Second Battle of Kehl (1796)

The Second Battle of Kehl in 1796 occurred on 18 September, when General Franz Petrasch's Austrian and imperial troops stormed the French-held bridgehead over the Rhine river. Although the Austrians originally pushed out the French defenders, a strong counter-attack forced them to retreat, leaving the French still in possession of the village and the important bridgeheads crossing the Rhine. Kehl is a village in present day German state of Baden-Württemberg, then, part of Baden-Durlach. Across the river, Strasbourg, an Alsatian city, was a French Revolutionary stronghold. This battle was part of the Rhine Campaign of 1796, in the French Revolutionary War of the First Coalition.

In the 1790s, the Rhine was wild, unpredictable, and difficult to cross. Its channels and tributaries created islands of trees and vegetation that were alternate submerged by floods or exposed during the dry seasons. At Kehl and the city of Strasbourg  lay a complex of bridges, gates, fortifications and barrage dams. These had been constructed by the fortress architect Sébastien le Préstre de Vauban in the seventeenth century. The crossings had been contested before: in 1678 during the French-Dutch war, in 1703 during the War of the Spanish Succession, in 1733 during the War of the Polish Succession, and earlier in 1796, when the French crossed into the German states on 23–24 June. Critical to French success was the army's ability to cross the Rhine at will. The crossings at Hüningen, near the Swiss city of Basel, and the crossing at Kehl, gave them ready access to most of southwestern Germany; from there, French armies could sweep north, south, or east, depending on their military goal.

Throughout the summer of 1796, the French and the Austrians had chased each other back and forth across the south German states. In late summer, the Austrian force, under the command of Archduke Charles, had pushed the French back across the southern states. As the French withdrew into the Black Forest, which lay to the east of the Kehl, Austrian troops attempted to secure the crossing at Kehl. Control of the bridges there would prevent the French from crossing to safety in Strasbourg, and require Moreau to withdraw further to the south, and cross by the Swiss city of Basel.

On 18 September 1796, the Austrians temporarily acquired control of the tête-du-ponts (bridgeheads) joining Kehl and Strasbourg until a strong French counter-attack forced them to retreat. The situation remained in status quo until late October. Immediately after the Battle of Schliengen, while most of Moreau's army retreated south to cross the Rhine at Hüningen, Count Baillet Latour moved north to Kehl to begin the siege.

General campaign
At the end of the Rhine Campaign of 1795, the two sides called a truce. This agreement lasted until 20 May 1796, when the Austrians announced that it would end on 31 May. The Coalition's Army of the Lower Rhine counted 90,000 troops. The 20,000-man right wing under Duke Ferdinand Frederick Augustus of Württemberg, who was replaced by Wilhelm von Wartensleben, stood on the east bank of the Rhine behind the Sieg River, observing the French bridgehead at Düsseldorf. The garrisons of Mainz Fortress and Ehrenbreitstein Fortress included 10,000 more. The remainder of the Imperial and Coalition army was posted on the west bank behind the Nahe River. Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser led the 80,000-strong Army of the Upper Rhine. Its right wing occupied Kaiserslautern on the west bank while the left wing under Anton Sztáray, Michael von Fröhlich and Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé guarded the Rhine from Mannheim to Switzerland. The original Austrian strategy was to capture Trier and to use their position on the west bank to strike at each of the French armies in turn. However, after news arrived in Vienna of Napoleon Bonaparte's successes, Wurmser was sent to Italy with 25,000 reinforcements. Reconsidering the situation, the Aulic Council gave Archduke Charles command over both Austrian armies and ordered him to hold his ground.

On the French side, the 80,000-man Army of Sambre-et-Meuse held the west bank of the Rhine down to the Nahe and then southwest to Sankt Wendel. On the army's left flank, Jean Baptiste Kléber had 22,000 troops in an entrenched camp at Düsseldorf. The right wing of the Army of the Rhine and Moselle was positioned behind the Rhine from Hüningen northward, centered along the Queich River near Landau and its left wing extended west toward Saarbrücken. Pierre Marie Barthélemy Ferino led Moreau's right wing at Hüningen, Louis Desaix commanded the center and Laurent Gouvion Saint-Cyr directed the left wing. Ferino's wing consisted of three infantry and cavalry divisions under François Antoine Louis Bourcier and Henri François Delaborde. Desaix's command included three divisions led by Michel de Beaupuy, Antoine Guillaume Delmas  and Charles Antoine Xaintrailles. Saint-Cyr's wing had two divisions commanded by Guillaume Philibert Duhesme, and Alexandre Camille Taponier.

