By 1938, Adolf Hitler had turned his attention toward Central Europe. His policy of uniting ethnic Germans within a “Greater Germany” had already been proclaimed for years, and Austria was a central target of this ambition.
Austrian Nationalist Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg had attempted to preserve Austrian independence while easing tensions with Germany. When the two met in February 1938, Hitler made clear that Austria’s sovereignty was no longer acceptable.
What is all this nonsense about your independence? Whether Austria is independent or not is not the question. There’s only one thing to discuss. Do you want the Anschluss brought about with bloodshed or without?
Hitler speaking with Schuschnigg
Schuschnigg announced a referendum on independence for March 13th, believing that a majority of Austrians would reject union with Germany. In response, Hitler ordered military preparations and demanded Schuschnigg’s resignation. Under threat of invasion and without support from Britain or France, Schuschnigg stepped down, and German troops entered Austria unopposed.
A photo of German soldiers driving through the Austrian streets
Although the annexation was achieved through intimidation and political coercion, it was not imposed on an entirely unwilling population. Austrian Nazis had been active for years, and many Austrians welcomed German forces with public celebrations. Another referendum held in April 1938 reported that 99.7 percent of voters approved of union with Germany, but the vote was conducted under conditions of propaganda, intimidation, and the exclusion of Jewish voters and political opponents. While many Austrians opposed annexation, a significant proportion supported it, particularly among German nationalists and Nazi sympathisers.
The consequences were immediate. Austrian Jews and political opponents were subjected to public humiliation, violence, and dispossession, often carried out by Austrian civilians as well as German authorities. In the weeks following the annexation, hundreds of Austrian Jews committed suicide, fearing worse under Nazi rule. Austria’s independence was destroyed, and its population was absorbed into the structures of the Nazi state.
Czechoslovakia was a democratic state with a modern army and extensive border fortifications, particularly in the Sudetenland, a mountainous region inhabited largely by ethnic Germans and held much of Czechoslovkia’s industry. With Austria annexed, Germany now surrounded the state of Czechoslovakia on three sides, who had open intentions about wanting to take Czechoslovakian territory. It was allied to France and had an agreement with the Soviet Union, but geographic and political realities weakened these arrangements. Soviet assistance would have required passage through Poland or Romania, both hostile to communism, and France showed little willingness to fight without British support.
A map of Czechoslovakia
Hitler claimed that ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland were oppressed and demanded that the territory be transferred to Germany. While minority grievances existed, the demand went far beyond cultural rights and threatened Czechoslovakia’s territorial integrity and security. Czechoslovakia appealed to Britain and France for support. Instead, both powers sought to avoid war by encouraging territorial concessions.
However much we may sympathise with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbour, we cannot, in all circumstances, undertake to involve the whole British Empire in war simply on her account. If we have to fight, it must be on larger issues than that. I am myself a man of peace to the depths of my soul. Armed conflict between nations is a nightmare to me. But if I were convinced that any nation had made up its mind to dominate the world by fear of its force, I should feel that it should be resisted. And that such a domination like the people who believe in liberty, would not be worth living. But war is a fearful thing, and we must be very clear before we embark on it, that it is really the great issues that are at stake, and that a call to risk everything in their defense, when all the consequences are weighed, is irresistible.
Chamberlain’s statement on Czechoslovakia
In September 1938, Britain and France convened a conference with Germany and Italy to resolve the crisis. Czechoslovak representatives were not invited to attend. At the conference, Germany was granted the Sudetenland in return for Hitler’s promise that he would make no further territorial claims in Europe. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned home declaring that the agreement had secured “peace in our time.” The settlement dismantled Czechoslovakia’s defences and transferred major industrial resources to Germany.
Neville Chamberlain waving the agreement
The loss of the Sudetenland left Czechoslovakia strategically and politically crippled. Hungary seized southern Slovak territories soon afterward, while Germany supported a separatist movement in Slovakia that resulted in the creation of a dependent Slovak state under German influence. In March 1939, German forces occupied the remaining Czech lands and transformed them into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. This action demonstrated that Hitler’s promises at Munich had been tactical rather than sincere, and that his objectives extended beyond the unification of German-speaking populations.
At the same time, Germany exerted pressure on Lithuania over the Memel region, a small territory with a German-speaking population that had been detached from Germany after the First World War. In March 1939, Germany issued an ultimatum demanding its return. Lithuania, diplomatically isolated and facing overwhelming military superiority, ceded the territory without resistance.
For much of the nineteenth century, war still retained an element of glamour in the European imagination. Military service could be portrayed as an adventure, a test of courage and a path to honour. Paintings, newspapers and patriotic literature often presented battles as dramatic clashes between soldiers and their commanders, with cavalry charges, colourful uniforms and heroic acts of individual bravery. This did not mean that nineteenth-century people were unaware of the horrors of war. The Napoleonic Wars had killed hundreds of thousands, whilst conflicts such as the Crimean War and the American Civil War demonstrated just how destructive modern weapons could be. However, the image of the soldier as a heroic figure remained powerful. The First World War would fundamentally challenge that image.
A notoriously glorified painting of Napoleon Bonaparte crossing the Alps during the War of the Second Coalition
The nineteenth century inherited much of its image of warfare from an earlier age. Battles were often depicted as grand spectacles in which generals directed armies from horseback whilst soldiers demonstrated courage and discipline on the battlefield. The Napoleonic Wars had helped create this mythology. Napoleon Bonaparte became one of the most celebrated military figures in European history, whilst paintings of battles emphasised movement, colour and heroic leadership. Military uniforms themselves were often deliberately striking, helping commanders distinguish units and contributing to the ceremonial character of armies. Nationalism strengthened this romantic view. As European nation-states developed, military service increasingly became associated with patriotism and citizenship. Soldiers were portrayed as men willing to sacrifice themselves for their country, whilst military victories became symbols of national greatness. By the late nineteenth century, this image could still be seen in popular culture. Young men were encouraged to view military service as an opportunity for adventure, friendship and honour. Yet warfare was already changing.
The technology of warfare was developing much faster than the romantic image surrounding it. The invention and improvement of the machine gun, modern artillery, smokeless powder, rapid-fire rifles and increasingly accurate ammunition meant that crossing an open battlefield was becoming extraordinarily dangerous. The American Civil War had already demonstrated some of these dangers. Rifled muskets increased the range and accuracy of infantry fire, whilst railways and telegraphs allowed armies to mobilise and coordinate on an unprecedented scale. The Crimean War had also demonstrated the consequences of industrial-age logistics and weaponry. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 provided another warning. Modern artillery and mass armies could produce enormous casualties in a relatively short period of time.
A painting of the declaration of the German Empire after the Franco-Prussian War
Yet military thinking did not always keep pace with technological change. Many European armies continued to place considerable emphasis on offensive spirit, discipline and morale. The belief that determined soldiers could overcome defensive positions remained powerful. When the First World War began in 1914, millions of men marched to war believing that the conflict would be relatively short. Few understood what industrial warfare was about to become.
