In 1796, the army of the Sambre and Meuse, commanded by General
Jourdan, effected a retreat, which was rendered still more difficult
by the loss of his line of communication. Seeing, however, that the
forces of the archduke Charles were scattered, Jourdan, in order to
accomplish his retreat upon Frankfort, resolved to open himself a way
by Wurtzburg, where there were at that moment only two divisions of
the Austrian army. This movement would have been attended with success,
if the French general, believing he had simply these two divisions to
contend with, had not committed the error of separating himself from
the corps of Lefevre--which he left at Schweinfurt to cover the only
direct communication of the army with its base of operation.
The commission of this fault at the outset, added to some slowness in
the march of the French general, secured the victory to the archduke,
who hastened to concentrate his forces.
The arrival of the two divisions, also, of Kray and Wartesleben, during
the battle, enabled him to oppose fifty thousand men to the French
army, which scarcely numbered thirty thousand combatants. This last
was consequently beaten, and obliged to continue its retreat by the
mountains of Fuldes, where the badness of the roads could be equalled
only by the difficulty of the country.
The division of Lefevre, amounting to fourteen thousand men, would,
in all probability, have turned the scale in favor of Jourdan, had
the latter not unfortunately conceived that two divisions only were
opposing his passage to Wurtzburg.