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The French Revolutionary Wars re-escalated as 1793 began. New powers entered the First Coalition days after the execution of King Louis XVI on 21 January. Spain and Portugal were among these. Then, on 1 February France declared war on Great Britain and the Netherlands.
Three other powers made inroads into overwhelmingly French-speaking territory in the following months prompting France to amass, domestically, an army of 1,200,000 soldiers. The very ascendant Jacobins executed thousands of proven and suspected dissenters, in the final, climactic phase of the Reign of Terror. Counter-revolutionary forces turned Toulon over to Britain and Spain on 29 August, capturing much of the French navy, a port not retaken by Dugommier (with the assistance of the young Napoleon Bonaparte) until 19 December. Between these months a battle on the northern frontier, in September, was won by France, which saw the mainly British siege of Dunkirk lifted. The year ended with the First French Republic's government, the National Convention, having rebuffed attacks from the south and south-east but having made an unsuccessful counter into Piedmont (toward Turin).
At the opening of the year, Dumouriez chose to ignore orders from the government in Paris to defend Belgium and instead began an invasion of the Netherlands, hoping to overthrow the stadtholder and establish a popular republic backed by France. In the event, he took Breda in Brabant and prepared to cross into Holland and capture Dordrecht. However, the armies remaining in Belgium suffered a number of defeats, such as by the Austrians at Aachen and Liège and their raising (lifting) Miranda's siege of Maastricht. Dumouriez was forced by his superiors to return to Belgium and take command in the Flanders Campaign.
After a defeat at Neerwinden, Dumouriez had to retreat from Belgium. He then made an agreement with the Austrians to hand over to them several border fortresses in return for a truce where he could march on Paris and restore the monarchy under the Constitution of 1791. However, he was unable to secure the loyalty of his troops, and he defected to the Austrian lines rather than face arrest by the Jacobins.
At the same time, the increasing power of radicals in Paris incited revolt in the provinces, with the people of Lyon and Marseille rebelling and the Vendée raising an army to attack the central government and open communications with Britain. Spanish armies crossed the Pyrenees, Kingdom of Sardinia (largely Piedmont-Savoy) armies various Alpine borders, and Austrian armies occupied Valenciennes and forced the northern armies back toward Paris. Britain ordered a naval blockade of France on 31 May.
The revolutionary government prepared a full mobilization of the nation (see Levée en masse), showing no mercy to internal or external enemies. According to Mignet's History of the French Revolution: "The republic had very soon fourteen armies, and 1,200,000 soldiers. France, while it became a camp and a workshop for the republicans, became at the same time a prison for those who did not accept the republic." They proceeded to suppress Caen, Lyon, and Marseille, although the counter-revolutionary forces turned Toulon over to Britain and Spain on 29 August, resulting in the capture of much of the French navy, and Toulon was not retaken by Dugommier (with the assistance of the young Napoleon Bonaparte) until 19 December.
In September, Nicolas Houchard defeated the Duke of York at Hondschoote, forcing him to abandon the siege of Dunkirk. In October Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, taking over the northern armies, won the Battle of Wattignies and returned to the offensive, but did not make major gains before the winter.
In the Pyrenees, the French armies ended the year on a defensive posture near the border, while on the Alpine frontier, a French invasion of Kingdom of Sardinia failed.
The Directory was the governing five-member committee in the French First Republic from 26 October 1795 until November 1799, when it was overthrown by Napoleon Bonaparte in the Coup of 18 Brumaire and replaced by the Consulate. In mainstream historiography, the term Directoire is also used to refer to the period, coinciding with the final four years of the French Revolution.
The War of the First Coalition was a set of wars that several European powers fought between 1792 and 1797, initially against the constitutional Kingdom of France and then the French Republic that succeeded it. They were only loosely allied and fought without much apparent coordination or agreement; each power had its eye on a different part of France it wanted to appropriate after a French defeat, which never occurred.
Charles-François du Périer Dumouriez was a French military officer, minister of Foreign Affairs, minister of War in a Girondin cabinet and army general during the French Revolutionary War. Dumouriez is one of the names inscribed under the Arc de Triomphe, on Column 3.
The following is a timeline of the French Revolution.
