Crisis Communications Toyota UK’s sticky accelerator pedal

Crisis Communications Toyota UK’s sticky accelerator pedal Toyota UKs sticky accelerator pedal recall of January 2010 was considered by journalists as a disaster for its reputation with UK customers (Booth and Teather, 2010 and Hutton, 2010). Yet just three weeks after the crisis broke comments left by customers on the companys UK website revealed that they did not share this opinion. This essay will seek to understand these reactions, explain them and suggest ways Toyotas own crisis communication efforts may have helped and hindered them. After establishing the Toyota recall as a crisis, the essay will undertake a content analysis of customer comments to the companys UK website. The Situational Crisis Communications Theory (SCCT) of Coombs and Holladay (1996, 2001 and 2002) will then be applied to the results to start to explain these responses. The essay will then move on to assess how Toyotas own crisis communication efforts, as evidenced by a content analysis of company statements uploaded to Toyotas UK website, followed the tenets set o ut by SCCT. The aim will be to demonstrate how Toyotas crisis response strategies could have negatively and positively influenced these customer reactions. The essay will then conclude by suggesting further research needs to be done to prove any direct causal relationship between Toyotas crisis communication strategies and the resulting customer reactions. Before beginning this analysis it is important we give the essay a strong foundation by establishing that the Toyota accelerator recall was in fact a crisis and therefore warrants the application of crisis communications theory. Underpinning this process is the definition of a crisis as a an event or a perception of an event that threatens or violates important value expectancies of stakeholders and [where] stakeholders reactions can seriously impact the organizations performance and generate negative outcomes (Coombs, 1999, quoted in Tomasz and others, 2010, p. 637). Within this definition is the concept of stakeholders, which is interpreted as any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organisations objectives (Freeman, 1984, p. 46). In the case of Toyota this could include the customers who buy the cars; the staff, who make them and the shareholders, who finance the company. According to Tomazs and others (2010) the expectations mentioned in this definition above centre on what they perceive to be an agreement or promise by the organisation. These are formed from exposure to information about the organisation, published by the organisation itself and the media; societal norms and interpersonal interactions with the company and other parties. Tomasz and others (2010) go on to explain that an episode that threatens or violates these expectations can be considered a crisis. The result of which can make stakeholders change their attitudes towards the organisation and/or change their behaviours, thus negatively affecting profitability and stockholder value. How well a company is meeting expectations can be described as reputation (Coombs, 2004a). So, it is important that, before applying this theory to the sticky accelerator pedal recall, we ascertain Toyotas reputation. From Toyotas own corporate material (Toyota, 2010a and Toyota, 2010b) and media articles (The Telegraph, 2010) about the car marque, the brand promises are clear. By buying a Toyota customers are promised safety, reliability and quality. By applying the theory above to the accelerator recall, it is reasonable to suggest that if the sticky accelerator fault occurred, a car could become unpredictable thus making the vehicle unreliable and unsafe to drive, and threatening two key customers expectations As a consequence, because these issues had never occurred before, customers could begin to feel like the quality associated with the marque had diminished, thus potentially violating the third brand pillar. With Tomasz and others (2010) placing a direct link between the threat or violation of expectations and negative stakeholder behaviour, it is also reasonable to suggest that the recall episode could have some damaging consequences for Toyota and its business goals, including a potential drop in car sales as customers stopping purchasing the marque, which would then lead to a drop in the companys share price. This therefore shows that the sticky accelerator pedal recall defiantly fits into definition of a crisis, as outlined above. What was at stake was Toyotas relationship with its customers. That is why this essay will focus on looking at the crisis from their point of view, in particular its UK customers. In the next part of the essay I will seek to start to understand how customers reacted to this crisis by analysing messages this stakeholder group left on Toyotas UK website. The aim of this examination is to start to build a picture of what damage was done to the relationship between