The first trenches of the First World War were relatively simple defensive positions. Soldiers dug into the ground for protection from enemy fire, often creating little more than elongated foxholes. As the war on the Western Front settled into stalemate, however, these temporary positions developed into enormous defensive systems. A typical trench system was not simply one trench facing another. There could be several lines of trenches, connected by communication trenches and supported by dugouts, machine-gun positions, artillery batteries, supply areas, command posts and medical facilities. Reserve units could be stationed behind the front line, ready to reinforce troops during an attack. The front itself stretched for hundreds of miles from the Belgian coast to the Swiss frontier. What had initially been expected to be a war of movement had become a war in which armies could remain within the same general positions for months or even years.
An image of early trenches on the Western Front
Life in the trenches was rarely glamorous. Rain could turn the ground into mud, whilst poor drainage created an environment in which soldiers were constantly wet and cold. One of the most notorious consequences was trench foot, a condition caused by prolonged exposure to cold and damp conditions which could result in severe swelling, tissue damage and, in extreme cases, amputation. Rats became common around trench systems, attracted by food waste and the bodies of dead soldiers. Lice spread rapidly and contributed to the misery of daily life. Soldiers were also constantly exposed to the possibility of death. Artillery shells could strike without warning. Snipers targeted exposed soldiers. Machine guns could sweep exposed areas of the battlefield, whilst mines and grenades created additional dangers. Even when there was no major attack, the psychological pressure could be enormous. Soldiers could spend days or weeks waiting for an enemy bombardment or attack, knowing that they might be ordered over the parapet at any moment.
Between opposing trench systems was the area that became known as No Man’s Land. It was rarely the completely empty space suggested by the name. It was often covered in shell craters, barbed wire, broken equipment, destroyed trees and the remains of buildings. In some sectors, the landscape had been so heavily bombarded that it bore little resemblance to the countryside that had existed before the war. Crossing it was extraordinarily dangerous.
An image of No Man’s Land
A typical attack might begin with an artillery bombardment intended to destroy enemy positions, cut barbed wire and suppress defending troops. Once the barrage lifted or moved forward, infantry would leave their trenches and attempt to cross No Man’s Land. Defenders could respond with machine-gun and rifle fire, artillery and grenades. The resulting casualties could be enormous. However, the popular image of commanders simply ordering soldiers to walk slowly in straight lines into machine-gun fire is misleading. Tactics evolved throughout the war. Armies experimented with creeping barrages, infiltration tactics, improved communications, grenades, mortars, tanks and coordinated infantry-artillery attacks. The problem was that military technology was developing so quickly that armies were constantly trying to adapt to it.
The quality of trenches varied enormously depending on the location, the soil, the length of time a position had been occupied and the resources available. German forces generally had an advantage in the construction of defensive positions, particularly in sectors where they had time to establish permanent fortifications. Their trenches were often deeper and more elaborate, with substantial dugouts beneath the ground. Some German dugouts could contain sleeping quarters, command rooms, medical facilities and storage areas. Certain positions were remarkably sophisticated by the standards of the battlefield. Allied trenches varied considerably. British and French forces also constructed extensive defensive systems, and their positions became increasingly sophisticated as the war continued. The difference was partly a consequence of strategy. After the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line in 1917, German forces deliberately constructed deeply fortified defensive positions designed to absorb artillery bombardments and resist infantry attacks. The idea that British trenches were universally shallow while German trenches were universally deep therefore oversimplifies the reality. Conditions varied substantially across the Western Front.
Although machine guns became one of the defining symbols of trench warfare, artillery was responsible for the majority of battlefield casualties. Artillery could destroy trenches, bury soldiers alive and turn entire landscapes into craters. Soldiers could be exposed to bombardments lasting hours or even days. The psychological consequences could be devastating. Men subjected to prolonged bombardment sometimes experienced uncontrollable shaking, paralysis, blindness, nightmares, panic and emotional collapse. During the war this was often called shell shock. At first, many military authorities believed that men suffering from shell shock were cowards or were attempting to avoid combat. As the scale of the problem became apparent, however, medical understanding gradually changed.
An image often used to demonstrate shell shock
What we now recognise as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is not exactly synonymous with shell shock, and historians and psychologists debate how closely the two conditions correspond. Nevertheless, the experience of shell shock demonstrated something that the romantic image of warfare had largely ignored: modern warfare could inflict psychological injuries as profound as its physical ones.
In 1915, another terrifying weapon appeared on the Western Front. Germany used chlorine gas at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. The gas was released from cylinders and carried towards Allied positions by the wind. The attack demonstrated the terrifying potential of chemical warfare. Chlorine damaged the lungs and could cause suffocation. Other chemical agents, including phosgene and mustard gas, were introduced later. Chemical weapons had been restricted by international agreements before the war, including the 1899 Hague Declaration concerning the use of projectiles intended to diffuse asphyxiating or deleterious gases. The First World War nevertheless saw their widespread use by both sides. Gas did not become the dominant killer of the war – the vast majority of casualties were still caused by conventional weapons – but it became one of its most feared symbols. Protective equipment also evolved. Soldiers were issued increasingly effective gas masks, and armies developed warning systems and procedures for responding to attacks. The image of soldiers choking beneath clouds of poisonous gas became another powerful reminder that warfare had entered a new technological age.
An image of German Soldiers releasing some chemical gas
The greatest shock of trench warfare was perhaps not any individual weapon, but its duration. The soldiers who went to war in 1914 had often expected a short conflict. Instead, the Western Front became a largely static battlefield lasting for more than four years. The Battle of the Somme in 1916 became one of the clearest demonstrations of the scale of industrial warfare. On the first day alone, the British Army suffered tens of thousands of casualties. The offensive ultimately produced enormous losses on both sides for relatively limited territorial gains. Verdun, Passchendaele and numerous other battles produced similar experiences. This did not mean that every attack achieved nothing. Armies learned, adapted and sometimes captured strategically important territory. But the enormous cost of attempting to break through heavily defended positions demonstrated how difficult it was to achieve decisive results against a prepared industrial defence. The battlefield had become a machine in which enormous quantities of ammunition, equipment and human lives could be consumed.
