Battle of Wertingen

Battle context

The Battle of Wertingen was the opening engagement of the Ulm Campaign, giving French forces an immediate tactical success at the outset of operations against the Austrian army. Marshals Murat and Lannes brought roughly 12,000 troops to bear against Feldmarschall-Leutnant von Auffenberg's corps of approximately 5,500, inflicting around 2,900 Austrian casualties. As the first action of a campaign that would culminate in the encirclement and surrender of the main Austrian force at Ulm, Wertingen established French operational momentum and demonstrated the vulnerability of isolated Austrian detachments to the converging French corps. The lopsided outcome foreshadowed the broader collapse of Austrian resistance in southern Germany during this phase of the War of the Third Coalition.