The French plan called for two armies to press against the flanks of the northern Coalition armies in the German states while a third army approached Vienna through Italy. Specifically, Jean-Baptiste Jourdan's army would push south from Düsseldorf, hopefully drawing troops and attention toward themselves, and Moreau's army massed on the east side of the Rhine by Mannheim. According to plan, Jourdan's army feinted toward Mannheim, and Charles quickly reapportioned his troops. Once this occurred, Moreau's army endured a forced march south and attacked the bridgehead at Kehl, which was guarded by 7,000 imperial troops—troops recruited that spring from the Swabian Circle polities, inexperienced and untrained—which held the bridgehead for several hours, but then retreated toward Rastatt. Moreau reinforced the bridgehead with his forward guard, and his troops poured into Baden unhindered. In the south, by Basel, Ferino's column moved quickly across the river and advanced up the Rhine along the Swiss and German shoreline, toward Lake Constance and spread into the southern end of the Black Forest. Worried that his supply lines would be overextended or his army would be flanked, Charles began a retreat to the east.

At this point, the jealousies and competition between the French generals came into play. Moreau could have joined up with Jourdan's army in the north, but did not; he proceeded eastward, pushing Charles into Bavaria, and Jourdan pushed eastward, pushing Wartensleben's autonomous corps into the Ernestine duchies. On either side, the union of two armies—Wartensleben's with Charles' or Jourdan's with Moreau's—could have crushed the opposition.

Wartensleben and Charles united first, and turned the tide against the French. With 25,000 of his best troops, the archduke crossed to the north bank of the Danube at Regensburg and moved north to join his colleague Wartensleben. Once Charles and Wartensleben's forces were reunited, their combined efforts pushed the French slowly to the east. The defeat of Jourdan's army at the battles of Amberg, Würzburg and Altenkirchen allowed Charles to move more troops to the south, and effectively removed Jourdan from the remainder of the campaign.

Preliminary action at Bruchsal: September 1796
While Charles and Moreau jockeyed for position on the eastern slope of the Black Forest, Franz Petrasch engaged the French at Bruchsal. The troops there, under orders of General Marc Amand Élisée Scherb, included the 68th Demi-brigade and two squadrons of the 19th Dragoons, had remained behind after the Battle of Ettlingen to observe the garrisons of Mannheim and Philippsburg. Realizing that his command was too small to withstand a concerted attack by the stronger Austrians, Scherb withdrew toward Kehl. It was important that he reach Kehl and secure the crossing across the Rhine to Strasburg: Moreau, now well into a retreat across the mountains, would need the crossing for a safe passage to France.

An initial Austrian attack on the French position at Bruchsal favored the French, who charged the Austrians with bayonets. Again, on 5 and 6 September, the Austrians and French spent most of the day skirmishing at their advanced posts but this masked the Austrian intention of circling around Bruchsal and marching south to secure the Rhine crossing to Strasbourg. General Scherb received intelligence of a contingent of infantry and cavalry marching against him and retired south. Scherb found the Austrians already in possession of Untergrombach, a village south of Bruchsal. After he tried to force his way through, the Austrians fell back to Weingarten at 49.05139°N, 8.53056°W and waited there for the French to catch up. By the time the French arrived there, Scherb found himself caught between a detachment of Austrians by the Kinzig river, and another detachment of Austrians behind him. General Moreau deployed a demi-brigade of infantry and a regiment of cavalry from his army in the Black Forest, with instructions to proceed by forced marches to Kehl, but General Petrasch, acting on intelligence sent Konstantin 'Aspré with two battalions to occupy Renchen, which is only about 10 mi from Kehl. This effectively prevented Moreau's reinforcements from reaching Kehl and locked Scherb was effectively locked in place. The undermanned garrison at Kehl was on its own.

Action at Kehl
The Kehl garrison consisted of one battalion of the 24th Demi-brigade and some detachments of the 104th under command of Balthazar Alexis Henri Schauenburg. This was too weak a force to defend a position of such importance, or to develop additional extensive works. Moreau reported that some of Scherb's troops had arrived, but it is unclear which ones. Furthermore, the lack of cooperation from local peasant workers and the exhaustion of troops prevented the enhancements of the fortifications from proceeding with any speed. On the evening of 16 September, Petrasch and most of his column had arrived at Bischofsheim, immediately by Kehl, with three battalions and two squadrons; more troops were not far behind. By 17 September, a small corps of Austrians approached the outskirts of Kehl and vigorously attacked the French sentries there; this was merely a prelude to the significant action the following day.

