Habsburg Spain
Habsburg Spain refers to Spain over the 16th and 17th centuries, when it was ruled by kings from the House of Habsburg. The Habsburg rulers reached the zenith of their power, they controlled territory that included the Americas, the East Indies, the Low Countries and territories now in France and Germany in Europe, the Portuguese Empire from 1580 to 1640, various other territories such as small enclaves like Ceuta and Oran in North Africa. This period of Spanish history has been referred to as the "Age of Expansion". Under the Habsburgs, Spain dominated Europe politically and militarily for much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but experienced a gradual decline of influence in the second half of the seventeenth century under the Habsburg kings; the Habsburg years ushered in the Spanish Golden Age of cultural efflorescence. Among the most outstanding figures of this period were Teresa of Ávila, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Miguel de Cervantes, El Greco, Domingo de Soto, Francisco Suárez, Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Vitoria.
"Spain" or "the Spains" in this period covered the entire peninsula, politically a confederacy comprising several, nominally independent kingdoms or realms in personal union: Aragon, Castile, León, Navarre and, from 1580, Portugal. In some cases, these individual kingdoms themselves were confederations, most notably, the Crown of Aragon; the marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1469 had enabled the union of two of the greatest of these kingdoms and Aragón, which led to their successful campaign against the Moors, peaking at the conquest of Granada in 1492. Isabella and Ferdinand were bestowed the title of Most Catholic Monarchs by Pope Alexander VI in 1496, the term Monarchia Catholica remained in use for the monarchy under the Spanish Habsburgs; the Habsburg period is formative of the notion of "Spain" in the sense, institutionalized in the 18th century. From the 17th century and after the end of the Iberian Union, the Habsburg monarchy in Spain was known as "Spanish Monarchy" or "Monarchy of Spain", along with the common form Kingdom of Spain.
Spain as a unified state came into being de jure only after the Nueva Planta decrees of 1707 from the contested successor to the multiple Crowns of its former realms. After the death in 1700 of Charles II and with it the extinction of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty, the Spanish Succession war lasted for many years between its contesting dynasties from France and Austria and their respective supporting allies, until the ascension of Philip V and the inauguration of the Bourbon dynasty when this centralizing legal vehicle for new State formation, without legal precedent in the Iberian realms and of clear foreign origin, in all comparable after those in France under the Old Regime Absolutism, were established after de facto. In 1504, Isabella I died, although Ferdinand II tried to maintain his position over Castile in the wake of her death, the Castilian Cortes Generales chose to crown Isabella's daughter Joanna as queen, her husband Philip I was the Habsburg son of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy.
Shortly thereafter Joanna began to lapse into insanity, though the extent of her mental illness was the topic of some debate. In 1506, Philip I was declared jure uxoris king, but he died that year under mysterious circumstances poisoned by his father-in-law, Ferdinand II. Since their oldest son Charles was only six, the Cortes reluctantly allowed Joanna's father Ferdinand II to rule the country as the regent of Joanna and Charles. Spain was now in personal union under Ferdinand II of Aragon; as undisputed ruler in most of the Peninsula, Ferdinand adopted a more aggressive policy than he had as Isabella's husband, going on to crystallize his long-running designs over Navarre into a full-blown invasion led by a Castilian military expedition, supported by Aragonese troops. He attempted to enlarge Spain's sphere of influence in Italy, strengthening it against France; as ruler of Aragon, Ferdinand had been involved in the struggle against France and the Republic of Venice for control of Italy. Ferdinand's first investment of Spanish forces came in the War of the League of Cambrai against Venice, where the Spanish soldiers distinguished themselves on the field alongside their French allies at the Battle of Agnadello.
