Political disagreements and enmity in the National Convention between October 1793 and July 1794 reach unprecedented levels, leading to dozens of Convention members being sentenced to death and guillotined.

Meanwhile, France's external wars in 1794 are prospering, for example in what will become Belgium.

In 1795, the government seems to return to indifference towards the desires and needs of the lower classes concerning freedom of (Catholic) religion and fair distribution of food.

Until 1799, politicians, apart from inventing a new parliamentary system (the 'Directory'), busy themselves with dissuading the people from Catholicism and from royalism.

France, after seizing the Low Countries in a surprise winter attack, establishes the Batavian Republic as a puppet state.

The king of Prussia had retired from any active part in the war even before the close of 1794, and on April 5, 1795, he concludes with France the Peace of Basel, which recognizes France's occupation of the left bank of the Rhine.

The new French-dominated Dutch government buys peace by surrendering Dutch territory to the south of that river.

A treaty of peace between France and Spain follows in July.

The grand duke of Tuscany had been admitted to terms in February.

The allied coalition thus falls into ruin and France proper will be free from invasion for many years.

Britain attempts to reinforce the rebels in the Vendée by landing French Royalist troops at Quiberon, but fails, and attempts to overthrow the government at Paris by force are foiled by the military garrison led by Napoleon Bonaparte, leading to the establishment of the Directory.

On the Rhine frontier, General Pichegru, negotiating with the exiled Royalists, betrays his army and forces the evacuation of Mannheim and the failure of the siege of Mainz by Jourdan.

French armies under General Jean Charles Pichegru complete their conquest of the Low Countries in 1795.

The Dutch republic becomes a French dependency called the Batavian Republic.

Pichegru begins contacting royalist exiles.

Operations east of the Rhine are less successful, with the French capturing, then losing Mannheim.

France concludes treaties with Spain and the Netherlands.

Jean Victor Marie Moreau is given the command of the Army of the Rhine-and-Moselle, with which he crosses the Rhine and advances into Germany in 1795.

He is at first completely successful and wins several victories and penetrates to the Isar, but at last has to retreat before the Archduke Charles of Austria.

The skill he displays in conducting his retreat—which is considered a model for such operations—greatly enhances his own reputation, however, the more so as he manages to bring back with him more than five thousand prisoners.

Moreau was born at Morlaix in Brittany.

His father, a successful lawyer, had insisted on Moreau studying law at the University of Rennes instead of allowing him to enter the army, as he attempted to do.

Young Moreau, showing no inclination for law, had reveled in the freedom of student life: instead of taking his degree, he had continued to live with the students as their hero and leader, and formed them into a sort of army, which he commanded as their provost.

When 1789 came, he had commanded the students in the daily affrays that took place at Rennes between the young noblesse and the populace.

Moreau in 1791 had been elected a lieutenant colonel of the volunteers of Ille-et-Vilaine.

With them he had served under Charles François Dumouriez, and the good order of his battalion, coupled with own martial character and republican principles, had secured his promotion in 1793 as general of brigade.

Lazare Carnot early in 1794 had promoted Moreau to be general of division, and had given him command of the right wing of the army under Charles Pichegru, in Flanders.

The Battle of Tourcoing (1794) had established Moreau's military fame.

French monarchism is checked by the death of the imprisoned dauphin, the uncrowned Louis XVII , in June 1794, and by a failed royalist landing in Brittany in support of his uncle, the Count of Provence, proclaimed Louis XVIII by the princes-in-exile.

The French Directory orders General of Division Jean-Baptiste Jourdan with the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse and General of Division Jean-Charles Pichegru with the Army of Rhin-et-Moselle to launch a pincer attack across the Rhine against Feldmarschall Count of Clerfayt's Austrian army in the summer of 1795.

Jourdan is instructed to cross to the north near Düsseldorf while Pichegru crosses anywhere between Mannheim and Strasbourg in the south.

His army crosses the Rhine north of Düsseldorf on September 8.

Wheeling to the right, the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse strikes south and moves forward to the Lahn River by September 20.

On the 21st, the Bavarian garrison at Düsseldorf capitulates to General of Division François Joseph Lefebvre and twelve thousand six hundred French troops.

Count Hompesch's two thousand-man garrison is allowed to march home after promising not to fight the French for one year.

The city and its one hundred and sixty-eight fortress guns become French prizes.

In the south, Pichegru finds his army blocked by General der Kavallerie Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser's Austrian army.

Pichegru moves north until he is across from Mannheim and demands its surrender.

Baron von Belderbusch enters into negotiations with the French and surrenders Mannheim and four hundred and seventy-one guns on September 20.

His ninety-two hundred-man Bavarian garrison is allowed to march home.

The Austrians feel betrayed by their allies, but can only protest as their enemies gain a key bridgehead.

Miranda had remained in La Force even after the fall of Robespierre in July 1794, and is not finally released until the January of 1795.

The art theorist Quatremère de Quincy is among those who campaigned for his release during this time.

Now convinced that the whole direction taken by the Revolution had been wrong, Miranda starts to conspire with the moderate royalists against the Directory, and is even named as the possible leader of a military coup.

He is arrested and ordered out of the country, only to escape and go into hiding.

The French army under Pichegru crosses the Waal near Zaltbommel on January 10 and ...

...on January 13th enters Utrecht, which surrenders on the 16th.

The Prussian and the British army withdraws behind the IJssel and flees to Hanover and Bremen.

Pichegru, who has successfully avoided the frozen Dutch Water Line, arrives in Amsterdam on January 20, after a velvet revolution has taken place and proclaimed the Batavian Republic; William V, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, has fled the country

The French will occupy the rest of the Dutch Republic in the next month.

This major victory has been marked by the exceptional discipline of the French battalions in Amsterdam, who, although faced with the opportunity of plundering the richest city in Europe, show self-restraint, and by ...