The War of Wars Read online

  The Duke of Brunswick was appointed to command the joint 365,000 strong Austrian-Prussian forces: after his victories at Maastricht, Liège and Neerwinden in the Low Countries, he was a commander to be feared. However, for reasons which remain obscure, he placed a force of 15,000 French émigré cavalry, which ought to have been the elite of his force, in the rear. There were suspicions that Brunswick was waging a war of aggression: for when he captured Longwy and Verdun he did so in the name of the Emperor of Austria, not the King of France. He had a splendid army of Prussian troops and Austrian dragoons under General Clairfait; but he launched no immediate attack to disperse the raw recruits which Dumouriez, now minister of war, had raised from a levy of men from across provincial France, nor the hesitant regular army, which had lost most of its royalist officers.

  Brunswick’s army was blocked at the fortress of Thionville: he had too few cannon. He then moved into the Champagne region, one of the poorest in Europe, where his men fell upon a profusion of melons and grapes which immediately caused an epidemic of dysentery in the army, killing hundreds. Nevertheless the émigré cavalry scored a notable success in ambushing a column of carmagnoles, as the raw republican conscripts were called.

  The Duke himself only took part in one action, the Battle of Valmy, before being rebuffed by Dumouriez’s forces and deciding to order a retreat. This deeply demoralized the émigrés, who had no choice but to obey the orders of their foreign commander, and the Prussians, who had obeyed the call to arms of the Emperor at great expense. The French resistance, however raw, was stiffened by the fear that any restoration of Louis XVI to his absolute powers by the émigrés would inevitably have resulted in years of revenge, bloodletting and the reimposition of feudal rule.

  With the Prussian retreat, the formerly uncertain French army found new hope: they had repulsed the enemy. Recruits flowed into the surprisingly successful French armies controlled by Generals Custine in Paris, Montesquieu in Savoy and Dumouriez in the Netherlands. Montesquieu, an aristocrat of the old school but a patriot, repulsed the Savoyan army ordered into France by the King of Sardinia and took Nice and Chambery, threatening to invade Italy.

  On the central front Custine struck forward against the seven German kingdoms, capturing Worms, Oppenheim and Spiree and the stronghold of Mentz. Custine had no hesitation in urging the people of central Germany to overthrow their rulers. In the north Dumouriez, ably supported by his Spanish deputy Francisco de Miranda, struck forward against Clairfait’s soldiers, spectacularly winning the Battle of Jemappes on 6 November 1792. Clairfait was forced to retreat from the Austrian Netherlands with its towns undefended thanks to Joseph II’s ridiculous decision to dismantle the fortifications along the frontier. The French army under Dumouriez remained firmly disciplined in its new conquests, but a shower of revolutionary officials descended on the area, pillaging the churches, plundering the land and setting up republican forms of government.

  Dumouriez rushed to Paris in an effort to save the King. Bravely, and well aware that his own head was at stake if he lingered too long, he now privately proposed setting the Dauphin or the Duc d’Orleans’ son – who had served under him – on the throne. But he was ordered to return to invade Holland.

  At first the campaign went well: Gertruydenberg was seized and Bergenop-Zoom blockaded. But Dumouriez was blocked at Williamstadt. Moreover an Austrian army had at last arrived under the Prince of Saxe-Coburg and was threatening Belgium. Dumouriez veered about, but his army was mauled at Aix-la-Chapelle. Where before he might have been able to restore the French monarchy, his reputation was now endangered. He made a further blunder by threatening to march on Paris in a letter of 12 March 1793, in support of the King. Only six days later he was defeated in the Battle of Neerwinden. His sieges of the fortresses of Lisle, Valenciennes and Cond all failed.

  He entered into serious negotiations with the Austrians and arrested four commissars sent out by the Convention to keep an eye on him, sending them to the Austrians as prisoners. He tried to persuade several commanders, including Miranda, to join him in seeking to seize control of Paris. Most refused, and the army showed no disposition to follow him as he negotiated with the enemy. He realized the game was up and fled to the Austrians, and then into exile in Britain, where he spent nearly twenty years acting as a wise counsellor to the British government during the Napoleonic war.

