trians to retire into the country behind them. These operations of the army, under Moreau, were designed to second those of that under Jourdan, who was successfully proceeding in every enterprize he formed, and driving before him the Imperialists, under Wartensleben, a brave and experienced officer, but at this period continually unfortunate. After a series of ill success, he sustained a heavy defeat, on the sixth of August, at Hochstadt, in the neighbourhood of Bamberg, where his own skill, and the valour of his troops, were obliged to yield to the superior exertions of the French. He now retired to a strong position between Sultzbach and Amberg, two towns on the confines of the north of Bavaria, but here he was again attacked by general Jourdan, on the sixteenth of August, and his troops driven from the advantageous post they occupied here and at Neumark, a town in the vicinity. These repeated disasters, in Ger many, rendered more grievous by the intelligence daily arriving of the victorious progress of the French in Italy, caused an alarm at Vienna, almost equal to that which had been experienced in the commencement of the reign of the late empress, Mary Theresa, when she was compelled to quit her capital, to avoid the danger of falling into the hands of her numerous enemies. The emperor Francis seemed on the eve of being in the like manner forced to abandon Vienna. His hereditary dominions, Bohemia particularly, were menaced with a speedy invasion by the French, unless an immediate stop were put to their career. In this perilous emergency he made a solemn appeal to his subjects in Bohemia, who lay nearest the danger, exhorting them, by every motive of loyalty to their sovereign, and regard to the safety of their possessions and religion, to arm instantly in the defence of both. To this purpose he enjoined the establishment of a national militia, to which he held out every encou ragement and remuneration enjoy. ed by the regular troops. By the plan proposed, the twentieth part of all the able-bodied men in that kingdom were to be drafted for the protection of its frontiers, from the expected irruption of the French. The like appeal was made to the people of Hungary, and of all his other dominions. They were carefully reminded, on this occasion, of the immense exactions of the French, not only in money, but in every article of necessity, or of use, and with what severe punctuality the payment of them was quired. re It was chiefly the dread of these heavy demands that influenced the determination of the Germans to contribute all in their power to prevent the farther progress of the French. Their levies of money, and their other requisitions, excited universal alarm. The duke of Wirtemburg had been assessed four millions; the circle of Swabia, twelve millions, besides to furnish eight thousand horses, five thousand oxen, one hundred and fifty thousand quintals of corn, one hundred thousand sacks of oats, a proportion. able quantity of hay, and one hun dred thousand pair of shoes. Eight millions were demanded from the circle of Franconia, with a very large supply of horses. Great sums [K 4] were were also required from the cities of Francfort, Wurtsburg, Bamberg, and Nuremberg, together with an immense quantity of other articles, for the subsistence and clothing of the French armies. But the terror which their arms had spread every where, superseded all considerations but that of deprecating their hostility upon any terms. After general Moreau's pas sage of the Lech, the elector of Bavaria, thinking himself no longer secure, made overtures to that officer for a pacification. This, indeed, had been done by every prince and city that had not been able to resist him. The diet itself of the empire, convened as usual at Ratisbon, partook of the universal consternation. In a sitting, held on the 30th of July, for the purpose of consulting on the situation of affairs, the deputies of the princes and states of the empire came to the determination of opening a negociation for peace with France. All the members of the diet acceded to it, except the deputies from Austria and Bohemia, who ascribed the disasters of the war to want of union among the states of the empire, and their backwardness to second their chief, the emperor, in the common defence of their country. But the dangers apprehended from the French, appeared greater than that of opposing the desire of the emperor. A decree was passed by the diet, seriously to remonstrate to him, that, in the present circumstances of the empire, it was necessary, conform bly to the wish of its divers members, to put an end to a war that had been so calamitous, and no longer to defer the concluding of a peace upon reasonable con ditions. Not content with this address to the emperor, they looked upon the situation of the diet as so precarious, that they commissioned deputies to repair to the French armies, to stipulate with the generals for the security and protection of the diet, and of the public documents and archives in its custody, and for the neutrality of Ratisbon itself. In this extremity, the archduke resolved to make a resolute attempt to extricate the diet and the empire at once, from the humiliating condition to which they were reduced. He was at this time so