The Battle of Valmy

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Hello, on the 20th of September 1792 at Balmy, 120 miles to the east of Paris, the French won one of the most significant battles of recent centuries, so saving their revolution.

Ranged against them were the Prussians, Austrians, and French royalists heading for Paris to free Louis XVI and restore his power.

Thanks to the morale of recruits, including memorably from Marseille, and the professional soldiers they joined, the French forced their opponents to retreat.

And the very next day, back in Paris, the National Convention abolished the monarchy and declared the new republic.

With me to discuss the Battle of Balmy are Michael Rowe, reader in European history at Kingish College London, Heidi Merkens, a lecturer in modern European history at the University of Aberdeen, and Colin Jones, Professor Emeritus of History at Queen Mary University of London.

Colin, why had France gone to war in April 1792?

If we go back to July the 14th and the storming of the Bastille and what what followed on from that, we see a new type of phenomenon coming into international affairs.

And that was clearly in conflict with the way that all the other powers of Europe thought about it.

So in a way, a move towards war became not inevitable, but certainly likely the longer the revolution went on.

And in fact, from late 1791 to early 1792, there was a standoff effectively between France, still a monarchy, and the rest of Europe, but particularly the Holy Roman Emperor, the ruler of Germany, Germany, particularly over the collection of troops, German troops, on the French frontiers, along with armed forces led by, in fact, the brother and the cousins of the king, Louis XVI, who seemed a very threatening force there, and there was fear that they would intervene.

Their refusal, the Emperor's refusal to withdraw those troops, led Louis XVI to declare war on the Holy Roman Emperor, as he would become on the 20th of April 1792.

Did that seem to be a rather foolish move on his part?

Many people thought it was very foolish, and in retrospect most historians think it was pretty foolish too.

But at the time there are very few people who seemed against it.

In fact, funnily enough, one of those people was Maximilien Robespierre, famously the architect of terror, but who at this stage said honestly, quite accurately, I think, no one loves an armed missionary.

To go abroad and to try and sell the revolutionary message to the rest of Europe seemed ridiculous and fraught with all sorts of dangers.

But most of the revolutionaries wanted war because they felt a short conflict would put an end to this intransigence of the Allied powers and also force the king and his supporters within France to support the revolution.

It must be said that the king and particularly his supporters at court wanted warfare for the same reason, a short war, but in which the victor would be the Allied forces and this would end the revolution.

They'd be able to put Louis XVI back on his throne and possibly themselves partition parts of France as well.

And they called up recruits from all over France, including from Marseille, who brought a tremendous, what became a great propaganda song and seriously important in the affairs of the battle.

Yes, the Marseillaise, this is really the moment when the Marseillaise makes its entry into history.

It was a war song written by Rugé Le Lidles, as we all know, and it was written in Strasbourg, in fact, in April 1792, just as the war was being being declared.

But it became very famous straight away.

It spread through France.

And we know that a recruit, a national volunteer for the army from Montpellier, went to Marseilles in the summer of 1792 and started singing this song.

And the Marseille picked it up.

Many of the national volunteers from Marseille then were marching up to Paris to support the revolution, to defend Paris, and maybe, as many did, actually go on to fight the enemy.

And they took that song with them.

When they arrived in Paris, everyone realized the Marseille, the men from Marseille, were

singing this song.

It's interesting also because in some ways the first revolution, genuinely revolutionary song that everyone was singing in Paris and elsewhere from 1790 onwards was the famous sahirat, you know, a sail, saire, saireat.

But that's a sort of dancing song.

When you hear the marseillaise, you know, you can hear the boot tramp, you know, it's a marching song, à l'en sent fantre.

It's that sort of song.

So yeah, this is the moment moment when the Marseillaise really makes it.

But it did have an effect, did it, on the battle, on the on the morale of both sides in different ways.

Definitely.

Well, we're going to talk about this, I'm sure, but my sense is that it was a very important psychological weapon, actually, in the conflict of September 1792.

Everyone knew this,

everyone, you know, they were singing it, they were singing that at the Mar Desagrade, and so these revolutionary songs were sweeping over the battlefield almost as much as the cannonballs were later on and giving a bit of sort of psychological edge to the French and it was really a bit unsettling for the Prussians because the Prussians had gone into the battle onto the battlefield thinking it's going to be a walkover these guys are undisciplined earlier on in the summer there'd been a famous conflict in which the French literally not only ran away but murdered their commander there have been all the September massacres which we're going to talk about I'm sure in in Paris as well so there's this feeling that there's they were up against this very highly trained, professional army of the Ancien regime, was up against a rabble of undisciplined, you know, very enthusiastic people, but they would be wiped off the field of battle altogether.

