After all, if they were a continuation of the previous wars against Revolutionary France, and if the latter were wars of self-defence, then France would have won them if she emerged without loss of territory or change to her form of government. And this was in substance achieved. While there were some trivial losses on the Belgian and German borders, these were more than offset by other territories – Avignon/Venaissin, Montbeliard, Mulhouse and other enclaves in Alsace and Lorraine – which she annexed in the same period and was allowed to keep at the peace. So France emerged from the Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars with somewhat more territory than she started.

Ditto for her form of government. When war broke out in 1792, France was a Constitutional Monarchy under Louis XVI. When peace was made in 1815, she was one under Louis XVIII. True, the constitutions weren’t identical, but there was no return to the Ancien Regime, and when Charles X tried to achieve one he was quickly dsiposed of.

So France came out of the war with a modest increase of territory and not much more undemocratic than before the wars, and thus could fairly claim to have won them. All the same, I wonder how many Frenchmen saw it that way at the time.