Battle of Jemappes

Background

After Valmy the Prussians fell back, and the last of them recrossed the frontier on 23 October. That freed Dumouriez for the plan he had long nursed: to invade the Austrian Netherlands. In the north the Duke of Saxe-Teschen had besieged Lille that autumn with about 13,000 men, and raised the siege as a relief army approached.

On 6 October the Executive Council gave Dumouriez the direction of the invasion. Beurnonville brought the army of the Argonne north from Vouziers to Valenciennes, boasting that it had not marched but swum or flown. Dumouriez reached Valenciennes on 20 October to command four bodies: his own Armée de la Belgique of about 40,000; d'Harville's corps of some 10,000 raw troops at Maubeuge on his right; Labourdonnaye's weakened Armée du Nord on the far left, to threaten Ath; and Valence's Armée des Ardennes, 20,000 strong, marching on Namur by Givet. A detachment of about 8,000 under Berneron was sent against Ath and Leuze to keep the Austrian detachments at Tournai and Menin from joining their commander.

Saxe-Teschen fixed his headquarters at Mons on 30 October, but he had to cover a long frontier and had scattered his troops in detachments. Rather than give up the country without a fight, he chose to stand on the fortified heights of Jemappes and Cuesmes, at the foot of which Biron's French army had broken and fled in panic on 29 April. From 27 October the advance guards skirmished almost daily. On 3 November Imperial hussars cut up four companies of the Belgian legion near Thulin; on 4 November the French took the Bois de Sars and the fortified mill at Boussu. On the 5th the two armies faced each other across the plain before Mons.

The armies

Saxe-Teschen, with Clerfayt's reinforcements, had 11 battalions, 12 companies of free corps, 5 companies of chasseurs and 16 squadrons of dragoons, light horse and hussars: about 13,200 men by Chuquet's count, or 11,628 infantry, 2,168 cavalry and 56 guns by Digby Smith's. Clerfayt and Beaulieu commanded under him, and Lilien held the right. They were seasoned regulars, among them Tyrolean chasseurs, the Bender infantry regiment and the Coburg and Latour dragoons, fighting behind redoubts.

Dumouriez's Armée de la Belgique numbered about 40,000 on paper, nearer 30,000 at the battle once Berneron had been detached. D'Harville's 10,000 came up on its right. The army mixed old royal regiments, such as Navarre, Auvergne, Flandre and Vivarais, with the volunteer battalions of 1791 and a mass of newer levies. Chuquet judges it brave but undisciplined, mistrustful of its officers and prone to panic; only weeks before, Dumouriez's aide Macdonald had watched a whole detachment break and run back to Lille.

Beurnonville and Dampierre led the right, which had formed the advance guard. The 19-year-old Duke of Chartres, the future King Louis-Philippe, led the centre. Ferrand, the senior maréchal de camp, had the left, because Miranda was away in Paris; Thouvenot served as Dumouriez's chief of staff. The French guns, about 100 against some 50 to 56, were their great advantage, and several batteries of the new horse artillery saw action.

The battle

The position. The Austrian line ran in a semicircle about 6,000 paces long. Six companies of free corps held Quaregnon, out in front of the right. Behind it the village of Jemappes rose in tiers up a hill astride the Valenciennes–Mons road. Between Jemappes and Cuesmes, at the foot of the heights, lay the little Bois de Flénu, held by chasseurs. Redoubts crowned the slopes at Cuesmes. Beaulieu had three battalions on the height of Bertaimont, a suburb of Mons, with four free companies and three squadrons at Ciply; most of the cavalry waited between Cuesmes and Bertaimont. Behind it ran the Trouille, swollen and marshy, and the Haine enclosed the whole position: the only way out was through Mons. Dumouriez attacked in columns of battalions: the left was to take Quaregnon and turn the end of Jemappes, the centre to storm Jemappes and the gap beside it, the right to carry the Cuesmes redoubts. D'Harville was to keep level with the right, push on to Bertaimont and then seize Mont Panisel and the heights of Nimy, cutting the road to Brussels.

Cannonade, 07:00–10:00. Both sides opened fire at about seven. The French guns, massed along the front, crossed their fire on the Austrian batteries. Dumouriez held back his eager generals until Quaregnon fell.

The left: Quaregnon and Jemappes. Ferrand attacked slowly. At ten Dumouriez came to the left in person, and Rosières, with two 12-pounders and four light battalions, took Quaregnon. At eleven, with no news, Dumouriez sent Thouvenot, who found Ferrand stuck in ditched, marshy meadows. Thouvenot led twelve battalions, regulars and volunteers together, against the end of Jemappes. Clerfayt directed the defence in full dress. Twice the fire broke the French columns. Sliding to their right, they found an unguarded re-entrant where the first redoubt met the village, and poured into Jemappes. Austrian accounts add that three battalions crossed the Trouille on boats and planks into the village's rear.

