In the siege of Hüningen (27 November 1796 – 1 February 1797), the Austrians captured the city from the French. Hüningen is in the present-day Department of Haut-Rhin, France. Its fortress lay approximately north of the Swiss city of Basel and north of the spot where the present-day borders of Germany, France and Switzerland meet. During the time of this siege, the village was part of the Canton of Basel City and the fortress lay in area contested between the German states and the First French Republic.
The siege occurred within the French Revolutionary Wars during which Revolutionary France ranged itself against a Coalition that included most of the states with which it shared land or water borders. In particular, France was at odds with the European monarchies, who initially feared for the safety of Louis XVI and his wife, who was the sister of the Holy Roman Emperor. Fighting, which began in 1792, had been inconclusive. Fighting in 1795 had largely favored the Coalition; the Campaign in the Rhineland in 1796, though, had pushed the Coalition forces far into the German states; the Coalition forces had pushed back and, at the end of the summer's fighting in 1796, the Austrian force under command of Archduke Charles had succeeded in pushing the French back to the Rhine.
With the conclusion of the Battle of Schliengen on 24 October, the French army withdrew south and west toward the Rhine. Forces commanded by Jean Charles Abbatucci and Pierre Marie Barthélemy Ferino provided the rear guard support and the main force retreated across the Rhine into France. The French retained control of the fortifications at Kehl and Hüningen and, more importantly, the tête-du-ponts (bridgeheads) of the star-shaped fortresses where the bridges crossed the Rhine. The French chief commander, Jean Victor Moreau, offered an armistice to the Austrian commander, which the archduke was inclined to accept. He wanted to secure the Rhine crossings and then send troops to northern Italy to relieve Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser at besieged Mantua; an armistice with Moreau would allow him to do that. However, his brother, Francis II, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the civilian military advisers of the Aulic Council categorically refused such an armistice, forcing Charles to order simultaneous sieges at Kehl and Hüningen. These tied his army to the Rhine for most of the winter. He himself moved north with the bulk of his force to invest the larger crossing at Kehl, and instructed Karl Aloys zu Fürstenberg to conduct the siege in the south by Basel. While the Austrians besieged these Rhine crossings, Moreau had sufficient surplus troops to send 14 demi-brigades (approximately 12,000 troops) into Italy to assist in the siege at Mantua.Phillip Cuccia, Napoleon in Italy: the Sieges of Mantua, 1796–1799, University of Oklahoma Press, 2014, pp. 87–93. Smith. Data Book. pp. 125, 131–133.
Fürstenberg's force initiated the siege within days of the Austrian victory at the Battle of Schliengen. Most of the siege ran concurrently with the siege at Kehl, which concluded on 9 January 1797. By the time troops engaged at Kehl marched to Hüningen in preparation for a major assault, Fürstenberg had established extensive earthworks, built three large batteries that rained continuous cannonades into the fortress. The Habsburgs repelled a French sortie in early December in which Abbatucci, the French commander, was killed. His replacement, Georges Joseph Dufour, capitulated on 1 February 1797, preventing a costly assault, and the French evacuated, taking everything of value that remained with them. Like the conclusion of the siege at Hüningen, the Austrians took possession of a pile of rubble.
Background
Initially, the rulers of Europe, such as Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, viewed the revolution in France as an event between the French king and his subjects, and not something in which they should interfere. The French Republican position became increasingly difficult. Compounding problems in international relations, French émigrés continued to agitate for support of a counter-revolution abroad. Chief among them were the Prince Condé, his son, the Duke de Bourbon, and his grandson, the Duke d'Enghien. From their base in Koblenz, immediately over the French border, they sought direct support for military intervention from the royal houses of Europe, and raised an army.Timothy Blanning. The French Revolutionary Wars, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 41–59.
As the rhetoric grew more strident, however, the other monarchies started to view events with alarm. In 1790, Leopold succeeded his brother Joseph as emperor and by 1791, he considered the situation surrounding his sister, the French Queen Marie Antoinette, and her children, with greater and greater alarm. In August 1791, in consultation with French émigré nobles and Frederick William II of Prussia, he issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, in which they declared the interest of the monarchs of Europe as one with the interests of Louis and his family. They threatened ambiguous, but quite serious, consequences if anything should happen to the royal family.
On 20 April 1792, the French National Convention declared war on Austria. In this War of the First Coalition (1792–1798), France ranged itself against most of the European states sharing land or water borders with her, plus Portugal and the Ottoman Empire. Coalition forces achieved several victories at Verdun, Kaiserslautern, Neerwinden, but these were countered by French victories at Tourcouring (1794), Dunkirk, and Haguenau. For the French, the Rhine Campaign of 1795 proved especially disastrous, although they had achieved some success in other theaters of war (see for example, War of the Pyrenees (1793–1795).
