal strife. The new republic also lacked funds, no longer enjoying the services of Lazare Carnot, the minister of war who had guided France to its victories during the early stages of the Revolution. Bonaparte, commander of the Armée d'Italie in the latter stages of the First Coalition, had launched a campaign in Egypt, intending to disrupt the British control of India. Pressed from all sides, the Republic suffered a string of successive defeats against revitalised enemies, who were supported by Britain's financial help.

Bonaparte returned to France from Egypt on 23 August 1799, his campaign there having failed. He seized control of the French government on November 9, in a bloodless coup d'état, replacing the Directory with the Consulate and transforming the republic into a de facto dictatorship. He further reorganised the French military forces, establishing a large reserve army positioned to support campaigns on the Rhine or in Italy. Russia had already been knocked out of the war, and, under Napoleon's leadership, the French decisively defeated the Austrians in June 1800, crippling Austrian capabilities in Italy. Austria was definitively defeated that December, by Moreau's forces in Bavaria. The Austrian defeat was sealed by the Treaty of Lunéville early the following year, further compelling the British to sign the Treaty of Amiens with France, establishing a tenuous peace.

Start date and nomenclature

[edit] No consensus exists as to when the French Revolutionary Wars ended and the Napoleonic Wars began. Possible dates include 9 November 1799, when Bonaparte seized power on 18 Brumaire, the date according to the Republican Calendar then in use; 18 May 1803, when Britain and France ended the one short period of peace between 1792 and 1814; or 2 December 1804, when Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor.

British historians occasionally refer to the nearly continuous period of warfare from 1792 to 1815 as the Great French War, or as the final phase of the Anglo-French Second Hundred Years' War, spanning the period 1689 to 1815. Historian Mike Rapport (2013) suggested using the term "French Wars" to unambiguously describe the entire period from 1792 to 1815.

In France, the Napoleonic Wars are generally integrated with the French Revolutionary Wars: Les guerres de la Révolution et de l'Empire.

German historiography may count the War of the Second Coalition (1798/9–1801/2), during which Napoleon had seized power, as the Erster Napoleonischer Krieg ("First Napoleonic War").

In Dutch historiography, it is common to refer to the 7 major wars between 1792 and 1815 as the Coalition Wars (coalitieoorlogen), referring to the first two as the French Revolution Wars (Franse Revolutieoorlogen).

Napoleon's tactics

[edit]

Napoleon was, and remains, famous for his battlefield victories, and historians have spent enormous attention in analysing them.^{[page needed]} In 2008, Donald Sutherland wrote:

The ideal Napoleonic battle was to manipulate the enemy into an unfavourable position through manoeuvre and deception, force him to commit his main forces and reserve to the main battle and then undertake an enveloping attack with uncommitted or reserve troops on the flank or rear. Such a surprise attack would either produce a devastating effect on morale or force him to weaken his main battle line. Either way, the enemy's own impulsiveness began the process by which even a smaller French army could defeat the enemy's forces one by one.

After 1807, Napoleon's creation of a highly mobile, well-armed artillery force gave artillery usage an increased tactical importance. Napoleon, rather than relying on infantry to wear away the enemy's defences, could now use massed artillery as a spearhead to pound a break in the enemy's line. Once that was achieved he sent in infantry and cavalry.^{[page range too broad]}

Prelude

[edit] Britain was irritated by several French actions following the Treaty of Amiens. Bonaparte annexed Piedmont and Elba, made himself President of the Italian Republic, a state in northern Italy that France had set up, and failed to evacuate Holland, as it had agreed to do in the treaty. France then continued to interfere with British trade despite peace having been made and complained about Britain harbouring certain individuals and not cracking down on the anti-French press.

Malta was captured by Britain during the war and was subject to a complex arrangement in the 10th article of the Treaty of Amiens, where it was to be restored to the Knights of St. John with a Neapolitan garrison and placed under the guarantee of third powers. The weakening of the Knights of St. John by the confiscation of their assets in France and Spain along with delays in obtaining guarantees prevented the British from evacuating it after three months as stipulated in the treaty.

