ABSTRACT
On 20 April 1792, less than three years after the fall of the Bastille, the National Assembly voted to declare war on Austria. The war was expected to be short, decisive and victorious. In the event, it dragged on for more than two decades, punctuated by truces masquerading as peaces, inflicting permanent social, economic and political damage and ending with the destruction of the Revolution. In terms of personal animosity and political axe-grinding, the disputes over the origins of the revolutionary wars were in no way inferior to present-day controversies over the origins of twentieth-century world wars. Albert Sorel chose to dilute the ideological content of revolutionary foreign policy by stressing its continuity with old-regime opposition to the Austrian alliance of 1756 and thus with French traditions which stretched back to Francis I and beyond. Count Mercy, the Austrian ambassador to France, observed that by taking this decision the National Assembly had declared war on all other governments.
