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20 September 1792
Forces Engaged
French: 36,000 men and 36 cannon. Commander: General Charles-François Dumouriez.
Austro-Prussian: 30,000 to 34,000 men and 54 cannon. Commander: Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick.
Importance
Prussian withdrawal from the battle saved France from invasion and confirmed the power of the French revolutionary government. This was the first major success of levee en masse.
Historical Setting
On 14 July 1789, Parisian citizens stormed the prison at the Bastille, freeing only a few prisoners, but marking the beginning of the French Revolution. Not long afterward came the publication of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen and the call for a constitutional, rather than absolute, monarchy. In June 1791, King Louis XVI attempted but failed to escape France to rally monarchical forces around Europe to his cause. This failure convinced many aristocrats to either withdraw from public life or to flee the country, and among the emigrants were some 6,000 army officers. Louis for a time was reinstated as a constitutional monarch and reluctantly worked with a new legislative assembly.
The other monarchs of Europe looked with some dread at the situation in France, fearing that the revolution that had removed British power from the American colonies and spread its ideas to France could spread farther still to their countries. In August 1791, in response to the pleas of French emigrants, William II of Prussia joined with Leopold II of Austria with the intent of crushing the revolution. They received the financial and moral support of Russia, Sweden, and Spain. In February 1792, a military alliance was proclaimed, which brought in the support of the north Italian kingdom of Savoy whose troops, like the Austrians and Prussians, began to marshal on their respective frontiers with France. In response, the French legislature declared war on Austria in April.
Because of the defection of so many aristocratic officers, the long-serving noncommissioned officers of the French army rose in rank. That promotion of commoners, as well as the open recruiting practices that attracted many revolutionaries to the colors, resulted in a much larger army than France had fielded before 1789. The recruits of 1791, called into uniform by the legislature, received some training under the new officer corps, but the later volunteers that joined up after the declaration of war were more enthusiastic than able. Through the summer of 1792, French forces launched attacks into the Austrian Netherlands (modern Belgium) with little, if any, success. The most minor of resistance usually sent them fleeing, and the Austro-Prussian coalition assumed that an invasion of France would prove remarkably easy. The man chosen to command that invasion was Prussian Field Marshal Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick. He had commanded a Prussian invasion of Holland in 1787 and accomplished an almost bloodless victory, primarily because the rules of war were so formalized that he could second-guess and outmaneuver his opponent.
What the duke and every other military officer in Europe failed to realize was that the French had changed the rules. From 1791 onward, soldiers were not conscripted pawns but volunteers motivated by ideals. Any leader who could harness that enthusiasm would lead an aroused army that would stand and fight for a cause or close with an enemy more aggressively than the linear tactics of the day allowed. As shown in the Netherlands campaign, enthusiasm often failed under pressure, but when the Austrians and Prussians actually crossed the frontier into France to challenge the ideals of the revolution, the army responded.
The invasion was planned to take place along three parallel lines. With his king looking over his shoulder, Brunswick commanded the center, marching from Coblenz into the province of Lorraine; his army numbered 42,000 Prussians, 5,000 Hessians, and 8,000 French emigrants. To the north, an Austrian army of 15,000 would march out of the Austrian Netherlands, while to the south, a second Austrian force of 14,000 would advance from the city of Speyer. Although marching along a fairly wide front, the three forces were to enter France between their two primary armies, the Armée du Nord, commanded by General Charles-François Dumouriez, and the Armée du Centre, commanded by General François-Christophe Kellerman. The primary problem with the invaders’ plan was the extremely slow progress they made. The nature of logistics at the time was that everything had to travel with the army, and the baggage train as well as the cooks and clerks and camp followers all served to hinder movement. In August 1792, the Prussian army marched only 6 miles a day. Still, they reached the French fortress at Longwy on 23 August and forced its surrender in a matter of hours. The major fortress at Verdun surrendered a week later, and the road to Paris seemed open.
The Battle
Both the weather and the nature of the Prussian military aided the French. Able to survive on fewer supplies than the invaders, as well as able to draw on local sources for food, the French were quick to react. Although Dumouriez at first preferred an offensive into the Austrian Netherlands to draw the Austro-Prussian force in that direction, the fall of two major fortresses convinced him to seek a confrontation in France. He marched south to the Argonne Forest, through which the oncoming armies would have to pass. He was able to place himself between the forest and the Prussians and then withdraw into the woods to defend the five routes through them. The Argonne, running north-south, is a hilly and marshy forest, and the few paths through it benefited a defender. Unfortunately, one of the routes was too lightly held: the road through La Croix aux Bois, the second road through the northern end of the forest. When the Prussians advanced by that road, Dumouriez was forced to abandon his stronger position at Grandpré, the central road, and fall back southward to the town of Ste. Menehoud, at the junction of the Aisne and Auve Rivers.
Leaving troops to block the two southern paths through the Argonne, Dumouriez called for reinforcements. The marquis de Beurnonville arrived from Châlons on 19 September, as did General Kellerman leading 18,000 men of the Armée du Centre. This brought the French force up to 58,000. The ground they occupied was an open square with the Aisne to the east, the Auve to the south, and the Bionne River to the north. In the middle of this square was the town of Valmy, with hills to the west, south, and north of the town. On the evening of 19 September, Kellerman and Dumouriez argued about their respective deployments, Kellerman stating that he intended to reposition his men the next morning on the south side of the Auve in the villages of Dampièrre and Voilement. At dawn, however, Brunswick’s forces marched south out of the town of Somme-Bionne to encircle the French and cut off the road to Châlons. That forced Kellerman to place his troops facing west on the hills just outside Valmy. A forward position at a tavern called La Lune held out long enough to slow Brunswick’s move, giving Kellerman time to deploy his men. That extra time, and a dense fog, screened his movements from Brunswick; it also hid the fact that he had ordered infantry, cavalry, and artillery into place through the same location, causing considerable though temporary confusion. The fight at La Lune caused Brunswick to realize just where the French were and to take up a position parallel to them on hills just to the west.
