Pichegru sent two divisions to seize the Austrian supply base at Heidelberg, but his troops were bloodily repulsed at Handshuhsheim.

Afterward, the Austrian commander François Sébastien Charles Joseph de Croix, Count of Clerfayt turned on Jourdan's army, driving it back across the Rhine.

The Austrians later won the battles of Mainz, Pfeddersheim and Mannheim, forcing the French armies back onto the west bank of the Rhine.

The Kingdom of Prussia, intent on joining the Russian Empire in carving up the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, desired to exit from the First Coalition.

Not wishing to be swamped by thousands of unemployed soldiers at the peace, the French Directory drove a very hard bargain.

[1] On 4 November 1794, General of Division Jean Baptiste Kléber with a corps of 35,605 Frenchmen captured Maastricht from its Austro-Dutch garrison of approximately 8,000 troops.

In exchange for turning over the fortress with 344 artillery pieces and 31 colors, Prince Frederick of Hesse-Kassel and his soldiers were allowed to march away.

Lacking the numbers or the heavy guns to place the fortress under regular siege, the French general contented himself with blockading the city starting on 14 December 1794.

Another deterrent to more aggressive French action was the presence of an Austrian army under Feldzeugmeister François Sébastien Charles Joseph de Croix, Count of Clerfayt and General der Kavallerie Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser on the east bank of the Rhine.

The plan called for Pichegru to attack anywhere between Mannheim and Strasbourg while Jourdan crossed farther to the north near Düsseldorf.

After negotiations, Baron von Belderbusch and his 9,200-man garrison from the Electorate of Bavaria handed the city and 471 artillery pieces over to the French and marched away.

The next day, a second Bavarian garrison at Düsseldorf surrendered to General of Division François Joseph Lefebvre and 12,600 French soldiers.

[8] On 23 September, the French were able to press back their adversaries, but Quosdanovich rapidly concentrated the bulk of his forces on the north bank against Dufour's isolated division.

The Austrian cavalry was placed in the hands of Johann von Klenau[7] recently promoted Oberst (colonel) on 8 September.

[7] Numbers of French soldiers found and crossed a ford to the south bank where they joined Ambert's men.

[5] While the two French commanders waited on fresh instructions from Paris, Jourdan surrounded Mainz and Pichegru used Mannheim as a base.

Winning the Battle of Pfeddersheim on 10 November and other actions, the Austrians relentlessly drove Pichegru's army south down the west bank of the Rhine until Mannheim was completely isolated.

In 1803 he returned to France with royalist conspirator Georges Cadoudal, was caught by Napoleon's secret police, and died in suspicious circumstances in a prison cell.