french revolution; session v. war

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Aux Armes, Citoyens!

French Revolutionsession v

war & counterrevolution


Aux Armes, Citoyens!

French Revolutionsession v

war & counterrevolution

The Battle of Varoux

November 1792


War never solves anything.

Well, perhaps not...


but it certainly changes things.Thursday, August 26, 2010

Following the French declaration of war on Austria in 1792, Rouget de Lisle, a French officer stationed in Strasbourg, composed the "Battle Song of the Army of the Rhine" during the night of April 25-26, in the home of citizen Dietrich, the Mayor of the city.


Following the French declaration of war on Austria in 1792, Rouget de Lisle, a French officer stationed in Strasbourg, composed the "Battle Song of the Army of the Rhine" during the night of April 25-26, in the home of citizen Dietrich, the Mayor of the city.

Rouget de Lisle singing the Marsei!aise for the first time in his home

The song was taken up by the fédérés from Marseilles who took part in the Tuileries insurrection on August 10, 1792. It proved so successful it was declared a national song on July 14, 1795.


Aux armes, citoyens

Aux armes, citoyens,Formez vos batai!ons,Marchons, marchons!

Qu’un sang impurAbreuve nos si!ons!

To arms, citizens,Form your battalions,

March, march!May an impure bloodWater our furrows!


Aux armes, citoyens





A!ons enfants de la Patrie,Come, children of the Fatherland,

Le jour de gloire est arrivé !The day of glory has arrived!

Contre nous de la tyrannie,Against us about the tyrant,

L'étendard sanglant est levé, (bis)The bloody banner is raised, (repeat)

Entendez-vous dans les campagnesDo you hear into the countryside,

Mugir ces féroces soldats ?of those ferocious soldiers wailing?

Ils viennent jusque dans vos brasThey're coming right into your arms

Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes !To slay your sons and wives!

Le depart de1792

(La Marsei!aise)


Aux armes, citoyens





A!ons enfants de la Patrie,Come, children of the Fatherland,

Le jour de gloire est arrivé !The day of glory has arrived!

Contre nous de la tyrannie,Against us about the tyrant,

L'étendard sanglant est levé, (bis)The bloody banner is raised, (repeat)

Entendez-vous dans les campagnesDo you hear into the countryside,

Mugir ces féroces soldats ?of those ferocious soldiers wailing?

Ils viennent jusque dans vos brasThey're coming right into your arms

Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes !To slay your sons and wives!

Le depart de1792

(La Marsei!aise)

Nous entrerons dans la carrièreWe shall enter in the (military) career

Quand nos aînés n'y seront plus,When our elders are no longer there,

Nous y trouverons leur poussièreThere we shall find their dust

Et la trace de leurs vertus (bis)And the trace of their virtues (repeat)

Bien moins jaloux de leur survivreMuch less jealous to survive them

Que de partager leur cercueil,Than to share their coffins,

Nous aurons le sublime orgueilWe shall have the sublime pride

De les venger ou de les suivreOf avenging or following them


Major topics for this session

• Military Reforms before the Revolution

• Opening Engagements

• Counterrevolution in the Vendée

• Levée en Masse

•“Organizer of Victory”

• The Rush upon Europe


Military Reforms before the Revolution


Military Reforms before the Revolution

Canons Gribeauval au musée de l'armée Paris


The Gribeauval System

• 1776-as IG of artillery, he standardized cannons as either 12, 8 or 4 pounders (weight of cannon ball)

• this ended a wasteful variation in sizes and ammunition, thus easing supply problems

• guns were drawn by four horses in pairs instead of files

• gun carriages were improved, built to a uniform model with the “trail” lengthened and the hardwood axle replaced by iron

• sighting methods and equipment were also improved

• these improvements brought French artillery well in advance of other armies as the Revolution began

Lieutenant General Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval

(1715 – 1789)


“If the infantry is the king of battles, then artillery is the queen.”proverb

Piece de 8

Piece de 4

Piece de 12


Gribeauval’s standardized ammunition

A. anti-personnel (for use against troops)B. general purpose, good on fortificationsC. counter battery fire (against enemy artillery) or wagons

fuse

charge

sabot(wood)

propellant

shell(iron)

musketballs


Gribeauval 12 pdr


In 1770, at the age of twenty-seven, he published his famous Essai general de tactique, and within a few years [it] had been translated even into the Persian. Europe’s salon intellectuals and professional soldiers alike discussed a work which exploded a bomb under current ideas of warfare. Nor did the author limit himself to military theory, for in his preface he sounds one of the first notes of the Revolution:

The Writings of Guibert

In the midst of the general feebleness the various governments, themselves feeble but prolific in petty methods, extend the dull weight of their oppression. They seem to be engaged in a secret war against their subjects, corrupting one faction only to tyrannize over another.

The armies of Europe, declared Guibert, were composed of “the most vile and miserable class of citizens … onerous to those nations in time of peace, insufficient to reassure them in time of war.” As for the conflicts of the age, he dismisses them in several contemptuous sentences:


The Writings of Guibert (cont.)Conquerors or conquered, it makes little difference. The mass of national debt accumulates. Credit declines. Funds are lacking. The fleets cannot recruit more sailors, nor the army more soldiers. The ministers, between themselves, sense that it is high time to negotiate. Peace is made. Several colonies or provinces change hands. Often the cause of the quarrel is not mentioned, and each side remains seated on the debris, occupied by paying its debts and whetting its dull sword.

Nobody accomplished more than he to inspire the victories he had predicted.

Jacques Antoine Hippolyte, Comte de Guibert, quoted in Lynn Montross, War Through the Ages, p. 447

In his very next paragraph, however, Guibert foresees a possibility which became historical fact a generation later:

But suppose there were to arise in Europe one vigorous nation, of method and genius and sound government: a people who combined simple virtues and a national militia with a fixed plan of aggrandizement; who never lost sight of system; who knew how to make war at small expense and subsist on their victories; who were not reduced to sheathing their sword by calculations of finance. We would see this people subjugating their neighbors … as the north wind blows down the frail reed!


Bourcet, Guibert’s mentor• as a petty noble he was not eligible for supreme commands,

but he has been called the first great chief of staff

• 1759-when Guibert was sixteen he accompanied his father in the Seven Years War and came in contact with Bourcet and his ideas:

• “The plan is to threaten the enemy at all other points of his position….This will make him divide his forces, and we can then take advantage of the geographical conditions to reunite our own at the critical point before he can unite his”

• 1763-after the war Bourcet became director of a school for staff officers where he taught the importance of map reading, mountain warfare and skills which would later be called “Napoleonic”

• Principes de la guerre de montagnes circulated among staff officers in secret manuscript copies

• we will see them at work in Napoleon’s Italian campaigns

Pierre-Joseph de Bourcet1700-1780


“...derived, but developed and enlarged…”

• “Coming within reach of the enemy, the general either draws off or strengthens certain columns according to his judgment, advancing one, leaving another in the rear, directing this toward one point, that toward another….The troops...form for battle in an instant, beginning their attack before the enemy has had time to determine the point where the blow is being aimed, or, even if he has discovered the point, before he has time to change his dispositions to ward off the blow.”

• “What will the enemy be able to do if surprised by this new kind of war?...Will he change his position? If so, he will lose the advantages of the ground on which he has relied, and be obliged to accept a battle wherever he can.”

• “We must unite the greatest number of troops and the greatest masses of artillery on the points where we wish to force the enemy’s position, while creating the illusion of attack on the others….The moment when our troops should assault is determined by the ravages that the artillery has made on the troops and defenses of the foe.”

