While this unsatisfactory general levy was being made, defeats,
defections and invasion in earnest came in rapid succession, and to
deal with the almost desperate emergency, the ruthless Committee of
Public Safety sprang into existence. "The levy is to be universal.
Unmarried citizens and widowers without children of ages from 18 to 25
are to be called up first," and 450,000 recruits were immediately
obtained by this single act. The complete amalgamation of the regular
and volunteer units was decided upon. The white uniforms of the line
gave place to the blue of the National Guard in all arms and services.
The titles of officers were changed, and in fact every relic of the
old regime, save the inherited solidity of the old regular battalions,
was swept away. This rough combination of line and volunteers
therefore--for the "Amalgam" was not officially begun until 1794--must
be understood when we refer to the French army of Hondschoote or of
Wattignies. It contained, by reason of its universality and also
because men were better off in the army than out of it--if they stayed
at home they went in daily fear of denunciation and the
guillotine--the best elements of the French nation. To some extent at
any rate the political _arrivistes_ had been weeded out, and though
the informer, here as elsewhere, struck unseen blows, the mass of the
army gradually evolved its true leaders and obeyed them. It was,
therefore, an army of individual citizen-soldiers of the best type,
welded by the enemy's fire, and conscious of its own solidarity in the
midst of the Revolutionary chaos.
After 1794 the system underwent but little radical change until the
end of the Revolutionary period. Its regiments grew in military value
month by month and attained their highest level in the great campaign
of 1796. In 1795 the French forces (now all styled National Guard)
consisted of 531,000 men, of whom 323,000 were infantry (100
3-battalion demi-brigades), 97,000 light infantry (30 demi-brigades),
29,000 artillery, 20,000 engineers and 59,000 cavalry. This novel army
developed novel fighting methods, above all in the infantry. This arm
had just received a new drill-book, as the result of a prolonged
controversy (see INFANTRY) between the advocates of "lines" and
"columns," and this drill-book, while retaining the principle of the
line, set controversy at rest by admitting battalion columns of
attack, and movements at the "quick" (100-120 paces to the minute)
instead of at the "slow" march (76). On these two prescriptions,
ignoring the rest, the practical troop leaders built up the new
tactics little by little, and almost unconsciously. The process of
evolution cannot be stated exactly, for the officers learned to use
and even to invent now one form, now another, according to ground and
circumstances. But the main stream of progress is easily
distinguishable.
Tactics.
The earlier battles were fought more or less according to the
drill-book, partly in line for fire action, partly in column for the
bayonet attack. But line movements required the most accurate drill,
and what was attainable after years of practice with regulars moving
at the slow march was wholly impossible for new levies moving at 120
paces to the minute. When, therefore, the line marched off, it broke
up into a shapeless swarm of individual firers. This was the form, if
form it can be called, of the tactics of 1793--"horde-tactics," as
they have quite justly been called--and a few such experiences as that
of Hondschoote sufficed to suggest the need of a remedy. This was
found in keeping as many troops as possible out of the firing line.
From 1794 onwards the latter becomes thinner and thinner, and instead
of the drill-book form, with half the army firing in line (practically
in hordes) and the other half in support in columns, we find the rear
lines becoming more and more important and numerous, till at last the
fire of the leading line (skirmishers) becomes insignificant, and the
decision rests with the bayonets of the closed masses in rear. Indeed,
the latter often used mixed line and column formations, which enabled
them not only to charge, but to fire close-order volleys--absolutely
regardless of the skirmishers in front. In other words, the bravest
and coolest marksmen were let loose to do what damage they could, and
the rest, massed in close order, were kept under the control of their
officers and only exposed to the dissolving influence of the fight
when the moment arrived to deliver, whether by fire or by shock, the
decisive blow.
Cavalry. Artillery. Engineers.
The cavalry underwent little change in its organization and tactics,
which remained as in the drill-books founded on Frederick's practice.
But except in the case of the hussars, who were chiefly Alsatians, it
was thoroughly disorganized by the emigration or execution of the
nobles who had officered it, and for long it was incapable of facing
the hostile squadrons in the open. Still, its elements were good, it
was fairly well trained, and mounted, and not overwhelmed with
national guard drafts, and like the other arms it duly evolved and
obeyed new leaders.
In artillery matters this period, 1792-1796, marks an important
progress, due above all to Gribeauval (q.v.) and the two du Teils,
Jean Pierre (1722-1794) and Jean (1733-1820) who were Napoleon's
instructors. The change was chiefly in organization and equipment--the
great tactical development of the arm was not to come until the time
of the _Grande Armee_--and may be summarized as the transition from
battalion guns and reserve artillery to batteries of "horse and
field."
The engineers, like the artillery, were a technical and non-noble
corps. They escaped, therefore, most of the troubles of the
Revolution--indeed the artillery and engineer officers, Napoleon and
Carnot amongst them, were conspicuous in the political regeneration of
France--and the engineers carried on with little change the traditions
of Vauban and Cormontaingne (see FORTIFICATION AND SIEGECRAFT). Both
these corps were, after the Revolution as before it, the best in
Europe, other armies admitting their superiority and following their
precepts.
In all this the army naturally outgrew its old "linear" organization.
Temporary divisions, called for by momentary necessities, placed under
selected generals and released from the detailed supervision of the
commander-in-chief, soon became, though in an irregular and haphazard
fashion, permanent organisms, and by 1796 the divisional system had
become practically universal. The next step, as the armies became
fewer and larger, was the temporary grouping of divisions; this too in
turn became permanent, and bequeathed to the military world of to-day
both the army corps and the capable, self-reliant and enterprising
subordinate generals, for whom the old linear organization had no
room.
The starting point of modern warfare.
This subdivision of forces was intimately connected with the general
method of making war adopted by the "New French," as their enemies
called them. What astonished the Allies most of all was the number and
the velocity of the Republicans. These improvised armies had in fact
nothing to delay them. Tents were unprocurable for want of money,
untransportable for want of the enormous number of wagons that would
have been required, and also unnecessary, for the discomfort that
would have caused wholesale desertion in professional armies was
cheerfully borne by the men of 1793-1794. Supplies for armies of then
unheard-of size could not be carried in convoys, and the French soon
became familiar with "living on the country." Thus 1793 saw the birth
of the modern system of war--rapidity of movement, full development of
national strength, bivouacs and requisitions, and force, as against
cautious manoeuvring, small professional armies, tents and full
rations, and chicane. The first represented the decision-compelling
spirit, the second the spirit of risking little to gain a little.
Above all, the decision-compelling spirit was reinforced by the
presence of the emissaries of the Committee of Public Safety, the
"representatives on mission" who practically controlled the
guillotine. There were civil officials with the armies of the Allies
too, but their chief function was not to infuse desperate energy into
the military operations, but to see that the troops did not maltreat
civilians. Such were the fundamental principles of the "New French"
method of warfare, from which the warfare of to-day descends in the
direct line. But it was only after a painful period of trial and
error, of waste and misdirection, that it became possible for the
French army to have evolved Napoleon, and for Napoleon to evolve the
principles and methods of war that conformed to and profited to the
utmost by the new conditions.
Those campaigns and battles of this army which are described in detail
in the present article have been selected, some on account of their
historical importance--as producing great results; others from their
military interest--as typifying and illustrating the nature of the
revolution undergone by the art of war in these heroic years.