The Helvetic Republic was set up by France when it invaded Switzerland in 1798. France had withdrawn its troops, but violent strife broke out against the government, which many Swiss saw as overly centralised. Bonaparte reoccupied the country in October 1802 and imposed a compromise settlement. This caused widespread outrage in Britain, which protested that this was a violation of the Treaty of Lunéville. Although continental powers were unprepared to act, the British decided to send an agent to help the Swiss obtain supplies, and also ordered their military not to return Cape Colony to Holland as they had committed to do in the Treaty of Amiens.

Swiss resistance collapsed before anything could be accomplished, and, after a month, Britain countermanded the orders to not restore Cape Colony. At the same time, Russia finally joined the guarantee regarding Malta. Concerned that there would be hostilities when Bonaparte found out that Cape Colony had been retained, the British began to procrastinate on the evacuation of Malta. In January 1803, a government paper in France published a report from a commercial agent which noted the ease with which Egypt could be conquered. The British seized on this to demand satisfaction and security before evacuating Malta, which was a convenient stepping stone to Egypt. France disclaimed any desire to seize Egypt and asked what sort of satisfaction was required, but the British were unable to give a response. There was still no thought of going to war; Prime Minister Henry Addington publicly affirmed that Britain was in a state of peace.

In early March 1803, the Addington ministry received word that Cape Colony had been reoccupied by the British army, in accordance with the orders which had subsequently been countermanded. On 8 March they ordered military preparations to guard against possible French retaliation and justified them by falsely claiming that it was only in response to French preparations and that they were conducting serious negotiations with France. In a few days, it was known that Cape Colony had been surrendered in accordance with the counter-orders, but it was too late. Bonaparte berated the British ambassador in front of 200 spectators over the military preparations.

The Addington ministry realised they would face an inquiry over their false reasons for the military preparations, and during April unsuccessfully attempted to secure the support of William Pitt to shield them from damage. In the same month, the ministry issued an ultimatum to France, demanding a retention of Malta for at least ten years, the permanent acquisition of the island of Lampedusa from the Kingdom of Sicily, and the evacuation of Holland. They also offered to recognise French gains in Italy if they evacuated Switzerland and compensated the King of Sardinia for his territorial losses. France offered to place Malta in the hands of Russia to satisfy British concerns, pull out of Holland when Malta was evacuated, and form a convention to give satisfaction to Britain on other issues. The British falsely denied that Russia had made an offer, and their ambassador left Paris. Desperate to avoid a war, Bonaparte sent a secret offer where he agreed to let Britain retain Malta if France could occupy the Otranto peninsula in Naples. All efforts were futile, and Britain declared war on 18 May 1803.

War between Britain and France, 1803–1814

[edit] Main article: United Kingdom in the Napoleonic Wars

British motivations

[edit] Britain ended the uneasy truce created by the Treaty of Amiens when it had declared war on France in May 1803. The British were increasingly angered by Napoleon's reordering of the international system in Western Europe, especially in Switzerland, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. Kagan argues that Britain was especially alarmed by Napoleon's assertion of control over Switzerland. The British felt insulted when Napoleon said it deserved no voice in European affairs (even though King George was an elector of the Holy Roman Empire) and sought to restrict the London newspapers that were vilifying him.

Britain had a sense of loss of control, as well as loss of markets, and was worried by Napoleon's possible threat to its overseas colonies. McLynn argues that Britain went to war in 1803 out of a "mixture of economic motives and national neuroses—an irrational anxiety about Napoleon's motives and intentions." McLynn concludes that it proved to be the right choice for Britain because, in the long run, Napoleon's intentions were hostile to the British national interest. Napoleon was not ready for war, and so this was the best time for Britain to stop them. Britain seized upon the Malta issue, refusing to follow the terms of the Treaty of Amiens and evacuate the island.

The deeper British grievance was their perception that Napoleon was taking personal control of Europe, making the international system unstable, and forcing Britain to the sidelines.^{[page needed][page needed]} Numerous scholars have argued that Napoleon's aggressive posture made him enemies and cost him potential allies. As late as 1808, the continental powers affirmed most of his gains and titles, but the continuing conflict with Britain led him to start the Peninsular War and the invasion of Russia, which many scholars see as a dramatic miscalculation.