Comte de Guibert1743-1790


the Revolution transforms the military

• 1789- 6,633 of the 9,578 army officers were noble. The navy was even more unbalanced with nearly 1,000 noble officers there

• the navy was confronted by a rival in the merchant service, whose bourgeois captains considered themselves every bit as skilled at ship-handling

• the nobility were faced by a serious threat to both their careers and to the prestige of the sword if the Assembly should carry out its work of leveling in the armed forces

• 1787-the Army Council, with Guibert as its secretary, had continued the gradual abolition of the purchase system (something the British wouldn’t attempt until 1871!) and the establishment of military training colleges in the provinces. Napoleon would attend one such.

• the elimination of superfluous officers had brought the number down from 35,000 to below 10,000

• the provincial nobility welcomed the Revolution, hoping it would break the monopoly of the noblesse de cour (Versailles nobles) on the top posts. Several of the leading generals of 1792-3, such as Kellermann, Wimpfen, Dillon and Dumouriez belonged to this class


the Revolution transforms the military

• September 1790-the Constituent opened the officer corps to commoners, one quarter of the sub-lieutenants were to be promoted from the ranks, the remainder chosen by competitive exam

• January 1791-the number of staff officers was reduced from 216 to 34,but there was no attempt at a general purge. The majority of officers remained noble

• the rank-and-file was reformed by abolition of the hated militia drawn from the peasantry

• national conscription was rejected at this time and the regular army would be recruited by voluntary enlistment (plus a lottery when vols fell short) until 1793 and the levée en masse

• July 1789-the role of militia was replaced by the National Guard, a semi-military police force which was used to reinforce troops in dealing with civil disturbances and could form a reserve in time of war


from 1789 onwards discipline in the armed forces tended to break down

• regiments disobeyed their officers and crews mutinied. In ports the naval authorities often found themselves at loggerheads with the new municipalities

• many of the officers were correctly suspected of being royalists

• they began to leave the services in considerable numbers, either to retire or to join the émigré forces:

• Artois at Coblentz

• the much more serious army that the veteran Condé was raising at Worms

• the more officers emigrated the more the Assembly tended to suspect those that remained

• July 1791-after Varennes a new oath of loyalty was imposed, from which the king’s name was dropped. This was refused by 1,500 army officers

• January 1792-3,500--more than half the noble officers in 1789--had left. The aristocracy was not evicted from the armed forces; they chose to leave a cause which their consciences no longer allowed them to support


Opening Engagements


Opening Engagements

Batai!e de Valmy. le 20 septembre 1792 Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse, 1835


Revolutionary War Leader

• born in Flanders (Belgium), of noble (epée) rank, he attended Lycée Louis le Grand and began his military career in the Seven Years War

• 1789-after a long and distinguished military career under the ancien régime, he joined the Jacobins and attached himself to Mirabeau

• 1790-was appointed French military advisor to the newly established independent Belgian government and remained dedicated to the cause of an independent Belgian Republic

• 15 March 1792-became minister of foreign affairs, supported the declaration of war against Austria, and sent armies north expecting the Belgians to welcome them and help expel Austria from the Netherlands

Charles-François du Périer Dumouriez

1739 – 1823


...the first campaign of the wars that would end twenty-three years and a million and a half dead Frenchmen later, began as a pathetic fiasco.

This was all the more shocking because the commanders appointed to the three major theaters of war were all famous veterans of France’s successful campaign in America. Lafayette, the center; Luckner, Alsace; and Rochambeau, the hero of Yorktown, the most immediately critical zone of the Belgian frontier….The French armies were far from prepared to face the Austrians [with regard to numbers], battle readiness and discipline….The increasing rate of emigration among officers after Varennes had...deepened suspicions among the rank and file that officers… might be deliberately betraying the patrie

Schama, p. 599


• the Dillons were Irish Catholic Jacobite officers in France, the so-called “wild geese,” enobled by Louis XIV


• the Dillons were Irish Catholic Jacobite officers in France, the so-called “wild geese,” enobled by Louis XIV

• 29 April 1792-Theobald Dillon was sent on a modest expedition against Tournai on the Belgian border

• to do this he was given a force of 5,000, mostly regular cavalry, supplemented by volunteers

• when Austrian cannons opened up, his soldiers fled. He was accused of leading them into a trap, taken under guard to Lille, where he was torn by the mob from his carriage

• the townsmen, soldiers and National Guard slashed his face, bayoneted him to death and hanged his body from a lanterne. His leg was severed as a trophy and paraded around the town before the rest of the corpse was thrown on a bonfire


The commanders-in-chief of the armies became political "suspects"; and before a serious action had been fought, the three armies commanded respectively by Rochambeau, Lafayette and Luckner had been reorganized into two commanded by Dumouriez and Kellermann. Thus the disciplined soldiers of the Allies had apparently good reason to consider the campaign would be easy.

Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolutionary_Wars:_Campaigns_of_1792


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baptiste_Donatien_de_Vimeur,_comte_de_Rochambeau

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baptiste_Donatien_de_Vimeur,_comte_de_Rochambeau

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_la_Fayette

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_la_Fayette

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Luckner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Luckner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fran%C3%A7ois_Dumouriez

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fran%C3%A7ois_Dumouriez

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Christophe_Kellermann

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Christophe_Kellermann

For many of the King of Prussia’s advisors, and for some in Austria, the whole French adventure was a diversion if not an error, and the important front lay in Poland, where it was expedient to make a quick end to the Polish revolution…. The two German powers therefore held many of their best troops for use on their eastern borders, believing in any case that no full-scale military effort would be necessary against a France weakened by internal anarchy.

R.R. Palmer, Democratic Revolution, vol. ii, The Stru%le, p. 12


• On the Rhine, a combined army of Prussians, Austrians, Hessians and émigrés under the Duke of Brunswick was formed for the invasion of France

• In the Southern (Austrian) Netherlands, plans called for the Austrians to besiege Lille, just over the French border. In the south the Piedmontese also took the field

• 25 July 1792-with the incredibly slow pace of warfare, which Bonaparte would bring to an end, nothing had happened until Brunswick issued the ill-fated manifesto. Expressing the views of the Queen via Fersen, it was issued against the advice of Brunswick himself, whose signature appeared on it; the duke, a model sovereign in his own principality, sympathized with the constitutional side of the French Revolution, while as a soldier he had no confidence in the success of the enterprise.

• 19 August 1792-after completing its preparations in the leisurely manner of the previous generation, his army crossed the French frontier. The Allies readily captured Longwy and slowly marched on to Verdun, which appeared more indefensible even than Longwy


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesse


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89migr%C3%A9


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_William_Ferdinand,_Duke_of_Brunswick




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Netherlands


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lille


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piedmont_(Italy)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longwy


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdun-sur-Meuse






Longwy

Verdun

..

