Treaty of Tilsit

Treaty of Tilsit, name of two treaties signed at the East Prussian town of Tilsit (now Sovetsk, Russia), in July 1807, between France and Russia (July 7) and France and Prussia (July 9), during the Napoleonic Wars, enforcing the Continental Blockade of Britain. Preliminary discussions were held between Napoleon and Alexander I of Russia, during a famous meeting on a raft on the Memel River (now Niemen River), on June 25, 1807. The meeting took place following the defeat of Russia by France in the Battle of Friedland on June 14, 1807, and also followed the defeat of the Prussians at Jena on October 14, 1806.

By the terms of the treaties, Prussia was forced to cede all its territory west of the Elbe to Napoleon, who used it to create the kingdom of Westphalia. Prussia also relinquished to France the Polish territory it acquired in the partitions of 1793 to 1795, out of which Napoleon created the duchy of Warsaw; Danzig (Gdańsk) was made a free city. Prussia joined Napoleon's Continental System for the blockade of Britain, and closed its ports to British vessels. The Prussian army was reduced to 42,000 men. Prussian forts and provinces taken by the French were occupied until a war indemnity fixed at 120 million francs was paid in substantial part. The sovereignty of Napoleon's three brothers, Joseph Bonaparte, Louis Bonaparte, and Jerome Bonaparte, as the kings of Naples, Holland, and Westphalia, respectively, was recognized. Russia obtained only a small portion of East Prussia. In effect, by the agreements, France and Russia divided the political control of Europe between them, an arrangement that lasted until 1812.