Weißenburger Lines
The Weißenburg Lines or Lauter Lines were laid out between 1701 and 1714 during the War of the Spanish Succession by Claude-Louis-Hector de Villars to defend Alsace, newly acquired by France, between the Rhine near Lauterbourg and the Vosges near Wissembourg .
Location and facility
The zigzag lines follow the south bank of the Lauter . Like the Eppinger lines , the Bühl-Stollhofener line and the Ettlinger line on the other bank of the Rhine, they consist of a parapet and a ditch, also at the turn of the 17th to the 18th century, but against the French troops . The lines included around 50 ski jumps ( Redouten ), including the Redoute Maréchal de Marcin, the Villars-Schanze and the Lanzensee-Schanze. Individual redoubts are advanced northwards over the Lauter into the Bienwald . The western end point was the (destroyed) Redoute on the Scherhol .
history
The lines were reinforced in 1746. Militarily, the lines last played a role during the First Coalition War on October 13th and December 23rd, 1793, when the Austrian-led imperial troops under Feldzeugmeister Wurmser first recaptured Alsace against the French Rhine-Moselle Army under General Pichegru , and then from in December General Hoche were again forced to retreat across the Rhine. Later the lines fell into disrepair. In 1873 they were released for agricultural use. However, they can still be easily recognized in the terrain. The trail "Sentier Lignes de la Lauter" follows the lines.
literature
- Weißenburger Lines . In: Meyers Konversationslexikon , 1885–90, 16th volume.
- Brockhaus' Kleines Konversations-Lexikon , 5th edition, volume 2. Leipzig 1911, p. 966.
- Rolf Übel: The Weißenburger or Lauter lines , 1992
- Denis Mathis: Les hydrosystèmes militaires défensifs de Basse-Alsace (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles) . In: Géographie historique et questions militaires , No. 8, May 2016 ( online ).