Pied-mont


















• 3 September 1792-The commandant of Verdun, Col. Beaurepaire, shot himself in despair, and the place surrendered






















From this place and from this day forth commences a new era in the world's history, and you can all say that you were present at its birth.-- J. W. v. Goethe


the statue of Kellermannat Valmy


Alsatian German, French hero

• his was a Saxon family, long settled in Strasbourg and ennobled there

• 1757-63--served in the Seven Years War

• 1771-made a lieutenant-colonel in Louis XV’s Polish expedition

• 1784-made brigadier and in the following year marechal-de-camp

• 1789-enthusiastically embraced the revolution

• 1791-became general of the army in Alsace

• April 1792-made a lieutenant general, and in that fall came the opportunity and the glory of Valmy

• twice challenged, imprisoned for thirteen months and acquitted by the National Convention during the Terror, a period of heightened distrust of aristocratic officers

François Christophe Kellermann or de Kellermann

1st Duc de Valmy (under Napoleon)1735 –1820


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valmy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valmy

aftermath

This engagement was the turning point of the campaign. Ten days later, without firing another shot, the invading army began its retreat. Dumouriez's pursuit was not seriously pressed; he occupied himself chiefly with a series of subtle and curious negotiations which, with the general advance of the French troops, brought about the complete withdrawal of the allied invaders from the soil of France.The day after this first victory of the French revolutionary troops, on 21 September, in Paris, the French monarchy was abolished and the First French Republic proclaimed. The battle of Valmy was really the first victory of an army inspired by citizenship and nationalism, and marked the death knell of the era of absolute monarchy

Wikipedia; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Valmy


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_the_abolition_of_the_monarchy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_the_abolition_of_the_monarchy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_French_Republic


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_monarchy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_monarchy

more to celebrate• instead of going into winter quarters,

Dumouriez followed the Austrians into Belgium

• 6 November 1792-with a greatly superior force, he attacked near the city of Mons

• the duc d’Orleans, Philippe Egalité, now General Egalité, sent a massive column against the enemy’s center

• his costly but effective charges, “bellowing the Marseillaise,” broke the Austrian position

• the excellent French artillery, once again, proved the value of Gribeauval’s reforms

• Mons surrendered the day after the battle and Brussels on the 14th

Batai!e de Jemmapes 6 November 1792


The decrees of 19 November and 15 December 1792

[The case of foreign radicals living in exile in France] came before the Convention...which enacted as a temporary measure, pending further review of the question of occupied territories during the war, the famous decree of November 19, 1792, “according aid and fraternity to all peoples wishing to recover their liberty….”

...the Convention, on December 15, issued its famous decree on policy to be pursued in occupied countries during the war….The two together have been commonly called the Propaganda Decrees, though mere propaganda was hardly their purpose…. Its most immediate purpose was to arrange for supply of the French armies in Belgium. French generals in the field were directed to seize the revenues of enemies of the Republic, that is to say, of the enemy governments, the noble and feudal classes, and the church. The decree was explained…Guerre aux châteaux, paix aux chaumières--war on the castles and manor houses, peace to the cottages and cabins. The enemies of the Revolution were to pay for its triumphs.

Palmer, The Stru%le, pp. 59, 61-62


the international revolution• most colorful of the international revolutionary

immigrants to France during the Revolution

• born in Cleves, a Prussian city on the Dutch border, a philosophe, heir to a great fortune, he travelled the continent

• 1789-age 34, he came to Paris, attracted by the ideals of the Revolution, took the name Anacharsis

• 19 June 1790-he appeared before the Constituent, the head of an “embassy” of 36 foreigners, announcing that the “human race” adhered to the Declaration of the Rights of Man

• 1792-contributed 12,000 livres to the arming of fighters against tyranny, declared himself a “personal enemy of Jesus Christ,” elected to the National Convention

the “Orator of the Human Race”engraving by Levachez

Jean-Baptiste du Val-de-Grâce,

baron de Cloots

1755 – March 24, 1794


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron

Counterrevolution in the Vendée


Counterrevolution in the Vendée Henri de La Rochejacquelein au combat de Cholet en 1793


The Vendée was only one, perhaps the major, military threat facing the Paris government. After the defeat at Neerwinden [18 March 1793], Dumouriez had to retreat from Belgium. He then made an agreement with the Austrians to hand over to them several border fortresses in return for a truce where he could march on Paris and restore the monarchy under the Constitution of 1791. However, he was unable to secure the loyalty of his troops, and he defected to the Austrian lines rather than face arrest by the Jacobins.

At the same time, the increasing power of radicals in Paris incited revolt in the provinces, with the people of Lyon and Marseille rebelling and the Vendée raising an army to attack the central government and open communications with Britain. Spanish armies crossed the Pyrenees, Sardinian armies the Alps, and Austrian armies occupied Valenciennes and forced the northern armies back on Paris. Britain ordered a naval blockade of France on 31 May.

wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolutionary_Wars:_Campaigns_of_1793


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Neerwinden_(1793)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Neerwinden_(1793)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1791

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1791

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_Club

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_Club

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marseille

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marseille

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_in_the_Vend%C3%A9e

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_in_the_Vend%C3%A9e

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pyrenees

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pyrenees

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Sardinia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Sardinia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alps

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alps

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valenciennes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valenciennes

• 11 March 1793-a Republican recruiting drive in Machecoul begins the civil war in the Vendée. Out of the early morning mist toward this village, 12 miles from the Atlantic, came a peasant mob of 3,000

• only a few old men and boys remained in the National Guard. Many of the young men had gone off to join the army. So the local government had no force to resist the rebels

• Maupassant, the officer who had come to supervise the drawing of lots for the army, told the Guard to stand their ground. Most broke and fled. He was killed with a single pike thrust. Then the massacre began. First, in the streets, then, more methodically

• Local authorities and constitutional priests were rounded up and more than 500 were forced to dig their own graves, then shot to fall into them. It was the bloodiest massacre perpetrated by the Vendéan rebels.

• “They have killed our king; chased away our priests; sold the goods of our church; eaten everything we have and now they want to take our bodies … no, they shall not have them.”


• 11 March 1793-a Republican recruiting drive in Machecoul begins the civil war in the Vendée. Out of the early morning mist toward this village, 12 miles from the Atlantic, came a peasant mob of 3,000

• only a few old men and boys remained in the National Guard. Many of the young men had gone off to join the army. So the local government had no force to resist the rebels

• Maupassant, the officer who had come to supervise the drawing of lots for the army, told the Guard to stand their ground. Most broke and fled. He was killed with a single pike thrust. Then the massacre began. First, in the streets, then, more methodically

• Local authorities and constitutional priests were rounded up and more than 500 were forced to dig their own graves, then shot to fall into them. It was the bloodiest massacre perpetrated by the Vendéan rebels.

• “They have killed our king; chased away our priests; sold the goods of our church; eaten everything we have and now they want to take our bodies … no, they shall not have them.”

• what began as a draft riot grew into the Grand Royal and Catholic Army


the army assembles, May 1793


a long, bitterly fought civil war

MAUGE



MAUGE

Thouars5 May

HILLSHEDGEROWS

MARSH

But first, let’s begin with a little French vocabulary exercise...



MAUGE

Thouars5 May

Cholet17 October

HILLSHEDGEROWS

MARSH




MAUGE

Thouars5 May

Cholet17 October

Savenay23 December

HILLSHEDGEROWS

MARSH



Batai!e de Thouars, 5 May 1793

Thouars

.


