French Revolutionary Wars

(noun)

A series of sweeping military conflicts, lasting from 1792 until 1802, resulting from the French Revolution. They pitted the French First Republic against Britain, Austria and several other monarchies. They are divided in two periods: the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797) and the War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802). Initially confined to Europe, the fighting gradually assumed a global dimension as the political ambitions of the Revolution expanded.

Related Terms

Examples of French Revolutionary Wars in the following topics:

  • Napoleon's Military Record

    • Napoleon rose to prominence as a military leader during the French Revolutionary Wars and his 20-year-long military career earned him the titles of one of the finest commanders in world history and military genius.
    • The French Revolutionary Wars began from increasing political pressure on King Louis XVI of France to prove his loyalty to the new direction France was taking.
    • The War of the Second Coalition began with the French invasion of Egypt, headed by Napoleon, in 1798.
    • With Austria and Russia out of the war, the United Kingdom found itself increasingly isolated and agreed to the Treaty of Amiens with Napoleon's government in 1802, concluding the Revolutionary Wars.
    • Defeat for a European power meant more than the loss of isolated enclaves, intensifying the Revolutionary phenomenon of total war.

  • Early Wars with Austria and Britain

    • Napoleon's early wars with Austria and Britain confirmed the French dominance over Austria, did not stop the British dominance in the Mediterranean, and ended with a precarious peace broken only a year after signing the final treaty of the French Revolutionary Wars.  
    • The War of the First Coalition (1792–1797), one of the conflicts of the French Revolutionary Wars, was the first attempt by the European monarchies to defeat the French First Republic.
    • Promoted to general in 1795, Napoleon was sent to the battlefields of the French Revolutionary Wars to fight the Austro-Piedmontese armies in Northern Italy the following year.
    • The War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802) was the second war on revolutionary France by the European monarchies, led by Britain, Austria and Russia, and including the Ottoman Empire, Portugal and Naples.
    • The treaty is generally considered to mark the transition between the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.

  • Foreign Intervention

    • What followed was a series of sweeping military conflicts lasting from 1792 until 1802 that would be known as the French Revolutionary Wars.
    • The War of the First Coalition began with French victories, which rejuvenated the French nation and emboldened the National Convention to abolish the monarchy.
    • By 1795, the French had captured the Austrian Netherlands and knocked Spain and Prussia out of the war with the Peace of Basel.
    • French success in these conflicts ensured the spread of revolutionary principles over much of Europe.
    • Radical Frenchmen who called for war used it as a pretext to gain influence and declare war on April 20, 1792, leading to the campaigns of 1792 in the French Revolutionary Wars.

  • Across the Atlantic: France and Britain

    • It was formed in the midst of the American Revolutionary War, which promised French military support in case of attack by British forces indefinitely into the future.
    • A long-time enemy of Britain and an imperial rival, lost much of their colonial lands in the Americas after the French and Indian War.
    • The French monarchy, humiliated by Britain's victory in the Seven Years War, had been planning for a war of revenge since the Treaty of Paris that had ended the conflict in 1763.
    • In particular, French involvement in the war would prove to be exceedingly important during the Siege of Yorktown when 10,800 French regulars and 29 French warships, under the command of the Comte de Rochambeau and Comte de Grasse respectively, joined forces with General Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette to obtain the surrender of Lord Cornwallis's Southern army.
    • It was an agreement between the United States and Great Britain that was credited for averting war, resolving issues that had not been addressed since the Treaty of Paris of 1783, and facilitating ten years of peaceful trade between the United States and Britain in the midst of the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1815).

  • The Quasi-War

    • The Quasi-War was an undeclared naval war fought between France and the United States in the Caribbean Sea.
    • In a practical sense, Washington, Adams, and other Federalists believed that the United States was too weak to enter into the French revolutionary wars and had too much at stake.
    • War seemed inevitable as the French continued to seize private American ships in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Caribbean, and Congress authorized Adams to begin to build up the army and navy.
    • Democratic-Republicans were pro-French and were dismayed by the Quasi-War, often voicing their opinions in political speeches and writings.
    • Although Congress never officially declared war, it did authorize Adams to build a navy for the explicit purpose of attacking French warships that sought to capture American merchant vessels.

  • Revolution in France

    • Revolutionary French art was dominated by neoclassicism, as opposed to Rococo influences.
    • Revolutionary French art was dominated by neoclassicism, as opposed to Rococo influences.
    • The Greek and Roman subject matters were also often chosen to promote the values of French republicanism during the revolutionary period.
    • David was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the Ancien Regime and revolutionary eras.
    • The French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars brought great changes to the arts in France.

  • The American Revolution

    • The origins of the French involvement in the American Revolution go back to the British victory in the French and Indian War (1754–1763; the American theater in the Seven Years' War).
    • Furthermore, both the French general population and the elites supported the revolutionary spirit that many perceived as the incarnation of the Enlightenment ideals against the "English tyranny."
    • From the spring of 1776, France (together with Spain) was informally involved in the American Revolutionary War, with French admiral Latouche Tréville leading the process of providing supplies, ammunition, and guns from France.
    • France was also involved in the Caribbean and Indian theaters of the American Revolutionary War.
    • The French support was weak, however, and the status quo ante bellum ("the state existing before the war") 1784 Treaty of Mangalore ended the war.

  • France and Spain in the Revolutionary War

    • As a result, Britain declared war on France on March 17, 1778.
    • France was also instrumental in securing Spain’s involvement in the Revolutionary War.
    • In June 1779, Spain launched the unsuccessful Great Siege of Gibraltar, the first and longest Spanish action in the Revolutionary War, which lasted until February 1783.
    • Under François-Joseph Paul, Marquis de Grasse Tilly, comte de Grasse, the French defeated a British fleet at the Battle of the Chesapeake in 1781, ensuring the success of allied ground forces in the Siege of Yorktown, the last major land battle of the Revolutionary War.
    • The Battle of Ushant was the first naval engagement between Britain and France in the Revolutionary War.

  • The French and Indian War

    • In some countries, the war is alternatively named after combats in the respective theatres: the French and Indian War (North America, 1754–63), Pomeranian War (Sweden and Prussia, 1757–62), Third Carnatic War (Indian subcontinent, 1757–63), and Third Silesian War (Prussia and Austria, 1756–63).
    • The French and Indian War (1754–1763) is the name for the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War.
    • The issue of settlement in the region is considered to have been a primary cause of the French and Indian War and a later contributing factor to the American Revolutionary War.
    • This is a scene from the French and Indian War (1754–1763), depicting the alliance of French and American Indian forces.
    • Describe the political and economic impact of the French and Indian War on the colonies

  • Foreign and Domestic Crises

    • Democratic-Republicans seized on the French revolutionaries’ struggle against monarchy as the welcome harbinger of a larger republican movement around the world.
    • Indeed, the American Revolution served as an inspiration for French revolutionaries.
    • The French king was executed in January 1793, and the next two years became known as "the Terror," a period of extreme violence against perceived enemies of the revolutionary government.
    • France requested that the United States make a large repayment of the money it had borrowed to fund the Revolutionary War.
    • During the war, the United States slowly pushed the French out of the West Indian trade system.