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Catherine the Great’s Military Contribution to the Struggle against France: 1793-1796
By Robert Goetz
http://www.napoleon-serie...battles/c_catherine1.html

«Catherine the Great’s Military Contribution to the Struggle against France: 1793-1796» By Robert Goetz

«The plan of operations for the coalition, drafted by the Austrians in the autumn of 1796, resembled the general plan that had been pursued by the coalition in cooperation with Prussia in 1793-4. Each army was to be independent of the other, but this time the armies were to cooperate under the supreme command of a Russian general. The combined armies would be arrayed on the Rhine in two main groups. The northern group, operating between Mainz and Coblenz (the area where Prussian troops had been committed) would consist of 60,000 Russians, 20-30,000 troops contributed by the German princes, and the 10,000-strong French Ё¦migrЁ¦ corps of Prince CondЁ¦. The Austrian forces already on the Rhine would be concentrated on the upper Rhine between Mannheim and Basel and would be augmented by the contingents of other German princes. While the plan called for assuming the offensive, the Austrians persisted in planning a war of positions, targeting the fortresses of Saarlouis, Thionville and Metz as the objective for the Russians while the Austrian army focused on the fortresses of Alsace. General Marquis Chasteler was to be sent to St. Petersburg to work out the details of the cooperation.[6]

Russian preparations began immediately, including the selection of the specific forces to be committed to the Rhine and the officers to command this force. Catherine appointed Field Marshal Graf Suvorov as overall commander of the Russian forces - which meant that he would also assume overall command of the combined forces according to the Austrian plan. Three columns (called divisions) were formed from the forces on the western frontier that had been mobilized in June 1795, the majority being drawn from Suvorov’s 8th Ekaterinoslav Division.[7] These columns, totaling 51,904 combatants, would concentrate at Krakow and then proceed to the Rhine. The musketeer and cavalry regiments were to leave understrength reserve battalions and squadrons in Russia that would be completed by recruiting and used to reinforce the field battalions.[8] This would bring the total contingent to approximately 60,000 men. This measure appears to indicate that the regiments would not wait for additional recruits to bring them up to full strength but rather would march as soon as the regiments were assembled and the logistics of supply and route of march worked out. While it does not appear that a firm date was set for the force to march, it seems likely that they were to be in position on the Rhine for the opening of the spring 1797 campaign.[9]...

The untimeliness of Catherine’s death certainly presents one of the great
“what-ifs” of the French Revolutionary Wars. As Austria feared, without
Russian support she was indeed forced to sign a “dishonorable” peace with
France, though she rather cynically accepted the dishonor of partitioning
Venice with her enemy without a qualm. While the Russian army of some
50,000 men was unlikely to have proven decisive in tilting the balance of
the war in Austria’s favor, the dynamic and inspired leadership of Suvorov
that was crucial in sweeping the French out of Italy in 1799 would have
done much to energize the flagging Austrian war effort. Given Suvorov’s
actions in Italy in1799, it seems highly unlikely that Suvorov would have
followed the Austrian plans to focus on the seizure of fortresses.
Further, a force crossing the Russian frontier in late December 1796 would
have found itself in Moravia by mid-February, after news of the Austrian
defeat at Rivoli (14 January 1797) and when the Austrians were shifting
forces to the Tyrol and Styria to oppose the victorious Bonaparte in
Italy.[11] Given events in Italy in January 1797, it seems very possible
that the Russian forces would have been diverted to meet the threat from
Bonaparte and to defend Vienna ЁC a prospect that Suvorov had been eagerly
anticipating since the news of Bonaparte’s exploits had reached his
ears.[12] Suvorov’s Russians would have been a very different enemy for
Bonaparte to face rather than the collection of raw recruits and tattered
remnants of the Austrian army of Italy led by the war-weary Charles. Even
with a delay in the arrival of the Russians, the existence of the Russian
army in a position to reinforce Charles in opposing Bonaparte may well
have stiffened Austrian resistance and prolonged the conflict beyond 18
April 1797 with unpredictable results.»