The Ministry of all the Talents has fallen and the Duke of Portland, after a record-breaking gap of 24 years, has formed a new government. The people making it up are now referred to as Tories and think of themselves that way. As for the Whigs, who had a brief taste of power with the Talents, their first in 23 years since 1783, they’re going to have to wait to return to power until 1827.

Meanwhile, the war continues to go badly for the nations fighting France. The Fourth Coalition collapsed like the Third. Now a Fifth, which does produce the first ever defeat of an army personally commanded by Napoleon, ultimately goes the same way as the Austrians are once more massively defeated within a couple of months of that victory. Vienna is occupied again and Napoleon helps himself to an Austria Princess as his second wife, to cement a new alliance.

Only in the Iberian Peninsula are things beginning to move a little in the direction of the enemies of France as a General, still for the moment referred to as Arthur Wellesley, wins back Portugal.

Illustration: The British fleet bombarding Copenhagen in 1807, by Christian William Eckersberg. Public domain.