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The Fox of France - Chapter 81
🕑 Added 2023-10-27 11:57:44 +0000 UTCOn August 29th, the Prussian-Austrian coalition surrounded the gates of Paris at Valmy. By the morning of September 2nd, royalists in Valmy launched a rebellion, killing the commander of the city's defenses. Valmy surrendered to the Prussian-Austrian coalition, and the gates of Paris were opened.
The fall of Valmy due to the rebellion took the French completely by surprise. In their plans, Valmy, with its formidable terrain, was supposed to serve as an unbreakable anvil, with the French army as a heavy hammer. They would cooperate, smashing the enemy to pieces. However, Valmy, this anvil, was easily captured due to internal traitors. This infuriated and terrified the French, as they began to fear that there might be traitors around them ready to betray their homeland.
The National Assembly quickly reacted, and their first important task now was to suppress the counter-revolution. Danton, recently a wanted criminal and now the Minister of Justice in the new government, led the efforts to eliminate traitors. In the National Assembly that afternoon, he delivered a famous speech, "Be Brave, Be Brave, Be Brave!" and began overseeing the repression of counter-revolutionaries in Paris.
Many nobles, or those with connections to nobility, or suspected of sympathizing with the king and nobles, were imprisoned "preventively" without any investigation or trial.
If this were the extent of it, it wouldn't be too extreme. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in later times, even the beacon nation imprisoned Japanese-Americans in concentration camps.
In the midst of fear and anger, this "preventive" arrest policy naturally followed the principle of "guilty until proven innocent," with the motto of "better to arrest a thousand wrongfully than let one escape." Parisian prisons quickly filled up, and more "traitor" suspects were being brought in.
At this point, a rumor started circulating. According to this rumor, royalists would launch a rebellion, storm the prisons, free the "traitors," and join forces with the nearby Prussian-Austrian coalition to suppress the Parisian revolution. The Austrians had already declared their intention to cleanse the streets of Paris with blood in retaliation for their perceived humiliation of the king.
The people of Paris quickly armed themselves, prepared to counter a royalist uprising. But at this point, the royalists were either imprisoned or had escaped Paris, making a rebellion unlikely. However, an unexpected event would soon spiral out of control.
One prison became overcrowded, so the National Guard decided to transfer the "suspects" to another prison with more space. When they left the prison, some citizens saw them. Nervous citizens, thinking they were royalists attempting to free the "traitors," began shouting. Parisians armed with various weapons surrounded them.
The National Guard had no desire to confront the "traitors" for the sake of these hated individuals, so they simply abandoned them.
The citizens couldn't catch up with the National Guard, but they at least stopped the "suspects" who attempted to flee. In their anger and excitement, the citizens killed them all. Someone shouted, "Why keep these traitors locked up? They all deserve to die!"
The crowd then moved on to other prisons, storming in and killing everyone held within, regardless of whether they were "traitors." Queen Marie Antoinette's confidante, Princess de Lamballe, was killed by the enraged mob, her head severed and placed on a pike, paraded outside the tower where the king and queen were imprisoned. People shouted towards the tower, "You will end up like this one day!"
Some Girondin deputies approached Justice Minister Danton and proposed restoring order and stopping the massacres. But while Danton didn't openly oppose the idea of restoring order, he took no action.
"We can't stand against the people," Danton later explained.
Many Girondin deputies believed Danton was intentionally allowing this behavior to mobilize all of Paris against the Prussian-Austrian coalition. By eliminating potential threats in one fell swoop, Paris could then commit more forces to the fight against the foreign intervention.
Indeed, after this frenzy of killing, the government rapidly mobilized 20,000 volunteers to support the front lines.
Following Napoleon's advice, General Dumouriez positioned his army near the Valmy heights of Sainte-Menehould. This location was not on the main road from Valmy to Paris. However, if the Prussian-Austrian coalition dared to advance directly toward Paris, Dumouriez's army could easily cut off their retreat from this position.
