(^198) Chapter Six
revolutionary performance conformed roughly to new tactical ideas
developed in the French army after 1763. At Hondeshoote (Septem
ber 1793) for example, skirmishers firing at the enemy line from
behind hedgerows played an important role in compelling the
English-German force to withdraw; and at Wattignies (October 1793),
sustained only by revolutionary enthusiasm and by whatever they
could pick up along the way, French soldiers proved able to move
cross-country at something like twice the accustomed rate. They were
therefore able to concentrate vastly superior numbers on the field of
battle and, by enveloping the Austrian line, counteracted the fire
superiority of professional troops by coming at them from front,
flank, and rear.
This was the first time the revolutionary recipe for decisive victory
came clearly into focus. Lazare Carnot, the “organizer of victory,” was
present at the Battle of Wattignies, representing the supreme author
ity of the Committee of Public Safety. Perhaps he deserves the main
credit for taking the risks inherent in radically aggressive strategic and
tactical moves. But if the French soldiers had refused their utmost
effort in the approach march, or if their morale had wavered in battle,
defeat would surely have followed. Instead, a new confidence in the
might of the revolution flowed deep and strong through the ranks and
began to inspire most of the French officers as well.^30
Speed of march, strategic concentration, and aggressive tactics on
the battlefield became the hallmarks of the French armies thereafter.
By using skirmishers more freely than armies whose discipline was
less spontaneous could afford to do, the French were able to attack
through rough or wooded landscapes where the old-fashioned battle
line was quite unable to form.^31 Impassable terrain could no longer be
counted on to safeguard the flanks of a deployed infantry line, as in the
days of Frederick II, and numbers (of artillery pieces as well as of men)
attained a decisiveness that lasted throughout the Napoleonic period.
Victories, in turn, allowed the French armies to invade Belgium and
the Rhinelands, carrying into those fertile and populous regions the
principles of command economy which were about to disappear from
France itself as the Terror wound down. Food and fodder, the per
petual needs of all armies, were too bulky to travel far. In any case, the
victorious French had no desire to supply their troops from their own
- Marcel Reinhard, Le grand Carnot (Paris, 1952), 2:81–82.
- The superiority of the Roman legions over the Greek-Macedonian phalanx rested
on a similar adaptability of Roman cohorts to hilly ground. In this as in other respects,
the French revolutionaries consciously identified themselves with Roman republican
models.