The appearance of this new element in the struggle changed its whole conditions; and it was with renewed hope that Pitt lavished subsidies on the two allies at the close of 1798. But his preparations for the new strife were far from being limited to efforts abroad. In England he had found fresh resources in an Income-Tax, from which he anticipated an annual return of ten millions. Heavy as the tax was, and it amounted to ten per cent on all incomes above 200 a year, the dogged resolution of the people to fight on was seen in the absence of all opposition to this proposal. What was of even greater importance was to remove all chance of fresh danger from Ireland. Pitt's temper was of too statesmanlike a mold to rest content with the mere suppression of insurrection or with the system of terrorism which for the moment held the country down. His disgust at "the bigoted fury of Irish Protestants" had backed Lord Cornwallis in checking the reprisals of his troops and of the Orangemen; but the hideous cruelty which he was forced to witness brought about a firm resolve to put an end to the farce of "Independence" which left Ireland helpless in such hands. The political necessity for a union of the two islands had been brought home to every English statesman by the course of the Irish Parliament during the disputes over the Regency. While England repelled the claims of the Prince of Wales to the Regency as of right, the legislature of Ireland admitted them. As the only union left between the two peoples since the concession of legislative independence was their obedience to a common ruler, such an act might conceivably have ended in their entire severance; and the sense of this danger secured a welcome in England for the proposal which Pitt made at the opening of 1799 to unite the two Parliaments. The opposition of the Irish borough-mongers was naturally stubborn and determined, and when the plan was introduced into the Parliament at Dublin, it was only saved from rejection by a single vote. But with men like these it was a sheer question of gold; and their assent was bought with a million in money, and with a liberal distribution of pensions and peerages. Base and shameless as were such means, Pitt may fairly plead that they were the only means by which the bill for the Union could have been passed. As the matter was finally arranged in June, 1800, one hundred Irish members became part of the House of Commons at Westminster, and twenty-eight temporal with four spiritual peers, chosen for each Parliament by their fellows, took their seats in the House of Lords. Commerce between the two countries was freed from all restrictions and every trading privilege of the one thrown open to the other, while taxation was proportionately distributed between the two peoples.

While the Union was being pushed slowly forward, the struggle abroad was passing through strange vicissitudes. At the opening of 1799 the efforts of the new coalition were crowned with success in every quarter. Though Naples had been turned into a Parthenopean Republic at the close of the previous year, and the French supremacy extended over the whole peninsula, the descent of an Austrian army from the Tyrol at the end of March, and a victory of the Russian and Austrian forces at Cassano, compelled the French army to evacuate Southern Italy and Lombardy, while a fresh defeat at Novi flung it back on the Maritime Alps. A campaign conducted with more varying success drove the armies which advanced into Germany back over the Rhine. In Switzerland however the stubborn energy of Massena enabled his soldiers to hold their ground against the combined attack of Russian and Austrian forces; and the attempt of a united force of Russians and English to wrest Holland from its French masters was successfully repulsed. Twelve of the thirty thousand men who formed this army consisted of English troops; and Sir Ralph Abercrombie succeeded in landing at their head, in seizing what remained of the Dutch fleet at the Texel, and in holding General Brune at bay when he advanced with superior forces. But Abercrombie was superseded in his command by the Duke of York; and in another month the new leader was glad to conclude a convention by which the safe withdrawal of his troops was secured.

In the East however England was more successful. Even had Buonaparte not been baffled in his plans of a descent on Southern India from the basis of Egypt by the battle of the Nile, they would have been frustrated by the energy of Lord Wellesley. Mysore was invaded, its capital stormed, and Tippoo slain, before a French soldier could have been dispatched to its aid. But foiled as were his dreams of Indian conquest, the daring genius of the French general plunged into wilder projects. He conceived the design of the conquest of Syria and of the creation of an army among its warlike mountaineers. "With a hundred thousand men on the banks of the Euphrates," he said years afterward, "I might have gone to Constantinople or India; I might have changed the face of the world." Gaza was taken, Jaffa stormed, and ten thousand French soldiers advanced under their young general on Acre. Acre was the key of Syria, and its reduction was the first step in these immense projects. "Once possessed of Acre," wrote Napoleon, "the army would have gone to Damascus and the Euphrates. The Christians of Syria, the Druses, the Armenians, would have joined us. The provinces of the Ottoman Empire were ready for a change, and were only waiting for a man." But Acre was stubbornly held by the Turks, the French battering train was captured at sea by an English captain, Sir Sidney Smith, whose seamen aided in the defence of the place, and after a loss of three thousand men by sword and plague, the besiegers were forced to fall back upon Egypt.

Egypt indeed was more than ever their own, for their army had now penetrated to the cataracts of the Nile, and a Turkish force which landed near Alexandria was cut to pieces by Buonaparte in the battle of Aboukir. But the news of defeat at home and the certainty that all wider hopes in the East were at an end induced him only a month after his victory to leave his army. With a couple of frigates he set sail for France; and his arrival in Paris was soon followed by a change in the government. The Directors were divided among themselves, while the disasters of their administration made them hateful to the country; and a revolution brought about by the soldiery on the 10th of November put an end to their power. In the new system which followed three consuls took the place of the Directors; but the system only screened the government of a single man, for under the name of First Consul Buonaparte became in effect sole ruler of the country. His energy at once changed the whole face of European affairs. The offers of peace which he made to England and Austria were intended to do little more than to shake the coalition, and gain breathing time for the organization of a new force which was gathering in secrecy at Dijon, while Moreau with the army of the Rhine pushed again along the Danube. The First Consul crossed the Saint Bernard with this army in the spring of 1800, and on the 14th of June a victory at Marengo left the Austrian army, which had just succeeded in reducing Genoa, helpless in his hands. It was by the surrender of all Lombardy to the Oglio that the defeated general obtained an armistice for his troops; and a similar truce arrested the march of Moreau, who had captured Munich and was pushing on to Vienna. The armistice only added to the difficulties of Buonaparte's opponents, for Russia, as anxious not to establish a German supremacy as she had been to weaken the supremacy of France, had withdrawn from the contest as soon as the coalition seemed to be successful; and Austria was only held back from peace by her acceptance of English subsidies. But though she fought on, the resumption of the war in the autumn failed to reverse the fortune of arms. The Austrians were driven back on Vienna; and on the second of December Moreau crushed their army on the Iser in the victory of Hohenlinden. But the aim of the First Consul was only to wrest peace from his enemies by these triumphs; while the expiration of her engagements with England left his opponent free to lay down her arms. In February, 1801, therefore the Continental War was brought suddenly to an end by the Peace of Luneville.