The campaign of 1796 was part of the French Revolutionary Wars in which republican France pitted itself against a fluid coalition of Prussians and Austrians and several other states of the Holy Roman Empire, the British, Sardinians, Dutch and royalist French emigres. The French had won several victories but the campaigns of 1793 through 1795 had been less successful. The Coalition partners had difficulty coordinating their war aims and their efforts faltered. In 1794 and 1795, French victories in northern Italy salvaged French enthusiasm for the war and forced the Coalition to withdraw further into Central Europe. At the end of the Rhine Campaign of 1795, the Habsburg Coalition and the French Republicans called a truce between their forces that had been fighting in Germany.Theodore Ayrault Dodge, Warfare in the Age of Napoleon: The Revolutionary Wars Against the First Coalition in Northern Europe and the Italian Campaign, 1789–1797. Leonaur Ltd, 2011. pp. 286–287; Blanning, pp. 41–59. The agreement lasted until 20 May 1796, when the Austrians announced that the truce would end on 31 May.Ramsay Weston Phipps,The Armies of the First French Republic: Volume II The Armées du Moselle, du Rhin, de Sambre-et-Meuse, de Rhin-et-Moselle Pickle Partners Publishing, 2011 reprint (original publication 1923–1933), p. 278.
