The Battle of Schliengen took place on 24 October 1796 between the French Army of the Rhine and Moselle and the Austrian army near the village of Schliengen during the War of the First Coalition. The French army was under the command of Jean-Victor Moreau and the Austrian army was under the command of Archduke Charles of Austria. The village lies in the present-day Kreis Lörrach in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, close to the borders with Haut-Rhin (France), and the Canton of Basel-Stadt (Switzerland). During the French Revolutionary Wars, Schliengen was a strategically important location for the armies of both Republican France and Habsburg Austria. Control of the area gave either combatant access to southwestern German states and important Rhine crossings.
On 20 October Moreau retreated from Freiburg im Breisgau and established his army along a ridge of hills. The severe condition of the roads prevented Archduke Charles from flanking the French right wing. The French left wing lay too close to the Rhine to outflank, and the French center, positioned in a 7-mile (11 km) semi-circle on heights that commanded the terrain below, was unassailable. Instead, Charles attacked the French flanks directly, and in force, which increased casualties for both sides.
Although both the French and the Austrians claimed victory at the time, military historians generally agree that the Austrians achieved a strategic advantage. However, the French withdrew from the battlefield in good order and several days later crossed the Rhine River at Hüningen. A confusion of politics and diplomacy in Vienna wasted any strategic advantage that Charles might have obtained and locked the Habsburg force into two sieges on the Rhine, when the troops were badly needed in northern Italy. The battle is commemorated on a monument in Vienna and on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
Background
Initially, the rulers of Europe viewed the French Revolution as a dispute between the French king and his subjects, and not something in which they should interfere. As revolutionary rhetoric grew more strident, they declared the interest of the monarchs of Europe as one with the interests of Louis XVI and his family; the Declaration of Pillnitz (27 August 1791) threatened ambiguous, but quite serious, consequences if anything should happen to the royal family. The position of the revolutionaries became increasingly difficult. Compounding their problems in international relations, French émigrés continued to agitate for support of a counter-revolution. Finally, on 20 April 1792, the French National Convention declared war on Austria. In this War of the First Coalition (1792–98), France ranged itself against most of the European states sharing land or water borders with her, plus Portugal and the Ottoman Empire. Despite some victories in 1792, by early 1793, France was in terrible crisis: French forces had been pushed out of Belgium; also there was revolt in the Vendée over conscription; wide-spread resentment of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy; and the French king had just been executed. The armies of the French Republic were in a state of disruption; the problems became even more acute following the introduction of mass conscription, the levée en masse, which saturated an already distressed army with thousands of illiterate, untrained men. For the French, the Rhine Campaign of 1795 proved especially disastrous, although they had achieved some success in other theatres of war (see for example, War of the Pyrenees (1793–95)).
Campaign in 1796
The armies of the First Coalition included the imperial contingents and the infantry and cavalry of the various states, amounting to about 125,000 (including three autonomous corps), a sizable force by eighteenth century standards but a moderate force by the standards of the Revolutionary wars. In total, though, the commander-in-chief Archduke Charles' troops stretched from Switzerland to the North Sea and Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser's, from the Swiss-Italian border to the Adriatic. 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 their opponents. Compared to French coverage, Charles had half the number of troops covering a 211-mile (340 km) front that stretched 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 his north, Wilhelm von Wartensleben's autonomous corps covered the line between Mainz and Giessen. The Austrian army consisted of professionals, many moved from the border regions in the Balkans, and conscripts drafted from the Imperial Circles.
Two French generals, Jean-Baptiste Jourdan and Jean Victor Moreau, commanded (respectively) the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse and the Army of the Rhine and Moselle at the outset of the 1796 campaign. The French citizens' army, created by mass conscription of young men and systematically divested of old men who might have tempered the rash impulses of teenagers and young adults, and had already made itself odious, by reputation and rumor at least, throughout France. Furthermore, it was an army entirely dependent upon the countryside for its material support. After April 1796, pay was made in metallic value, but pay was still in arrears. Throughout the spring and early summer, the unpaid French army was in almost constant mutiny: in May 1796, in the border town of Zweibrücken, the 74th Demi-brigade revolted. In June, the 17th Demi-brigade was insubordinate (frequently) and in the 84th Demi-brigade, two companies rebelled. The French commanders understood that an assault into the German states was essential, not only in terms of war aims, but also in practical terms: the French Directory believed that war should pay for itself, and did not budget for the payment or feeding of its troops.
