Battle of Amberg

Coordinates: 49 ° 28 ′ 16.2 "  N , 11 ° 49 ′ 44.8"  E

Battle of Amberg

Part of: First Coalition War

date	August 24, 1796
location	On the mountain
exit	Austria's victory

Parties to the conflict
France	Austria
Commander
Jean Baptiste Jourdan	Karl of Austria-Teschen
Troop strength
approx. 45,000	approx. 60,000
losses
21 officers, 513 soldiers, a total of approx. 1,000	12 officers, 391 soldiers

The Battle of Amberg was a conflict during the First Coalition War in which French revolutionary troops and Imperial Austrian forces faced each other. It took place on August 24, 1796 northwest of the Upper Palatinate city of Amberg and ended with a victory for the Austrian troops.

background

In the summer of 1796, the French Directory had set up two armies to invade the right bank of the Rhine and southern Germany, the Sambre and Maas Army under the command of Chief General Jean-Baptiste Jourdan and the Rhine-Moselle Army under the command of Chief General Jean- Victor Moreau . After their unification, they were to penetrate directly into the Austrian heartland from here and unite there with another French army that was operating in northern Italy under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte .

After Archduke Karl had withdrawn over the south bank of the Danube after the undecided battle at Neresheim (August 11th), Moreau was free to stay on the north bank and, if necessary, he could also seek his union with Jourdan.

The army under Jourdan had advanced into the Upper Palatinate by mid-August and on August 17th at Sulzbach had fought a victorious battle with the retreating Austrian troops under Feldzeugmeister lieunenant Kray . In the meantime, on August 18, the Austrian army under Archduke Karl von Österreich-Teschen near Ingolstadt had returned to the northern bank of the Danube. The Archduke led his 28,000 men back to the north bank of the Danube, united with the royalists under Prince Conde to 30,290 soldiers and marched on the Regensburg-Neumarkt road to achieve union with the corps under Wartensleben.

A French corps commanded by the future King of Sweden, Jean Baptiste Bernadotte , set out from Neumarkt to pursue Regensburg and on the 22nd met the troops of the Austrian general Friedrich August von Nauendorf in the battle of Deining , whose troops moved to Daßwang after a brief meeting withdrawn. The Austrian corps pursued by General Moreau under Lieutenant Field Marshal Maximilian Baillet von Latour stayed behind on the right bank of the Danube to deceive the French and was defeated at Friedberg on August 24th and pushed to the Lech .

Troop strength

Troop formation on August 22, 1796:

Austrian troops in the Upper Palatinate

• Army under Feldzeugmeister Wartensleben with 39 battalions and 105 squadrons (= 34,000 men) on the Naab between Schwarzenfeld and Schwandorf , then the detachments at Rosshaupt, Regensburg , Tasswang etc.
• Army under Archduke Karl with 28 battalions and 56 squadrons (= 28,000 men) approaching Neumarkt

Sambre and Maas army

• Chief General Jean Baptiste Jourdan with four divisions (= 36,000 men) on the Naab between Nabburg and Schwandorf
• Division Jean Étienne Championnet
• Paul Grenier Division
• Division Claude-Sylvestre Colaud
• Jacques-Philippe Bonnaud cavalry division
• 9,000 men from the Bernadotte division operated near Neumarkt
• Reserve: François-Joseph Lefebvre division out of action

battle

Battle map

Archduke Karl advanced against Neumarkt via Hemau and ordered the Feldzeugmeister von Wartensleben to stop the retreat on the Naab near Schwandorf and to attack again. Wartensleben had the important heights to the northwest of Amberg occupied in a hurry, his two columns marched in two meetings, the newly occupied position now established itself on higher ground behind Krumbach , Gärmersdorf and Kümmersbruck . Its right wing leaned against the wooded heights of Krumbach, the left wing reached the Vils near Lengfeld .

Archduke Karl reinforced the troops commanded by Friedrich von Hotze at Lauf with the division under Field Marshal Lieutenant Anton Sztáray von Nagy-Mihaly to pursue the French division Bernadotte. The Archduke himself led 6 battalions and 16 squadrons, which he reinforced with 9 additional squadrons on August 24th, from Neumarkt via Kastl to Amberg.

