The
Battle of Zurich went down while
the French Revolutionary Wars were cooking, and resulted in the defeat of two
Russian armies in June 1799 in the mountains near
Zurich. This forced the
Tsar to withdraw from the
coalition against the
French.
So whats
the rest of the story?
The
French had invaded
Switzerland in 1798 and created the
Helvetian Republic. Becuase of this the
Archduke Charles Louis of the
Holy Roman Empire, which was niether
holy,
Roman nor an
empire, led a
coalition army into
Switzerland and
defeated the
French who fell under
Marshal Andre Massena.
Fast forward a few months and the
Archduke takes ill and the
Russian General Alexander Korsakov enters Switzerland with 30,000
Russian troops to take over command of the
coalition troops there. At the same time the
Russian Marshal Alexei Suvarov, based in northern
Italy, sets out across the
St Gotthard Pass to join Korsakov, bringing another 40,000
troops.
Massena sends a
corps of
troops to mess with
Suvarov in the mountains, then turns his main strength on
Korsakov, defeating him and scattering his army.
He then turns and attacks
Suvarov, who
retreats, harassed by ambushes and short of supplies.
Suvarov returns to
Italy leaving about 14,000
casualties behind him.
And now you know
the rest of the story.