Batai!e de Thouars17 Floreal 11

5 May 1793 Marquis de Lescure

Henri de La Rochejacquelein

pont de Vrine


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_de_La_Rochejacquelein




Le saint du Poitou

• born at Versailles, educated at the École Militaire

• 1791 emigrated, but soon returned

• 10 August 1792-defended the Tuileries and was forced to leave Paris

• March 1793-was arrested in the Vendée with all his family as one of the promoters of the rising

• after being liberated by the Royalists, he became one of their generals

• May-November-fought in most of the battles from Thouars to Cholet

• 4 November 1793-was killed near the château of La Tremblaye

Louis-Marie Joseph, marquis de Lescure

1766 – 1793


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess


Le saint du Poitou

• born at Versailles, educated at the École Militaire

• 1791 emigrated, but soon returned

• 10 August 1792-defended the Tuileries and was forced to leave Paris

• March 1793-was arrested in the Vendée with all his family as one of the promoters of the rising

• after being liberated by the Royalists, he became one of their generals

• May-November-fought in most of the battles from Thouars to Cholet

• 4 November 1793-was killed near the château of La Tremblaye

•Louis-Marie Joseph, marquis de Lescure

1766 – 1793




"Mes amis, si j'avance, suivez-moi! Si je recule, tuez-moi! Si je meurs, vengez-moi!" (My friends, if I advance, follow me! If I retreat, kill me! If I die, avenge me!)

• 10 Août 1792-with his cousin de Lescure, he fought for the first time, age 19, in the Constitutional Guard defending the Tuileries, they then returned to Lescure’s estate in Poitou

• April 1793-joined the the Royal & Catholic Army

• 9 June-after Thouars, he led the capture of Saumur

• in August, in Luçon, he regrouped the Vendéan army, which was on the verge of being disbanded, and won the battle of Chantonnay in September. He had to retreat across the Loire after being beaten in Cholet

• 20 October-elected commander of the armies. Brave but lacking experience, he was defeated at Le Mans (12 Dec) and more severely at Savenay (23 Dec)

• he saved the remains of his army by crossing the Loire, left under the criticism of his companions

• 28 January 1794-he was killed while waging guerilla war

Henri du Vergier,

comte de la Rochejaquelein

1772 -1794


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu%C3%A7on

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu%C3%A7on

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chantonnay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chantonnay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comte

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comte

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_la_Rochejacquelein

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_la_Rochejacquelein

"Mes amis, si j'avance, suivez-moi! Si je recule, tuez-moi! Si je meurs, vengez-moi!" (My friends, if I advance, follow me! If I retreat, kill me! If I die, avenge me!)

• 10 Août 1792-with his cousin de Lescure, he fought for the first time, age 19, in the Constitutional Guard defending the Tuileries, they then returned to Lescure’s estate in Poitou

• April 1793-joined the the Royal & Catholic Army

• 9 June-after Thouars, he led the capture of Saumur

• in August, in Luçon, he regrouped the Vendéan army, which was on the verge of being disbanded, and won the battle of Chantonnay in September. He had to retreat across the Loire after being beaten in Cholet

• 20 October-elected commander of the armies. Brave but lacking experience, he was defeated at Le Mans (12 Dec) and more severely at Savenay (23 Dec)

• he saved the remains of his army by crossing the Loire, left under the criticism of his companions

• 28 January 1794-he was killed while waging guerilla war

Henri du Vergier,

comte de la Rochejaquelein

1772 -1794

Mort de La Rochejacquelin


“le prince fit de nouveaux prodiges de valeur…”

• 8th duc du Thouars, last count of Laval, his residence was the 12th century château de Laval

• 1791-emigrated to the Rhineland where he was aide de camp to Artois. He sent him to the Vendée to raise a rebellion

• 1792-93-tried to raise a force to rescue the King without success

• March-June 1793-arrested, escaped to Saumur, where he was made commander of the cavalry of the Royal and Catholic Army

• June-October-fought in all the battles, after the defeat at Cholet, he protected the withdrawal and the Loire crossing

• participated in the Virée de Galerne, was captured, interrogated, returned to Laval, where he was guillotined and his head paraded on a pikeAntoine-Philippe de la Tremoille,

Prince of Talmont

1765 - 27 January 1794


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“le prince fit de nouveaux prodiges de valeur…”

• 8th duc du Thouars, last count of Laval, his residence was the 12th century château de Laval

• 1791-emigrated to the Rhineland where he was aide de camp to Artois. He sent him to the Vendée to raise a rebellion

• 1792-93-tried to raise a force to rescue the King without success

• March-June 1793-arrested, escaped to Saumur, where he was made commander of the cavalry of the Royal and Catholic Army

• June-October-fought in all the battles, after the defeat at Cholet, he protected the withdrawal and the Loire crossing

• participated in the Virée de Galerne, was captured, interrogated, returned to Laval, where he was guillotined and his head paraded on a pikeAntoine-Philippe de la Tremoille,

Prince of Talmont

1765 - 27 January 1794 Interrogatoire Talmont


It was the kind of war with which we are all too familiar but for which the army of the Republic, especially those troops who had been drawn from the battlefields of Belgium or the siege of Mainz, was completely unprepared. Uniformed troops in disciplined formation were tied down in isolated garrisons. They were dispersed in small units of fifty or some hundreds, numerous enough to provide a target for the infuriated rebels but not substantial enough to overawe them.They were able to control large towns on the perimeter of the war zone but helpless to patrol the interior, where every wood might conceal a murderous ambush, or to distinguish in villages between civilians and combatants. When the French generals who had fought in the Vendée discovered, to their dismay, similar conditions in the Peninsular War in Spain fifteen years later, they referred to it as “la petite guerre,” which in Spanish became rendered as guerri!a.

Schama, pp. 701,703


Cholet

Cholet17 October


• 16 October-the Vendéens, beaten two days earlier, lacking ammunition and artillery, abandoned Cholet, yielding it to the Republican forces under General Kléber’s command. He received 10,000 more troops that evening bringing their number up to 26,000

• 17 October-the Vendéens were divided on whether to move north to Brittany and gather more recruits or to stand and fight in the Vendée. Some left, but the majority agreed to attack Cholet with their superior numbers, 40,000

Cholet




• the Vendéens pushed into the town center

Cholet




• the Vendéens pushed into the town center

• but superior discipline and generalship gave the advantage to the Republicans

• Vendéen generals D’Elbée and Bonchamps fell, severely wounded at practically the same time. The last Vendéens fled taking their wounded with them

• the retreat became a route, cries of “to the Loire!” could be heard

Cholet


La déroute de Cholet, peinture de Jules Girardet, 1883.


http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Girardet


Virée de Galerne (Adventure of the Northwest Wind)18 October-23 December 1793

Le Général Lescure blessé passe la Loire à Saint-Florent, peinture de Jules Girardet, 1882Thursday, August 26, 2010



Batai!e du Mans

• 10 December-reduced to half their number, burdened with 20,000 non-combatants (wounded, women & children), the army entered Le Mans

• morale was low, proper defenses weren’t set, soldiers foraged, got drunk

• 12 December-de La Rochejacquelein set a successful ambush with 4,000 men for the approaching armies of Westermann and Kléber, but had to pull back due to superior Republican numbers

• Republican soldiers: 20,000 Vendéen soldiers: 15,000

• that evening and night the Republicans overwhelmed the Vendéen defenses, only a few escaped, the rest, mostly non-combatants were massacred

• Republican losses: 30 KIA 100 WIA Vendéen losses 15,000 dead, no prisoners taken


Savenaycroix Vendéens


“There is no more Vendée, citizens, it has perished under our free sword along with its women and children. I have just buried it in the marshes and mud of Savenay. FOLLOWING THE ORDERS THAT YOU GAVE ME [emphasis added, jbp] I have crushed children under the feet of horses, massacred women who at least...will engender no more brigands. I have no prisoners with which to reproach myself.

