War of the Second Coalition
The War of the Second Coalition (1798-1802), part of the broader French Revolutionary Wars, was the second attempt by an alliance of major European powers to defeat Revolutionary France. The Second Coalition, which included Russia, Austria, Great Britain, Naples, Portugal, and the Ottoman Empire, was defeated by the French Republic, and hostilities ended with the Treaty of Amiens in 1802.
Origins: Victory of the Great Nation
With the signing of the Treaty of Campo Formio on 17 October 1797, the War of the First Coalition (1792-1797) finally came to an end. Born out of tensions surrounding the French Revolution (1789-1799), the war had seen the infant French Republic take on most of the great powers of Europe, including Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, and Spain, while simultaneously dealing with several counter-revolutionary rebellions within its borders. Through draconian efforts such as mass conscription and the bloodshed of the Reign of Terror, the French Republic managed not only to survive the existential threat posed by these enemies, but to triumph; by 1796, French armies had won a succession of victories in the Netherlands, on the Rhine, and in Italy. The frustrated nations of the First Coalition gradually dropped out of the war until October 1797, when Austria made peace at Campo Formio and left Great Britain as the only power to remain at war with France.
The victory left the French Republic as the preeminent power in Western Europe, rivaled only by Britain itself. France had annexed Belgium, Luxembourg, and the west bank of the Rhine and indirectly ruled Holland and northern Italy through a collection of client states known as 'sister republics'. For the French, who had succeeded in their war goals to both preserve their Revolution and expand it into Europe, this was not just a victory but also an indicator of the greatness of the French people. Around this time, the French increasingly referred to themselves as "the Great Nation", a state superior to all others and unencumbered by international rules. This rise in nationalism coincided with a sharp turn back into extremist Jacobinism; the Coup of 18 Fructidor (4 September 1797) purged the Republic's government, called the French Directory, of its conservative and royalist members, many of whom were exiled to French Guiana. This neo-Jacobin resurgence resulted in a new wave of violence against priests and political opponents and reignited the disdain for the old regime monarchies of Europe. The new Fructidorian Directory promptly broke off preliminary peace talks with Britain and began to make plans for further territorial expansion.
At the Congress of Rastatt, which met in November 1797 to finalize the peace between France and the Holy Roman Empire, the first signs of France's aggressive post-war foreign policy became apparent. Despite Holy Roman Emperor Francis II's promise to the Imperial Diet that the empire would retain its "complete integrity", the French still compelled the German states to cede all lands on the west bank of the Rhine. The French also stipulated that German princes who lost land from the deal could be compensated by the secularization of ecclesiastical states, dealing a further blow to the unity of the empire.
The nations of Europe, unnerved by France's belligerent attitude at Rastatt, were further alarmed in January 1798, when a French-backed coup overthrew the government of Switzerland, which was replaced with a French puppet state called the Helvetic Republic. Meanwhile, a riot in Rome that led to the death of a French general was used as the pretext for the French invasion of the Papal States on 15 February 1798. The Eternal City was integrated into the patchwork of French client states as the Roman Republic, and Pope Pius VI was taken prisoner. Though the "Great Nation" was now at the center of a zone of influence that stretched in an almost unbroken line from Amsterdam to Rome, its appetite for conquest remained unsatisfied.
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