On 18 March 1793 the French Revolutionary army of General Charles François Dumouriez attacked the Austrians of Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg at Neerwinden, in what is now Belgium. After a day of fighting for the villages along the Little Gete, the French were beaten. Within three weeks Dumouriez had lost Belgium, arrested the Convention's commissioners and gone over to the enemy.
From Jemappes to the Gete
Dumouriez was the hero of the previous autumn. On 6 November 1792 he beat the Austrians at Jemappes, and by the end of the year French armies had overrun the Austrian Netherlands. When France declared war on Britain and the Dutch Republic on 1 February 1793, he turned north and invaded Holland, while General Francisco de Miranda besieged Maastricht.1
The Austrians used the respite. Coburg crossed the Roer, routed the French covering force at Aldenhoven on 1 March and forced them to give up the siege of Maastricht. Dumouriez hurried south to take over the army in Belgium and, judging that his men's morale could not stand a retreat, went over to the attack. After skirmishing around Tirlemont, now Tienen, Coburg drew up his army behind the Little Gete, with Archduke Charles on the right and Count Clerfayt on the left around the villages of Neerwinden and Oberwinden. The French had won a famous victory on the same ground in 1693.2
The battle
The two armies were of similar size, but the figures vary between historians. The World History Encyclopedia, which follows Ramsay Weston Phipps, gives Dumouriez about 40,000 infantry and 4,500 cavalry against some 30,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry under Coburg, so the Coalition was far stronger in horsemen. The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica sums up the odds as 11 to 10 in favor of the attackers.3
Dumouriez split his army into eight columns. He expected Coburg to be strongest on his right, guarding his supply line, so he aimed the main blow at the Austrian left: Valence on the French right and the Duke of Chartres in the center were to take Oberwinden, the Mittelwinden hill and Neerwinden, while Miranda attacked on the left along the main road. The French crossed the river at seven in the morning. Neerwinden and Oberwinden changed hands several times; Austrian cavalry charges in the open ground between the villages pushed the French back, and by evening Clerfayt held roughly the line he had started from.4
On the French left the decisive fighting came between three and six in the afternoon. Miranda's columns took Dorsmael and lost it to Austrian counterattacks, and after Archduke Charles sent in his cavalry the left wing was driven back across the river toward Tienen. The Britannica article observes that French enthusiasm could hold the villages, but on open ground the veteran Austrian regulars were superior. Finding his center isolated, Dumouriez retreated.5
Losses
John Rickard's account puts the French losses at about 4,000 and the Austrian losses at 2,000. The World History Encyclopedia gives 4,000 French killed and wounded and another 1,000 taken prisoner, and 2,700 Austrians killed and wounded, among them 97 officers.6
Defeat, then defection
The Britannica calls the repulse the signal for the almost complete dissolution of the Revolutionary army. After a further defeat at Louvain, volunteers deserted in droves and Dumouriez's army dwindled to about 20,000 men, according to the World History Encyclopedia. Miranda's supporters accused Dumouriez of sacrificing him with orders that could not be carried out. Dumouriez opened talks with Coburg's staff officer Karl Mack and agreed to evacuate Belgium in return for an unhindered retreat.7
By then he was plotting to march his army on Paris and overthrow the Convention. When commissioners came to his headquarters to summon him, he arrested them and handed them over to the Austrians. His troops refused to follow him, and on 5 April 1793 he crossed to the Austrian lines with the Duke of Chartres, the future King Louis Philippe. The Britannica article sees Neerwinden as the start of the Allied invasion of France. The French recovery that autumn is told in 16 October in military history: Wattignies, 1793.8 › Battle of Wattignies, 1793
Also on this day
- 1969: Operation Menu. Operation Menu was a secret American B-52 bombing campaign over eastern Cambodia during the Vietnam War, aimed at North Vietnamese and Viet Cong bases near the South Vietnamese border.