Toyota and its customers due to the crisis episode. This analysis is heavily influenced by the work of Tomasz and others (2010) and as a result breaks the possible harm into two categories; negative changes in customer attitudes to the organisation and negative changes to customer behaviours. With these categories in mind 400 posts were analysed that had been left on Toyotas UK website in reaction the companys pleas for Your Experiences of the Recall (Toyota, 2010c).Toyota uploaded this appeal to their blog two weeks after the countrywide fix of affected models began, therefore giving an indication of the final thoughts of customers. Firstly, these posts were coded as positive, negative or neutral in their attitude towards Toyota. Each post was then broken down further and coded for evidence that the customers perceived Toyota to be responsible for the crisis, that their opinion of the car marquee had been damaged and that the crisis had affected their purchase intentions. Reputation was examined by looking for evidence of the three stakeholder expectations, as established above. These results showed that only 16% of customers in this sample had a negative attitude towards Toyota and only 1.3 % blamed the car marque for what had happened (Purnell, 2010). As for the three pillars of Toyotas reputation, just 2.6% of the customers sampled thought Toyotas were now unsafe, 1.9 % considered them unreliable and 1.3 % thought quality had dropped (Purnell, 2010). However, most interestingly just 2.7 % said the crisis had put them off buying a Toyota (Purnell, 2010). It is therefore fair to say that overall the posts were positive, with comments including not a major problem; not changed my loyalty ; will keep buying Toyotas and 11 out of 10 for Toyota acknowledging the problem and actually doing something about it. With percentages high in the not mentioned categories it is also interesting to stop for a moment and look at the topics that customers were concerned about. Many customers were concerned and confused about how they were affected by the way the recall had been handled. In the next section of the essay I will apply the tenets of SCCT as developed by Coombs and Holladay (1996, 2001 and 2002) to the sticky accelerator crisis in a bid to shed light on why customers may have reacted in the ways established above. The reason SCCT was chosen was because the core proposition of the theory is that during crisis situations organisations need to protect their reputations. The way they can do this is by developing crisis responses based on the specific circumstances of a particular situation. Successfully implementing such tailored responses will have a positive effect on stakeholder perceptions. The match between the situation and the response strategy is based on attribution of responsibility and different responses strategies imply different degrees of responsibility (Coombs and Holladay, 1996, 2001 and 2002). SCCT ( Coombs and Holladay, 1996, 2001 and 2002) suggests that a match between the Toyota crisis and the suggested crisis response strategy can be identified using a two step process, which involves determining the frame stakeholders use to categorise the crisis and then establishing if any intensifying factors are present. SCCT (Coombs and Holladay, 1996, 2001 and 2002) offers three frames, victim, accidental and intentional. The categories present increasing levels of attributions of responsibility and therefore threat posed by the crisis. Using this model in relation to the Toyota recall, reveals that the episode fits into the accidental crisis category which has a low attribution of crisis responsibility. This is because the situation was caused by the failure of a mechanism in certain models of their cars that could not be detected by normal inspection and could therefore be considered technical error product harm, one the subsets of the accidental crisis category. With this base level of threat established the next step is to look at whether any intensifying factors were present during Toyotas sticky accelerator pedal recall. SCCT identifies two intensifying factors, a crisis history and prior reputation (Coombs, 2004b). In SCCT if an organisation had a similar crisis in the past or is suffering from a poor reputation with stakeholders, the current crisis will be a much greater reputational threat because it will establish a pattern of behaviour by an organisation (Coombs and Holladay, 2004). In Toyotas case one of the two intensifying factors is present. The company, despite having a strong reputation with customers, had been having problems with product recalls since 12 months before the accelerator pedal problem. In January 2009, Toyota issued a global recall of 1.3million cars, including some in Britain, because of seatbelt and exhaust problems. The companys woes in this department were also exacerbated by the fact that two weeks into the sticky accelerator pedal crisis, the company issued another