Heidi,

who were the forces of the, let's call them, the coalition, they call themselves the coalition, invading France and why did they do it?

Yeah, the Holy Roman Emperor, he joined forces with the King of Prussia, and the Prussian armies and the Austrian armies would go into battle here or go into this campaign together.

So we've got about in July, August 1792, we've got about 80,000 troops gathering in the Rhineland.

So we've got a core here of 42,000 Prussian soldiers, well trained, well disciplined, and we've got two armies protecting their flanks and both are Austrian troops led by very experienced commanders.

And I can only say, you know, I completely agree with Colin.

The expectation was that this would be basically a walk in the park before they even went into you know across the frontier the expectation was that the French soldiers are not disciplined, they would just run away.

So this army, the Allied army, was commanded by the Duke of Brunswick and the battle plan was basically to you know sweep away the French troops and then march directly for Paris with the aim at this stage to rescue the French royal family because there was a sense that the royal family's lives were in imminent danger, especially after the storming of the Tuileries in June.

The army was then joined by émigré forces as well later in August, about 4,000, 4,500 strong, including the brothers of Louis XVI, the Comte d'Artois, the Comte de Provence.

And they came with their own agenda, re-establishing monarchical authority in France, maybe even before the army would reach Paris.

And at the head of that, let's call it it the coalition, was the Duke of Brunswick.

Who was he and how experienced was he as a general?

Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick.

He was a very experienced general.

He was born in 1735,

so had been in the business for a long time.

He was a field marshal with the Prussian army.

He had started his military career in the Seven Years' War in the 1750s, shown his leadership qualities 1759, 1760, and in various battles.

The Duke of Brunswick was actually quite popular in Britain because he had fought with Allied British troops, but he was also married to an English princess, Augusta, sister of King George III, because of the personal union, because the Hanoverian branch of his family and Great Britain.

So he was a seasoned military commander.

His last battle would actually be the Battle of Jena and Auerstedt in 1806.

And he was 71, and he was wounded in battle and died of his wounds afterwards.

So nobody clearly to stand just in the back and shout commands, but he was in the thick of the action.

Yeah, command was given to a very seasoned and rational commander.

Thank you.

Michael Rowe, can you tell us about his plan?

He delivered a manifesto, didn't he?

Yes, the famous or infamous Brunswick manifesto, probably not penned by him, but it bears his signature, in which he threatens, you know, destruction upon Paris should anything happen to the French royal family, who are, you know, at this stage of a revolution essentially been imprisoned.

You know, they're in a place called the Temple in Paris.

Who would imprison them?

Well, the revolutionary government, who, I think, quite correctly suspect them of treason.

They've been in communication with the brother of the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, is the sister of the Emperor, and his troops are amongst those who are marching into France.

So you've got a head of state who's in effect committed treason, as indeed has his spouse.

So they've been imprisoned, and there's genuine fear on the coalition side that they will come to harm.

You know, it'll be murdered.

something which of course will happen eventually.

And Brunswick issues this manifesto, you know, threatening destruction upon Paris and Parisians if any harm should come.

It has, of course, as one would possibly expect the exact opposite effect.

Paris was then an undefended city, wasn't it?

So when he said he would walk in and they could run amok, he could have done that.

Yes, I mean Paris's fortifications, of the medieval fortifications, had been demolished under Louis XIV, so about a hundred years earlier.

And faith had been placed not in the walls of Paris, which didn't exist anymore, but in border fortifications built by a very famous military engineer, somebody called Vaubin so France and the northeastern frontiers ringed by these very powerful fortresses and it was felt that that was sufficient to keep out an invading army once you punched through them yes theoretically you could march into Paris mind you'd have half a million possibly enraged revolutionaries to deal with at that point but the

coalition and when they moved under Brunswick moved into France what success did they have at first they do have successes and it's partly as Colin mentioned, because the French army, you know, its performance is dismal.

It runs away.

They murder their own commanders because they're suspected of treason, of being royalists.

Some of them indeed are.

The most famous Frenchman in this period is probably Lafayette, you know, hero of the American Revolutionary War.

He defects.

So it does seem that the French army will fall apart.

