Battle of Höchstädt

The Battle of Höchstädt was fought on 19 June 1800 on the north bank of the Danube near Höchstädt, and resulted in a French victory under General Jean Victor Marie Moreau against the Austrians under Baron Pál Kray. The Austrians were subsequently forced back into the fortress town of Ulm. Instead of attacking the heavily fortified, walled city, which would result in massive losses of personnel and time, Moreau dislodged Kray's supporting forces defending the Danube passage further east. As a line of retreat eastward disappeared, Kray quickly abandoned Ulm, and withdrew into Bavaria. This opened the Danube pathway toward Vienna.

The Danube passage connecting Ulm, Donauwörth, Ingolstadt and Regensburg had strategic importance in the ongoing competition for European hegemony between France and the Holy Roman Empire; the army that commanded the Danube, especially its passage through Württemberg and Bavaria, could command access to the important cities of Munich and the seat of Habsburg authority: Vienna. The end result of the battle was the opposite of what had occurred on those same fields almost 100 years earlier, when the armies of the Grand Alliance had faced the armies of France during the War of the Spanish Succession. At the Second Battle of Höchstädt in 1704, called the Battle of Blenheim by the English, the overwhelming Allied victory ensured the safety of Vienna from the Franco-Bavarian army, thus preventing the collapse of the Grand Alliance. France's loss during that engagement opened the pathway into France for the allied English and Austrian forces.

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