The Rhine Campaign of 1795 (April 1795 to January 1796) opened when two
Habsburg armies under the overall command of
François Sébastien Charles Joseph de Croix, Count of Clerfayt defeated an attempt by two
Republican French armies to cross the Rhine River and capture the
Fortress of Mainz. At the start of the campaign the French Army of the Sambre and Meuse led by
Jean-Baptiste Jourdan confronted Clerfayt's Army of the Lower Rhine in the north, while the French Army of Rhine and Moselle under Pichegru lay opposite
Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser's army in the south. In August, Jourdan crossed and quickly seized
Düsseldorf. The Army of the Sambre and Meuse advanced south to the
Main River, completely isolating
Mainz. Pichegru's army made a surprise capture of
Mannheim so that both French armies held significant footholds on the east bank of the Rhine. The French fumbled away the promising start to their offensive. Pichegru bungled at least one opportunity to seize Clerfayt's supply base in the
Battle of Handschuhsheim. With Pichegru unexpectedly inactive, Clerfayt massed against Jourdan, beat him at
Höchst in October and forced most of the Army of the Sambre and Meuse to retreat to the west bank of the Rhine. About the same time, Wurmser sealed off the French bridgehead at Mannheim. With Jourdan temporarily out of the picture, the Austrians defeated the left wing of the Army of Rhine and Moselle at the
Battle of Mainz and moved down the west bank. In November, Clerfayt gave Pichegru a drubbing at
Pfeddersheim and successfully wrapped up the
Siege of Mannheim. In January 1796, Clerfayt concluded an armistice with the French, allowing the Austrians to retain large portions of the west bank. During the campaign Pichegru had entered into negotiations with French Royalists. It is debatable whether Pichegru's treason or bad generalship was the actual cause of the French failure. which lasted until 20 May 1796, when the Austrians announced that it would end on 31 May. This set the stage for continued action during the campaign months of May through October 1796.
Terrain The Rhine River flows west along the border between the German states and the
Swiss Cantons. The stretch between
Rheinfall, by
Schaffhausen and Basel, the
High Rhine cuts through steep hillsides over a gravel bed; in such places as the former rapids at
Laufenburg, it moved in torrents. A few miles north and east of Basel, the terrain flattens. The Rhine makes a wide, northerly turn, in what is called the
Rhine knee, and enters the so-called Rhine ditch (
Rheingraben), part of a
rift valley bordered by the
Black Forest on the east and
Vosges Mountains on the west. In 1796, the plain on both sides of the river, some wide, was dotted with villages and farms. At both far edges of the flood plain, especially on the eastern side, the old mountains created dark shadows on the horizon. Tributaries cut through the hilly terrain of the Black Forest, creating deep defiles in the mountains. The tributaries then wind in rivulets through the flood plain to the river. The Rhine River itself looked different in the 1790s than it does in the twenty-first century; the passage from Basel to
Iffezheim was "corrected" (straightened) between 1817 and 1875. Between 1927 and 1975, a canal was constructed to control the water level. In the 1790s, the river was wild and unpredictable, in some places four or more times wider than the twenty-first century incarnation of the river, even under regular conditions. Its channels wound through marsh and meadow, and created islands of trees and vegetation that were periodically submerged by floods. It was crossable at Kehl, by Strasbourg, and
Hüningen, by Basel, where systems of
viaducts and
causeways made access reliable.
Political complications The German-speaking states on the east bank of the Rhine were part of the vast complex of territories in
central Europe called the
Holy Roman Empire. The considerable number of territories in the Empire included
more than 1,000 entities. Their size and influence varied, from the
Kleinstaaterei, the little states that covered no more than a few square miles, or included several non-contiguous pieces, to the small and complex territories of the princely
Hohenlohe family branches, to such sizable, well-defined territories as the Kingdoms of
Bavaria and
Prussia. The governance of these many states varied: they included the autonomous
free imperial cities, also of different sizes and influence, from the powerful
Augsburg to the minuscule
Weil der Stadt; ecclesiastical territories, also of varying sizes and influence, such as the wealthy
Abbey of Reichenau and the powerful
Archbishopric of Cologne; and dynastic states such as
Württemberg. When viewed on a map, the Empire resembled a "
patchwork carpet". Both the
Habsburg domains and
Hohenzollern Prussia also included territories outside the Empire. There were also territories completely surrounded by France that belonged to Württemberg, the Archbishopric of
Trier, and
Hesse-Darmstadt. Among the German-speaking states, the Holy Roman Empire's administrative and legal mechanisms provided a venue to resolve disputes between peasants and landlords, between jurisdictions, and within jurisdictions. Through the organization of
imperial circles, also called
Reichskreise, groups of states consolidated resources and promoted regional and organizational interests, including economic cooperation and military protection. (Habsburg),
Offenburg and
Rottweil (free cities), the territories belonging to the princely families of
Fürstenberg and
Hohenzollern, the
Duchy of Baden, the
Duchy of Württemberg, and several dozen ecclesiastic polities. Many of these territories were not contiguous: a village could belong predominantly to one polity, but have a farmstead, a house, or even one or two strips of land that belonged to another polity. The light cream-colored territories are so subdivided they cannot be named.
Disposition The armies of the
First Coalition included the contingents and the infantry and cavalry of the various states, amounted to about 125,000 troops (including the three autonomous corps), a sizable force by eighteenth century standards but a moderate force by the standards of the Revolutionary wars.
Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen and brother of the Holy Roman Emperor, served as commander-in-chief. In total, Charles’ troops stretched in a line from Switzerland to the North Sea.
Habsburg troops comprised the bulk of the army but the thin white line of Habsburg infantry could not cover the territory from Basel to Frankfurt with sufficient depth to resist the pressure of the opposition. Compared to French coverage, Charles had half the number of troops covering a 211-mile front, stretching from
Renchen, near Basel to
Bingen. Furthermore, he had concentrated the bulk of his force, commanded by
Count Baillet Latour, between Karlsruhe and Darmstadt, where the confluence of the Rhine and the
Main made an attack most likely, as it offered a gateway into eastern German states and ultimately to Vienna, with good bridges crossing a relatively well-defined river bank. To the north,
Wilhelm von Wartensleben’s autonomous corps stretched in a thin line between Mainz and Giessen. In spring 1796, drafts from the free imperial cities, and other
imperial estates in the Swabian and Franconian Circles augmented the Habsburg force with perhaps 20,000 men at the most. The militias, most of which were Swabian field hands and day laborers drafted for service in the spring of that year, were untrained and unseasoned. As he gathered his army in March and April, it was largely guess work where they should be placed. In particular, Charles did not like to use the militias in any vital location. Consequently, in May and early June, when the French started to mass troops by
Mainz and it looked as if the bulk of the French army would cross there—they even engaged the imperial force at Altenkirchen (4 June) and Wetzler and Uckerath (15 June)—Charles felt few qualms placing the 7000-man
Swabian militia at the crossing by Kehl. ==French plans==