Only a year Ferdinand joined the Holy League against France, seeing a chance at taking both Naples — to which he held a dynastic claim — and Navarre, claimed through his marriage to Germaine of Foix. The war was less of a success than that against Venice, in 1516 France agreed to a truce that left Milan under French control and recognized Spanish hegemony in northern Navarre. Ferdinand would die that year. Ferdinand's death led to the ascension of young Charles to the throne as Charles I of Castile and Aragon founding the monarchy of Spain, his Spanish inheritance included all the Spanish possessions in the New World and around the Mediterranean. Upon the death of his Habsburg father in 1506, Charles had inherited the Netherlands and Franche-Comté, growing up in Flanders. In 1519, with the death of his paternal grandfather Maximilian I, Charles inherited the Habsburg territo
Charles Napier (Royal Navy officer)
Admiral Sir Charles John Napier KCB GOTE RN was a British naval officer whose sixty years in the Royal Navy included service in the War of 1812, the Napoleonic Wars, Syrian War and the Crimean War, a period commanding the Portuguese navy in the Liberal Wars. An innovator concerned with the development of iron ships, an advocate of humane reform in the Royal Navy, he was active in politics as a Liberal Member of Parliament and was the naval officer most known to the public in the early Victorian Era, he became a midshipman in 1799 aboard the 16-gun sloop HMS Martin, but left her in May 1800 before she was lost with all hands. He next served aboard flagship of Sir John Borlase Warren. After this, in November 1802, he transferred to the frigate Greyhound under Captain William Hoste; the following year, he moved to Égyptienne for a voyage to St Helena escorting a convoy of ships and in the English Channel and off the coast of France. In 1804–5 he served on Mediator before moving to HMS Renommée off Boulogne.
He was promoted lieutenant on 30 November 1805. He was appointed to Courageux, was present in her in the West Indies at the action in which the squadron under Admiral Warren took the French Marengo and Belle Poule, on 13 March 1806. After returning home with Warren, he returned to the West Indies in HMS St George and having been promoted to commander on 30 November 1807, he was appointed acting commander of the brig Pultusk of 16 guns the French privateer Austerlitz. In August 1808 he became captain of the brig-sloop HMS Recruit, in her fought a hot action off Antigua with the French sloop Diligente, in which his thigh was smashed by a cannonball. In April 1809, Napier took part in the capture of the Caribbean island of Martinique, subsequently distinguished himself in the Troude's pursuit of three escaping French ships of the line, handling the small Recruit so well that the British were able to capture the French flagship Hautpoult; as a result, he was promoted acting post captain and given the command of the captured 74-gun ship-of-the-line.
His rank was confirmed on 22 May 1809, but he was put on half-pay, when he came home as temporary captain of the frigate Jason escorting a convoy. While on half-pay he spent some time at the University of Edinburgh. Napier, still on half-pay went to Portugal to visit his three cousins, he took part in the Battle of Buçaco, during which he saved his cousin Charles's life and was himself wounded. In 1811, he was appointed captain of the frigate HMS Thames and served in the Mediterranean Fleet under Sir Edward Pellew, disrupting enemy shipping. Among his principal exploits was the 1813 capture of the island of Ponza, a possible haven for corsairs. In 1813 he moved to command the frigate Euryalus, operating off the French and Spanish Mediterranean coast. After the surrender of Napoleon and his first period of exile in 1814, Napier and his ship were transferred to the coast of North America, where the War of 1812 with the United States was still in progress, now commanded by Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane.
In the Chesapeake Bay campaign, he took part in the August expedition up the Potomac River to Alexandria, Arriving several days after the Burning of Washington and the Battle of Bladensburg under Maj. Gen. Robert Ross and Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn, he was second in command to Captain James Alexander Gordon; the British squadron took 10 days to travel 50 miles upriver, with many strandings and damage from a tornado/thunderstorm, but on 28 August 1814 before attempting a bombardment, they captured Fort Washington on the north shoreline, blown up by the Americans prior to the attack. The town of Alexandria capitulated with a ransom paid and the shipping there was seized; the squadron withdrew downriver with their prizes despite frequent harassing American attacks from the shores downstream. During this withdrawal Napier was wounded in the neck, he next distinguished himself in the following attack on the city of Baltimore by a British army accompanied by 16 warships, 12–14 September 1814, under Admirals Cochrane, Cockburn.
