page_title: Battle of Gotthard Pass
section_title: 25 September
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Gotthard Pass / Battle / 25 September
context_page_description: The Battle of Gotthard Pass or Battle of St. Gotthard Pass saw an Imperial Russian army commanded by Field Marshal Alexander Suvorov supported by two Habsburg Austrian brigades attack a Republican French division under General of Division Claude Lecourbe. The Austro-Russian army successfully captured the Gotthard Pass after stiff fighting on the first day. Suvorov's main body was assisted by a Russian flanking column led by Lieutenant General Andrei Rosenberg and a smaller Austrian flanking column under General-major Franz Xaver von Auffenberg. The next day, Suvorov's army fought its way north along the upper Reuss River valley past the Teufelsbrücke in Schöllenen Gorge. By 26 September the army reached Altdorf near Lake Lucerne.
  Suvorov's offensive was part of a misbegotten Allied strategy that planned to unite the Russian armies of Suvorov and Lieutenant General Alexander Korsakov near Zurich. Together with Austrian and Swiss forces led by Feldmarschall-Leutnant Friedrich Freiherr von Hotze, they would sweep General of Division André Masséna's French Army of Helvetia from Switzerland.
context_section_description: Suvorov's troops set out from Hospental at 6:00 am, heading north toward Andermatt where they met Rosenberg's corps. A short distance north of Andermatt was the Schöllenen Gorge, a canyon so narrow that if the French had been present in sufficient strength, they might have held their ground indefinitely. One feature of the gorge was the Urnerloch, where in 1707, the Swiss dug a tunnel 65 metres (213 ft) long and 2.2 metres (7.2 ft) wide. The road from Andermatt led through the Urnerloch to the Teufelsbrücke (Devil's Bridge), built in 1595, which spanned the deep gorge. At 9:00 pm on 24 September, unaware that the Gotthard had already fallen, Lecourbe wrote a letter to Masséna, "I have just heard that the enemy are attacking us at Airolo. I imagine it is no more than a reconnaissance." He soon learned the truth. Leaving Altdorf the next day at 7:00 am, he arrived at the Devil's Bridge two hours later, where the battle was in progress.
  In order to seize the Devil's Bridge, one battalion of the Rehbinder Musketeers under Colonel Vasily Ivanovich Svishchov and 200 men from the Kashkin Jägers crossed to the west side of the gorge and climbed the Bäxberg heights to reach a path that led to the Devil's Bridge. General-major Nikolay Kamensky led the two battalions of the Kamensky Musketeers up the slope farther south, then followed the contour to come in on Svishchov's left. Finally, Colonel Iosif Petrovich Trubnikov took 300 men from the Mansurov Musketeers up the Nätschen Mountain on the right. General-major Mansurov led the remainder of the Mansorov and Rehbinder Musketeers directly against the Urnerloch, chasing the French skirmishers through the tunnel. The French blasted the Russians emerging from the tunnel with canister shot from a 4-pound cannon near the bridge. At 11:00 am, Lecourbe received warning that an enemy column was menacing Amsteg in his rear; it was Auffenberg's Austrians. The French general announced, "This body comes from Disentis. We must attack it. It is the left wing of Hotze. We are cut."
  On 24 September, Auffenberg's brigade made a very strenuous hike across the mountains. One of his columns did not make it to the rendezvous by the evening, so the Austrian general decided to wait until the next day to move against Amsteg. The next morning, Auffenberg's men worked their way down the Maderanertal unopposed until within a half-hour march of Amsteg, when they bumped into two companies of the 38th Line. Amid the rocky course of the Charstelenbach stream, the French held up the Austrians for four hours. Finally, the Austrian infantry seized the bridge across the Charstelenbach. Auffenberg occupied Amsteg with two battalions and posted the other two battalions on the lower slopes of the Bristen Mountain, south of the stream. Auffenberg only partly damaged the bridge probably because he wanted to slow down the French when they retreated his way, but did not want to keep Suvorov from repairing it when the Russians arrived.
  Once alerted to Auffenberg's threat to his rear, Lecourbe took 1,600 soldiers back to Amsteg. This detachment fatally weakened Loison's position at Devil's Bridge. The first French troops to appear near Amsteg were one battalion of the 76th Line and the grenadier reserve. They attacked the Austrians on Bristen Mountain. Unable to dislodge them, the French crossed the bridge and cleared the Austrians out of Amsteg with the help of the two companies of the 38th Line. Soon, the French were joined by two battalions of the 38th Line retreating from the Devil's Bridge. Auffenberg's brigade lost 18 killed, 56 wounded, and 155 captured on 25 September. At Schöllenen Gorge, Svishchov's men on the west bank drove back the French to the bridge. At this, the French on the east bank rolled the 4-pounder into the gorge and fell back across the bridge. Farther down the west bank, the French demolished part of the roadway and this held up the Russian advance until a passage could be improvised. Kamensky pressed the pursuit so that some French troops of the 76th Line were forced to retreat west from Göschenen
caption: Nikolay Kamensky
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