The Battle of Donauwörth was the first engagement of Napoleon's 1805 Austrian campaign. French forces under marshals

Joachim Murat Joachim Murat ( , also ; ; ; 25 March 1767 – 13 October 1815) was a French Army officer and statesman who served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Under the French Empire he received the military titles of Marshal of the ...

and Nicolas Soult beat an Austrian army corps under Kienmayer on 7 October at

Donauwörth Donauwörth (; ) is a town and the capital of the Donau-Ries district in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany. It is said to have been founded by two fishermen where the rivers Danube (Donau) and Wörnitz meet. The city is part of the scenic route called "R ...

and crossed the

Danube The Danube ( ; see also #Names and etymology, other names) is the List of rivers of Europe#Longest rivers, second-longest river in Europe, after the Volga in Russia. It flows through Central and Southeastern Europe, from the Black Forest sou ...

Course

After Austrian forces under general Karl Mack entered

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

, the French army left the camp de Boulogne and reached the Rhine at the end of September 1805. The Austrian general based his army around the Bavarian town of

Ulm Ulm () is the sixth-largest city of the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with around 129,000 inhabitants, it is Germany's 60th-largest city. Ulm is located on the eastern edges of the Swabian Jura mountain range, on the up ...

beside the Danube, ready to meet the French force when it exited the

Black Forest The Black Forest ( ) is a large forested mountain range in the States of Germany, state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is th ...

Napoleon I Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led Military career ...

sent the general cavalry reserve under the command of Joachim Murat to establish supply depots and raid the countryside in an attempt to trick Mack while Napoleon himself took his main force on a vast enveloping movement to the north. On 7 October Napoleon, Murat and Soult's 4th Corps arrived before Donauworth, 65 km downstream of Ulm. The town was defended by Michael von Kienmayer's force, which formed the rearguard of the Austrian army. The battle pitted Soult's corps (mainly Dominique-Joseph René Vandamme's division Nicole Gotteri, Le ''Maréchal Soult'', Paris, Bernard Giovanangeli Éditeur, October 2000, 2nd edition (, LCCN 2001348931), p. 180) and Murat's cavalry Jean Tulard, ''Murat'', Paris, Fayard, 1999 (), p. 133 against the Austrian force. The French victory enabled an initial crossing of the Danube and allowed the

Grande Armée The (; ) was the primary field army of the French Imperial Army (1804–1815), French Imperial Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Commanded by Napoleon, from 1804 to 1808 it won a series of military victories that allowed the First French Empi ...

to deploy on the river's right bank as well as continuing its enveloping manoeuvre. Fighting resumed the following day at Wertingen.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Donauwörth 1805 Ulm campaign October 1805 Battles of the War of the Third Coalition involving Austria Battles of the Napoleonic Wars involving Bavaria Joachim Murat Military history of Bavaria Donau-Ries Danube