We’re into the slide into the most destructive of the series of wars of that rocked the eighteenth century. It would be a war that had a devastating effect on most of Europe. It was also the last war between Britain and France, and by far the biggest.

But, oddly enough, in the run up to it William Pitt had worked hard, and with an apparently high degree of success, to rebuild Britain’s status as a world power and to use that status to ensure that the whole continent was at peace, and stayed that way. Indeed, apart from a certain intransigence from the Russians, the only factor that denied him complete success was the refusal of the House of Commons to back him on the last key step in his plans.

Shades of his defeats in 1784…

Although, given the slide to war, all of that effort for peace was a little irrelevant. Events way beyond Pitt's control were driving Europe towards war. They were happening in France, where the revolution was still far from over.

Illustration: The Battle of Valmy, September 20th, 1792, by Horace Vernet. This was the surprising victory of the French revolutionary forces over the Prussian, a sign of things to come…

Public domain. Published anywhere (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before 1927 and public domain in the U.S.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License