Franco-Austrian alliance

During the War of the Polish Succession (1733–1735), France and its allies managed to weaken the power of Austria severely and forced it to give up small amounts of territory.

By 1754, six years after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle had brought the previous war to an end, a new figure, Count von Kaunitz, had risen to power in Vienna as a close advisor of Maria Theresa.

In 1756, Britain signed a limited defensive alliance with Prussia, Both Austria and French were outraged at what they perceived as a betrayal by their respective allies.

In August 1756, Frederick the Great of Prussia, fearing that his country was about to be overrun and partitioned by its enemies, launched a pre-emptive strike against Austria's ally, Saxony, which he succeeded in capturing.

The alliance reached its high-water mark in late 1757, when a French invasion overran Hanover, Austrian troops recaptured Saxony, and Austria liberated its own province of Bohemia, which had been occupied by Prussia.

Having signed a Second Treaty of Versailles in 1757, the French were now committed to an offensive war and sent troops to aid the Austrians against Prussia as well as financial subsidies to support the large armies put onto the field by Austria.

[4] France and Austria struggled then to defeat their enemies, as Prussia fought them to a standstill in a conflict that was extremely costly in terms of men, resources and money and brought the French government just at the brink of bankruptcy.

In 1763, the Treaty of Paris forced Austria to acknowledge the continued Prussian ownership of Silesia, and France had to cede a number of colonies to the British.

The failure of them and their allies to overwhelm Prussia was considered by France to be a major reason for the loss of numerous global French colonies to the British.

The new emperor, Joseph II, was more willing to consider establishing fresh alliances, such as with Great Britain, which was fighting a global war against France, Spain, the Dutch Republic and the United States.

One of the strongest remaining links between the two states was the marriage of Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Maria Theresa and a sister of Joseph II, to Louis XVI of France, which had taken place in 1770.

In 1792, the Austrians sent troops to invade France and threatened to destroy Paris unless Louis XVI, now reduced to a constitutional monarch, was restored to his previous status.