1. The Tsar openly declared at his court in 1807 that Finland from now on was to consider part of the Russian Empire.
2. The stupid, naïve, cowardly Swedish government got constant warnings from among others their Ambassador in St. Petersburg, that there was a Russian attack coming to capture Finland.
3. The stupid, naïve, cowardly Swedish government
totally ignored the reports.
4. At 5 AM, 21 February 1808, the Russian army invaded Finland.
5. The stupid government and the insane King Gustav IV Adolf did almost nothing to stop the invasion at first, and when they did, the efforts were all too small. The King even for some absurd reason denied the Brits, who were Sweden's allies, to send troops to Finland to help Sweden!
6. The Swedish-Finnish regular troops and even civilians actually fought the invasion as good as they could, but they didn't get reinforcements enough to have the slightest chance to fight the intruders. There even was a Swedish Captain Malm wo actually managed to push the Russians back over the border and invade Russian Karelia(!), but to what point when he couldn't get reinforcements to hold his positions?
7. In early 1809, most of Finland was occupied by Russia and Russian troops were invading the Swedish mainland and were even near to reach Stockholm. The high officers than finally had had enough and dethroned the King, but it was too late to win the war.
8. In August 1809, the Swedish army made some final poor attempts to fight back the Russians occupying northern Sweden, to get a better position for peace negotiations, but again, thanks to lack of reinforcement and enthusiasm, it failed.
9. At the peace negotiations the Swedes behaved cowardly (of course) and made clear to the Russians that they wanted peace at almost any price.
10. The result was the
Treaty of Fredrikshamn of September 17, 1809, where all of Finland, the totally Swedish populated Ã…land Islands and parts of northern Sweden were lost forever.
I don't agree with Wikipedia that it was a beneficial treaty more than that the border wasn't drawn even more to the south than it was.
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