The Second Coalition was led by Britain, Austria and Russia, and included the Ottoman Empire, Portugal, Naples, various German monarchies and several other minor European states.

[5] Napoleon Bonaparte, who had seized power in the Coup of 18 Brumaire,[6] carried out a crossing of the Alps with his Army of the Reserve (officially commanded by Louis-Alexandre Berthier) in May 1800.

[7][8] This move, made almost before the passes were open, threatened Austrian General Michael von Melas' lines of communications in northern Italy.

The French army then seized Milan on 2 June, followed by Pavia, Piacenza and Stradella, cutting the main Austrian supply route eastward along the south bank of the Po river.

Bonaparte hoped that Melas' preoccupation with the Siege of Genoa, held by French General André Masséna, would prevent the Austrians from responding to his offensive.

As other French forces closed from the west and south, the Austrian commander had withdrawn most of his troops from their positions near Nice and Genoa to Alessandria on the main Turin-Mantua road.

It caused the fighting to end,[15] and the Austrians agreed to evacuate Italy as far as the Mincio and abandon all of their strongholds in the Piedmont and Milan,[16] losing all that they had gained in 1798 and 1799.

[24] General Officer Count Joseph Saint-Julien was sent to deliver the convention to Francis II,[a][26] and it was soon ratified by the Court of Vienna.

[27][13] It proved to be only a temporary cease-fire, as Johann Amadeus von Thugut (and the Austrian government) refused to accept the terms and give up any of Austria's Italian holdings.

"[35] Historian David Bell concluded in 2014 that a bulk of the Austrian army had survived the Battle of Marengo, and Melas was still in a position that he could have continued fighting.

Prussian historian Dietrich Heinrich von Bülow, "the keenest contemporary observer of the 1800 campaign,"[36] said of the convention: "Bonaparte did not seize success; Melas threw it away.