There was one serious attempt to negotiate peace with France during the war, made by Charles James Fox in 1806. The British wanted to retain their overseas conquests and have Hanover restored to George III in exchange for accepting French conquests on the continent. The French were willing to cede Malta, Cape Colony, Tobago, and French Indian posts to Britain but wanted to obtain Sicily in exchange for the restoration of Hanover, a condition which the British refused.^{[page needed]}

Unlike its many coalition partners, Britain remained at war during the period of the Napoleonic Wars. Protected by naval supremacy (in the words of Admiral Jervis to the House of Lords "I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea"), Britain did not have to spend the entire war defending itself and could thus focus on supporting its embattled allies, maintaining low-intensity land warfare on a global scale for over a decade. The British government paid out a large amount of money to other European states so that they could pay armies in the field against France. These payments are colloquially known as the Golden Cavalry of St George. The British Army provided long-term support to the Spanish rebellion in the Peninsular War of 1808–1814, assisted by Spanish guerrilla ('little war') tactics. Anglo-Portuguese forces under Arthur Wellesley supported the Spanish, who campaigned successfully against the French armies, eventually driving them from Spain and allowing Britain to invade southern France. By 1815, the British Army played the central role in the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.

Beyond minor naval actions against British imperial interests, the Napoleonic Wars were much less global in their scope than preceding conflicts such as the Seven Years' War, which historians term a "world war".

Economic warfare

[edit] In response to the naval blockade of the French coasts enacted by the British government on 16 May 1806, Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree on November 21, 1806, which brought into effect the Continental System. This policy aimed to eliminate the threat from Britain by closing French-controlled territory to its trade. Britain maintained a standing army of 220,000 at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, of whom less than 50% were available for campaigning. The rest were necessary for garrisoning Ireland and the colonies and providing security for Britain. France's strength peaked at around 2,500,000 full-time and part-time soldiers including several hundred thousand National Guardsmen whom Napoleon could draft into the military if necessary. Both nations enlisted large numbers of sedentary militia who were unsuited for campaigning and were mostly employed to release regular forces for active duty.

The Royal Navy disrupted France's extra-continental trade by seizing and threatening French shipping and colonial possessions, but could do nothing about France's trade with the major continental economies, and posed little threat to French territory in Europe. France's population and agricultural capacity greatly outstripped Britain's. Britain had the greatest industrial capacity in Europe, and its mastery of the seas allowed it to build up considerable economic strength through trade. This ensured that France could never consolidate its control over Europe in peace. Many in the French government believed that cutting Britain off from the Continent would end its economic influence over Europe and isolate it.

Financing the war

[edit] A key element in British success was its ability to mobilise the nation's industrial and financial resources, and apply them to defeating France. Though the UK had a population of approximately 16 million against France's 30 million, the French numerical advantage was offset by British subsidies that paid for many of the Austrian and Russian soldiers, peaking at about 450,000 men in 1813.^{[page needed]} Under the Anglo–Russian agreement of 1803, Britain paid a subsidy of £1.5 million for every 100,000 Russian soldiers in the field.

British national output continued to be strong, and the well-organised business sector channeled products into what the military needed. Britain used its economic power to expand the Royal Navy, doubling the number of frigates, adding 50 per cent more large ships of the line, and increasing the number of sailors from 15,000 to 133,000 in eight years after the war began in 1793. France saw its navy shrink by more than half. The smuggling of finished products into the continent undermined French efforts to weaken the British economy by cutting off markets. Subsidies to Russia and Austria kept them in the war. The British budget in 1814 reached £98 million, including £10 million for the Royal Navy, £40 million for the army, £10 million for the allies, and £38 million as interest on the national debt, which had soared to £679 million, more than double the GDP. This debt was supported by hundreds of thousands of investors and taxpayers, despite the higher taxes on land and a new income tax. The cost of the war amounted to £831 million. In contrast, the French financial system was inadequate and Napoleon's forces had to rely in part on requisitions from conquered lands.^{[page range too broad][page needed]}

From London in 1813 to 1815, Nathan Mayer Rothschild was crucial in almost single-handedly financing the British war effort, organising the shipment of bullion to the Duke of Wellington's armies across Europe, as well as arranging the payment of British financial subsidies to their continental allies.