HMS Euryalus was involved in the bombardment of Fort McHenry, protecting the city on the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River that began early in the morning of the 13th. At; the same time, earlier on the 12th, Gen. Ross had been put ashore to the southeast at North Point with his regiments to attack the town from the east, he was shot in a brief skirmish just before his troops met the City Brigade regiments of the Maryland Militia under Brig. Gen. John Stricker at the Battle of North Point that afternoon. After pausing for the night to tend to the substantial wounded and now under the command of Col. Arthur Brooke, the regiments waited outside the substantial American dug-in fortifications with opposing approx. 20,000 troops and 100 artillery at old Loudenschlager's Hill until the naval forces were able to subdue the fort and move upriver to attack the eastern land redoubts. The critical period of the attack developed shortly after midnight when a picked British force in longboats armed with scaling ladders under Napier’s command penetrated the Middle or Ferry Branch of the river along the southern opposite shore (today's Brooklyn and Fair
Botanical garden
A botanical garden or botanic garden is a garden dedicated to the collection, cultivation and display of a wide range of plants labelled with their botanical names. It may contain specialist plant collections such as cacti and other succulent plants, herb gardens, plants from particular parts of the world, so on. Visitor services at a botanical garden might include tours, educational displays, art exhibitions, book rooms, open-air theatrical and musical performances, other entertainment. Botanical gardens are run by universities or other scientific research organizations, have associated herbaria and research programmes in plant taxonomy or some other aspect of botanical science. In principle, their role is to maintain documented collections of living plants for the purposes of scientific research, conservation and education, although this will depend on the resources available and the special interests pursued at each particular garden; the origin of modern botanical gardens is traced to the appointment of professors of botany to the medical faculties of universities in 16th century Renaissance Italy, which entailed the curation of a medicinal garden.
However, the objectives and audience of today’s botanic gardens more resembles that of the grandiose gardens of antiquity and the educational garden of Theophrastus in the Lyceum of ancient Athens. The early concern with medicinal plants changed in the 17th century to an interest in the new plant imports from explorations outside Europe as botany established its independence from medicine. In the 18th century, systems of nomenclature and classification were devised by botanists working in the herbaria and universities associated with the gardens, these systems being displayed in the gardens as educational "order beds". With the rapid rise of European imperialism in the late 18th century, botanic gardens were established in the tropics, economic botany became a focus with the hub at the Royal Botanic Gardens, near London. Over the years, botanical gardens, as cultural and scientific organisations, have responded to the interests of botany and horticulture. Nowadays, most botanical gardens display.
The role of major botanical gardens worldwide has been considered so broadly similar as to fall within textbook definitions. The following definition was produced by staff of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium of Cornell University in 1976, it covers in some detail the many functions and activities associated with botanical gardens: A botanical garden is a controlled and staffed institution for the maintenance of a living collection of plants under scientific management for purposes of education and research, together with such libraries, herbaria and museums as are essential to its particular undertakings. Each botanical garden develops its own special fields of interests depending on its personnel, extent, available funds, the terms of its charter, it may include greenhouses, test grounds, an herbarium, an arboretum, other departments. It maintains a scientific as well as a plant-growing staff, publication is one of its major modes of expression; this broad outline is expanded: The botanic garden may be an independent institution, a governmental operation, or affiliated to a college or university.
