French Revolutionary Wars

The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of large military conflicts that grew out of the French Revolution and ran from 1792 until 1802. They pitted revolutionary France against Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia and several other states, and they are usually divided into the War of the First Coalition (1792 to 1797) and the War of the Second Coalition (1798 to 1802). What began as a European struggle spread to Egypt, the Atlantic, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. Mass conscription let France field very large armies, and the campaign of Napoleon Bonaparte in Italy in 1796 and 1797 destroyed the Habsburg forces there and led Austria to accept the Treaty of Campo Formio. The wars ended with the Treaty of Lunéville in 1801 and the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, leaving France in control of the Low Countries, the Rhineland and much of Italy. Within about a year the conflict resumed as the Napoleonic Wars.