Franco-Austrian alliance

Foreign alliances of France

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The Franco-Austrian Alliance was a

.

The alliance had its heyday during the

French Republic

.

Background

Further information:

French-Habsburg rivalry

Throughout the 17th century and for the first half of the 18th century, France and Austria had been enemies and repeatedly fought wars against each other. During the War of the Polish Succession (1733–1735), France and its allies managed to weaken the power of Austria severely and forced it to give up small amounts of territory.^[1] In the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), France allied with Prussia to attack Austria, which ended in Austria being forced to cede its richest and most prized province, Silesia, to the Prussians.

The failure of Britain in both wars to prevent Austria's losses led to a re-evaluation of the Anglo-Austrian Alliance, which had existed since 1731. Austria began to consider gaining new allies to help it to recover Silesia, which was the priority of Maria Theresa, the ruler of Austria.

France and

during the Thirty Years' War). That made the alliance a major diplomatic realignment for both France and Austria.

Diplomatic Revolution

Wenzel Anton Count of Kaunitz-Rietberg

was one of the major architects of the Franco-Austrian Alliance.

By 1754, six years after the

, provided a close link between Paris and Vienna. Choiseul indicated to Kaunitz that France was willing to consider a rapprochement with Austria despite the long history of conflict between the two states.

In 1756, Britain signed a

, Both Austria and French were outraged at what they perceived as a betrayal by their respective allies.

In response, Austria and France signed a defensive alliance of their own, the First Treaty of Versailles.^[2] It stipulated that if either was attacked by a third party, the other would come to its assistance. As Austria were now planning an attack on Prussia to retake Silesia, the treaty was seen as a way of preventing any other power from trying to intervene on the side of Prussia.

The sudden political changes formed part of what became known as the stately quadrille.

In August 1756, Frederick the Great of Prussia, fearing that his country was about to be overrun and partitioned by its enemies, launched a pre-emptive strike against Austria's ally, Saxony, which he succeeded in capturing.^[3] That triggered the declaration of the Seven Years' War, and Austria went to war with Prussia with France as an ally. The Treaty of St Petersburg saw Sweden and Russia join the anti-Prussian alliance. Britain was Prussia's only major ally but was at war with France only, not with Austria, Russia, Saxony or Sweden.

The alliance reached its high-water mark in late 1757, when a French invasion overran Hanover, Austrian troops recaptured

France and Austria struggled then to defeat their enemies, as Prussia fought them to a standstill in a conflict that was extremely costly in terms of men, resources and money and brought the French government just at the brink of bankruptcy. While French troops were poured into Germany, Britain attacked France's colonies around the globe, causing France to lose most of its colonies in North America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia colonies. France was ultimately forced to abandon its financial commitments to Austria because of a lack of money. France and Austria continued fighting in Germany until late 1762, when an armistice was signed with Britain and Prussia.

In 1763, the Treaty of Paris forced Austria to acknowledge the continued Prussian ownership of Silesia, and France had to cede a number of colonies to the British. The war was extremely costly and left large swathes of Central Europe in ruins, with little discernible continental advantage for any of the participants.^[5]

Austria and France were disappointed with each other's military performance during the war. The failure of them and their allies to overwhelm Prussia was considered by France to be a major reason for the loss of numerous global French colonies to the British. The Austrians was unimpressed by the level of help that they had received from France to recover Silesia. That disappointment led to a cooling of relations between the two states, as France drew closer to its neighbour, Spain, and Austria looked to its Russian ally in the east, as both Austria and Russia shared an enmity towards the Ottoman Empire.

By the 1780s, the alliance had grown much weaker after the death of Maria Theresa and the fall from power of Kaunitz. The new emperor, Joseph II, was more willing to consider establishing fresh alliances, such as with Great Britain, which was fighting a global war against France, Spain, the Dutch Republic and the United States. (The latter having declared its independence in 1776.) Britain was diplomatically isolated and without a major ally and so it tried to secure Austrian support. Britain hoped that an Austrian attack on France would draw French resources back across the Atlantic to concentrate on Europe, which would thereby safeguard Britain's valuable West Indian colonies.^[6]

Although Austria ultimately remained neutral in the conflict, the alliance was considerably weakened, partly because the French failed to support Austria adequately in its brief

French Revolution

The French Revolution destroyed the ties between the two states, despite appeals by the French National Assembly for Austria to honour the 1756 treaty. In 1792, the Austrians sent troops to invade France and threatened to destroy Paris unless Louis XVI, now reduced to a constitutional monarch, was restored to his previous status. The Austrians suffered a defeat at the Battle of Valmy; Louis XVI was overthrown and, together with Marie Antoinette, was executed the following year. Austria has joined a coalition of states trying to crush the French revolutionaries by force, and Vienna became one of the centres of anti-revolutionary activity by giving shelter to many French royalist refugees.^[8]

After the

.

The alliance broke down after Napoleon's retreat from Russia, and Austria joined the

Sixth Coalition

against France in 1813.

See also

• Foreign alliances of France
• Anglo-Austrian Alliance
• Anglo–Prussian Alliance

• Dull, Jonathon R. The French Navy in the Seven Years' War. University of Nebraska Press, 2005.
• MacDonogh, Giles. Frederick the Great: A Life in Deeds and Letters. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999.
• McLynn, Frank. 1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World. Pimlico, 2005.
• Mansel, Philip. Prince of Europe: The Life of Charles-Joseph De Ligne. Phoenix, 2005.
• Murphy, Orvile T. Charles Gravier: Comete de Vergennes: French Diplomacy in the Age of Revolution. New York Press, 1982.
• Simms, Brendan. Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire. Penguin Books, 2008.