  So ended the career of one of the most redoubtable figures of revolutionary France, a potential military dictator long before Napoleon. Far more than the feeble Lafayette before him, he had shown that revolutionary France could be great if order was restored. It was far too soon, but the lesson was not lost on the men who were later to bring Napoleon to power.

  Dumouriez’s early victories halted any occupation of France while it was at its most vulnerable and showed that the new popular army, with its officers promoted through merit from the ranks and its soldiers believing they were fighting for the Revolution, not merely to serve the King or the aristocracy, could be a potent force. Again, Dumouriez’s successors and Napoleon were not slow to imbibe the lesson.

  If the British had lent their support to the joint Austrian and Prussian forces, the Revolution might have been nipped in the bud at this early moment. However the British had absolutely no intention of intervening at this stage, and the opportunity passed. Dumouriez had certainly entertained the hope of an alliance with the British and the Austrians against the Convention, but his revolt had failed and he was forever to be damned as a traitor to France. The course of history would have been very different had he succeeded.

  Chapter 5

  THE LATIN ADVENTURER

  Francisco de Miranda, one of Dumouriez’s best generals, enjoyed a career not unlike Napoleon’s early one, emerging as a potential French leader himself. The Venezuelan-born Miranda had deserted from the Spanish army and travelled extensively in the United States, Europe and Russia, where he became Catherine the Great’s lover, seeking support for his goal of Latin American independence from Spain. He had previously spent three years in London pursuing this cause, but all his talk of leading South America to revolution had come to nothing. He switched his attention to the revolutionary ferment in France: a group of monarchists there had tried to get him to join a counter-revolutionary mercenary army of Russians, Swedes, Germans and Frenchmen partly backed by Catherine the Great, who had suggested Miranda’s name. However, Miranda’s intellectual sympathies lay with the revolutionaries.

  He made a good impression on Brissot when the Girondin leader visited London, and between them they developed the idea that the Revolution in France could be spread both to mainland Spain and to Spanish America. Brissot lobbied the commander in northern France, Dumouriez, to appoint Miranda as head of an invasion force of 12,000 French infantry and 10,000 mulattos then garrisoned in Santo Domingo who, with the assistance of the French navy, might be expected to topple Spain’s hold on her colonies, something France wanted almost as much as Britain.

  Crossing to Paris, Miranda had found little enthusiasm for the plan there, however, and was considering a return to London when the Austrian and Prussian armies invaded France from the east. In August 1792, as the country reeled at the prospect of defeat, Miranda, who had perhaps sold his military credentials a little too successfully, found himself offered the rank of marshal in the French army and the title of baron, as well as a fat stipend, very attractive to a man now hard pressed for the money to live in the grand style to which he had become accustomed. At the age of forty-two he was at last a real general – in the service of revolutionary France. His Russian supporters, who loathed the French revolutionaries, were appalled at the transformation, but did not sever their links with him altogether.

  To his own surprise, in his first engagement, along the border between Belgium and Holland, his force of 2,000 men succeeded after seven hours of fighting in putting to flight some 6,000 Prussians led by the Graf von Kelkreuth, a capable commander. It was the first French success of the war. With uncha
racteristic modesty, Miranda spoke of his ‘beginner’s luck in the French army’; he was promptly appointed to command a division in the front line, under Dumouriez’s overall command. En route to Vaux the 10,000-strong division commanded by General Chazot suddenly encountered 1,500 Prussian hussars. The French panicked and fled; a rout seemed imminent, until the retreating forces reached Miranda’s position at Wargemoulin. There, sword in hand, he stopped their flight, and reorganized the two forces into three columns to march on Valmy.

  Dumouriez boldly attacked, believing that he faced a Prussian army of 50,000 men, and a major battle. Instead he was met only by covering fire; the Prussians had retreated after the French rally. Miranda’s reputation soared. However, he viewed with distaste the rise of the revolutionary party in France, in particular the Jacobin faction led by Robespierre and Marat. He wrote to the American Alexander Hamilton: ‘The only danger which I foresee is the introduction of extremist principles which would poison freedom in its cradle and destroy it for us.’