global recall for its Prius model because of suspected brake problems. SCCT (Coombs, 2007b) then combines these factors to evaluate the reputational threat presented by the crisis. Therefore Toyotas accelerator pedal recall rates as an accidental crisis, with minimal attributions of crisis responsibility but because of the intensifying factor it has the potential to produce greater reputation damage than would normally be for this category. This means that although customers see the event as largely out of the control of Toyota and unintentional, there is an increased chance that it will damage the companys reputation with customers The application of SCCT to the Toyota recall supports the results of the content analysis above and goes a long way to explain by customers reacted this way. A much stronger attribution of crisis responsibility and therefore threat would have been levelled at Toyota, if customers considered the product recall has been intentional, perhaps a human error crisis caused by someone not doing their job properly(Coombs, 2007a; Coom bs and Holladay, 2002). Although the SCCT model (Coombs, 2007a; Coombs and Holladay, 2002) starts to explain the customers reactions represented above, especially as to why they did not blame Toyota, what we cant forget is that SCCT to the predicts that the episode has the potential to create serious damage to Toyotas reputation with its customers in the posts analysed. It is reasonable then to expect to see a significantly larger proportion of negative feedback from this audience group. However, this is not evidenced, which suggested that Toyotas own crisis communications efforts may have helped to minimise the impact the crisis had on the companys relations with its customer base. The next section of the essay will analyse how well Toyotas own crisis communication efforts met the tenets of SCCT (Coombs, 2007a; Coombs and Holladay, 2002). By analysing statements made by the company on its UK website between January 28 2010- when the crisis began and February 10 when the company began fixing the affected v ehicles. On January 28 Toyota UK issued its first public statement explaining that the accelerator pedal problem currently affecting the US could now affect the UK and Europe (Toyota, 2010d). It focussed on explaining to drivers what signs to look out for and what Toyota was doing to rectify the situation. This is the type of message that SCCT would consider to be instructing information, i.e. information that would help affected people cope physically with the crisis. Instructing and adjusting information are the two types of information that SCCT suggests begin and are part of every crisis response strategy (Coombs, 2010). So it was entirely appropriate that Toyota began its crisis communication efforts in this way. But it is equally important that this hard work was sustained Organisations must protect their stakeholders to protect themselves (Coombs, 2010, p. 29). However, Toyota did not do this. Once the first statement was issued Toyota waited three days before issuing any further statement (Toyota, 2010 e) on their website or elsewhere, leaving customers with no instructing information during this period. To make matters worse there was also a complete lack of adjusting information. Adjusting information are expressions of compassion and the efforts the company is making to prevent a repeat of the crisis (Coombs, 2010) Such information makes victims feel better about the crisis and hold less animosity toward the organisation (Cohen, 2002). Yet until day five of the crisis, February 1(Toyota, 2010e), Toyota had not expressed any sympathy towards those affected and had not announced what steps the company was making to prevent a reoccurrence. This evidence shows that during the initial stages of their crisis response Toyota broke both of the basic tenets set out by SCCT, which Coombs ( 2010) would suggest meant that the company failed in helping customers deal practically or psychologically with the crisis. Although this was not a strong start Toyotas efforts from February 1(Toyota, 2010e) were significantly better. They regularly updated their website with instructing information, including confirming what vehicles were affected, that a fix had been found and how the fix process would work (Toyota, 2010f, Toyota, 2010g, Toyota, 2010h, Toyota, 2010i, Toyota, 2010j, Toyota,2010k, Toyota, 2010l and Toyota, 2010m). This instructing information was also supported by a steady flow of adjusting information, including comments by President and CEO of Toyota Motor Europe, Tadashi Arashima, on February 1( Toyota, 2010e), which expressed regret that it( the crisis) was causing concern; and a statement by the world-wide President of Toyota, Akio Toyoda, on February 5( Toyota, 2010i), which indicated that the company deeply regretted the inconvenience and concern caused to our customers(by the crisis) and confirmed that he would lead a special quality task force to