Revolutionskriege, the wars resulting from the French Revolution of 1789.
(1) The First Coalition. As the monarchy and the personal safety of Louis XVI and of his family were seriously endangered and many emigrant nobles (émigrés) fled to Germany pleading for support against revolutionary France, the German powers faced an increasingly difficult situation. But the Austrian Emperor Leopold II was anxious to avoid an open conflict with France, in spite of his concern for his sister Queen Marie-Antoinette. In the declaration of Pillnitz (August 1791) Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia and Leopold refused to intervene on behalf of the émigrés; at the same time they expressed their concern for the French king and for the German princes in Alsace, for whom they demanded a reinstatement of their feudal rights. The Declaration of Pillnitz thus aggravated the danger of war, and the Girondins saw in the campaign against the enemies of the Revolution a means of consolidating their position at home.
In April 1792, a month after the death of Leopold II and the accession of Franz II, France declared war on Austria, implicating Prussia as an ally of Austria. The war became an integral part of the Revolution; a manifesto of Duke Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand of Brunswick (reigned from 1780, killed in action 1806) on behalf of the militant émigrés provoked the storming of the Tuileries, and the advance of the Prussians across the Rhine to Longwy and Verdun (30 August 1792) determined the abolition of the French monarchy. Prussian progress was checked at Valmy (which Goethe witnessed, see Campagne in Frankreich), and before the end of 1792 the French Republic occupied the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium), Speyer, Worms, and Mainz, as well as Savoy and Nice. For a short time Frankfurt was in French hands. In 1793 the coalition, now including Great Britain, gained successes by the recovery of the Austrian Netherlands and Mainz; the invasion of Alsace once more threatened an advance towards Paris. At this point the Jacobins reorganized national resistance under Carnot, and by the end of 1793 the French were well on the way to recovering their initial gains in Alsace and on the left bank of the Rhine. During 1794 French advances were made easier by the slackening of Prussian resistance. In 1795 Friedrich Wilhelm II, tempted by gains in Poland (see Poland, Partitions of), deserted the coalition.
In the Peace of Basel (5 April 1795) Prussia recognized the French Republic and its claim on the left bank of the Rhine, and ceded Mörs, Kleve, and upper Geldern to France. In return France acknowledged Prussia's right to compensate herself for losses west of the Rhine by territorial acquisitions on the right bank. Other German powers likewise withdrew, including Baden, Bavaria, Hesse-Kassel, the Swabian Circle (Schwäbischer Kreis), and Württemberg; Austria alone remained in the field against Napoleon, whose repeated successes in Italy culminated in the fall of the fortress of Mantua in February 1797. While Austria negotiated with France following a preliminary peace at Leoben, Napoleon invaded the republic of Venice.
In the Peace of Campo-Formio (17 October 1797) Austria recognized the Cisalpine Republic, created by Napoleon in the name of the French Republic, but was promised in return those parts of the republic of Venice which had not been incorporated into the Cisalpine state (the territory east of the Adige with Istria and Dalmatia). Austria ceded the Netherlands (Belgium) to France and, in secret clauses, acknowledged the French acquisition of the left bank of the Rhine, except for occupied Prussian territories. German princes were to be compensated for their losses with ecclesiastical principalities at a congress at Rastatt. France also agreed to the Austrian acquisition of the Bavarian Inn district (see Innviertel) and of the bishopric of Salzburg.
The treaties of Basel and Campo-Formio ending the wars of the First Coalition realized French ambitions which had not been fulfilled in the Thirty Years War (see Dreissigjähriger Krieg). But apart from territorial losses they confirmed above all the dualism persisting in the relationship between Prussia and Austria since the Silesian Wars (see Schlesische Kriege) and exposed the Holy Roman Empire (see Deutsches Reich, Altes) as an ironic anachronism. At the Congress of Rastatt (November 1797-April 1799), which was supervised by envoys of the French Republic while the newly gained territories were being integrated into the French legal and administrative system, no agreement was reached over the embarrassing problem of territorial compensation.
(2) The Second Coalition. In 1798 French conquests were resumed and the proclamation of the Roman Republic in the Papal States and the Helvetian Republic in Switzerland was the prelude to Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, which provoked the Second Coalition against the French Directory; Prussia abstained. Napoleon returned to France, deposed the Directory by a coup d'état (9 November 1799), and, as First Consul in the Consulate, took over the government of France; he immediately set out to repair French military disasters in Italy. His position was strengthened by Russia's withdrawal from the Coalition. On 14 June 1800 he won the battle of Marengo, to which Moreau added a victory at Hohenlinden in Bavaria (3 December 1800). These two battles decided the issue in favour of France. In the Treaty of Lunéville (9 February 1801) Austria confirmed the conditions of the Treaty of Campo-Formio and recognized the French possessions on the Rhine as well as the Batavian, Helvetian, Cisalpine, and Ligurian (Genoa) republics. France and Great Britain concluded the Peace of Amiens in the following year (1802).
The question of compensation and redistribution of land had still to be solved, but to achieve results the conference was this time transferred to Paris, beginning its sessions in 1801. Its Resolution, the Reichsdeputationshauptschluß (Principal Resolution of the Imperial Deputation), was passed on 15 February 1803: more than half of the 360 odd petty German states existing since the Peace of Westphalia (see Westfälischer Friede) were eliminated; of the free cities (see Freie Stadt) only six survived (Hamburg, Lübeck, Bremen, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, and Augsburg); virtually all ecclesiastical states disappeared, notably Cologne, Trier, and Mainz (for the last of which Regensburg was substituted). The Reichsdeputationshauptschluß favoured above all Prussia and the secondary German states, thus balancing the German powers against Austria. Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria especially emerged strengthened. Prussia gained five times more than it lost, absorbing a number of free cities and ecclesiastical states such as Hildesheim, Paderborn, Münster, Erfurt, and Goslar. The circumstances surrounding the preparations for the Resolution were in many respects humiliating, but the resultant map of Germany was a conspicuous inauguration of Napoleonic influence over Germany, abolishing the structure of the Holy Roman Empire which formally ceased to exist three years later (1806), after the formation of the Third Coalition (see Napoleonic Wars).