  Miranda moved up to join Dumouriez as second-in-command of the French army in Belgium. He went to the relief of Dumouriez’s army at Anderlecht, and was appointed to take over General La Bourdonnais’s command of the Northern Army. As the grip of winter intensified Miranda’s forces reached the outskirts of Ambères, where he personally supervised the digging of trenches, encouraging his men while maintaining rigid discipline. Ambères was heavily fortified; on 26 November the French guns opened up and were answered from within, but not a single besieger was killed. By five in the afternoon, as plumes of smoke from the burning city curled into the sky, the Austrians were seeking terms. These took four days to negotiate and amounted to unconditional surrender, at the cost of just thirty casualties to Miranda’s army.

  It was another morale-boosting victory for the hard-pressed French under their inspired new general, who immediately set about reinforcing the city’s defences. He arrested some of its leading citizens to exact tribute to pay for provisioning his troops, and dissolved the convents and monasteries, stripping prelates, abbots and monks of their titles. The 22,000 men under his command were soon joined by thousands belonging to the Army of the Ardennes, swelling his command to 70,000 men.

  In February 1793, against his own advice, Miranda was ordered to send out 12,000 of his men to besiege Maastricht. As he expected, the 30,000 or so enemy forces proved too well entrenched. They fired some 32,000 cannon-shot in six days, but failed to inflict many casualties upon the small French besieging force. Miranda decided to withdraw, lest he lose his guns to an Austrian sortie. He was bitterly criticized for what was clearly a sensible tactical move; he was also hated by many of his own men for his draconian punishments for looting and raping.

  Another much more dangerous threat now loomed. Early in March, Miranda’s commander-in-chief, Dumouriez, asked his staff officers what they thought of the growing Jacobin outrages. King Louis XVI had been executed in January, the revolutionary Terror was gathering pace, and the radicals mistrusted nothing so much as the army, even though they depended upon it for the Revolution’s survival against external enemies. Miranda primly replied that he disapproved of seeking the opinions of soldiers on such issues.

  Soon afterwards two generals, La Hove and Stengel, were arrested on grounds of conspiracy. Dumouriez now demanded to know what Miranda would do if the order came to arrest him, Dumouriez. Miranda said that he would have no option but to obey, adding that General Valance, as the senior general in the French army, would however be responsible for executing it. Dumouriez angrily retorted that the army would refuse to carry out any such order. A few days later Dumouriez told Miranda that he intended to march on Paris, to restore freedom: the counter-revolution was under way. To his astonishment Miranda, despite his own disapproval of the increasingly radical turn taken by the Revolution, told Dumouriez the soldiers would not obey him and that he, Miranda, might also oppose him. It was a moment of truth: from then on Dumouriez no longer trusted his subordinate.

  Miranda’s action is inexplicable, except in terms of self-preservation – he believed Dumouriez could not succeed. Miranda had little romantic commitment to the French Revolution and was privately highly critical of the direction it was taking. His enemies believed his ambition was to replace his superior: already the Girondin leaders had identified him as the best candidate for Dumouriez’s post, should anything happen to the commander-in-chief.

  Dumouriez then decided on an extraordinarily high-risk tactic, one that Miranda’s partisans have always believed was an act of deliberate treachery designed to discredit their hero and lead to his downfall. Holding good defensive positions, though vastly outnumbered and out-gunned, Dumouriez determined to risk the whole French flank in an offensive against the Austrian-led forces. His motive may have been to give himself enough prestige, through victory, to march on Paris and take over the reins of power.

  On 15 March Miranda had successfully repulsed an attack on Tirlemont, but with General Champmorin’s forces was then ordered to attack the right flank of the enemy at Neerwinden. It was suicidal, since Miranda’s 10,000 men were opposed by Austrian-led forces around 18,000-strong, well entrenched in a defensible position. The French were mown down without pity. Although he was in the thick of the fight, Miranda survived; after nightfall, he had no alternative but to sound the retreat, leaving 2,000 of his men dead. The retreat was orderly, and he handled it with great coolness.

  It soon emerged that Dumouriez had known the enemy was strongest on their right flank and weakest on their left, where his own forces were superior: the weakest part of the French force, under Miranda, had thus been ordered to attack where the enemy were strongest. From the start Miranda had opposed the plan, which he later described as ‘against the rules of the art of warfare. I am astonished that Dumouriez was capable of such an error.’ The suspicion must be that Dumouriez wanted Miranda to do badly by comparison with the other commanders, in a bid to discredit and remove him before the coup attempt. But he had miscalculated in believing that the centre would hold, and the whole French army was thrown back as a result of this disastrously conceived attack.

