So, that happened. But, the good news is that we can talk about history some more, because the world didn’t end! I hope that’s worth something.
This week, we’re going to talk about the Battle of Jemappes, one of the early battles of the French Revolutionary Wars. Now, normally, when talking about the Revolutionary Wars, one starts with the Battle of Valmy- however, to be honest, calling Valmy a battle is a bit generous. It was mostly a contest to discover who felt like standing around in the rain the longest. As far as the survival of the revolutionary French Republic, and the propaganda value of the battle for the French, it’s quite tremendous, but, our purpose in looking into these battles isn’t really about the French Revolution, but to understand the changes wrought on military operations and tactics during the period- which were quite revolutionary. So, we’ll skip Valmy, and move on to Jemappes, a battle that began to establish the template for the Revolutionary French Army.
But, first, the Revolution…
The French Revolution.
Before we get started, I think it’s important to say that we can’t really cover the French Revolution in a lot of detail. Most college history departments take a semester to cover the Revolution in detail, and it takes a good year of serious study to get into the scholarship of the Revolution. I’ll try to make it as comprehensible as possible, while trying to constrain the focus to things that are important to what we’re talking about- the shooting and bayonetting stuff.
The truth is, the 1700s were a rough century for the Kingdom of France. This is for a lot of reasons:
1) Poor leadership. In the 1600s and early 1700s, the French had a string of effective rulers: Henri IV, Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, Louis XIV, Louis XIV and, finally, Louis XIV. Seriously, Louis XIV was not just long lived (Louis XV was his great-grandson) but a highly effective ruler. Louis XV couldn’t hold XIV’s jockstrap, and Louis XVI was even worse at the whole “king” thing. Even worse, there weren’t any Richelieus laying around to run the country for them.
2) While Louis XIV was an effective ruler, he ruled in a highly idiosyncratic way. His method of ruling was to, fundamentally, set his nobles against each other in a highly stylized competition at the court of Versailles, and use this court to make people powerful, and then, when they got too powerful, break them. He created a legal system that made no sense at all, and then split responsibilities between the nobles and the middle class, who fought each other and turned to Louis to play referee. He promoted himself as a champion of the peasantry, using them against his nobles as needed. He broke the clergy and turned them to his side. It’s a very effective system, so long as you’re a sociopath that doesn’t mind being lonely and working 20 hour days. If you’re not, it’s a damned mess.
3)France became a damned mess after Louis XIV. Louis XV decided to favor his nobles, impoverishing the peasantry and angering the middle class. The centralized, bureaucratic economy of France couldn’t compete with the freer markets of Britain, Prussia and Austria, impoverishing them middle class. He let the nobles drive everyone else out of government, and then was surprised that they ignored him.
4) France lost a lot of wars in the 1700s. The good news is they spent a lot of money they didn’t have to do it. Their most successful war was the American Revolution, which got them nothing in land, but at least cost a lot of money. France was effectively bankrupt before the war, and then went heavily into debt at a high interest rate. (Thanks, guys!)
5) The 1700s was, philosophically, the era of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was interested in a lot of things, but it promoted a number of ideas about economic, legal and political reform. Undertaking these reforms would undermine the power of the French monarchy, though, and so Louis XV and Louis XVI had no interest in them. However, the Emperors of Austria and Russia were, as was the King of Prussia and the Parliament of Great Britain. They got rich and prospered, while France floundered. And a lot of people in France believed they had the answers to France’s problems, if only someone would listen.
The whole thing came to a head in the late 1780s. Louis tried several times to enact a land tax, which would raise quite a lot of money. However, the nobles and the clergy, who owned most of the land, used the various levers of the government they controlled to prevent Louis’ tax. At the same time, a famine struck France. This led to a general economic collapse, as the middle class found itself struggling to trade and eat at the same time. Meanwhile, the poor had to choose between paying rents and eating, leading to massive disruptions in the countryside, and a movement of peasants into the cities to try and get jobs that didn’t exist, to buy food that didn’t exist and rent rooms that didn’t exist. The conditions put France on a knife’s edge.
In 1789, to try and at least resolve the tax issue, Louis called the Estates General, France’s version of a Parliament. This body had the power to enact laws and tax reform, which meant that a lot of people had high hopes for tax reform, economic reform and political reform. Instead, they spent most of the spring and early some of 1789 arguing how to *vote*. This argument never got resolved, and Louis decided to just call the whole thing off.
However, the members of the Third Estate, representing everyone who wasn’t a noble and wasn’t a clergyman, decided that they wouldn’t go home. Instead they found a tennis court in the palace (what is it about tennis and French political crises?) and declared themselves the actual government of France, with the support of some of the nobles and some of the clergy. They then decided that the thing to do was write a constitution, which Louis would then accept, naturally.
