Battle of Valmy

Background

France declared war on Austria on 20 April 1792, and Prussia joined Austria that summer. On 25 July the Duke of Brunswick, commanding the Allied army, issued a manifesto threatening Paris if the royal family were harmed; it backfired, and on 10 August the Tuileries was stormed and the king imprisoned.

The Allies had gathered about 84,000 men at Coblenz: some 42,000 Prussians, 29,000 Austrians, 5,000 Hessians and 8,000 French émigrés. They crossed the frontier on 19 August. Longwy surrendered on 23 August after a short bombardment and Verdun on 2 September, almost without a fight. The road to Paris ran through the Argonne, a belt of woods, defiles and marsh that favoured a defender.

On 1 September Dumouriez marched from Sedan to hold the Argonne passes, but the Allies forced the lightly held pass at La Croix-aux-Bois and turned his line. He fell back on Sainte-Menehould, where Kellermann's army, marching from Metz, joined him on 19 September. Rain was ruining Brunswick's supply lines and dysentery was spreading through his camp. Brunswick himself had wanted only to secure positions east of the Argonne and resume the campaign in the spring; the advance was pressed on him by Frederick William II.

Brunswick now swung round to the north and west to cut the French off from Paris. The result was an inverted battlefield. As Goethe, riding with the Weimar contingent, later put it, the Prussians had Paris at their backs and the French army between them and Germany.

The armies

The Allied army was reckoned among the best in Europe, but it reached Valmy tired, hungry and sick. Of the 42,000 Prussians who crossed the frontier, about 34,000 were fit for the field by mid-September, and at one point up to two-thirds of the camp had dysentery. Brunswick had 54 guns. The king rode with the army and pressed for the offensive. Clerfayt's Austrian corps of about 12,000 played no part. A second Hohenlohe, Hohenlohe-Kirchberg, led Austrians who were held back at Les Islettes by Dillon's French troops.

Kellermann's army, about 36,000 men with 36 to 40 guns, held the front line. Dumouriez's army, perhaps 18,000 exhausted men, stood in a second line. The popular picture of a victory won by raw volunteers is largely a later creation. Just over half the French infantry were regulars of the old Royal Army, and so were nearly all the cavalry and gunners. The artillery, built to Gribeauval's system, was regarded as the best in Europe, and it was the decisive arm of the day. Among the French generals was the young Duke of Chartres, the future King Louis-Philippe, who commanded a division in the second line.

The French had more men on the field, but Dumouriez's second line barely fought, and in the front line the numbers were close. The French advantage was position, the quality of their guns, and the fact that Brunswick had to attack.

The battle

Dawn and fog. The Prussian and Austrian columns began moving at about five in the morning, local time, through drizzle. Hohenlohe's advance guard ran into Kellermann's outposts near Hans. Thick fog hid the armies from each other until about seven. Kellermann had drawn up his army on a low rise west of the village of Valmy, crowned by a windmill. Opposite, about 2,500 yards away across a shallow valley, the Prussians formed on the heights around the inn of La Lune, astride the Châlons–Sainte-Menehould road. Dumouriez's army was camped further back, in front of Sainte-Menehould.

The cannonade opens. As the fog thinned, both artilleries opened fire. Goethe's cavalry regiment was first led too far west across the road, then recalled to form facing La Lune. He watched round shot strike by the dozen in front of the squadron and bury itself in the soft ground without ricocheting, spattering men and horses with mud. The range and the wet ground explain why so many rounds did so little harm. A French battery near La Lune also checked the Prussian cavalry.

Crisis at the windmill. The windmill knoll was the target of the Prussian fire, and Kellermann had the mill itself pulled down so that enemy gunners could not use it to lay their pieces. Sometime between mid-morning and early afternoon (the sources differ: about ten o'clock in one, about two in another), Prussian shells blew up French ammunition wagons near the mill. Kellermann's horse was killed under him. Drivers bolted with other caissons, ammunition ran short, and some infantry fell back. Kellermann rode in to restore the line and brought up more guns.

The Prussian advance. Brunswick now formed three attack columns, with cavalry in support, and sent them towards the windmill. Kellermann answered by putting his hat on his sword and crying "Vive la nation!", and the cry ran down the line, followed by songs including the Marseillaise and Ça Ira. The scene is well attested but has since been heavily embroidered. The Prussian infantry advanced about 200 yards under heavy fire and halted. Brunswick stopped the attack.

The afternoon. Goethe wrote that the firing was at its most violent at about one o'clock, after a pause: the earth shook, yet neither line moved. Curious about "cannon fever", he rode up to La Lune himself to feel it. A second Prussian advance came to within about 650 yards of the French before it too stopped under artillery fire. At a council of war near La Lune at about four, Brunswick is reported to have said "Hier schlagen wir nicht" ("we do not fight here"). The guns fell silent at around four. By about seven the Allies were back in their starting positions, and rain and wind returned. Some 20,000 rounds had been fired in the day; Goethe put it at 10,000 shots a side.

21 September. Kellermann shifted his army to the heights behind the Auve, south of the Châlons road. This left the Prussians a clear line of retreat.

Aftermath

By any standard Valmy was nearly bloodless: about 300 French and perhaps 100 to 200 Prussians killed or wounded. Its importance was political. On 21 September the newly elected National Convention met in Paris. Over that day and the next it abolished the monarchy and began dating its acts from Year I of the Republic.

The Prussians lingered for ten days while Dumouriez negotiated with them, short of food and riddled with dysentery. On the night of 30 September they broke camp. Verdun was evacuated on 14 October, Longwy on 22 October, and the last Prussians recrossed the border on 23 October. Dumouriez went on to win at Jemappes on 6 November, before going over to the enemy in April 1793. Kellermann was made Duke of Valmy by Napoleon in 1808, and his heart was buried on the field after his death in 1820.

Why Brunswick gave up is still argued over. Proposed explanations include disease, the rain, the strength of the French position, Prussia's eye on Poland, and Brunswick's own reluctance. Royalists and émigrés alleged bribery or a secret deal. Munro Price finds no convincing proof of bribery.

Goethe's famous line, "from here and today begins a new epoch of world history, and you can say you were there", comes from Campagne in Frankreich. He wrote it some thirty years later and published it in 1822, and nothing contemporary records him saying it. The battle's later fame owes much to Louis-Philippe and to the Third Republic.

Wargaming it

Valmy is a gaming puzzle: a famous battle where the infantry barely fired. Played as a straight fight it becomes a long cannonade, so the interest lies in morale, ammunition and the attacker's nerve. A grand-tactical game with battalion or brigade units suits it, covering the windmill ridge, the valley and La Lune on a modest table. Six or eight turns from fog to late afternoon would do.

Key terrain is the windmill knoll and the La Lune heights, with the Châlons road between them. Soft, rain-soaked ground should sharply reduce the effect of round shot, and fog should limit sighting until mid-morning. The exploding caissons make a good random event: a sudden test of French morale and an ammunition shortage at the moment Brunswick is deciding whether to attack.

The central decision is Brunswick's. A game should make the Prussian player weigh a costly assault on a strong position against the state of a sick army far from its depots. Victory conditions can be political rather than territorial, for instance by penalising Prussian losses heavily. The what-ifs are good ones. What if Brunswick had committed his columns fully at the crisis by the mill? What if Hohenlohe's Austrians had broken through at Les Islettes? What if the French volunteers had run? Dumouriez's second line gives the French player a reserve to manage, and the Duke of Chartres a chance at the glory later propaganda gave him.

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.