The Battle of Hchstdt was fought on 19 June 1800 on the north bank of the Danube near Hchstdt, and resulted in a French victory under General Jean Victor Marie Moreau against the Austrians under Baron Pl Kray. The Austrians were subsequently forced back into the fortress town of Ulm. Instead of attacking the heavily fortified, walled city, which would result in massive losses of personnel and time, Moreau dislodged Kray's supporting forces defending the Danube passage further east. As a line of retreat eastward disappeared, Kray quickly abandoned Ulm, and withdrew into Bavaria. This opened the Danube pathway toward Vienna.

The Danube passage connecting Ulm, Donauwrth, Ingolstadt and Regensburg had strategic importance in the ongoing competition for European hegemony between France and the Holy Roman Empire; the army that commanded the Danube, especially its passage through Wrttemberg and Bavaria, could command access to the important cities of Munich and the seat of Habsburg authority: Vienna. The result of the battle was the opposite of what had occurred on those same fields in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession, when the Second Battle of Hchstdt had ensured the safety of Vienna and opened the pathway into France for the allied English and Austrian forces.



The War of the Second Coalition (1798/9 – 1801/2, depending on periodisation) was the second war on revolutionary France by most of the European monarchies, led by Britain, Austria and Russia, and including the Ottoman Empire, Portugal, Naples and various German monarchies, though Prussia did not join this coalition, and Spain supported France.

The overall goal of Britain and Russia was to contain the expansion of the French Republic and to restore the monarchy in France, whereas Austria, which was still weakened and in deep financial debt from the War of the First Coalition, primarily sought to recover its position and come out of the war stronger than it entered. Due in important part to this difference in strategy amongst the three major allied powers, the Second Coalition failed to overthrow the revolutionary regime, and French territorial gains since 1793 were confirmed. In the Franco–Austrian Treaty of Lunéville in February 1801, France held all of its previous gains and obtained new lands in Tuscany, Italy, while Austria was granted Venetia and the Dalmatian coast. Most other allies would also sign separate peace treaties with the French Republic in 1801. Britain and France signed the Treaty of Amiens in March 1802, followed by the Ottomans in June 1802, bringing an interval of peace in Europe that lasted several months until Britain declared war on France again in May 1803. The renewed hostilities would culminate in the War of the Third Coalition.