The Illyrian Provinces were an autonomous province of France during the First French Empire that existed under Napoleonic Rule from 1809 to 1814. The province encompassed modern-day Gorizia and Trieste, and parts of Slovenia, Croatia, Austria and Montenegro. Its capital was Ljubljana in Slovenia. It encompassed six départements, making it a relatively large portion of territorial France at the time. Parts of Croatia were split up into Civil Croatia and Military Croatia, the former served as a residential space for French immigrants and Croatian inhabitants and the latter as a military base to check the Ottoman Empire.
Napoleon in Austria during the War of the Fifth Coalition.
The First French Empire, officially the French Republic, then the French Empire after 1809 and also known as Napoleonic France, was the empire ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte, who established French hegemony over much of continental Europe at the beginning of the 19th century. It lasted from 18 May 1804 to 3 May 1814 and again briefly from 20 March 1815 to 7 July 1815, when Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena.
Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1806
The Battle of Austerlitz, 2nd December 1805, by François Gérard
The Arc de Triomphe, ordered by Napoleon in honour of the Grande Armée, is one of several landmarks whose construction was started in Paris during the First French Empire.
Napoleon reviewing the Imperial Guard before the Battle of Jena, 1806
