Russia joins the Coalition (1796)

The supplied passages document the late stage of the War of the First Coalition, when Prussia had withdrawn and Britain alone remained fighting France, and they establish Catherine the Great's identity and reign. They do not themselves document the Russo-British agreement of September 1796; that accord rests on the legacy record and is presented here with that qualification.

Episodes

Background and detail

Background. The War of the First Coalition pitted several European powers against France from 1792 to 1797, though the allies fought loosely and without much coordination, each hoping to annex different parts of France. By 1794 the revolutionary armies were gaining the upper hand, and Prussia effectively left the conflict, concluding the Peace of Basel with France on 5 April 1795.

Russia in 1796. Catherine II, Empress of Russia since July 1762, was in the final months of her reign. In 1796 her forces were engaged against Persia, storming Derbent in May and overrunning much of present-day Azerbaijan by mid-June, while her Swedish cousin King Gustav IV Adolf visited her in September 1796.

The Agreement with Britain. According to the legacy record, Catherine signed an agreement with Great Britain that formally brought Russia into the coalition against France; the supplied passages do not document this agreement, so its existence is stated here only on that basis. The passages do confirm the coalition's condition at the time: Prussia had withdrawn, and Britain was left as the only power still fighting France in the field.

People involved

Sources

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.