By October they were fighting on the western slope of the Black Forest, and by December Charles had the French forces under siege at the principal river crossings of Kehl and Hüningen.

In 1790, Leopold succeeded his brother Joseph as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire; by 1791, the danger to his sister, Marie Antoinette and her children, alarmed him.

In this War of the First Coalition (1792–1798), France ranged itself against most of the European states sharing its land or water borders, plus Portugal and the Ottoman Empire.

Shortly after Fleurus, the position of the First Coalition in Flanders collapsed and the French armies overran the Austrian Netherlands and the Dutch Republic in the winter of 1794–1795.

Recruits, urged on by revolutionary fervor from the special representatives—agents of the legislature sent to ensure cooperation among the military—lacked the discipline and training to function efficiently; frequently insubordinate, they often refused orders and undermined unit cohesion.

Many of the old officer class had emigrated, forming émigré armies; the cavalry in particular suffered from their departure and the Hussards du Saxe and the 15éme Cavalerie (Royal Allemande) regiments defected en masse to the Austrians.

[3][2] By 1794-95, military planners in Paris considered the upper Rhine Valley, the south-western German territories and Danube river basin of strategic importance for the defense of the Republic.

With Pichegru unexpectedly inactive, Clerfayt massed against Jourdan, beat him at Höchst in October, and forced most of the Army of the Sambre and Meuse to retreat to the west bank of the Rhine.

In January 1796, Clerfayt concluded an armistice with the French, sending the Army of the Rhine and Moselle back to France, and retaining a large portions of the west bank.

After Kléber won sufficient maneuver room on the east bank of the Rhine River, Jean Baptiste Jourdan was supposed to join him with the remainder of the Army of the Sambre and Meuse.

At the first battles of Altenkirchen (4 June 1796) and Wetzlar, two Republican French divisions commanded by Kléber attacked a wing of the Habsburg army led by Duke Ferdinand Frederick Augustus of Württemberg.

Three future Marshals of France played significant roles in the engagement at Altenkirchen: François Joseph Lefebvre as a division commander, Jean-de-Dieu Soult, as a brigadier and Michel Ney, as leader of a flanking column.

It was largely guesswork where they would be placed, and Archduke Charles, commander of the Reichsarmee and the Habsburg forces, did not like to use the militias, which were poorly trained and unseasoned.

[13] At Kehl, Moreau's advance guard, 10,000 men, preceded the main force of 27,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry directed at a mere several hundred Swabian pickets on the bridge.

[16] Furthermore, at Hüningen, near Basel, Ferino executed a full crossing, and advanced east along the German shore of the Rhine with the 16th and 50th Demi-brigades, the 68th, 50th and 68th line infantry, and six squadrons of cavalry that included the 3rd and 7th Hussars and the 10th Dragoons.

[17] With Ferino's quick movements to encircle him, Charles executed an orderly withdrawal in four columns through the Black Forest, across the Upper Danube valley, and toward Bavaria.

[18] In the course of this withdrawal, most of the Swabian Circle was abandoned to the Army of the Rhine and Moselle, which enforced an armistice and extracted sizeable reparations; in addition, the French occupied several principal towns in southwestern Germany, including Stockach, Meersburg, Constance, Überlingen am Bodensee, Ulm, and Augsburg.

[19] As Charles withdrew further east, the neutral zone expanded, eventually encompassing most of southern German states and the Ernestine duchies.

Despite Charles' instructions to withdraw northward toward Ingolstadt, Maximilian Anton Karl, Count Baillet de Latour retreated eastward to protect the borders of Austria.

On 3 September at Würzburg, Jourdan attempted unsuccessfully to halt the retreat; at the Battle of Limburg, Charles pushed him back to the Rhine.

The French attempted to slow their pursuers by destroying bridges, but the Austrians repaired them and crossed the swollen rivers despite the high waters.

[29] At Hüningen Karl Aloys zu Fürstenberg's force initiated the siege within days of the Austrian victory at the Battle of Schliengen.

The French commander, Jean Charles Abbatucci, was killed in the early days of the fighting, and replaced by Georges Joseph Dufour.

[31] At mid-day 1 February 1797, as the Austrians prepared to storm the bridgehead, General of Division Dufour pre-empted what would have been a costly attack for both sides, offering to surrender the position.

An abbreviated campaign in late spring of 1797 led to Austrians and the French to agree to the Treaty of Campo Formio, ending the War of the First Coalition.

The campaign of 1795 had been entirely a French failure and the difficulties the Army of the Rhine and Moselle faced, especially in 1795, had much to do with Pichegru's own situation: his competition with both Moreau and Jourdan and his disaffection with the direction in which the revolution was headed.

[37] As a hero of the Revolution captured Mannheim but inexplicably he allowed his colleague Jourdan to be defeated; throughout 1796, his machinations in Paris complicated the conduct of operations in Germany by undermining the senior command confidence.

Faced with this mutiny, Jourdan replaced Bernadotte with General Henri Simon and divided Colaud's rebellious units among the other divisions.

Phipps's objective was to show how the training received in the early years of the war varied not only with the theater in which they served but also with the character of the army to which they belonged.

In 1895, Richard Phillipson Dunn-Pattison also singled out the French Revolutionary army as "the finest school the world has yet seen for an apprenticeship in the trade of arms.