hard pressed by Moreau, that he hardly could judge which of the two difficulties required his attention the most: that of opposing this formidable adversary, or of hastening to the succour of Wartensleben. Jourdan had invariably maintained his superiority over him: and pushing him, from post to post, was now advanced within a day's march of Ratisbon. No time was, therefore, to be lost in marching to his assistance. This was become the more indispensible, that a strong division of Jourdan's army, under general Bernadotte, an active and enterprising officer, had been detached, with orders to proceed immediately to Ratisbon. This circumstance determined the archduke. Leaving a powerful body to observe the motions of Moreau, he speeded towards the Danube, which he crossed on the seventeenth of August, at Ingolstadt, with the intent of throwing himself between Ratisbon and the French division that was approaching it. "On that very day general Wartensleben's army was attacked in its encampment at Sultzback, by that of of Jourdan. The Austrians had been so much reinforced by continual detachments sent them by the archduke, that they were more than equal in number to the French. They defended themselves with such obstinacy, that the conflict lasted from the beginning of day till eleven at night, when the French had obtained possession of the ground on which the battle had been fought. During this engagement, a large division of Jourdan's army marched towards Amberg, to prevent the Austrians, who were stationed there, from coming to the aid of those who were fighting at Sultzbach. General Championnet, who commanded this division, fell in with the Austrians while on their way to that town; and assailed them with so much vigour, that they were forced back to Amberg. The dispute was maintained with great courage and perseverance on each side, and lasted no less than twelve hours. On the morning of the eighteenth, the French army moved forwards towards the Austrians, who were strongly posted in front of Amberg. General Jourdan proposed to attack them before they had been joined by the archduke ; but their superiority was already such fhat, without waiting to be attacked, they advanced upon the French with such impetuosity and vigour, that these several times forced from the position they had taken : they recovered it at last, after repeated effors; and, pursuing their advantage, made themselves masters of the heights before Amberg. The Auswere compelled to retreat across the Nab, and wait the arrival of the numerous troops which they hourly expected would come to their trans were assistance. They arrived at length, with the archduke at their head. Repeated expresses had been dispatched tohim during the night of the eighteenth, to apprise him of the retreat of the Austrians before the French army, and of its taking possession of the country on the other side of the Nab. As soon as he had gained sufficient intelligence of the relative position of the contending armies, he resolved to avail himself, without delay, of the immense superiority. which his junction with Wartensleben now gave him over the French. After concerting their plan of operations, the archduke attacked the French division under general Bernadotte, on the twenty-second of August, and forced him to fall back to Neumark, whence he was, on the day following, compelled to retire towards Nuremberg; leaving the left wing and rear of Jourdan's army exposed to that of the archduke. This proved a decisive day. Ge. neral Jourdan was no longer able to contend with the united armies of the archduke and of Wartensleben. They moved in order of battle, on the twenty-fourth, with an intention to surround him. The latter was to assail him in front, and the former to take him in flank and rear. The vast disparity of his strength obliged the French general to make an immediate retreat. He conducted it with equal judgment and spirit. From the twenty-fourth of August, when it commenced, till his arrival at Wurtsburg, on the second of September, it was a series of encounters, and skirmishes; wherein the superiority of the Austrians in numbers, aided by the great multitudes of the peasantry, that fell upon the French from all quarters, rendered all re sistance General Jourdan made a resolute stand upon that day. He defeated the Austrian general, Stzaray; and would have totally destroyed the troops under his command, notwithstanding his skill and their bravery, had not the whole of the archduke's army arrived in time to relieve both him and Wartensleben, who had not, conjointly, been able to make an effectual impression upon the French. They again continued their retreat, harrassed by the Austrians; who frequently experienced the severest checks, and were obliged to act with the utmost caution against an enemy, whose inferiority of strength alone procured them most of their advantages. From the sixth to the sixteenth, several obstinate engagements took place between the Austrians and the French, who routed two of their best generals, Kray and Hotze, with considerable loss. But on the archduke's concentrating his force for a general attack, they withdrew from their posts on the Lahn, on the seventeenth, and made good their retreat to the Sieg. It was performed with such