By noon, the fog had blown away and the two armies faced each other. Because of the rainy weather, Brunswick’s force was much smaller than the one with which he had entered France; dysentery was rampant in the Prussian ranks. Brunswick also had been unable to combine the three wings of his total army, so he fielded a force of between 30,000 and 34,000 men. The French faced him with 36,000 on the front line with Kellerman and another 18,000 deployed across a marsh to the rear under Dumouriez. Although the French army deployed well, the Prussians were sure that would change after the opening shots were fired. King Frederick William ordered an artillery barrage to soften them up, and his fifty-four guns opened fire. Kellerman’s thirty-six guns answered.
The battle at Valmy was for the most part an artillery duel, and that was the one branch of the service in which the French still excelled.
In the 1770s, they had adopted a new and improved type of gun that was more accurate and had greater range than most of the field pieces of the day, and the gun crews for the most part had not defected with the coming of the revolution. Thus, they were the best-trained part of the French army and fired the best guns in Europe. Unfortunately for both sides, the two armies faced each other at approximately 2,500 yards, the maximum range of the cannon. That meant that the cannonballs were losing momentum by the time they arrived, which, coupled with the sodden ground that absorbed most of the impact, meant that little damage was done by either side.
Brunswick and his officers were amazed to see that the French troops did not break and run. Having a few more months in uniform and a few skirmishes under their belts, the French soldiers were not the panicked recruits of early summer. As the French stood their ground, the Prussians came to the realization that to win this battle they would have to cross a mile and a half of open ground under constant artillery fire and then face real soldiers. It was not a pleasant prospect. Still, King Frederick William ordered an advance. As a line of Prussian soldiers began to march forward, General Kellerman rode among his men shouting encouragement. The men responded with cheers of “Vive la nation!” After a mere 200 paces, Brunswick ordered a halt. The cannonade continued, and at 1400 a chance Prussian ball struck a French powder caisson. The explosion would have rattled the troops a few months earlier and Brunswick sensed an opportunity. He sent his men forward again, but, as the French continued to stand their ground, he knew he could not break them; again he pulled his men back. By 1600, he knew that to mount a serious assault would prove suicidal, so he withdrew from the field.
Results
For the next 10 days, Brunswick and Dumouriez negotiated fruitlessly; then the Prussian commander led his troops home. They were sick and dispirited from the weather and the defeat; even had they won, they almost certainly could not have marched on Paris. That was King Frederick William’s desire, but Brunswick all along had resisted the final moves that culminated at Valmy. He had preferred to establish Prussian control over the line of towns that paralleled the Argonne Forest on the eastern side, wintered there, and resumed the offensive the following spring. Had he been in sole command, that would have happened, but the Prussian king was adamant about advancing to save his fellow monarch, and Brunswick had little choice but to obey.
The battle at Valmy was relatively minor in terms of length and casualties; a few hours were spent and a few hundred men were lost on either side. That outcome alone made it virtually the last battle of its kind. Since the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, European warfare had depended mainly on maneuver, with battle accepted or pressed only when everything seemed to indicate victory. That was the reason that Brunswick’s earlier almost bloodless victory in Holland had been so widely hailed.
In military, political, and social terms, however, Valmy marked a sea change in the way warfare was conducted. When the French volunteers stood their ground in the face of an army of professionals, the day of the truly national army had arrived. Kellerman’s force did include a number of veterans, more so than did Dumouriez’s force behind him, but that no one fled meant that France could and would put armies in the field made up of soldiers in numbers never before dreamed of. Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) had introduced the concept of a regular standing army that fought for its monarch, as opposed to the concept of armies of mercenaries, an approach that had been prevalent over the previous two centuries. Since his day, small groups of professional, long-term soldiers fought among themselves. After Valmy, not just armies but entire nations went to war. Soldiers fought not for pay or their king but for their nation, which from this point forward were nations of individual patriots. Nationalism arrived in Europe, and nothing would ever be the same.
Militarily, that meant that the government could call upon the entire nation for personnel, and armies would no longer be small groups but massive hosts. Forces numbering 100,000 and more would soon be common as France introduced nationalism through its conquests and found that same nationalism rising up against them via conquered peoples. Fighting itself began to change, with more mobile artillery arriving on the battlefield and the standard attack in line giving way in many cases to attacks in column, whose striking power could punch holes in enemy lines. All of this meant more deaths, and sacrifice for one’s nation became a common theme in public media.
Politically, the battle of Valmy confirmed the power of the new revolutionary government. On the day that Valmy was fought, the Legislative Assembly was replaced by the National Convention, which declared France a republic the following day and executed Louis XVI a few months later. This formally ended the monarchy, which had been losing power for some time, but it led to a nation in arms that fought for more than two more decades almost nonstop. That fighting brought to the fore Napoleon Bonaparte, who took France to its greatest glory before the other European nations banded together successfully against him in 1814 and 1815. Wolfgang von Goethe, the German writer, was at Valmy as an observer. After the battle, he commented to his associates, “From this place and from this day forth commences a new era in the world’s history, and you can all say you were present at its birth” (Lynn, “Valmy,” p. 97).
References:
Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1989; Fuller, J. F. C. A Military History of the Western World, vol. 2. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1955; Lefebvre, Georges. The French Revolution from Its Origins to 1793. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962; Lynn, John. “Valmy,” Military History Quarterly 5(1), Autumn 1992; Rothenberg, Gunther. The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1978.
