Having restored peace and security at home, Buonaparte sought to gratify the national thirst for glory by foreign victories. In 1800, he marched an army across the Alps by the route of the Great St. Bernard, descended unexpectedly on the rear of the Austrians, and, June 14, gave them a complete overthrow at Marengo. Having recovered nearly all the former conquests of the French by this battle, he returned to Paris to avail himself of this triumph to advance his power. But the rejection of the overtures of the Bourbons, and the obvious design of Buonaparte to appropriate the crown to himself, led to a union between the Royalists and Jacobins; and plots were formed against his life, from one of which he narrowly escaped. In November he resumed hostilities against Austria; and the battle of Hohenlinden, gained by Moreau, December 2, concluded the war. Austria then acknowledged the Cisalpine Republic, and permitted France to possess the boundary of the Rhine, and to annex Holland to her dominions. The war, continued by England, was distinguished for the battle of Copenhagen, fought April 2, 1801, by which the Northern Maritime Confederacy was broken up; and for the recovery of Egypt from the French by the army of Abercrombie: it was ended in 1802, by the Treaty of Amiens. A short interval of peace ensued, during which Buonaparte strengthened his personal power by becoming First Consul for life, with the right of naming his successor. He also constituted himself President of the Italian and Helvetian Republics, by which these states became in fact provinces of France.