<P> The major preoccupation of the Directory during its existence was the war against the coalition of Britain and Austria . The military objective set by the Convention in October, 1795 was to enlarge France to what were declared its natural limits: the Pyrenees, the Rhine and the Alps, the borders of Gaul at the time of the Roman Empire . In 1795, Prussia, Spain and the Dutch Republic quit the coalition and the war and made peace with France, but Britain refused to accept the French annexation of Belgium . Beside Britain and Austria, the only enemies remaining for France were the kingdom of Sardinia, and several small Italian states . Austria proposed a European congress to settle borders of Europe, but the Directory refused, demanding direct negotiations with Austria instead . Under British pressure, Austria agreed to continue the war against France . </P> <P> Lazare Carnot, the Director who oversaw military affairs, planned a new campaign against Austria, using three armies: General Jourdan's Army of Sambre - et - Meuse on the Rhine and General Moreau's Army of the Rhine and Moselle on the Danube would march to Vienna and dictate a peace; a third army, the Army of Italy under General Bonaparte, who had risen in rank with spectacular speed due to his defense of the government from a royalist uprising, would carry out a diversionary operation against Austria in northern Italy . Jourdan's army captured Mayence and Frankfurt, but on 14 August 1796 was defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Amberg and again on 3 September 1796 at the Battle of Würzburg, and had to retreat back to the Rhine . General Moreau, without the support of Jourdan, was also forced to retreat . </P> <P> The story was much different in Italy, Bonaparte, though he was only twenty - eight years old, was named commander of the Army of Italy on 2 March 1796, through the influence of Barras, his patron in the Directory . Bonaparte faced the combined armies of Austria and Sardinia, which numbered seventy - thousand men . Bonaparte slipped his army between them and defeated them in a series of battles, culminating at the Battle of Mondovi where he defeated the Sardinians on 22 April 1796, and the Battle of Lodi, where he defeated the Austrians on 10 May . The king of Sardinia and Savoy, was forced to make peace in May 1796, and ceded Nice and Savoy to France . </P> <P> At the end of 1796, Austria sent two new armies to Italy to expel Bonaparte, but Bonaparte outmaneuvered them both, winning a first victory at the Battle of Arcole on 17 November 1796, then at the Battle of Rivoli on 14 January 1797 . He forced Austria to sign the Treaty of Campo Formio (October 1797), whereby the emperor ceded Lombardy and the Austrian Netherlands to the French Republic in exchange for Venice and urged the Diet to surrender the lands beyond the Rhine . </P>

Economic problems the immediate cause of the french revolution included all of the following except