Armée de Sambre-et-Meuse

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The Armée de Sambre-et-Meuse (German Sambre and Meuse Army ) was the most famous of the French revolutionary armies and was named after the Meuse and its largest left tributary, the Sambre . It was formed on June 29, 1794 by merging the Ardennes Army with the right wing of the Northern Army and the left wing of the Moselle Army . On September 29, 1797, it merged with the Rhine and Moselle armies to form the German Army .

Battles and fights

The Marceau monument in Koblenz , donated by the Sambre and Maas Army for their General
Marceau who died in 1796
The General Hoche monument in Weißenthurm , memorial of the Sambre and Maas armies for their commanding General
Hoche, who died in 1797

The reason for the formation of the army was the Battle of Fleurus on June 26, 1794, in which the troops that were later combined won a decisive victory over Austria. As a result of Fleurus, the Allied positions in Flanders soon collapsed and the French armies overran the Austrian Netherlands and the Republic of the United Netherlands in the winter of 1794/95 . The Sambre and Maas Army stood out in the storming of Tournai , Ostend , Brussels , Maastricht and Aachen . With the second battle of Aldenhoven on October 2, 1794, the last Austrian bastion was won and the left bank of the Rhine was conquered. Koblenz , located on the Rhine and the residence of the Trier electors, was handed over to General Marceau on October 24, 1794 without a fight , which in fact meant the end of the Trier electoral state . The imperial troops withdrew to the Ehrenbreitstein fortress , but finally had to capitulate to the French on January 27, 1799. On December 14, 1794, the Sambre and Maas army began to siege the Prussian-occupied Mainz fortress .

After participating in the conquest of the Netherlands and the conquest of Luxembourg in June 1795, the army fought on the Middle Rhine, the Hunsrück and the Nahe. On September 6, 1795, the army crossed the Rhine for the first time near Düsseldorf and advanced between the Rhine and the further eastward demarcation line established in the Peace of Basel as far as the Main near Frankfurt (Main) . At Frankfurt-Höchst there was a defeat against the Allied Prussians and Austrians and the army withdrew to the Bergisches Land .

On May 30, 1796, the left wing and the center crossed the Rhine again under the command of General Jourdan near Düsseldorf and Neuwied . The real purpose of the advance of the Sambre and Maas armies was to withdraw the Austrian forces under Archduke Carl of Austria from the Upper Rhine in order to enable the Rhine-Moselle Army under General Moreau to cross the Rhine between Mannheim and Strasbourg . On their advance they defeated the Austrians at Siegburg and Altenkirchen , but suffered a defeat at Wetzlar and withdrew again across the Rhine.

On June 28, 1796, the army crossed the Rhine again - the Rhine-Moselle army had successfully advanced into southern Germany - and advanced as far as Nuremberg . In Amberg , the Austrians were the Sambre and Meuse Army beat. Defeats on the retreat near Würzburg and on the Lahn forced the French to abandon the conquests on the right bank of the Rhine.

Under the new high command of General Hoche , it crossed the Rhine again and won a last major victory on April 18, 1797 in the Battle of Neuwied over Austrian troops under General Franz Freiherr von Werneck . With further successes in combat, she advanced to Frankfurt, but had to break off her campaign because of the armistice and preliminary peace of Leoben .

In late summer 1797, another invasion of the English and Irish coasts was planned in Paris. General Hoche was ordered to lead 10,000 Sambre and Maas Army soldiers to the west coast for an invading army. The march was interrupted within the periphery of Paris, which meant a violation of the current constitution and led to protests among the population and the conservative opposition. It was suspected that the troop presence in Paris in support of the anti-royalist coup d'état of Fructidor 18 (September 4, 1797) had been initiated conspiratorially by board member Barras . The plans to invade England were postponed and the troops were relocated back to the Rhine. It was the last action of the revolutionary army as an independent force.

Troop strength 1796

French Sambre and Maas Army under the command of General Jean-Baptiste Jourdan

Troop formation :

  • right wing under General Marceau
    • to occupy the armistice line from St. Wendel to Niederdiebach (today Rheindiebach )
      • Marceau Division ............... 12 battalions, 11 squadrons
      • Poncet Division .................. 12 battalions, 8 squadrons
      • Bernadotte Division ............ 12 battalions, 8 squadrons
  • Center Chief General Jourdan
    • on the Rhine, from Niederdiebach to the mouth of the Moselle
      • Championnet Division ......... 12 battalions, 8 squadrons
    • on the Rhine, from the mouth of the Moselle to Cologne
      • Grenier Division .................. 12 battalions, 12 squadrons
    • behind Bonn and Cologne
      • Bonnard Division .................. 3 battalions, 4 squadrons
  • left wing General Kléber
    • near Düsseldorf
      • Lefebvre Division ................ 12 battalions, 8 squadrons
      • Colaud division ................... 12 battalions, 12 squadrons
  • Cavalry Reserve Division on the lower Moselle ..... 24 squadrons

Commanding generals

literature

  • Christian Vogel: The withdrawal of the Sambre Maas Army from the Kinzig to the Lahn and the destruction of Lißberg in September 1796 . Self-published, Niddatal 1996, DNB 956033873 .
  • Archduke Carl of Austria : Principles of strategy, explained by the representation of the campaign of 1796 in Germany. Anton Strauss, Vienna 1814. (in 3 volumes)
  • Jean Baptiste Jourdan : Memories of the history of the campaign of 1796. Translated by Johann Bachoven von Echt. Koblenz 1823.
  • Jochem Rudersdorf: The last campaign of the French general Lazare Hoche and the end of the 1st coalition war of 1797. In: Nassauische Annalen. Volume 109, 1998, pp. 229-264.
  • Günter Schneider: 1794 - The French on the way to the Rhine. Aachen 2006, ISBN 3-938208-24-4 .
  • Max Plassmann: The Prussian Empire Policy and the Peace of Basel 1795. In: Yearbook Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg. Volume 4, 2001/2002, Oldenbourg Akademieverlag, 2003.
  • Günter Schneider: 1794 - The French on the way to the Rhine. Aachen 2006, ISBN 3-938208-24-4 .
  • Adolphe Thiers , History of the French Revolution, 6 volumes, Paris 1823–1827, trans. v. A. Walthner, Mannheim 1844

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Max Plassmann: The Prussian Reich Policy and the Peace of Basel 1795. P. 143.