Slaget vid Emmendingen

Vid **slaget vid Emmendingen** den 19 oktober 1796, slogs den franska Rhen-och-Moselarmén under Jean Victor Marie Moreau den Överrhens första koalitionsarmé kommenderade av Karl av Österrike-Teschen. Emmendingen är beläget på Elzfloden i Baden-Württemberg, huvudstaden i distriktet Emmendingen i Tyskland, 14 km norr om Freiburg im Breisgau.

Fransmännen drog sig redan tillbaka genom Svartskogen till Rhen, för att korsa tillbaka in till Frankrike via bron i Kehl. Österrikarna, i nära strävan, tvingade den franske kommendanten att dela upp sin styrka så att han kunde korsa Rhen på tre olika platser: Kehl, Breisach, och Hüningen. Den robusta terrängen försvårade slaget, vilket gjorde det möjligt för Habsburg/den österrikiska styrkan att idka prickskytte på de franska trupperna; vidare hämmade det regniga och kalla vädret möjligheterna för båda sidorna, och gjorde strömmar och små åar till rusande vattenströmmar, och förhalade vägarna. Habsburg succé vid Emmendingen tvingade fransmännen att överge sina planer för en tredelad tillbakagång, och tvingade de att ge upp idén om att korsa Breisach; en mindre kontingent drog sig tillbaka mot Kehl, där de förlorade belägringen i slutet av oktober. Resten fortsatte sitt tillbakadragande genom Svartskogens bergsstäder söderut, där arméerna skulle komma att återigen mötas vid slaget vid Schliengen fem dagar senare. Händelsen inträffade under första koalitionskriget, den första delen av det större Franska revolutionskriget. Två generaler dödades i slaget, en från båda sidor.

## Bakgrund

I början såg Europas ledare på den franska revolutionen som en dispyt mellan den franske kungen och dennes undersåtar, och inget man borde ha ingripit i. Samtidigt som den revolutionära retoriken växte till att bli allt mer kärv, förklarade man att Europas monarkers intresse var det samma som det med Ludvig XVI och dennes familj; denna förklaring i Pilnitz (27 augusti 1791) hotade tvetydigt, men rätt så seriöst, med konsekvenser om kungafamiljen skulle utsättas för någonting. Revolutionärernas position kom att bli svår. Genom att förvärra deras problem i internationella relationer, fortsatte franska émigrés att agitera för stöd av en kontrarevolution. I slutändan, den 20 April 1792, förklarade nationalkonventet krig mot Österrike. I detta första koalitionskrig (1792–98), attackerade Frankrike de flesta av sina grannstater; de stater som delade landyta eller vattenyta med landet, plus Portugal och Osmanska riket. Trots en del segrar 1792, i början av 1793, befann sig Frankrike i en outhärdlig kris: franska styrkor hade blivit utkastade från Belgien; och över värnplikten ägde Revolten i Vendée rum; en vidarespridd förbittring av Klerkens civilkonstitution; och den franske kungen hade precis avrättats. Franska republikens arméer befann sig i sönderfall; problemen blev ännu mer akuta efter att massvärnplikt inrättats, den s.k. *levée en masse*, något som mättade en redan bedrövad armé med tusentals analfabeta, otränade men. För fransmännen visade sig Rhenfälttåget 1795 vara i synnerhet förödande, även om de visserligen lyckades uppnå succé i de övriga delarna av kriget (se exempelvis Pyrenéekriget (1793–95)).

Arméerna i den första koalitionen inkludera bland annat kejserliga kontingenten och de olika staternas kavalleri, som uppskattades till drygt 125 000 (inklusive tre autonoma kårer), en ansenlig styrka enligt 1700-talets standarder men en moderat styrka sett till Revolutions -och Napoleonkriget. Sammanlagt sträckte sig befälhavare ärkehertig Karls trupper sig från Schweiz till Nordsjön och Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmsers, från den schweizisk-italienska gränsen ända fram till Adriatiska havet. Habsburgstrupperna bestod av arméns bulk, men koalitionsinfanteriets tunna vita linje kunde inte täcka territoriet från Basel till Frankfurt med ett tillräckligt djup att motstå deras opponenters tryck. Compared to French coverage, Charles had half the number of troops covering a Mall:Convert 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; the rivers 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.