The First World War therefore transformed the popular image of warfare. The cavalry charge remained a powerful symbol of military heroism, but tanks, aircraft, machine guns, heavy artillery and poison gas increasingly defined the battlefield. Individual bravery still mattered, but courage could not protect a soldier from an artillery shell exploding hundreds of metres away. This was perhaps the most important change in the perception of war. The nineteenth-century image of war had often focused on the individual soldier’s courage. The First World War increasingly demonstrated the power of impersonal forces: industrial production, artillery, logistics, communications and mass mobilisation. A soldier could perform an extraordinary act of bravery and still be killed moments later by an artillery barrage whose source he could not even see. Artists and writers increasingly reflected this change. The patriotic literature of the early war years gradually gave way to a much darker cultural memory. Poets such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon described the mud, exhaustion, fear and destruction of the trenches rather than the glory of battle. Owen’s poetry in particular challenged the idea that dying in war was inherently noble, famously describing the experience of soldiers dying from gas and the suffering of men exposed to industrial warfare. Photography and newspapers also brought the war closer to civilians, although censorship meant that the public did not see the full reality of the front. For millions of families, however, the absence of a son, husband or brother made the cost of war impossible to ignore. The war had not simply changed warfare. It had changed the way Europeans understood it.
Stormtroopers Advance Under a Gas Attack, an anti-war piece of art by Otto Dix
The First World War did not completely destroy the romantic image of military service. Heroism, patriotism and sacrifice remained important ideas throughout the twentieth century. Governments continued to use them to encourage recruitment and maintain morale. But the experience of industrialised warfare made it increasingly difficult to portray war simply as an exciting adventure. The trenches became a symbol of something fundamentally different: a war in which ordinary soldiers endured prolonged fear, disease, exhaustion and bombardment, often for objectives they could barely understand from the front line. The transformation was not instantaneous, nor was it entirely caused by the trenches. The nineteenth century had already seen devastating industrial wars, and people had long understood that warfare could be brutal. What the First World War did was bring the consequences of modern technology, mass armies and industrial production together on an unprecedented scale. By 1918, the old image of the glorious battlefield had been profoundly damaged. War could still be presented as heroic. But it could no longer so easily be presented as glamorous. The trenches had become one of the defining symbols of the twentieth century: a reminder that modern warfare was no longer primarily a contest between individual warriors seeking glory, but an industrial struggle capable of consuming entire generations.
While the German advance in France ground to a halt on the Western Front, events in the east were unfolding much faster than Berlin had anticipated. German planners had assumed that Russia, with its enormous territory and comparatively underdeveloped railway network, would require at least six weeks to mobilise its vast army. Instead, Russian mobilisation progressed far more rapidly than expected. Although it was still incomplete, two Russian armies crossed the border into the German province of East Prussia before Germany had defeated France, forcing Berlin to divert troops away from the west far earlier than planned.
A photo of Russian soldiers marching on the Eastern Front
The invasion was led by Generals Paul von Rennenkampf and Alexander Samsonov, who commanded the Russian First and Second Armies respectively. Their objective was straightforward: overrun East Prussia, force Germany to defend its homeland, and relieve pressure on France before the war in the west could be decided. Initially, the strategy appeared to be working. German commanders feared losing East Prussia altogether, and panic spread among the civilian population as thousands fled westward.
The situation changed dramatically with the appointment of Paul von Hindenburg and his chief of staff Erich Ludendorff to command the German Eighth Army. Making use of intercepted Russian radio messages – which, astonishingly, had often been transmitted without encryption – and Germany’s excellent railway network, the Germans realised that the two Russian armies had become dangerously separated. Rather than retreat, they decided to destroy them one at a time.
A painting of Hindenburg (left) and Ludendorff discussing battle strategy
Between 26 and 30 August 1914, the Germans surrounded Samsonov’s Second Army near the town of Tannenberg. The battle became one of the most decisive victories of the entire war. Nearly 100,000 Russian soldiers were captured, tens of thousands more were killed or wounded, and the Second Army effectively ceased to exist. Unable to bear responsibility for the catastrophe, General Samsonov reportedly walked into a nearby forest and took his own life.
With Samsonov defeated, Hindenburg and Ludendorff turned their attention to Rennenkampf’s First Army. A few weeks later, during the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes, the Russians were driven out of East Prussia altogether. Although much of the Russian Army remained intact, the immediate threat to German territory had been eliminated, transforming Hindenburg and Ludendorff into national heroes almost overnight.
A phot of the General staff of the German 8th Army during the battle
Further south, Germany’s ally Austria-Hungary was faring far less successfully. Vienna had expected a swift victory over Serbia following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but Serbian forces proved far more resilient than anticipated. In August 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Army suffered a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Cer, marking the first Allied victory of the war. At the same time, Russian armies surged into the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia, inflicting a series of defeats and forcing the Habsburg armies into a chaotic retreat. By September, the strategically important fortress of Przemyśl had been surrounded, beginning one of the longest sieges of the First World War.
Germany was now forced to support its struggling ally. Throughout the autumn of 1914, German and Russian forces fought a series of major engagements across modern-day Poland, including the Battle of Łódź. Although neither side achieved a decisive breakthrough, the fighting prevented the Russians from exploiting their earlier successes against Austria-Hungary and helped stabilise the Central Powers’ eastern front.
A photo of the German army entering Łódź
The conflict expanded still further in late October 1914 when the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Once one of the world’s greatest empires, Ottoman territory still stretched across much of the Middle East, including modern-day Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine. German military advisers had spent years modernising the Ottoman Army, and its government increasingly viewed Russia as its principal rival. On 29 October, Ottoman warships launched surprise attacks against the Russian ports of Odessa, Sevastopol and several other Black Sea harbours. Russia declared war soon afterwards, followed within days by Britain and France. A new front had opened in the Caucasus Mountains, while the Middle East itself would soon become another major theatre of the war.
Unlike the Western Front, however, the Eastern Front never became dominated by an unbroken network of trenches stretching from one end of the battlefield to the other. The distances involved were simply too vast. From the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea stretched a front of well over a thousand miles, much of it crossing forests, marshes and open plains. Neither side possessed enough men to fortify every mile of the line, meaning battles remained far more mobile. Armies frequently advanced or retreated by hundreds of miles, and sweeping manoeuvres, encirclements and rapid offensives remained common throughout much of the war.
By the early twentieth century, Europe had become increasingly divided into two rival alliance systems. On one side stood the Triple Entente, an informal partnership between Britain, France and Russia. On the other stood the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. The origins of these alliances lay in growing geopolitical tensions. France had never accepted the loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 and sought an opportunity to regain the territory. Britain became increasingly concerned by Germany’s rapid naval expansion under Kaiser Wilhelm II, fearing that the German fleet might one day challenge the Royal Navy’s dominance of the seas. Russia, meanwhile, saw itself as the protector of the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe and increasingly found itself at odds with Austria-Hungary in the Balkans.
A map of Europe in 1914
Germany’s leaders feared that their country was becoming strategically encircled by hostile powers. To counter this threat, Berlin strengthened its alliance with Austria-Hungary, Germany’s only major and dependable continental ally. Although Italy was formally part of the Triple Alliance, its commitment to the partnership was often uncertain and its interests frequently diverged from those of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The growing rivalry between the great powers was exposed during a series of international crises before 1914. In 1905 and again in 1911, Germany challenged French influence in Morocco, hoping to weaken the Entente between Britain and France. Instead, the crises had the opposite effect. Britain backed France, diplomatic relations between the Entente powers strengthened, and Germany increasingly felt isolated on the international stage.
