Peace of Tilsit

              After the great defeats against France at Jena and Auerstedt on the 14th of October,
              Prussia was compelled to give away the territories left of the Elbe and all profits from
              the 2nd and 3rd political division of Poland. The rest of Prussia was occupied by
              French troups and payed high compensations to France.

              The former Prussian possessions were given to the kingdom of Westfalia and to the
              dukedom of Warsaw. Both had been founded as French vasalle states after the Peace
              of Tilsit. The complete destruction of Prussia was prevented by the Russian czar
              Alexander I through direct negotiations with Napoleon. Instead of the independent
              kingdom planed, the sovereign dukedom Warsaw was founded.

              Prussia experienced great reformes, which became the basis for the development in
              Prussia away from the absolute state to a modern constitutional state. The reforms
              were oriented from the ideas of the French revolution and were managed by Freiherr
              vom und zum Stein and von Hardenberg.

                                                                                                      source: nordhessen.net

         From the 1911 edition encyclopedia

TILSIT, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of East Prussia, situated on the left bank of the Memel or Niemen, here crossed by an’iron railway bridge, 57 m. S.E. of Memel and 72 N.E. of Konigsberg by rail. Pop. (1905), 37,148. The town has a number of handsome modern buildings, including a town hall, a post office, law courts, and a large hospital. It contains four Protestant churches, among them the German church, with a handsome steeple, and the curious circular Lithuanian church, a Roman Catholic church, a Jewish synagogue and a classical school (Gymnasium). The manufactures include machinery, chemicals, soap, leather, shoes, glass and other articles, and there ,are iron-foundries, breweries, and, steam flour and saw-mills. Tilsit carries on trade in timber, grain. hemp, flax, herrings and coal; but its trade’ with Russia, at one time considerable, has fallen off since the construction of the railway from Konigsberg to Kovno. The river is navigable above the town, and there is a steamboat communication with Konigsberg, Memel and Kovno.

Tilsit, which received civic rights in 1552, grew up around a castle of the Teutonic otder, known as the “Schalauner Haus,” founded in 1288. It owes most of its interest to the peace signed here in July 1807, the preliminaries of which were settled by the emperors Alexander and Napoleon on a raft moored in the Memel, This treaty, which constituted the kingdom of Westphalia and the duchy of Warsaw, registers the nadir of Prussia’s humiliation under Napoleon. The poet Max von Schenkendorf (1784—1817) was born at Tilsjt.
                                                                                           

                                                 source: http://www.1911ency.org/T/TI/TILSIT.htm

 

  From Infoplease

Sovetsk [suvyetsk']
Pronunciation Key

Sovetsk , formerly Tilsit [til'zit] , town (1989 pop. 41,900), NW European Russia, on the Neman River at the mouth of the Tilse. It is a rail junction, a river port, and an industrial and commercial center in an agricultural area. Lumbering and woodworking are the chief industries; others include the production of machines, cotton cloth, and Tilsit cheese. The town grew around a castle built in 1288 by the Teutonic Knights and was chartered in 1552. Napoleon I, having won the battle of Friedland, met Emperor Alexander I of Russia on June 25, 1807, on a raft in the Neman River off Tilsit. Their negotiations, joined later by King Frederick William III of Prussia, an ally of Russia, led to the treaties of Tilsit of July 7 and July 9, 1807. By the first treaty, France made peace with Russia, which recognized the grand duchy of Warsaw and which secretly promised to mediate between France and England; if England should reject mediation, Russia was to ally itself with France. At the same time, France gave Russia a free hand with regard to Finland, then a Swedish possession. The Russo-French alliance proved tenuous and collapsed altogether in 1812. In the second treaty, Napoleon drastically reduced Prussia, which lost all its territory west of the Elbe to France and most of its Polish provinces to the grand duchy of Warsaw. Danzig became a free city, the Prussian army was reduced to 42,000 men, several leading Prussian fortresses were to be garrisoned by French troops, and Prussia was to join in the Continental System against England. Prussia was thus reduced to virtual vassalage to France, from which it freed itself only in 1813. Tilsit was occupied by Soviet forces in World War II and was transferred, along with other sections of East Prussia, to the USSR at the Potsdam Conference of 1945.

                                                  source: http://infoplease.com/ce6/world/A0846120.html

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