You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Hello, and thank you for joining the American Revolution.

This week, episode 244, Russia and the League of Armed Neutrality.

Over the past few episodes I have focused on how Britain has been struggling with a larger war against European powers.

The rebellion of its American colonies raised a sense in

Britain's enemies that it might be a little weak right now. France in 1778 and

Spain in 1779 went to war against Britain.

Other countries also began smelling blood.

Although not ready to go to war, they did hope to take advantage of the situation.

You have to remember, Europe at this time was really dominated by just a few families of aristocrats

that intermarried with one another.

They made whatever deals they had to do to maintain alliances of national security, and they were

also always ready to pounce on a neighbor in a moment of weakness in order to add to their

own real estate when possible.

When various European powers went to war,

diplomatic efforts turned to bringing allies into the war

or at least keeping potential enemies out of the war.

Alliances shifted with some regularity, but a general trend over the prior couple of centuries

was that Protestant countries generally squared off against

Catholic countries. So Catholic France, Spain, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire

tended to ally along with some smaller people states on the Italian peninsula.

Protestant Britain tended to ally with the Netherlands, Denmark, which included Norway,

and Sweden which included

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