General Westermann’s report to the Committee of Public SafetySchama, p. 788


“There is no more Vendée, citizens, it has perished under our free sword along with its women and children. I have just buried it in the marshes and mud of Savenay. FOLLOWING THE ORDERS THAT YOU GAVE ME [emphasis added, jbp] I have crushed children under the feet of horses, massacred women who at least...will engender no more brigands. I have no prisoners with which to reproach myself.

General Westermann’s report to the Committee of Public SafetySchama, p. 788

Some historians believe this letter never existed.[2] The rebellion was still going on, and there were several thousand living Vendéan prisoners being held by Westerman's forces when the letter was supposedly written.[3] The killing of civilians would also have been an explicit violation of the Convention's orders to Westermann.[4]

2. Frédéric Augris, Henri Forestier, général à 18 ans, Éditions du Choletais, 1996

3. Jean-Clément Martin, Contre-Révolution, Révolution et Nation en France, 1789-1799, éditions du Seuil, collection Points, 1998, p. 219

4. Jean-Clément Martin, Guerre de Vendée, dans l'Encyclopédie Bordas, Histoire de la France et des Français, Paris, Éditions Bordas, 1999, p 2084, et Contre-Révolution, Révolution et Nation en France, 1789-1799, p.218.

but Wikipedia points out:


Peter McPhee roundly criticizes Secher.... McPhee does this by pointing to what he considers to be a number of dubious assumptions and flawed methodology on Secher's part. Namely, (1) The war was not fought against Vendeans but Royalist Vendeans, the government relied on the support of Republican Vendeans; (2) the Convention ended the campaign after the Royalist Army was clearly defeated - if the aim was genocide, then they would have continued and easily exterminated the population; (3) Fails to inform the reader of atrocities committed by Royalist against Republicans in the Vendée; (4) Repeats stories now known to be folkloric myths as fact; (5) Does not refer to the wide range of estimates of deaths [for the Vendéens, range between 117,000 and 450,000, out of a population of around 800,000] suffered by both sides, and that casualties were not "one-sided"; and more.

Was it genocide?

In 1986 Reynald Secher wrote a controversial book entitled: A French Genocide: The Vendée, in which he argued that the actions of the French republican government during the revolt in the Vendée … was the first modern genocide.

for the whole debate, see wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_the_Vendée


Levée en Masse


The term Levée en masse denotes a short-term requisition of all able-bodied men to defend the nation and has to be viewed in connection with the political events in revolutionary France, namely the new concept of the democratic citizen as opposed to a royal subject.Central to the understanding of the Levée is the idea that the new political rights given to the mass of the French people also created new obligations to the state. As the nation now understood itself as a community of all people, its defense also was assumed to become a responsibility of all. Thus, the Levée en masse was created and understood as a means to defend the nation for the nation by the nation.Historically, the Levée en masse heralded the age of the people's war and displaced prior restricted forms of warfare as the cabinet wars (1715 - 1792) when armies of professional soldiers fought without general participation of the population

Wikipedia


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabinettskriege

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabinettskriege

Of all the innovations of 1793, then, the levée en masse---the creation of a national conscript army---was by far the most important. Its success would determine the ability of the Republic to retake Lyon and the Vendée and to prevent the French rebels from linking up with foreign armies. It also provides another instance of an institution created in a fit of Romantic enthusiasm evolving into a professionally organized and highly disciplined arm of the state. The levée was born in desperation: an attempt to mobilize the population in areas immediately threatened with being overrun by the invader.

Schama, p. 760


National Guard officer

The para-military civil guard and adjunct to the royalist army

developed during the summer of 1789


1793 recruitsthe Phrygian cap, or bonnet rouge,

with tricoleur cockade (all);sans-culotte officer with

tricoleur sash,drummer boy,

soldier


Réprésentant en mission

A representative (member of the National Convention) sent to the armies to oversee their leadership.

Compare this practice to the Soviet commissars.

General Milhaudby Jacques-Louis David


the original concept

• July 1793-at Lille it was suggested that general conscription would produce citizen-soldiers who would “fall en masse like the Gauls on the brigand hordes”

• August--réprésentant-en-mission Milhaud had the tocsin sounded in Wissembourg in the Moselle. Peasants were given rudimentary drill and armed with pitchforks, hunting knives and occasionally firearms, then thrown against Austrian regulars

• the first proposal for the levée was a spontaneous explosion of martial enthusiasm involving large numbers of men, loosely organized and separated from the professional army

• 23 August-Danton demanded a more rational, organized, and properly supported policy in the National Convention

• all bachelors and childless widowers between 18 and 25 were conscripted


“From this moment on, until the enemies have been chased from the territory of the Republic, all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the service of the armies. The young men will go to combat; married men will forge weapons and transport food; women will make tents and uniforms and will serve in the hospitals; children will make bandages from old linen; old men will present themselves in public places to excite the courage of the warriors, to preach hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic.”

Schama, p. 762

National Convention Decree of 23 August 1793


...in its origin the term meant much more. A “mass rising” in 1793, could be a general rising of the people for any purpose, with or without the assistance of official persons who did not command much public confidence. It could be a swarming of citizen soldiers to defy the regular armies of Prussia and Austria. It could be a rising of the sections of Paris against the Convention or some of its members. It could be an armed insurrection or an unarmed demonstration in the streets. It could be the wandering of a band of sans-culottes from one part of France to another, self-organized as an armée révolutionnaire, in pursuit of aristocrats or in search of food. There was something inherently anarchic in the whole idea.

Palmer, p. 104


Negotiation with the enemy was abandoned. Even diplomatic relations virtually ceased.Ministers and ambassadors were recalled…,except those in Switzerland and the United States, the Committee henceforth dealing formally only with supposedly democratic republics.

Schama, p. 762


national workshops• 5 September-the government itself entered into producing munitions. Danton proposed a

resolution for 100,ooo,ooo livres for defense, part of which went to the building of workshops, the hiring of men and the purchase of materials

• the industry was centralized in Paris for two reasons:

• many of the outlying regions were untrustworthy

• this gave employment to the sans-culottes

• men produced weapons, munitions and boots; women, uniforms

• great shops were erected in the gardens of the Tuileries and the Luxembourg


On November 3 the first batch of muskets was completed and presented to the Convention…. In the public shops the number of workers rose from only 633 on November 3 to more than two thousand at the end of the year, and more than five thousand in the following summer. At that time, in Thermidor, about five hundred muskets a day were produced…. In the summer of 1794 the nationally owned workshops of Paris were probably the greatest arsenal of small arms in the world.

Palmer, p.238


...in its most militant phase [1793-94, jbp], the Revolution did invent a new kind of politics, an institutional transference of Rousseau’s sovereignty of the General Will that abolished private space and time, and created a form of patriotic militarism more all-embracing than anything that had yet been seen in Europe. For one year it invented and practiced representative democracy; for two years, it imposed coercive egalitarianism (though even this is a simplification). But for two decades [till 1815] its enduring product was a new kind of militarized state.

