On 6 November 1792 the French Army of the North under General Charles-François Dumouriez attacked an Austrian army entrenched on the heights of Jemappes, in front of Mons in the Austrian Netherlands, today's Belgium. The French, many of them raw volunteers, had at least twice as many men, but at noon Austrian grapeshot and cavalry sent attacking battalions running. They were rallied, the ridge fell in the early afternoon, and the Austrians fell back through Mons. It was the young Republic's first real victory in the open field, and it gave the Duke of Chartres, the future King Louis-Philippe, a legend his supporters would invoke when he took the throne in 1830. The date also recalls Lützen, 1632, and Passchendaele, 1917.
After Valmy: a plan to invade Belgium
Six weeks before Jemappes, the French had stopped the Prussian invasion at Valmy. The World History Encyclopedia notes that the National Convention, emboldened, then abolished the monarchy and declared the Republic. John Rickard notes that after ten days facing the French, the allied army retreated out of France. Dumouriez had been planning a campaign against the Austrian Netherlands since before the war: he saw it as the best way to stop the invasion of France, and he believed the arrival of revolutionary armies would make the Belgians rise against Habsburg rule. Once the Austrians had given up their siege of Lille, he marched from Valenciennes toward Mons and the road to Brussels. Fabienne Manière of Herodote.net writes that the Austrians, settling into winter quarters, were caught off guard.1
Three tiers of redoubts
Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen, governor of the province, made his stand on the ridge that runs from Cuesmes to Jemappes in front of Mons, with the marshy valleys of the Trouille and the Haine behind it. The day after the battle Dumouriez described the position to the minister of war: the Austrians, he wrote, were posted on a wooded height where three tiers of redoubts rose like an amphitheater. The historian René Plisnier, who quotes the letter, suggests that it inspired a Paris comedy of 1793 in which a servant who had fought there tells how the French scaled "three steep rocks piled one on another", rocks that, Plisnier notes, one would look for in vain around Jemappes.2
The armies were badly mismatched. Rickard gives the Austrians 11,600 infantry, 2,170 cavalry and 56 guns; the World History Encyclopedia gives about 13,700 men and James Kieswetter about 14,000. Against them Dumouriez had about 40,000 men and some 100 guns, many of them in battalions of untried volunteers. Herodote.net puts the French at 55,000.3
Morning: the flanks stall
The French guns opened fire soon after dawn, and Kieswetter writes that the bombardment lasted some three hours. Dumouriez meant to turn both Austrian flanks, with General Beurnonville on the right and General Ferrand on the left against the village of Quaregnon, while the Duke of Chartres, whom Rickard calls by his revolutionary name, General Égalité, held the center. Neither flank went to plan. On the right, Beurnonville's attack stalled under Austrian fire. Rickard adds that General d'Harville, sent to cut the Austrian line of retreat, failed to take Ciply.4
On the left the accounts differ. Rickard says Ferrand took Quaregnon but did not press on against Jemappes. The World History Encyclopedia, drawing on Dumouriez's own account, says Ferrand wasted time shelling the village until Dumouriez, judging that he had lost his senses, sent Colonel Thouvenot to replace him and told him not to come back until the village was his.5
Noon: the line breaks, and rallies
Around noon Dumouriez ordered a general attack along most of the line. Rickard describes eight battalions of Beurnonville's wing taking some Austrian guns before a charge of Austrian cavalry routed them. The World History Encyclopedia describes the center under Chartres broken by grapeshot and musketry and scattered by cavalry.6
Who saved the moment depends on whom you read. Dumouriez claimed that he rallied the fleeing men himself, and Kieswetter writes that the French were driven back several times and that Dumouriez rallied them. Rickard notes that after Dumouriez went over to the Austrians the next year, his role was played down in France. The World History Encyclopedia gives the credit to Chartres, who rode among the fugitives, gathered them into a mixed unit that became known as the battalion of Jemappes, and led it back into the Austrian redoubts, where it held. Rickard likewise has Égalité forming his infantry into a massive column that took the central part of the Cuesmes ridge, and the historian Munro Price credits Chartres, commanding the center, with helping to win the day.7
