On 19 October 1794, French troops marched into Simmern, ending the Electorate of the Palatinate rule. Patrimonial hierarchy ("Erbuntertänigkeit" – an arrangement similar to serfdom, but without the lord's actual ownership of the subjects), with its compulsory labour for the enfeoffed lord and its tithes was then abolished, but new compulsory labour for the French army weighed even more heavily on the people. The official cession of the Rhine’s left bank to France in 1797 led to administrative restructuring. The nobility lost their holdings, churches and monasteries were expropriated and estates could be acquired by those who had hitherto been their tenants. Keidelheim was grouped with 12 other municipalities into the "Mairie" (“Mayoralty”) of Simmern in the Canton of Simmern, thereby making it part of the Department of Rhin-et-Moselle, whose seat was at Koblenz. As French citizens, young men were then required to do military service. With Napoleon's defeat in Russia began a time in which Austrians, Russians, Bavarians and Prussians quartered themselves locally and imposed more compulsory labour on the people. At first, the area was governed by an Austrian-Bavarian administration commission. In an 1813 statistical publication, the following figures were noted for Keidelheim: 114 souls, 25 houses and 25 windows.