If a department of an educational institution, it may be related to a teaching program. In any case, it is not to be restricted or diverted by other demands, it is not a landscaped or ornamental garden, although it may be artistic, nor is it an experiment station or yet a park with labels on the plants. The essential element is the intention of the enterprise, the acquisition and dissemination of botanical knowledge. A contemporary botanic garden is a protected natural urban green area, where a managing organization creates landscaped gardens and holds documented collections of living plants and/or preserved plant accessions containing functional units of heredity of actual or potential value for purposes such as scientific research, public display, sustainable use and recreational activities, production of marketable plant-based products and services for improvement of human well-being; the "New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening" points out that among the various kinds of organisations now known as botanical gardens are many public gardens with little scientific activity, it cites a more abbreviated definition, published by the World Wildlife Fund and IUCN when launching the ’’Botanic Gardens Conservation Strategy’’ in 1989: "A botanic garden is a garden containing scientifically ordered and maintained collections of plants documented and labelled, open to the public for the purposes of recreation and research."
This has been further reduced by Botanic Gardens Conservation International to the following definition which "encompasses the spirit of a true botanic garden": "A botanic garden is an institution holding documented collections of living plants for the purposes of scientific research, conservation and education." Worldwide, there are now about 1800 botanical gardens and arboreta in about 150 countries of which about 550 are in Europe, 2
Temple
A temple is a structure reserved for religious or spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. It is used for such buildings belonging to all faiths where a more specific term such as church, mosque or synagogue is not used in English; these include Hinduism and Jainism among religions with many modern followers, as well as other ancient religions such as Ancient Egyptian religion. The form and function of temples is thus variable, though they are considered by believers to be in some sense the "house" of one or more deities. Offerings of some sort are made to the deity, other rituals enacted, a special group of clergy maintain, operate the temple; the degree to which the whole population of believers can access the building varies significantly. Temples have a main building and a larger precinct, which may contain many other buildings, or may be a dome shaped structure, much like an igloo; the word comes from Ancient Rome, where a templum constituted a sacred precinct as defined by a priest, or augur.
It has the same root as the word "template", a plan in preparation of the building, marked out on the ground by the augur. Templa became associated with the dwelling places of a god or gods. Despite the specific set of meanings associated with the word, it has now become used to describe a house of worship for any number of religions and is used for time periods prior to the Romans; the temple-building tradition of Mesopotamia derived from the cults of gods and deities in the Mesopotamian religion. It spanned several civilizations; the most common temple architecture of Mesopotamia is the structure of sun-baked bricks called a Ziggurat, having the form of a terraced step pyramid with a flat upper terrace where the shrine or temple stood. Ancient Egyptian temples were meant as places for the deities to reside on earth. Indeed, the term the Egyptians most used to describe the temple building, ḥwt-nṯr, means "mansion of a god". A god's presence in the temple linked the human and divine realms and allowed humans to interact with the god through ritual.
These rituals, it was believed, sustained the god and allowed it to continue to play its proper role in nature. They were therefore a key part of the maintenance of maat, the ideal order of nature and of human society in Egyptian belief. Maintaining maat was the entire purpose of Egyptian religion, thus it was the purpose of a temple as well. Ancient Egyptian temples were of economic significance to Egyptian society; the temples stored and redistributed grain and came to own large portions of the nation's arable land. In addition, many of these Egyptian temples utilized the Tripartite Floor Plan in order to draw visitors to the center room. Though today we call most Greek religious buildings "temples," the ancient Greeks would have referred to a temenos, or sacred precinct, its sacredness connected with a holy grove, was more important than the building itself, as it contained the open air altar on which the sacrifices were made. The building which housed the cult statue in its naos was a rather simple structure, but by the middle of the 6th century BCE had become elaborate.