### Resumption of fighting: 1796

Mall:Main article
In January 1796, the French and the members of the First Coalition called a truce, ending the Rhine Campaign of 1795; they understood it was temporary. This agreement lasted until 20 May 1796, when the Austrians announced that it would end on 31 May. The Coalition's Army of the Lower Rhine included 90,000 troops, mostly Habsburg and *Reichsarmee* (Imperial) troops mustered from the states of the Holy Roman Empire. The 20,000-man right wing under Duke Ferdinand Frederick Augustus of Württemberg stood on the east bank of the Rhine behind the Sieg River, observing the French bridgehead at Düsseldorf. The garrisons of Mainz Fortress and Ehrenbreitstein Fortress counted 10,000 more. Charles posted the remainder of the Habsburg and Coalition force on the west bank behind the Nahe. Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser led the 80,000-strong Army of the Upper Rhine. Its right wing occupied Kaiserslautern on the west bank, and the left wing under Anton Sztáray, Michael von Fröhlich and Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé guarded the Rhine from Mannheim to Switzerland. The original Coalition strategy was to capture Trier and to use their position on the west bank to strike at each of the French armies in turn. However, after news arrived in Vienna of Bonaparte's successes, Wurmser was sent to Italy with 25,000 reinforcements. Reconsidering the situation, the Aulic Council gave Archduke Charles command over both Austrian armies and ordered him to hold his ground.

On the French side, the 80,000-man Army of Sambre-et-Meuse held the west bank of the Rhine down to the Nahe and then southwest to Sankt Wendel. On the army's left flank, Jean Baptiste Kléber had 22,000 troops in an entrenched camp at Düsseldorf. The right wing of the Army of Rhin-et-Moselle was positioned behind the Rhine from Hüningen northward, its center was along the Queich River near Landau and its left wing extended west toward Saarbrücken. Pierre Marie Barthélemy Ferino led Moreau's right wing, Louis Desaix commanded the center and Laurent Gouvion Saint-Cyr directed the left wing. Ferino's wing consisted of three infantry and cavalry divisions under François Antoine Louis Bourcier and Henri François Delaborde. Desaix's command counted three divisions led by Michel de Beaupuy, Antoine Guillaume Delmas and Charles Antoine Xaintrailles. Saint-Cyr's wing had two divisions commanded by Guillaume Philibert Duhesme, and Taponier.

The French grand plan called for two French armies to press against the flanks of the northern armies in the German states while simultaneously a third army approached Vienna through Italy. Jourdan's army would push southeast from Düsseldorf, hopefully drawing troops and attention toward themselves, which would allow Moreau’s army an easier crossing of the Rhine between Kehl and Hüningen. According to plan, Jourdan’s army feinted toward Mannheim, and Charles quickly reapportioned his troops. Moreau’s army attacked the bridgehead at Kehl, which was guarded by 7,000 imperial troops—troops recruited that spring from the Swabian circle polities, inexperienced and untrained—which amazingly held the bridgehead for several hours, but then retreated toward Rastatt. On June 23–24, Moreau reinforced the bridgehead with his forward guard. After pushing the imperial militia from their post on the bridgehead, his troops poured into Baden unhindered. Similarly, in the south, by Basel, Ferino’s column moved speedily across the river and proceeded up the Rhine along the Swiss and German shoreline, toward Lake Constance and into the southern end of the Black Forest. Anxious that his supply lines would be overextended, Charles began a retreat to the east.

At this point, the inherent jealousies and competition between generals came into play. Moreau could have joined up with Jourdan’s army in the north, but did not; he proceeded eastward, pushing Charles into Bavaria. Jourdan also moved eastward, pushing Wartensleben’s autonomous corps into the Ernestine duchies and neither general seemed willing to unite his flank with his compatriot's. There followed a summer of strategic retreats, flanking, and reflanking maneuvers. On either side, the union of two armies—Wartensleben’s with Charles’ or Jourdan’s with Moreau’s—could have crushed the opposition. Wartensleben and Charles united first, and the tide turned against the French. With 25,000 of his best troops, the Archduke crossed to the north bank of the Danube at Regensburg and moved north to join his colleague Wartensleben. The defeat of Jourdan's army at the Amberg, Würzburg and Altenkirchen allowed Charles to move more troops to the south. The next contact occurred on 19 October at Emmendingen.,

## Terrain

Mall:Main
Emmendingen lies in the Elz valley, which winds through the Black Forest. The Elz creates a series of hanging valleys which challenge the passage of large bodies of troops; the rainy weather further complicated the passage the Elz valley. The area around Riegel am Kaiserstuhl is noted for its loess and narrow transition points.
Mall:Gallery

