page_title: Army of Sambre and Meuse
section_title: Original formation
hierarchical_section_title: Army of Sambre and Meuse / Purpose and formation / Original formation
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: L'armée de Sambre-et-Meuse, 1795.
context_page_description: The Army of Sambre and Meuse was one of the armies of the French Revolution. It was formed on 29 June 1794 by combining the Army of the Ardennes, the left wing of the Army of the Moselle and the right wing of the Army of the North. Its maximum paper strength was approximately 83,000.
  After an inconclusive campaign in 1795, the French planned a co-ordinated offensive in 1796 using Jean-Baptiste Jourdan's Army of the Sambre et Meuse and the Army of the Rhine and Moselle commanded by his superior, Jean Victor Moreau. The first part of the operation called for Jourdan to cross the Rhine north of Mannheim and divert the Austrians while the Army of the Moselle crossed the southern Rhine at Kehl and Huningen. This was successful and, by July 1796, a series of victories forced the Austrians, commanded by Archduke Charles to retreat into the German states. By late July, most of the southern German states had been coerced into an armistice. The Army of Sambre and Meuse maneuvered around northern Bavaria and Franconia, and the Army of the Rhine and Moselle operated in Bavaria.
context_section_description: The basic unit of the army, the demi-brigade, mixed the men of the old army with the recruits from the levee en masse.  Ideally, it was designed to include the regular infantry inherited from the old Royal regiments of the King, who were relatively well trained and equipped, dressed in white uniforms and wearing tarleton helmets, with the national guard units, who were less well-trained or equipped, with blue uniforms, and the  fédéré volunteer battalions, who were poorly trained and equipped, with no uniform other than a red phrygian cap and a cockade of France. In 1794, the right flank of the Armies of the Center, later called the Army of the Moselle, the entirety of the Armies of the North and the Ardennes formed the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, on 29 June 1794.  The remaining units of the former Army of the Center and the Army of the Rhine united initially on 29 November 1794 and formally on 20 April 1795, under command of General Jean-Charles Pichegru as the Army of the Rhine and Moselle. These were the French armies involved in the successes at Fleurus and the Lowlands, but the strength of the units had been enhanced by untrained conscripts.
  Pressures exerted by the Coalition forces on the French front at the Rhine required the movement of the Army of Sambre and Meuse troops from the Fortress of Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands into a unit on the middle Rhine. These units were reorganized into task forces that wcould engage the Austrian and Coalition forces directly in the Rhineland. Its paper strength equaled close to 83,000 men, although its actual strength was considerably less. By 1 October 1795, some of the troops had been assembled in five locations to form an advanced guard of 63,615, men commanded by the veteran General of Division François Joseph Lefebvre.  General Louis Friant's division of 3,296 men remained at the Luxembourg fortress and General Antoine Morlot's division of 3,471 remained in Aachen.
caption: Soldiers of the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, from an 1870s illustration
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