Battle of Schliengen

Battle of Schliengen
Part of the War of the First Coalition
Present-day view of the battlefield
Date 24 October 1796 Location Schliengen, Lörrach, Baden 47°45′20″N 7°34′38″E / 47.75556°N 7.57722°E / 47.75556; 7.57722 Result Austrian victory
Belligerents
Austria	France
Commanders and leaders
Archduke Charles	Jean Moreau
Strength
24,000	32,000
Casualties and losses
800 killed and wounded[1]	1,200 killed and wounded
class=notpageimage| Location within Europe

At the Battle of Schliengen (24 October 1796), the French Army of the Rhine and Moselle under the command of Jean-Victor Moreau and the Austrian army under the command of Archduke Charles of Austria both claimed victories. The village of Schliengen lies in the present-day Kreis Lörrach close to the border of present-day Baden-Württemberg (Germany), the Haut-Rhin (France), and the Canton of Basel-Stadt (Switzerland).

During the French Revolutionary Wars, Schliengen was a strategically important location for the armies of both Republican France and Habsburg Austria. Control of the area gave either combatant access to southwestern German states and important Rhine crossings. On 20 October Moreau retreated from Freiburg im Breisgau and established his army along a ridge of hills. The severe condition of the roads prevented Archduke Charles from flanking the French right wing. The French left wing lay too close to the Rhine to outflank, and the French center, positioned in a 7-mile (11 km) semi-circle on heights that commanded the terrain below, was unassailable. Instead, he attacked the French flanks directly, and in force, which increased casualties for both sides.

Although the French and the Austrians claimed victory at the time, military historians generally agree that the Austrians achieved a strategic advantage. However, the French withdrew from the battlefield in good order and several days later crossed the Rhine River at Hüningen. A confusion of politics and diplomacy in Vienna wasted any strategic advantage that Charles might have obtained and locked the Habsburg force into two sieges on the Rhine, when the troops were badly needed in northern Italy. The battle is commemorated on a monument in Vienna and on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.