Longueville, which is an important sort of fortified point, that surrenders to Brunswick.

Even more seriously, on the 2nd of September, you get the surrender of Verdun, which is a sort of key fortress.

Of course, it's famous for being a fortress in the First World War when it doesn't surrender.

So, yeah, I mean, it does seem that the route, the path, the road to Paris is open, and that then sparks this, you know, complete panic in the French capital.

Yeah, I think that's a really important point to pick up, that the Brunswick Declaration, which in many ways is a sort of routine declaration which one makes as the commanding officer going into it just to try and keep people quiet has completely the opposite effect in Paris because Paris.

So he threatened them and they reacted against him.

Exactly, yes, and I think he didn't realize the extent to which Parisians had been completely enraged by the processes of the summer, in particular the overthrow of the king, and then this threat raining in on them that they're going to be pursued and punished with exemplary forms of punishment and avenge, basically, if any

harm falls on the king.

And then, as a result, you get this extraordinary event, the September massacres, where gangs of Parisians go round the prisons of Paris and kill probably about half the prison population, 1,200, although most people at the time think it's a much bigger figure.

And the rationale behind that, which people are saying at the time, is that basically we are going to fight.

We volunteered for

the front.

But before we go, we want to make sure that there's no plotting within Paris and that these fifth column aristocrats or clerics or whatever in the prisons can be neutralized in fact before they leave the city.

But that also adds to this feeling

on the German side that basically this is a rabble.

They're undisciplined.

They can't be controlled.

They're just completely out of control and they will therefore militarily pose no problem.

What happened in Paris?

Was there any sense of it reorganizing in a more formal militaristic way?

I think what happens is that basically the National Assembly accepts that the king has been removed.

They have to decide then what to do with him.

But without a proper executive arm, they immediately appoint a set of six ministers, a provisional executive council.

The most significant figure is actually Danton in that.

He's a major, major figure, Danton, in mobilizing and giving a sense of commitment and engagement to the French.

But at the same time, the Legislative Assembly, the National Assembly, is being competed for power by the Commune, the Paris Commune.

So you have a very strange and very unsettling and unusual situation where you've got a sort of dual power situation right at the heart of the revolution.

Heide, let's start to talk about Valme, the Battle of Balme.

There's a famous quotation ascribed to Goethe which says, from this day forth begins a new era in the history of the world.

We have your comment on that.

Yeah.

So Goethe was actually an eyewitness.

That's so interesting.

He joined the campaign.

He was traveling with his prince, the Duke of Weimar, who was commanding a regiment.

And Goethe,

he wasn't really a political person, you know, he was the poet, philosopher.

He looked at the whole affair with different interests, but he was certainly not sharing the hardships of soldiers.

He was travelling quite comfortably in his carriage and on horseback, and he had a manservant who made sure he had enough to eat.

But he was interested in the Battle of Varmy.

He observed it, he described the sound of cannon, and he wrote about all of this in his memoirs and in his recollections of his French campaign.

He wrote about this around 1820, and it was published in 1822.

And this is where he says, I sat with soldiers after the Battle of Vermy, and they were all terribly demoralized.

And he gave them this bon mot about

the new world era starting.

It's a fantastic quote.

We don't know if he said this in 1792, but from the perspective of 1820, when Goethe looked back on the campaign with 30 years of hindsight, it certainly made complete sense to say that Valmy was there, a turning point, a moral turning point in French history and world history.

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Michael, let's come to Valmy, the battle.

And what happened on the 20th of September in 1792?

Well, one thing happens is that it's bad weather.

And so many sort of key battles in this period seem to be affected by rain.

And you have rain on the day of Valmy, and you also have mist, which obscures the French French position, so that the Prussians and the French don't see each other.

In many ways, it's an odd battle.

If you look at the actual map, you think you've got the map the wrong way around, because the Prussians are actually closer to Paris than the French are.

So the French have actually got behind the Prussian lines of communication through...

clever maneuvering and arguably that actually already dooms the Prussian effort because it means that their lines of communication back to their territories in Germany have been cut off.

The French occupy something which

is maybe calling it a hill is a bit flattering.

It's a slight rise of the ground, famously a windmill, which they then demolish, and they position themselves there.

The windmill because they didn't want it to be a marker for yes, it would be spectacularly stupid

to have kept that windmill in position.

And they occupy high ground.

The mist burns away, if you like, in the sun, and the French position is revealed.

