The Battle of Teugen-Hausen or the Battle of Thann was an engagement that occurred during the War of the Fifth Coalition, part of the Napoleonic Wars. The battle was fought on 19 April 1809 between the French III Corps led by Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout and the Austrian III Armeekorps commanded by Prince Friedrich Franz Xaver of Hohenzollern-Hechingen. The French won a hard-fought victory over their opponents when the Austrians withdrew that evening. The site of the battle is a wooded height approximately halfway between the villages of Teugn and Hausen in Lower Bavaria, part of modern-day Germany.
Battle of Teugen-Hausen
Archduke Charles
Louis Berthier excelled as Napoleon's chief of staff, but as army commander, he fumbled.
Marshal Louis Davout
War of the Fifth Coalition
The War of the Fifth Coalition was a European conflict in 1809 that was part of the Napoleonic Wars and the Coalition Wars. The main conflict took place in Central Europe between the Austrian Empire of Francis I and Napoleon's French Empire. The French were supported by their client states—the Kingdom of Italy, the Confederation of the Rhine and the Duchy of Warsaw. Austria was supported by the Fifth Coalition which included the United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, and the Kingdoms of Sardinia and Sicily, although the latter two took no part in the fighting. By the start of 1809 much of the French army was committed to the Peninsular War against Britain, Spain and Portugal. After France withdrew 108,000 soldiers from Germany, Austria attacked France to seek the recovery of territories lost in the 1803–1806 War of the Third Coalition. The Austrians hoped Prussia would support them, having recently been defeated by France, but Prussia chose to remain neutral.
War of the Fifth Coalition
Strategic situation in Europe in February 1809
The general situation from 17 to 19 April involved the Austrians moving towards the strategic city of Regensburg in hopes of attacking the isolated French III Corps.
The Landshut Maneuver and the expulsion of Austrian forces from Bavaria