Even more dangerous were the tensions in the Balkans. The declining Ottoman Empire had left a power vacuum across south-eastern Europe, leading to competing nationalist movements and territorial disputes. Austria-Hungary, a vast multinational empire containing millions of Slavic subjects, feared that rising Serbian nationalism could inspire its own minorities to seek independence. Serbia, by contrast, dreamed of creating a larger South Slav state that would unite Serbs living under Austrian rule with those already living in Serbia. These tensions escalated during the Bosnian Crisis of 1908, when Austria-Hungary formally annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, a territory populated by many Slavs. Serbia was outraged and Russia backed Serbian objections, but both were forced to back down when Germany supported Austria-Hungary. The humiliation left both countries determined not to retreat again in a future crisis.
A politican cartoon depicting the Bosnian Crisis of 1908
The situation became even more volatile after the Balkan Wars of 1912–13. Serbia emerged significantly larger and more powerful, alarming Austrian leaders who increasingly viewed the country as an existential threat to the stability of their empire. At the same time, nationalist groups within Serbia began advocating more aggressively for the liberation of Slavs living under Austrian rule. By 1914, Europe had become a continent of competing empires, military alliances, nationalist movements and unresolved diplomatic crises. The great powers had spent years preparing for a major war, building vast armies and drawing up detailed mobilisation plans. What they lacked was a trigger.
June 28th, 1914. Heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was visiting Sarajevo in Bosnia with his pregnant wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg. The visit was intended to demonstrate Austrian authority over Bosnia-Herzegovina, which Austria-Hungary had formally annexed in 1908. To many young Bosnian nationalists, however, the Archduke represented precisely the political system they wanted to destroy. Bosnia-Herzegovina was a deeply divided territory. Its population consisted principally of Orthodox Serbs, Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats, alongside smaller communities. The territory had spent centuries under Ottoman rule before being occupied by Austria-Hungary in 1878 and formally annexed thirty years later.
The annexation was particularly provocative to Serbian nationalists. Serbia had ambitions to unite the Serb populations of the Balkans into a larger Serbian state, while a broader South Slav movement sought to unite Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and other South Slavs into a common political entity. Austria-Hungary therefore stood directly in the way of these ambitions. For the young men who would eventually participate in the assassination, this was not simply an argument about borders. Many regarded Habsburg rule as foreign domination and believed that Bosnia should be liberated from Vienna.
The most important organisation among the young conspirators was Young Bosnia, or Mlada Bosna. It was a loose revolutionary movement whose members were influenced by Serbian nationalism, South Slav nationalism, revolutionary socialism and anarchism. They were young, radicalised by the political tensions of the Balkans and increasingly convinced that conventional politics could not liberate Bosnia. One of them was Gavrilo Princip.
Princip’s mugshot
Princip had been born in Bosnia and had become involved in nationalist politics as a teenager. Like many young Bosnian nationalists, he was deeply influenced by the events surrounding the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The successful Balkan Wars of 1912–13 further strengthened the appeal of Serbian nationalism. Serbia had emerged from those conflicts substantially larger and more powerful, while the Ottoman Empire had been driven from most of its remaining territory in Europe.
To young nationalists, Serbia appeared to demonstrate that the political map of the Balkans could be changed. Austria-Hungary, meanwhile, appeared increasingly determined to prevent that change. The conspirators therefore did not regard Franz Ferdinand merely as an individual. He was the heir to the empire that controlled their homeland. There was, however, an additional reason for making him a target. Franz Ferdinand’s political ideas were more complicated than the conspirators understood. He was not simply an advocate of maintaining the existing Austro-Hungarian system. He had considered reforms that could have given greater political recognition to the empire’s South Slav populations. This created a paradox. The very man who might have reformed the Habsburg system was regarded by some radicals as a particularly dangerous threat because reform might make the empire stronger and undermine the case for its destruction. The conspirators feared that if Franz Ferdinand successfully reorganised the empire and gave its Slavic peoples greater autonomy, the South Slav nationalist cause could lose momentum.
The assassination was therefore intended not simply as an act of revenge, but as a political statement. The young Bosnian conspirators did not have the resources to carry out such an operation alone. They received assistance from the Black Hand, formally known as Unification or Death, a secret Serbian nationalist organisation founded by Serbian army officers. Its objective was the expansion and unification of Serbian lands, particularly territories under Austro-Hungarian rule. The organisation had a network of contacts across the Balkans and was involved in propaganda, espionage and political violence. The Black Hand was connected to influential figures within the Serbian military establishment, most importantly Dragutin Dimitrijević, better known as Apis, the head of Serbian military intelligence. Members of this clandestine network helped provide the conspirators with weapons, training, money and safe passage across the Serbian-Bosnian border.
A group of early members of the Black Hand
This is where the assassination becomes particularly complicated. It would be misleading to describe the assassination simply as “the Serbian government ordered Franz Ferdinand’s murder.” There is strong evidence of involvement by elements of the Serbian military intelligence apparatus and the Black Hand, but the full Serbian government was not collectively responsible for planning the attack. Prime Minister Nikola Pašić, in fact, appears to have become aware that something was being planned and attempted to warn the Austro-Hungarian authorities, although the warning was too indirect to prevent the assassination.
The distinction would become extremely important during the July Crisis. Austria-Hungary would regard the assassination as evidence of a wider Serbian conspiracy against the Habsburg Empire. Serbia could therefore argue that the murder had been the work of extremists acting through clandestine networks rather than an official act of the Serbian state. Both positions contained elements of truth. The operation itself involved six principal assassins positioned along the Archduke’s planned route: Muhamed Mehmedbašić, Vaso Čubrilović, Nedeljko Čabrinović, Cvjetko Popović, Gavrilo Princip and Trifko Grabež. Danilo Ilić acted as the organiser in Sarajevo. Most were extremely young; several were still teenagers. Their youth is important. These were not experienced soldiers conducting a conventional military operation. They were young revolutionaries who believed that an act of spectacular political violence could inspire a much larger movement.
These six men were coordinated by Danilo Ilić. Every assassin would be armed with a pistol, a bomb and a cyanide pill. Before the Archduke even got into town, things began to go awry. They were worried the weapons would not get there in time, as they were being smuggled in a sugar shipment to the city. However, the problem was they thought they sent the sugar to the wrong place. Eventually, the weapons did arrive in time.
