The promising start to the French offensive ended when Pichegru lost an opportunity to seize Clerfayt's supply base in the Battle of Handschuhsheim.

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

With Jourdan temporarily out of the picture, the Austrians defeated the left wing of the Army of the Rhine and Moselle at the Battle of Mainz and moved down the west bank.

The most radical of the revolutionaries purged the military of all men conceivably loyal to the Ancien Régime (Old Regime), resulting in the loss of experienced leadership and non-commissioned officers.

By early 1795, this newly structured and expanded army had made itself odious throughout France through its rapacious dependence upon the countryside for material support, its general lawlessness, and its undisciplined behavior.

The size and influence of the polities varied, from the Kleinstaaterei, the little states that covered no more than a few square miles or included several non-contiguous pieces, to such sizeable territories as the Duchy of Bavaria and the Kingdom of Prussia.

Through the organization of ten Imperial circles, also called Reichskreise, groups of states consolidated resources and promoted regional, religious, and organizational interests, including economic cooperation and military protection.

[5][Note 1] The Rhine formed the boundary between the German states of the Holy Roman Empire and its neighbors, principally France but also Switzerland and the Netherlands.

As the river passed Düsseldorf and Duisburg, the Rhine divided into several channels in the Netherlands, formed a delta, and emptied into the North Sea.

Between the Rhine Knee and Mannheim, channels wound through marsh and meadow and created islands of trees and vegetation that were periodically submerged by floods.

[9][Note 3] Only to the north of Kaiserslauten did the river acquire a defined bank where fortified bridges offered reliable crossing points.

[11] By 1794–1795, civilian military planners in Paris considered the upper Rhine Valley, the south-western German territories and the Danube river basin of strategic importance for the defense of the Republic.

Soldiers were paid in paper currency called the assignat, which the local inhabitants did not want, for lodging, food and general purchases; it eventually became worthless.

[15] With late summer successes at Düsseldorf and Mainz, the French armies held significant footholds on the east bank of the Rhine.

[14] Clerfayt massed his troops against Jourdan, beat him at the Battle of Höchst in October, and forced most of the Army of the Sambre and Meuse to retreat to the west bank of the Rhine.

Clerfayt advanced with 75,000 Coalition troops south along the west bank of the Rhine against Pichegru's 37,000-man strong defenses behind the Pfrimm River near Worms.

The French First Republic's finances were in poor shape, so its armies would be expected to invade new territories and then live off the conquered lands, as they had been instructed to do in 1795.

For example, in its prompt capitulation of Mannheim, the Bavarian garrison had surrendered all supplies, horses, armaments and weaponry, an action that seemingly confirmed to the Habsburg commanders that their allies were not reliable.

By 1795, the Habsburg forces were better prepared to make war alone, placing Wurmser and Clerfayt, both experienced commanders, in charge of their own independent corps.

Eventually, Wurmser was transferred to northern Italy to address the threat Napoleon posed to the southern border of the Austrian lands, leaving Charles on his own.

[21] Even with his force augmented by imperial recruits, in the spring of 1796 Charles had an army half the size of the French, covering a 340-kilometer (211 mi) front that stretched from Switzerland to the North Sea in what Gunther Rothenberg called the "thin white line".

By 1795, Pichegru was leaning heavily toward the Royalist cause: he accepted money from a British agent William Wickham and was in contact with individuals who wished for a return of the French monarchy.

[23] Historians still debate if Pichegru's treason, his bad generalship, or the unrealistic expectations set by the military planners in Paris were the actual cause of the French failure.

The training received in the early years of the war varied not only with the theater in which the young officers served but also with the character of the army to which they belonged.

[25] The experience of young officers under the tutelage of such experienced men as Soult, Moreau, Lazare Hoche, Lefebvre, and Jourdan provided them with valuable lessons.

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

Jean de Dieu Soult, who served under Moreau and Massena, becoming the latter's right-hand man during the France's invasion of Switzerland in 1798 and the Swiss campaign of 1799–1800.