Complications
Geography The Rhine River flows west along most of the border between the former German states and the northern territories and cities of the former Swiss Cantons.These territories include present-day Baden-Württemberg and the Cantons of Schaffhausen, Aargau, Basel-land, and Basel-Stadt. Schaffhausen and Aargau attained canton status in the peace settlement of 1803, a de facto acceptance of the Swiss Revolution of 1798–99; Basel-land and Basel-Stadt were created from the Canton Basel in 1833. Along the stretch between the Rhine Falls (near Schaffhausen) and Basel, the High Rhine (Hochrhein) cuts through steep hillsides over a gravel bed; in some places, such as the former rapids at Laufenburg, it moves in torrents.Laufenburg now has dams and barrages to control the flow of water. Thomas P. Knepper. The Rhine. Handbook for Environmental Chemistry Series, Part L. New York: Springer, 2006, pp. 5–19. The terrain flattens a few miles north and east of Basel. The Rhine makes a wide, northerly turn, in what is called the Rhine knee, and enters the Rheingraben (Rhine ditch), part of a rift valley bordered by the Black Forest on the east and Vosges Mountains on the west. Here the river runs between present-day France and the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg.Knepper, pp. 19–20.
In 1796, the plain on both sides of the river, some wide, was dotted with villages and farms. At both far edges of the flood plain, especially on the eastern side, the old mountains created dark shadows on the horizon. Tributaries cut through the hilly terrain of the Black Forest, creating deep defiles in the mountains. The tributaries meandered in rivulets through the flood plain to the river. The river itself looked different in the 1790s than it does in the 21st century; engineers "corrected" (straightened) the passage from Basel to Iffezheim between 1817 and 1875. Between 1927 and 1975, engineers constructed a canal to control the water level. In 1790, though, the river was wild and unpredictable, in some places four or more times wider than in the twenty-first century, even under regular (non-flood stage) conditions. Its channels wound through marsh and meadow, and created islands of trees and vegetation that were periodically submerged during floods. Helmut Volk. "Landschaftsgeschichte und Natürlichkeit der Baumarten in der Rheinaue." Waldschutzgebiete Baden-Württemberg, Band 10, pp. 159–167. It was crossable at Kehl, by Strasbourg, and Hüningen, by Basel, where systems of viaducts and causeways made access reliable.Thomas C. Hansard (ed.).Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 1803, Official Report. Vol. 1. London: HMSO, 1803, pp. 249–252.
Political terrain
The German-speaking states on the east bank of the Rhine were part of the vast complex of territories in central Europe called the Holy Roman Empire.Joachim Whaley, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire: Volume I: Maximilian I to the Peace of Westphalia, 1493–1648 (2012), pp. 17–20. The considerable number of territories in the Empire included more than 1,000 entities. Their size and influence varied, from the Kleinstaaten ("little states") that covered no more than a few square miles, or included several non-contiguous pieces, to the small and complex territories of the princely Hohenlohe family branches, to sizable, well-defined territories such as the Kingdoms of Bavaria and Prussia. Their governance varied: they included free imperial cities, also of different sizes, such as the powerful Augsburg and the minuscule Weil der Stadt; ecclesiastical territories, also of varying sizes and influence, such as the wealthy Abbey of Reichenau and the powerful Archbishopric of Cologne; and dynastic states such as Württemberg. When viewed on a map, the Empire resembled a Flickenteppich ("patchwork carpet"). Both the Habsburg domains and Hohenzollern Prussia also included territories outside the Empire structures, such as the Habsburg territories in eastern Europe and northern Italy. There were also territories completely surrounded by France that belonged to Württemberg, the Count of Solm, the archbishopric of Trier, and Hesse-Darmstadt. Among the German-speaking states, the Holy Roman Empire's administrative and legal mechanisms provided a venue to resolve disputes between peasants and landlords, between jurisdictions, and within jurisdictions. Through the organization of imperial circles (Reichskreise), groups of states consolidated resources and promoted regional and organizational interests, including economic cooperation and military protection.See, for example, James Allen Vann, The Swabian Kreis: Institutional Growth in the Holy Roman Empire 1648–1715. Vol. LII, Studies Presented to International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions. Bruxelles, 1975 or Mack Walker. German home towns: community, state, and general estate, 1648–1871. Ithaca, 1998.
Diplomacy and politics
The Vauban fortresses at Hüningen and Kehl were both important bridgeheads across the river; maintaining control of them had been critical in Moreau's relatively easy access to the German side of the Rhine in June 1796. At both towns, the principal fortresses lay on the west side (French side) of the Rhine; the bridgeheads and the smaller fortifications surrounding those lay on the both sides. Taking them would require a costly and time-consuming siege.Conrad Malte-Brun. Universal Geography or a Description of all Parts of the World, on a New Plan: Spain, Portugal, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and Holland. A Black, 1831.