Greek temple architecture had a profound influence on ancient architectural traditions. The rituals that located and sited Roman temples were performed by an augur through the observation of the flight of birds or other natural phenomenon. Roman temples faced east or toward the rising sun, but the specifics of the orientation are not known today. In ancient Rome only the native deities of Roman mythology had a templum; the Romans referred to a holy place of a pagan religion as fanum. Medieval Latin writers sometimes used the word templum reserved for temples of the ancient Roman religion. In some cases it is hard to determine whether a temple was an outdoor shrine. For temple buildings of the Vikings, the Old Norse term hof is used. A Zoroastrian temple may be called a Dar-e-mehr and a Atashkadeh. A fire temple in Zoroastrianism is the place of worship for Zoroastrians. Zoroastrians revere fire in any form, their temples contains an eternal flame, with Atash Behram as the highest grade of all, as it combines 16 different types of fire gathered in elaborate rituals.
In the Zoroastrian religion, together with clean water, are agents of ritual purity. Clean, white "ash for the purification ceremonies is regarded as the basis of ritual life," which, "are the rites proper to the tending of a domestic fire, for the temple fire is that of the hearth fire raised to a new solemnity". Hindu temples are known by many different names, varying on region and language, including Alayam, Mandira, Gudi, Koil, Kovil, Déul, Devasthana, Deva Mandiraya and Devalaya. A Hindu temple is the seat and dwelling of Hindu gods, it is a structure designed to bring human gods together according to Hindu faith. Inside its Garbhagriha innermost sanctum, a Hindu temple contains a Hindu god's image. Hindu temples are magnificent with a rich history. There is evidence of use of sacred ground as far back as the Bronze Age and during the Indus Valley Civilization. Outside of the Indian subcontinent (India
Terrace (agriculture)
In agriculture, a terrace is a piece of sloped plane, cut into a series of successively receding flat surfaces or platforms, which resemble steps, for the purposes of more effective farming. This type of landscaping is therefore called terracing. Graduated terrace steps are used to farm on hilly or mountainous terrain. Terraced fields decrease both erosion and surface runoff, may be used to support growing crops that require irrigation, such as rice; the Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras have been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of the significance of this technique. Terraced paddy fields are used in rice and barley farming in east and southeast Asia, as well as the Mediterranean and South America. Drier-climate terrace farming is common throughout the Mediterranean Basin, where they are used for vineyards, olive trees, cork oak, etc. In the South American Andes, farmers have used terraces, known as andenes, for over a thousand years to farm potatoes and other native crops.
Terraced farming was developed by the Wari culture and other peoples of the south-central Andes before 1000 AD, centuries before they were used by the Inca, who adopted them. The terraces were built to make the most efficient use of shallow soil and to enable irrigation of crops by allowing runoff to occur through the outlet; the Inca built on these, developing a system of canals and puquios to direct water through dry land and increase fertility levels and growth. These terraced farms are found, they provided the food necessary to support the populations of great Inca cities and religious centres such as Machu Picchu. Terracing is used for sloping terrain. At the seaside Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, the villa gardens of Julius Caesar's father-in-law were designed in terraces to give pleasant and varied views of the Bay of Naples. Terraced fields are common in islands with steep slopes; the Canary Islands present a complex system of terraces covering the landscape from the coastal irrigated plantations to the dry fields in the highlands.
These terraces, which are named cadenas, are built with stone walls of skillful design, which include attached stairs and channels. In Old English, a terrace was called a "lynch". An example of an ancient Lynch Mill is in Lyme Regis; the water is directed from a river by a duct along a terrace. This set-up was used in steep hilly areas in the UK. In Japan, some of the 100 Selected Terraced Rice Fields, from Iwate in the north to Kagoshima in the south, are disappearing, but volunteers are helping the farmers both to maintain their traditional methods and for sightseeing purposes. Anden Banaue Rice Terraces Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras Satoyama Terrace garden Terrace Fields around the World
Circe
Circe is a goddess of magic or sometimes a nymph, enchantress or sorceress in Greek mythology. She is either the nymph Perse or the goddess Hecate. Circe was renowned for her vast knowledge of herbs. Through the use of these and a magic wand or staff, she would transform her enemies, or those who offended her, into animals; the best known of her legends is told in Homer's Odyssey when Odysseus visits her island of Aeaea on the way back from the Trojan War and she changes most of his crew into swine. He forces her to return them to human shape, lives with her for a year and has sons by her, including Latinus and Telegonus, her ability to change others into animals is further highlighted by the story of Picus, an Italian king whom she turns into a woodpecker for resisting her advances. Another story makes her fall in love with the sea-god Glaucus. In revenge, Circe poisoned the water where her rival turned her into a monster. Depictions in Classical times, wandered away from the detail in Homer's narrative, to be reinterpreted morally as a cautionary story against drunkenness.
