An unknown general took 150,000 prisoners in Italy within a year
The French Revolutionary Wars of 1792 to 1802 set revolutionary France against Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia and others. A mass conscript army carried French rule into Italy, the Low Countries and the Rhineland, and a little-known general named Napoleon Bonaparte made his reputation along the way.
Europe's monarchies watched the revolution with outrage from 1791, weighing whether to rescue Louis XVI or exploit French disorder. Austria massed troops on the frontier and, with Prussia, issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, promising severe consequences if the king or Marie Antoinette came to harm. When Vienna would not pull back, France declared war on both powers in spring 1792. Their joint invasion was stopped at Valmy that September, a victory that emboldened the National Convention to abolish the monarchy.
Fortunes swung sharply. Defeat at Neerwinden in spring 1793 and further setbacks that year helped the Jacobins seize power and launch the Terror in the name of national unity. Then 1794 brought triumphs at Fleurus over Austrians and Dutch and at the Black Mountain over Spain. By 1795 France held the Austrian Netherlands and the Dutch Republic, and the Peace of Basel knocked Spain and Prussia out of the fight. Bonaparte opened his Italian campaign in April 1796 and within a year had driven the Habsburgs out of the peninsula. With French columns heading for Vienna, Austria asked for terms, and the Treaty of Campo Formio, signed on 17 October 1797, closed the First Coalition's war.
The Second Coalition formed after Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798. The allies seized the chance to win back lost ground, pushing the French out of Italy and into Switzerland with victories at Magnano, Cassano and Novi. Their momentum broke at Zurich in September 1799, after which Russia left the war. In the Middle East Napoleon won at the Pyramids, Mount Tabor and Abukir, but failure at the siege of Acre in 1799 turned the campaign, and the Royal Navy's win at the Nile in 1798 had already crippled French sea power, securing British dominance of the Mediterranean.
Napoleon slipped back to France in autumn 1799, his fame inflated by reports of Egyptian success, leaving his army stranded in a venture that finally failed. What began as a European war had by then taken on a global reach, and French victories spread revolutionary principles under military occupation across much of the continent.
Source: French Revolutionary Wars