Schama, p.184


“Organizer of Victory”


“Organizer of Victory”Carnot at the

battle ofWattignies

October 1793


soldier, engineer, mathematician, politician

• educated in Burgundy at an artillery and engineering prep school, the the Mezieres School of Engineering

• 1773-commissioned a lieutenant in the Prince of Condé’s engineer corps. Noted for his work in fortification and his writings on physics

• 1784-published Essay on Machines. This led to his admission to the Arras Literary Society and promotion to captain

• 1791-elected to the Legislative. Appointed to the Committee on Education. His views on universal education were too ambitious for the times

• 1792-elected to the Convention, representative-on-mission to Bayonne to review the defenses against Spain

• 14 August 1793-elected to the Committee of Public Safety to provide military expertise as one of the de facto Ministers of War

Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot

1753 – 1823


The Beginning of Victory

• 5 September 1793-Carnot received a discouraging report from one of his generals

• the Army of the North was outside the Flemish town of Hondschoote

• its orders were to break the siege of Dunkirk






• a British army commanded by the Duke of York was besieging the French garrison, hoping to gain this port for the Allies






• a British army commanded by the Duke of York was besieging the French garrison, hoping to gain this port for the Allies

• the French general was Jean Nicholas Houchard, “...the first and most unhappy of the commoners that the Committee of Public Safety called to high command.”-Palmer

• though 10 million livres had just arrived from Paris, Houchard was not at all sure how his army was going to eat


“He looked like a royalist’s nightmare vision of a sans-culotte.”

• 1755-an Alsatian, he began his career at age fifteen in the Royal German Regiment

• six feet tall, crude and gruff, spoke French poorly, “...face was hideous with three saber cuts and a bullet wound.”-Palmer

• not noble, but well-born enough to make acting captain before the Revolution

• after the betrayal of several noble generals he was brought up from command of a company through the ranks of colonel and brigadier

• a modest man, he leaned heavily and frankly upon the shoulders of his subordinates

• still, the more extreme “patriot” Jacobins didn’t trust him and demanded proof of his loyalty

1739-17 November 1793


In the south the Spaniards and Sardinians threatened invasion. Toulon was occupied by the English on August 29. Lyons and Bordeaux were unsubdued. Blood flowed freely in the Vendée. But the chief menace was in the north and east, along the borders that separated France from the Austrian Netherlands and the German Rhineland. The Prussians had taken Mainz and pushed the Army of the Rhine back into Alsace. The Austrians and British, led respectively by the Prince of Coburg and the Duke of York, had captured Condé and Valenciennes. The Army of the North stood by seemingly powerless to resist.

Palmer, p. 87


snatching defeat from the jaws of victory



• Condé and Valenciennes were fortified towns about five miles apart, just within the frontier and about a hundred miles north of Paris

• Austrian cavalry patrols rode through the northern departments as far south as St. Quinten



• Condé and Valenciennes were fortified towns about five miles apart, just within the frontier and about a hundred miles north of Paris

• Austrian cavalry patrols rode through the northern departments as far south as St. Quinten

• the Allies had a force of 160,000 men on the Netherlands border, the French had far fewer opposing them

• York and Coburg could drive south to Paris in a few days, disperse the Convention, annihilate the Committee of Public Safety and dictate such peace terms as they chose

• they did no such thing

• York was under orders from London to take Dunkirk and so settled down to a leisurely siege


snatching victory from the jaws of defeat

• it was not Carnot and the Committee who devised the winning strategy

• rather it was the military staff officers under Houchard

• they recommended stripping the garrisons from the other French border fortresses and concentrating them against York’s army

• rather than take the riskier option of trying to encircle York completely, Houchard left him an escape route

• and so the victory was less than complete

• with fatal results for the unfortunate general


The Battle of Hondschoote; 6-8 September 1794

At Hondschoote, 40,000 Frenchmen defeated 24,000 British and Hanoverian soldiers, capturing 6 flags and all of the Duke of York's artillery. This strategic victory resulted in the British lifting the Siege of Dunkirk. Despite his triumphant entry into the city, General Houchard was later tried and guillotined.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Dunkirk_(1793)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Dunkirk_(1793)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotined

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotined

The Committee of Public Safety congratulated Houchard on his “brilliant success.” ...for two weeks Hondschoote was celebrated in Paris as a victory….until September 20, when Hentz, who was a representative on mission, arrived in the capital to accuse Houchard of treachery. The Committee issued the order for his removal two days later.

So Houchard went to prison where he found twenty-four other generals.

...on the 15th of November he appeared before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and on the next day he went to the guillotine.

He had commanded in the north for only six weeks. The first brief experiment with a non-noble general had ended in tragedy and failure.

Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled, pp. 95-96


In a world where generalship had been the business of aristocrats, could a régime that denounced aristocracy conduct a successful war? Was it possible to find commoners who could lead armies? Could the middle class, which had replaced the aristocracy in so many other ways, now replace it on the battlefield? If it could, then aristocracy...would have lost still another reason for existence. If not, democratic ideas would remain a dream.

The right men were soon found. Representatives on mission sometimes commissioned promising young officers tentatively as generals, like medieval kings knighting the valiant on the field…. Somehow they discerned the men of ability…. It may be doubted that any other government in an equal time, has matched their record, for before the end of 1793 they raised to the rank of general (among others) Bonaparte, Jourdan, Hoche, Pichegru, Masséna, Moreau, Davout, Lefèvre, Perignon, Serrurier, Augereau and Brune. One of these became an emperor, eight others marshals of his empire; the remaining three (Hoche, Pichegru and Moreau) rose to be distinguished commanders under the Republic.



Houchard’s successor• 1778-not quite 16, enlisted in the army, fought in America

• 1782-after service in the West Indies he returned home with malaria which would recur throughout his life

• 1792-93--fought in the victory at Jemappes, the defeat at Neerwinden, with great skill at both

• 27 May 1793-promoted to brigadier, and division two months later

• 8 September led his division at Hondschoote, wounded in the chest

• 22 September-named to lead the Army of the North. All three of his predecessors were under arrest and later executed

Jean-Baptiste Jourdan

(under Napoleon, 1st Comte Jourdan)

1762 – 1833


Houchard’s successor• 1778-not quite 16, enlisted in the army, fought in America

• 1782-after service in the West Indies he returned home with malaria which would recur throughout his life

• 1792-93--fought in the victory at Jemappes, the defeat at Neerwinden, with great skill at both

• 27 May 1793-promoted to brigadier, and division two months later

• 8 September led his division at Hondschoote, wounded in the chest

• 22 September-named to lead the Army of the North. All three of his predecessors were under arrest and later executed

• his first assignment was to relieve the 20,000 man garrison at Maubeuge under siege by Coburg

Jean-Baptiste Jourdan

(under Napoleon, 1st Comte Jourdan)

1762 – 1833


conditions were desperate• the 160,000 Allies were well established on French soil, already holding Valenciennes,

Condé and Le Quesnoy. If Maubeuge fell to them, it might topple the government

• opposing them were 130,000 mixed forces, from veterans to boys just off the farm, spread from the Ardennes to the sea and led by a thirty-one year old ex-private

• food was hard to get. Paris had its food battalions competing with the army’s buyers and the Commune usually won

• horses were urgently needed for cavalry and transport. They were dying almost as fast as new ones could be gotten. New mounts arrived without harnesses

• soldiers were short of uniforms, weapons and ammunition. Carnot sent for 15,000 bayonets

• artillery was immobilized by the lack of horses, crippled for the want of munitions

• Carnot arrested the general responsible who cut his own throat while in prison

• Carnot reported that three-quarters of the men were barefoot. Two days later 8,000 pairs of shoes arrived


Battle of Wattignies; 15-16 October 1793

• 30 September-Coburg began the siege of Maubeuge with Dutch troops under William V, Prince of Orange. Austrian regulars covered them under Coburg’s command




• Carnot, “on mission,” took personal charge of the first day’s battle plan





• he attempted a double envelopment plus a frontal attack and thus “carefully [dispersed] the French numerical superiority”






• 15 October-the disciplined Austrian troops pushed back the French skirmisher swarms. Their cavalry finished the work






• 15 October-the disciplined Austrian troops pushed back the French skirmisher swarms. Their cavalry finished the work

• 16 October-Jourdan concentrated his forces on the right, opposite the village of Wattignies and drove off the Austrians. This compelled the Dutch to lift the siege

• the French forces in Maubeuge failed to join the attack

• Carnot returned to Paris with his version of who had gained the victory and little love for Jourdan


Even Carnot, to say nothing of Jourdan, had looked upon the abyss into which Houchard had been swallowed. These men walked precariously upon a brink, living in mortal danger; but the most immediate danger was from their fellow revolutionists…. The Jacobins had to win victories in order to protect themselves from each other.



