The French Revolutionary Wars

Gregory Fremont-Barnes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135977412
• Print ISBN:
  9781579583651
• Subtopic: Early Modern History

Europe's great powers formed two powerful coalitions against France, yet force of numbers, superior leadership and the patriotic fervor of France's citizen-soldiers not only defeated each in turn, but closed the era of small, professional armies fighting for limited political objectives. This period produced commanders such as Napoleon and Nelson, whose names remain a by-word for excellence to this day. From Italy to Egypt Napoleon demonstrated his strategic genius and mastery of tactics in battles including Rivoli, the Pyramids and Marengo. Nelson's spectacular sea victories at the Nile and Copenhagen were foretastes of a century of British naval supremacy.

The fighting

The first and second coalitions

The War of the First Coalition, 1792–97

The Campaign of 1792

The French Revolutionary Wars were divided into two distinct periods, organized around the War of the First Coalition (1792–97) and that of the Second Coalition (1798–1802), each with its own combination of European powers. The fervor of revolutionary ideology in France, together with the revulsion that it inspired abroad, brought France into open conflict with Austria and Prussia, soon to be joined by various other states. The Allies expected a quick and decisive victory. Once across the Rhine they expected to brush aside the poorly equipped amateurish forces sent to meet them. At the end of a decade of continuous fighting, the French Revolutionary Wars left France in a far stronger position than she had begun them, controlling not only the so-called ‘natural’ frontiers of the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, but exercising considerable influence over her satellite states in the Low Countries, western Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. These achievements, though relatively swiftly attained, were made only after fighting on an unprecedented scale, in many separate theaters of war and under very different geographical conditions.

When hostilities began in April 1792, France deployed her armies along all her borders. To the north, two officers distinguished by their previous service in the War of American Independence, Generals Rochambeau and Lafayette, with about 50,0 men each, held positions extending from the northern coast to the Ardennes. A somewhat smaller army under General Luckner stood near the Rhine further south. Fifty thousand men under Montesquieu occupied the border with Piedmont, on the south coast. Each of these armies was understrength and suffered from poor discipline and disorganization.

Fighting began when French forces invaded the Austrian Netherlands (modern Belgium), where, at Valenciennes, the Republicans overcame all resistance in the first action of the war. Further south, along the Rhine, however, the Austrians and Prussians were aiming directly for Paris itself. The prospect of invasion had a profound effect in the French capital, where the National Assembly decreed that every citizen was to come forward in defense of the Republic, while radical politicians moved closer to deposing the King. On 24 July Prussia, together with a number of lesser German states, formally joined Austria's cause by declaring war on France.

On 1 August the Allies issued the Brunswick Manifesto, a statement that proved immensely counter-productive since it inadvertently fanned the flames of revolutionary fervor in France. While it was meant to be an ominous warning of punishment which would cow the French, as well as being a pledge to protect Louis XVI, it played into the hands of French propagandists who presented it as a dire threat to the nation's existence. If the Tuileries were attacked, the Brunswick Manifesto said,

if the least violence or outrage be offered to their Majesties, the king, queen and royal family, if their preservation and their liberty be not immediately provided for, they [the Allies] will exact an exemplary and ever-memorable vengeance, by delivering the city of Paris over to a military execution and to complete ruin, and the rebels guilty of these outrages to the punishments they shall have deserved.

Parisians bid farewell to the National Guard, September 1792. Scenes like these took place all over France: soldiers leaving for the front kiss their sweet hearts and receive bouquets from enthusiastic ladies lining the streets while men cheer and raise or throw their hats in to the air ‘Every citizen should be a soldier’ proclaimed one revolutionary, ‘and every soldier should be a citizen.’ (Print after Coginet, Roger-Viollet)

Received in Paris on 3 August, it caused widespread public demonstrations and the imprisonment of the King, who was now sovereign in name only. The determination to repel the enemy grew enormously and volunteer enlistments rose at an astonishing pace.