Early philosophical questions were raised whether the change from a reasoning being to a beast was not preferable after all, this paradox was to have a powerful impact during the Renaissance. Circe was taken as the archetype of the predatory female. In the eyes of those from a age, this behaviour made her notorious both as a magician and as a type of the sexually free woman; as such she has been depicted in all the arts from the Renaissance down to modern times. Western paintings established a visual iconography for the figure, but went for inspiration to other stories concerning Circe that appear in Ovid's Metamorphoses; the episodes of Scylla and Picus added the vice of violent jealousy to her bad qualities and made her a figure of fear as well as of desire. Male interpretations were to take the metamorphoses she inflicted not just as reflecting a temptation to bestiality but as an emasculatory threat. Among women she has been portrayed more sympathetically. By most accounts, she was the daughter of Helios, the Titan sun god, Perse, one of the three thousand Oceanid nymphs.
Her brothers were Aeëtes, keeper of the Golden Fleece, Perses. Her sister was the wife of King Minos and mother of the Minotaur. Other accounts make her the daughter of the goddess of witchcraft, she was confused with Calypso, due to her shifts in behavior and personality, the association that both of them had with Odysseus. In Homer's Odyssey, an 8th-century BCE sequel to his Trojan War epic Iliad, Circe is described as living in a palace that stands in the middle of a clearing in a dense wood on her island of Aeaea. Around the house prowled strangely docile lions and wolves, the drugged victims of her sorcery. Circe worked at an enormous loom, she invited the hero Odysseus' crew to a feast of familiar food, a pottage of cheese and meal, sweetened with honey and laced with wine, but laced with one of her magical potions and drunk from an enchanted cup. Thus so she turned them all into swine with her magic wand or staff after they gorged themselves on it. Only Eurylochus, suspecting treachery from the outset and thus not entering the mansion of Circe, escaped to warn Odysseus and the others who had stayed behind at the ship.
Odysseus set out to rescue his men, but was intercepted by the messenger god, sent by Athena. Hermes told Odysseus to use the herb moly to protect himself from Circe's magic and, having resisted it, to draw his sword and act as if he were going to attack her. From there, Circe would ask him to bed, but Hermes advised caution, for there the goddess would be treacherous, she would take his manhood. Odysseus followed Hermes' advice, freeing his men and remained on the island for one year and drinking wine. According to Homer, Circe suggested two alternative routes to Odysseus to return to Ithaca: toward Planctae, the "Wandering Rocks", or passing between the dangerous Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, conventionally identified with the Strait of Messina, she advised Odysseus to go to the Underworld and gave him directions. Towards the end of Hesiod's Theogony, it is stated that Circe bore Odysseus three sons: Ardeas or Agrius; the Telegony, an epic now lost, relates the history of the last of these.