The centre: Bois de Flénu. At noon Dumouriez ordered the general attack. The centre's columns crossed the plain with little loss, but in the wood Tyrolean marksmen drove them from bush to bush. Drouet's brigade took fright at some Imperial squadrons and hid behind houses, leaving a gap; the next brigade halted at half musket range under canister. Dumouriez's valet, Baptiste Renard, shamed Drouet into returning, and Drouet fell mortally wounded. Kilmaine plugged the gap with the 3rd Chasseurs and 6th Hussars. An aide rallied a broken battalion by singing "Amour sacré de la patrie", a verse of the Marseillaise. Chartres gathered stragglers into a column he called the "battalion of Mons", gave it a gun and a flag, and led it at the redoubts. Navarre and Auvergne followed, shouting their old regimental cries. As the Austrians fought on the crest, Thouvenot's columns emerged from Jemappes. Caught between two fires, the Imperials fell back on Mons, and more than 400 are said to have drowned crossing the Haine.

The right: Cuesmes. Beurnonville's 4 sixteen-pounders and 16 twelve-pounders pounded each redoubt. At noon Dampierre's eight battalions climbed the escarpment and outflanked the redoubts while French hussars and chasseurs charged. Then two fresh squadrons of Coburg dragoons and one of Latour dragoons counter-charged, retook the guns and routed the French horse, already shaken by d'Harville's guns firing into them from Ciply. Dampierre's infantry fell back until Dumouriez arrived and rallied them; the 71st (Vivarais) beat off three charges. He then led the hussars and chasseurs round the redoubts, singing the Marseillaise. By two o'clock Cuesmes was taken, and Chartres's brother rode up to report that Jemappes had fallen.

Evening. After two hours' rest and a ration of bread and brandy the army advanced again at four. D'Harville was slow to reach Mont Panisel, two brigades panicked at Bertaimont, and in the dark the Austrians slipped away. The last left Mons at nine the next morning.

Aftermath

French losses were about 2,000: roughly 650 dead and 1,300 wounded in one count. Austrian figures vary widely. The Austrians' own reported figure, given by Digby Smith, is 305 dead, 513 wounded and 423 prisoners, with five guns lost. Bodart gives about 1,000 killed and wounded and 500 prisoners. Chuquet, from Austrian sources, gives 4,000 killed, wounded or deserted and 13 guns. The Bender regiment alone lost about 400 men.

Mons opened its gates on 7 November, and Dumouriez rode in at about half past twelve. The French entered Brussels on 14 November, after a rearguard action at Anderlecht, and took Namur on 2 December. With Joseph II's fortresses razed, nothing stood between the French and the Meuse.

Critics from Jomini onwards say Dumouriez attacked where the position was strongest when he might have turned the Austrian left, and tied d'Harville too closely to his right. Chuquet replies that such manoeuvres were beyond the generals of 1792. What mattered was the effect: Valmy had been a holding action, and Jemappes was the Republic's first pitched-battle victory, "the Rocroi of the Republic". Holland Rose put it this way: "At Valmy they had merely stood their ground; at Jemappes they learnt to conquer."

The conquest did not last. Dumouriez was beaten at Neerwinden on 18 March 1793 and fled into exile. Louis-Philippe, proud of the day all his life, commissioned Vernet to paint it in 1819. In 1911 the Walloon socialist Jules Destrée unveiled the Coq monument on the field.

Wargaming it

Jemappes is a rare thing in the period: a set-piece assault on an entrenched line. The French have three to one, but in raw, brittle troops; the Austrians are fewer, but seasoned and dug in. A grand-tactical game with battalions as units fits the 6,000-pace front, and a brigade-level game can take the whole of d'Harville's flank as well. Play runs from the seven o'clock cannonade to dusk, roughly ten turns.

Key terrain is Quaregnon as the outwork, Jemappes village on its hill, the Bois de Flénu, the Cuesmes redoubts and the ditched meadows below. Behind the line, the Trouille and the Haine leave Mons as the only bridge out, so an Austrian collapse can become a catastrophe. Morale and leadership rules carry the game. French units should waver and rally often, and leaders such as Chartres, Thouvenot, Dumouriez and even a valet should be able to rally them in person. The Austrian cavalry needs a sharp counter-charge, slowed by wet, ditched ground.

The decisions are good ones. Does Dumouriez bombard until his left has Quaregnon, or go in early? Does the Austrian player hold his cavalry for the counter-stroke? The what-ifs: d'Harville seizing Mont Panisel and cutting the Brussels road; Saxe-Teschen concentrating 25,000 to 30,000 men and striking the French right, as Jomini suggested; or Dumouriez marching round the Austrian left instead of storming it.

Maps and pictures

Paintings and prints

Paintings and prints of the battle, from the time and the century after, by year: free-to-use pictures from the battle's category on Wikimedia Commons. Each opens its file page there, with the full caption and source.