Initially the army of the Duke of Brunswick met little resistance in its August advance on the French capital. In leisurely fashion he took the fortresses at Longwy and Verdun before proceeding through the Argonne forest. Opposing him was the Army of the Centre under General François Kellermann, joined by part of the Army of the North under General Charles Dumouriez. Together the Generals could deploy 36,000 men of dubious quality compared to the 34,000 professional troops under Brunswick. At last, on September 20, the two armies met at a position prepared by the French at Valmy. Both sides opened a cannonade until 1 pm, when the Prussian guns fell silent and their infantry, arrayed in two lines, marched forward in attack. Kellermann seized the moment: raising his hat on his sword he cried ‘Vive la Nation!’ and thousands of troops answered back in a great surge of patriotic enthusiasm. To the astonishment of the French, Brunswick halted his attack and withdrew – and he did not stop until he had gone back across the Rhine. Goethe, who was present with the allied army, rightly perceived the great historical significance of the French victory, for not only did it save Paris, it saved the Revolution itself. ‘From here and today,’ he told his colleagues, ‘there begins a new epoch in the history of the world, and you can say that you were there.’

On the southern front Montesquieu's army invaded Piedmont and Savoy, capturing Nice in the process. Dumouriez, for his part, made progress in the north. On his approach the Austrians raised the siege of Lille and made camp for the winter at Jemappes, just over the Belgian frontier. Now was the time for Dumouriez to strike. While Austrian and Prussian attention was diverted by matters in Poland, where the Eastern powers were arranging the second partition of that unfortunate country, Dumouriez launched another, more powerful invasion, this time with 40,000 men and 100 guns, defeating the 13,000 Austrians at Jemappes on 6 November.

The battle was a turning point in the war, for the French followed up by taking Brussels 10 days later, and sent a squadron up the Scheldt to besiege Antwerp. Significantly, the French had now adopted new tactics and displayed a thirst for the offensive, or élan, which was to serve them well over the next several years. Meanwhile, on the Rhine front, neither side had gained the upper hand. General Custine took Mainz but penetrated into Germany only as far as Frankfurt. Nevertheless, by the end of 1792, republican armies had preserved the nation and, moreover, sat ominously on the borders of Holland, while at home the Revolution had taken a more radical turn. A new government, the National Convention, came to power and promptly abolished the monarchy.

This, together with a French declaration on 16 November that opened the Scheldt Estuary to international shipping (in overt violation of existing treaties which guaranteed Holland sole control), led Britain to make war preparations. British security rested on the premise that no great maritime power held control of the Channel ports. Britain was right to be concerned, for Dumouriez planned to invade the Dutch Republic in the spring. In Paris Anglophobia was growing rapidly, particularly within the National Assembly.

The so-called ‘Edict of Fraternity’, issued on 19 November, gave further alarm in Britain, for it was an open invitation for radicals across Europe – and specifically within the small German states of the Holy Roman Empire – to overthrow their governments, whether or not those governments were then hostile to France. The French could hardly have produced a more provocative document:

Valmy, 20 September 1792. In one of history's most decisive battles, the Duke of Brunswick made two half-hearted advances against Dumouriez and Kellermann before acknowledging his numerical inferiority and declaring: ‘We shall not strike here.’ French morale soared.’The French Revolutionaries have come through their baptism of fire,’ noted one Prussian officer. They expected more from us. Now we have fallen in their estimation, but they have risen. We have lost more than a battle. Our credibility is gone.’ (Gamma)

The National Convention declares, in the name of the French nation, that it will grant fraternity and assistance to all peoples who wish to recover their liberty; and instructs the Executive Power to give the necessary orders to the generals to grant assistance to these peoples and to defend those citizens who have been – or may be – persecuted for their attachment to the cause of liberty.

The critical point came on 21 January 1793. The execution of Louis XVI caused outrage throughout Europe, including Britain, where the government had already begun discussing military plans with Austrian and Prussian officials. Just 10 days later, on 31 January, the National Assembly formally annexed Belgium, and it declared war on Britain and Holland the next day. The power of the Allies’ coalition was enormously increased with the additional military, naval, and above all financial resources of Britain, who began to use her diplomatic influence to draw in other members. Naples and Portugal soon joined the ranks of the Allies, followed by Spain, on whom France declared war on 7 March. To these Sweden and Russia gave their sympathy, if not their practical support.

