What happened at the Battle of Jemappes?
On 6 November 1792 the French army of General Charles-François Dumouriez attacked the Austrians of Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen, entrenched in redoubts on the heights of Jemappes and Cuesmes west of Mons. After a morning cannonade the French columns attacked at noon. The centre wavered and was rallied by the young Duke of Chartres, the future King Louis-Philippe, and Dumouriez led the right himself. By two in the afternoon the heights were taken. The Austrians retreated through Mons, which the French entered the next day, and Belgium was soon theirs.5
Arthur Chuquet, the historian of the revolutionary wars, called Valmy a mere skirmish of outposts and Jemappes a general battle, the Rocroi of the Republic. Thiers wrote that it gave back to the French, in the eyes of all Europe, the power to win great battles. The rest of that day is told in 6 November in military history, and the wider war in our guide to the French Revolutionary Wars.6
After Valmy
In the autumn of 1792, while Dumouriez was holding off the Prussians in the Argonne, the Austrians took Roubaix, Saint-Amand and Orchies, and Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen laid siege to Lille. When he heard that the Prussians were retreating after Valmy, he lifted the siege. On 6 October the Executive Council in Paris gave Dumouriez the chief direction of an invasion of Belgium, then the Austrian Netherlands.7
Dumouriez went to Paris, left on the night of 15 October and reached Valenciennes on 20 October. Four French armies were to enter the Austrian provinces together: the Army of the North, Dumouriez’s own army, now called the Army of Belgium, d’Harville’s corps and Valence’s Army of the Ardennes. Dumouriez told a correspondent that Belgium was waiting for him and that he was sure of six provinces out of ten.8
His army had courage but little else. Chuquet writes that it lacked horses, powder, coats and money. Dumouriez issued proclamations promising the Belgians that the Republic came to deliver them from their despots.9
Into the Austrian Netherlands
On 28 October Dumouriez gathered part of his army between Quarouble and Quiévrain, on the border, as both Jomini and Sybel record. Saxe-Teschen set up his headquarters at Mons on 30 October, but true to the Austrian system, as Thiers puts it, he had spread his troops in a cordon from Tournai to Mons. Valence’s army was delayed, so Clerfayt’s Austrian corps was able to slip past it and join the duke.10
On 3 November Belgian volunteers in French service took the village of Thulin, pursued too far and lost four companies to Imperial hussars. The next day Dumouriez refused to fall back, brought up six 12-pounders and took the wood of Sars and the mill of Boussu in three columns. He wrote that the Austrian free battalion of O’Donnell lost four or five hundred men in the wood.11
On 5 November there was only an indecisive cannonade. That night, Thiers writes, the Austrian general Beaulieu proposed a night attack on the French, and the Austrian command chose to wait in its entrenchments. Jomini mentions the same story but treats it as one version among several.12
A ring of redoubts
The Austrian line ran in a half circle through Quaregnon, Jemappes, Cuesmes and the height of Bertaimont, south of Mons. Chuquet writes that when the bivouac fires were lit that night they formed an almost perfect circle, and Sybel that they skirted the whole horizon. Behind the line lay the marshy Trouille and the Haine, so that a beaten army had no way out except through the town of Mons.13
Clerfayt commanded the right, on the heights of Jemappes, and Beaulieu the left at Bertaimont. On the height covering Cuesmes stood five large redoubts. Dumouriez described three tiers of redoubts, one above the other, with twenty heavy guns and many howitzers. Jomini counts fourteen armed redoubts and says that the triple tier existed only in the imagination of narrators who exaggerated. Thiers also speaks of fourteen.14
How many men
The French were much the stronger. Dumouriez’s report to the war minister said not more than 30,000 combatants. Phipps gives about 30,000 for Dumouriez and 10,000 for d’Harville, while Jomini puts d’Harville at about 12,000.15
The Austrian figures vary even more. Chuquet, working from Austrian accounts, counts 11 battalions, 12 free companies, 5 companies of chasseurs and 16 squadrons, 13,200 men under the duke’s direct orders, and adds that Dumouriez had three times as many. Phipps writes of probably some 13,796 men on their front. Dumouriez claimed 28,000 in his letter to the Convention, Sybel gives about 26,000 and Thiers 20,000.16
Dumouriez wrote that the Austrian artillery was close to 100 pieces and that he had as many. Chuquet instead gives the French 100 guns against 50 Austrian ones.17
The plan of attack
The left, under Ferrand, was to pass through Quaregnon and turn the flank of Jemappes. The centre, under the Duke of Chartres, was to take Jemappes from the front. The right, under Beurnonville, was to march on Cuesmes and its redoubts.18
