It is to be constantly recollected that the Republican armies were then totally unable to keep the field; that behind the frontier fortresses there was neither a defensive position, nor a corps to reinforce them; and that if driven from their vicinity, the capital was taken and the war concluded." In the following year, 1794, when France had completed her vast armaments, and, in her turn, had become the invading power, the enemy had no fortified towns to check the progress of the Republican armies; which, based on strong works of defence, in a few weeks overran Flanders, and drove the allies beyond the Rhine.
In the campaign of 1796, when the army of Moreau had been forced into a precipitate retreat by the admirable strategic operations of the Archduke Charles, the French forces owed their safety to the fortifications on the Rhine.

These works arrested the enemy's pursuit and obliged him to resort to the tedious operations of sieges; and the reduction of the French advanced posts alone, Kehl and Huninguen, poorly as they were defended, employed all the resources of the Austrian army, and the skill of their engineers, from early in October till late in February.

Kehl was at first assaulted by a force _four_ times as numerous as the garrison; if the enemy had succeeded, he would have cut off Moreau's retreat, and destroyed his army.

Fortunately the place was strong enough to resist all assaults; and Moreau, basing himself on the fortresses of Alsace, his right covered by Huninguen, Neuf-Brisach, and Befort, and his left by the iron barrier of the Netherlands, effectually checked the waves of Austrian success.
Let us now turn to the campaigns of Napoleon.

In his first campaign in Italy, 1796, the general was directed "to seize the forts of Savona, compel the senate to furnish him with pecuniary supplies, and to surrender the keys of Gavi, a fortress perched on the rocky height commanding the pass of the Bocchetta." Setting out from Savona, he crossed the mountains at a weak point between the Alps and the Apennines, and succeeded in piercing the enemy's line of defence.