Greatest Battles
FRANCE, 20 SEPTEMBER 1792
The Revolutionary Army stands strong at Valmy
announced a military alliance in February 1792 that led to the formation of the First Coalition.
Two months later, France declared war on Austria. Prussia, Austria and Savoy positioned forces alongside France’s eastern border, where they were joined by the émigrés.
The coalition chose the Duke of Brunswick to lead the Austro-prussian invasion force. A nephew of Frederick the Great, Brunswick was a cautious commander who believed in fighting a war by manoeuvre rather than sluggish battles. King William accompanied the army into France.
Brunswick’s adversary was French general Charles François Dumouriez. In August 1792, the French revolutionary government appointed Dumouriez and General François de Kellermann to command France’s Army of the North and Army of the Centre respectively. Both men were brave, self-confident and charismatic. The challenge facing the French commanders was to meld an army composed of regulars from the old army with volunteers of questionable quality.
Kellermann may have found the answer. To enhance the stability of his infantry brigades, he combined one battalion of regulars with two battalions of volunteers. He believed this was the best way to remedy the tendency of the volunteers to panic in combat. The battle that loomed on the horizon would test his new idea.
Although it seemed as if the veteran Prussian army had enormous advantages, this was not the case. First, the Prussians had a flawed logistics system. Second, the Prussian artillery corps was inferior to its French counterpart, which had instituted sweeping reforms beginning in 1776.
Due to the prestige associated with serving in the French artillery, the veteran artillerymen had not deserted like many of the infantrymen.
Brunswick’s plan was for Austrian and Prussian forces to unite in Lorraine and fight their way to Paris. The Prussian main body departed Coblenz on 3 August. Advancing at a snail’s pace, the Prussians didn’t reach the border for almost three weeks. The French border fortresses of Longwy and Verdun were lightly garrisoned and they fell to the coalition force on 23 August and 3 September respectively.
The next challenge for Brunswick was to get his army through the woods and swamps of the Argonne Forest, which could only be traversed by a large army on five major roads. The Prussian encampment at Verdun lay on the road to Chalons.
It passed through the villages of Clermont, Les Islettes and Sainte-menehould before arriving on a plateau near Valmy.
Continual rain throughout the campaign made the lives of Brunswick’s soldiers miserable. The Prussians remained at Verdun for one week, and the officers made no attempt to ensure they had proper sanitation. The long delay at Verdun was due, in large parts, to a disagreement between Brunswick and King William over the next stage of the campaign. Brunswick wanted to postpone a further advance until the following spring when the weather would be better. During that time, the Prussians would establish forward bases with food and ammunition to support a spring offensive. But King William vetoed Brunswick’s plan because he believed that Louis XVI’S life was at stake, and therefore it was imperative to reach Paris as soon as possible. In the end, the king prevailed.
At the start of the Prussian offensive, Dumouriez was in Valenciennes. He led his troops south to Sedan, arriving in the city on the Meuse River on 28 August. Three days later, he received orders from Servan instructing him to intercept Brunswick. To assist Dumouriez, Servan ordered Kellermann, who was based at Metz, to join him as soon as possible.
When Count von Clerfayt, commander of the Austrian contingent, crossed the Meuse on 31 August, Dumouriez was forced to fall back west. He marched through the Argonne Forest and took up a position on 4 September at Grandpre. Prone to grumbling when things went badly, Brunswick reluctantly led his army north from Verdun on 10 September. The Prussian main body marched a short distance to Landres and halted; this put them directly opposite the French army at Grandpre.
Dumouriez had left a minor detachment at Croix-aux-bois on his left flank, which covered the lower of two northern roads through the Argonne. On 12 September, Clerfayt’s hussars scattered the 100 French muskets guarding the defile. A French counterattack the next day by a division-sized force under General Jean Pierre Chazot failed to retake it.
The French main body broke camp on 15 September and headed towards Sainte-menehould. As Chazot’s infantry marched through the fields near Moncheutin, Prussian hussars charged them. Caught off guard, the French panicked.
Dumouriez was deploying his forces east of Valmy to await Kellermann when he learned of the rout. He rode north to help round up as many of the demoralised troops as possible. Brunswick, whose army was having a difficult time crossing through the Argonne on muddy roads, did not take advantage of the situation.
