Alps Campaign (1792–1796)

The Alps Campaign was military campaign during War of the First Coalition, fought as part of the French Revolutionary Wars. It was waged primarily by the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy, supported by Great Britain, Spain, and other states, against the French First Republic from 21 September 1792 to 28 April 1796, the date of the Armistice of Cherasco. The conflict took place along the Alpine front that geographically separates Italy from France.

The signing of peace with France opened a period of both internal and external tensions for Piedmont. Republican movements pushed for the fall of the monarchy, then represented by Charles Emmanuel IV, son of Victor Amadeus III, while the emergence of the neighboring sister republics—the Ligurian Republic and the Cisalpine Republic—repeatedly triggered diplomatic incidents that inflamed internal opposition to the kingdom. Paradoxically, until December 1798, the survival of the Savoyard monarchy depended on French interest in maintaining the status quo in Piedmont. Following the Sardinian refusal to declare war on the Kingdom of Naples, however, General Joubert, acting on instructions from the Directory, occupied the Piedmontese territory still under Savoyard control, proclaimed the establishment of the Piedmontese Republic, and forced the king to flee to Sardinia.