War of the Second Coalition
War of the Second Coalition | |||||||||
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Part of the Coalition Wars | |||||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||||
Second Coalition: Russia[3] Ottoman Empire[4] Naples (until 1801)[5] Portugal[6] Sardinia[7] |
French client republics:[8]
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Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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Casualties and losses | |||||||||
200,000 killed and wounded |
75,000 killed in combat 140,000 captured[11] |
620miles
The War of the Second Coalition (
The overall goal of Britain and Russia was to contain the expansion of the French Republic and to restore the monarchy in France, while Austria —weakened and in deep financial debt from the War of the First Coalition—sought primarily to recover its position and come out of the war stronger than when it had entered.[12] In large part because of the difference in strategy among the three major allied powers, the Second Coalition failed to overthrow the revolutionary government, and French territorial gains since 1793 were confirmed.[12] In the Franco–Austrian Treaty of Lunéville in February 1801, France held all of its previous gains and obtained new lands in Tuscany in Italy. Austria was granted Venetia and the former Venetian Dalmatia. Most other allies also signed separate peace treaties with the French Republic in 1801. Britain and France signed the Treaty of Amiens in March 1802, followed by the Ottomans in June 1802, which brought an interval of peace in Europe that lasted several months until Britain declared war on France again in May 1803. The renewed hostilities culminated in the War of the Third Coalition.
Background
On 20 April 1792, the
Peace interrupted
From October 1797 until March 1799, France and Austria, the signatories of the Treaty of Campo Formio, avoided armed conflict but remained skeptical of each other, and several diplomatic incidents undermined the agreement. The French demanded additional territory not mentioned in the Treaty. The Habsburgs were reluctant to hand over designated territories, much less additional ones. The Congress at Rastatt proved inept at orchestrating the transfer of territories to compensate the German princes for their losses. Republicans in the Swiss Cantons, supported by the French Revolutionary Army, overthrew the central government in Bern and established the Helvetic Republic.[14]
Other factors contributed to the rising tensions. In the summer of 1798, Napoleon led an
Preliminaries to war
Military strategists in Paris recognized the strategic significance of the Upper Rhine Valley, the southwestern German regions, and Switzerland for the defense of the Republic. The control of the Swiss passes was crucial as they provided a key route to northern Italy. Therefore, the army that maintained control over these passes could swiftly deploy troops between the northern and southern theaters of operations.[16]
Toward this end, in early November 1798, Marshal
Jourdan's orders were to take the army into Germany and secure strategic positions, particularly on the southwest roads through Stockach and Schaffhausen, at the westernmost border of Lake Constance. Similarly, as commander of the Army of Helvetia (Switzerland), André Masséna would acquire strategic positions in Switzerland, in particular the St. Gotthard Pass, the passes above Feldkirch, particularly Maienfeld (St. Luciensteig), and hold the central plateau in and around Zürich and Winterthur. These positions would prevent the Allies of the Second Coalition from moving troops back and forth between the northern Italian and German theatres, but would allow French access to these strategic passes. Ultimately, this positioning would allow the French to control all western roads leading to and from Vienna. Finally, the army of Mayence would sweep through the north, blocking further access to and from Vienna from any of the northern Provinces, or from Britain.[18]
Formation of the Second Coalition
The Second Coalition took several months to form, starting with Naples allying itself with Austria (19 May 1798) and Russia (29 November),[19] after which British Prime Minister Pitt and Austrian State Chancellor Thugut (the latter only on the condition that Russia also joined the coalition) failed to persuade Prussia (which had left the First Coalition as early as April 1795) to join in.[19][20] Neither were Britain and Austria able to formalise an alliance, due to lack of an agreement on the loan convention that would cover Austria's outstanding debt to Britain from the previous war, let alone British subsidy to Austria for the upcoming war; they resorted to ad hoc cooperation without formal agreement.[21] Next, Russia allied itself with the Ottoman Empire (23 December) and Great Britain (26 December) while attacking the French Ionian Islands.[19] By 1 December, the Kingdom of Naples had signed alliances with both Russia and Great Britain.[22]
The preliminary military action under the alliance occurred on 29 November when General
War
1799
In Europe, the allies mounted several invasions, including
Napoleon invaded
-
Battle of the Trebbia
-
General Masséna at the Second Battle of Zurich
-
General Bonaparte at the Siege of Acre
1800
Napoleon sent Moreau to campaign in Germany, and went himself to raise a new army at Dijon and march through Switzerland to attack the Austrian armies in Italy from behind.[citation needed]
Moreau meanwhile invaded
In May 1800, Napoleon led his troops across the
-
General Desaix at the Battle of Marengo
1801
Prior to the Acts of Union of July/August 1800, Ireland was a separate kingdom, with its own parliament, held in a personal union with Great Britain under the Crown. In response to the 1798 United Irishmen revolt, it became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, effective 1 January 1801.[citation needed]
The Austrians signed the Armistice of Treviso on 16 January, ending the war in northern Italy.[26] On 9 February, they signed the Treaty of Lunéville for the entire Holy Roman Empire, basically accepting the terms of the previous Treaty of Campo Formio. In Egypt, the Ottomans and British invaded and compelled the French to surrender after the fall of Cairo and Alexandria.[28]
Britain continued the war at sea. A
France and Spain invaded Portugal in the
Russia formally made peace with France through the Treaty of Paris on 8 October, signing a secret alliance two days later.[30]
In December 1801, France dispatched the Saint-Domingue expedition to recapture the island, which had been independent since the 1791 Haitian Revolution. This included over 30,000 troops with many experienced and elite veterans, but ended in catastrophic failure; by the end of 1802, an estimated 15,000–22,000 had died of disease and yellow fever, among them Napoleon's brother-in-law General Charles Leclerc.[citation needed]
Aftermath
On 25 March 1802, Britain and France signed the Treaty of Amiens, ending British involvement in the war. After a preliminary treaty signed at Paris on 9 October 1801, the Treaty of Paris of 25 June 1802 ended the war between France and the Ottoman Empire, the last remaining member of the Second Coalition. The peace treaties ceded the left bank of the Rhine to France and recognized the independence of the Cisalpine, Batavian and Helvetic republics. Thus began the longest period of peace during the period 1792–1815.
