Editing French Directory (section)

=== War and political crisis (1799) ===
==== Second Coalition against France ====
{{main|War of the Second Coalition}}
[[File:Suvorovs Battle By Adda.jpg|thumb|[[Suvorov]] and a Russian-Austrian army defeat the French at the [[Battle of Cassano (1799)|Battle of Cassano]] on 27 April 1799 by [[Luigi Schiavonetti]]]]
Britain and Austria had been alarmed by the French creation of Sister Republics. Austria first demanded that France hand over a share of the territory of the new Republics to it. When the Directory refused, Austria began searching for partners for a new military alliance against France. The new Tsar of Russia, [[Paul I of Russia|Paul I]], was extremely hostile to French republican ideas, sympathetic to the exiled Louis XVIII, and willing to join a new coalition against France. The Tsar offered an army of 20,000 men, sent by sea to Holland on his Baltic fleet. He sent another army of 60,000 men, veterans of fighting in Poland and Turkey, under his best general, [[Alexander Suvorov]], to join the Austrian forces in northern Italy.

The King of Prussia, [[Frederick-William III]], had carefully preserved neutrality in order to profit from both sides. The Directory made the error of sending one of the most prominent revolutionaries of 1789, the Abbé Sieyés, who had voted for the death of Louis XVI, as ambassador to Berlin, where his ideas appalled the arch-conservative and ultra-monarchist king. Frederick William maintained his neutrality, refusing to support either side, a setback for France.

By the end of 1798, the coalition could count on 300,000 soldiers, and would be able to increase the number to 600,000. The best French army, headed by Bonaparte, was stranded in Egypt. General Brune had 12,000 men in Holland; [[Charles XIV John of Sweden|Bernadotte]], 10,000 men on the Rhine; Jourdan, 40,000 men in the army of the Danube; Masséna, 30,000 soldiers in Switzerland; [[Barthélemy Louis Joseph Schérer|Scherer]], 40,000 men on the [[Adige]] river in northern Italy; and 27,000 men under [[Étienne Macdonald|Macdonald]] were based in [[Naples]]: a total of 170,000 men. To try to match the coalition forces, the Directory ordered a new call up of young men between the ages of twenty and twenty five to the army, seeking to add two hundred thousand new soldiers.{{sfn|Tulard|Fayard|Fierro|1998|p=256}}

==== Resurgence of the War in Italy and Switzerland ====
On 10 November 1798, the British and Austrian governments had agreed on a common goal of suppressing the five new sister republics and forcing France back into its 1789 borders. Then on 29 November 1798, on the first day of the [[War of the Second Coalition]], King [[Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies|Ferdinand of Naples]] launched an attack on Rome, which was lightly defended by French soldiers. A British fleet landed three thousand Neapolitan soldiers in Tuscany. However, the French army of General [[Jean Étienne Championnet|Championnet]] responded quickly, defeating the Neapolitan army at the [[Battle of Civita Castellana]] at [[Civita Castellana]] on 5 December. The next day, 6 December 1798, French soldiers also forced King Charles Emmanuel IV to remove his soldiers from [[Piedmont]] and to retreat to his island of [[Sardinia]], his last possession. The French army marched to the [[Kingdom of Naples]], obliging King Ferdinand to leave his City of [[Naples]] on a British warship on 23 December 1798. Naples was then occupied on 23 January 1799, and a new Neapolitan republic, the so-called [[Parthenopean Republic]], the sixth under French protection, was proclaimed on 26 January.

Peace negotiations with Austria went nowhere in the spring of 1799, and the Directory decided to launch a new offensive into [[Germany]], but the arrival of a [[Russian Empire|Russian]] army under Alexander Suvorov and fresh Austrian forces under the Archduke [[Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen|Charles]] for a time changed the balance of power. [[Jean-Baptiste Jourdan|Jourdan]]'s Army of the Danube crossed the Rhine on 6 March but was defeated by the Archduke Charles, first at the [[Battle of Ostrach]] and then at the [[Battle of Stockach (1799)|Battle of Stockach]] on 25 March 1799. Jourdan's army withdrew while Jourdan himself returned to Paris to plea for more soldiers.

The forces of the Second Coalition invaded French-occupied Italy, and after five earlier battles, a joint Russian-Austrian army under Suvorov's command defeated Moreau at the [[Battle of Cassano (1799)|Battle of Cassano]] on 27 April 1799 and thus occupied [[Turin]] and [[Milan]] and thereby took back the [[Cisalpine Republic]] from France. Suvorov then defeated the French Army on the Terrivva. To redress the situation, [[Barthélemy Catherine Joubert|Joubert]] was named the new head of the Army of Italy on 5 July, but his army suffered defeat by the Russians at the [[Battle of Novi (1799)|Battle of Novi]], on 15 August; Joubert himself was shot through the heart when the battle began, and his army was routed. The Sister Republics established by the French in Italy quickly collapsed, leaving only Genoa under French control.{{sfn|Tulard|Fayard|Fierro|1998|p=257}}

