French Revolutionary Army

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French Revolutionary Army
Pierre Augereau
Auguste Marie Henri Picot de Dampierre
Louis Desaix
Thomas-Alexandre Dumas
Lazare Hoche
Jean-Baptiste Jourdan
François Christophe de Kellermann
Jean-Baptiste Kléber
Jean Lannes
François Joseph Lefebvre
André Masséna
Jean Victor Marie Moreau
Jean-Mathieu-Philibert Sérurier
Joseph Souham

The French Revolutionary Army (

Napoleon Bonaparte, Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, André Masséna and Jean Victor Marie Moreau
.

As a general description of French military forces during this period, it should not be confused with the "revolutionary armies" (armées révolutionnaires) which were paramilitary forces set up during the Terror.[1] Following the proclamation of the French Empire in 1804 the Revolutionary Army became the Imperial Army.

Formation

French line grenadier during the Revolution

As the

constitutional monarchy, and then to a republic, 1789–92, the entire structure of France was transformed to fall into line with the Revolutionary principles of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity". Reactionary Europe stood opposed, especially after the French king was executed. The signing of the Declaration of Pillnitz between Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor and King Frederick William II of Prussia
and the subsequent French declaration of war meant that from its formation, the Republic of France was at war, and it required a potent military force to ensure its survival. As a result, one of the first major elements of the French state to be restructured was the army.

Almost all of the officers of the

Comte de Rochambeau and Count Nicolas Luckner
, were soon accused of having monarchist sympathies and either executed or forced into exile.

Revolutionary fervour, along with calls to save the new regime, resulted in a large influx of enthusiastic, yet untrained and undisciplined, volunteers. These were the first

former royal army.[3][4]

The transformation of the Army was most apparent in the officer corps. Before the revolution, 90% of the officers had been aristocrats, compared to only 3% in 1794. Revolutionary fervor was high, and was closely monitored by the Committee of Public Safety, which assigned Representatives on Mission to keep watch on the army generals. Indeed, during the war, some generals deserted, and others were removed or executed. The government demanded that soldiers be loyal to the government in Paris, not to their generals.[5]

1791 Reglement

Officially, the Revolutionary Armies were operating along the guidelines set down in the 1791 Reglement, a set of regulations created during the years before the Revolution. The 1791 Reglement laid down several complex tactical maneuvers, maneuvers which demanded well trained soldiers, officers and NCOs to perform correctly. The Revolutionary Army was lacking in all three of these areas, and as a result the early efforts to conform to the 1791 Reglement were met with disaster. The untrained troops could not perform the complex maneuvers required, unit cohesion was lost and defeat was ensured.

Realizing that the army was not capable of conforming with the 1791 Reglement, commanders began experimenting with formations which required less training to perform. Many eminent French military thinkers had been clamoring for change decades before. In the period following the humiliating performance of the French Army during the

columnar formations, placing emphasis on the shock of cold steel
over firepower.

In the 1770s, some commanders, among them the brilliant

l'ordre profond
 worked best when it was supported by artillery and large numbers of skirmishers. Despite these exercises, l'ordre mince had strong and powerful supporters in the French Royal Army, and it was this formation which went into the 1791 Reglement as the standard.

Trial by fire

The Battle of Valmy (1792) was a decisive victory for the French.

The French struck first, with an invasion of the Austrian Netherlands proposed by foreign minister Charles François Dumouriez. This invasion soon turned into a debacle when it was found that the hastily trained Revolutionary forces were badly disorganized and disobedient: on one occasion, troops murdered their general to avoid a battle; on another, troops insisted on putting their commander's orders to a vote. The Revolutionary forces retreated from the Austrian Netherlands in disarray.

In August 1792, a large Austro-Prussian army commanded by the

Jean Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval
.

The Battle of Valmy ensured that the Revolutionary armies were respected and no longer underestimated by their enemies. For the next ten years, these armies not only defended the fledgling

Bonaparte
, expanded the borders of the French republic.

Lazare Carnot

While the Cannonade of Valmy had saved the Republic from imminent destruction and caused its enemies to take pause, the

export the revolution
' hardened the resolve of France's enemies to destroy the Republic and reinstate a monarchy.