D’Harville was to keep level with the right, cannonade the Austrian left from the heights of Ciply and then seize Mont Panisel and the heights of Nimy, cutting the road to Brussels. All the attacks were to be made in columns of battalions, Thiers writes.19
The cannonade
The French guns opened the battle. Dumouriez’s report of 7 November says the cannonade began at seven in the morning and lasted until ten. Jomini and Thiers say eight. He placed twelve 16-pounders, twelve 12-pounders and twelve howitzers along his front, and the batteries were sited, by Thiers’s account, to strike each redoubt in the flank.20
Phipps notes that several batteries of a new arm, the horse artillery, were used that day.21
Sybel, the German historian, judged that the cannonade made little impression on the Austrian veterans. In spite of their numbers the French commanders either did not dare to storm the position or saw their men fall back when they tried, and only at midday did Dumouriez manage to pass his own restless energy to his troops.22
Thouvenot on the left
On the left the attack went slowly. Thiers writes that Ferrand attacked faintly and that at eleven o’clock, with the enemy’s flanks still unshaken, Dumouriez sent his trusted staff officer, Colonel Jacques Thouvenot, to the left wing.23
Thouvenot found Ferrand’s troops stuck in marshy meadows and Rosières sheltering behind the houses of Quaregnon. He took command and launched twelve battalions against the right end of Jemappes. Clerfayt directed the defence of the village in full dress, wearing all his orders, and Chuquet writes that he called days of battle his feast days.24
Austrian accounts, Chuquet notes, say that three French battalions crossed the Trouille and the marshes on boats and planks and appeared inside Jemappes, and treat this as decisive. The French reports do not mention it, and Jomini doubts the story. Dumouriez later wrote that the success of the battle was due above all to Thouvenot, who had directed the attack on the left.25
The centre wavers
At noon the infantry went forward in columns of battalions. Dumouriez’s aide-de-camp Macdonald remembered that a discharge of the 12-pounder battery announced the hour.26
In the centre things went wrong. The wood of Flénu was swept by the fire of Tyrolean chasseurs. The brigade of General Drouet, alarmed by Austrian squadrons, took cover behind a cluster of houses and left a gap in the line, and the brigade beside it halted under grapeshot. Captain Dufresse stopped a fleeing volunteer battalion by singing a verse of the Marseillaise, and the men turned back towards Jemappes singing with him, as Chuquet and Phipps both tell.27
Kilmaine filled the gap with the 3rd Chasseurs and the 6th Hussars. Dumouriez wrote that he saved the centre of the infantry line. Drouet fell as he led his brigade back. Chuquet says he was mortally wounded, and Dumouriez’s report that he had a leg broken by a shot.28
The man who brought Drouet’s brigade back, Jomini and Thiers write, was Dumouriez’s young valet Baptiste Renard, who galloped to the general, shamed him for retreating and led seven squadrons into the gap. On 9 November the Convention received Baptiste at its bar, gave him the fraternal kiss of its president and decreed that he be armed, equipped and mounted at the expense of the Republic.29
Chartres and the battalion of Mons
The Duke of Chartres, eldest son of the Duke of Orléans, was nineteen, and old officers called him a child. Chuquet writes that he was brave with judgement. He gathered the men drifting out of the wood of Flénu into a large column, which he jokingly named the battalion of Mons, gave it a gun, officers and a flag, had the charge beaten and led it under grapeshot against the redoubts. Thiers and Phipps call it the battalion of Jemappes.30
Dumouriez’s report praised the cool courage with which Chartres rallied the columns and led them to the second tier of redoubts. The old regiments went in with their traditional cries, Navarre without fear and Auvergne without stain. Adjutant-General Montjoye was shot in the mouth and lost seven teeth. Jemappes itself fell before two in the afternoon, and Chartres’s younger brother Montpensier galloped to the right to announce it.31
Dumouriez on the right
On the right Dampierre led eight battalions up the escarpment of Cuesmes, two hundred paces ahead of his men, and outflanked the redoubts. Then two squadrons of the Coburg dragoons and one of the Latour dragoons charged, drove off the French hussars and chasseurs and retook the guns. D’Harville’s guns at Ciply, by what Dumouriez called an inconceivable mistake, fired into the French cavalry from behind.32
Dumouriez rode to the right himself. The battalions of his old camp at Maulde rallied with cries of Vive Dumouriez, and the 1st Paris battalion stopped the dragoons with a volley at close range. Chuquet writes that the 71st, the old Vivarais regiment, threw them back three times. The Berchiny hussars broke the Coburg dragoons, who fled to Mons, and Chuquet records that every one of their officers was killed or wounded.33
