Battles near Bamberg and Forchheim

Battles near Bamberg and Forchheim

Part of: First Coalition War

date	4th-7th August 1796
place	Bamberg Forchheim
output	Victory of France

Parties to the conflict
France	Austria
Commander
Jean Baptiste Jourdan	Wilhelm von Wartensleben
Troop strength
about 45,000 men	unknown
losses
unknown	unknown

The battles near Bamberg and Forchheim , from August 4 to 7, 1796 , were retreat battles by the Austrian army under Feldzeugmeister Wilhelm Graf von Wartensleben . The two attacks were carried out by the French Armée de Sambre-et-Meuse under the supreme command of General Jourdan during his second invasion of Germany in the First Coalition War .

background

The Austrian units were attacked along the Main and in July pursued from the imperial city of Frankfurt to the prince-bishopric of Bamberg and, due to the further course, pushed further into the Upper Palatinate .

Battle of Bamberg

Driven by the eagerness to be the first to take the city of Bamberg , the pursuing vanguard divisions of Generals Grenier and Championnet surprisingly encountered a numerically superior rearguard of the Austrian army near Bamberg on August 4th. At that time, the main Austrian army was already moving to the small town of Altendorf in the south. Only the arrival of the French main force prevented the two French divisions from being wiped out, yet the French suffered heavy losses before taking Bamberg. After the battle, the Austrian rearguard continued along the Regnitz to the level of the Aisch and took a defensive position at Altendorf together with the local units.

consequences

In the days that followed laid Count of Wartensleben its main defense line south of Forchheim and left positions on the Regnitz ford at Sassanfahrt and five infantry battalions and 22 cavalry squadrons of General Kray along the line Weppersdorf and Willersdorf about ten kilometers north of Forchheim along the Aisch vorlagern .

The right front of the Austrians formed the Wiesent river , on which units were deployed. The entire front now ran from Neustadt and Höchstadt an der Aisch over the Forchheim fortress in an easterly direction and reached as far as Ebermannstadt .

Wartensleben had orders to delay the advance of the French and to unite with Archduke Karl's army , which was already on the march on August 5, 1796 about 100 kilometers south of Forchheim. Since the Commander-in-Chief General Jourdan fell ill on the French side in Bamberg, General Kleber briefly took over command of the Sambre-Maas Army.

Battle of Forchheim

The Wartensleben army was divided into two wings by the position with Forchheim in the middle and thus by the river Regnitz, but Kleber did not use the chance to attack the enemy wings separately and therefore left generally, on a broad front, at seven o'clock advance towards Forchheim on August 7th. The French army advanced along both banks of the Regnitz. General Lefebvre sent a command over the mountains of Franconian Switzerland to the Wiesent valley on the left and successfully harassed the right wing of the Austrians.

General Collaud led the advance on the French right, his vanguard was led by Adjutant General Ney , whose units were soon in combat with the superior Austrian. Ney was able to hold his position with reinforcements and was promoted to brigadier general after the fight for his performance.

General Grenier's units pushed the Austrians back over the Aisch under FMl Kray and were able to unite with the units of Championnets and exert even more pressure.

When General Bernadotte was still evading Kray's positions with his cavalry near Höchstadt an der Aisch, Kray had to retreat south-east near Hausen across the Regnitz. Since the positions of the right Austrian side not only ran the risk of being outnumbered, but also of being outstripped, FZM Wartensleben gave up his positions and thus Forchheim and let the fighting break off. The Austrian army now quickly withdrew towards the imperial city of Nuremberg .

consequences

When the French arrived in Forchheim, the fortress garrison surrendered after their first request and the army also captured sixty cannons from the fortress.

On August 17th, the Sambre-Maas Army fought another battle with the retreating Austrian troops near Sulzbach-Rosenberg, from which Wartensleben had to withdraw again, and then successfully fought against Archduke Karl's imperial Austrian forces on August 22nd to unite. So took place the battle of Amberg (August 24th) and the turning point in the war in the Upper Palatinate and Franconia.

With "BAMBERG" there is an inscription on the "Pilier NORD" of the 128 battles of the French armies for the republic and the empire at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

literature

• Principles of the higher art of war and examples of their appropriate application, by Karl (Austria, Archduke, 1771–1847)
• Carl, Archduke of Austria, saves Franconia, liberates Nuremberg, Bamberg, Würzburg, Aschaffenburg, Frankfurt, and horrifies Mainz from the French, in the last days of August and in the first days of September 1796: A fragment from history, Aschaffenburg , 1835
• France militaire. Histoire des armées françaises de terre et de mer, Volume 2, edited by Abel Hugo