## Dispositions

The better part of the French army debouched through the Höll valley. Desaix's left wing included the nine Battalion and 12 squadrons of the Division St. Suzanne by Riegel, straddling both shores of the Elz. To the right, between Malterdingen and Emmendingen, Beaupuy commanded a division of 12 battalions and 12 squadrons. Further to the right, by Emmendingen itself, and in the heights by Heimbach, stood Saint-Cyr; around this stretched the Duhesme's Division (12 battalions and eight squadrons). Further to the right of these, in the Elz valley by Waldkirch stood Ambert's division and the Girard brigade; by Zähringen, about a mile away, Lecourbe's brigade stood in reserve, and, stretching northward from there, a mounted division of 14,000 horses roamed the vicinity of Holzhausen (nowadays part of March, Breisgau). These positions created a line about Mall:Convert long. On the far side of Lecorbe's brigade stood Ferino's 15 battalions and 16 squadrons, but these were well to the south and east of Freiburg im Breisgau, still marching through the mountains. Everyone had been hampered by heavy rains; the ground was soft and slippery, and both the Rhine and Elz rivers had flooded, as had the many tributaries. This increased the hazards of mounted attack, because the horses could not get a good footing.

Against this stood the Archduke's force. Upon reaching a few miles of Emmendingen, the Archduke split his force into four columns. Column Nauendorf, in the upper Elz, had eight battalions and 14 squadrons, advancing southwest to Waldkirch; Wartensleben had 12 battalions and 23 squadrons advancing south to capture the Elz bridge at Emmendingen. Latour, with 6,000 men, was to cross the foothills via Heimbach and Malterdingen, and capture the bridge of Köndringen, between Riegel and Emmendingen, and column Fürstenberg held Kinzingen, about Mall:Convert north of Riegel. Frölich and Condé (part of Nauendorf's column) were instructed to pin down Ferino and the French right wing in the Stieg valley.

## Battle

The first to arrive at Emmindingen, the French secured the high point at Waldkirch, which commanded the neighboring valleys; it was considered, at the time, a maxim of military tactics, that command of the mountains gave control of the valleys. By 19 October, the armies faced each other, on the banks of the Elz from Waldkirch to Emmendingen. By then, Moreau knew he could not proceed to Kehl along the right bank of the Rhine, so he decided to cross the Rhine further north, at Breisach. The bridge there was small, though, and his whole army could not pass over without causing a bottleneck, so he sent only the left wing, commanded by Desaix, to cross there.

At dawn, Saint-Cyr (French right) advanced along the Elz valley. Nauendorf prepared to move his Habsburg forces down the valley. Seeing this, Saint-Cyr sent a small column across the mountains to the east of the main valley, to the village of Simonswald, located in a side valley. He instructed this force to attack Nauendorf's left, and force him to withdraw from Bleibach. Anticipating this, though, Nauendorf had already posted units on the heights along the Elz valley, from which Austrian shooters ambushed Saint-Cyr's men. On the other side of the Elz valley, more Habsburg gunmen reached Kollnau, which overlooked Waldkirch, and from there they could fire down on the French force. The fighting was swift and furious. The superior Austrian positions forced Saint-Cyr to cancel his advance on Bleibach and withdraw to Waldkirch; even there, though, Nauendorf's men continued to harass him, and Saint-Cyr retreated another Mall:Convert to the relative safety of Denzlingen.

The fighting went no better for the French on their left. Decaen's advanced guard proceeded forward, albeit cautiously. Austrian marksmen fired down upon the column, and Decaen fell from his horse, injured. Beaupuy took Decaen's place with the advance guard. At midday, Latour threw his customary caution to the wind and sent two columns to attack Beaupuy between Malterdingen and Höllental (Val d'Enfer), resulting in a fierce firefight. Beaupuy was killed early in the fighting and in the confusion this caused, his division did not receive an order to retreat along the Elz to the hamlet of Wasser, south of Emmendingen, resulting in additional casualties.

In the center, French riflemen posted in the Landeck wood, Mall:Convert north of Emmendingen, held up two of Wartensleben's detachments while his third struggled over muddy, nearly impassable, roads. Wartensleben's men needed all day to fight their way to Emmendingen, and during the shooting, Wartensleben left arm was shattered by a musket ball and he was taken out of action. Finally, late in the day, Wartensleben's third column arrived and threatened to outflank the French right; the French retreated across the Elz river, destroying the bridges behind them.

At the close of the day's fighting, Moreau's force stood in a precarious position. Left to right, the French were stretched along a jagged, broken line of about Mall:Convert. Decaen's division stood at Riegel and Endingen, at the north-eastern corner of the Kaiserstuhl, no longer of any assistance to the bulk of Moreau's force; Moreau had also lost an energetic and promising officer in Beaupuy. On the right, Saint-Cyr's division stood behind Denzlingen, and left stretched to Unterreute, a thin line also separated from the center, at Nimburg (near Tenningen and Landeck), half way between Riegel and Unterreute. The French line faced north-east towards the Austrians; despite Habsburg successes throughout the day, the Coalition forces were unable to flank the French line, and the French were consequently able to withdraw in reasonably good order to the south.

