The War of the Fifth Coalition in 1809 pits a coalition of the Austrian Empire and the United Kingdom against Napoleon's French Empire and Bavaria.

Major engagements between France and Austria, the main participants, unfold over much of Central Europe from April to July, producing horrific casualty rates.

Britain, already involved on the European continent in the ongoing Peninsular War, sends another expedition to the Netherlands to take pressure off the Austrians, although this has little impact on the outcome of the conflict.

After much campaigning in Bavaria and across the Danube valley, the war ends favorably for the French after the bloody struggle at the Battle of Wagram in early July.The resulting Treaty of Schönbrunn is the harshest that France has imposed on Austria in recent memory.

Metternich and Archduke Charles have the preservation of the Habsburg Empire as their fundamental goal, and to this end the former succeeds in making Napoleon seek more modest goals in return for promises of Franco-Austrian peace and friendship.

Nevertheless, while most of the hereditary lands remain part of Habsburg territories, France receives Carinthia, Carniola, and the Adriatic ports, while Galicia is given to the Poles and the Salzburg area of the Tyrol went to the Bavarians.

Austria loses over three million subjects, about one-fifth of her total population, as a result of these territorial changes.

While fighting in the Iberian Peninsula will continue, the War of the Fifth Coalition is to be the last major conflict on the European continent until the French invasion of Russia in 1812 sparks the rise of the Sixth Coalition.