Action of 18 September
Before the break of dawn on 18 September (03:45), three Austrian columns attacked Kehl, while another kept Scherb locked in place by the Kinzig. The principal column, comprising the 38th Regiment, crossed the Kinzig river above the French position and proceeded toward the dykes of the Rhine above (south of) Kehl. This placed them between Scherb's force and Kehl. Using the dykes as protection, and conducted by some peasants familiar with the fortifications, they advanced as far as the horn work on the Upper Rhine and entered a gorge which led them to the outskirts of Kehl. The second column of the 38th Regiment, under command of Major Busch, proceeded via Sundheim toward Kehl, and obtained possession of the village itself, although not the bridge leading to Strasbourg. The third column, which included three companies of Serbians and a division of Hussars, executed a feint on the left bank of the river. One column of reserve, under the command of Franz Pongratz, approached as far as the French earthworks on the banks of the Rhine to support the columns ahead of him; another, which included a battalion of the 12th Regiment (Manfredini), moved past Neumuhl at 48.57°N, 7.84389°W toward Kehl.

Quickly, the Austrians possessed all the earthworks of the town, the village itself, and the fortress; their skirmishers reached one side of the abutment of the old bridge of palisades, and advanced to the other side, across the islands formed by branches of the Kinzig and the Rhine. There, almost within eye-shot of the French sentinels, they halted; there is some confusion about why they stopped. Possibly they mistook the abutment for the bridge itself, as Moreau seemed to think. Regardless, the troops there did not burn the bridge, but started plundering and drinking. Despite their disadvantage, the French cavalry tried to retired into Kehl via the Kinzig bridge, but the heavy Austrians fire destroyed most of them.

The French executed several attempts to retake the bridges. The 68th, under command of general Jean-Baptiste de Sisce, was repulsed three times by the superiorly-numbered Austrian force and the fearsome fire of case shot from four cannons that lined the principal road. Not until 19:00 did fortune favor the French, when Colonel d'Aspré and two hundred men of the Regiment Ferdinand were captured within the fort itself. The next in command, a Major Delas, was badly wounded, leaving no one in overall command of the 38th Regiment. The French general Schauenburg, who had gone to Strasburg for troops, returned with some reinforcements, including part of the Strasbourg national guard, and led these troops over the pontoon bridges. They met at once an impetuous Austrian attack, but were sufficiently strong to recover. At 22:00, the Austrians still held the redoubt and the houses at the edge of the village; the arrival of a fresh battalion of the 12th Regiment led to a new attack, but it was repulsed. The Austrians had insufficient reserves to meet the fresh troops from Strasbourg. By 23:00 though, the French had recovered Strasbourg, the village of Kehl and all of the French earthen works.

Losses
Report on the losses varies. According to Smith and his sources, the Austrians lost 2,000 men killed, missing and wounded and the French, considerably fewer: 1,200 missing and captured. German sources report, though, that the Austrians lost 1,500 men, and 300 prisoners, and the French had 300 dead, and 800 wounded.

Impact of September action
Despite the limited success of Petrasch's action, it had a broad impact on the movements of the main armies of Moreau and Archduke Charles. By preventing access to the Kehl/Strasbourg crossing, Petrasch forced Moreau to move south; any retreat into France must happen via the bridges at Hüningen. The next contact between the main armies occurred on 19 October at Emmendingen, in the Elz valley which winds through the Black Forest. The section of the valley involved in the battle runs south-west through the mountains from Elzach, through Bleibach and Waldkirch. Just to the southwest of Waldkirch, the river emerges from the mountains and flows north-west towards the Rhine, with the Black Forest to its right. This section of the river passes through Emmendingen before it reaches Riegel. Riegel sits in a narrow gap between the Black Forest and an isolated outcropping of volcanic hills known as the Kaiserstuhl.

The Austrian and French armies met again at Schliengen on 24 October. Moreau had arrayed his force in a semi-circle on the heights, offering him a tactically superior position. Charles threw his army against both flanks; the French left flank fought stubbornly, but gave way under the pressure of Condé's emigre corps; the right flank withstood a day-long battering by Latour and Nauendorf, but eventually had to withdraw. The loss of access to the crossing at Kehl required that Moreau withdraw south to Hüningen.

With a strong rear guard provided by Generals Abbatucci and Lariboisière, he abandoned his position the same night and retreated part of the 9.7 mi to Hüningen. The right and left wings followed. By 3 November, he had reached Haltingen, where he organized his force to cross over the bridges into France. The Archduke then sent most of his army north to besiege Kehl.

Orders of battle
The following troops participated in the action at Kehl.

French

 * 24th Demi-brigade de Ligne (one battalion)
 * 68th Demi-brigade de Ligne (three battalions)
 * 104th Demi-brigade de Ligne (remnants)
 * 19th Dragoon Regiment (two squadrons)

Austrian

 * Infantry Regiment Nr. 12 (three battalions)
 * Infantry Regiment Nr. 15 (three battalions)
 * Infantry Regiment Nr. 38 (elements)