Dumouriez then put himself at the head of hussars and chasseurs, struck up the Marseillaise and took the Cuesmes redoubts from the rear, with heavy slaughter of the Hungarian grenadiers. By his account the fighting had begun at noon and it was only two o’clock. Thiers tells the same story. More than four hundred Austrians drowned crossing the Haine.34
The Austrians retreated through Mons in good order, Jomini writes, covered by Beaulieu’s intact troops, crossed the Haine on a bridge of boats near Nimy and camped at Soignies on the 7th. D’Harville never reached Mont Panisel and Nimy in time, so the road was left open.35
Counting the cost
Dumouriez’s letter to the Convention estimated the French dead at 300 and the wounded at twice as many, and the enemy’s losses at more than 4,000 killed or wounded and 1,500 prisoners or deserters over the days of 3 to 7 November. His memoirs, written later, give the French loss as about 2,000, of whom 600 to 700 dead.36
Historians differ as much. Chuquet accepts about 4,000 Austrian killed, wounded or deserters. Jomini gives only 2,000, Thiers 1,500 prisoners and 4,500 killed and wounded, and Sybel 6,000 to 7,000 Austrians and 4,000 French. The number of captured guns grew from 9 in Dumouriez’s first letter to 13 in his memoirs and in Chuquet.37
The Austrian cavalry earned praise from the French historian. Chuquet writes that no French regiment could rival the Latour dragoons in bravery and coolness.38
Mons, Brussels and the decree of fraternity
The last 400 Austrians left Mons about nine o’clock on 7 November. The inhabitants broke open the gates and the magistrates offered Dumouriez the keys. He told them that the French came as brothers and friends. The tricolour cockade appeared, the imperial eagle was replaced by the cap of liberty, and Chuquet notes that the battle was at first called the battle of Mons. Sybel alone dates the capitulation of Mons two days after the battle.39
Clerfayt’s rearguard of 5,000 held the heights of Anderlecht, and on 13 November Dumouriez fought a cannonade there of nearly six hours. On 14 November he entered Brussels to the sound of cannon and bells. Saxe-Teschen, pleading illness, handed the command to Clerfayt, and the Austrians lost Belgium up to the Meuse.40
In Paris, Thiers writes, sincere republicans greeted the news with joy and prepared great festivities. The Girondins applauded the general, and the Jacobins, though they suspected him, applauded too, because they could not help admiring the successes of the Revolution. Only Marat dissented. He claimed that Dumouriez must have understated his dead, that it had been a retreat rather than a defeat, that the Austrians had left with their baggage and guns, and that the frontal attack had been made to sacrifice the battalions of Paris.41
In Paris the victory fed bolder ambitions. On 19 November the Convention declared that France would grant fraternity and help to all peoples who wished to recover their liberty, and ordered the generals to proclaim it. Chuquet describes a party of natural frontiers, with Danton declaring that France’s limits were fixed by nature at the Ocean, the Rhine, the Alps and the Pyrenees.42
Sybel writes that the defeat demoralised the Austrian army, which began to suffer badly from desertion. Jomini, a soldier writing later, criticised Dumouriez for attacking head on rather than marching by Charleroi against the Austrian line of retreat, and Chuquet answers that such combinations were beyond the generals of 1792.43
Paintings and a rooster
The Duke of Chartres became King Louis-Philippe in 1830, and the battle followed him. The National Gallery in London notes that he was sometimes called the King of Jemappes. In 1819 he commissioned from Horace Vernet a painting of the battle for 8,000 francs, and asked for an isolated act characteristic of French bravery. The picture of 1821, which shows the mortally wounded Drouet carried from the field, was refused by the Salon of 1822 as anti-royalist.44
At Versailles Louis-Philippe gave the battle a room. The 1792 Room, the Château writes, is the only one he devoted to the Revolution, and it shows the battle in a large copy of Vernet’s picture by Henry Scheffer. The picture at the top of this page carries Vernet’s signature and the date 1821 in its lower right corner. A contemporary engraving held by the Bibliothèque nationale celebrated the capture of Mons as proof that the French were worthy of fighting for liberty.45
In Belgium the battle took a second life. Philippe Raxhon describes the commemoration of Jemappes as the most representative Belgian celebration of the French Revolution, presented by the Walloon movement as an answer to the Flemish celebration of the Battle of the Golden Spurs of 1302. A monument with a Gallic rooster was unveiled on 24 September 1911. The Université de Mons notes that it was blown up by the Germans in 1914 and rebuilt in 1922.46
