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Although the rejection of Napoleon’s peace overtures was accompanied by much ferocious rhetoric - in a Commons debate on 3 February 1800, Pitt not only savaged the whole course of French policy since 1792, but accused the First Consul personally of being behind all the worst of France’s actions - Britain was by no means committed to a war to the death in 1800. And, if this was true of Britain, it was also true of Austria. Like many of his British counterparts, the Austrian chancellor, Thugut, loathed the French Revolution, while he clearly saw the conflict as a clash of ideologies in which Austria ‘must fight a nation which has not only become utterly fanatical, but which tries to drag along with it other peoples, and which has prepared its current efforts for a long time in all of Europe through the voices of its prophets’.12 However, there were important nuances in his position. In 1791 he had written:

If the democratic regime ever acquires any consistency and starts to spread the misfortune with which Europe is threatened, I would not hesitate to give all my support to the most vigorous means to pull this evil up by the roots, to make of these scoundrels an example that would dissuade forever those tempted to imitate it, and profit at the same time by the opportunity to deprive France of its former preponderance that it has so often abused vis-à-vis the other European courts.13

From this two things are apparent. First, if the Revolution could be contained, it need not actually be destroyed. France would have to be defeated, certainly, but there was no need for total victory and with it the overthrow of the Republic: like Pitt, in fact, Thugut dreamed of sealing off France with a cordon sanitaire whose basis would be territorial changes on the French borders that would place all the major fortresses of the region in the hands of Austria, Prussia and a much expanded Bavaria. Even if the Austrian army did eventually have to appear before the Tuileries, it would not be with the intention of opening the gates to a Bourbon who had, in the old phrase, learned nothing and forgotten nothing, for to do so would simply be to run the risk of a second 1789 and with it a second war.

To return to the views Thugut expressed in 1791, the second issue they raise is that making war on the Revolution was linked to wider issues of foreign policy. One of these was simply keeping France weak, which was in some ways a situation that suited Austria very well. But another - and one left unsaid - is the issue of ‘compensation’. Though Austria did in the end gain some territory from the elimination of Poland from the map of Europe between 1793 and 1795, the partition of the Polish state was a major catastrophe for the Habsburgs that greatly weakened their position in Eastern Europe. Not only was the territory they obtained of only limited intrinsic worth, but Russia was now in a position to march straight across the frontier. Particularly in the period after the second partition in 1793, when it seemed that Austria was going to get nothing at all in the face of major gains for Russia and Prussia, Vienna had to fight on, for only thus could it obtain the new territory that would even the balance. In 1797, however, it had suddenly been presented with that territory in the form of most of the Republic of Venetia, whereupon Thugut had rather grudgingly made peace. The principles of the French Revolution were still anathema, but Austria had at last gained something from the conflict. With public opinion in Vienna openly war-weary - Thugut was jeered whenever he appeared in the streets - neither Britain nor Russia able or willing to do much to support the Austrians, the treasury bankrupt and the army utterly unable to resist the attacks of Napoleon, an end to the war might at least be tried. The very favourable impression made on Thugut by the political power exercised by the victor of Arcola and Rivoli also helped, the fact being that a peace settlement negotiated by Napoleon might just stick - that Napoleon was a man with whom he could