In 1791, Moreau was elected a lieutenant colonel of the volunteers of
Ille-et-Vilaine. With them he served under
Charles François Dumouriez, and in 1793 the good order of his battalion, and his own martial character and
republican principles, secured his promotion as
général de brigade.
Lazare Carnot promoted Moreau to be
général de division early in 1794, and gave him command of the right wing of the army under
Charles Pichegru, in
Flanders. The 1794
Battle of Tourcoing established Moreau's military fame, and in 1795 he was given the command of the
Army of the Rhine and Moselle, with which he crossed the Rhine and advanced into Germany. He was at first completely successful and won several victories and penetrated to the
Isar, but at last had to retreat before the
Archduke Charles of Austria. However, the skill he displayed in conducting his retreat—which was considered a model for such operations—greatly enhanced his own reputation, the more so as he managed to bring back with him more than 5000 prisoners.
Intrigues '' by
Henri Frédéric Schopin, 1836. Moreau at the
Battle of Hohenlinden In 1797, after prolonged difficulties caused by want of funds and materiel, he crossed the Rhine again, but his operations were checked by the conclusion of the preliminaries of
Peace of Leoben between Bonaparte and the
Austrians. It was at this time he found a traitorous correspondence between his old comrade and commander
Charles Pichegru and the émigré
Prince de Condé. He had already appeared as Pichegru's defender against imputations of disloyalty, and now he foolishly concealed his discovery, with the result that he has ever since been suspected of at least partial complicity. Too late to clear himself, he sent the correspondence to Paris and issued a proclamation to the army denouncing Pichegru as a traitor. Moreau was dismissed, and only re-employed in 1799, when the absence of Bonaparte and the victorious advance of the
Russian commander
Aleksandr Suvorov made it necessary to have some tried and experienced general in Italy. He commanded the
Army of Italy, with little success, for a short time before being appointed to the
Army of the Rhine, and remained with
Barthelemy Catherine Joubert, his successor in Italy, until the
Battle of Novi had been fought and lost. Joubert fell in the battle, and Moreau then conducted the retreat of the army to
Genoa, where he handed over the command to
Jean Étienne Championnet. When Bonaparte returned from the
French campaign in Egypt and Syria, he found Moreau in Paris, greatly dissatisfied with the
French Directory government both as a general and as a republican, and obtained his assistance in the ''coup d'état'' of
18 Brumaire, when Moreau commanded the force which confined two of the directors in the
Luxembourg Palace. In reward, Napoleon again gave him command of the Army of the Rhine, with which he forced back the Austrians from the Rhine to the Isar. On his return to Paris he married 19-year-old Eugénie Hulot, born in
Mauritius and friend of
Joséphine de Beauharnais, an ambitious woman who gained a complete ascendancy over him. After spending a few weeks with the army in Germany and winning the celebrated
Battle of Hohenlinden (3 December 1800), he settled down to enjoy the fortune he had acquired during his campaigns. His wife collected around her all who were discontented with the aggrandisement of
Napoleon. This "Club Moreau" annoyed Napoleon, and encouraged the Royalists, but Moreau, though not unwilling to become a military dictator to restore the republic, would be no party to an intrigue for the restoration of
Louis XVIII. All this was well known to Napoleon, who seized the conspirators. Moreau's condemnation was procured only by great pressure being brought to bear by Bonaparte on the judges; and after it was pronounced the
First Consul treated him with a pretense of leniency, commuting a sentence of imprisonment to one of banishment. In 1804, Moreau passed through
Spain and embarked for
America. == Banished from France ==