The Nation in Arms

In the spring of 1792, the French Revolution was three years old and in serious trouble. The economy was in collapse, the king was under virtual arrest, the political factions were murdering each other, and the great powers of Europe were watching with the calculation of men deciding when to intervene. Austria went first: Emperor Francis II massed his army on the French border, supported by Prussia. The Girondins who controlled the French government, convinced that war would unite the nation and expose the king's treachery, declared war on Austria in April. They were right about the first and wrong about the second; Louis XVI tried to collaborate with the invaders and was executed eight months later.

The force that marched to meet the Austrian-Prussian coalition was unlike any army Europe had seen. Professional French royal officers had largely fled; the 150,000-man force that crossed into the Austrian Netherlands in April 1792 was led by men promoted from the ranks, motivated by ideology, and trained only in the most basic maneuvers. The opening campaign was a disaster — French units fled at the first contact with Austrian regulars, murdering their own officers in the retreat. A professional force might have been shattered by such a beginning. The revolutionary army absorbed it and kept coming.

The autumn crisis was existential. Brunswick's Prussians crossed into France in August 1792, advancing along the road to Paris through the valley of the Argonne. Their progress was slow — dysentery wracked the army, the roads were terrible — but they were the finest professional soldiers in Europe and their commander was the Continent's most respected general. Between them and Paris stood the Army of the North under Dumouriez and Kellermann's Army of the Center: 36,000 citizen soldiers who had never fought a real battle.

The confrontation came at Valmy on September 20, 1792. Brunswick's Prussians advanced through the morning mist toward the French position on a low ridge. The French artillery answered — the revolutionary army, unlike the infantry, contained many veteran professionals, and it functioned with mechanical precision. When the Prussian infantry advanced, the French soldiers began chanting 'Vive la Nation!' — not 'Vive le Roi,' not 'Vive la République,' but 'Vive la Nation,' a word that had no real military history. They did not break. Brunswick, who had expected them to run, halted his advance and ordered a withdrawal. The road to Paris remained open. He chose not to take it.

Goethe, traveling with the Prussian army as an observer, recorded what he witnessed that evening: men who had just watched their army's advance halted sat in silence, unable to explain what had happened. He offered them an explanation that evening: 'From this place and this time forth commences a new era in the world's history, and you can all say that you were present at its birth.' Two months later, Dumouriez conquered Belgium at Jemappes in a battle where raw French columns absorbed devastating Austrian fire and kept advancing until the professional line broke. The citizen army had announced itself.