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The Siege of Condé (8 April – 12 July 1793) saw a force made up of Habsburg Austrians and French Royalists commanded by Duke Ferdinand Frederick Augustus of Württemberg lay siege to a Republican French garrison led by Jean Nestor de Chancel. After a blockade lasting about three months the French surrendered the fortress. The operation took place during the War of the First Coalition, part of a larger conflict known as the French Revolutionary Wars. Condé-sur-l'Escaut, France is located near the Belgium border about northeast of Valenciennes. The Austrian victory at Neerwinden in mid-March drove the French occupation army from the Austrian Netherlands. The subsequent defection of Charles François Dumouriez shook the morale of the French soldiers and caused the politicians to suspect most generals of treason. Austria and her Coalition allies moved against the line of fortresses protecting the northeastern border of France, investing first Condé and Valenciennes soon afterward. Meanwhile, the motley French armies, composed of regulars and raw recruits and led by generals fearful of the guillotine, struggled to defend their nation. ==Background== On 18 March 1793, Charles François Dumouriez's French army attacked Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld's Austrian army in the Battle of Neerwinden. The French army numbered 40,000 infantry and 4,500 cavalry while the Austrians employed 30,000 foot and 9,000 horse. The fighting on the French right and center was bitterly contested, but the French left collapsed and abandoned the field. After a second defeat near Leuven on 21 March, the French abandoned Brussels on the 24th, their soldiers deserting in large numbers. Dumouriez negotiated with the Austrians and evacuated the Austrian Netherlands in return for free passage for French troops. The French armies took positions behind the frontier. The ''Army of Holland'' deployed near Lille, the ''Army of the Ardennes'' at Maulde, the ''Army of the North'' at Bruille-Saint-Amand, and the ''Army of Belgium'' at Condé-sur-l'Escaut and Valenciennes. Dumouriez was at heart a monarchist and King Louis XVI had been executed on 21 January 1793. He planned to lead the army to Paris and overthrow the National Convention. He negotiated with the Austrians to cooperate by not invading France while her borders were undefended. On 1 April, when the War Minister Pierre de Ruel, marquis de Beurnonville and the government commissioners arrived at his headquarters in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux to demand answers, Dumouriez arrested them and handed them over to the Austrians. The plan quickly unravelled when the plotters failed to seize control of the frontier fortresses. In one incident, Louis-Nicolas Davout's volunteer battalion fired on Dumouriez. While the cavalry and some of the regular infantry might have gone along with the scheme, the artillery and the volunteers, pro-Revolution to the core, refused to follow their general. On 5 April 1793, Dumouriez defected to the Austrians with Duke Louis of Chartres, Jean-Baptiste Cyrus de Valence and other officers. With the plot in ruins, the Austrians resumed hostilities.〔Phipps (2010), pp. 158–162〕 Condé-sur-l'Escaut occupies a strategic location at the confluence of the Scheldt (Escaut) and Haine Rivers. The Romans recognized this when they founded a town at the site. Subsequent residents fortified the location so that by the end of the Middle Ages, Condé was defended by a stone wall with towers surrounded by a moat. The Spanish first tried to modernize the defenses in 1654, but the town was captured by the French general Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne the following year. After the French returned Condé by the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, the Spanish converted the town into a fortress. They built a new bastioned trace around the town, outside the old wall which was kept as an inner line. Originally, the new defenses were constructed of earth, but in 1666, the bastions on the west side were revetted with stone. On the south side, a hornwork was built to protect the old town castle. In case of attack, the defenders could easily flood the ditch with water from the rivers. In April 1676 a French army laid siege to the town. Condé was ceded to France by the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678. Fortifications expert Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban greatly improved the defenses on the east side, adding two demi-bastions and a full bastion. He also constructed sluice gates so that the garrison could control the depth of the water in the ditches and flood areas on the east side. Outside the fortress, Vauban built five square redoubts in order to keep an attacker away from the main defenses as long as possible. The fortress was undisturbed during the wars of King Louis XIV. The engineer Pierre du Buat made some alterations to Condé in the 1770s. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Siege of Condé (1793)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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