address the problems. This demonstrates a strong use of both instructing and adjusting strategies, but Toyotas crisis response efforts did not stop there. The companys January 28 release also shows the start of a third strategy (Toyota, 2010d). Toyota explains that the accelerator problem only occurs in rare instances which this author interprets as the beginning of what SCCT theorists would consider a diminishing strategy. This strategy continues in subsequent posts and is Toyotas bid to minimise the seriousness of the crisis. This strategy continued throughout the crisis, as evidenced by statements such as Toyota is not aware of any accidents resulting from this condition in Europe (Toyota, 2010e) and that the recall is merely a precautionary measure to guarantee the highest quality standards to all customers (Toyota, 2010e). These efforts are in line with the SCCT tenets for crises which attract minimal responsibility but have an intensifying factor. The use of such strategies significantly strengthene d Toyotas efforts and these are further bolstered by correct application of reinforcing strategies alongside these primary strategies, as suggested by SCCT (Coombs, 2006). These are demonstrated through the use of comments such as those made by MD of Toyota GB, Miguel Fonseca, on February 4 (Toyota, 2010g), which state that customer safety has been and will remain our top priority. These seek to add positive information about the organisation and remind people of its past good works. In summary then, it is reasonable to say that, despite a weak start, Toyotas crisis responses efforts did follow the tenets set out by SCCT (Coombs, 2010) and should therefore have worked to minimise the possible damage the recall had on the companys reputation, by positively influencing customer opinions. It is interesting at this point to return to the findings of the content analysis of customers reactions ( Purnell, 2010), which showed that minimal damage had been done to Toyotas relationship with important stakeholder group and where there was negative feelings towards to company, these reflected the areas of weakness subsequently found in Toyotas crisis response strategies. An example of this is that the lack of information and detail about the product recall and how the fix would be handled that occurred in the first few days of the crisis. The company then paid for this weakness, with many of the negative customer comments expressing confusion and worry about how the recall a ffected them and frustration about how the process was being handled. These findings are very useful because they strongly point to the fact that the weaknesses in instructing and adjusting information at the start of Toyotas response strategy did have an ultimate affect on customer perceptions. With this in mind, it is also reasonable to suggest that where Toyotas efforts correctly followed the tenets of SCCT (Coombs 2010), these may have had a positive effect on customer impressions of the organisation. But, although this analysis strongly suggests such a direct relationship, it far from proves one. It is therefore suggested that further research is needed to substantiate such claims and prove that Toyotas strategies actually influenced the resulting customer reactions and therefore definitely diminished the impact of the crisis episode had on the company. In conclusion, this essay would like to propose that, despite media warnings to the contrary ((Booth and Teather, 2010 and Hutton, 2010), the sticky accelerator recall of 2010 was not a disaster for Toyotas reputation with UK customers. Critical to understanding why this occurred is the recognition that despite threatening to violate customer expectations, the product recall did not actually do so. Insight into why this did not occur can be found by applying SCCT (Coombs, 2007a; Coombs and Holladay, 2002) to the episode. This predicted that Toyota customers would attribute minimal responsibility to Toyota because the episode was caused by a technical fault; something that goes a long was to explain why so few customers blamed Toyota for the episode. But, nevertheless, SCCT (Coombs, 2007a; Coombs and Holladay, 2002) points out that the recall still remained a substantial threat, because of Toyotas crisis history. This essay proposes that this threat was successfully minimised by Toyot as own crisis communication response. Despite weaknesses in the provision of instructing and adjusting information, the brand successfully followed the tenets of SCCT (Coombs, 2010) and used diminishing and reinforcing strategies to minimise the negative effect the recall had on customer perceptions. However, despite customer reactions appearing to mirror the strengths and weaknesses of Toyotas strategy, how they influenced them remains unconfirmed. It is therefore suggested that further research in undertaken to try to prove a direct causal relationship between Toyotas strategies and the resulting customer responses.

