page_title: Rhine campaign of 1795
section_title: Geography
hierarchical_section_title: Rhine campaign of 1795 / Background / Geography
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Die Karte zeigt den Fluss Rhein English: The map shows the river Rhine
context_page_description: In the Rhine campaign of 1795, two Habsburg Austrian armies under the command of François Sébastien Charles Joseph de Croix, Count of Clerfayt, defeated two Republican French armies attempting to invade the south German states of the Holy Roman Empire. At the start of the campaign, the French Army of the Sambre and Meuse, led by Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, confronted Clerfayt's Army of the Lower Rhine in the north, while the French Army of the Rhine and Moselle, under Jean-Charles Pichegru, lay opposite Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser's Army of the Upper Rhine in the south. A French offensive failed in early summer but in August, Jourdan crossed the Rhine and quickly seized Düsseldorf. The Army of the Sambre and Meuse advanced south to the Main River, isolating Mainz. Pichegru's army made a surprise capture of Mannheim and both French armies held significant footholds on the east bank of the Rhine.
  The promising start to the French offensive ended when Pichegru lost an opportunity to seize Clerfayt's supply base in the Battle of Handschuhsheim.
context_section_description: The Rhine formed the boundary between the German states of the Holy Roman Empire and its neighbors, principally France but also Switzerland and the Netherlands. Any attack by either party required control of the crossings. At Basel, where the river makes a wide, northerly turn at the Rhine knee, it enters what the locals called the Rhine Ditch (Rheingraben). This forms part of a rift valley some 31 km (19 mi) wide, bordered by the mountainous Black Forest on the east (German side) and the Vosges mountains on the west (French side). At the far edges of the eastern flood plain, tributaries cut deep defiles into the western slope of the mountains. Further to the north, the river became deeper and faster as it passed through the mountainous and hilly terrain of the Upper and Middle Rhine; the river abruptly turned between Wiesbaden and Bingen am Rhein, and it widened as it approached Bonn and Cologne.  As the river passed Düsseldorf and Duisburg, the Rhine divided into several channels in the Netherlands, formed a delta, and emptied into the North Sea.
  In the 1790s, the river was wild and unpredictable and armies crossed at their peril. Between the Rhine Knee and Mannheim, channels wound through marsh and meadow and created islands of trees and vegetation that were periodically submerged by floods. Flash floods originating in the mountains could deluge farms and fields. Any army wishing to traverse the river had to cross at specific points and, in 1790, complex systems of viaducts and causeways made access across the river reliable only at Kehl, by Strasburg, at Hüningen, by Basel and in the north by Mannheim. Sometimes a crossing could be executed at Neuf-Brisach, between Kehl and Hüningen, but the small bridgehead made this unreliable for an army of any size. Only to the north of Kaiserslauten did the river acquire a defined bank where fortified bridges offered reliable crossing points.
  By 1794–1795, civilian military planners in Paris considered the upper Rhine Valley, the south-western German territories and the Danube river basin of strategic importance for the defense of the Republic. At the border closest to France, the Rhine offered a formidable barrier to what the French perceived as Austrian aggression and the state that controlled its crossings controlled access into the territories on either side. Ready access across the Rhine and along the Rhine bank between the German states and Switzerland or through the Black Forest, gave access to the upper Danube river valley. For the French, the more German territory they could control, the safer they felt and control of the crossings meant control from the east (German) side of the river.
caption: Map of river Rhine shows Düsseldorf and the rivers Sieg and Lahn in the north, Strasbourg and Mannheim in the south. Both sides of the conflict viewed the Rhine as the main geographic asset, the natural border between the combatants. The state that controlled the Rhine crossings controlled access to the other state.
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