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The First Battle of Stockach, 1799 (The 11W Military History Series)

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JKH1232's picture
February 7, 2016 at 11:21am
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Well, it's the day of the Big Game, since I don't want to fall afoul of the NFL's copyright lawyers.  However, we have some time, and I think we can spend it talking about the outbreak of the War of the Second Coalition, and the first moves of the German campaign, leading to the First Battle of Stockach.

The Outbreak of the War of the Second Coalition

While Austria had sued for peace, and the peace terms of the Treaty of Camp Formio weren't particularly harsh, the Austrians were not overly interested in getting down to brass tacks in carrying them out.   The Austrians moved slowly to surrender their lands in Italy, though, they moved quickly to consolidate their gains.  At the Congress of Rastatt, called to support the French rearrangement of the principalities of the Holy Roman Empire, the Austrians openly supported French efforts, but behind the scenes, supported the squabbles and disagreements of the various petty princes, dragging out the Congress in an effort to keep the French from organizing much of anything in preparation for a break.  During the delay, the Austrians continued negotiations with the British and rebuilding their strength.

Additionally, the French had trouble in their newly conquered lands.  While northern Italy remained largely peaceful, the peasantry in the old Austrian Netherlands and Switzerland found themselves left out of the power structure of the republics they now found themselves in.  Under the old systems, they retained a number of important rights, but those rights were quickly assailed once those systems were swept away by revolutionaries- who apparently forgot they need to take care of the people that fed them.  This led to revolts in 1798, and to massive French interventions in those areas to put them down, making the French look weaker.

The third major issue leading to the outbreak of the War of the Second Coalition came from Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign.  As we discussed before, Napoleon made a stopover in Malta, and, in so doing, forced the Surrender of the Knights of St. John.  The commander of that order was Tsar Paul of Russia, and he took Napoleon's invasion as a personal insult.  While the Russians never really considered the French Revolution much of their affair, the Russians became more receptive to British and Austrian diplomatic efforts. 

Eventually, the Austrians, British and Russians came to the conclusion that France was growing weaker, and that this was a good time to recover the territory lost in the War of the First Coalition.  Over the winter, they agreed to a strategy- the Austrians would fight on the Danube, the Russians in Italy and Switzerland, the British and Russians in the Netherlands.  This allowed the Allies to concentrate their forces, and bring overwhelming force to bear on the less well prepared French armies.

 

The Early Danube Campaign

For their main effort along the Danube, the Austrians selected their best, battle-tested commander, Archduke Charles.  They gave him command of the general front, as well as his own army of 80,000 men. and 114 guns  While the French chose the best commander available to them, Jean Baptiste Jourdan, his army, the Army of the Danube, was wofefully underprepared.  Most of the veterans had left French service, his men were poorly equipped and fed, and he could muster 35,000 men and 64 guns.  Jourdan was ordered to undertake defensive positions to guard against an Austrian crossing of the Rhine.  To accomplish this, he opted for a forward defense, moving his army to the land between the Danube and Lake Constance, where he established his army in a long, drawn out line.

Charles decided to move quickly.  He broke up his army into a series of small columns, allowing them to march quickly.  By March 7th, elements of his advance guard had reached Ostrach, followed by elements of the French Army on the 9th.  Both sides began organizing their dispersed forces, racing to put them together.  At this point, however, neither side had declared war, officially.  Over the next two or so weeks, the outposts and pickets skirmished with each other while the armies assembled and waited to hear about the outbreak of war.

 

 

On the 20th of March, Jourdan sent an emissary to ask if the Austrians had declared war.  The Austrian commander on the scene, Prince Schwarzenberg, replied that he didn't have a declaration of war, but that the Austrians were abrogating the Treaty of Campo Formio.  In response, Jourdan ordered an attack, launching columns into the Austrian left and center.  While these attacks gained ground in the early going, Charles was able to pour massive reinforcements into the area, blunting, then quickly reversing the French advances.  At dawn on the 21st, Charles launched a general attack, moving against the French on all fronts and trying to march around the French flanks.  The French held for the morning, but fell back to a second line of hills in the afternoon, where they held until nightfall.  Jourdan conducted a reconnaissance in the early night, and decided he was too outnumbered to fight.  He abandoned the field at Ostrach in the night, heading west.  Both sides left 2000-2500 men on the field, but the Austrians could absorb the losses easily.

 

Jourdan fell back further, looking to find another defensive spot.  He found it outside the city of Stockach, where the Danube and Lake Constance narrowed again.

The Battle of Stockach

Jourdan formed up his army around Stockach on March 23rd.  Charles' pursuit had been slow, and this allowed the French enough time to catch their breath and put together a plan.  Vastly outnumbered, Jourdan believed he had only one option open to him: an all out attack.  He spent the 24th of March waiting, preparing for the attack while the Austrians closed in on him.  The Austrians advanced in several columns, forming up once the French had come to a halt.

 

 

Jourdan formed up his army into four columns for the attack. Against the Austrian right, he sent Vandamme and St. Cyr.  During the night of the 24-25, Vandamme made his way around the flank of the Austrian army, hoping to attack from the rear.  He sent Soult against the Austrian left, while he would command the attack against the Austrian center.  Most of the French hopes were pinned on the attack organized by St. Cyr and Vandamme- it would be difficult for the other attacks to go forward without that one.

At dawn on the 25th, St. Cyr and Vandamme launched a violent and well coordinated attack against the Austrian right, catching Austrian forces between them.  St. Cyr's forces had seized a wooded area, allowing them a place to retreat and reform during their attacks, and which gave them cover against Austrian fire.  The woods needed to be cleared, or the whole flank was in danger.  Sensing the battle in the balance, Archduke Charles deployed a force of elite grenadiers and heavy cavalry to carry out the attack, leading them to the field personally.  Charles formed up at the front of the grenadiers before the assault, but was grabbed by the soldiers there and prevented from leading the attack personally.  Instead, he had to settle for leading the second wave of attackers, which cleared the woods.  Jourdan himself rushed to the scene to rally the defenders, but was nearly killed in the assault led by Charles.

At the Austrian center, Jourdan's assault ran into the main body of the Austrian army.  More and more Austrians came to the fight, rapidly blunting the attack and forcing the French back.  Against the Austrian left, the French began their assault with the usual bombardment, followed by an attack in columns.  Three attacks went against the Austrians, and all three failed.  The Austrians began reforming from a defensive to an offensive posture, with a heavy bombardment.  Soult, having run out of ammunition for his cannons and men, had no choice but to fall back.  Both sides had, again, suffered equal casualties, about 500 dead and 2000 wounded, with another 2000 French captured.

 

The army in retreat, Jourdan decided that he had little choice but to forget about facing the Austrian army in battle.  He decided to retreat to the northwest and the Black Forest in order to protect the approaches in to France, rather than to the south to join up with the French army of Helvetia.   Charles didn't pursue the French any further, however- orders arrived from Vienna, ordering him to stay put until the Austrian-Russian offensive into Switzerland came to a victorious conclusion.  Jourdan left the army to return to Paris to ask for more men, but refused to return to the army, claiming sickness.  Without a leader, and demoralized from the double defeats in March, the Army of the Danube began to wither away.

If you like this sort of stuff, feel free to both discuss this further, and take a look at the archive, which is here.

This is a forum post from a site member. It does not represent the views of Eleven Warriors unless otherwise noted.

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