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TheFranco-Austrian Alliance was adiplomatic andmilitary alliance betweenFrance andAustria that was first established in 1756 after theFirst Treaty of Versailles. It lasted for much of the remainder of the century until it was abandoned during theFrench Revolution.
The alliance had its heyday during theSeven Years' War, when France and Austria joined forces to fight their mutual enemy,Prussia. After the allies' defeat, the intimacy of the alliance weakened, and by the 1780s, the alliance had become something closer to a formality. Austria even briefly considered the idea of entering theAmerican War of Independence on Britain's side against France. During the French Revolution, when France first declared itself a constitutional monarchy and then overthrew and executed its king, the alliance had collapsed entirely. Austria actively tried to restore the French monarchy by going to war with the newFrench Republic.
Throughout the 17th century and for the first half of the 18th century, France and Austria had been enemies and repeatedly fought wars against each other. During theWar of the Polish Succession (1733–1735), France and its allies managed to weaken the power of Austria severely and forced it to give up small amounts of territory.[1] In theWar of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), France allied with Prussia to attack Austria, which ended in Austria being forced to cede its richest and most prized province,Silesia, to the Prussians.
The failure of Britain in both wars to prevent Austria's losses led to a re-evaluation of theAnglo-Austrian Alliance, which had existed since 1731. Austria began to consider gaining new allies to help it to recover Silesia, which was the priority ofMaria Theresa, the ruler of Austria.
France andHabsburg Austria were two traditional geopolitical great rivals in Europe. Between 1494 and 1697, theFrench-Habsburg rivalry had played out in theItalian Wars, theThirty Years' War and theNine Years' War. The rise of theabsolute monarchy in France was motivated partially by a desire to seek allies against the Habsburgs, even when the interests of the state went against the Church (as was the case in theFranco-Ottoman alliance or theHeilbronn League, with Protestant princes against the Habsburg-ledCatholic League during the Thirty Years' War). That made the alliance a major diplomatic realignment for both France and Austria.
By 1754, six years after theTreaty of Aix-la-Chapelle had brought the previous war to an end, a new figure,Count von Kaunitz, had risen to power in Vienna as a close advisor ofMaria Theresa. He was committed to ending the British alliance and to looking for a new military partner. His friendship with the French ambassador,Choiseul, provided a close link between Paris and Vienna. Choiseul indicated to Kaunitz that France was willing to consider a rapprochement with Austria despite the long history of conflict between the two states.
In 1756, Britain signed alimited defensive alliance with Prussia, Both Austria and French were outraged at what they perceived as a betrayal by their respective allies.
In response, Austria and France signed a defensive alliance of their own, theFirst Treaty of Versailles.[2] It stipulated that if either was attacked by a third party, the other would come to its assistance. As Austria were now planning an attack on Prussia to retake Silesia, the treaty was seen as a way of preventing any other power from trying to intervene on the side of Prussia.
The sudden political changes formed part of what became known as thestately quadrille.
In August 1756,Frederick the Great of Prussia, fearing that his country was about to be overrun andpartitioned by its enemies, launched a pre-emptive strike against Austria's ally,Saxony, which he succeeded in capturing.[3] That triggered the declaration of the Seven Years' War, and Austria went to war with Prussia with France as an ally. TheTreaty of St Petersburg sawSweden andRussia join the anti-Prussian alliance. Britain was Prussia's only major ally but was at war with France only, not with Austria, Russia, Saxony or Sweden.
The alliance reached its high-water mark in late 1757, when a French invasion overran Hanover, Austrian troops recapturedSaxony, and Austria liberated its own province ofBohemia, which had been occupied by Prussia. Having signed aSecond Treaty of Versailles in 1757, the French were now committed to an offensive war and sent troops to aid the Austrians against Prussia as well asfinancial subsidies to support the large armies put onto the field by Austria. By autumn 1757, the Franco-Austrian forces had appeared to be about to overwhelm the much-smaller Prussia, which would then be partitioned by their allies. However, two decisive Prussian victories atRossbach andLeuthen ended that offensive.[4]
France and Austria struggled then to defeat their enemies, as Prussia fought them to a standstill in a conflict that was extremely costly in terms of men, resources and money and brought the French government just at the brink of bankruptcy. While French troops were poured into Germany, Britain attacked France's colonies around the globe, causing France to lose most of its colonies in North America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia colonies. France was ultimately forced to abandon its financial commitments to Austria because of a lack of money. France and Austria continued fighting in Germany until late 1762, when an armistice was signed with Britain and Prussia.
In 1763, theTreaty of Paris forced Austria to acknowledge the continued Prussian ownership ofSilesia, and France had to cede a number of colonies to the British. The war was extremely costly and left large swathes of Central Europe in ruins, with little discernible continental advantage for any of the participants.[5]
Austria and France were disappointed with each other's military performance during the war. The failure of them and their allies to overwhelm Prussia was considered by France to be a major reason for the loss of numerous global French colonies to the British. The Austrians was unimpressed by the level of help that they had received from France to recover Silesia. That disappointment led to a cooling of relations between the two states, as France drew closer to its neighbour, Spain, and Austria looked to its Russian ally in the east, as both Austria and Russia shared an enmity towards theOttoman Empire.
By the 1780s, the alliance had grown much weaker after the death of Maria Theresa and the fall from power of Kaunitz. The new emperor,Joseph II, was more willing to consider establishing fresh alliances, such as with Great Britain, which was fighting a global war against France, Spain, the Dutch Republic and the United States. (The latter having declared its independence in 1776.) Britain was diplomatically isolated and without a major ally and so it tried to secure Austrian support. Britain hoped that an Austrian attack on France would draw French resources back across the Atlantic to concentrate on Europe, which would thereby safeguard Britain's valuableWest Indian colonies.[6]
Although Austria ultimately remained neutral in the conflict, the alliance was considerably weakened, partly because the French failed to support Austria adequately in its briefWar of the Bavarian Succession against Prussia. One of the strongest remaining links between the two states was the marriage ofMarie Antoinette, the daughter ofMaria Theresa and a sister ofJoseph II, toLouis XVI of France, which had taken place in 1770. Marie Antoinette was mistakenly regarded by the French public as having enormous influence over her husband and in persuading him to pursue a pro-Austrian line. In reality, she had little control over Louis, who was guided instead by his ministers, including the anti-AustrianComte de Vergennes.[7]
The French Revolution destroyed the ties between the two states, despite appeals by the FrenchNational Assembly for Austria to honour the 1756 treaty. In 1792, the Austrians sent troops to invade France and threatened to destroy Paris unless Louis XVI, now reduced to a constitutional monarch, was restored to his previous status. The Austrians suffered a defeat at theBattle of Valmy; Louis XVI was overthrown and, together with Marie Antoinette, was executed the following year. Austria has joined a coalition of states trying to crush the French revolutionaries by force, and Vienna became one of the centres of anti-revolutionary activity by giving shelter to many French royalist refugees.[8]
After theAustrian Empire was defeated in theWar of the Fifth Coalition in 1809 by theFirst French Empire, the alliance was briefly revived.Francis II's second daughter,Marie Louise, marriedNapoleon I and becameEmpress consort of the French. The Austrians contributed 34,000 men toLa Grande Armée during theFrench invasion of Russia.
The alliance broke down after Napoleon's retreat from Russia, and Austria joined theSixth Coalition against France in 1813.