The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of sweeping military conflicts resulting from the French Revolution that lasted from 1792 until 1802. They pitted France against Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and several other countries. The wars are divided into two periods: the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797) and the War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802). Initially confined to Europe, the fighting gradually assumed a global dimension. After a decade of constant warfare and aggressive diplomacy, France had conquered territories in the Italian Peninsula, the Low Countries, and the Rhineland due to its very large and powerful military, which had been totally mobilized for war against most of Europe with mass conscription of the vast French population. French success in these conflicts ensured military occupation and the spread of revolutionary principles over much of Europe.
The French Revolutionary Wars began on 20 April 1792 when the French Legislative Assembly declared war on Austria. This launched the War of the First Coalition.
The French Revolutionary Wars continued from 1793 with few immediate changes in the diplomatic situation as France fought the First coalition.
The French Revolutionary Wars continued from 1794 between Revolutionary France and the First coalition.
The French Revolutionary Wars continued from 1795, with the French in an increasingly strong position as members of the First Coalition made separate peaces. Austria and Great Britain were the main remaining members of the coalition. The rebellion in the Vendée was also finally terminated by General Hoche.
The War of the Pyrenees, also known as War of Roussillon or War of the Convention, was the Pyrenean front of the First Coalition's war against the First French Republic. It pitted Revolutionary France against the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal from March 1793 to July 1795 during the French Revolutionary Wars.
The siege of Toulon was a military engagement that took place during the Federalist revolts and the War of the First Coalition, part of the French Revolutionary Wars. It was undertaken by forces of the French Republic against Royalist rebels supported by Anglo-Spanish forces in the southern French city of Toulon. It was during this siege that young Napoleon Bonaparte first won fame and promotion when his plan, involving the capture of fortifications above the harbour, was credited with forcing the city to capitulate and the Anglo-Spanish fleet to withdraw. The siege marked the first involvement of the British Royal Navy with the French Revolution.
The Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1801) were a series of conflicts fought principally in Northern Italy between the French Revolutionary Army and a Coalition of Austria, Russia, Piedmont-Sardinia, and a number of other Italian states.
Jacques François Coquille, known as Dugommier, was a French military leader during the French Revolutionary Wars.
Jean Baptiste François Carteaux was a French painter who became a General in the French Revolutionary Army. He is notable chiefly for being the young Napoleon Bonaparte's commander at the siege of Toulon in 1793.
The Armée des émigrés were counter-revolutionary armies raised outside France by and out of royalist émigrés, with the aim of overthrowing the First French Republic and restoring the monarchy. These were aided by royalist armies within France itself, such as the Chouans, and by allied countries such as Great Britain. They fought, for example, at the sieges of Lyon and Toulon.
The Low Countries theatre of the War of the First Coalition, also known as the Flanders campaign, was a series of campaigns in the Low Countries conducted from 20 April 1792 to 7 June 1795 during the first years of the War of the First Coalition. As the French Revolution radicalised, the revolutionary National Convention and its predecessors broke the Catholic Church's power (1790), abolished the monarchy (1792) and even executed the deposed king Louis XVI of France (1793), vying to spread the Revolution beyond the new French Republic's borders, by violent means if necessary. The First Coalition, an alliance of reactionary states representing the Ancien Régime in Central and Western Europe – Habsburg Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, Hanover and Hesse-Kassel – mobilised military forces along all the French frontiers, threatening to invade Revolutionary France and violently restore the monarchy. The subsequent combat operations along the French borders with the Low Countries and Germany became the primary theatre of the War of the First Coalition until March 1796, when Napoleon took over French command on the Italian front.
The Battle of Caesar's Camp saw the Coalition army led by Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld try to envelop a Republican French army under Charles Edward Jennings de Kilmaine. Numerically superior Habsburg Austrian, British and Hanoverian columns converged on the fortified French camp, but Kilmaine wisely decided to slip away toward Arras. The War of the First Coalition skirmish was fought near Cambrai, France, and the village of Marquion located 12 kilometres (7 mi) northwest of Cambrai.
Events from the year 1793 in France.
The Piedmontese Republic was a revolutionary, provisional and internationally unrecognized government established in Turin between 1798 and 1799 on the territory of Piedmont during its military rule by the French First Republic.
Thomas-Augustin de Gasparin, was a French military officer and député for the Bouches-du-Rhône departement to the National Legislative Assembly and the Convention.
The main source for this article is the out-of-copyright History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814, by François Mignet (1824), as made available by Project Gutenberg, as well as other Wikipedia articles.