 Map shows Central Europe after the Peace of Basel and theTreaty of Campo Formio. | |
| Context |
|
|---|---|
| Signed | 1795 |
| Location | Basel,Old Swiss Confederation |
| Signatories | |
ThePeace ofBasel of 1795 consists of three peace treaties involving France during theFrench Revolution (represented byFrançois de Barthélemy).[1]
With great diplomatic cunning, the treaties enabled France to placate and divide its enemies of the First Coalition, one by one. Thereafter,Revolutionary France emerged as a major European power.[3]
The first treaty, on 5 April 1795 between France and Prussia, had been under discussion since 1794. Prussia withdrew from the coalition that had been working on the impending partition of Poland and, when it was appropriate, withdrew its troops aligned against Austria and Russia. (See also theFrench Revolutionary Wars and theNapoleonic Wars.) In secret, Prussia recognised the French control of the west bank of theRhine pending a cession by theImperial Diet. France returned all of the lands east of the Rhine captured during the war. On the night of 6 April, the document was signed by the representatives of France and Prussia: François de Barthélemy and Karl August von Hardenberg. They were not face to face, each was in his own accommodation in Rosshof or theMarkgräflerhof, and the papers were passed around by a courier. The treaty that ceded the left bank of the Rhine was in a secret article, along with the promise that of indemnifying the right bank if the left bank of the Rhine was covered in a final general peace in France.Peter Ochs drew up the treaty and served as a mediator for a significant proportion of these financial statements.
Prussia stuck to the agreement of the Treaty of Basel until 1806, when it joined the Fourth Coalition.
In the second treaty, on 22 July, Spain ceded theCaptaincy General of Santo Domingo to France in exchange for keepingGipuzkoa. The French also came at night to sign the peace treaty between France and Spain in which Spain was represented by Domingo d'Yriarte, who signed the treaty in the mansion of Ochs, the Holsteinerhof. Spain wouldrecapture the area in 1808/1809 and maintain it undera light colonial control until 1822. Following theHaitian Revolution the French claim to what is now theDominican Republic would bede facto inherited by Haiti whichoccupied the area from 1822 to 1844. France would cede itsde jure claim over the eastern part of the island to Spain in the 1814Treaty of Paris. Owing partially to that, France refused to recognize any Haitian claim to the territory when it negotiated theHaiti Independence Debt andde jure recognition of Haiti's independence in 1825.
These treaties with Prussia and Spain had the effect of breaking the alliance between the French Republic's two main opponents of the First Coalition.
During the negotiations, France sought to re-gainLouisiana from Spain, but they were unsuccessful at achieving this in the negotiations.[4]
On 28 August 1795, the third treaty was completed, a peace between France and theLandgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, signed by Friedrich Sigismund Waitz von Eschen.[1]
There was also an agreement to exchange the Austrian troops who had been captured inBelgium.
Media related toPeace of Basel at Wikimedia Commons
