From this height Kellermann saw come in succession, from the white mist of the morning, and glitter in the sunshine, the countless Prussian cavalry.
Continuing Europe’s First Battle Against Republican France,
our selection from Alphonse M. L. Lamartine. The selection is presented in seven easy 5 minute installments.
Previously in Europe’s First Battle Against Republican France.
Time: 1792
Place: Valmy, France (village)
Kellermann’s army was en masse in the plain and behind the mill of Valmy. This bold position projected like a cape into the midst of the lines of the Prussian bayonets. General Chazot had not, as yet, come up with his twenty-six battalions to flank Kellermann’s left. General Leveneur, who was to have flanked his right and to unite it with Dumouriez’s army, advanced with hesitation and slowly, fearing to draw on his feeble force all the weight of the Prussian body, which he saw in battle array before him. General Valence, who commanded Kellermann’s cavalry, deployed into high line with a regiment of carbineers, some squadrons of dragoons, and four battalions of grenadiers, between Gizaucourt and Valmy, thus covering the whole space which Kellermann could fill up, and where that general was expected. Kellermann’s lines formed in the centre of the heights. His powerful artillery bristled by the side of the mill of Valmy, the centre and key to the position. Almost surrounded by semicircular lines of the enemy, which were perpetually increasing in numbers, and embarrassed on this very narrow elevation by his twenty-two thousand men, horses, guns, and baggage, Kellermann was unable to extend the wings of his army.
From this height Kellermann saw come in succession, from the white mist of the morning, and glitter in the sunshine, the countless Prussian cavalry, which must envelop him, as in a net, if he were driven from his position. About noon the Duke of Brunswick, having formed his whole army into two lines, and decided on his plan of the day, was seen to detach himself from the center, and advance toward the declivities of Gizaucourt and La Lune, at the head of a body of infantry, cavalry, and three batteries. Fresh troops filled up the space these left.
Such was the horizon of tents, bayonets, horses, cannon, and staff which displayed itself on September 20th, in the hollows and ravines of Champagne. At the same hour the convention * began its sittings and deliberations as to a monarchy or a republic. Within and without, France and liberty sported with destiny.
[* The National Convention, which succeeded the Legislative Assembly, actually opened September 21st. — ED.]
The exterior aspect of the two armies seemed to declare beforehand the issue of the campaign. On the side of the Prussians, one hundred ten thousand combatants; a system of tactics the inheritance of the Great Frederick; discipline, which converted battalions into machines of war, and which, destroying all personal will in the soldier, made him bend submissively to the thought and voice of his officers; an infantry solid and impenetrable as walls of iron; cavalry mounted on the splendid horses of Mecklenburg, whose docility, well-controlled ardor, and high courage were not alarmed either at the fire of artillery nor the glitter of cold steel; officers trained from their infancy to fighting as a trade, born, as it were, in uniforms, knowing their troops and known to them, exercising over their soldiers the twofold ascendency of nobility and command; as auxiliaries, the picked regiments of the Austrian Army, recently from the banks of the Danube, where they had been fighting against the Turks; the emigrant French nobility, bearing with them all the great names of the monarchy, every soldier of whom fought for his own cause and had his individual injuries to avenge — his King to save, his country to recover at the end of his bayonet or the point of his sabre; Prussian generals, all pupils of a military king, having to maintain the superiority of their renown in Europe; a generalissimo which Germany proclaimed its Agamemnon, and which the genius of Frederick covered with a prestige of invincibility; and, also, a young King, brave, adored by his people, dear to his troops, avenger of the cause of all kings, accompanied by representatives of every court on the field of battle, and supplying the inexperience of war by a personal bravery which forgot its rank in the sole consideration of its honor — such was the Prussian army.
In the French camp a numerical inferiority of one against three; regiments reduced to three or four hundred men by the effect of the laws of 1790, which only admitted volunteers; these regiments, deprived of their best officers by emigration, which had induced more than half to go to the enemy’s soil, and by the sudden creation of one hundred battalions of volunteers, at the head of which they had placed the officers remaining in France as instructors; these battalions and regiments, without any esprit de corps, regarding each other with jealousy or contempt; two feelings in the same army — the spirit of discipline in the old ranks, the spirit of insubordination in the new corps; old officers suspecting their men, soldiers doubtful of their officers; a cavalry ill equipped and badly mounted; an infantry competent and firm in regiments, raw and weak in battalions; pay in arrear and paid in assignats greatly depreciated; insufficiently armed; uniforms various, threadbare, torn, often in tatters; many soldiers without shoes, or substituting handfuls of hay tied round the legs with cord; the troops arriving from different armies and provinces, unknown to each other, and scarcely knowing the name of the generals under whom they had been enlisted — these generals themselves young and rash, passing suddenly from obeying to command, or, old and methodical, unable to make their formal modes comply with the dash required in desperate warfare; and, finally, at the head of this incongruous army, a general-in-chief fifty-three years of age, new to war, whom everybody had a right to doubt, mistrustful of his troops, at variance with his second in command, at issue with his government, whose daring yet dilatory plan was not understood by any, and who had neither services in the past nor the spell of victory on his sword to give authority or confidence to his command — such were the French at Valmy. But the enthusiasm of the country and the Revolution struggled in the heart of this army, and the genius of war inspired the soul of Dumouriez.
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