War of the Grand Coalition (We)

The War of the Grand Coalition (1790-1792) was the first major effort of the European monarchies to contain Revolutionary France. France was responding to distress calls from Hungary and Bohemia when it declared war on the Hapsburg monarchy of Austria on 25 May 1790. Prussia and Sardinia joined the Austrian side a few weeks later as the Spanish Republic joined France on May 29 to uphold their defensive pact.

Great Britain stayed out of the conlict to avoid the costs of mobilizing its military and focus on preserving King George's family in Hanover which had fallen into popular unrest similar to France. The Dutch Republic joined Austria when news spread that France was annexing the Austrian Netherlands and had ambitions for the rest of Northern Europe in its quest to bring the West into the fold of republicanism.

The radical goals of France in this war shocked beneficiaries of the anciens régimes who failed to take the threat of revolution seriously and were intent on carving up waning powers like Poland and the Ottoman Empire. When the end of the old order was realized it was too late to halt the wave of support for democratic ideals and governments for the people, by the people, without autocratic monarchs.

Background
Preceding the violent pangs of overthrown dynasties which would change Europe forever was the French Revolution. As King Louis XVI of France threw scorn upon the democratic desires of his people a surge of support for the National Assembly - National Constituent Assembly since 9 July 1789 - gave the new government the necessary impetus to end the anciens régimes of France with the execution of its king.

A nascent République Française inspired the nation's youth to leap into growing revolutionary fervor, swelling the ranks of its new Armée Revolutionnaire - 220,000 soldiers in August. When its government formally abolished feudalism and the French monarchy, whose royal family remained only in Spain, on August 4th, the need to bring democracy to the rest of Europe seemed obvious.

Charles IV's Kingdom of Spain was the first monarchy that fell to the European Revolution, expelling Charles and adopting a rudimentary constitution on 25 December 1789 that turned the country into the Republica Española. Within the same month, Saxony fell to revolution, marking the eruption of the Holy Roman Empire into a tangle of rebellions across its elector states - including the revolution of Vienna and the Austrian Netherlands. When the Reichstag reinstated a Habsburg monarch, Leopold II, onto the throne of the HRE the resurgence of centralized control of Hungary and Bohemia prompted them to send emissaries pleading for help in France.

Seeing a request from a people to overthrow their monarch as an opportunity, President Robespierre of France motioned for the Assembly to declare war on Austria, beginning the short French Revolutionary Wars. We