Louis wasn’t going to accept any constitution, or any nonsense from these jerks. He called in the army to put them down. However, the army was in the countryside, not Paris. As the troops approached, riots began in Paris, culminating in the storming of the Bastille Fortress on July 11th, 1789. This fortress had a huge cache of arms, allowing the National Assembly (as the constitutional convention styled itself) to arm a militia. Unwilling to storm his own capital, Louis backed down. This violence was matched in other cities in France, and in the countryside. Many nobles fled for safer havens in the Netherlands, the German principalities, Prussia and Austria.
Meanwhile, in the middle of all this, the National Assembly couldn’t really agree on anything. They agreed to abolish the rights of the clergy and nobility. They agreed to a statement of Rights held by French citizens. They agreed to hold Louis more or less hostage. But, after that, they argued about what shape the government should take- what role should the nobles have? The King? Who got to vote? There were four or five major factions, and they turned on each other on the hard questions. Meanwhile, the French economy went nowhere, since no one knew what the laws were. Chaos reigned in the countryside, since no one could enforce the law. Food didn’t get to the cities, where the poor starved. No one paid the soldiers, so they fed themselves as they could. From 1789 to 1791, the assembly turned more and more radical in its composition and actions, as the Jacobin faction gained more support amongst the mob in Paris.
The War of the First Coalition.
Louis XVI made a lot of mistakes. However, he married very, very well- Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna von Hapsburg. (More commonly known as Marie Antoinette.) Maria Antonia was the youngest daughter of Maria Theresa by the Grace of God Empress of the Romans, King of Bohemia, Queen of Hungary, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodemaria, Galicia, Archduchess of Austria… well, you get the idea. By 1791, her older brother, Leopold, was Emperor of Austria. He may not have seen her in 15 years, but family is family- and Hapsburgs are Hapsburgs.
Meanwhile, the state of France, and the disestablishment of the French nobility, had led to the rise of the emigres, French nobles who moved into exile in the courts of Europe. In those courts, they agitated for military action to end the Revolution, restore order in France, and put Louis back on his throne. These nobles gained a lot of purchase in Prussia, where King Frederick Wilhelm II came to support their cause as revolutionary turmoil began to spill out of France and into the German states and Poland.
Meanwhile, in June, 1791, Louis and Marie decided to make a run for it. They snuck out of their effective house arrest in Paris, and decided to make their way for the border to rally support to retake their thrones. However, they were caught, brought back to Paris, and confined even more closely. Concerned about the safety of his sister and brother in law, Leopold of Austria began to support anti-Revolutionary efforts himself, and in August of 1791, issued a Declaration with Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia that, if the Revolutionaries harmed Louis or Marie, or any of their children, some bad stuff would happen. No specifics about bad stuff were really mentioned.
The Declaration, though, hit the French government in the midst of political turmoil. The National Assembly had finally forced through a rather conservative constitution, angering the more radical factions of the Assembly. Word of the Declaration, along with the lack of rights for the poor of Paris in the new constitution, allowed the radicals to gain more power and support. They began pushing for a war with Austria to forestall an Austrian attack, causing the Austrians to begin looking for allies for a war in early 1792. In April, the French declared war on Austria. The Prussians declared their support for the Austrians, forming an anti-French Alliance that would become the First Coalition. (There’s going to be Seven of these, so pay attention.)
The French decided to attack the only place they really could- the Austrian Netherlands. This area covers, essentially, modern day Belgium, and were formed from the Catholic provinces of the Netherlands that had remained loyal to Philip II of Spain in the 1500s, during the Dutch Revolt.
However, the French Army was not in really spectacular shape. Irregular pay had led to desertion, poor food led to low morale amongst those who stayed. Leadership was an issue- under the King, only nobles could be officers. The French Revolutionary government had driven off many of these officers. While they opened up leadership ranks to non-nobles, this meant that there were plenty of losers in command positions, and even those that might be capable had no real experience in the job. When this army was ordered to invade the Austrian Netherlands, they decided to murder their commanding general and go home.
This left France in rather serious trouble. The Austrians and Prussians invaded France, and began besieging major fortresses like Lille and Verdun. The other two major commanders, Lafayette and Rochambeau- both heroes of the American Revolution, decided that getting out while they could was a good call. (Both would be arrested, but managed to avoid execution due to the support of the Washington Administration.) In August, 1792, the Duke of Brunswick, commanding the Prussian-Austrian Army, announced that he had had quite enough of this revolutionary BS, and that, when he took Paris, he was putting the King back in charge. This forced the hands of the Radicals, who stormed the Palace where Louis and Marie lived, and put them under double super arrest. They also began shooting all the non-radical members of the government they could get their hands on, declaring an emergency. Eventually, they would suspend the Constitution of 1791, and form the Committee for Public Safety, which was neither a committee, nor devoted to the public or its safety.
Meanwhile the Radicals turned to the only commanders they had with serious military experience left: Charles François Dumouriez and Francois Christophe de Kellerman. They through together an army as best they could- there were a few professionals left willing to fight for the Radicals, especially in the artillery, the only branch of the army that took non-nobles as officers. There were plenty of enthusiastic volunteers, but few had any real training or experience. Taking these raw troops against the veteran, professionally trained and led, well disciplined armies of Austria and Prussia on the terms of the Austrians and Prussians would be a disaster.
