Friedrich Wilhelm von Loßberg
Zeitschrift für Kunst, Wissenschaft, und Geschichte des Krieges
(Journal of Art, Science, and History of the War)
Volumes 66-73
(Excerpt from Vol. 71)
The removal of Mainz gave the war a completely different form, by forcing the allied army, returned from France, to take the offensive again immediately, in order to throw the enemy back on the left bank of the Rhine, as we only then besieged Mainz, which, in the happiest case, was no longer feasible in the current year.
But before I share, as we came at last, and what a glorious portion the Hessians, especially the Guards Grenadier Regiment, took part in the events, a few more words about how it was possible for such a significant fortress as Mainz to do so could quickly fall into enemy hands, how little Custine has used this unexpected stroke of luck, and why we moved so heavily to become masters of the right bank of the Rhine, with the exception of Cassel - the bridgehead of Mainz.
The fact that the Prussians and we, having only the conquest of Paris in mind, penetrated as far as St. Menehould and Clermont without proper flank cover in Brabant and on the Upper Rhine, also meant that a French army arrived in Mainz without significant resistance , could proceed. Meanwhile, under Prince Esterházy, 12,000 to 15,000 Austrians in the Breisgau region and about 4,000 emigres on the right, as well as 7,000 Austrians under General Erbach, stood between the Saar and the Moselle Rivers; in between, however, were only 3,000 men under the Mainz Colonel Winkelmann in the city of Speier, issued in neutral territory to cover the same magazine.
But this neutrality was not disputed by the French General Custine, who was at Landau with 18,000 men. Informed by the weakness of the Winkelmann corps, the latter advanced, with the approval of the French Directory, for Winkelmann to retreat to the Rhine, and compelled this corps to capitulate on the left bank, opposite the village of Rheinhausen: not to serve against France within a year. After completing this task, Custine returned back to Landau on the mere rumor that an Austrian corps was advancing against him.
Winkelmann had bravely defended himself in Speier, which brought about both the capture of his corps as well as the loss of the magazine by being able to supply one as well as the other to Mainz, as a result of which the garrison there had 3,000 more soldiers, he, as the leader of this force, could have had a strong say in the measures of defense to be taken, and his bravura would have found a proper sphere of action. As an excuse, Winkelmann found that he had brought ships together on the Rhine, which, however, sailed off the cannon shot that had fallen on the first bet, with no guard at hand. Probably Winkelmann had also assumed that Custine would respect neutrality, and it is now to be astonished at the partiality that a war of leading parties could lay a magazine on neutral ground and assume that the opponent would respect such neutrality.
It was not until 16 October that Custine set out from Landau, after several inhabitants of the Rhine district (chiefly from Mainz, where Jacobin clubs had already been secretly formed) had come to him, assuring him that it was only his Appearance needed to seize this fortress. Success taught that he had not been deceived. The 19th met Custine before Mainz, the 20th he made some cannon shots against the outer work of the fortress, the 21st were opened the negotiations and the 22nd handed him the decrepit Mainz Governor Gyming the place against free withdrawal of the 3000 -strong garrison ; a crew that would not have had enough to withstand a regular attack, but was quite sufficient to protect the fort against the first attempt, especially since Custine was no more than 8,000 strong because of detachments to Kreuznach.
In the council of war before the surrender, the engineer-major Eickemeyer, who had the full confidence of the governor but was at the head of all the Jacobin Clubs in Mainz, declared that the fortress could not last twenty-four hours; Just defend you city bombardment and a storm without being able to prevent the conquest. A part of the garrison, 1100 Austrians under their brave Captain Adujar - they were scattered from the corps to Speier, as well as recruits and convalescents, excluded himself from this surrender by leaving the city with pulling back to Frankfurt. If only he had the strength to violently resist the shameful delivery of the fortress. The remainder of the garrison consisted of Circle Troops.
