The Army of Sambre and Meuse () was a field army of the French Revolutionary Army. It was formed on 29 June 1794 by combining the Army of the Ardennes, the left wing of the Army of the Moselle and the right wing of the Army of the North. Its maximum paper strength (in 1794) was approximately 120,000.
After an inconclusive campaign in 1795, the French planned a co-ordinated offensive in 1796 using Jean-Baptiste Jourdan's Army of the Sambre et Meuse and the Army of the Rhine and Moselle commanded by his superior, Jean Victor Marie Moreau. The first part of the operation called for Jourdan to cross the Rhine north of Mannheim and divert the Austrians while the Army of the Moselle crossed the southern Rhine at Kehl and Huningen. This was successful and, by July 1796, a series of victories forced the Austrians, commanded by Archduke Charles, to retreat into the German states. By late July, most of the southern German states had been coerced into an armistice. The Army of Sambre and Meuse maneuvered around northern Bavaria and Franconia, and the Army of the Rhine and Moselle operated in Bavaria.
Internal disputes between Moreau and Jourdan and with Jourdan's subordinate commanders within the Army of the Sambre and Meuse prevented the two armies from uniting. This gave the Austrian commander time to reform his own forces, driving Jourdan to the northwest. By the end of September 1796, Charles had permanently separated the two French armies, forcing Jourdan's command further northwest and eventually across the Rhine. On 29 September 1797, the Army of Sambre and Meuse was merged with the Army of the Rhine and Moselle to become the Army of Germany.
Background
Initially, the rulers of Europe viewed the 1789 revolution in France as an internal matter between the French king and his subjects. In 1790, Leopold succeeded his brother Joseph as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire; by 1791, the danger to his sister, Marie Antoinette and her children, alarmed him. In August 1791, in consultation with French émigré nobles and Frederick William II of Prussia, Leopold's Declaration of Pillnitz articulated that the interests of the monarchs of Europe were as one with the interests of Louis and his family. He and his fellow monarchs threatened unspecified consequences if anything should happen to the royal family. French émigrés continued to agitate for support of a counter-revolution, and 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 its land or water borders, plus Portugal and the Ottoman Empire.Timothy Blanning. The French Revolutionary Wars. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 41–59.
Although initially successful in the campaigns of 1792 and 1793, the French army lost some effectiveness during the Reign of Terror, during which its generals were intimidated or executed and many of the army's experienced officers left France for safer havens. Elements of the armies that were later formed into the Army of Sambre and Meuse participated in the conquest of the Dutch Republic and the siege of Luxembourg. The various elements of the army won a victory at the Battle of Fleurus on 16 June 1794. The merging of the forces into the Army of Sambre and Meuse was made official soon afterwards. Shortly after Fleurus, the position of the First Coalition in Flanders collapsed and the French armies overran the Austrian Netherlands and the Dutch Republic in the winter of 1794–1795. French and Coalition military strategy subsequently focused on the Rhine river as the principal line of defense: for each side, control of the opposite bank or at least, the river's principal crossings, was the basis of defensive strategy.
Geopolitical terrain
Geography
The Rhine River flows west along the border between the German states and the Swiss Cantons. The stretch between Rheinfall, by Schaffhausen and Basel, is the High Rhine (Hochrhein); it cuts through steep hillsides over a gravel bed, and moves in torrents in such places as the former rapids at Laufenburg.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. A few miles north and east of Basel, the terrain flattens. The Rhine makes a wide, northerly turn, in what is called the Rhine knee, and enters the so-called Rhine ditch (Rheingraben), part of a rift valley bordered by the Black Forest on the east and Vosges mountains on the west.Knepper, pp. 19–20.