Insidious Film Review Essay

Insidious is terrifying in a completely different way than most horror movies. While the genre continues to creep toward exorcisms, thrill killers and the mentally deranged. It’s not out to scare viewers as much as it is to creep them out. The Lambert’s have just moved into a new house. Renai quit her job to focus on music and raise the kids, but the latter is proving to be more time-consuming than expected. There’s boxes to unpack, a baby who won’t stop crying and a husband who’s becoming increasingly distant. Josh assures her nothing’s wrong, but something feels off. She knows it. She just can’t put her finger on what. Unfortunately, that proof comes by way of a terrible accident. Oldest son Dalton goes exploring in the attic and lands on his head. Apart from a few bumps and bruises, he initially seems fine but fails to wake up the following morning. He’s rushed to the hospital where the puzzled doctors can’t figure out what’s wrong. He’s not in a coma. He just won’t wake up. Renai wakes up all the time. Anonymous eyes seem to be upon her. Something is inside the house. It’s sporadic at first, but after Dalton, still in his non-coma, is moved back home, the strange incidents start becoming more noticeable. Doors open in the middle of the night, alarms go off and there’s weird whisperings on the baby monitor. Tired, scared and fed up, the Lambert’s once again move to a new house, but their exodus only makes things worse. Bloody handprints are found on Dalton’s bed and faces appear in the windows almost nightly. After Josh’s mother witnesses a horrifying red-faced figure herself, she recommends the couple phone her old friend Elise. In preparation for her visit, Elise sends a two-man team of demon hunters to inspect the authenticity of the haunting claim. Scanning the ceilings for poisonous fumes to weed out the hallucinators and yelling at Josh for taking action figures out of their boxes, the Mutt and Jeff pair serve as a strange and wonderful precursor to their boss, who over-emphatically concludes there’s an epic problem at hand. Dalton is an astraltraveler. He leaves his body at night to voyage into the further, a sketchy realm where dead souls congregate, reliving horrors and coaxing the living into abandoning their Earthly bodies. There, he’s been taken prisoner by a devil-looking psychopath who climbs walls, listens to old wind-up music and wants to inhabit his body to embark on a murderous rampage. What makes the film work are the characters, the setting, the atmosphere and the really nice build-up of suspense and drama. Patrick Wilson is adequate as the troubled father and Rose Byrne is excellent as wife Renai. The film loses it’s edge in the second half as Wilson takes the helm, Byrne is the stronger of the two but is left with little to do or say and the weight of the film suffers as a result. The small cast works well and credit should go to Lin Shaye as the medium. Joseph Bishara’s music score is exceptionally creepy and the lighting, make-up of the ghostly faces is enough to give some nightmares. What works well is that while there are computer generated shots, they are well designed and hardly a distracting. All in all, Insidious is not for everyone, but I highly recommend you to check it out. In five years, if I’m flipping channels and see any twenty second excerpt from this film, I guarantee I won’t need the guide to tell me I’m watching Insidious. Not many movies can say that.

