The Army of the Rhine and Moselle () was one of the field units of the French Revolutionary Army. It was formed on 20 April 1795 by the merger of elements of the Army of the Rhine and the Army of the Moselle.
The Army of the Rhine and Moselle participated in two principal campaigns in the War of the First Coalition. Military planners in Paris formed armies based on specific strategic tasks, and the task of this Army was to secure the French frontier at the Rhine and to penetrate the German states, potentially threatening Vienna. The unsuccessful 1795 campaign concluded with the removal of General Jean-Charles Pichegru from command. In 1796, under the command of General Jean Victor Marie Moreau, the Army was more successful. After crushing the Reichsarmees elements at Kehl, the Army advanced into southwestern Germany.
Its success depended on the cooperation with France's Army of the Sambre and Meuse, commanded by Jean-Baptiste Jourdan. In 1796, the jealousies between Jourdan and Moreau, and among the subcommanders, complicated the efficient operations of both armies. After a summer of maneuver in which the Coalition force enticed the French deeper and deeper into German territory, the Habsburg commander Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen drubbed the French at Wurzburg and at second Wetzlar, and then defeated Jourdan's army at the Limburg-Altenkirchen. These battles destroyed any chance that Jourdan's force and Moreau's Army of the Rhine and Moselle could merge. Once Jourdan withdrew to the west bank of the Rhine, Charles could focus his attention on Moreau. By October they were fighting on the western slope of the Black Forest, and by December Charles had the French forces under siege at the principal river crossings of Kehl and Hüningen. By early 1797 the French had relinquished control of the bridgeheads over the Rhine. After an abbreviated German campaign in 1797, the French and Austrians agreed to the Treaty of Campo Formio and, on 29 September 1797, the Army of the Rhine and Moselle merged with the Army of the Sambre and Meuse to form the Army of Germany.
The Army of the Rhine and Moselle campaigns provided experience for a cadre of young officers. In his five-volume analysis of the Revolutionary Armies, Ramsey Weston Phipps called the Army of the Rhine and Moselle a "school for marshals", to emphasize the importance of experience under these conditions in training the future leadership of Napoleon's army.
Background
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.
Elements of the armies that were later formed into the Army of the Rhine and Moselle participated in the conquest of the Netherlands and the siege of Luxembourg. The various elements of the army won a victory at the Battle of Fleurus on 16 June 1794. 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 principle 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.
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.
Military cohesion became more acute following the 1793 introduction of mass conscription, the levée en masse. The basic unit of the army, the demi-brigade, mixed the men of the old army with the recruits from the levée en masse. Ideally, it was designed to include the regular infantry inherited from the old Royal regiments, who were relatively well-trained and equipped, dressed in white uniforms and wearing tarleton helmets, with the national guard units, who were less well-trained or equipped, with blue uniforms, and the fédéré volunteer battalions, who were poorly trained and equipped, with no uniform other than a red phrygian cap and a cockade of France.
Disruption reached the upper echelons of the army. French commanders walked a fine line between the security of the frontier and the Parisian clamor for victory. Commanders 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.
By 1794-95, military planners in Paris considered the upper Rhine Valley, the south-western German territories and Danube river basin of 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. The planners also understood the importance of moving the French army out of France and into the territories of other polities. Theirs was an army entirely dependent for support upon the countryside it occupied. Parisian revolutionaries and military commanders alike believed an assault into the German states was essential, not only in terms of war aims, but also in practical terms: the French Directory believed that war should pay for itself and did not budget for the payment or feeding of its troops.Bertaud, pp. 283–290. Although this solved some of the problems of feeding and paying the army, it did not solve them all. Until April 1796, soldiers were paid in an increasingly worthless paper currency called the Assignat; after April, pay was made in metallic value, but pay was still in arrears. Throughout the spring and early summer, the soldiers were in almost constant mutiny: in May 1796, in the border town of Zweibrücken, a demi-brigade revolted. In June, pay for two demi-brigades were in arrears and two companies rebelled.
Formation
In late 1794, military planners in Paris reorganized the army into task forces. The right flank of the Armies of the Center, later called the Army of the Moselle, the entire Army of the North and the Army of the Ardennes were combined to form the Army of the Sabre and Meuse, which was stationed on the west bank of the Rhine north of the junction of the Main and the Rhine rivers.
The remaining units of the former Army of the Center and the Army of the Rhine were united, initially on 29 November 1794, and formally on 20 April 1795, under command of Jean-Charles Pichegru. These troops were stationed further south, in a line that stretched on the west bank of the Rhine from Basel to the Main River.Smith, p. 111.
At Basel, where the river makes a wide, northerly turn at the Rhine knee, it enters what the locals call the Rhine Ditch (Rheingraben). This forms part of a rift valley some wide bordered by the mountainous Black Forest on the east (German side) and the Vosges mountains on the west (French side). At the far edges of the eastern flood plain, tributaries cut deep defiles into the western slope of the mountains.Knepper, pp. 19–20. Further to the north, the river became deeper and faster, until it widened into a delta where it emptied into the North Sea. Johann Samuel Ersch, Allgemeine encyclopädie der wissenschaften und künste in alphabetischer folge von genannten schrifts bearbeitet und herausgegeben. Leipzig, J. F. Gleditsch, 1889, pp. 64–66.
Campaign of 1795
The Rhine Campaign of 1795 (April 1795 to January 1796) opened both French armies attempted to cross the Rhine and capture the Fortress of Mainz. The French Army of the Sambre and Meuse, commanded by Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, confronted Count Clerfayt's Army of the Lower Rhine in the north, while the French Army of Rhine and Moselle under Pichegru lay opposite Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser's army in the south. From April until August, both sides engaged in a waiting game until, in August, Jourdan crossed and quickly seized Düsseldorf. The Army of the Sambre and Meuse advanced south to the Main River, completely isolating Mainz. Pichegru's Army of the Rhine and Moselle surprised the Bavarian garrison of Mannheim; by mid-month, both French armies held significant footholds on the east bank of the Rhine. The French fumbled away the promising start to their offensive. Pichegru bungled at least one opportunity to seize Clerfayt's supply base in the Battle of Handschuhsheim, with resultant significant losses. With Pichegru unexpectedly inactive, Clerfayt massed against Jourdan, beat him at Höchst in October, and forced most of the Army of the Sambre and Meuse to retreat to the west bank of the Rhine.Ramsay Weston Phipps, The Armies of the First French Republic: Volume II The Armées du Moselle, du Rhin, de Sambre-et-Meuse, de Rhin-et-Moselle, US, Pickle Partners Publishing, 2011 (1923–1933), p. 212.