On the right, two of Beurnonville's brigades reinforced by d'Harville reached the Austrian works and fought hand to hand with Hungarian grenadiers until the Hungarians broke, according to the World History Encyclopedia, which has Dumouriez riding up to take command and leading the men along the ridge as they sang La Marseillaise. Rickard writes that French troops also crossed the Haine at Jemappes and came at the Austrians from the rear. By about two in the afternoon, Kieswetter writes, the Austrian line had collapsed.8
The cost of the ridge
The Austrian right and center fell back across the Trouille toward Mons while their left held long enough to cover the retreat. The French did not pursue. Rickard and the World History Encyclopedia both put French losses at about 2,000 men. For the Austrians the figures range widely: Rickard gives 828 casualties and 413 prisoners, the World History Encyclopedia about 4,000 dead, wounded or captured, Herodote.net about 2,000 killed on each side, and Kieswetter an estimated 4,500 to 7,000 casualties on each side.9
Herodote.net calls it a mediocre victory, won above all by numbers, that left the enemy's forces intact. Kieswetter is more generous: French numbers and revolutionary ardor, he writes, had carried the day.10
Brussels, the fraternity decree and Neerwinden
The French occupied Mons within days, and Dumouriez entered Brussels on 14 November. By December the whole Austrian Netherlands was in French hands. Rickard argues that the result mattered more than the numbers: at Valmy the revolutionary army had avoided defeat, but at Jemappes it beat an army of Austrian regulars and drove it from the field. Kieswetter calls it the first real field victory of the revolutionary armies.11
Success went to the Republic's head. On 19 November 1792 the National Convention promised fraternity and help to all peoples who wished to recover their liberty, and on 15 December a decree imposed revolutionary policies on the occupied lands. Manière notes that Prussia and Austria were by then more interested in Poland, whose second partition they were preparing with Russia. Britain and the Dutch Republic turned against France, which declared war on both in 1793. Kieswetter adds that in the euphoria after the victory many volunteers, enlisted for one campaign, simply went home. The conquest did not last. On 18 March 1793 the Austrians beat Dumouriez at Neerwinden and took the country back, and soon afterward Dumouriez and Chartres defected to the enemy.12
The King of Jemappes
Chartres's day on the ridge outlived the Republic. When the July Revolution of 1830 toppled Charles X and Louis-Philippe, by then Duke of Orléans, was put forward as king, his supporters made much of his having fought at Jemappes; a manifesto posted on the walls of Paris, quoted by Plisnier, praised a citizen-king who had "carried the tricolor under fire". He had commissioned Horace Vernet to paint the battle, and according to the National Gallery in London, which holds Vernet's canvas, the series celebrated his military career and Republican sympathies and he was sometimes nicknamed the "King of Jemappes". At Versailles the 1792 Room, the only survivor of the rooms he devoted to the Revolution, presents him as a Revolutionary fighter and hangs Henry Scheffer's 1834 copy of Vernet's Jemappes, the painting at the top of this page.13
Also on 6 November
In 1632 the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus was killed at Lützen, in a battle against Wallenstein's Imperial army that the Swedes won. Swedish sources date it 6 November, by the Julian calendar Sweden then used; by today's reckoning it fell on 16 November, the date most histories give. The king was killed in the cavalry fighting after riding into an enemy formation, and Streiff, the horse he rode that day, is preserved in the Royal Armoury in Stockholm.14
In 1917 the 1st and 2nd Canadian Divisions took the ruined village of Passchendaele, and a last attack on 10 November ended the offensive. Two Canadians, Colin Fraser Barron and James Robertson, won the Victoria Cross on 6 November. Robertson carried one of two wounded snipers back under fire and was killed by a shell as he returned with the second. The battle is told on our 31 July page and in our article on Passchendaele.15
Also on this day
- 1863: Battle of Droop Mountain. A Union brigade under William Averell attacked John Echols's smaller Confederate force on Droop Mountain, West Virginia, in the Civil War.