But why, after Custine had carried out his business against Speier, did not the Austrian corps under Esterházy from the Breisgau, or that of General Erbach, which stood between the Moselle and the Saar, come hurrying to save Mainz, and why by no means? The neighboring German princes, even without an invitation to do so, who thereby most assuredly covered their own country, could also assume that they would soon be able to obtain the troops they had used again by the offensive movement of the army returning from France incomprehensible; but the non-temporal matter, which is only able to think to some extent of the then frail German Reich and its military constitution, and which is not my purpose to describe in detail, will soon come back from his astonishment, but at the same time to the conviction that both the constitution of the military and the German army The lack of public spirit in particular also affects the many princes of Germany, who have brought about the humiliation of this nation, which only after a long disgrace and oppression has become conscientious in its power, and now stands stronger than ever before.
May the image of that unhappy time of the powerlessness, selfishness, and fragmentation of the powers caused by the German Empire always hover over all princes, so that they never forget where the poor defenses and the early disunity of the princes led this country with its powerful inhabitants. The only prince, who at that time probably could have decided to strengthen the garrison of Mainz, was Landgrave Wilhelm IX. But he was at that time with his army corps in the position at Clermont.
Custine soon showed that, as a general, he did not deserve the good fortune of having in such a light manner the fortress of Mainz, which was so important to Germany, in his hands, the importance of which was so greatly increased that it depended only on him From this point on he would have to throw himself on the line of retreat of the Prussian army returning from France, by demanding no more difficulty in taking away Koblenz and Ehrenbreitstein, to which he had even been requested by a deputation of the Koblenz magistrate, than that of Mainz would have found as soon as he had acted quickly. In consequence of this, that army would have been forced to cross the Rhine near Cologne, which would probably have had the further consequence in the methodical conduct of the war, that the French were partly in possession of the right bank of the Rhine and Main during the winter from 1792 to 1793. Considering that the surrender of Mainz had already been signed on the 21st of October, Custine was sure of the surrender of the fortress on that day, and that on the same day there was a detachment of his army corps close by the Nahe River near Bingen. Finally the first Hessian infantry arrived late in the evening on the 26th of October at Koblenz, there is no doubt that Custine, if he was supported by a proper general, would have acted with determination, this one so important for the whole war could see earlier than we did. At Koblenz and Ehrenbreitstein, before our arrival, there were only a few Trier Circle Troops, among them a few artillerymen, who occupied themselves with making cartridges, for which we also had to use the fourth part of our service during our stay.
The fear that Custine would be stopped to punish the city Koblenz for accepting the emigrants before the opening of the campaign in Champagne had led the magistrate to ask him for protection, while at the same time offering to offer to pay a considerable contribution, which may serve as a proof of what was said earlier, and how it was then in Germany. Mainly contributed to this by the many spiritual states, whose subjects could have no love for their princes, and still fewer for the general German fatherland, by princes chosen for their lifetime, with few exceptions, only for their own enrichment, thought as well as for their next relatives, while the latter sought to profit as much as possible from the circumstance that one of their family wore the archiepiscopal sovereign prince hat.
Custine, however, wasted his time in having a look at Frankfurt, taking possession of the salt-works of Nauheim (where, after brave resistance, a Hessian command of two officers and ninety men, commanded by Capitan Mondorf1) of the regiment. Lossberg, captured), as everywhere in the neighborhood to pay out contributions to Weilburg and Limburg. How much he feared serious resistance, which was probably a main reason why he did not approach the returning allied army, is also clear from the fact that he dared not attack Hanau, an insignificantly fortified city, in which only two Hessian, 1,100 men strong, infantry battalions under the governor General Lieutenant von Kospoth was in garrison, who had unconditionally carried out the command of his prince (who at that time had returned from France, back to Cassel) by courage and perseverance to see what he lacked in defenses.