A modern day map of the river in Sarajevo (Google Maps)
Eventually, the Archduke arrived in the town in an open top car. As he drove down Obala Kulina bana, the street leading up to the City Hall in the third car of a six car motorcade, two of the assassins, Muhamed and Vaso, were stationed next to each other on the side of the street furthest from the Milijacka River and Nedeljko was on the river side of the street. The Archduke passes Muhamed and Vaso. For some unkown reason, Muhamed, who the Archduke is first to pass, does nothing. Many historians suspect it was due to nerves. Vaso, possibly because Muhamed didn’t act, also does nothing.
Eventually, Nedeljko, steps out into the street, throwing a bomb at the Archduke’s car. However, the bomb bounced off the car, rolled into the street and exploded the car behind the Archduke, injuring the guards inside. Realising the plan had failed, Nedeljko takes the cyanide pill and leaps into the river in an effort to drown himself. However, not only was the cyanide pill out of date, the river was also in a dry season. So Nedeljko was now vomiting in knee deep water having just broken his legs from jumping off the bridge. The crowd, mad at the attempt on the Archduke’s life, swarmed him and nearly beat this vomiting crippled man to death, before the police stepped in.
The other 3 assassins, whose whereabouts were unknown during all this, scrammed. Gavrilo decided to make a stop at a local sandwich shop on the corner of Obala Kulina bana and Zelenih berekti. Meanwhile, the motorcade races down to the City Hall, where the Archduke was supposed to make a speech. He burst in, halfway through the mayor’s speech, interrupting him saying:
Mr Mayor, I came here to visit and I am greeted with bombs. It is outrageous.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand upon walking into City Hall
When he wanted to give his speech, he discovered that the speech had been left in the car that had just blown up, so someone was sent back to retrieve the speech, now covered in blood, and hand it to the Archduke. After the speech, the Archduke and a security team decided what to do next, who eventually decided to go back the way they came towards the hospital to see if the guards were doing alright. They all agreed upon this plan, got in their cars and drove away.
The Archduke was now sat in the back right seat of his car, with Sophie on the back left seat and a guard hanging onto the left side. However, for some unholy reason, everyone neglected to tell the drivers, so they continued on the scheduled route up to the museum, which would involve a right turn onto Zelenih berekti. Just outside the sandwich shop, the guard noticed that they had made a wrong turn. Back in these days, there was no reverse on cars so the driver had to get out of the car and push. Around this time, Gavrilo left the shop and noticed his target stopped right in front of him, with his only guard on the other side of the car. Gavrilo took his chance and, with his pistol, shot the Archduke dead. The guard prepped to return fire and Gavrilo shot at him. However, Sophie, who was tending to her husband, got in the way and was shot instead.
A painting of the Archduke’s assassination
Gavrilo Princip, who was only 19 at the time, was arrested and put on trial. He was too young to be executed so was sentenced to solitary confinement in the Small Fortress, a prison complex in Terezin. He spoke to a psychiatrist, to whom he said that World War 1 would’ve started with or without the assassination. He did not feel responsible for the starting of the war but he did feel awful for killing Sophie. Princip died of tuberculosis on April 28th, 1918, weighing only 40kg (88lb) due to malnutrition inside the prison.
I sincerely regret that you should have been obliged to give up your intention of going to Vienna for the funeral ceremonies. I should have liked personally to express to you my sincerest thanks for your sympathy in my keen sorrow — a sympathy which has greatly touched me. By your warm and sympathetic condolence, you have given me renewed proof that I have in you a true and reliable friend, worthy of confidence and that I may count upon you in every hour of grave trial.
The attack directed against my poor nephew is the direct consequence of the agitation carried on by the Russian and Serbian Pan-Slavists whose sole aim is the weakening of the Triple Alliance and the destruction of my Empire.
By the foregoing declaration, it is no longer an affair at Sarajevo of the single bloody deed of an individual but of a well-organized conspiracy, of which the threads reach to Belgrade [which] constitutes a constant danger to my house and to my realm.
[A]fter this last terrible happening in Bosnia, will see and know that one cannot think of smoothing out the differences that separate us from Serbia, and that the maintenance of peaceful policy by all the European Monarchies will be threatened as long as this furnace of criminal agitation in Belgrade remains unpunished.
Emperor Franz Joseph writing to Kaiser Wilhelm II on July 2nd 1914
For several weeks, European governments manoeuvred around the crisis, deciding whether it could be contained to the Balkans or whether it presented an opportunity – or a necessity – to settle wider rivalries. In Vienna, the assassination was seen as an opportunity to finally deal with Serbia, which Austria-Hungary regarded as a growing threat to its position in the Balkans. The Austro-Hungarian government wanted to punish Serbia, but it also knew that Russia might intervene on Serbia’s behalf. The crucial question was therefore whether Germany would support Austria-Hungary if the crisis escalated.
Germany provided its answer in early July. Through the so-called “blank cheque”, Berlin assured Vienna that it would support Austria-Hungary even if its actions against Serbia resulted in a wider European war. This gave the Austro-Hungarian government confidence to pursue a deliberately severe ultimatum. On July 23rd, Austria-Hungary presented Serbia with a series of demands, giving Belgrade just 48 hours to respond. Several of the demands were designed to be extremely difficult for Serbia to accept, particularly those that would allow Austro-Hungarian officials to participate directly in investigations on Serbian territory. Serbia accepted most of the demands but rejected some of the most intrusive provisions.
Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28th. What had begun as a dispute between two Balkan states now threatened to activate Europe’s alliance system. Russia began preparing to support Serbia. Germany warned Russia against mobilisation, while France stood behind its Russian ally. As Russian mobilisation continued, Germany concluded that it could not afford to wait for Russia to complete its preparations. On 1 August, Germany declared war on Russia; two days later, it declared war on France. The crisis had become a European war.
A newspaper of the German declaration of war
Germany now faced the strategic problem that had troubled its military planners for years: a war against both France in the west and Russia in the east. Germany’s answer was to defeat France quickly before Russia could fully mobilise, then turn its forces eastwards. The plan required German armies to advance through neutral Belgium, bypassing the heavily fortified Franco-German frontier and sweeping into northern France. This was an enormous gamble. Belgium had been recognised as an independent and permanently neutral state by the European powers under the 1839 Treaty of London. Britain was one of the powers that had guaranteed this neutrality. On August 4th, Germany demanded that Belgium allow German troops to pass through its territory. Belgium refused. German forces crossed the Belgian frontier that morning.
The invasion transformed the character of the conflict. What had begun with the assassination of an Austrian archduke and a confrontation between Austria-Hungary and Serbia had now become a war involving the major European powers. Britain demanded that Germany respect Belgian neutrality. When Berlin refused, Britain declared war on Germany later that day. The chain of events had taken Europe from Sarajevo to Brussels in little more than five weeks. The assassination had been the spark, but the fire had been fed by years of military planning, alliance commitments, fears of encirclement, nationalism and great-power rivalry. By the time German troops crossed into Belgium, the original dispute over Serbia was almost irrelevant. Europe was at war.
Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, a northern area in modern day Austria, which was formerly a part of the vast but fragile Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1889. His father, Alois Hitler, was abusive to the young boy, often exacting punishments via physical abuse, whilst his mother, Klara Polz, who was also his Father’s cousin, was very doting and the young Hitler grew very fond of his mother.
Hitler as a baby
Whilst he was often described as a confident young man in his early youth, his personality changed when his younger brother, Edmund, passed away from the measles when Hitler was 11, turning him into a more detached and depressed young teen, who’d often argue with his father and teachers. Only three years later, his father would pass away from a lung hemorrhage. Not long afterwards, his grades started to decline, with him barely passing his final exams.
At the age of 18, he had a sad goodbye to his mother, before moving to Vienna to take an entrance exam to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. After being rejected not once but twice, he had to return home to Linz, after learning that his mother was dying of breast cancer. She passed away at the age of 47, when Hitler was 18. The family doctor, Eduard Bloch, said that he had never seen someone so distraught as Hitler was at his mother’s death.
One of Hitler’s paintings
Aimless, Hitler slept on the streets of Vienna, selling paintings of Vienna’s sights in order to pay for food and alike. Whilst his former roommate in Vienna, August Kubisek, often described Hitler as rather outgoing, despite a general disinterest in pursuing women romantically, passionate in politics and the arts, a fan of the opera and somewhat Catholic in his beliefs, Hitler abruptly left the apartment they lived in shortly after his mother died and left no note indicating where he was going to. Likely because he was going nowhere.
Whilst he was often friendly towards Jewish individuals who expressed their religion in a more subtle way, that attitude began to slowly change over his time on the streets. The Vienna into which Hitler arrived was a city in which antisemitism had become increasingly prominent, although it was very different from the antisemitism that would later define Nazi Germany. For centuries, hostility towards Jews had largely been rooted in religious prejudice. Jews had been accused of rejecting Christianity, blamed for the death of Christ and subjected to restrictions and persecution across Europe. During the nineteenth century, however, these older prejudices increasingly took on a new political and racial character. The development of nationalism and the emergence of new theories about human evolution and heredity encouraged some thinkers to divide humanity into supposedly distinct and hierarchical races. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection did not itself teach racial hierarchy or antisemitism, but ideas derived from or falsely presented as extensions of Darwinism were increasingly applied to human society. So-called Social Darwinists argued that competition between individuals, nations and races was a natural struggle in which supposedly superior groups would prevail over inferior ones.
Every progress of the whole must be preceded by a partial weakening. The strongest natures retain the type, the weaker ones help to advance it. Something similar also happens in the individual. There is rarely a degeneration, a truncation, or even a vice or any physical or moral loss without an advantage somewhere else. In a warlike and restless clan, for example, the sicklier man may have occasion to be alone, and may therefore become quieter and wiser; the one-eyed man will have one eye the stronger; the blind man will see deeper inwardly, and certainly hear better. To this extent, the famous theory of the survival of the fittest does not seem to me to be the only viewpoint from which to explain the progress of strengthening of a man or of a race.
Friedrich Nietzche writing on the nature of Social Darwinism
This provided antisemites with a new argument. Jews were increasingly portrayed not simply as followers of another religion who could convert to Christianity, but as members of an allegedly distinct and biologically defined race. This distinction was important because it meant that conversion could no longer supposedly make someone ‘less Jewish’. Antisemitism therefore became increasingly associated with theories of blood, heredity and racial nationalism. These ideas were never scientifically valid, but they gave existing prejudices the appearance of modern intellectual legitimacy.
Vienna was particularly fertile ground for this new political antisemitism. The city was the capital of the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire and contained a large and increasingly visible Jewish population. Jewish communities had played an important role in Vienna’s commercial, professional, cultural and intellectual life, whilst the rapid growth of the city had also produced social tensions and resentment towards the established political and economic order. Antisemitism could therefore be combined with opposition to liberalism, capitalism, socialism and the multinational character of the Habsburg Empire.
A map of the ethnicities occupying the Austro-Hungarian Empire
One of the most successful politicians to exploit these tensions was Karl Lueger, leader of the Christian Social Party and mayor of Vienna from 1897 until his death in 1910. Lueger openly used antisemitic rhetoric, blaming Jews for many of the problems facing ordinary Austrians. Yet his politics were more complicated than the racial ideology that would later emerge under Hitler. Lueger was a Catholic conservative and populist who combined antisemitism with support for municipal welfare, public services and the interests of Vienna’s lower middle classes. His antisemitism was therefore both ideological and political: it provided a convenient way of identifying an enemy whilst appealing to voters who felt threatened by economic and social change.
Austrian antisemitism also differed from that found in Germany. Germany certainly had powerful antisemitic movements and organisations, particularly from the 1870s onwards, but antisemitism did not achieve the same level of electoral success there before the First World War. In Austria, and especially in Vienna, it became much more deeply integrated into mainstream populist politics. Lueger was an especially important example. He was so successful that Emperor Franz Joseph repeatedly refused to confirm his election as mayor before eventually accepting the political reality of his popularity. Lueger himself once famously remarked that he decided who was a Jew, reflecting the opportunistic nature of his politics: antisemitism was central to his political appeal, but it was also a flexible tool rather than the consistently racial doctrine that the Nazis would later develop.
A portrait of Lueger
For the young Hitler, this political environment was formative. Vienna exposed him to an antisemitism that was not confined to extremist pamphlets or fringe organisations but could be used successfully by a major political movement. Hitler later wrote in Mein Kampf that his years in Vienna had transformed his understanding of Jews, claiming that he had gradually come to see them as a political and racial threat. These later recollections must be treated cautiously. Hitler was writing Mein Kampf after the First World War, when he was already a committed antisemite and Nazi politician, and he had an obvious interest in presenting his hatred of Jews as an inevitable discovery rather than a later development.
Once, when passing through the inner City, I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black side-locks. My first thought was: Is this a Jew? They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I watched the man stealthily and cautiously; but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a German?
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
There is evidence that Hitler encountered antisemitic ideas in Vienna, but it is difficult to establish precisely when he personally adopted them. His earlier life included relationships with Jewish acquaintances and no clear evidence that he entered Vienna already committed to the extreme racial antisemitism that would later characterise Nazism. His transformation was gradual and was influenced by the wider political culture around him. Lueger was particularly significant because Hitler later praised him as a master of mass politics. He admired the way Lueger could take popular grievances, identify political enemies and communicate his message directly to ordinary voters.
Hitler also encountered the German nationalist movement in Austria, particularly the ideas of Georg von Schönerer, whose Pan-Germanism was considerably more radical than Lueger’s Catholic populism. Schönerer combined German nationalism with virulent antisemitism and hostility towards the Habsburg monarchy. Hitler would eventually draw from both traditions: from Lueger, the use of populism, propaganda and mass political mobilisation; from Schönerer, a more explicitly racial antisemitism, German nationalism and hostility towards Austria’s multinational political structure.