## Aftermath

Both sides lost a general: Wartensleben never led another army and died several months later in Vienna and General of Division Beaupuy was killed in the action directly. Out of approximately 32,000 troops who could have participated, the French lost 1,000 killed and wounded, and close to 1,800 captured, plus the loss of two artillery pieces. The Austrians sent 10,000 out of 28,000 troops available (36%), and lost about 1,000 killed, wounded or missing (10%).

Lack of bridges did not slow the Coalition's pursuit. The Coalition forces repaired the bridges by Malterdingen, and moved on Moreau at Freiburg im Breisgau within 24 hours. On 20 October, Moreau's army of 20,000 united south of Freiburg with Ferino's column. Ferino's force was smaller than Moreau had hoped, bringing the total of the combined French force to about 32,000. Charles' combined forces of 24,000 closely followed Moreau's rear guard from Freiburg, southwest, to a line of hills stretching between Kandern and the Rhine. Skirting the mountain towns, Moreau pulled his troops toward Schliengen, where he and the Archduke next engaged at the Battle of Schliengen.

1. ↑ 1,0 1,1 Timothy Blanning. *The French Revolutionary Wars*, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, s. 41–59.
2. ↑ Roger Dupuy, *La période jacobine: terreur, guerre et gouvernement révolutionnaire 1792-1794.* Paris: Seuil. s.156.
3. ↑ Gunther E. Rothenberg, "The Habsburg Army in the Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815)". *Military Affairs*, 37:1 (Feb 1973), 1–5, 1–2 cited.
4. ↑ 4,0 4,1 4,2 Theodore Ayrault Dodge, *Warfare in the Age of Napoleon: The Revolutionary Wars Against the First Coalition in Northern Europe and the Italian Campaign, 1789–1797.* Leonaur Ltd, 2011. pp. 286–287. See also Blanning, pp. 41–59.
5. ↑ Ramsay Weston Phipps,*The Armies of the First French Republic: Volume II The Armées du Moselle, du Rhin, de Sambre-et-Meuse, de Rhin-et-Moselle* Pickle Partners Publishing, 2011 reprint (original publication 1923–1933), p. 278
6. ↑ Digby Smith, *Napoleonic Wars Databook*, Greenhill Press, 1996, p. 111.
7. ↑ Dodge, p.290. See also Mall:De icon Charles, Archduke of Austria. *Ausgewӓhlte Schriften weiland seiner Kaiserlichen Hoheit des Erzherzogs Carl von Österreich*, Vienna: Braumüller, 1893–94, v. 2, pp. 72, 153–154.
8. ↑ Dodge, pp. 292–293.
9. ↑ Dodge, pp. 297.
10. ↑ 10,0 10,1 10,2 J. Rickard,(17 February 2009), *Battle of Emmendingen*, History of war.org. Accessed 18 November 2014.
11. ↑ 11,0 11,1 Mall:De icon Johann Samuel Ersch, *Allgemeine encyclopädie der wissenschaften und künste in alphabetischer folge von genannten schrifts bearbeitet und herausgegeben*. Leipzig, J. F. Gleditsch, 1889, pp. 64–66.
12. ↑ 12,0 12,1 12,2 12,3 12,4 Archibald Alison, *History of Europe,* [London], W. Blackwood and Sons, 1835, pp. 86–90.
13. ↑ 13,0 13,1 13,2 13,3 Phipps, II:380–385.
14. ↑ Mall:De icon Constant von Wurzbach, *Biographisches Lexikon des Kaisertums Österreich* 53. Wien 1886, S. 111.
15. ↑ Mall:Fr icon Paul Huot, *Des Vosges au Rhin, excursions et causeries alsaciennes,* Veuve Berger-Levrault & Fils, Paris, 1868, p. 284–287.
16. ↑ 16,0 16,1 Smith estimates the French troop count based on united count of Ferino and Moreau at the Battle of Schliengen, four days later. Smith, pp. 125–126.
17. ↑ Thomas Graham, 1st Baron Lynedoch. *The History of the Campaign of 1796 in Germany and Italy.* London, 1797, p. 122.

Referensfel: `<ref>`-taggar finns för en grupp vid namn "Note", men ingen motsvarande `<references group="Note"/>`-tagg hittades