The Battle of Modena (12 June 1799) saw a Republican French army commanded by

Jacques MacDonald Ancient and noble French family names, Jacques, Jacq, or James are believed to originate from the Middle Ages in the historic northwest Brittany region in France, and have since spread around the world over the centuries. To date, there are over ...

attack a Habsburg Austrian covering force led by

Prince Friedrich Franz Xaver of Hohenzollern-Hechingen Friedrich Franz Xaver Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen (31 May 1757 – 6 April 1844) was an Austrian Empire, Austrian general. He joined the Austrian military and fought against the Kingdom of Prussia, Ottoman Turkey, and the First French Republi ...

. The outnumbered Austrians were defeated but in an accidental encounter, MacDonald was painfully wounded by two saber cuts. The action occurred during the

War of the Second Coalition The War of the Second Coalition (1798/9 – 1801/2, depending on periodisation) was the second war on revolutionary France by most of the European monarchies, led by Britain, Austria and Russia, and including the Ottoman Empire, Portugal, N ...

, part of a larger conflict known as the

French Revolutionary Wars The French Revolutionary Wars (french: Guerres de la Révolution française) were a series of sweeping military conflicts lasting from 1792 until 1802 and resulting from the French Revolution. They pitted French First Republic, France against Ki ...

Modena Modena (, , ; egl, label=Emilian language#Dialects, Modenese, Mòdna ; ett, Mutna; la, Mutina) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) on the south side of the Po Valley, in the Province of Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern I ...

is a city in northern Italy about northwest of

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...

. In the battles of

Magnano Magnano is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Biella in the Italian region Piedmont, located about northeast of Turin and about south of Biella. Magnano borders the following municipalities: Bollengo, Cerrione, Palazzo Canavese, ...

and Cassano, the Austrians and allied

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

forces swept the French from much of northern Italy in April 1799. MacDonald collected the French occupying forces in south and central Italy into an army and marched north to retrieve the situation. Bursting out of the

Apennine Mountains The Apennines or Apennine Mountains (; grc-gre, links=no, Ἀπέννινα ὄρη or Ἀπέννινον ὄρος; la, Appenninus or – a singular with plural meaning;''Apenninus'' (Greek or ) has the form of an adjective, which wou ...

, the French divisions of Jean-Baptiste Olivier and François Watrin mauled Hohenzollern's division at Modena. MacDonald swung west to fight the Coalition forces. The next action would be the

Battle of Trebbia The Battle of the Trebia (or Trebbia) was the first major battle of the Second Punic War, fought between the Carthaginian forces of Hannibal and a Roman army under Sempronius Longus on 22 or 23 December 218 BC. It took place on the flood p ...

from 17 to 19 June.

References

* * Battles of the War of the Second Coalition Battles of the French Revolutionary Wars Battles involving Austria Battles involving France Battles involving Italy Conflicts in 1799 History of Modena

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