And, you know, we've talked a a little bit about morale and on the French side being high, and

in the context of Marseilles, I think something which also impresses the Prussians is that the French are drawn up in disciplined formations.

You know, they clearly know what they are about.

And the Prussians advance, there's an exchange of artillery fire, the sodden ground means that actually the cannonballs don't ricochet and create the sort of casualties that they might have done.

So it's a battle which has, by the the standards of a day, surprisingly few casualties, you know, low hundreds on each side.

The big achievement is that the French don't run away.

They hold their ground.

They hold their position.

Brunswick, quite wisely, you know, decides not to press the point.

But before he does that, let's go back to the French here.

Having had a reputation as people who ran away, murdered their leaders and so on, all of a sudden we see them as a force that's well ordered, that's particularly good militarily.

We're supposed to be be one of the best military outfits in Europe, so I'm

squared.

You're quite right, this is a bit of a

puzzle, but actually I think the the reason behind that is that although the the Germans don't make much of this at the time, the a heavy corps, a large corps at the heart of the army

still in

late 1792, is still men who were soldiers under the ancien regime in the early part of the revolution.

So the volunteers have come in late, they've added enthusiasm, ardour.

Not to say that the soldiers themselves aren't part of the revolution as well.

And probably the most important, certainly the most important on that particular day are the artillery.

Now, the artillery under the Ancien regime had been pretty radically reformed in many ways, and the French artillery are generally seen to be the best in Europe.

Although there's much emigration, particularly from the noble-dominated cavalry, and to some extent from the infantry commanders, emigration and the loss therefore of command is less evident among the artillery.

So the artillery in some ways is a reformed and re-energised version of the artillery of the ancien regime.

How did they reform and re-energize us?

Well basically the army

doesn't sit in its barracks twiddling its thumbs.

It reads the newspapers, it attends revolutionary clubs and in fact through 1790 and 91 there's a whole set of disputes.

The biggest one is in Nancy in late 1790 where men mutiny against their officers because they say they're aristocrats, they're monarchists, they're royalists, they're not really committed to the revolution.

So I think this is, you know, they have been changed as well over time.

I think the other thing in terms of the technical, so I think Michael could probably talk better than me on this, is that the type of artillery which evolves in France particularly under the military theorist Griboval is the sort of lighter artillery that can be moved around on the battlefield.

And this is generally something which is very important not only under, you know, at Valmy, but right through the 1790s and into the Napoleonic period.

Michael?

Yes, I mean, sort of further to Colin's point, I think the French army of 1792 and indeed the following years achieves this sort of magical mix of good morale, of soldiers, citizen soldiers, who are well informed, who are committed to dying for the revolution and fighting for the republic.

On top of

also technical reforms, which actually predate the revolution by decades, the French army had suffered huge defeats in the Seven Years' War, and in the 1760s, 1770s, 1780s embarks on very important technical reforms, new types of musket, new types of artillery, new boring techniques, which mean you can have lighter guns but with heavier cannonball

changes in demand command structure and doctrine.

And you get those two elements, you know, the morale and the technical, coming together in 1792.

Heidi, why did Brunswick withdraw?

That's a really good question.

And historians have had quite a bit of a debate about this topic.

I think that it's never just one reason why a military commander decides to withdraw.

So, what's the situation at Valmy?

We've got two armies pretty much equal in strength, so like roughly the same amount of troops.

The Prussians had more artillery, but the French had the better artillery.

So pretty much a balanced affair.

But the French had the higher ground and the Allied troops tried to advance across open ground, but then decided not to pursue and just to stop in their tracks and retreat.

So why this?

I think there are several reasons that we need to take into account.

Michael has already pointed out.

The weather was really bad.

So we have plenty of soldiers who are cold, hungry, because the supply chains didn't work either.

We've got the army cut off from their supply chains as well because they were in this weird reversed positioning on the battlefield as well, so they couldn't reach their rear as well.

And I think Brunswick, as a commander, he was very much an 18th century military commander.

I think his concern was very much much to conserve energy and conserve manpower.

You know, 18th century warfare is a lot about outmaneuvering the enemy rather than destroying the enemy.

So I think he made that decision to just, you know, conserve power.

Also, I'm not sure he was sure he could rely on his troops because morale was so low.

Why was it so low?

It was low because of the bad weather.

It was low because actually

the French had made an impression on these troops.

You know, they could hear the Marseilles and could hear the Seira.

so that was an important factor, too.