Strategic analysis
American historian Paul W. Schroeder (1987) claimed that, at the time of his writing, most historians – exemplified by Piers Mackesy (1984) – had all too simplistically blamed the Second Coalition's failure on the requirement of "Britain and Russia to trust Austria, when it was obvious that Austria could not be trusted".[31] These historians had assumed that Austria failed to act in accordance with the Coalition's common goal of invading France, ending the Revolution and restoring the Bourbon monarchy, because Vienna was too selfish and too greedy for territorial expansion.[31] Schroeder argued it was not that simple: while Austria's primary war aim was not to overthrow the French Republic, it was reasonable for Vienna to set its own conditions for entering a war with France. The enormous financial debt it still had from the War of the First Coalition jeopardised not just the Habsburg Monarchy's ability to field an army capable of defeating the French, but had also caused hyperinflation and internal instability that risked a revolution inside Austria itself.[32] The Habsburg monarchy's very survival was at stake, and so Emperor Francis II and Thugut resolved not to enter a war in order to defeat France at all costs, but to make Austria come out stronger than it went in.[12] Moreover, Schroeder reasoned that all the other great powers that were negotiating to form the Second Coalition – Russia, Prussia (which ultimately remained neutral), Britain, and the Ottoman Empire – were duplicitous: each was afraid of and scheming against the others to make sure it gained the most from the war and the others would gain little or actually grow weaker with the new postwar balance of power.[33]
See also
- List of battles of the War of the Second Coalition
- Suvorov's Swiss campaign
- War of the First Coalition
- War of the Third Coalition
Notes
- Habsburg states such as the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.
References
Citations
- ^ Left the war signing the treaty of Paris (August 1801).
- ^ Great Britain until 1800. Left the war signing the treaty of Amiens.
- ^ Left the war signing the treaty of Paris.
- ^ Including the Mamluks and the Barbary Coast. Left the war signing the Treaty of Paris (1802) with France.
- ^ Left the war signing the Treaty of Florence with France.
- ^ Left the war signing the Treaty of Badajoz (1801) with Spain and the Treaty of Madrid (1801) with France.
- ^ Following the refusal to enter in alliance against the Two Sicilies, France declared war on both Naples and Piedmont-Sardinia the same day, December 6. The Piedmontese Republic was proclaimed on 10 December 1798. The Sardinian king Charles Emmanuel IV fled to Cagliari.
- ^ And other supporting soldiers as the Polish Legions and some Mamluks in captivity.
- ^ Clodfelter, M. (2008). Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015 (3rd ed.). McFarland. p. 115.
- ^ Warfare and Armed Conflicts : A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492-2015 (in French). p. 106..
- ^ Clodfelter, p. 115.
- ^ a b c Schroeder 1987, pp. 249–250.
- ^ Timothy Blanning, The French Revolutionary Wars pp. 41–59.
- ^ Blanning, pp. 230–32.
- ISBN 978-0-8061-3875-6p. 70.
- ISBN 978-1-86227-383-2pp. 70–74.
- ^ Jourdan, pp. 60–90.
- ^ Jourdan, pp. 50–60; Rothenberg, pp. 70–74.
- ^ a b c Encarta Winkler Prins Encyclopaedia (1993–2002) s.v. "coalitieoorlogen §2. Tweede Coalitieoorlogen (1799–1802)". Microsoft Corporation/Het Spectrum.
- ^ Schroeder 1987, p. 249.
- ^ Schroeder 1987, p. 252.
