Battle of Limburg
Detail from the map of 1796 from the book Principles of Strategy by Archduke Carl of Austria
| date | September 16, 1796 |
|---|---|
| place | Limburg |
| output | Austrian victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| around 30,000 | around 60,000 |
| losses | |
|
unknown |
unknown |
First Coalition War (1792–1797)
Verdun - Thionville - Valmy - Lille - Mainz (1792) - Jemappes - Namur - Neerektiven - Mainz (1793) - Famars - Valenciennes (1793) - Arlon (1793) - Hondschoote - Meribel - Avesnes-le-Sec - Pirmasens - Toulon - Fontenay-le-Comte - Cholet - Lucon - Trouillas - Menin -Wattignies - Biesingen - Kaiserslautern (1793) - First battle near Weissenburg (1793) - Second battle near Weissenburg (1793) - Boulou - Tourcoing - Tournay - 13th Prairial - Fleurus - Vosges - Aldenhoven - San-Lorenzo de la Muga - Genoa - Hyeres - Handschuhsheim - Mainz (1795) - Loano - Montenotte - Millesimo - Dego - Mondovi - Lodi - Borghetto - Castiglione - Mantua - Siegburg - Altenkirchen - Wetzlar - Kircheib - Kehl - Kalteiche - Malsch - Neresheim - Deining - Amberg - Würzburg - Rovereto - Bassano - Limburg - Biberach I - Emmendingen - Schliengen - Arcole - Fall of Kehl - Rivoli (1797) - St. Vincent - Diersheim - Santa Cruz - Neuwied - Camperduin
The Battle of Limburg (also: Battle of Limburg and Diez or Battle of the Lahn ) was a battle near Limburg an der Lahn on September 16, 1796 in the First Coalition War . The retreating French revolutionary army tried in vain to prevent the Austrian armed forces from crossing the Lahn .
background
After the defeat in the Battle of Amberg on August 24, 1796 against the approximately 60,000 strong Austrian troops under the command of Archduke Karl of Austria , the French troops withdrew to the Sambre Maas Army of a total of 30,000 men (according to French representations) their commander-in-chief, General Jourdan, returned to Mainfranken in various march columns in order to maintain a connection with the Rhine-Moselle Army under General Moreau operating on the Danube and in the Black Forest . However, the Austrians concentrated their main power on Jourdan and forced him on September 3 to a battle for Würzburg ; the numerically far outnumbered French were defeated and forced to withdraw to the west in a disorderly, and in some units even chaotic, retreat.
Along the Lahn , as a natural obstacle, Jourdan tried to reorganize the army between September 4th and 9th in order to carry out an orderly river crossing and withdrawal of the troops via the major roads in the direction of Cologne and Koblenz. He had already withdrawn General Marceau and around 16,000 men from the siege of the forts of Mainz and Ehrenbreitstein and formed a front on the lower Lahn between Diez and Nassau and as far as Limburg to protect the retreat of Jourdan's army. Units of the French Northern Army requested by Jourdan were also supposed to defend the crossings on the lower Lahn. At the most important Lahn bridges stood General Bernadotte in Runkel and Limburg, General Championnet near Weilburg , General Lefebvre behind Wetzlar , and General Grenier held Giessen . Opposite them stood the Austrians under the commanders Feldzeugmeister Kray , Generals Hotze , Neu and Starray. Archduke Karl had his headquarters in Niederbruch on the major overland road Frankfurt-Cologne.
Course of the battle
The course of the fighting between September 11th and 18th is described differently in the tradition and shows sometimes the Austrians, sometimes the French as winners in the battles over the Lahn crossings. The Sambre-Maas Army had in large resolution (" ... dans le plus grand délabrement ”, said Abel Hugo in 1838 in France militaire ) reached the Lahn. A regular replenishment of food, equipment and ammunition was no longer possible for the French since Würzburg. Jourdan had received no instructions from the government since the withdrawal began. Discipline and readiness to fight could only be found in the immediate area of command of the generals. There the Austrians also met resistance worth mentioning, for example near Gießen (General Grenier) and between Limburg and Diez (General Marceau).
According to German sources, the Austrians to cross with their main force in the Limburg Lahn tried to already to the north in the Westerwald withdrawing Gros to pursue the French.
On the morning of September 16, the French troops were within a square stretched to the south between Diez, Limburg, Mensfelden and Niederneisen . The Austrian attack began that morning. Coming from the south-west, a detachment initially bypassed most of the French positions, advanced directly on Diez, quickly captured the city with its Lahn bridge and established itself there without proceeding further.
