FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS (1792-1800), the general name for the first part of the series of French wars which went on continuously, except for some local and temporary cessations of hostilities, from the declaration of war against Britain in 1792 to the final overthrow of Napoleon in 1815. The most important of these cessations--viz. the peace of 1801-1803--closes the "Revolutionary" and opens the "Napoleonic" era of land warfare, for which see NAPOLEONIC CAMPAIGNS, PENINSULAR WAR and WATERLOO CAMPAIGN. The naval history of the period is divided somewhat differently; the first period, treated below, is 1792-1799; for the second, 1799-1815, see NAPOLEONIC CAMPAIGNS. France declared war on Austria on the 20th of April 1792. But Prussia and other powers had allied themselves with Austria in view of war, and it was against a coalition and not a single power that France found herself pitted, at the moment when the "emigration," the ferment of the Revolution, and want of material and of funds had thoroughly disorganized her army. The first engagements were singularly disgraceful. Near Lille the French soldiers fled at sight of the Austrian outposts, crying _Nous sommes trahis_, and murdered their general (April 29). The commanders-in-chief of the armies that were formed became one after another "suspects"; and before a serious action had been fought, the three armies of Rochambeau, Lafayette and Luckner had resolved themselves into two commanded by Dumouriez and Kellermann. Thus the disciplined soldiers of the Allies had apparently good reason to consider the campaign before them a military promenade. On the Rhine, a combined army of Prussians, Austrians, Hessians and _emigres_ under the duke of Brunswick was formed for the invasion of France, flanked by two smaller armies on its right and left, all three being under the supreme command of the king of Prussia. In the Netherlands the Austrians were to besiege Lille, and in the south the Piedmontese also took the field. The first step, taken against Brunswick's advice, was the issue (July 25) of a proclamation which, couched in terms in the last degree offensive to the French nation, generated the spirit that was afterwards to find expression in the "armed nation" of 1793-4, and sealed the fate of Louis XVI. The duke, who was a model sovereign in his own principality, sympathized with the constitutional side of the Revolution, while as a soldier he had no confidence in the success of the enterprise. After completing its preparations in the leisurely manner of the previous generation, his army crossed the French frontier on the 19th of August. Longwy was easily captured; and the Allies slowly marched on to Verdun, which was more indefensible even than Longwy. The commandant, Colonel Beaurepaire, shot himself in despair, and the place surrendered on the 3rd of September. Brunswick now began his march on Paris and approached the defiles of the Argonne. But Dumouriez, who had