A picture of Schönerer
Vienna therefore did not simply ‘make’ Hitler antisemitic. Rather, it provided him with a political laboratory in which he encountered several ideas that would later become central to Nazism. Older religious hostility towards Jews was being transformed into racial nationalism, antisemitism could be used as a populist political weapon, and politicians such as Lueger demonstrated how successfully such ideas could be incorporated into mass politics. Hitler would later take these influences much further, combining them with German nationalism, Social Darwinist racial theory, conspiracy theories and his own increasingly radical worldview. Having developed these racist sentiments, he came to despise the multicultural Austro-Hungarian Empire, so moved to Germany by late 1913. Accused of draft dodging, Hitler wrote a letter to the Austro-Hungarian police, fearing arrest if he didn’t. Admiring his tone, the police let him go and the matter was largely dropped altogether. Only a few months later, war broke out.
By 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte had established himself as First Consul of the French Republic, making himself functionally the autocratic head of state of a centralised republican government. Wielding his newfound and profound executive power, he pacified royalist rebels, established a new national bank to stabilise the economy, cracked down on banditry in the French countryside, reforms that were only exemplified by state owned newspapers. In what many describe as a benevolent dictatorship, Napoleon transformed France from the chaos of the early Republic into the stability of the Consulate. However, France’s foreign affairs position was nowhere near as good as its domestic one.
A portrait of Napoleon as First Consul
After Napoleon’s initial triumph in Northern Italy, the Second Coalition declared war on France. The powers of the Second Coalition sought to reverse French expansion across Europe, dismantle the satellite republics established during the Revolutionary Wars, and weaken France’s new republican regime. Specifically, Russian Field Marshal Alexander Suvorov had recaptured the Northern Italian territories that Napoleon had conquered in 1797, leaving French forces under the command of General André Masséna starving and in desperate need of supplies on the Mediterranean coast. When Tsar Paul I withdrew Russia from the coalition, it still left almost 100,000 Austrians in Northern Italy, under the Command of Field Marshal Michael von Melas.
Napoleon eventually rallied 60,000 reserve troops in order to liberate the French Forces at Genoa, reclaim Northern Italy and defeat the Austrians. A much more cautious man than Napoleon might have reinforced Masséna from the west, taking advantage of pre-existing friendly supply roots and would avoid a treacherous trek over the Alps. However, he believed that driving back enemy forces on his own supply depots could leave to a stalemate. So he took an incredibly bold plan. Though armies had crossed the Alps many times since antiquity, few had attempted to move a large force with artillery through such difficult terrain at speed and in secrecy. What it did require, however, was Masséna holding the line. By April, this was a very real fear that eventually materialised.
A map of French Positions by 1800 (Epic History, YouTube)
On April 6th, Melas launched a massive offensive against Masséna’s forces, which split his army in two and forced him to retreat into the city of Genoa, beginning a siege from both the land and sea. Fearing that the fall of Genoa would force him to be trapped between the mountains and the Austrian forces, Napoleon rallies his forces on May 6th to advance from Geneva across the Alps.
An army can pass always, and at any season, wherever two men can set their feet.
Napoleon, May 1800
The Alps are a great land to cross. At around 100 miles in width and peaks reaching over 14,000 feet, the Army of the Reserve, numbering roughly 40,000 men, crossed through several Alpine passes, with the main body using the Great St Bernard Pass, which has a peak of around 8,600 feet, a march that was led by General Jean Lannes on May 8th. Despite the spring season, the mountains were blanketed in thick snow and. To reduce the likelihood of an avalanche decimating the troops, they travelled at night and early morning. Despite the men considering mutiny due to the rough conditions, they eventually reached St Bernard Hospice, where food and rest was prepared.
An illustration of the hospice on the pass
Despite the brutal conditions, losses during the crossing were surprisingly light. Contrary to the propaganda of the era, Napoleon himself made the crossing on a sure-footed mule as opposed to a charger. Lannes’ advanced guard swept aside Austrian outposts and surprised an outpost at Châtillon. However, they encountered fierce opposition by Captain Josef Stockard von Bernkopf at Fort Bard.
Conditions in besieged Genoa became desperate, with food shortages reducing troops and civilians to eating horses and other animals as famine intensified. Not only that, but General Jean-de-Dieu Soult was badly wounded and captured by Austrian Forces. At Fort Bard, a small Austrian garrison temporarily blocked the French advance. Unable to quickly storm the fort, Napoleon ordered artillery dragged past the position at night with wheels wrapped to reduce noise. Lannes attacked the enemy at Ivrea before advancing on Romana. Napoleon rapidly entered Lombardy, seized Milan, and threatened Austrian communications, forcing Melas to abandon his wider strategic position and confront the French army. Napoleon had seized the strategic initiative, but Austria’s army remained intact. The campaign’s outcome would be decided weeks later on the plains near Marengo.
We have struck here like lightning […] the enemy can hardly believe it
Napoleon to Joseph Bonaparte, 24th May, 1800
An idealised portrait of Napoleon crossing the Alps in 1800
After the Siege of Toulon, and a subsequent crushing of a Parisian Royalist uprising, Napoleon had managed to land himself the rank of Major General, one of the highest ranks in the French Revolutionary Army. He was assigned his own army and decided that, in order to rise the social hierarchy, he needed a woman. Despite many women finding him creepy and disgusting, he managed to marry Josephine de Beauharnais, an older widow with two children and a rather promiscuous background, on March 9th, 1796. Only two days later, the French Government ordered an all out offensive against Austria. Napoleon was assigned to a southern campaign through Italy as more of a distraction away from Jean-Baptiste Jourdan and Jean Victor Marie Moreau. This would be his first major campaign, and it would be the first of many successes for Napoleon, at only 28-years-old.
You to whom nature has given spirit, sweetness, and beauty, you who alone can move and rule my heart, you who know all too well the absolute empire you exercise over it!
A letter Napoleon sent to Josephine in Februrary of 1797, during the Italian Campaign
The army assigned to him was demoralised, underpaid and in desperate need of equipment. However, Napoleon lifted their spirits with inspirational speeches, something that would become a staple of his career to come. Severely outnumbered, he would split his enemies into two and take them on separately, which would later become the iconic Napoleon strategy of dividing and conquering. Using this strategy, Sardinia was knocked out of the war and the Austrians were sent running. During the Austrian retreat, Napoleon was in the fray himself at the famous Battle of Lodi, aiming cannons and getting covered in mud, earning the respect of his men, to such an extent to the point where he ordered an almost suicidal charge over a river, they followed and succeeded.