  On 21 March the Austrians attacked at Pallemberg. Miranda held his positions for a day, despite severe losses, then staged another orderly night retreat. Four days later Dumouriez and Miranda met, and exchanged furious words. Dumouriez railed against the Jacobins, while Miranda criticized his commander’s military ineptitude.

  The Jacobins at last came to learn of Dumouriez’s plotting, and of his criticism of his second-in-command. As we have seen, Dumouriez went over to the Austrians; Miranda was summoned to Paris. Arriving at the end of the month, he was immediately interrogated by Citizen Petiot, a Girondin sympathizer, who arranged for him to appear before the Committee of War and Security. At a hearing on 8 April seventy-three questions were put to him as to the conduct of the war. The questioning was barely polite. Miranda knew that his life was on the line, not just his command. He impressed his interrogators with his calm and eloquent replies, and it appeared that he would be exonerated.

  But the Terror was gathering momentum. The radicals alleged that Danton had been conniving with Dumouriez – a charge which may have been true – and insisted that ordinary soldiers should testify against the actions of their superiors. The ultra radical Montagnards, with Robespierre as their new leader, attempted to incriminate Danton and his Girondin followers, the faction with which Miranda was identified. But Danton dodged the attack by himself joining the Montagnards and denouncing his former Girondin followers, among them Miranda, whose supporters Brissot and Petiot sprang to his defence against Danton and Robespierre.

  On 19 April 1793 the much-feared Chief Prosecutor of the Revolution, Fouquier-Tinville, ordered Miranda’s arrest, on charges of conspiring with the British government as well as with the Russians and the North Americans, and of aiding Dumouriez in his counter-revolutionary attempt to reinstate the monarchy. It now seemed all too likely that Miranda, who had led his men with b
rilliance, even perhaps turning the tables in the war, and who had acted with impeccable correctness in spurning Dumouriez’s overtures, would be guillotined on trumped-up charges.

  On 20 April he was taken before a revolutionary Tribunal presided over by Montane, with Fouquier-Tinville prosecuting. Miranda surprised those present by his calm demeanour and his eloquent and natural way of defending himself. He was also vigorously defended by Chaveau-Lagarde (who later attempted unsuccessfully to save Queen Marie Antoinette from the tumbrils): ‘An irreproachable republican,’ he argued, ‘never fears death but cannot bear the suspicion of crime, and for a month Miranda has been suspected.’

  Fouquier-Tinville rose and, in the precise, reedy voice which had condemned so many to the blade, accused Miranda of negligence in the war, and of being Dumouriez’s chief co-conspirator. Meanwhile Marat’s rabid newspaper, L’Ami du Peuple, had charged Miranda with looting Ambères after its capture. A procession of hostile witnesses was led by General La Hove and General Eustace. It was alleged that Miranda had a son and a brother-in-law in Maastricht, hence his discontinuance of the siege. A sergeant testified that the Dutch considered him ‘better than a Dutchman’. The national gendarmerie, whose excesses he had tried to contain at Antwerp, accused him of a succession of crimes.

  When it was Miranda’s turn to speak he calmly recalled that, far from being Dumouriez’s accomplice, he had been his accuser. He had withdrawn from Maastricht because he was out-numbered, and not on ground of his choosing: ‘You cannot win when you don’t have the advantage of the ground.’ Outraged, General Eustace demanded to speak again, saying that it had been his honour ‘to detest Miranda’. Remarkably, the acid, razor-sharp Fouquier-Tinville cut him down, saying he could not call an openly prejudiced witness. The defence witnesses were called. One revealed that at the time the King’s head was struck off by the guillotine Miranda had declared to his soldiers, ‘This is a great blow for the politics of France.’ The American revolutionary Thomas Paine himself came from London to argue with passion that Miranda would never have betrayed France, ‘because the cause of the French Revolution is intimately tied to the favourite cause of his heart, the independence of Spanish America’.