After suffering some major setbacks, notably the Battle of Aspern-Essling, the French swiftly triumphed over the Austrian commander Archduke Charles.

Following this battle, the French troops marched south to occupy Carniola, and with it Gottschee County, that had been centuries earlier settled by Austrians from Tyrol and Carinthia.

On October 6, a squad of 18 French soldiers entered the Slovene village of Kostel, south of the Gottschee German region.

News of these victories spread deep into Gottschee and on the early hours of October 9, a swarm of hundreds of rebels from Gottscheer villages near the town fell upon the French troops stationed there under Commissioner Gasparini.

However, the relief force never made it as they were waylaid by Gottschee Germans who were hiding along the road before they reached the town and the majority of the unit was killed.

They ambushed a French squad between the villages of Schalkendorf and Seele, forcing them to flee into the nearby caves where they either were massacred or surrendered.

On October 15 the Gottschee Germans and some Slovene peasant farmers who joined them after the initial success assaulted the French garrison in Neustadt.

After some small gains in the early stage of the battle, the Gottschee Germans and other peasants were ultimately driven off by shrapnel from Neustadt's two artillery pieces.

In one final act of punishment for this uprising, on October 18 the five Gottschee German leaders of the rebellion captured by the French were executed by firing squad in the churchyard of the town: Johann Jonke (from the town of Gottschee), Matthias Dulzer and Georg Eisenzopf (from Malgern), Johann Erker (from Windischdorf), and Bartholomäus Kusold (from Eben).

Under the rule of the French, Gottschee and the rest of Carniola was incorporated into the Illyrian Provinces which was a territory under Napoleon's direct control.

As it was written in the article "Gottschee und sein Volk": "Fewer and fewer soldiers of the French patrols returned home because the peasants lay in waiting for them and a good many of them were killed, In order to end this violence of the Gottscheers, the French took 200 Gottscheer citizens, placed them in back of the Stadtpfarr (parish church) and every tenth person was shot to death.