War of the Third Coalition, 1805

[edit] Main article: War of the Third Coalition

Britain gathered allies to form the Third Coalition against The French Empire after Napoleon was self-proclaimed as emperor.^{[page range too broad]} In response, Napoleon seriously considered an invasion of Great Britain, massing 180,000 troops at Boulogne. Before he could invade, he needed to achieve naval superiority—or at least to pull the British fleet away from the English Channel. A complex plan to distract the British by threatening their possessions in the West Indies failed when a Franco-Spanish fleet under Admiral Villeneuve turned back after an indecisive action off Cape Finisterre on 22 July 1805. The Royal Navy blockaded Villeneuve in Cádiz until he left for Naples on 19 October; the British squadron caught and overwhelmingly defeated the combined enemy fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October (the British commander, Lord Nelson, died in the battle). Napoleon never again had the opportunity to challenge the British at sea, nor to threaten an invasion. He again turned his attention to the enemies on the Continent.

In April 1805, Britain and Russia signed a treaty with the aim of removing the French from the Batavian Republic (roughly present-day Netherlands) and the Swiss Confederation. Austria joined the alliance after the annexation of Genoa and the proclamation of Napoleon as King of Italy on 17 March 1805. Sweden, which had already agreed to lease Swedish Pomerania as a military base for British troops against France, entered the coalition on 9 August.

The Austrians began the war by invading Bavaria on 8 September 1805 with an army of about 70,000 under Karl Mack von Leiberich, and the French army marched out from Boulogne in late July 1805 to confront them. At Ulm (25 September – 20 October) Napoleon surrounded Mack's army, forcing its surrender without significant losses.

With the main Austrian army north of the Alps defeated (another army under Archduke Charles fought against André Masséna's French army in Italy), Napoleon occupied Vienna on 13 November. Far from his supply lines, he faced a larger Austro–Russian army under the command of Mikhail Kutuzov, with Emperor Alexander I of Russia personally present. On 2 December, Napoleon crushed the Austro–Russian force in Moravia at Austerlitz (usually considered his greatest victory). He inflicted 25,000 casualties on a numerically superior enemy army while sustaining fewer than 7,000 in his own force.

Austria signed the Treaty of Pressburg (26 December 1805) and left the coalition. The treaty required the Austrians to give up Venetia to the French-dominated Kingdom of Italy and the Tyrol to Bavaria. With the withdrawal of Austria from the war, stalemate ensued. Napoleon's army had a record of continuous unbroken victories on land, but the full force of the Russian army had not yet come into play. Napoleon had now consolidated his hold on France, had taken control of Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and most of Western Germany and northern Italy. His admirers say that Napoleon wanted to stop now, but was forced to continue in order to gain greater security from the countries that refused to accept his conquests. Esdaile rejects that explanation and instead says that it was a good time to stop expansion, for the major powers were ready to accept Napoleon as he was:

in 1806 both Russia and Britain had been positively eager to make peace, and they might well have agreed to terms that would have left the Napoleonic imperium almost completely intact. As for Austria and Prussia, they simply wanted to be left alone. To have secured a compromise peace, then, would have been comparatively easy. But Napoleon was prepared to make no concessions.

War of the Fourth Coalition, 1806–1807

[edit] Main article: War of the Fourth Coalition

Within months of the collapse of the Third Coalition, the Fourth Coalition (1806–1807) against France was formed by Britain, Prussia, Russia, Saxony, and Sweden. In July 1806, Napoleon formed the Confederation of the Rhine out of the many small German states which constituted the Rhineland and most other western parts of Germany. He amalgamated many of the smaller states into larger electorates, duchies, and kingdoms to make the governance of non-Prussian Germany smoother. Napoleon elevated the rulers of the two largest Confederation states, Saxony and Bavaria, to the status of kings.

In August 1806, the Prussian king, Frederick William III, decided to go to war independently of any other great power. The army of Russia, a Prussian ally, in particular, was too far away to assist. On October 8, 1806, Napoleon unleashed all the French forces east of the Rhine into Prussia. Napoleon defeated a Prussian army at Jena (14 October 1806), and Davout defeated another at Auerstädt on the same day. 160,000 French soldiers (increasing in number as the campaign went on) attacked Prussia, moving with such speed that they destroyed the entire Prussian Army as an effective military force. Out of 250,000 troops, the Prussians sustained 25,000 casualties, lost a further 150,000 as prisoners, 4,000 artillery pieces, and over 100,000 muskets. At Jena, Napoleon had fought only a detachment of the Prussian force. The battle at Auerstädt involved a single French corps defeating the bulk of the Prussian army. Napoleon entered Berlin on 27 October 1806. He visited the tomb of Frederick the Great and instructed his marshals to remove their hats there, saying, "If he were alive we wouldn't be here today". Napoleon had taken only 19 days from beginning his attack on Prussia to knock it out of the war with the capture of Berlin and the destruction of its principal armies at Jena and Auerstädt. Saxony abandoned Prussia, and together with small states from north Germany, allied with France.

