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It is quite clear, however, that Thugut did not like the treaty that resulted. In his eyes, the French problem was quite unresolved, and he had only really made peace because the alternative was military catastrophe. Nor was the acquisition of most of Venetia much of a sop, for almost twice as many people lived in the lost lands of Belgium and Lombardy as had been gained at Campo Formio. Still worse, French behaviour in the months that intervened between the original armistice at Leoben and the signature of the treaty itself and in the short period of peace that had followed, suggested, first, that there was no intention of acting in good faith towards Vienna and, second, that the Revolution would continue its onward march. Before the French had handed over Venetia, for example, they had stripped it of many resources and encouraged the growth of revolutionary feeling, while the creation of republics in Genoa, Rome and Switzerland and the sudden expansion of French demands with regard to the left bank of the Rhine to include the territory of not just Austria but everyone else as well, convinced Thugut that the goal was indeed universal upheaval. Nor was the behaviour of the ambassador France now sent to Vienna much better: a notoriously vain, unpleasant and ambitious man of a strongly Jacobin persuasion, General Bernadotte adopted an air that was as swaggering as it was insolent, and cultivated the acquaintance of a variety of malcontents.

Yet the conviction that France was a danger to every monarchy in Europe - even to the whole of European civilization - did not mean that Thugut was bent on a perpetual war to the death. In the end the only hope was military victory, but the Austrian statesman knew full well that even a compromise peace could only be achieved by means of a grand alliance of all the powers that was absolutely solid and determined to subordinate everything else to the defeat of France. But of this there was no sign. Even if she joined a coalition, Prussia could be trusted neither to fight the French nor to refrain from stabbing Austria in the back in Germany. Britain was more reliable, perhaps, but even she had made overtures to France in 1797, while her ability to contribute to a land war - the only type of conflict that Thugut valued - was extremely limited; as for ‘Pitt’s gold’, it was only forthcoming in limited amounts that came not as outright grants but rather loans that were repayable at an exorbitant rate of interest (an issue which in the period 1797-8, in particular, made relations between London and Vienna very frosty). And, last but not least, the Russia of Paul I was not necessarily to be trusted either: setting aside the tsar’s own stability - though he was probably not mad (as is often claimed), the Russian ruler was extraordinarily prickly and capricious - there was also the question how Russia could intervene effectively on the battlefields of Germany and Italy and whether the Russian army was capable of taking on France.

All this meant that, far from rushing into a renewed war with France at the earliest possible opportunity, Thugut had actually held back and tried to appease Paris. Indeed, he had only gone to war at all once it was clear that the French would be opposed by a substantial coalition. In the event, however, the coalition had proved to be substantial only in the number of states that it could initially put into the field. Initial success had been squandered in disagreements over strategy, and the Russian forces, in particular, had proved of dubious reliability and far fewer in numbers than had been promised. By the end of 1799, pragmatism led Thugut to adopt a different line and all the more so given his private hopes that Napoleon would be able to suppress faction - the real motor, it was felt, of French aggression - and thereby create the conditions for a lasting peace settlement. The peace overture of January

1800 was therefore rejected, but the terms of the Austrian response were by no means as scathing as those of its British counterpart, and the next few