The Campaign of 1793

France faced a whole host of threats in the spring of 1793: to the south Spain could mount an attack across the Pyrenees; Austrian and Italian troops were preparing for the spring campaign season near Nice; a multinational army under British command was being readied for operations in Flanders in conjunction with Habsburg forces; and the Allies now boasted an army of 120,000 men along the Rhine. These combined forces numbered nearly 350,000 men, while in France civil and political instability, workers’ strikes, and administrative collapse left the armies of the Republic lacking in supplies and pay and suffering from low morale. In theory they numbered 270,000, but the true figure must have been considerably lower, and with morale at its lowest point there was no telling what the next season of campaigning would bring. To make matters worse, France had now also to contend with the powerful Royal Navy, which was reckoned by all more than a match for its French counterpart. With France already on the verge of bankruptcy, the prospect of losing her colonies and having her commerce swept from the seas must have seemed like a nightmare.

The French duly invaded Holland in the middle of February, but the Allies were meanwhile launching their own offensive with 40,000 Austrians under the Prince of Saxe-Coburg, who crossed the Meuse to retake Belgium. On the Rhine, Brunswick returned with 60,000 Prussians to besiege Custine in Mainz, but neither of their two operations was vigorously pressed. Indeed, the allied campaign in Flanders stumbled along without any rush to reach the French frontier. Adhering to the strategies of previous wars, the forces of the coalition instead chose to spend the summer consolidating their ground by laying siege to the cities of Valenciennes, Condé, and Mainz.

Nevertheless, the French under General Francisco de Miranda suffered defeat at Maastricht on 6 March, while on the 18th, at Neerwinden, Dumouriez launched eight separate columns totaling 45,000 men against Saxe-Coburg in an attempt to turn his left. The French columns were defeated in detail, rapidly putting paid to French plans of swift conquest. The Austrians retook Brussels, and Dumouriez, unwilling to face the inevitable backlash in Paris where his Jacobin political enemies demanded blood, defected to the enemy on 5 April. Custine, who ultimately replaced him, was defeated at the besieged city of Valenciennes on 21–23 May, and fell victim to the ruthless Committee of Public Safety in Paris, the main instrument of the Reign of Terror (a sort of revolutionary dictatorship led by Maximilien Robespierre). Custine was sent to the guillotine, setting a chilling precedent for many other generals who would either fail on the battlefield or whose loyalties to the Republic would come under suspicion. Saxe-Coburg duly followed up his success by taking Condé on 10 July and Valenciennes on the 29th.

Execution of Louis XVI. His death at the Guillotine not only galvanized existing opposition to the Revolution from abroad, it went far in persuading even many British republicans that things had gone sour. ‘I will tell you what the French have done,’ said William Cowper They have made me weep for a King of France, which In ever thought to do, and have made me sick of the very name of liberty, which In ever thought to be.’(Roger-Viollet)

While the Terror sought to cleanse France of its internal enemies – real and imagined – the nation was in an increasingly dangerous position, with fighting along the Pyrenees and, from August, serious royalist counterrevolutions under way in the Vendée, Lyon, and Toulon. An Anglo-Spanish fleet under Admiral Lord Hood appeared off Toulon, disembarked troops for its defense against republican forces, and prepared to burn or capture the French fleet sitting at anchor. The British were also active to the north, dispatching an Anglo-Hanoverian expedition under the Duke of York to Flanders, where it invested Dunkirk and linked forces with the Austrians to the east. Elsewhere, with low morale among both their leaders and men, French forces along the Rhine could not hope to stop the allied advance from the east that recaptured Mainz in August. These were dark times indeed for France, a country now apparently on the point of c...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chronology
• Historical rivalries
• Opposing strength
• A clash of ideologies
• The first and second coalitions
• William Dillon: A midshipman in the Royal Navy
• The impact of conflict
• Emma Hamilton: British Ambassadress at Naples
• Hohenlinden and Copenhagen
• Conclusion and consequences
• Further reading
• Index