Research-Napoleonic Wars

Smuggler's Captain takes place in December 1796, with Her Captain's Honor taking place one month later in January 1797. So what was happening in the world during that time?

The War of the First Coalition was more a series of wars than a prolonged war that we think of like WWII. There were allies. Sorta. English, Portuguese, Dutch, parts of what is now Italy,  (Spain for a bit), and Austrian against the French and some remnants of the Polish lands (they'd been torn apart by Austria, Russia, and Prussia), and Spain from 1796.

This, by later scholars, was considered a true World War. 

War of the First Coalition | Military Wiki | Fandom

War of the First Coalition - Wikipedia

• In December 1796, The British government begins work on a 40-acre site at Norman Cross, becoming the first ever prisoner of war camp that was made specifically for POWs. 
• December 18, 1796 British Navy ship HMS Courageux is wrecked on the Barbary Coase, 464 of the 593 onboard were lost.
• January 3, 1797 – The Treaty of Tripoli, a peace treaty between the United States and Ottoman Tripolitania, is signed at Algiers (see also 1796).
• January 7, 1797 – The parliament of the Cisalpine Republic adopts the Italian green-white-red tricolour as the official flag (this is considered the birth of the flag of Italy).
• January 13, 1797 – Action of 13 January 1797, part of the War of the First Coalition: Two British Royal Navy frigates, HMS Indefatigable and HMS Amazon, drive the French 74-gun ship of the line Droits de l'Homme aground on the coast of Brittany, with over 900 deaths.
• January 14, 1797 – Battle of Rivoli during the War of the First Coalition: French forces under General Napoleon Bonaparte defeat an Austrian army of 28,000 men, under Feldzeugmeister József Alvinczi, near Rivoli (modern-day Italy), ending Austria's fourth and final attempt to relieve the fortress city of Mantua.
• January 26, 1797 – The Treaty of the Third Partition of Poland is signed in St. Petersburg by the Russian Empire, Austria and the Kingdom of Prussia.