Circe informed him who his absent father was and, when he set out to find Odysseus, gave him a poisoned spear. With this he killed his father unknowingly. Telegonus brought back his father's corpse to Aeaea, together with Penelope and Odysseus' other son Telemachus. After burying Odysseus, Circe made the others immortal. In the 5th-century BCE epic Dionysiaca, author Nonnus mentions Phaunos, Circe's son by the sea god Poseidon. According to Lycophron's 3rd-century BCE poem Alexandra, John Tzetzes' scholia on it, Circe used magical herbs to bring Odysseus back to life after he had been killed by Telegonus. Odysseus gave Telemachus to Circe's daughter Cassiphone in marriage; some time Telemachus had a quarrel with his mother-in-law and killed her. On hearing of this, Odysseus died of grief. In his 3rd-century BCE epic, the Argonautica, Apollonius Rhodius relates that Circe purified the Argonauts for the death of Absyrtus reflecting an early tradition. In this poem, the animals that surroun
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of major conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European powers formed into various coalitions and led by the United Kingdom. The wars stemmed from the unresolved disputes associated with the French Revolution and its resultant conflict; the wars are categorised into five conflicts, each termed after the coalition that fought Napoleon: the Third Coalition, the Fourth, the Fifth, the Sixth, the Seventh. Napoleon, upon ascending to First Consul of France in 1799, had inherited a chaotic republic. In 1805, Austria and Russia waged war against France. In response, Napoleon defeated the allied Russo-Austrian army at Austerlitz in December 1805, considered his greatest victory. At sea, the British defeated the joint Franco-Spanish navy in the Battle of Trafalgar on October 1805; this victory prevented the invasion of Britain itself. Concerned about the increasing French power, Prussia led the creation of the Fourth Coalition with Russia and Sweden, the resumption of war in October 1806.
Napoleon defeated the Prussians in Jena and the Russians in Friedland, bringing an uneasy peace to the continent. The peace failed, though, as war broke out in 1809, when the badly prepared Fifth Coalition, led by Austria, was defeated in Wagram. Hoping to isolate Britain economically, Napoleon launched an invasion of Portugal, the only remaining British ally in continental Europe. After occupying Lisbon in November 1807, with the bulk of French troops present in Spain, Napoleon seized the opportunity to turn against his former ally, depose the reigning Spanish Bourbon family and declare his brother King of Spain in 1808 as Joseph I; the Spanish and Portuguese revolted with British support, after six years of fighting, expelled the French from Iberia in 1814. Concurrently, unwilling to bear economic consequences of reduced trade violated the Continental System, enticing Napoleon to launch a massive invasion of Russia in 1812; the resulting campaign ended with the dissolution and disastrous withdrawal of the French Grande Armée.
Encouraged by the defeat, Prussia and Russia formed the Sixth Coalition and began a new campaign against France, decisively defeating Napoleon at Leipzig in October 1813 after several inconclusive engagements. The Allies invaded France from the East, while the Peninsular War spilled over southwestern French territory. Coalition troops captured Paris at the end of March 1814 and forced Napoleon to abdicate in early April, he was exiled to the island of Elba, the Bourbons were restored to power. However, Napoleon escaped in February 1815, reassumed control of France; the Allies responded with the Seventh Coalition, defeating Napoleon permanently at Waterloo in June 1815 and exiling him to St Helena where he died six years later. The Congress of Vienna redrew the borders of Europe, brought a lasting peace to the continent; the wars had profound consequences on global history, including the spread of nationalism and liberalism, the rise of the British Empire as the world's foremost power, the appearance of independence movements in Latin America and subsequent collapse of the Spanish Empire, the fundamental reorganisation of German and Italian territories into larger states, the establishment of radically new methods of conducting warfare.
Napoleon seized power in 1799. There are a number of opinions on the date to use as the formal beginning of the Napoleonic Wars; the Napoleonic Wars began with the War of the Third Coalition, 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 and declared war on France in May 1803. Among the reasons were Napoleon's changes to the international system in Western Europe in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. 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 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 enforced a naval blockade of France to starve it of resources.
Napoleon responded with economic embargoes against Britain, 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, secured dominance over the seas, allowing it to 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; this war ended disastrously for Prussia and occupied within 19 days of the beginning of the campaign. Napoleon subsequently defeated the Russian Empire at Friedland, creating powerful client states in Eastern Europe and ending the fourth coalition. Concurrently, the refusal of Portugal to commit to the Con
