Campaigns of 1799 in the French Revolutionary Wars

The Second Coalition had organized against France, with Great Britain allying with Russia, Austria, the Ottoman Empire, and several of the German and Italian states.

However, his repeated assaults on Acre were driven back by Ottoman and British forces under the command of Jezzar Pasha and Sir Sidney Smith.

Leaving his 'Army of Egypt' behind with Kléber in command, he somehow managed to sail through the British blockade and returned to France on 9 October and then on to Paris where he resolved to take control of the then five-man Directory government there in a coup.

In August, the allies mounted an invasion of the Netherlands (which at that time was a French vassal state, known as the 1795-1806 Batavian Republic) with a combined Anglo-Russian army under the Duke of York, who landed at the northern tip of Holland.

Gen. Moreau was briefly appointed to command the French forces, followed quickly by General Joubert, who was severely defeated at Novi, a few miles south of Marengo.

Division traveling through the Black Forest via Oberkirch, and the Reserve, with most of the artillery and horse, by the valley at Freiburg im Breisgau, where they would find more forage, and then over the mountains past the Titisee to Löffingen and Hüfingen.

[4] The major part of the imperial army, under command of Archduke Charles', had wintered immediately east of the Lech, which Jourdan knew, because he had sent agents into Germany with instructions to identify the location and strength of his enemy.

The French suffered significant losses and were forced to retreat from the region, taking up new positions to the west at Messkirch (Mößkirch, Meßkirch), and then at Stockach and Engen.

From there, General Jourdan relegated command of the army to his chief of staff, Jean Augustin Ernouf, and traveled to Paris to ask for more and better troops and, ultimately, to request a medical leave.

Following the reorganization and change in command, the Army participated in several skirmishes and actions on the eastern part of the Swiss Plateau, including the Battle of Winterthur.

In the late summer, of 1799, Charles was ordered to support imperial activities in the middle Rhineland; he withdrew north across the Rhine, and marched toward Mannheim, leaving Zürich and northern Switzerland in the hands of the inexperienced Alexander Korsakov and 25,000 Russian troops.

This left Masséna in control of northern Switzerland, and closed forced Suvorov into an arduous three-week march into the Vorarlberg, where his troops arrived, starving and exhausted, in mid-October.