The French right wing, formed by the Championnet division, leaned against the gorge near Unter-Ammerthal, the left wing extended towards the city's hospital. The division commanded by Paul Grenier acted as a reserve and camped behind on the town's plateau. Colaud's division stood on the left bank of the Vils to protect itself against Schwarzenfeld and Schwandorf. Jourdan suspected that the main enemy attack would come from the left, so the cavalry division was concentrated there and merged with the Championnet division. Jourdan's divisions were pinched from two sides by the Archduke and Waiting Life.

Archduke Karl had his troops advance over Ursensollen and march behind Weiherzant . Wartensleben opened the attack on Collaud's French division under heavy artillery fire. Lieutenant Field Marshal Kray formed the left wing near Raigering and behind Aschach , while Lieutenant Field Marshal Karl Joseph von Hadik-Futak advanced on the right in order to achieve union with the Archduke's troops. Waiting life's troops pushed the Austrians out of the Haselmühle, penetrated near Lengenfeld over the Vils and again formed the attack columns at Köfering . The archduke attacked with strong gunfire and broke through the forest of Ursensollen and forced the union with Hadik's troops. On the right wing Kray led 9 battalions and 24 squadrons from Schwarzenfeld via Wolfring and Engelstadt to attack the French position under Collaud on Mariahilfberg , on the far right another column acted separately via Ensdorf against Aschach. The main focus of the fighting was on the Sünderbühl , a small hill south of the Poppenrichter district of Witzlhof .

Jourdan's front was pushed back as far as Sulzbach, and Grenier's division occupied new positions against the Lauf on the heights to the right and behind the town. The defeated Colaud division again leaned against the Vils, troops under Championnet covered the right wing as far as Bachetsfeld. The light troops of the Austrians pursued the French on the line Poppenricht, Allmannshof, Rosenberg, Kropfersricht and Dietersberg. In the evening Archduke Karl moved into Amberg to the cheers of the people. On the same day, Field Marshal Lieutenant Hotze's division attacked the troops under Bernadotte near Lauf an der Pegnitz and threw them back to Forchheim .

follow

After the defeat suffered at Amberg, the French units withdrew again in a north-westerly direction, roughly on the same route as the advance. On the territory of the Bamberg Monastery , the first serious retreat battles began on August 30, such as the battles near Bamberg and Forchheim at the beginning of August. However, the French tried to stop their opponents by setting fire to entire places, such as Ebermannstadt or Strullendorf , a procedure that the Sambre and Maas armies repeated many times on their retreat to the Rhine.

On September 3, the battle of Würzburg took place near Würzburg with the pursuing Austrian army , which the Austrians were also able to decide in their favor. The Battle of Limburg followed on September 16 . After that, the French continued their retreat to Düsseldorf with great losses , where Jourdan finally resigned his command.

Battle of Amberg on the Arc de Triomphe

literature

• Johann Schmidt: The Upper Palatinate as a theater of war in August 1796 . Amberg, 1896 ( digitized ).
• Karl-Otto Ambronn, Achim Fuchs, Heinrich Wanderwitz (eds.): Amberg 1034–1984. From a thousand years of city history. Catalog for the exhibition on the occasion of the 950th anniversary. Amberg 1984, ISBN 3-924707-00-6 .
• Hans Bungert, Franz Prechtl (ed.): A millennium Amberg. Series of publications of the University of Regensburg Volume 11. Mittelbayerische Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft, Regensburg 1985, ISBN 3-921114-60-8 .
• Johann Baptist Schenkl: New Chronicle of the City of Amberg . Reprint of the 1817 edition. Carl Mayr, Amberg 1972.
• Stefan Helml: French against Austrians in Bavaria 1796 . Strobl Druck- und Verlags-GmbH, Amberg 1996, ISBN 3-9803552-2-5 .
• Archduke Carl of Austria : Principles of Strategy, explained by depicting the campaign of 1796 in Germany. III. Part. Anton Strauss, Vienna 1819, pp. 30–54 ( digitized in the Google book search).
• Jean Baptiste Jourdan : Memories of the Campaign of 1796, translated by Johann Bachoven, published in Koblenz in 1823, pages 102 and 103

Individual evidence

1. ^ Johann Schmidt: The Upper Palatinate as a theater of war in August 1796 . Amberg, 1896 ( digitized version )
2. ^ Karl von Österreich-Teschen  : Principles of Strategy, explained by the depiction of the campaign of 1796, printed by Anton Strauss, Vienna 1814, Volume III, pages 29 and 30
3. ^ Schneidawind, Franz Josef Adolf, Aschaffenburg 1835: 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 of the year 1796: fragment from the history of the French revolutionary campaigns, page 15