In early 1793, the

revolt
had broken out. The Revolutionary army was greatly overstretched, and it seemed that the fall of the republic was imminent.

In early 1793 Lazare Carnot, a prominent mathematician, physicist, and delegate to the Convention, was promoted to the Committee of Public Safety. Displaying an exceptional talent for organization and for enforcing discipline, Carnot set about rearranging the disheveled Revolutionary Armies. Realizing that no amount of reforming and discipline was going to offset the massive numerical superiority enjoyed by France's enemies, Carnot ordered (24 February 1793 decree of the national Convention) each département to provide a quota of new recruits, a number totaling around 300,000. By mid-1793, the Revolutionary Army had increased around 645,000 men.

Levée en masse

Main article: National Volunteers (France)

On 23 August 1793, at Carnot's insistence, the Convention issued the following proclamation ordering a levée en masse

"From this moment until such time as its enemies shall have been driven from the soil of the Republic all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the services of the armies. The young men shall fight; the married men shall forge arms and transport provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes and shall serve in the hospitals; the children shall turn linen into lint; the old men shall betake themselves to the public squares in order to arouse the courage of the warriors and preach hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic"[6]

All unmarried able bodied men aged between 18 and 25 were to report immediately for military service. Those married, as well as the remaining men, women and children, were to focus their efforts on arming and supplying the army.

This increased the size of the Revolutionary Armies dramatically, providing the armies in the field with the manpower to hold off the enemy attacks. Carnot was hailed by the government as the Organizer of Victory. By September 1794, the Revolutionary Army had 1,500,000 men under arms. Carnot's levée en masse had provided so much manpower that it was not necessary to repeat it again until 1797.

Tactics

French Revolutionary général, officer d'infanterie legere and soldier of a demi-brigade de ligne.

Seeing the failure of the 1791 Reglement, several early revolutionary commanders followed de Broglie's example and experimented with the pre-revolutionary ideas, gradually adapting them until they discovered a system that worked. The final standard used by the early Revolutionary Armies consisted of the following:

  • Troops with exceptional morale or skill became
    skirmishers
    , and were deployed in a screen in front of the Army. Their main fighting tactics were of a guerrilla-warfare nature. Both mounted and on foot, the large swarm of skirmishers would hide from enemies if possible, pepper their formations with fire and deploy ambushes. Unable to retaliate on the scattered skirmishers, the morale and unit cohesion of the better trained and equipped émigré and monarchist armies was gradually worn down. The incessant harassing fire usually resulted in a section of the enemy line wavering, and then the 'regular' formations of the Revolutionary Army would be sent into the attack.
  • Troops with less skill and of more dubious quality, making up the 'regular' part of the army, were formed into
    battalion columns
    . The battalion column required little training to perfect, and provided commanders with potent "battering ram-style" formations with which to hit the enemy lines after the skirmishers had done their work. The skirmish screen also provided protection for those troops

Infantry

French Republican soldiers

Following the dissolution of the Ancien régime, the system of named regiments was abandoned. Instead, the new army was formed into a series of numbered demi-brigades. Consisting of two or three battalions, these formations were designated demi-brigades in an attempt to avoid the feudal connotations of the term Regiment. In mid-1793, the Revolutionary Army officially comprised 196 infantry demi-brigades.

After the initial dismal performance of the Fédéré volunteer battalions, Carnot ordered that each demi-brigade was to consist of one regular (ex-Royal Army) and two fédéré battalions. These new formations, intended to combine the discipline and training of the old army with the enthusiasm of the new volunteers,[7] were proven successful at Valmy in September 1792. In 1794, the new demi-brigade was universally adopted.

French soldiers from the 1798–1801 Egyptian campaign (left to right, clockwise): line infantry officer, line infantryman, line drummer, light infantryman.

The Revolutionary Army had been formed from a hodgepodge of different units, and as such did not have a uniform appearance. Veterans in their white uniforms and

Armée d'Orient
which arrived in Egypt in 1798 was uniformed in purple, pink, green, red, orange and blue jackets.

Along with the problem of uniforms, many men of the Revolutionary Army lacked weapons and ammunition. Any weapons captured from the enemy were immediately absorbed into the ranks. After the Battle of Montenotte in 1796, 1,000 French soldiers who had been sent into battle unarmed were afterwards equipped with captured Austrian muskets. As a result, uniformity was also lacking in weapons.