Jourdan feels the pressure

• a week after Wattignies the Committee sent him an impracticable set of orders:

• pursue Coburg, but don’t take unnecessary risks; surround the enemy, but don’t divide your forces; conduct a vigorous offensive, but don’t advance too far into Belgium

• he argued with Paris. He was supported by the representative on mission Duquesnoy. He listed all his problems:

• desertions, dysentery, hospitals overflowing, unshod soldiers wit feet wrapped in straw, rains, stores damp, roads impassable

• 17 November-the Committee authorized him to go into winter quarters

• when they ordered him to send 15,000 men from the north to the Vendée, he was slow to comply

• when he reported that he had nowhere near the 140,000 men that the war office claimed, they charged him with “padding his books”

• 10 January 1794-he was arrested but allowed to retire, told he might be used later


A colonial interlude with tragic future consequences

• The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was a period of brutal conflict in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, leading to the e l iminat ion o f s l a ver y and the establishment of Haiti as the first republic ruled by people of African ancestry.

• Although hundreds of rebellions occurred in the New World during the centuries of slavery, only the revolt on Saint-Domingue, which began in 1791, was successful in achieving permanent independence under a new nation. The Haitian Revolution is regarded as a defining moment in the history of Africans in the New World.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_colonial_empire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_colonial_empire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Domingue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Domingue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World

Battle on Santo Domingo, a painting by January Suchodolski depicting a

struggle between Polish troops in French service and the Haitian rebels


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Suchodolski

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Suchodolski

A colonial interlude with tragic future consequences

• Although an independent government was created in Haiti, its society continued to be deeply affected by the patterns established under French colonial rule. The French established a system of minority rule over the illiterate poor by using violence and threats. Because many planters had provided for their mixed-race children by African women by giving them education and (for men) training and entrée into the French military, the mulatto descendants became the elite in Haiti after the revolution. By the time of war, many had used their social capital to acquire wealth and some already owned land. Some had identified more with the French colonists than the slaves, and associated within their own circles.

• In addition, the still-new nation's future was literally mortgaged to French banks in the 1820s as it was forced to make massive reparations to French slaveholders in order to receive French recognition and end the nation's political and economic isolation. These payments permanently affected Haiti's economy and wealth.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_loan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_loan

The Rush upon Europe


The Rush upon Europe

Batai#e de Fleurus, victoire $ançaise du général Jourdan, le 26 juin 1794, contre l'armée autrichienne menée par les princes de Cobourg et d'Orange.


The French Revolution...was...a menace to the constituted order of Europe. It threatened everything held dear by beneficiaries of the old order, the familiar balance of power in Europe, the respect paid to monarchy and aristocracy, the privileges of class, church, town, and province, the deferential obedience of inferiors to their betters. The Committee of Public Safety in its last Hundred Days opened those onslaughts upon the old Europe which ended only with another Hundred Days, at Waterloo.

Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled, p. 335


finis Poloniae (the end of Poland)1794

• 1792-Russia and Prussia had intervened in Poland after the Constitution of 1791 raised the spectre of “Jacobinism” in Eastern Europe

• 1793-the resulting Second Partition created the emaciated state seen here

• 24 March 1794-Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a seven-year veteran of the American war of independence, raised an uprising against the Russian occupation of the Polish rump state

• he hoped to recover the losses of the 1793 partition







• a Polish corps under Jan Dumbrowski ran rings around a slower Prussian force forcing them to pull out of Poland







• a Polish corps under Jan Dumbrowski ran rings around a slower Prussian force forcing them to pull out of Poland

• after initial Polish success, the Russians sent in a large force under their greatest general, Alexander Suvarov. Numbers prevailed

• Poland would disappear from the map until 1919 and many of her most patriotic citizens became émigrés


At the start of the 1794 campaign season France’s 11 field armies had reached the unprecedented strength of 750,000 men. Modern studies have revealed that of this number around 37% had not seen action; 15 % were recruits of 1793 who had seen some action; 23 % were the volunteers from 1792; 5 % were volunteers from 1791; and 18 %, soldiers of the former royal army. It is estimated that in total only 5 % of soldiers in 1794 had seen any military service before the Revolution in 1789.

Terry Crowdy, French Revolutionary Infantry 1789-1802, p.21


A government, little loved by its own people, struggling against famine, possessing the strongest army in the world, surrounded by wealthy and disorganized enemies who had tried to invade and partition the country in its moment of weakness, was a government peculiarly liable to the temptations of plunder and revenge….

Adjacent Continental territories, in the official view, were to be not annexed but exploited, stripped of portable wealth and left useless as bases for attack upon France.



the Southern Front• 1793-the professional armies of Spain

poured through the mountain passes and occupied French Rousillon

• December 1793-with the re-taking of Toulon from the British, new forces from the levée en masse were shifted west to the Pyrenees Front

• 1 May 1794-Dugommier drove the Spanish forces south of the border and began the invasion of Catalonia “where the people seemed ripe for revolution and where the army captured enough munitions to supply all the [Southern] armies”-Palmer

• the Committee ordered the execution of captured French royalist forces

• by the fall, gains were made in the Western Pyrenees as well


The Army of Italy presented more of a problem. It entered the territory of the king of Sardinia in April, forty thousand people fleeing before it, according to the younger Robespierre [Maximilien’s brother, Augustin], who complained that the villagers thought the French would eat their babies and desecrate their religion. Not much booty was obtainable in these highland regions. The Army of Italy was not very well fed. It was heavily in debt to the Republic of Genoa, the small neighboring neutral state through which it imported much of its food. The Genoese in May were raising difficulties over credit.



•November 1793-Augustin Robespierre, representative on mission with the Army of Italy, began urging the invasion of neutral Genoa, both to feed the army and to encircle the Sardinian enemy. The Committee declined to do so

• June 1794-the Genoese credit squeeze changed minds. Augustin’s friend, an obscure brigadier general Bonaparte, was ordered to draw up plans for such a wider war. Augustin brought the plan to Paris

• the Genoese ambassador was summoned before the Committee and bullied but no further action would be taken for two years

• the Committee was absorbed with two greater priorities:

• the American grain convoy--once again, France was on the brink of starvation

• the Belgian frontier--no gains had been made since Wattignies


The Naval War of the First Coalition

• The Glorious First of June (also known as the Third Battle of Ushant, and in France as the Bataille du 13 prairial an 2 or Combat de Prairial) of 1794 was the first and largest fleet action of the naval conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the First French Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars.

• The British Channel Fleet under Admiral Lord Howe attempted to interdict the passage of a vitally important French grain convoy from the United States, which was protected by the French Atlantic Fleet, commanded by Vice-Admiral Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse. The two forces clashed in the Atlantic Ocean, some 400 nautical miles (741 km) west of the French island of Ushant on 1 June 1794.