In Spring, 1796, when resumption of war appeared imminent, the 88 members of the Swabian Circle, which included most of the states (ecclesiastical, secular, and dynastic) in Upper Swabia, had raised a small force of about 7,000 men. These were literally raw recruits, field hands and day laborers drafted for service, but usually untrained in military matters. It was largely guess work where they should be placed, and Charles did not like to use the militias in any vital location. Consequently, in early late May and early June, when the French started to mass troops by Mainz as if they would cross there—they even engaged the Imperial force at Altenkirchen (4 June) and Wetzler and Uckerath (15 June)—Charles thought that main attack would occur there and felt few qualms placing the 7,000-man Swabian militia at the crossing by Kehl. On 24 June, though, at Kehl, Moreau's advance guard, 10,000, preceded the main force of 27,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry directed at the Swabian pickets on the bridge. The Swabians were hopelessly outnumbered and could not be reinforced. Most of the Imperial Army of the Rhine was stationed further north, by Mannheim, where the river was easier to cross, but too far away to support the smaller force at Kehl. Neither the Condé's troops in Freiburg nor Karl Aloys zu Fürstenberg's force in Rastatt could reach Kehl in time to support them. Within a day, Moreau had four divisions across the river. Thrust out of Kehl, the Swabian contingent reformed at Rastatt by 5 July. There they managed to hold the city until the French turned both flanks. Charles could not move much of his army away from Mannheim or Karlsruhe, where the French had also formed across the river, and Fürstenberg could not hold the southern flank. Furthermore, at Hüningen, near Basel, on the same day that Moreau's advance guard crossed at Kehl, Ferino executed a full crossing, and advanced unopposed east along the German shore of the Rhine with the 16th and 50th Demi-brigades, the 68th, 50th and 68th line infantry, and six squadrons of cavalry that included the 3rd and 7th Hussars and the 10th Dragoons.
The Habsburg and Imperial armies were in danger of encirclement, as the French pressed hard at Rastatt. Ferino moved quickly east along the shore of the Rhine; from there, an approach from the rear might have flanked the entire force. To prevent this, Charles executed an orderly withdrawal in four columns through the Black Forest, across the Upper Danube valley, and toward Bavaria, trying to maintain consistent contact with all flanks as each column withdrew through the Black Forest and the Upper Danube. By mid-July, the column encamped near Stuttgart. The third column, which included the Condé's Corps, retreated through Waldsee to Stockach, and eventually Ravensburg. The fourth Austrian column, the smallest (three battalions and four squadrons), Ludwig Wolff de la Marselle, marched the length of the Bodensee's northern shore, via Überlingen, Meersburg, Buchhorn, and the Austrian city of Bregenz.
Given the size of the attacking force, Charles had to withdraw far enough into Bavaria to align his northern flank in a perpendicular line with Wartensleben's autonomous corps to protect the Danube valley and deny the French primary access to Vienna. His own front would prevent Moreau from flanking Wartensleben from the south and together they could resist the French onslaught. In the course of this withdrawal, he abandoned the Swabian Circle to the French. For the Swabians to negotiate neutrality, their militia needed to disband. At the end of July, eight thousand of Charles' men executed a dawn attack on the camp of the remaining three thousand Swabian and Condé's immigrant troops, disarmed them, and impounded their weapons. As Charles withdrew further east, the neutral zone established in Swabia expanded, eventually to encompass most of southern German states and the Ernestine duchies.
Summer of maneuvers
The summer and fall included various conflicts throughout the southern territories of the German states as the armies of the Coalition and the armies of the Directory sought to flank each other:
By mid-summer, the situation looked grim for the Coalition: Wartensleben continued to withdraw to the east-northeast despite Charles' orders to unite with him. It appeared probable that Jourdan or Moreau would outmaneuver Charles by driving a wedge between his force and that of Wartensleben. At Neresheim on 11 August, Moreau crushed Charles' force, forcing him to withdraw further east. At last, however, with this loss, Wartensleben recognized the danger and changed direction, moving his corps to join at Charles' northern flank. At Amberg on 24 August, Charles inflicted a defeat on the French, yet that same day, his commanders lost a battle to the French at Friedberg. Regardless, the tide had turned in the Coalition's favor. Both Jourdan and Moreau had overstretched their lines, moving far into the German states, and were separated too far from each other for one to offer the other aid or security. The Coalition's concentration of troops forced a wider wedge between the two armies of Jourdan and Moreau, similar to what the French had tried to do to Charles and Wartensleben. As the French withdrew toward the Rhine, Charles and Wartensleben pressed forward. On 3 September at Würzburg, Jourdan attempted to halt his retreat. Once Moreau received word of the French defeat, he had to withdraw from southern Germany. He pulled his troops back through the Black Forest, with Ferino supervising the rear guard. The Austrian corps commanded by Latour drew too close to Moreau at Biberach and lost 4,000 men taken as prisoners, some standards and artillery, after which Latour followed at a more prudent distance.
Terrain
The Rhine River flows west along the border between the German states and the Swiss Cantons. The High Rhine (Hochrhein), the 80-mile (130 km) stretch between the Rhine Falls near Schaffhausen and Basel, cuts through steep hillsides over a gravel bed; in such places as the former rapids at Laufenburg, it moves 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 19 miles (31 km) wide, was dotted with villages and farms. At the farthest 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 wound in rivulets through the flood plain to the river.
The landscape was impressive, but rugged. As a nineteenth-century traveler described it,
the mountains in the vicinity [of Müllheim] are bold; the dark ravines contrasting with its sunny fronts offer some exquisite scenes. The Rhine ... lay revealed before us for many a league, twisting and twining like a serpent of silver ... dotted with innumerable islands, and flowing through a most extensive plain, perfectly flat. Our elevation was considerable and the eye ranged over a great extent of country: Elsace [sic], in France, and the level country as far as Bingen, would have been seen to their furthest limits had not the distance melted the extreme verges into 'thin air'. Many were the villages, and hamlets, and woods sprinkled over the landscape. [...]