In the next stage of the war, the French drove Russian forces out of Poland and employed many Polish and German soldiers in several sieges in Silesia and Pomerania, with the assistance of Dutch and Italian soldiers in the latter case. Napoleon then turned north to confront the remainder of the Russian army and to try to capture the temporary Prussian capital at Königsberg. A tactical draw at Eylau (7–8 February 1807), followed by capitulation at Danzig (24 May 1807) and the Battle of Heilsberg (10 June 1807), forced the Russians to withdraw further north. Napoleon decisively beat the Russian army at Friedland (14 June 1807), following which Alexander had to make peace with Napoleon at Tilsit (7 July 1807). In Germany and Poland, new Napoleonic client states, such as the Kingdom of Westphalia, Duchy of Warsaw, and Republic of Danzig, were established. Early that same year, the French besieged the fortified town of Kolberg, which resulted in a lifting of the siege by a peace treaty on 2 July.

By September, Marshal Guillaume Brune completed the occupation of Swedish Pomerania, allowing the Swedish army to withdraw with all its munitions of war.

Scandinavia and Finland

[edit] Main articles: Gunboat War, Finnish War, and Dano-Swedish War of 1808–1809

Britain's first response to Napoleon's Continental System was to launch a major naval attack against Denmark. Although ostensibly neutral, Denmark was under heavy French and Russian pressure to pledge its fleet to Napoleon. London could not take the chance of ignoring the Danish threat. In August 1807, the Royal Navy besieged and bombarded Copenhagen, leading to the capture of the Dano–Norwegian fleet, and assuring use of the sea lanes in the North and Baltic seas for the British merchant fleet. Denmark joined the war on the side of France, but without a fleet it had little to offer,^{[page needed][page needed]} beginning an engagement in a naval guerrilla war in which small gunboats attacked larger British ships in Danish and Norwegian waters. Denmark also committed themselves to participate in a war against Sweden together with France and Russia.

At Tilsit, Napoleon and Alexander had agreed that Russia should force Sweden to join the Continental System, which led to a Russian invasion of Finland in February 1808, followed by a Danish declaration of war in March. Napoleon also sent an auxiliary corps, consisting of troops from France, Spain and Holland, led by Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, to Denmark to participate in the invasion of Sweden. But British naval superiority prevented the armies from crossing the Øresund strait, and the war came mainly to be fought along the Swedish–Norwegian border. At the Congress of Erfurt (September–October 1808), France and Russia further agreed on the division of Sweden into two parts separated by the Gulf of Bothnia, where the eastern part became the Russian Grand Duchy of Finland. British voluntary attempts to assist Sweden with humanitarian aid remained limited, and did not prevent Sweden from adopting a more Napoleon-friendly policy.^{[page range too broad]}

The war between Denmark and Britain effectively finished with a British victory at the Battle of Lyngør in 1812, involving the destruction of the last large Dano–Norwegian ship—the frigate Najaden.

Poland

[edit] Main article: Duchy of Warsaw

In 1807, Napoleon created a powerful outpost of his empire in Central Europe. Poland had recently been partitioned by its three neighbours, but Napoleon created the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, which depended on France from the beginning. The duchy consisted of lands seized by Austria and Prussia; its Grand Duke was Napoleon's ally King Frederick Augustus I of Saxony, but Napoleon appointed the intendants who administered the country. The population of 4.3 million was released from occupation and, by 1814, sent about 200,000 men to Napoleon's armies. That included about 90,000 who marched with him to Moscow; few marched back. The Russians strongly opposed any move towards an independent Poland and one reason Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 was to punish them. The Grand Duchy was absorbed into the Russian Empire as a semi-autonomous Congress Poland in 1815; Poland did not become a sovereign state again until 1918, following the collapse of the neighbouring Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian Empires in the aftermath of World War I. Napoleon's impact on Poland was significant, including the Napoleonic legal code, the abolition of serfdom, and the introduction of modern middle-class bureaucracies.