Lost And Immerses s Wide Sargasso Sea - 1079 Words

Lost and Entrapped in the Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys s Wide Sargasso Sea, written in 1966, is the deeper insight to one of the underlying characters in Charlotte Bronte s Jane Eyre. In the novel, we experience the challenges one faces when having a cultural background and we see the entrapment of characters leading to indignation and hostility between the servants and their white employers. The enslavement and entrapment of individuals form many of the relationships throughout Rhys s novel, not only between whites and blacks, but between family as well. Rhys uses situational irony, symbolism, and foreshadowing to show the underlying theme of how entrapping others can stimulate intense relationships between characters. The oppression†¦show more content†¦When people feel entrapped like this, they use names and actions which create harsh relationships between the different characters. Entrapment is a major feeling slaves feel during this time and the feeling of entrapment is deeply rooted in the oppression of slavery. Along with the feeling of entrapment through the oppression caused by slavery, symbolism and foreshadowing is used to help show the deeper meaning of entrapment. Insects are used to represent entrapment of individuals, A great many moths and beetles found their way into the room, flew into the candles, and fell dead on the table cloth. (80) Rochester and Antoinette are in their room when they see the moth’s continuous actions. Even though the fire kills them, they fly into it anyways. Amà ©lie continues to sweep up the dead ones and then more continue to come. The thing that is killing the moths is what continues to draw in and intrigue the moths to continue coming ba ck. In the Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette keeps going back to Rochester even though it kills the creole part inside of her, like a trap. The moths and beetles symbolize the persistence of Antoinette, but also foolishness. Mr. Mason feels trapped, He made an effort to fly down but his clipped wings failed him and he fell screeching. He was all on fire. (43) Mr. Mason clips his wings because Antoinette is annoying, trapping him. Antoinette ends up trapped in the attic of Thornfield but this isn’t because she is annoying. When

War of the First Coalition in 1790s France

The French Revolution led to much of Europe going to war in the mid-1790s. Some belligerents wanted to put Louis XVI back on a throne, many had other agendas like gaining territory or, in the case of some in France, creating a French Republic. A coalition of European powers formed to fight France, but this ‘First Coalition’ was just one of seven which would be needed to bring peace to the majority of Europe. The early phase of that mammoth conflict, the war of the First Coalition, is also known as the French Revolutionary Wars, and they are often overlooked by the arrival of a certain Napoleon Bonaparte, who transformed them into his conflict. The Start of the French Revolutionary Wars By 1791 the French Revolution had transformed France and worked to tear down the powers of the old, nationally absolutist, regime. King Louis XVI was reduced to a form of house arrest. Part of his court hoped that a foreign, royalist army would march into France and restore the king, who had asked for help from abroad. But for many months the other states of Europe refused to help. Austria, Prussia, Russia and the Ottoman Empires had been involved in a series of power struggles in Eastern Europe and had been less worried about the French king than their own jostling for positions until Poland, stuck in the middle, followed France by declaring a new constitution. Austria now tried to form an alliance that would threaten France into submission and stops the eastern rivals from fighting. France and the revolution had thus been sheltered while it progressed but became a useful distraction with land which could be taken. On August 2nd, 1791 the King of Prussia and the Holy Roman Emperor seemed to declare an interest in war when they issued the Declaration of Pillnitz. However, Pillnitz was designed to frighten the French revolutionaries and support the French who supported the king, not start a war. Indeed, the text of the declaration was worded to make war, in theory, impossible. But the emigres, agitating for war, and the revolutionaries, who were both paranoid, took it the wrong way. An official Austro-Prussian alliance was only concluded in February 1792. The other Great Powers were now looking at French hungrily, but this did not automatically mean war. However the emigres — people who had fled France — were promising to return with foreign armies to restore the king, and while Austria turned them down, German princes humored them, upsetting the French and provoking a call for action. There were forces in France (the Girondins or Brissotins) who wanted to take pre-emptive action, hoping that war would enable them to oust the king and declare a republic: the king’s failure to surrender to constitutional monarchy left the door open for him to be replaced. Some monarchists supported the call for war in the hope foreign armies would march in and restore their king. (One opponent of the war was called Robespierre.) On April 20th France’s National Assembly declared war on Austria after the Emperor helpfully tried another