order, and their countenance appeared so firm and resolute, that the Austrians, though they were so much more numerous, did not judge proper to give them much molestation, and suffered them to retire with a loss that was deemed inconsiderable when compared with the means they had of rendering it much greater. Thus ended an expedition, from which, at its commencement, the nost prosperous issue was expected, and would probably have been derived, had those irregularities and depredations been duly restrained, which were so peculiarly unbecoming and impolitic in the republican and revolutionary army, and had those supplies of men and money been seasonably provided, on which the general entrusted with the expedition had confidently relied. The want of pecuniary remittances obliged him to have recourse to heavier exactions than were consistent with the plan of conciliation, on which the French must have been conscious the preservation of their popularity among the natives of Germany, and of that good will to their cause, through which they promised themselves, and actually met with during some time, a very friendly reception from the commonality chiefly depended. The want of reinforcements was a still more fatal injury to the enter prise. The extent of country, overrun rather than subdued by the French, required a far greater force than that commanded by Jourdan, whose operations were necessarily stinted, from the inadequacy of his strength to perform them, and whose activity was perpetually retarded by the defect of means to give it proper scope. The losses of the French in this expedition were very considerable in soldiers and officers of the highest desert and reputation in their ser vice. None, indeed, but such could have contended with the far superior numbers of excellent troops continually starting up against them from every quarter; nor could have made good their retreat through the vast tract of country they had to traverse; their march through which was no less dangerous from the hostility of the inhabitants, than from the indefatigable vigour of a pursuing enemy. The The greatest loss that befel them, in this long and difficult retreat, was that of general Marceau, an officer of the highest character in his profession. In the retreat of the Sieg, on the nineteenth of September, while the French were cleaning the defiles of Altankircha, he was entrusted with the protection of their rear. He executed this task in a masterly and successful manner. But as he was reconnoitring a wood, occupied by the enemy, he was mortally wounded. So great was the esteem and respect he was held in by the Austrians, that the archduke himself sent his surgeon to attend him; and after he was dead, ordered his body to be delivered to the French, and military honours to be paid to his memory by his own army, in conjunction with the French military. General Marceau fell in the flower of his age: he had just completed his twenty-seventh year. But his talents were extraordinary, and excited the firmest persuasion, that he would become one of the greatest commanders of the age. He was, by the generality of military people, reputed another Buonaparte. He had, like him, risen by performing arduous and essential services, and was the favourite of the soldiery, who lamented his loss as that of a friend and protector, as well as of a general in whom they placed the justest confidence. Shortly after his retreat across the Rhine, general Jourdan became so seriously indisposed, through the incessant fatigue he had undergone during this laborious campaign, that he was obliged to resign the command of the army of the Sambre and Meuse, which was conferred upon general Bournonville, who was at this time at the head of those forces denominated the army of the north. He had greatly distinguished himself in the campaigns of 1792. and 1793. He fully maintained the reputation he had acquired; and, during the remainder of the campaign, kept theAustrians continually in check, and defeated them in some very serious engagements. In the mean time, the archduke having freed the empire from one of the invading armies, now saw himself at liberty to attack the other with a far superior force, flushed with victory, and desirous to complete the success and honour it had gained, by compelling that army in the same manner to abandon its conquests in Germany. Leaving a sufficient strength to make head against the French forces he had driven across the Rhine, he set out at the head of a powerful army in quest of general Moreau, whom he doubted not to compel, as he had done Jourdan, to retire into France. This resolute and skilful officer was still contending successfully with general Latour, who commanded the Austrian forces, and was extremely active in his endeavours to expel the French from Batavia; but Moreau was superior to him in every engagement. Finding it, however, impossible to maintain his ground, in the heart of Germany, after the expulsion of Jourdan's army, against the immense superiority of numbers that were on the point of assailing him, he came to the determination of moving back to the Rhine. He broke up his incampment before Ingolstadt on the 10th of September, and retired leisurely towards Neuburg, overcoming every obstacle in his way, and |