• The action was the culmination of a campaign that had criss-crossed the Bay of Biscay over the previous month in which both sides had captured numerous merchant ships and minor warships and had engaged in two partial, but inconclusive, fleet actions. During the battle, Howe defied naval convention by ordering his fleet to turn towards the French and for each of his vessels to rake and engage their immediate opponent. This unexpected order was not understood by all of his captains, and as a result his attack was more piecemeal than he intended.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Great_Britain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Great_Britain



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolutionary_Wars

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolutionary_Wars

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Channel_Fleet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Channel_Fleet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Howe,_1st_Earl_Howe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Howe,_1st_Earl_Howe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Navy




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Thomas_Villaret_de_Joyeuse




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Ocean

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Ocean

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushant

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushant

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1794_Atlantic_campaign

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1794_Atlantic_campaign

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Biscay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Biscay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raking_fire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raking_fire


• The Glorious First of June (also known as the Third Battle of Ushant, and in France as the Bataille du 13 prairial an 2 or Combat de Prairial) of 1794 was the first and largest fleet action of the naval conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the First French Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars.

• The British Channel Fleet under Admiral Lord Howe attempted to interdict the passage of a vitally important French grain convoy from the United States, which was protected by the French Atlantic Fleet, commanded by Vice-Admiral Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse. The two forces clashed in the Atlantic Ocean, some 400 nautical miles (741 km) west of the French island of Ushant on 1 June 1794.

• The action was the culmination of a campaign that had criss-crossed the Bay of Biscay over the previous month in which both sides had captured numerous merchant ships and minor warships and had engaged in two partial, but inconclusive, fleet actions. During the battle, Howe defied naval convention by ordering his fleet to turn towards the French and for each of his vessels to rake and engage their immediate opponent. This unexpected order was not understood by all of his captains, and as a result his attack was more piecemeal than he intended.



• Nevertheless, his ships inflicted a severe tactical defeat on the French fleet. In the aftermath of the battle both fleets were left shattered and in no condition for further combat, Howe and Villaret returning to their home ports. Despite losing seven of his ships of the line, Villaret had bought enough time for the French grain convoy to reach safety unimpeded by Howe's fleet, securing a strategic success.

• However, he was also forced to withdraw his battle-fleet to port, leaving the British free to conduct a campaign of blockade for the remainder of the war. In the immediate aftermath both sides claimed victory and the outcome of the battle was seized upon by the press of both nations as a demonstration of the prowess and bravery of their respective navies.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ships_of_the_line




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade

The battle of Fleurus (26 June 1794) was the decisive battle in the two year long campaign in the Austrian Netherlands between the forces of revolutionary France and the powers of the First Coalition. The French plan for 1794 was to carry out offensives at both ends of the front line on the southern border of the Austrian Netherlands, with one army attacking in western Flanders and another towards Charleroi on the Sambre.

Rickard, J (20 January 2009), Battle of Fleurus, 26 June 1794 , http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_fleurus_1794.html


The battle of Fleurus (26 June 1794) was the decisive battle in the two year long campaign in the Austrian Netherlands between the forces of revolutionary France and the powers of the First Coalition. The French plan for 1794 was to carry out offensives at both ends of the front line on the southern border of the Austrian Netherlands, with one army attacking in western Flanders and another towards Charleroi on the Sambre.


Charleroi •


• 19 March-Jourdan, his “time out” ended, assumed command of the Army of the Moselle on the Belgian border

•neither side had unity of command as the campaign season opened. Carnot sent Saint-Just “on mission” to try to enforce a coordinated strategy

• the Austrian emperor, Francis II, younger even than Saint-Just, held court in Valenciennes on French soil to taunt his enemies

•his attempt to unite the coalition of Prussia, the Netherlands, Britain and Austria made little headway. His own advisors urged him to concentrate on Poland. He left orders for the abandonment of his Belgian lands if matters took a turn for the worse

•23 May-the Austrian field marshall Mack resigned expressing the opinion that the reconquest of Belgium was hopeless


• the French army opposite Charleroi made several unsuccessful crossings of the Sambre in an attempt to besiege Charleroi

•8 June-the Committee ordered Jourdan’s army to combine with them into a formidable force called the Army of the Sambre-Meuse, probably at the advice of Saint-Just

• Jourdan’s 90,000 man force crossed the Sambre and was again driven back

• 18 June-once again they fought across, the seventh time for some units, and this time the last

•Charleroi was now successfully besieged and the garrison, unaware that Coburg was marching to their relief, surrendered unconditionally


•as Coburg approached with only 52,000 men, Jourdan took up a defensive position north of the Sambre with his right flank on the town of Fleurus

•26 June-artillery began before dawn, the coalition forces attacked in five columns. Jourdan was able to shift his reserves to meet the enemy thrusts

• the losses were heavy on both sides, about 5,000 for each army

•but when the firing stopped at seven p.m., it was Coburg’s army which withdrew to the north and then turned east and continued to the Rhine, abandoning the Austrian Netherlands and their British and Dutch allies


detail

Saint-Justen mission

Français : Bataille de Fleurus, victoire française du général Jourdan, le 26 juin 1794, contre l'armée autrichienne menée par les princes de Cobourg et d'Orange. A gauche de Jourdan, Saint-Just en mission, à droite Marceau, Kléber et Championnet.

Jourdan MarceauKléber

Championnet

first use of aircraftin war


compagnie d'aérostiers --the world’s first air force



TRANSPORT OF THE UNDERTAKING FROM

MAUBEUGE TO CHARLEROI


The Aftermath

Considering the size of the armies involved (around 80,000 on each size) and the length of the battle Fleurus was not a particularly costly battle. Both sides suffered around 2,000 casualties, and the French took 3,000 prisoners. Its real significance was that it marked the point at which the Austrians finally lost interest in defending the Austrian Netherlands. Over the next few months the Allied armies retreated north and east, until late in July they separated, with the Austrians retreating east to defend Luxembourg and the line of the Rhine while the British and Dutch retreated north to defend the Netherlands.

The demoralized Allied armies were only able to escape from a potential trap in the Austrian Netherlands because the Committee of Public Safety ordered Pichegru and Jourdan to enter Brussels (9 July) and then concentrate on recapturing the French border fortresses at Condé and Valenciennes. By the end of the year the French had conquered most of the Netherlands, and were threatening the Austrian position on the Rhine. The defensive phase of the Revolutionary Wars was over.



• July 1794-the Army of the Rhine was the largest of the 13 field armies with 115,000 men under general Michaud

• it was opposed by an Allied army of around 70,000 Prussians, Austrians and Saxons holding strong defensive positions in the elevated terrain of the Vosges mountains in Alsace

• 2 July-Michaud ordered attacks all along the 50 mile front. The only success was on the extreme right. However, this advanced division was was counterattacked by von Blücher, took 1,000 casualties and by the end of the day both armies were back at their original positions

• 13 July-on Carnot’s orders, Michaud launched a second offensive. When thee Austrians failed to support the Prussians at Tripstadt, the Allied position collapsed and they withdrew from the entire west bank of the Rhine

the drive to the Rhine


Franzosen errichten einen Freiheitsbaum auf dem Neumarkt, Köln-1794


Franzosen errichten einen Freiheitsbaum auf dem Neumarkt, Köln-1794

The French erect a liberty tree in the Newmarket,Cologne-1794


By the end of 1794 French armies had won victories on all fronts, and as the year closed they began a surprise assault into the

Netherlands.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands

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