French Revolutionary Wars: Campaigns of 1792

The French Revolutionary Wars are a series of major conflicts, from 1792 until 1802, fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states.

Marked by French revolutionary fervor and military innovations, the campaigns see the French Revolutionary Armies defeat a number of opposing coalitions and expand French control to the Low Countries, Italy, and the Rhineland.

The wars involve enormous numbers of soldiers, mainly due to the application of modern mass conscription.The French Revolutionary Wars are usually divided between the First Coalition (1792–1797) and the Second Coalition (1798–1801), although France is also at war with Great Britain continuously from 1793 to 1802.

Hostilities cease with the Treaty of Amiens (1802).

Both conflicts together constitute what is sometimes referred to as the "Great French War.

"France declares war on Austria on 20 April 1792.

However, Prussia and other powers have allied themselves with Austria in the expectation of conflict, and thus France face a coalition and not a single power at the moment when the "emigration", the ferment of the Revolution, and want of material and of funds have thoroughly disorganized her army.The army behaves badly in the first engagements.

Near Lille (29 April) the French soldiers flee at sight of the Austrian outposts and murder their general.

The commanders-in-chief of the armies become political "suspects"; and before a serious action is fought, the three armies commanded respectively by Rochambeau, Lafayette and Luckner are reorganized into two commanded by Dumouriez and Kellermann.

Thus the disciplined soldiers of the Allies have apparently good reason to consider the campaign will be easy.On the Rhine, a combined army of Prussians, Austrians, Hessians and émigrés under the Duke of Brunswick is formed for the invasion of France, flanked by two smaller armies on its right and left, all three being under the supreme command of King Frederick William II of Prussia.

In the Netherlands, plans call for the Austrians to besiege Lille, and in the south the Piedmontese also take the field.The first step, taken against Brunswick's advice, is the issue (25 July) of a proclamation which, couched in terms in the last degree offensive to the French nation, generates the spirit that is afterwards to find expression in the "armed nation" of 1793-1794, and seals the fate of King Louis.

The duke, a model sovereign in his own principality, sympathizes with the constitutional side of the French Revolution, while as a soldier he has no confidence in the success of the enterprise.

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