Because I'm late on the updates I decided to join all small Political Updates into one big update. Next
week we go back to the Peninsula to see the Portuguese efforts in Capturing Salamanca. Also no Naples because I couldn't find anything interesting about it so Naples stays OTL, with Murat on the throne, the Netherlands are also OTL but I will mention both the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire for not speaking of the other two.
Dirty Politics - Part Four
In Saint Petersburg the Tsar, was deeply disturber by the events unfolding in Europe and in Russia. For the Russian nobility, for whom Napoleon was the "Enemy of Mankind", the defiance of the Iberian powers, was a stain on their honor, as they felt the peace of Tilsit was a disgrace for Russia and a possible danger, as the new Polish State, could become a beacon for Polish resistance and with the last partition, having been just a decade ago, many on the Tsar's court, saw the Duchy of Warsaw as a possible catalyzer, to another Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. With the Russian nobility, becoming more and more unsatisfied with the Tsar, Alexander, begun to make preparations for another war, to distract the Russian people from his Peace Treaty with Napoleon.
The two obvious targets, were Finland and the Caucasus, the first under Swedish control and the later already being contested by the Russian Empire and Persia. A move to reignite the Persian War, would serve of little interest to the Tsar, as the Caucasus was too far from Saint Petersburg to distract the nobility, a problem that was solved by a war in Finland. Another candidate had been the Ottoman Empire, but the Tsar feared that the French would support the Turks on a possible war, so he left them to their own devices, while increasing the funding to the Serbian Revolt.
Conquering Finland resolved several problems to the Tsar. First it allowed him to unite the Russians, against their old enemy, Sweden, and when victory was achieved the Tsar, would use the Finish Conquest as propaganda to make the people forget the Tilsit Treaty, and the it would also work to convince Napoleon, that Russia was on his side, for Sweden was a British ally.
Ursprungen av Finska kriget, by Asbjörn Ek
The title of "Sick Man of Europe" as been awarded many times by historians, to once powerful countries that felt into severe Decline. In late 1807 several powers, could compete for the tile: Sweden, with their days of being the "Lion of The North" being long gone; Denmark, whose claim to Second Tier Power had been destroyed, when the British had destroyed their Navy; Prussia, whose survival everyone one thought was numbered; Spain, that had been broken into a confusion of competing states, and with unrest growing in the colonies; and the Ottoman Empire, whose strength was going away as Nationalism, was on the rise among their European subjects, specially among the Serbians and the Greeks, and finally the conservative forces of the Empire, specially the Janissaries, worked to stop the modernization of the Empire.
(...)
Sweden, had been on steady decline since the days of Charles XII, and the Swedish bad luck culminated with, Gustav IV Adolf being their leader during the early Napoleonic Wars. This ineffective King, was the embodiment of the Absolutism movement, having even postponed his coronation to avoid summoning a Diet, and his views made even his allies, Great Britain and the Kingdom of Portugal, weary of him and with the Russians turning their gaze to Finland, the fate of Sweden looked more and more dark every day.
(...)
Selim III was the reformer of the Ottoman Empire. A man, that from an early age, had been predicted to expand the Empire to it's former glory, his early reign show how good intentions, usually don't survive the real world. The Austrians and the Russians, tested him as soon as he was on the throne and more Ottoman land was lost on the European border, then the French invasion of Egypt and Syria left those areas in complete disarray, with the Albanian Muhammad Ali, becoming the de-facto ruler of those areas, even if he was a nominal Ottoman subject, and culminating on his assassination attempt by the Janissaries in late 1807. He survived, but was forced to escape from Istambul, where the Janissaries declared his cousin Mustafa, the new Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.
Still the Sultan, had the good luck of joining with his loyal Grand Vizir, Alemdar Mustafa Pasha, in Rusçuk, where they gathered the Nizam-i Jedid, that had been fighting in Serbia, to march against the Janissaries.
(...)
The Sick Men of Europe, by George Marshal.