Kellermann immediately tied into Dumouriez’s left flank, extending it across the Chalons Road. The French army was further strengthened by the arrival of General Pierre de Ruel, marquis of Beurnonville, with a corps that had been guarding Chalons.
The Prussian main body completed its passage through the Argonne on 18 September. Meanwhile, Dumouriez and Kellermann engaged in a heated conversation about the best placement of Kellermann’s units. Dumouriez advised him to deploy on the low hills around Valmy, but Kellermann favoured deploying on the south side of the Auve River. If the Prussians attacked, his men would be in a much better defensive position behind the river, insisted Kellermann. Since Dumouriez was not his superior, Kellermann was free to do as he saw best.
A thick fog blanketed the hills and valleys of western Lorraine on the morning of 20 September. The prince of Hohenlohe, whose troops had joined the Prussian main body, led the advance south at 6am. A French battery opened fire on the Prussian advanced guard as it pushed south along the Heights of La Lune. When Kellermann heard the cannonading to his west, he countermanded his order to deploy south of the Auve. He decided the best option was to deploy west of Valmy as Dumouriez had suggested. Because of this, Kellermann’s Army of the Centre would bear the brunt of the fighting that day, and Dumouriez would feed reinforcements to him as needed.
At 7am Kellermann led the main body of his army across the fields towards a low hill west of Valmy, topped by a windmill. Although the French could hear the Prussians and vice versa, the blanket of fog prevented the opposing lines from seeing each other.
While Prussian and French troops skirmished at La Lune, Hohenlohe ordered six batteries to unlimber their guns on the Heights of La
Lune. When the fog burned off later in the day, the battlefield of Valmy would prove to be an artillerist’s dream. From their positions atop low hills, the artillery crews of both sides would enjoy expansive, virtually uninterrupted fields of fire.
Kellermann had sent as many as two dozen regiments, as well as four artillery batteries, to deploy on the low rise west of Valmy. Dumouriez was not idle and ordered Chazot to take the equivalent of a division and reinforce the French left flank at Orbeval. He also ordered Beurnonville to take his corps and position it behind Stengel to reinforce it if necessary. Last, Dumouriez ordered General Alexis Leveneur to advance his division to the right of Stengel and to probe the Prussian left, and weigh the possibility of a flank attack against it.
Across the rolling pastures, about 1.2km to the west, the Prussian forces moved from column to line, taking up a position behind the barking guns. Although the fog prevented them from knowing the enemy’s strength, they squandered any chance to disrupt Kellermann’s deployment.
Brunswick arrived with King William at about midmorning, and sent several members of his staff to reconnoitre the French left. Upon their return, they recommended that the Prussian guns should be directed at the French left. Once this was done, they believed that it might be possible to roll up the French left flank. The fog began to slowly disperse in the second half of the morning; as it did, it revealed to the Prussians that the key to the French position was the hill where the windmill stood.
The French troops deployed around La Lune could not withstand the storm of Prussian shells that crashed and exploded all around them and soon withdrew east. Kellermann observed the retreat and ordered Chazot to counterattack but the Prussians had strengthened their position at La Lune and Chazot’s men were sharply repulsed. By then it was late morning and the fog was almost completely lifted. The Prussian and French batteries, which were a kilometre apart, began a ferocious duel that would last for most of the day.
Brunswick and his staff were deeply discouraged that their artillery bombardment had inflicted very little damage on the French infantry in its exposed position on the low hills surrounding Valmy. The
A prince in the Holy Roman Empire, the Duke of Brunswick was a renowned field commander and modelled himself after Frederick the Great as what has been termed a ‘benevolent despot’. He would go on to fight in the Napoleonic Wars, where he met his end in 1806.
Hohenlohe enjoyed a long and successful career in the Austrian military, serving in the Seven Years’ War, the War of Bavarian Succession and the French Revolutionary Wars. By Valmy he was 59 years old and had been in command of 50,000 men in the Upper Rhine Valley.
Although Dumouriez achieved a great victory at Valmy he would end up deserting the Revolutionary Army; he became a royalist working against Napoleon and an adviser to the British. Still, you can see his name inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe.