page_title: Battle of Ettlingen
section_title: Results
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Ettlingen / Results
caption_attribution_description: English: Lazare Carnot, a feverishly productive member of the Committee of Public Safety during the Terror. His part in raising the levée en masse probably saved the French Revolutionary armies from defeat at the hands of their numerically superior opponents.
context_page_description: The Battle of Ettlingen or Battle of Malsch was fought during the French Revolutionary Wars between the armies of the First French Republic and Habsburg Austria near the town of Malsch, 9 kilometres southwest of Ettlingen. The Austrians under Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen tried to halt the northward advance of Jean Victor Marie Moreau's French Army of Rhin-et-Moselle along the east bank of the Rhine River. After a tough fight, the Austrian commander found that his left flank was turned. He conceded victory to the French and retreated east toward Stuttgart. Ettlingen is located 10 kilometres south of Karlsruhe.
  The Rhine Campaign of 1796 saw Moreau's army facing the Austrian Army of the Upper Rhine under Maximilian Anton Karl, Count Baillet de Latour in the south. Meanwhile, Jean-Baptiste Jourdan's French Army of Sambre-et-Meuse opposed the Army of the Lower Rhine under Archduke Charles in the north. Jourdan drubbed Duke Ferdinand Frederick Augustus of Württemberg at Altenkirchen on 4 June, compelling Archduke Charles to rush to the rescue with reinforcements. Charles defeated Jourdan at Wetzlar on the 15th, forcing him to pull back to the west bank of the Rhine.
context_section_description: French losses numbered 2,000 killed and wounded plus 400 captured. The Austrians suffered 1,300 killed and wounded with 1,300 captured. On 10 July, Charles evacuated Malsch and ordered a forced march east to Pforzheim via Karlsruhe. Also on the 10th, the French occupied Ettlingen and Neuenbürg. Anxious to protect his magazines at Heilbronn, Charles halted at Pforzheim for a few days. For his part, Moreau would not believe that Charles had given up, so he waited around Ettlingen for several days. Meanwhile, the Austrians packed their supplies into wagons and headed east on 14 July. The next day, Moreau moved on Pforzheim but found the archduke gone.
  When Archduke Charles withdrew from the Rhine valley, he left about 30,000 troops in garrisons along the river. There were 15,000-foot and 1,200 horse in Mainz, 3,000 infantry in Ehrenbreitstein, 8,800 infantry and 300 cavalry in Mannheim and 2,500-foot soldiers in Philippsburg. To contain the first two, Jourdan left 28,545 troops under François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers while Moreau only detailed 2,800 infantry and 240 cavalry to watch the last two places. For the most part, the Austrian garrisons remained quiescent. But the Austrians in Mannheim caused mischief by attacking Kehl on 18 September. More might have been accomplished in that assault, but the Austrian soldiers paused to pillage the French camp and were driven off by their enemies. Even so, Charles not only lost the services of the 30,000 men in the fortresses but also of the Swabians, Saxons and other German allies when he retreated from the Rhine. These auxiliary forces began to negotiate with the French when their territories were occupied.
  Historian Ramsay Weston Phipps believed that Charles might have remained along the Rhine and defeated the French armies one after the other. Unlike the divided command of the French, the Austrians enjoyed unity of command. After Ettlingen, Phipps thought that the correct French strategy was for the two French armies to join. However, this was not part of Carnot's plan, which was for each army to operate against the Austrian flanks. Carnot's strategy had succeeded in 1794 during the Flanders Campaign and he expected that it would win again. However, in 1794 the Coalition was made up of several countries with different vulnerabilities, while in 1796 Charles could issue a command and expect it to be obeyed. The next clash would be the Battle of Neresheim on 11 August.
caption: Lazare Carnot
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