A painting of the Battle of Lodi (May 10th, 1796)
Napoleon swept through Northern Italy, being welcomed in town after town with open arms, believing them to liberating the people from their Austrian oppressors. However, Napoleon would plunder towns and send riches back to France. It is estimated that Napoleon collected 45 million Francs in money, 12 million Francs worth of jewellery and precious metals, as well as an additional 300 art pieces, such as sculptures and paintings. He also used some of the money he plundered to pay his men, some of the first real money they had seen in ages.
During the campaign, Napoleon also became more influential in French politics. He created two newspapers, one for circulation amongst soldiers and the other for the French populous. Recognising his ambition, French Royalists warned that Napoleon may be on the path to becoming a dictator. In response, Napoleon sent General Charles-Pierre Augereau to Paris to support a coup that purged royalists from legislative councils. This meant that Paul Barras, one of the Directors of the Executive Branch of the French Government, had a firm grip on power but was now more dependent on Napoleon.
A drawing of Generals being rounded up during the coup
Whilst the northern front was at a stalemate, Napoleon began making a bee-line straight for Vienna. Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen, had to withdraw forces to Vienna, despite gaining a successful victory against the northern forces, due to Napoleon’s assault. After losing to Napoleon at the Battle of Tarvis, the Austrian government sued for peace when they learnt that Napoleon had arrived at Leoben, a city just 100km (62 miles) away from Vienna. With Napoleon overseeing negotiations himself, Austria allowed France to take control of much of Northern Italy as well as the low countries. He managed the establishment of many Sister Republics for the French Republic, of which he wrote constitutions and organised governments. Napoleon’s first success had been a great one, and it was only the beginning of his military career.
From that moment, I foresaw what I might be. Already I felt the earth flee from beneath me, as if I were being carried into the sky.
Napoleon after his victory at the Battle of Lodi
Casualties
First French Republic – 45,000 killed, captured or wounded
Coalition Forces (Sardinia, Habsburg Empire, Papal States, Venice) – 27,000 killed, 160,000 captured
By 1792, the French Revolution had transformed France. The monarchy had been weakened, the old privileges of the nobility and clergy had been dismantled, and a constitutional system had been established. Yet the revolution was no longer confined to France. Its ideas were spreading across Europe, whilst European monarchies increasingly feared that the revolution threatened not only the French king, but the entire political order of Europe. The result was a growing confrontation between revolutionary France and the conservative monarchies surrounding it. By April 1792, this tension would develop into the War of the First Coalition, beginning a conflict that would eventually bring France into war with much of Europe.
A painting of revolutionaries in France
The revolution had initially been viewed by some European governments with cautious interest. France was not immediately seen as an existential threat. However, as the revolution became more radical, its implications became increasingly difficult for other monarchies to ignore. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaimed that political authority came from the nation rather than from a monarch’s divine right. The abolition of feudal privileges challenged the traditional social order, whilst the nationalisation of Church property and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy brought the French state into direct conflict with the Catholic Church.
Most threatening of all was the suggestion that the principles of the revolution were universal. French revolutionaries increasingly argued that liberty was not simply a French privilege. If people elsewhere in Europe were oppressed by absolute monarchies, the revolutionaries believed that they too had a right to freedom. This raised an obvious question for Europe’s rulers: if revolutionary France believed its principles could cross national borders, what would stop revolution from spreading into their own territories? This fear was particularly strong in neighbouring states such as Austria and Prussia, where monarchs ruled over societies with their own political and social tensions.
Schloss Hof, an Austrian palace, in the 18th Century
The situation became more dangerous after Louis XVI attempted to escape France in June 1791. The royal family’s attempted flight to the eastern frontier ended at Varennes, where they were recognised and arrested before being returned to Paris. The episode destroyed much of the remaining trust between the king and the revolutionary movement. Many French revolutionaries now suspected that Louis was secretly working with France’s enemies.
The suspicion was not entirely unfounded. The royal family had attempted to reach territory near the Austrian Netherlands, where the king hoped to place himself under protection and potentially rally support against the revolution. His wife, Marie Antoinette, was also the sister of Emperor Leopold II of the Holy Roman Empire and Archduke of Austria. The European powers, however, were initially cautious about intervening. Leopold did not immediately want to launch a war against revolutionary France, and other monarchies had their own strategic concerns. The revolutionary government nevertheless became increasingly convinced that foreign powers were plotting to restore the old regime.
A painting of Leopold II
The most important diplomatic warning came in August 1791. Leopold II and King Frederick William II of Prussia met at Pillnitz in Saxony. They issued a declaration expressing concern for the position of Louis XVI and suggesting that the European powers were prepared to intervene if necessary to restore the French monarchy. The Declaration of Pillnitz was partly intended as a diplomatic warning rather than an immediate declaration of war. Leopold himself was cautious and wanted to avoid a major European conflict. In France, however, it was interpreted very differently. Revolutionary politicians presented the declaration as evidence that foreign monarchies were preparing to invade France and destroy the revolution. The threat of foreign intervention therefore strengthened the position of those revolutionaries who believed that war was inevitable.
The French émigrés – nobles and other opponents of the Revolution who had fled France – lso added to these fears. Many émigrés gathered along France’s borders and attempted to organise military forces to restore the monarchy. To French revolutionaries, this appeared to be the beginning of a counter-revolutionary invasion. By late 1791, influential politicians within the Legislative Assembly increasingly argued that France should go to war. One of the most prominent was Jacques Pierre Brissot, leader of a group of deputies who would become associated with the Girondins. Brissot argued that war could expose France’s enemies and strengthen the revolution. If the European monarchies were genuinely preparing to attack France, he believed, it was better for France to strike first.
A portrait of Brissot
There was also a domestic political calculation. A victorious revolutionary war could unite France behind the Revolution. It could expose traitors and royalists within the country and demonstrate that the new political order was capable of defending itself. Some revolutionaries also believed that French soldiers would spread the principles of liberty throughout Europe. Others opposed war. Maximilien Robespierre was particularly sceptical. He feared that France was not militarily prepared and that war could actually strengthen the monarchy or allow military leaders to acquire excessive power. He also questioned whether France could realistically impose liberty on other nations through military force. His fears would prove remarkably prescient. Nevertheless, the war party gained the upper hand.
The international situation deteriorated further in early 1792. Leopold II died in March 1792 and was succeeded by his son, Francis II. The new emperor inherited the growing confrontation with revolutionary France. France increasingly demanded that Austria stop supporting émigré forces and abandon its opposition to the Revolution. Austria, meanwhile, regarded the revolutionary government with increasing suspicion. On April 20th 1792, King Louis XVI – still technically head of the French constitutional monarchy – appeared before the Legislative Assembly and declared war on Austria. The vote was overwhelmingly in favour. France had entered its first major war since the Revolution began. The conflict initially involved Austria, but Prussia soon joined the war against France. Other European powers would eventually become involved, forming what became known as the First Coalition.
