On 3 December 1800 the French army of General Jean Victor Moreau routed the Austrian and Bavarian army of the young Archduke John at Hohenlinden, east of Munich. The Austrians came through a forest in separate columns and were broken, the decisive blow falling on their left. Three weeks later Austria signed an armistice at Steyr.1
Battle of Hohenlinden
3 December 1800 · 225 years ago
War resumes in Bavaria
After Bonaparte's victory at Marengo in June 1800 there was talk of peace, but Austria was not yet ready to accept the French terms. In 1800 the emperor's brother, Archduke John, aged eighteen, was given command of the army in Bavaria, though only nominally: the real direction lay with his adviser, General Franz von Lauer.2
When the war resumed late in the year, John went over to the offensive, aiming at Munich. On 3 December his army, Austrians and Bavarians, marched through the forest around Hohenlinden in separate columns, believing the French were giving way.3
The rout in the forest
Moreau's troops struck the columns as they came through the woods, and the Austrian commanders, thinking they had only a rear guard in front of them, failed to bring their forces together in time. The French general Antoine Richepanse attacked the Austrian left and broke it; the Fondation Napoléon calls his bravery the deciding factor, and Kieswetter writes that his improvised attack shattered the two Austrian columns on that wing. The Austrian army dissolved into a disorderly rout.4
Disputed numbers
The figures vary widely. The Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte, the Bavarian state history museum, puts the French at 70,000 against more than 60,000 Austrians and Bavarians; the historian James K. Kieswetter gives 100,000 against 111,000, the strength of the two armies as a whole.5
On losses, the museum says the imperial forces lost almost 12,000 men and 50 guns and the French between 1,300 and 2,500. Kieswetter gives some 18,000 Austrian casualties against 5,000 French, and the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 8,000 against 5,000 killed and wounded. All agree that the defeat was crushing and the French loss far smaller.6
To the gates of Vienna
There was no longer an Austrian army of any size between Moreau and Vienna. He pursued as far as Steyr, where Austria signed an armistice on 25 December 1800. Archduke Charles, hastily recalled to command, could do nothing to stop him. The Peace of Lunéville in February 1801 ended the War of the Second Coalition.7
Moreau did not enjoy his fame for long. In 1804 he was arrested and tried with the royalist conspirators Cadoudal and Pichegru, and went into exile in the United States. In 1813 he returned to Europe to serve with the allies against Napoleon, and a French cannonball mortally wounded him at the Battle of Dresden that August.8
Also on this day
Battle of Wenden
3 December 1626 · 399 years ago
A Lithuanian force under Aleksander Gosiewski made a surprise attack on Swedish troops under Gustav Horn near Wenden, in present-day Latvia, in the Polish-Swedish War of 1626-1629. The attack was beaten off, and Gosiewski had to pull back and go on the defensive.
