ASIANOVERLAND.NET RUSSIA SCANDINAVIA

DAY 13/237 – HELSINGFORS TO HELSINKI, FINLAND

The Finnish War  was fought between the Kingdom of Sweden and the Russian Empire from 21 February 1808 to 17 September 1809.

The Battle of Friedland (June 14, 1807) was a major engagement of the Napoleonic Wars between the armies of the French Empire commanded by Napoleon I and the armies of the Russian Empire. Napoleon and the French obtained a decisive victory that routed much of the Russian army, which retreated chaotically at the end of the fighting. The battlefield is located in modern-day Kaliningrad.

The Treaties of Tilsit were two agreements signed by Napoleon I of France in the town of Tilsit in July 1807 in the aftermath of his victory at Friedland. The first was signed on 7 July, between Emperor Alexander I of Russia and Napoleon I of France, when they met on a raft in the middle of the Neman River. The second was signed with Prussia on 9 July.

Napoleon not only cemented his control of Central Europe but also had Russia with him against his two remaining enemies, the United Kingdom and Sweden, triggering the Anglo-Russian and Finnish War.

After the Russian Emperor Alexander I concluded the 1807 Treaty of Tilsit with Napoleon, Alexander, in a letter on 24 September 1807 to the Swedish King Gustav IV Adolf, informed the king that the peaceful relations between Russia and Sweden depended on Swedish agreement to abide by the limitations of the Treaty of Tilsit. On 30 December 1807 Russia announced that should Sweden not give a clear reply, Russia would be forced to act.

It took two months before the Swedish King responded that it was impossible to honour the previous arrangements as long as the French were in control of the major Baltic ports. King Gustav Adolf did this after securing an alliance with Britain on 8 February 1808.

King Gustav Adolf had an unrealistic view of Sweden's ability to defend itself against Russia. In Saint Petersburg, his stubbornness was viewed as an opportunity for Russia to occupy Finland, pushing the Russo-Swedish frontier to the west of the Russian capital, and safeguarding it in case of any future hostilities between the two powers.

On February 21, 1808, 24,000 Russian troops crossed the border and took the Swedish/Finnish town of Lovisa. The Swedish King was quite unprepared for the attack. About 21,000 Swedish troops were stationed in various fortresses in Finland, while the rest of the Swedish army was unable to leave southern Sweden for fear of Danish attack.

The Russian advance was swift. On the first day of the war they had captured the town of Lovisa and besieged the Swedish sea fortress of Svartholm. Borgå  was captured on 24 February and Helsingfors (Helsinki) on 2 March. Helsinki had been transformed from Swedish to Russian in the first ten days of the Finnish War.

By November 1808, Russian forces had overrun all of Finland. On 19 November, the Convention of Olkijoki was signed and the Swedish army was forced to leave the Finnish countryside. As a result of the war, the eastern third of Sweden (now Finland) was established as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire.

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