French Revolutionary & Napoleonic wars: how many wars actually were there?

It's usually typical to pluralise these terms to refer to several wars, but is there a case for characterising them as one "Great French War"? If not, how many wars would you say there were?
 
It's usually typical to pluralise these terms to refer to several wars, but is there a case for characterising them as one "Great French War"? If not, how many wars would you say there were?

It depends from the perspective I guess. Prussia fought three wars IIRC, with substantial periods of peace in between. The only power that was consistently at war with France for all the time was Britain. From the British point of view, the case for a Great French War, only interrupted by a relatively brief truce (treaty of Amiens) is quite strong. For pretty much everyone else, there were separate wars, or maybe intermittent involvements in the background struggle between France and Britain. From a French POV, OTOH, the war was about domination on the continent. Arguably either Austria or Russia, not Britain, was seen as the main opponent. And since both countries were fighting France intermittently, albeit with some consistence, there were separate wars. This is not so strange. I am accustomed to think of the War of the Austrian Succession as a unitary conflict, but very often the First and Second Silesian Wars (in Germany) and the Jenkins's Ear War (in Britain) are counted as separate conflicts.
 
Well Amiens was an actual peace treaty, even if neither side fully negotiated in good faith. So I think the wars should be divided at least before and after that. Also, the next phase of war coincided with Napoleon crowning himself emperor, so from the French perspective, the rationale for war changed quite a bit. In 1792 France was fighting to defend the Revolution against invasion by reactionary states. In 1804 it was trying to dominate Europe under a new monarchy.
 
Dominate Europe? More like Europe didn't want to give it a rest - i.e. 1805 war was started by the Austrians.
 
Dominate Europe? More like Europe didn't want to give it a rest - i.e. 1805 war was started by the Austrians.

Well I think it was a bit of both. Napoleon's occupation of Hannover and his killing of the Duc D'Enghien certainly weren't gestures of peace.
 
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