Battle of Handschuhsheim

Part of the War of the First Coalition

Date	24 September 1795
Location	Heidelberg, Electorate of the Palatinate, modern-day Germany Coordinates: 49°25′44″N 8°41′13″E / 49.42889°N 8.68694°E / 49.42889; 8.68694
Result	Austrian victory

Belligerents

French Republic

Habsburg Austria

Commanders and leaders

Georges Dufour (POW) (WIA)

Peter Quosdanovich

Units involved

Army of Rhin-et-Moselle, 6th & 7th Divisions

Army of Lower Rhine

Strength

12,000

8,000

Casualties and losses

1,500, 8 guns

187

The Battle of Handschuhsheim or Battle of Heidelberg (24 September 1795) saw an 8,000-man force from Habsburg Austria under Peter Vitus von Quosdanovich face 12,000 men from the Republican French army led by Georges Joseph Dufour. Thanks to a devastating cavalry charge, the Austrians routed the French with disproportionate losses. The fight occurred during the War of the First Coalition, part of the French Revolutionary Wars. Handschuhsheim is now a district of Heidelberg, but it was a village north of the city in 1795.

In early 1795 many of France's enemies made peace, leaving only Austria and Great Britain in opposition. In September, the French government ordered the armies of Jean-Charles Pichegru and Jean-Baptiste Jourdan to attack the Austrian armies on the Rhine River. The French scored early successes, capturing two key cities and crossing the river in force. Pichegru sent two divisions to seize the Austrian supply base at Heidelberg, but his troops were bloodily repulsed at Handshuhsheim. Afterward, the Austrian commander François Sébastien Charles Joseph de Croix, Count of Clerfayt turned on Jourdan's army, driving it back across the Rhine. The Austrians later won the battles of Mainz, Pfeddersheim and Mannheim, forcing the French armies back onto the west bank of the Rhine.

On 19 January 1795, the French army of General of Division Jean-Charles Pichegru seized Amsterdam, extinguished the Dutch Republic, and set up the satellite Batavian Republic. The armies of the First French Republic stood victorious on the west bank of the Rhine. The Kingdom of Prussia, intent on joining the Russian Empire in carving up the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, desired to exit from the First Coalition. Not wishing to be swamped by thousands of unemployed soldiers at the peace, the French Directory drove a very hard bargain. Nevertheless, Prussia, the Electorate of Saxony, Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, Electorate of Hanover, and Kingdom of Spain chose to make peace with France. Only the United Kingdom and Habsburg Austria continued the struggle. The Directory relaxed price controls and soon the cost of food and clothing shot up. Bread riots broke out in Paris during April and May, and mobs invaded the National Convention. The Directory struck back. On 22 May 1795, Pichegru led troops in putting down a revolt in the Faubourg Sainte-Antoine; nine of the arrested ringleaders killed themselves or were executed.

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Wikipedia