- ^ a b c Emerson Kent
- ^ Christopher Duffy, Eagles over the Alps: Suvorov in Italy and Switzerland, 1799 (1999)
- ^ Georges Lefebvre, The French Revolution Volume II: from 1793 to 1799 (1964), chapter 13.
- ^ George Armand Furse, 1800 Marengo and Hohenlinden (2009)
- ^ JSTOR 3678081
- ISBN 978-0008116095.
- ^ Piers Mackesy, British Victory in Egypt, 1801: The End of Napoleon's Conquest (1995) online
- ^ Dudley Pope, The Great Gamble: Nelson at Copenhagen (1972).
- ^ Agatha Ramm (1967), Germany, 1789–1919: A Political History, Methuen, p. 52.
- ^ a b Schroeder 1987, p. 246.
- ^ Schroeder 1987, p. 250.
- ^ Schroeder 1987, pp. 256–258.
Sources
- Acerbi, Enrico. "The 1799 Campaign in Italy: Klenau and Ott Vanguards and the Coalition's Left Wing April–June 1799". Napoleon Series, Robert Burnham, editor in chief. March 2008. Retrieved 30 October 2009.
- Ashton, John. English caricature and satire on Napoleon I. London: Chatto & Windus, 1888.
- ISBN 0-340-56911-5.
- Boycott-Brown, Martin. The Road to Rivoli. London: Cassell & Co., 2001. ISBN 0-304-35305-1.
- Bruce, Robert B. et al. Fighting techniques of the Napoleonic Age, 1792–1815. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0312375874
- Chandler, David. The Campaigns of Napoleon. New York: Macmillan, 1966. ISBN 978-0-02-523660-8; comprehensive coverage of N's battles
- Clausewitz, Carl von (2020). Napoleon Absent, Coalition Ascendant: The 1799 Campaign in Italy and Switzerland, Volume 1. Trans and ed. Nicholas Murray and Christopher Pringle. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-3025-7
- Clausewitz, Carl von (2021). The Coalition Crumbles, Napoleon Returns: The 1799 Campaign in Italy and Switzerland, Volume 2. Trans and ed. Nicholas Murray and Christopher Pringle. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-3034-9
- Dwyer, Philip. Napoleon: The Path to Power (2008) excerpt vol 1
- Englund, Steven (2010). Napoleon: A Political Life. Scribner. ISBN 978-0674018037.
- Gill, John. Thunder on the Danube Napoleon's Defeat of the Habsburgs, Volume 1. London: Frontline Books, 2008, ISBN 978-1-84415-713-6.
- Griffith, Paddy. The Art of War of Revolutionary France, 1789–1802 (1998)
- Hochedlinger, Michael. Austria's Wars of Emergence 1683–1797. London: Pearson, 2003, ISBN 0-582-29084-8.
- Kagan, Frederick W. The End of the Old Order. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press 2006, ISBN 978-0-306-81545-4.
- Kent, Emerson (2016). "War of the Second Coalition 1789–1802". Emerson Kent.com: World History for the Relaxed Historian. Emerson Kent. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
- Mackesy, Piers. British Victory in Egypt: The End of Napoleon's Conquest (2010)
- Mackesy, Piers. War Without Victory: The Downfall of Pitt, 1799–1802 (1984)
- Markham, Felix (1963). Napoleon. Mentor.; 303 pages; short biography by an Oxford scholar
- McLynn, Frank (1998). Napoleon. Pimlico. ISBN 0-7126-6247-2.; well-written popular history
- ISBN 0-8008-5471-3
- Phipps, Ramsay Weston. The Armies of the First French Republic, volume 5: The armies of the Rhine in Switzerland, Holland, Italy, Egypt and the coup d'état of Brumaire, 1797–1799, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939.
- Roberts, Andrew. Napoleon: A Life (2014)
- Rodger, Alexander Bankier. The War of the Second Coalition: 1798 to 1801, a strategic commentary (Clarendon Press, 1964)
- ISBN 978-1-86227-383-2.
- Schroeder, Paul W. (1987). "The Collapse of the Second Coalition". Journal of Modern History. 59 (2). The University of Chicago Press: 244–290. S2CID 144734206. Retrieved 22 February 2022.
- Schroeder, Paul W. The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848 (1994) 920 pp; advanced history and analysis of major diplomacy online
- ISBN 1-85367-276-9
- Smith, Digby. Klenau. "Mesko". "Quosdanovich". Leopold Kudrna and Digby Smith (compilers). A biographical dictionary of all Austrian Generals in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1792–1815. The Napoleon Series, Robert Burnham, editor in chief. April 2008 version. Retrieved 19 October 2009.
- ISBN 978-1-85367-722-9
- Thompson, J.M. (1951). Napoleon Bonaparte: His Rise and Fall. Oxford U.P., 412 pages; by an Oxford scholar
External links
- Media related to War of the Second Coalition at Wikimedia Commons
Preceded by Peasants' War (1798) |
French Revolution: Revolutionary campaigns War of the Second Coalition |
Succeeded by Siege of Acre (1799) |