The Rhine looked different in the 1790s than it does in the twenty-first century; the passage from Basel to Iffezheim was "corrected" (straightened) between 1817 and 1875. Construction of a canal to control the water level occurred from 1927 to 1974. In 1790, the river was wild and unpredictable, in some places more than four times wider than in the twenty-first century, even under normal conditions. Its channels wound through marsh and meadow and created islands of trees and vegetation that were periodically submerged by floods. Systems of viaducts and causeways made access reliable at Kehl, by Strasbourg, and at Hüningen, by Basel. Helmut Volk, "Landschaftsgeschichte und Natürlichkeit der Baumarten in der Rheinaue." Waldschutzgebiete Baden-Württemberg, Band 10, S. 159–167. In 1796, the plain on both sides of the river, some wide, was dotted with villages and farms. At the furthest 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, and became rivulets through the flood plain to the river.
Politics
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 , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 17–20. The 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 to large and powerful states. The states and territories involved in late 1796 included the Breisgau (Habsburg), Offenburg and Rottweil (imperial cities), the princely states of Fürstenberg, Neuenburg and Hohenzollern, the Margraviate of Baden, the Duchy of Württemberg, and several dozen ecclesiastic polities. Rule varied: they included free imperial cities 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 such dynastic states as Württemberg. When viewed on a map, the Empire resembled a Flickenteppich (patchwork carpet). Some states included non-contiguous pieces, the Habsburg domains and Hohenzollern Prussia also governed territories outside the Empire, such as the Habsburg territories in eastern Europe and northern Italy; for others, a village could belong predominantly to one polity but have a farmstead, a house or even one or two strips of land that belonged to another polity. There were also territories surrounded by France that belonged to Württemberg, such as the county 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 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.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. Mack Walker. German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, 1648–1871, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998.
Purpose and formation
Military challenges By 1792 the armies of the French Republic were in a state of disruption; experienced soldiers of the Ancien Régime fought side by side with volunteers. Recruits, urged on by revolutionary fervor from the special representatives—agents of the legislature, sent to ensure cooperation among the military—lacked the discipline and training to function efficiently; frequently insubordinate, they often refused orders and undermined unit cohesion. After a defeat, they were capable of mutiny, as Théobald Dillon learned when his troops lynched him in 1792.Relation de l'assassinat de M. Théobald Dillon, Maréchal-de-Camp, Commis à Lille, le 29 avril 1792. Imprimerie de Mignaret (4 May 1792). Jean Paul Bertaud, R.R. Palmer (trans). The Army of the French Revolution: From Citizen-Soldiers to Instrument of Power, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988, chapter 1.
The problems of command became more acute following the 1793 introduction of mass conscription (levée en masse). French commanders walked a fine line between the security of the frontier and the Parisian clamor for victory. Add to this the desperate condition of the Army—in training, supplies and leadership—and the military leadership faced a crisis. They were constantly under suspicion from the representatives of the new regime and sometimes from their own soldiers. Failure to achieve unrealistic expectations implied disloyalty and the price of disloyalty was an appointment with Madame guillotine: several of the highest ranking generals, including the aged Nicolas Luckner, Jean Nicolas Houchard, Adam Philippe Custine, Arthur Dillon and Antoine Nicolas Collier, were killed. Francisco de Miranda's failure to take Maastricht landed him in La Force Prison for several years. Many of the old officer class had emigrated, forming émigré armies; the cavalry in particular suffered from their departure and the Hussards du Saxe and the 15éme Cavalerie (Royal Allemande) regiments defected en masse to the Austrians. The artillery arm, considered by the old nobility to be an inferior assignment, was less affected by emigration and survived intact. Charles Clerget, Tableaux des armées françaises: pendant les guerres de la Révolution, R. Chapelot, 1905, pp. 55, 62.
Military planners in Paris understood that the upper Rhine Valley, the south-western German territories and Danube river basin held strategic importance for the defense of the Republic. The Rhine offered a formidable barrier to what the French perceived as Austrian aggression and the state that controlled its crossings controlled the river and access into the territories on either side. Ready access across the Rhine and along the Rhine bank between the German states and Switzerland or through the Black Forest, gave access to the upper Danube river valley. For the French, control of the Upper Danube or any point in between, was of immense strategic value and would give the French a reliable approach to Vienna.Gunther E. Rothenberg, Napoleon’s Great Adversaries: Archduke Charles and the Austrian Army, 1792–1914, Stroud, (Gloucester): Spellmount, 2007, pp. 70–74.
Original formation