TILSIT, a t. of Prussia, in the province of Prussia, on the left bankof the Memel 'or Niemen, 65 m. n. e. of Konigsberg. Pop. '75, 19,787. It stands in a fruitful dis trict, called the Tilsit Flat, has broad streets and a cleanly appearance. Its castle and town-hall are the chief buildings. It carries on an active transit-trade with Russia.
besides considerable trade in timber, corn, butter, cheese, and Russian products, and has paper, sugar, and oil-mills. Tilsit will be ever memorable in history for the treaties which were there signed between France and Russia on July 7, and France and Prussia on July 9, 1807. By the former of these, Napoleon agreed to restore to the king of Prussia a great portion of his dominions, his Polish acquisitions being joined to Saxony (see POLAND), and his possessions west of the Elbe formed into the nucleus of the new kingdom of Westphalia; Dantzic was declared an independent city; the Prussian province of Bialystok was ceded to Russia; the dukes of Oldenburg and Mecklenburg, the czar's relatives, were reinstated by Napoleon, and in return, the Bonapartist kings of Naples and Holland were recognized by the czar, etc. By the latter, the king of Prussia recog nized the kings of Holland, Naples, and Westphalia, and the Confederation of the Rhine, agreed to the cessions laid down in the Russian treaty, and to other minor alienations and concessions to Saxony, amounting in all to nearly one half of his dominions; to the exclusion from his harbors of the commerce of Great Britain, and to the occupation of the Prussian fortresses by the French, till the payment of an enormous ransom. The
weighty importance of the alterations effected by this treaty is, however, dwarfed before the startling magnitude of the secret provisions signed between France and Russia. By these were arranged the resignation of the empire of the east to Russia, Roumelia and Constantinople being specially excepted by Napoleon, and the acquisition of the Spanish peninsula by France; the two powers were to make common cause against Great Britain, and were to force the three courts of Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Lisbon to join them; and Napoleon agreed to increase no further the power of the duchy of Warsaw, and to do nothing which might lead to the re-establishment of the Polish' monarchy. By a fur ther agreement, not put formally into writing, the mouths of the Cattaro, the Ionian isles, Sicily, Malta, Egypt, and the papal dominions were to be taken by France; and Greece, Macedonia, Dalmatia, and the Adriatic coasts, on the partition of Turkey; while, on the other hand, Russia was to obtain the rest of Turkey, and was allowed to Finland. These secret articles are given on most excellent authority, and their correct ness is further vouched for by the conduct of France and Russia for the next few years.