Age of Revolution (Dutch Superpower)

1793
On 21 January, the revolutionary government executed Louis XVI after a show trial. Spain and Portugal entered the anti-French coalition in January 1793, and, on 1 February, France declared war on the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the Netherlands.

France drafted hundreds of thousands of men, beginning a policy of using mass conscription to deploy more of its manpower than the autocratic states could manage to do. This approach also allowed the French to maintain an offensive long enough that these vast armies might commandeer war material from territory taken from their enemies and, to a certain extent, "live off the fat of the land". Nonetheless, the Coalition allies launched a determined drive to invade France during the Flanders Campaign.

France suffered severe reverses at first. They were driven out of the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium), and serious revolts flared in the west and south of France. One of these, at Toulon, was the first serious taste of action for an unknown young artillery officer named Napoleon Bonaparte. He contributed to the siege of the city and its harbor by planning an effective assault with well-placed artillery batteries raining projectiles down on rebel positions. This performance helped make his reputation as a capable tactician, and it fueled his meteoric rise to military and political power.

By the end of the year, large new armies and a fierce policy of internal repression had turned back foreign invaders and suppressed internal revolts. The French military was in the ascendant.

1794
The year 1794 brought increased success to the revolutionary armies. Although an invasion of Piedmont failed, an invasion of Spain across the Pyrenees took San Sebastián, and the French won a victory at Fleurus and occupied all of Belgium and the Rhineland.

At sea, the French and British fleets clashed on the First of June over a grain convoy arriving from the United States. Both sides claimed victory, since the British sank or captured a quarter of the French Atlantic Fleet with minimal losses of their own, but the vital convoy got through unharmed.