Besides the regular demi-brigades, light infantry demi-brigades also existed. These formations were formed from soldiers who had shown skill in marksmanship, and were used for skirmishing in front of the main force. As with the line demi-brigades, the light demi-brigades lacked uniformity in either weapons or equipment.

Artillery

Supporting the skirmishers was the French

Chevalier Jean du Teil meant that the French artillery was the finest in Europe. The Revolutionary Artillery was responsible for several of the Republic's early victories; for example at Valmy, on 13 Vendémiaire, and at Lodi. The revolutionary cannon played a vital role in their success. The cannon continued to have a dominating role on the battlefield throughout the Napoleonic Wars
.

Cavalry

Hussar, line cavalryman and line infantryman, 1795–96.

The cavalry was seriously affected by the Revolution. The majority of officers had been of aristocratic birth and had fled France during the final stages of the monarchy or to avoid the subsequent Terror. Many French cavalrymen joined the émigré army of the Prince du Condé. Two entire regiments, the Hussards du Saxe and the 15éme Cavalerie (Royal Allemande) defected to the Austrians.

Lacking not only trained officers, but also mounts and equipment, the Revolutionary Cavalry became the worst equipped arm of the Revolutionary Army. By mid-1793, the paper organisation of the Revolutionary Army included twenty six heavy cavalry regiments, two regiments of carabiniers, twenty dragoon regiments, eighteen regiments of chasseurs à cheval and ten hussar regiments. In reality, it was seldom that any of these regiments reached even half strength. However, unlike the infantry, where all battalions of the old Royal Army were merged with freshly raised volunteers to form new demi-brigades, the cavalry retained their regimental identities throughout the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. As one example, the Regiment de Chasseurs d'Alsace (raised in 1651) was renamed the 1er Regiment de Chasseurs in 1791 but otherwise remained unchanged until it was finally disbanded after Waterloo.[8]

Aerostatic corps

Main article: French Aerostatic Corps

The French Aerostatic Corps (compagnie d'aérostiers) was the first French

balloons, primarily for reconnaissance. The first military use of the balloon occurred on 2 June 1794, when it was used for reconnaissance during an enemy bombardment.[10] On 22 June, the corps received orders to move the balloon to the plain of Fleurus, in front of the Austrian troops at Charleroi.[11]

Notable generals and commanders

Notable battles and campaigns

Main article: French Revolutionary Wars

Active Armies, 1792–1804

Armies of 1792
  • Armée du Nord
  • Armée du Rhin
  • Armée des Alpes
  • Armée des Pyrénées
  • Armée des côtes
  • Armée du Centre
  • Armée de réserve
  • Armée du Var
Armies after restructure of 1793
  • Armée du Nord
  • Armée des Ardennes
  • Armée de Moselle
  • Armée du Rhin
  • Armée des Alpes
  • Armée d'Italie
  • Armée des côtes de Brest
  • Armée des côtes de Cherbourg
  • Armée des côtes de La Rochelle
  • Armée des Pyrénées occidentales
  • armée des Pyrénées orientales

On 1 October, the Armée de la Rochelle was redesignated as the

armée de l'Ouest
.

Armies formed for specific tasks

See also

References

  1. ISBN 0300040423
    .
  2. ISBN 0-330-48827-9
  3. ^ "Lazare Carnot : Organiser of Victory : French revolution : Napoleonic personalities".
  4. ^ "Napoleon: Man of Peace".
  5. ^ Robert A. Doughty and Ira D. Gruber, ed. Warfare in the Western World: volume 1: Military operations from 1600 to 1871 (1996) p 187
  6. ^ Hazen, C.D. - The French Revolution Vol II, pp 666
  7. ISBN 1-84176-660-7
  8. ISBN 0-85045-269-4
  9. ^ Jeremy Beadle and Ian Harrison, First, Lasts & Onlys: Military, p. 42
  10. ^ F. Stansbury Haydon, Military Ballooning During the Early Civil War, pp. 5–15[ISBN missing]
  11. ^ Charles Coulston Gillispie, Science and Polity in France: The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Years, pp. 372–373[ISBN missing]

Further reading

Primary sources

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