To him who is involved in the methodical warfare of that time, it cannot seem conspicuous that, after the arrival of the Prussian army at Koblenz, we needed 6 weeks to get Frankfurt back into possession. If, at present, an army were in a similar situation, it would, as much as possible, after a necessary eight-day rest, proceed from Koblenz via Wiesbaden to Hochheim, by doing good or by force, or by way of requisition against subsequent payment would take what they needed to their maintenance. But at that time people did not think so, and I am firmly convinced that no one in all the different headquarters had conceived such a thought; for in the campaign, therefore, a correction was made to such an extent that one had proceeded to look for military wrongful grunts, but that, though the two cases had nothing in common, would have been an incomprehensible idea, to which one was all the less when the army returned from Champagne seemed too fatigued, and no preparations had been made to supply the troops.
The offensive movement was finally decided and advanced there according to all the rules of the art of war. To the end, the army stood behind the Lahn River, the base of operations (at Limburg and Weilburg that of the Duke, as united with the Hessen and Prussian Army Corps under General’s Kalkreuth and Biesenrodt in the position known from the Seven Years War in Krusdorf). We then slowly advanced into several columns, and indeed the wing columns on the two sides, which united at Frankfurt (until then less resistance, as was foreseen) in the apex of the triangle. Frankfurt was defended by the French because the duke's army advancing over Limburg and Homburg did not threaten the retreat line of the garrison to Hochst, otherwise this would probably have been earlier, especially in the case of a movement from the city Hanau to Sachsenhausen.
No shot would have fallen at Frankfurt when the Prussian army marched over Nastadt and Wiesbaden; and Custine, who boasted only where there was no serious resistance, would not have dared to fight against the army, which was maddening by Wiesbaden, and which could only have been desired by Prussian side, for all the army detachments advanced by Custine under Generals’ Nevinger and Houchard would go to Hochheim.
The opinion that the army returned from campaigns in Champagne had come too low to carry out such a movement, and that it lacked the necessary moral strength, I cannot hope for. An eight-day respite in the good quarters at Koblenz, to which the short Prussian marches from Luxemburg had completely restored us, and even the army at the total strength lacked one-third of the crew, which in any case was again suffering from the partial crisis. The troops of Cassel and Hesse-Darmstadt, which had been stationed at Marburg and Giessen, had been strengthened, but the means were perfectly adequate to our poorly organized and undisciplined opponents, who themselves had fewer combatants than ourselves, and who did not resemble the picture which Rotteck, Posselt and the like partymen have intended to beat us wherever we met them.
This would have been the case all the more, for in the course of the first campaigns, as in the case of 1794, in the allied army, but especially in our country, the belief was that we would never do otherwise than only through the greatest superiority of the enemy, could lose a foot of terrain: what belief - I refer to what I said earlier about this in the Guards Grenadier Regiment - has never been shaken in the course of all campaigns; but, in order not to cause any misunderstandings, I do not want to go unnoticed that the former French armies did not resemble those of the last period of the Revolutionary War, much less Napoleon's legions.
That in a concentrated advance from Koblenz over Wiesbaden to Hochheim we regained masters of the right bank of the Rhine in a much shorter time and with a lesser loss, than was the case with our heavy movement, which the Prussians were still operating in Limburg from Koblenz are fed with bread, is probably to be assumed as indivisible; only the concern of seeing the army in a similar accident as in Champagne, as the difficulties of boarding at that time, had so intimidated the minds that such an idea could not come to fruition, or at least lacked proper clarity. This seems all the more incomprehensible, as the French armies in Champagne had not followed the Prussians, but the General Count Clerfayt over Arlon to conquer Brabant (a favorite idea of Dumouriez); furthermore, Prince Hohenlohe stood by Trier with 15,000 troops, and at last Custine had already manifested such an inability (especially by his two-fold approach to Speier), that afterwards under much difficult conditions, the individuality of the enemy and the poorly disciplined army commanded by him taking into account the advance over Wiesbaden without the least danger would have been able to step.
Now, as far as the opinion of those concerned is concerned, that by a direct movement from Luxembourg on the left bank of the Rhine towards Mainz the same purpose was most quickly achieved, I cannot therefore share them (although I later heard them from insightful militaries), because the Prussian army returning to Luxembourg was really in such a state of exhaustion that it was then unable to carry out such a movement; It required some rest, but it was preserved by the short marches of Luxembourg and by the eight-day rest at Koblenz, so that the army, which was no longer on the march, could not be compared with that of Luxembourg.
Nor would this movement have led to a quicker outcome, even in the happiest case, because this army still had the Rhine crossing, under much more difficult conditions than at Koblenz, between St. Goar and Mainz, and not Oppenheim by the advanced season no longer allowing a siege of Mainz; nor could the army, without the possession of this fortress, be preserved on the left bank of the Rhine during the winter. In addition, it came that small accidents, to which the army was exposed on the march over the Hundsrück, could produce large losses, and finally even the unfortunate battle with Mons delivered on 5 November, whereby the Austrians lost the Netherlands up to the Maas, so as the position of Kellermann against the Prince of Hohenlohe, standing near Trier, should have made the march of the Prussian army on the left bank of the Rhine seem very daring.
After this digression I go back to my narrative, which, as I repeat, is based on my diary in these campaigns. On the first days of November the Prussian Corps under Kalckreuth reached Koblenz, to whom the Duke of Brunswick’s army followed in silence; The Hessians made way. Lieutenant General von Biesenrodt sat down after a command received from his sovereign on the 4th of November in order to cross the Lahn at Weilburg and doing so over pouring to reach Marburg, where William IX’s troops had led to the defense of his country. On the 5th of November, however, the advance guard under the Colonel Schreiber, who was a day before us, met Colonel Houchard, with 1,800 Frenchmen and 4 guns, whom Custine had sent to ravish Weilburg, which gave Biesenrodt cause to attack, the advance guard which was already on the left bank, to take back to the right bank, and change the direction of the march so that the army corps marched through the low mountain range, Westerwald, over Herborn in very bad and very narrow artillery paths, whereby he got the flow of the Lahn River between himself and the enemy. On the 10th we reached the place of our destiny. Biesenrodt first took his headquarters in Ebsdorf, then on the 13th in Niederwalgern and finally the 19th in Marburg. The Guards Regiment had been here since the 13th. The Guard Grenadiers cantoned in the villages of Ober- and Nieder- Weilbach and the surrounding area.
The advance guard was pre-posted to the Hessen-Darmstadt borders, and contacted the Hessen-Darmstadt troops stationed at Giessen, so that in the event of an attack as was in the Seven Years' War known position at Krusdorf, after a designed order of battle, would have united. In this case, a vast disposition was made, according to which the corps should unite. Also fanale quarters and signals (cannon shots) intended to disengage the troops have been set up.
The two, Colonel Schreiber and Houchard had unexpectedly come to meet at Weilburg. The latter had the advantage here that he marched in concentration, and thus was able to act quickly and faithfully to attack. Houchard forced the two companies of the Jäger Corps and three squadrons’ strong hussars to back off, whereupon hussars and jägers united to retreat, with the exception of the Grenadier Battalion Philippsthal, who had hurried from Weilburg, and had taken up his corps on a high ground in front of the city, which was in a favorable position for the defense. After Schreiber guessed that he was dealing with an enemy twice superior to him, he sent the hussars and jägers back through the city and across the Lahn bridge, and followed them with the Grenadier battalion; a detachment of jägers under the Captain Ochs and Lieutenant von Münchhausen made up the rear guard.
Houchard, too, retired to Weilmunster without going to the city (which spared it from arson and pillage). This allowed time for which Schreiber to refill his unit with hussars. Both parts had some dead and wounded, and the Hussars were taught not to permit individual farmhands to advance with hand horses to reach the quarters earlier, some of them at the head of our advance guard being the Frenchman which also caused the distress that the enemy was informed of the advance of this body.
Colonel Schreiber, in this engagement, proved his reputation as an excellent leader of light troops, and, in his report to the commandant, thought very much of Captain Ochs. Both were commended in the order of the day.2)
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