In August, the Russians and British opened a new front in the Netherlands. A British army was landed at [[Den Helder]] on 27 August, and was joined by a Russian army. On 31 August, the [[Batavian Navy]], allied with France, surrendered to the Royal Navy. Seeing the French army and government in a crisis, the leaders of the royalist rebellions in the Vendée and Brittany came together on 15 September to prepare a renewed uprising.{{sfn|Tulard|Fayard|Fierro|1998|p=408}}

The surviving leaders of the royalist rebellions in the Vendée and Brittany, which had long been dormant, saw a new opportunity for success and met to plan strategy on 15 September 1799. The royalist commander [[Louis de Frotté]], in exile in England, returned to France to command the new uprising.{{sfn|Tulard|Fayard|Fierro|1998|p=408}}

==== Bonaparte's Campaign in Syria (February–May 1799) ====
While the French armies in Italy and Switzerland tried to preserve the Sister Republics, Bonaparte pursued his own campaign in Egypt. He explained in a letter to the Directory that Egyptian venture was just the beginning of a broader campaign "to create a formidable diversion in the campaign of Republican France versus monarchic Europe. Egypt would be the base of something much larger than the original project, and at the same time a lever which will aid in the creation of a general uprising of the Muslim world." This uprising, he believed, would lead to the collapse of British power from the Middle East to India.{{sfn|Tulard|Fayard|Fierro|1998|p=257}} With this goal in mind, he left Cairo and marched his army across the [[Sinai Peninsula|Sinai desert]] into Syria, where he [[Siege of Acre (1799)|laid siege]] to the port of [[Saint-Jean-d'Acre]] of the [[Ottoman Empire]], which was defended by a local army and supplied by a British fleet offshore. His long siege and attempts to storm the city were a failure; his army was ravaged by disease, it was down to 11,000 men, and he learned that an Ottoman army was to be embarked by the British fleet to sail to Cairo to recapture the city. On 17 May, he abandoned the siege and was back in Cairo by 4 June. The British fleet landed the Ottoman army, but as soon as they were ashore they were decisively defeated by Bonaparte at the [[Battle of Abukir (1799)|Battle of Abukir]] on 25 July 1799.{{sfn|Tulard|Fayard|Fierro|1998|pp=248–249}}

Due to the British blockade of Egypt, Bonaparte had received no news from France for six months. He sent one of his military aides to meet with Turkish government officials and to try to get news from France, but the officer was intercepted by the British navy. The British admiral and naval commander in the eastern Mediterranean, Sir [[Sidney Smith (Royal Navy officer)|Sidney Smith]], who had lived in Paris and knew France well, gave the officer a packet of recent French newspapers and sent him back to Bonaparte. Bonaparte spent the night reading the newspapers, learning about the political and military troubles in France. His orders permitted him to return home any time he chose. The next day he decided to return to France immediately. He handed over command of the army to General [[Jean-Baptiste Kléber|Kléber]] and left Egypt with a small party of senior officers aboard the frigate ''[[French frigate Muiron|Muiron]]''. He escaped the British blockade but did not reach France until 9 October.<ref>Thiers, Adolphe, ''Histoire de la Révolution française'', 1839 (Ninth edition), Volume 10, Chapter XIII, Project Gutenberg digital edition</ref>

==== Tide turns: French successes (September 1799) ====
[[File:SA 4941-Anno 1799. De slag bij Castricum..jpg|thumb|Franco-Batavian troops attacking Anglo-Russian forces at the [[Battle of Castricum]], 6 October 1799, by Jan Antoon Neuhys, [[Amsterdam Museum]], Netherlands]]
The military position of France, which seemed disastrous during the summer, improved greatly in September. On 19 September, General Brune won a victory over an Anglo-Russian army in the Netherlands at [[Battle of Castricum|Castricum]]. On 18 October, besieged by Brune at [[Alkmaar]], the Anglo-Russian forces under the Duke of York agreed to withdraw. In Switzerland, a Russian Army had split into two. On 25–26 September, the French army in Switzerland, led by [[André Masséna]], defeated one part of the Russian army under [[Alexander Korsakov|Alexander Rimsky-Korsakov]] at the [[Second Battle of Zurich]], and forced the rest of the Russian army, under Suvorov, into disastrous retreat across the Alps to 'Italy'. Suvorov was furious at the Austrians, blaming them for not supporting his troops, and he urged the Tsar to withdraw his forces from the war.{{sfn|Tulard|Fayard|Fierro|1998|p=257}}
 
The royalist uprising in the west of France, planned to accompany the Anglo-Russian-Austrian offensive, was also a failure. The Chouans briefly seized [[Le Mans]] on 14 October and [[Nantes]] on 19 October, but they were quickly driven out by the French Army, and the rebellion had collapsed by 29 October.{{sfn|Tulard|Fayard|Fierro|1998|p=409}}