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The Adriatic campaign was a minor theatre of war during the Napoleonic Wars in which a succession of small British Royal Navy squadrons and independent cruisers harried the combined naval forces of the First French Empire, the Kingdom of Italy, the Illyrian Provinces and the Kingdom of Naples between 1807 and 1814 in the Adriatic Sea. Italy, Naples and Illyria were all controlled either directly or via proxy by the French Emperor Napoleon I, who had seized them at the Treaty of Pressburg in the aftermath of the War of the Third Coalition. Control of the Adriatic brought numerous advantages to the French Navy, allowing rapid transit of troops from Italy to the Balkans and Austria for campaigning in the east and giving France possession of numerous shipbuilding facilities, particularly the large naval yards of Venice. From 1807, when the Treaty of Tilsit precipitated a Russian withdrawal from the Septinsular Republic, the French Navy held naval supremacy in the region. The Treaty of Tilsit also contained a secret clause that guaranteed French assistance in any war fought between the Russians and the Ottoman Empire. To fulfil this clause, Napoleon would have to secure his supply lines to the east by developing the French armies in Illyria. This required control of the Adriatic against increasingly aggressive British raiders. The Royal Navy determined to stop these troop convoys from reaching Illyria and sought to break French hegemony in the region, resulting in a six-year naval campaign. The campaign was not uniform in approach; British and French forces were limited by the dictates of the wider Mediterranean and global conflict, and consequently ship numbers fluctuated. Although numerous commanders held commands in the region, the two most important personalities were those of William Hoste and Bernard Dubourdieu, whose exploits were celebrated in their respective national newspapers during 1810 and 1811. The campaign between the two officers reached a climax at the Battle of Lissa in March 1811, when Dubourdieu was killed and his squadron defeated by Hoste in a celebrated action. The events of 1811 gave the British dominance in the Adriatic for the remainder of the war. British and Greek expeditionary forces steadily captured fortified French islands and British raiding parties devastated the local trade across the region. As a result, French plans against the Ottoman Empire were cancelled, La Grande Armée turning towards Russia. British forces continued operations until the advancing armies of the Sixth Coalition drove the French from the shores of the Adriatic in early 1814, British troops and marines assisting in the capture of several important French cities, including Fiume and Trieste. ==Background== There had been a French presence in the Adriatic Sea since the Treaty of Campo Formio during the French Revolutionary War. Campo Formio marked the end of the War of the First Coalition in 1797 and confirmed the demise of the independent Republic of Venice and the division of its territory between the French Republic and the Austrian Empire.〔Chandler p. 78〕 One of France's grants from this division were the seven Ionian Islands that controlled the entrance to the Adriatic. These French outposts in the Eastern Mediterranean were considered a threat by both the Russian and the Ottoman Empires and in 1800 a united Russo-Ottoman force attacked the massively fortified French citadel on Corfu, which fell after a four-month siege. The victors took possession of the islands and from them created the Septinsular Republic, nominally Ottoman, practically independent and guaranteed by the Russian Navy. On mainland Europe, the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte as the ruler of the new French Empire resulted in a new conflict, the War of the Third Coalition in 1805, which ended disastrously for the Austrian and Russian allied armies at the Battle of Austerlitz. The treaties that ended the war created two French client monarchies in Italy, the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Naples, and French troops were left holding substantial parts of the Eastern coastline of the Adriatic in Dalmatia.〔Chandler p. 348〕 These holdings significantly increased French naval interest in the Adriatic, which was well supplied with excellent ports and shipbuilding facilities, particularly at Venice.〔 The Russian garrison on Corfu, augmented with a powerful naval squadron, effectively blocked French use of the Adriatic by sealing the entrance through the Straits of Otranto. French military concerns were also directed further north at this time, resulting in the War of the Fourth Coalition during 1806 and 1807 that saw Napoleon's armies overrun Prussia and force the Russians to sign the Treaty of Tilsit on July 7, 1807.〔Chandler p. 163〕 One of the minor clauses of this treaty transferred the Septinsular Republic back into French hands, the Russians withdrawing completely from the Adriatic.〔Adkins, p. 209〕 This withdrawal supported a hidden clause in the treaty that guaranteed French support in the continuing Russian war with the Ottomans in the Balkans.〔Chandler p. 441〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Adriatic campaign of 1807–14」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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