Members

Current

• Deniz Tek - Guitar (1974-1978, 1996-2008, 2014-present)
• Rob Younger - Vocals (1974-1978, 1996-2008, 2014-present)
• Philip "Pip" Hoyle - Keyboards (1974-1978, 1996-2008, 2014-present)
• Jim Dickson - Bass (2002-2008, 2014-present)
• Nik Rieth - Drums (2005, 2014-present)
• Dave Kettley - Guitar (2014-present)

Former

• Carl Rorke - Bass (1974-1975; died 2005)
• Ron Keeley - Drums (1974-1978, 1996-2004)
• Warwick Gilbert - Bass (1975-1978, 1996-2002)
• Chris "Klondike" Masuak - Guitar (1976-1978, 1996-2008)
• Russell "Rusty" Hopkinson - Drums (2005-2008)

Crying Sun records

Crying Sun Records
Founded	1996
Founder	Radio Birdman
Genre	Indie rock/Garage rock
Country of origin	Australia
Location	Sydney

Crying Sun Records is the record company privately owned by Radio Birdman. Only a few albums have been released by this label including Radio Birdman's 1996 live album, Ritualism and their 2006 reunion album, Zeno Beach.

The label is named after the song "Crying Sun" by Radio Birdman on their 1981 studio album, Living Eyes. Crying Sun Records were originally based around Radio Birdman owned music venue turned bar, The Oxford Funhouse. Crying Sun Records was created by the band in association with Citadel Records to handle all the band's current and future recorded work. It was created to ensure that the band would be completely independent of record industry support or influence. This was seen as essential to maintaining the band's commitment to quality and fairness for the people who choose to listen.

The Crying Sun Records logo was designed by Radio Birdman bass player, Warwick Gilbert.

Discography

Studio albums

List of albums, with selected details and chart positions

Title	Album details	Peak chart positions
		AUS
Radios Appear	Released: 1977 Format: LP Label: Trafalgar (TRL 1001)	51
Radios Appear (Overseas Version)	Released: 1978 Format: LP Label: Trafalgar (TRL 102)	89
Living Eyes	Released: 1981 Format: LP Label: WEA (6000085)	55
Zeno Beach	Released: 2006 Format: CD Label:	59

Live albums

Title	Release
More Fun! (ep)	1988
Ritualism	1996
Live in Texas	2011
Live at Paddington Town Hall	2015

Compilations

Title	Release	Notes
Soldiers of Rock'n'Roll: An Audio Documentary of Radio Birdman CD	1982
Under the Ashes CD/LP	1988
The EPs (CD)	1992
The Essential Radio Birdman CD (SubPop)	2001	US CMJ Top 200 Albums #9
Living Eyes/More Fun CD	2005
Radio Birdman Box Set	2014

Singles

Title	Release
"New Race/TV Eye"	1977
"Aloha Steve and Danno/Anglo Girl Desire"	1978
"What Gives?/Anglo Girl Desire"	1978
"Alone in the Endzone/Breaks My Heart"	1981
"Hungry Cannibals/Rock Bottom"	2006
"Zeno Beach/Subterfuge"	2007
"Buried and Dead/Ballad of Dwight Fry"	2016

Documentary DVD

In 2018, the DVD documentary Descent into the Maelstrom: The Radio Birdman Story was released internationally; it also received an HD release on Vimeo and iTunes. It was written, directed and edited in Australia by Jonathan Sequeira, and produced by Mark Sequeira and Jonathan Sequeira. The documentary features live footage of the band and interviews with its various members and fans. The DVD was an official selection of the Detroit Freep Film Festival 2018, the Glasgow Film Festival 2018, the London Screensound Festival 2018, and the Manifesto Festival Amsterdam 2018. The Guardian called it "brutally honest', and I-94 Bar called it "the best rock documentary ever made".

External links

• Official website
• Radio Birdman on Trove, The National Library of Australia
• Zeno Beach Fan microsite
• Divine Rites Fansite
• Interview from Melbourne's Age Newspaper
• Music Australia Additional Information
• Shock Records- Biography