The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars can be dated to 17th August 1787, when in Constantinople the Ottomans arrested the Russian ambassador Count Bulgakov in the Topkapi palace, and declared war on St Petersburg. Catherine the Great had deliberately provoked the Turks and now dragged in the reluctant Austrians into the war. The Austrian Emperor was Joseph II, the archetypal enlightened despot, who worked hard to reform his empire but from the top down. His reforms provoked the so-called Brabantine Revolution 1789-90 in the Netherlands which was similar in some ways to the contemporary French Revolution. 

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Music from Joseph Haydn (Symphony 94, 'Surpise'), Christoph Gluck (the opera 'Iphigenie En Tauride') and Mozart (the Turkish March), courtesy of www.musopen.org

Picture - January Suchodolski - the Siege of Ochakov 1788

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