After another victory over the Austrians, the French army led by GD Jean-Baptiste Jourdan isolated Maastricht and its Coalition garrison.

The historian Ramsay Weston Phipps believed that the Battle of Fleurus on 26 June 1794 was decisive, even though its importance was not realized at that time.

This left Frederick, Duke of York and Albany's Coalition forces at Ronse (Renaix) in peril, but, under orders from the all-powerful Committee of Public Safety Pichegru turned away and moved toward the ports of Ostend and Nieuwpoort.

On 30 June, there was a conference of Coalition leaders at which Coburg and FML Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen swore to York that they had no instructions to evacuate Flanders.

At the meeting, it was agreed to move Feldzeugmeister François de Croix, Count of Clerfayt's Austrian corps closer to Coburg while shifting York's forces toward the coast.

[4] Ordered by the Committee of Public Safety to move northwest to seize Mons, Jourdan did so,[3] taking the city on 1 July.

[4] At Aalst, York was joined on 5 July by a substantial British force led by Major General Francis Rawdon-Hastings, Lord Moira.

[8] Meanwhile, the French captured Mechelen and Leuven on 15 July and, a few days later, Coburg's army began withdrawing east to Hasselt.

With his left flank in air, York was compelled to abandon Antwerp on 22 July and pull back north into the Dutch Republic.

During this lull, incompetent officers such as GD François Muller were removed and the various regular and volunteer battalions were welded into regiments.

[15] Schérer's siege corps rejoined the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse on 11 September 1794, and Jourdan assigned it to his right wing where he determined to make his attack.

The right wing included the divisions of GDs François Séverin Marceau, Jean Adam Mayer, Honoré Hacquin, and part of Hatry's.

The Austrian right flank was still at Roermond while the rest of their defense line ran past Linnich, Jülich, Düren, and ended at Nideggen.

Not wanting to repeat Charles François Dumouriez's mistake in the 1793 Siege of Maastricht by tying up too much of his field army, Jourdan detached GD Guillaume Philibert Duhesme's 15,000 men to blockade the city while keeping the remainder of Kléber's wing for active operations.

[23] Jourdan first established his army on the west bank of the Rhine, then he sent Kléber's three divisions back to lay siege to Maastricht.

[25] Kléber summoned Prince Frederick to surrender, and when he refused, the 80 French siege guns opened fire on 1 November.

On Ney's second visit, he accused the fortress commander of "sacrificing the town to his personal glory", and he was so persuasive that Prince Frederick capitulated on 4 November.