The lightning-like rapidity of these operations completed the demoralization of the Austrian troops. The fortified defiles and cliffs of the Tyrol fell before the French attacks as easily as their breastworks in the plains. Wurmser had twenty-six thousand men in Mantua; but from fear and fever half of them were in the hospitals. Meanwhile, disaster had overtaken the French arms in the North. Jourdan had crossed the Rhine at Düsseldorf, as Moreau had at Kehl. They had each about seventy-five thousand men, while the army of the Austrian archduke Charles had been reduced by Wurmser's departure for Italy to a number far less. According to the plan of the Directory, these two French armies were to advance on parallel lines south of the neutral zone through Germany, and to join Bonaparte across the Tyrol for the advance to Vienna. Moreau defeated the Austrians, and reached Munich without a check. Würtemberg and Baden made peace with the French republic on its own terms, and Saxony, recalling its forces from the coalition, declared itself neutral, as Prussia had done. But Jourdan, having seized Würzburg and won the battle of Altenkirchen, was met on his way to Ratisbon and Neumarkt, and thoroughly beaten, by the same young Archduke Charles, who had acquired experience and learned wisdom in his defeat by Moreau. Both French armies were thus thrown back upon the Rhine, and there could be no further hope of carrying out the original plan. In this way the attention of the world was concentrated on the victorious Army of Italy and its young commander, whose importance was further enhanced by the fulfilment of his own prophecy that the fate of Europe hung on the decision of his campaign in Italy.