careful threat. The result was Europe reacting and the formation of the First Coalition, which was first between Austria and Prussia but was then joined by Britain and Spain. It would take seven coalitions to permanently end the wars now started. The First Coalition was aimed less at ending the revolution and more on gaining territory, and the French less as exporting revolution than getting a republic. The Fall of the King The revolution had wrought havoc on the French forces, as many of the officers had fled the country. The French force was thus an amalgam of the remaining royal army, the patriotic rush of new men, and conscripts. When the Army of the North clashed with the Austrians at Lille they were easily defeated and it cost the French a commander, as Rochambeau quit in protest at the problems he faced. He fared better than General Dillon, who was lynched by his own men. Rochambeau was replaced by the French hero of the American Revolutionary War, Lafayette, but as violence erupted in Paris, he debated whether to march on it and install a new order and when the army wasn’t keen he fled to Austria. France organized four armies to form a defensive cordon. By mid-August, the main coalition army was invading mainland France. Led by Prussia’s Duke of Brunswick it had 80,000 men drawn from central Europe, it took fortresses such as Verdun and closed on Paris. The Army of the Centre seemed like little opposition, and there was a terror in Paris. This was largely due to the fear the Prussian army would flatten Paris and slaughter the residents, a fear caused largely by Brunswick’s promise to do just that if the king or his family were harmed or insulted. Unfortunately, Paris had done exactly that: the crowd had killed their way to the king and taken him prisoner and now feared retribution. Massive paranoia and a fear of traitors also fuelled the panic. It caused a massacre in the prisons and over a thousand dead. The Army of the North, now under Dumouriez had been focusing on Belgium, but marched down to aid the Centre and defend the Argonne; they were pushed back. The Prussian king (also present) gave orders and entered into a battle with the French at Valmy on September 20th, 1792. The French won, Brunswick being unable to commit his army against a larger and well defended French position and so fell back. A determined French effort might have shattered Brunswick, but none came; even so, he withdrew, and the hopes of the French monarchy went with him. A republic was established, in large part due to the war. The rest of the year saw a mixture of French successes and failures, but the revolutionary armies took Nice, Savoy, the Rhineland and in October, under Demouriez, Brussels, and Antwerp after swamping the Austrians at Jemappes. However, Valmy was the victory that would inspire French resolve over the next years. The coalition had moved half-heartedly, and the French had survived. This success left the government to hurriedly come up with some war aims: the so-called ‘Natural Frontiers’ and the idea of freeing oppressed peoples were adopted. This caused further alarm in the international world. 1793 France began 1793 in a belligerent mood, executing their old king and declaring war on Britain, Spain, Russia, the Holy Roman Empire, most of Italy and The United Provinces, despite roughly 75% of their commissioned officers having left the army. The influx of tens of thousands of passionate volunteers helped strengthen the remains of the royal army. However, the Holy Roman Empire decided to go on the offensive and France was now outnumbered; conscription followed, and areas of France rebelled as a result. Prince Frederick of Saxe-Coburg led the Austrians and Dumouriez rushed down from the Austrian Netherlands to fight but was defeated. Dumouriez knew he’d be accused of treason and had had enough, so he asked his army to march on Paris and when they refused fled to the coalition. The next General up — Dampierre — was killed in battle and the next — Custine — was defeated by the enemy and guillotined by the French. All along the borders coalition for ces were closing in — from Spain, through the Rhineland. The British managed to occupy Toulon when it rebelled, seizing the Mediterranean fleet. France’s government now declared a ‘Levà ©e en Masse’, which basically mobilized/conscripted all adult males for the defense of the nation. There was uproar, rebellion and a flood of manpower, but both the Committee of Public Safety and the France they ruled had the resources to equip this army, the organization to run it, new tactics to make it effective, and it worked. It also started the first Total War and began the Terror. Now France had 500,000 soldiers in four main forces. Carnot, the Committee of Public Safety man behind the reforms was called the ‘organiser of Victory’ for his success, and he may have prioritized an attack in the north. Houchard was now commanding the Army of the North, and he used a mixture of old regime professionalism with sheer weight of conscript numbers, together with coalition mistakes which divided their forces and gave inadequate support, to force the coalition back, but he also fell to French guillotines after accusations doubting his effort: he was accused of not follow up victory quick enough. Jourdan was the next man up. He relieved the siege of Maubeuge and won the battle of Wattignies in October 1793, while Toulon was liberated thanks, in part, to an artillery officer called Napoleon Bonaparte. The rebel army in the Vendà ©e was broken, and the frontiers generally forced back east. By the end of the year the provinces were broken, Flanders cleared, France expanding, and Alsace liberated. The French army was proving fast, flexible, well supported and able to absorb more losses than the enemy, and could thus fight more often. 