Napoleon estimated that, due to continuous rain, the coalition's logistics must have been strained. Once their retreat was cut off, they would surely collapse. Therefore, before eliminating the threat from Valmy's French forces, they wouldn't dare to advance on Paris.
"Our army is courageous but lacks training, making complex offensive operations difficult. Defense, on the other hand, is relatively easier when taking advantage of the terrain," Joseph supported his brother's plan. "In most cases, defense is a more effective strategy than offense. If the enemy initiates an attack, we will surely defeat them in a defensive battle."
Things were playing out just as Napoleon had judged. The coalition did not dare to march on Paris before removing the threat to their retreat. However, they knew that the longer they delayed, the more favorable it would be for France. Every minute, every second, the French army was growing in size and becoming more organized.
So, Duke of Brunswick decided to concentrate his forces first, crush General Dumouriez's army, and then push towards Paris.
On September 17th, the Prussian-Austrian coalition approached Valmy. Initially, Duke of Brunswick hoped to force the French to retreat by threatening their supply route, Vitry Road. However, before this, the revolutionary government had managed to gather significant provisions for General Dumouriez's army through price controls. So, at least for a considerable time, Dumouriez was not concerned about his supply line being cut. On the contrary, the coalition's own supply line was vulnerable due to constant attacks from French volunteers.
This situation forced Duke of Brunswick to violate military principles and launch a direct assault on the larger enemy force.
Most of the French army consisted of volunteers. These volunteers were poorly trained, unable to form a proper formation, and thus could only fight in a scattered manner. However, their high morale and fierce combativeness made them useful as skirmishers.
Generally, during this era, skirmish formations were not the primary force because they would easily crumble against heavy cavalry. Heavy cavalry theoretically could effortlessly break these formations and decimate them in pursuit.
But in these preliminary skirmishes, the French volunteers' skirmishing abilities surprised the Austrians and Prussians. When they found that the French didn't maintain strict formations and had limited cavalry (since many nobles were in the cavalry, which was not considered very reliable, and the volunteer infantry wasn't yet skilled enough for this kind of work), they naturally sent in their cavalry. They believed their cavalry could easily scatter and destroy these rabble in blue uniforms, who they didn't even consider a proper army. However, during the attack, they were astonished to discover that the French troops, despite their loose formation, lack of a traditional square formation used against cavalry, and the absence of much cavalry, stood their ground, advanced boldly against the cavalry, and began firing at them instead of fleeing as expected.
Although the accuracy of these musket shots was not high, they still inflicted casualties on the Prussian cavalry. The infantry nevertheless rushed forward, as in most cases, the enemy should have dropped their weapons and fled, allowing the cavalry to easily catch and kill them from behind. But these volunteers didn't retreat; they stood their ground, brandishing bayonets, and charged at the cavalry.
Warhorses could easily knock over infantry in a charge, but such collisions still injured the horses, especially when the infantry was armed with bayonet-equipped muskets. The cavalry, although prevailing in such melee combat, still suffered considerable losses. While it took killing four or five of these blue-clad rabble for one cavalryman to die, this exchange rate was causing considerable heartache to Duke of Brunswick.
It's important to note that the French had conscripted these blue-clad rabble for a fraction of the cost compared to their own cavalry. Such exchanges, in terms of manpower, favored the Prussian-Austrian coalition, but in terms of cost, it was a heavy loss. Don't forget that even the horses themselves were more valuable than these French rabble.
Nonetheless, Duke of Brunswick believed that his well-trained infantry would destroy the French rabble's lines.
After repelling the French skirmishers, the Prussian-Austrian coalition's artillery began to pound the French positions relentlessly. Following a brief but intense bombardment, the coalition's infantry lines started advancing towards the French positions.
Napoleon stood behind a trench, watching the approaching coalition forces, and muttered, "They've come charging after just a few shots. It seems their supply lines indeed have significant issues."
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