Treaty of Kiel - Background

Background

In the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark-Norway and Kingdom of Sweden tried to maintain neutrality, but soon became involved in the fighting joining opposite camps. Swedish king Gustav IV Adolf entered an alliance with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Russian Empire against Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804, and declared war on Napoleonic France in 1805. The United Kingdom, which had declared war on France in 1803, paid subsidies to Sweden. Before Gustav IV Adolf marched his forces out of Swedish Pomerania, a province long coveted by Prussia, he negotiated an agreement that Prussia would not attack it. Denmark remained neutral.

In 1807, Napoleonic forces seized Swedish Pomerania and forced Prussia and Russia to sign the Treaty of Tilsit. Russia was therein obliged to attack Napoleon's enemies, and since Gustav IV Adolf refused to break his alliance with the United Kingdom, the tsar invaded Finland and severed it from Sweden in the Finnish War, 1808/1809. Sweden could no longer uphold her anti-French foreign policy, and French general Jean Baptiste Bernadotte was elected pretender to the Swedish throne in 1810. Denmark-Norway entered an alliance with France after the second British bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807.

In 1812, Napoleon's forces were decimated in their failed attempt to subdue Russia, and started their westward retreat. Sweden allied with Russia on 30 August 1812, with the United Kingdom on 3rd March 1813, and with Prussia on 22 April 1813. Already on 23 March 1813, she declared war on Napoleon. Bernadotte's condition for entering the anti-Napoleonic alliance was the gain of Norway, which the United Kingdom and Russia accepted in May 1813. Prussia however did not acknowledge this claim at first. Thus, Bernadotte hesitated to enter the war with full force, and only engaged in a campaign against Hamburg which on 30 June was re-conquered by allied French and Danish forces. When Prussia finally accepted the Swedish claim to Norway on 22 July, Sweden joined the alliance of Reichenbach concluded between Russia, the United Kingdom and Prussia on 14/15 June. With three armies (North, Main and Silesian, the Northern army under Bernadotte's command), the allies subsequently cleared Northern Germany from French forces. Denmark, who had maintained the alliance with Napoleon in face of the Swedish claim to Norway, was isolated and, as a consequence of the war, bankrupt.