1794 In 1794 France reorganized armies and moved commanders about, but the successes kept coming. Victories at Tourcoing, Tournai, and Hooglede occurred before Jourdan once more took control, and the French were finally able to successfully cross the Sambre after many attempts, beating Austria at Fleurus, and by the end of June had thrown the allies out of Belgium and the Dutch Republic, taking Antwerp and Brussels. Centuries of Austrian involved in the region had been halted. Spanish forces were repelled and parts of Catalonia taken, the Rhineland was also taken, and the borders of France were now safe; parts of Genoa were now also French. The French soldiers were constantly boosted by patriotic propaganda and a huge number of texts sent out to them. France was still producing more soldiers and more equipment than its rivals, but they also executed 67 generals that year. However, the revolutionary government didn’t dare disband the armies and let these soldiers flood back into France to destabilize the nation, and neither could the faltering French finances support the armies on French soil. The solution was to carry the war abroad, ostensibly to safeguard the revolution, but also to get the glory and booty the government needed for support: the motives behind the French actions had already changed before Napoleon arrived. However, the success in 1794 had been partly due to war breaking out again in the east, as Austria, Prussia, and Russia sliced up a Poland fighting to survive; it lost and was taken off the map. Poland had in many ways helped France by distracting and dividing the coalition, and Prussia scaled -down war efforts in the west, happy with gains in the east. Meanwhile, Britain was sucking up French colonies, the French navy is unable to work at sea with a devastated officer corps. 1795 France was now able to capture more of the northwest coastline, and conquered and changed Holland into the new Batavian Republic (and took its fleet). Prussia, satisfied with Polish land, gave up and came to terms, as did a number of other nations, until only Austria and Britain remained at war with France. Landings designed to aid French rebels — such as at Quiberon — failed, and Jourdan’s attempts to invade Germany were frustrated, in no small part to a French commander following others and fleeing to the Austrians. At the end of the year, the government in France changed to the Directory and a new constitution. This government gave the executive — Five Directors — too little power over war, and they had to manage a legislature which continually preached spreading the revolution by force. While the Directors were, in many ways, keen on the war, their options were limited, and their control over their generals questionable. They planned a two front campaign: attack Britain through Ireland, and Austria on land. A storm stopped the former, while the Franco-Austrian war in Germany went back and forth. 1796 The French forces were now split largely between operations in Italy and Germany, all aimed at Austria, the only major enemy left on the mainland. The Directory hoped Italy would provide plunder and land to be exchanged for territory in Germany, where Jourdan and Moreau (who both had priority) were fighting a new enemy commander: Archduke Charles of Austria; he had 90,000 men. The French force was disadvantaged as they lacked cash and supplies, and the target region had suffered several years of depredation by the armies. Jourdan and Moreau advanced into Germany, at which point Charles tried to force them apart before the Austrians united and attacked. Charles managed to defeat Jourdan first at Amberg in late August and again at Wà ¼rzberg in early September, and the French agreed an armistice having been pushed back to the Rhone. Moreau decided to follow suit. Charles’ campaign was marked by sending his surgeon over to assist a famed and injured French General. In Italy, Napoleon Bonaparte was given the command. He stormed through the region, winning battle after battle against armies who divided their forces. 1797 Napoleon secured control of northern Italy and fought his way close enough to Austria’s capital of Vienna to make them come to terms. Meanwhile, in Germany, without Archduke Charles — who had been sent to face Napoleon — the Austrians were pushed back by French forces before Napoleon had forced the peace in the south. Napoleon dictated the peace himself, and the Treaty of Campo Formio expanded the boundaries of France (they kept Belgium) and created new states (Lombardy joined the new Cisalpine Republic) and left the Rhineland for a conference to decide. Napoleon was now the most famous general in Europe. The only major French setback was a naval battle at Cape St. Vincent, where one Captain Horatio Nelson assisted a British victory over French and allied ships, which were notionally readying for an invasion of Britain. With Russia far away and pleading financial weakness, only Britain remained both at war and close to France.