A second division marched towards Limburg from the south in order to attack the city via what is now the Blumenrod district . Around noon, the Austrians had partially conquered the Limburg urban area south of the Lahn and the strategically important Greifenberg in the southeast of the city. There they positioned a gun battery, under whose protection they shortly afterwards captured both the stone and a wooden Lahn bridge. The slow advance of the Austrians on the northern Lahn side was thrown back in the afternoon by a French counter-attack from Offheim . However, this only brought the Limburg bridge suburb north of the river and no longer the Lahn crossing itself into French hands for a short time.
This prevented the French south of the Lahn from crossing the river over the bridges. In the further course of the day, the Austrians managed to open a battery of guns on the Schafsberg . The gun emplacement on the Greifenberg was fortified with entrenchments , the remains of which can still be seen today. The two artillery positions then took the French remaining in and around Limburg under crossfire. In the afternoon the main thrust of the Austrians turned against the French entrenched in Niederneisen, on the Mensfelder Kopf and in Linter , who were soon defeated. This meant that there were significant French units only north of the river.
The French tried to stop the Austrians across the Lahn. In particular, a battery from Diezer Petersberg shot at the bridge in the city, causing several houses to catch fire. This bombardment only ended when two Austrian batteries from Schloss Oranienstein and the Gucksberg destroyed the French guns. The French then withdrew to the Altendiezer Wald and the Austrians also moved to Diez on the northern bank of the Lahn. The fleeing French were mainly attacked by Austrian hussars . The numerically superior Austrians pushed the French back to the northeast as far as Offheim, with which the battle ended. The Austrians then seem to have withdrawn to the two immediate urban areas of Limburg and Diez for the time being.
Under cover of the following night and the gathering fog, the French withdrew from the region for good. A march column moved via Staffel and Montabaur to the Rhine crossing in Koblenz , another via Elz to Hachenburg . Marceau and Lefebvre tried as rearguard ( arriére-garde ) to repel the Austrian attacks on the withdrawing army. Marceau was wounded while he was supervising the défilé of the columns near Höchstenbach and died on September 21, 1796 in Altenkirchen .
After a final combat operation on September 20 on the Wied near Altenkirchen - here General Kléber had hit the Austrians severely on June 4 - the bulk of the Sambre-Maas Army had withdrawn to the left bank of the Rhine. The left wing of the army occupied and established itself in the Siegburg region . Diez became the headquarters of the Austrian troops, who moved into winter quarters along the Lahn and were commanded by Field Marshal Lieutenant Franz von Werneck .
Review
The campaign against the Austrians in Germany in late summer 1796 was hardly noticed in France. The great interest was in General Bonaparte and his promising conquests in northern Italy . Jourdan's rapid and at the beginning successful advance deep into the Reich turned into a military and political failure due to the lack of support (Hugo: " … la négligence administrative ") and the unqualified orders of the Paris government and the Directory .
General Jourdan resigned bitterly, (Hugo: " … dégouté des tracasseries du gouvernement "), the high command. His successor in the defeated Sambre Maas Army, which as an occupying army in the Rhineland had to support itself with the highest demands on the civilian population - often with the use of brutal force - was General Beurnonville .
literature
- Konrad Fuchs: On the military conflict in the Nassau lands in 1796 , in: Nassauische Annalen (80), Wiesbaden 1969, pp. 283–288.
- Franz Prox: Much evidence of the war in the Nassauer Land . In: Nassauische Neue Presse August 1, 2001.
- Abel Hugo: France militaire. Histoire des armées Françaises de terre et de mer de 1792 à 1837. Vol. 2. Delloye, Paris 1838 ( full text online at: gallica.bnf.fr ), here pp. 49–56 (chapter Opérations de l'armée de Sambre- et-Meuse, Bataille de Wurtzbourg, Retraite sur le Rhin. )
- Volker Ecker, General Marceau's last battle near Höchstenbach , Chronicle of the municipality of Höchstenbach from 1994, p. 219 ff.
- Hermann Cardauns (Ed.) The French in Coblenz 1794-1797. Notes from Koblenz Professor Minola , Koblenz 1916. ( online )
- Archduke Carl of Austria Principles of Strategy , Explained by the depiction of the campaign of 1796 in Germany, Vienna, printed by Anton Strauss in 1814, Volume 3, pp. 161–181
- Jean Baptiste Jourdan translated by Johann Bachhoven von Echt, "Memories of the history of the campaign of 1796, Koblenz 1823, pp. 129-135
- Jochem Rudersdorf: General Marceau, the blockade of Mainz and his early death, in NASSAUISCHE ANNALEN, Volume 108, Jahrbuch der Nassauische Altertumskunde und Geschichtsforschung, Wiesbaden 1997 ISSN 0077-2887 , pp. 239-241 (The Battle of Limburg September 16, 1796 )