So, much like Rich Rod and Urban Meyer inventing the power-spread offense just to try to win any single came they could, Dumouriez and Kellerman decided to do something rather completely different. On September 20th, they formed up in an entrenchment in the rain outside Valmy, halfway between Paris and Verdun. There, they just made themselves too hard a target for the Duke of Brunswick, who decided to not make a bloody assault. Lacking the time to besiege Paris anyway in 1792, he retreated back across the Rhine. With Paris safe, Dumouriez decided to take his army of 40,000 men north, and invade the Austrian Netherlands. He figured it would be an easy campaign, given that he had been their during the Brabant Revolution of 1790, and he figured everyone there would rather be part of a French Republic than an Austrian Empire.
The Battle of Jemmapes
Dumouriez marched north from Valmy, attacking and retaking Lille, then marching north towards Mons, and, eventually Brussels, he hoped. He brought an army of 40,000 men, some of whom had fought at Valmy, and 100 guns. Against him, the Duke of Saxe-Teschen, the governor of the Austrian Netherlands, brought up 20,000 troops and 50 guns. Outnumbered, the Duke decided to find a strong position to set up his army to defend the road to Mons. He decided to place them on a long ridge, anchoring them on the fortress of Mons to his left and the town of Jemappes to his right. Unfortunately, this forced him to defend a front of a few miles with his small, outnumbered force. Still, he dug in, and planned to fight it out.
Dumouriez had to attack this position, one way or another, as his army closed on November 6th. Unlike Valmy, he couldn’t hang in a defensive position, and the late date made it imperative that he sweep the Austrians aside. But, he didn’t have a professional army to do this properly- form up in lines, march up the hill, shoot it out, and assault the Austrians off the hill. Frankly, his men probably could not even form a regimental line, much less march in one under fire. Nor did they have the leadership and discipline to stand in the line and duke it out with professional, organized Austrian troops. He did, however, have men willing to cross fields of fire to attack the Austrians hand to hand. He had professional artillery. He also had twice as many men as Saxe-Teschen, and his opponent was rather well stretched out.
Rather than form up in lines, Dumouriez formed his men up in what might be generously called columns- but, might as well be moderately organized mobs. He then decided to send forces against the Austrian left and the troops in front of Jemappes to pin them down and protect the flanks of his main effort, which he planned to launch at the Austrian center-right position.
The French opened with a heavy bombardment of artillery, while keeping their columns out of range of Austrian guns. Once the Austrians looked soft enough, the French launched an attack across the line. However, the attacks stalled, and lost coordination. While enthusiastic, the French began to falter through the morning, as individual commanders rallied their men, brought them to the attack, and then were driven back without much consideration given to mutual support, either in the small tactical environments on the Austrian flank, or in general across the French Army.
The French rallied in the midmorning, and at noon, Dumouriez organized a massive assault column of several regiments to attack. By sheer weight and enthusiasm, this column began to push the Austrians off the ridge between Jemappes and Mons. This helped dislodge the Austrian left in front of Jemappes as well. With his flank beginning to crumble, Saxe-Tenchen decided to call it a day, and began retreating. He made it off the field in good order, as the French were just about exhausted, and their cavalry was in no shape to organize a pursuit against the well formed Austrians.
All in all, casualties were rather light- about 300 dead Austrians, with another 400 captured and 500 wounded. The French lost 650 men on the field, with 1,300 wounded. Without an army to support it, Mons fell the next day. This left the road to Brussels open, and Dumouriez charged down it, occupying the rest of the Austrian Netherlands by the end of November. Meanwhile, the Austrians retreated across the Rhine, finding winter quarters in Germany. Dumouriez decided to let them go. On the one hand, he wanted to hold his army together to prepare for an invasion of the Netherlands. On the other, it turned out he was wrong about the people of the Austrian Netherlands- rather than welcoming him as a liberator, they shunned him, making his winter rather difficult.
The battle would provide a template for future French successes: first, have more men than the enemy. This is usually a good plan, but, as we shall see, the ability of the French to raise and arm large numbers of men would be vital in the era. The French also learned how to tap in to the enthusiasm of their volunteers, by leading them in attacks with cold steel, rather than hoping they’d win a disciplined firefight. By moving in column-ish formations, they could keep together and deliver weight to the enemy line. Finally, they, once again, relied on a strong artillery bombardment, which would come to characterize French efforts in the era.
The victories at Valmy and Jemappes also encouraged the French government to push for broader war aims. Rather than just surviving, the French government decided to expand to the “natural frontiers” of France: the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Jura Waterway and the Rhine. This meant taking more land. Even more concerning or the rest of Europe, though, the French decided to “liberate the oppressed peoples of Europe-“ that is, potentially, overthrow the other governments of Europe and replace them with Revolutionary ones. That was a rather serious threat. In fact, the French government was feeling sufficiently ready that they declared war on Great Britain in early 1793, dragging them into the war.
