The Battle of the Vosges also known as the Battle of Tripstadt was fought on 13 July 1794 in eastern France in the Vosges Mountains from which it derives its name.

Introduction

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By July 1794 the fledgling French Republic had been at war for a little under two years and in that time its fortunes had changed dramatically. Following initial setbacks for the Revolutionaries the war changed in France's favour with the appointment of Lazare Carnot to the post of War Minister (or as the position was formally known - Head of the Committee of Public Safety War Section). Following the introduction of the levée en masse or mass conscription French armies had increased to around 800,000 frontline troops and a grand total of between 1.4 and 1.6 million men under arms. These were divided into 13 principal field armies.

The largest of these was the Army of the Rhine which in July 1794 amounted to around 115,000 and was under the command of the unremarkable General Michaud. The Army of the Rhine was deployed along a frontline some 70 kilometres in length and was opposed by an Allied army of around 70,000 Prussians, Austrians and Saxons under the command of Prussian Field Marshal von Möllendorf. Despite the sizeable numerical disparity between the two armies the Allied force held strong defensive positions and elevated terrain. In the approximate centre of the Allied line was the town of Tripstadt on which the ensuing battle would hinge.

The battle

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On 2 July Michaud launched an attack all along the front. The French army was halted everywhere except on the extreme right where a brilliant young divisional commander, Louis Desaix, successfully pushed back the Allied wing. However this left his division isolated and counter attacks by the Prince of Baden and future victor of Waterloo, von Blücher, reversed his advance whilst inflicting about 1,000 casualties. At the end of the day both armies occupied approximately the same positions as they had at the commencation of hostilities.

On orders from Carnot, Michaud launched a second offensive on 13 July. On the right of the French line General Gouvion Saint-Cyr, a future Napoleonic marshal, captured the village of Kaiserslautern supported by the artillery of General Desaix's division. In the centre of the battlefield General Taponnier's corps pushed back Prince von Höhenlohe's Prussian corps to Tripstadt whilst on the left the French advance divided the Allied line, thus denying General Kalckreuth the chance to assist Höhenlohe.

An attack on Tripstadt by Taponnier completed a French victory when the Austrians failed to support their Prussian allies. Möllendorf ordered his forces to regroup east of the Rhine on the night of 13-14 July thus ending all Allied presence on the west bank. On the 16th Kalckreuth and Höhenlohe rejoined the bulk of Möllendorf's army, but no attempt to salvage the situation was made until September when Höhenlohe successfully caught Michaud off-guard. This later success however was not followed up and the complacency of both forces led to stagnation of the front.

Battles of the French Revolutionary Wars | Battles of Austria