You were placed in a hard situation by France's builds, not just by your commitment to attack France. I thought it was similar to how Turkey and Italy's fleet builds in the East made fighting me difficult. There was no way you and France could ally against Britain, so he could pick and choose who to ally with.
I was worried early game that you and Britain would kick me out of the North while I was preoccupied in the South, and then gobble up France, but that never materialized as Britain played around in Denmark and Holland.
I have to agree with Hugh's analysis that war was inevitable, given my strength in Scandinavia, but I had hopes that I could delay attacking you as long as possible. Part of this was so that I could grab Edinburgh, but it was also because I try not to eliminate players as a general principle. It makes it harder to form grand alliances if there are more factions remaining on the board.
Once it became obvious that I couldn't solo, though, and the Grand Alliance formed, it became a race with France for your centers.
I have to say that I enjoyed talking to you the most, along with Italy (before I stabbed him). I was slightly relieved when you stabbed me because it meant that I wouldn't have to go through the drama of me stabbing another ally.
(A full list of game moves and commentary is available here; the game maps are available here.)
Since I was GM, I had a distinctly limited access to private communications, so I've relatively little analysis.
A brief review of the game:
Austria was the first player to get eliminated; in contrast to the sort of min-maxing I've usually seen in Diplomacy, they took a lot of big risks in the beginning, in particular leaving Trieste open to Italian attack, in favor of quick expansion to the east. Although they did manage to take Warsaw and Serbia, the Austrian forces wound up overextended and unable to hold onto their gains, and in a weak position diplomatically; the fall of Trieste didn't help matters. Nobody was willing to help Austria, and so Italy seized all of Austria, with Turkey taking the Balkans and Russia taking Rumania. After that, there was a long period of stalemate in the Balkans, as neither of the three powers was willing to divert enough troops to one front to make any offensive progress.
In the west, Germany initially faced a combined Franco-British attack; they held out surprisingly well, aided by cracks in the alliance and occasional Russian attacks on Norway. Britain was actually the first Power to fall in the West, when France piled on after the fall of Norway; the British player was forced to stop participating in the game at around that time. France wound up with all of the British Isles, and Germany was squeezed between it and Russia until it cracked. (The brief Italian occupation of Munich didn't help.) Germany did manage to hold out for most of the rest of the game; there were only a few months of inconclusive war between France and Russia before the draw proposal.
Meanwhile, in the east, Italy gradually fell back before a combined Russian-Turkish attack. After Russia seized Vienna and Budapest, and Turkey seized Trieste, Russia mostly concentrated on attacking England and Germany, leaving Turkey and Italy in a period of stalemate, broken by the advance of Turkish fleets into the Ionian Sea. Soon after, Italy's player had to drop out, and Turkey soon seized control of Italy. Then the game ended.
One thing I'm curious about is how much communication there was between the eastern and western powers. (In-game, beyond Russia fighting on both fronts and a single, chance retreat by Italy, there was little direct interaction.)