While the Prussians won this triumph on an unimportant front, the French armies soon began winning decisive victories in Belgium and the Netherlands.

In 1794 Kaiserslautern was part of the Electoral Palatinate but today the city is located in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany about 67 kilometres (42 mi) west of Mannheim.

That spring the Army of the Moselle sent heavy reinforcements to northeast France, leaving the Rhine front lightly defended by troops under Jean René Moreaux.

Taking advantage of French weakness, the main Prussian assault was aimed at Ambert who could only try to save as many of his troops as possible.

Though part of the Prussian army of Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel intervened late in the day, it could only keep the French from launching a close pursuit.

The two French armies pressed north along the west bank of the Rhine and relieved the siege of Landau.

The French pursued as far north as Bad Kreuznach before encountering Prussian resistance and falling back to Kaiserslautern.

[3] On 14 January Pichegru was relieved in command of the Army of the Rhine by Claude Ignace François Michaud.

[4] The Prussians were not fully committed to the war because their leaders were divided over whether it was more important to crush the French Revolution or participate in the Third Partition of Poland.

[5] As it was, Prussia wished to leave the Coalition at the end of 1793, but kept fighting in 1794 when the United Kingdom paid to keep 60,000 of its troops in the field.

[6] Fed up with interference from King Frederick William II, who was more interested in Poland, Brunswick resigned command of the army.

[9] Orders from the government arrived to advance on Trier which Hoche objected to because the army lacked boots and many other supplies.

Hoche was put under arrest and remained in prison until the Thermidorian Reaction when Maximilien Robespierre and his associates were sent to the guillotine.

On 2 May, Jourdan personally took command of the army's left wing and reinforced it so that it numbered 56,014 troops, although there were only 31,548 effectives.

[12] Moreaux received some reinforcements taken from the Army of the Rhine so that he had 25,000 soldiers in three divisions thinly deployed between Longwy on the west and Kaiserslautern on the east.

Meanwhile, the Army of the Rhine under Claude Ignace François Michaud counted 38,500 men, but only 30,000 were able to take the field.

These were spread out along the Speyerbach River between Speyer and Neustadt an der Weinstrasse, with Louis Desaix's division on the right by the Rhine.

Moreaux's positions were vulnerable to attack from Wichard Joachim Heinrich von Möllendorf's Prussian army to his front and the Austrians in Trier and Luxembourg City on his left.

Michaud's army faced the Prussian left wing under Frederick Louis, Prince of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen and the Habsburg Austrians led by Friedrich Wilhelm, Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Kirchberg.

[13] Though aware of the weakness of his defense lines, Moreaux did not want to retreat, possibly because he was masking Jourdan's transfer of troops to the north.

Kaiserslautern was held by the division of Jean-Jacques Ambert with eight battalions, a cavalry regiment and two squadrons of chasseurs à cheval.

Anxious about the position, Moreaux sent Laurent Gouvion Saint-Cyr, an adjutant general whose advice he trusted, to look over the ground.

19, three squadrons each of the Eben Hussars and Voss Dragoons, three Jäger companies and one horse and two foot artillery batteries.

A flying column under Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher was sent to cut the link between the two French armies but this effort failed.

The Prussian horsemen routed their adversaries and the defeated French cavalry stampeded through the ranks of their own infantry, causing chaos.

Oudinot's battalion, made of sterner stuff, chased off the Prussian cavalry and returned to the edge of the woods where they recovered some of the abandoned artillery.

[14] At Kaiserslautern the French lost about 1,000 men killed, wounded or missing in addition to 17 artillery pieces and two colors.

[17] Möllendorf's offensive quickly ground to a halt and the Prussians set about building a series of armed camps to hold their newly captured territory.

[18] At the end of this battle on 17 July, the French occupied Kaiserslautern and moved forward to the Speyerbach again, wiping out all of the Coalition's recent gains.