Yes, and also, wasn't there something serious, like typhus was in his

dissentry, it was very much a topic as well.

So, many of the soldiers were ill.

So, he made the decision to retreat.

It's been discussed, there are also more serious allegations against the Duke of Brunswick that have been discussed.

For example, was he bribed to retreat?

But I don't think there's evidence for this.

Or was he told by the French king not to pursue, for example, but I don't think we have evidence for this.

So it was the decision of a military commander, much in line with their way of thinking.

Yeah, my sense is that a basic thing for a general in the commander in the 18th century is to consult an army so expensive to put together, so difficult to train, to work in the way that those armies did.

You've got to keep them together.

I mean, Marshal de Saches, who's the greatest military theorist of the Enlightenment of the 18th century, famously says the sign of truly great generalship will be to go through one's entire career and never fight a battle, but still be seen as a great general.

So it's a sort of warfare of manoeuvre much more than face-on battle.

And I think Brunswick is following his line.

Interestingly, of course, one of the generals, key generals on the French side, Kelleman, is also an ancient regime general.

And he's actually

rather not sure about committing that day.

And in in fact, Dumourier pushes him into battle.

And of course, Kellermann has this great moment where he shouts out Vive la Nation and everyone puts their hats on, their bayonets and lifts it up.

And everyone shouts Vive la Nation.

Part of the psychological warfare, if you like, going on on the field of battle is very much that.

But Kelleman sort of steps in backwards into this

acclamation that he'll get from the Republicans later.

Michael, what's your view about the withdrawal of Brunswick?

I think Brunswick does the right thing.

I would have been very worried had I been Brunswick at Valmy.

We've had talk of the bad weather

and dysentery.

The French have got the advantage of fighting on home soil.

It means that they're more motivated.

And I think there is a sense that on the Prussian side in particular, to an extent on the Austrian side, that neither of their rulers are fully committed to this campaign.

They've got other things to worry about.

They're Central European powers.

They have eastern border to worry about.

They have the Russians to worry about.

And what the Russians are doing at this time is actually

very concerning.

You know, they're partitioning Poland.

So you can't commit fully to defeating the French Revolution.

They're not going to throw in every soldier they've got to defeating France in 1792.

So you've got this situation where Brunswick is there at Valmy.

His forces are not larger than the French forces and they're diminishing.

you know they're diminishing because of illness his supply lines are overextended the french yes, they're suffering from bad weather as well, but they're on home soil and they can replenish their forces.

You really face the risk of being cut off and not being able to extract your army.

So it is a dire position.

So, you know,

moving out of France as quickly as possible is actually the sensible thing to do.

The idea was that this was a French citizen army.

How true do you think that was?

It's a mixture of citizens and professionals, you know, inherited from the old regime.

And I think it's about 50, 50.

Obviously, the officer corps is made up of professionals, as Colin mentioned, people like Kellemann.

The French commanders, Duma

and Kellemann, are of the same generation as Brunswick.

They're born in the 1730s.

They've got plenty of military experience behind them.

So you have this core of professionalism, which is then supplemented by volunteers.

That volunteer element will increase over the subsequent weeks, months, and years.

Colin, on the day of the battle, France was still a monarchy.

How much jeopardy was the royal family in at that time?

And where was it?

A lot of

jeopardy, as Michael said earlier, there.

Straight after the overthrow on the 10th of August, they're put in the Temple Prison.

The Temple no longer exists, but it's a great Gothic structure, which would actually be very difficult to attack in the way that the other prisons are attacked in the September massacres.

They're kept under very, very heavy armed guard, and they're basically removed from Versailles and the sort of atmosphere in which they've lived most of the Ancien regime.

On the other hand, I think since they moved to Paris, since the days of October 1789, when they moved to the Tuileries, they have felt that they were in prison.

They don't have freedom of action, if you like.

So, in some ways, there's a continuity with what went before.

And the other strange continuity is that the kings of France live their lives publicly.

They eat in public, they are dressed in public, they are undressed in public.

So they're used to not having a private life in some ways.

And they certainly won't have a private life in the temple because obviously you've got these armed guards watching their every move to make sure they're not going to escape.

And there are quite a few plots going around and rumours of plots and all the rest of it.

And you've got this core group of king, queen, the king's sister, Madame Elizabeth, and then their two children, the thirteen-year-old daughter and then the young Dauphin.

Yes.

When w was there any feeling in Paris that they deserved what had come to them?

I think it's very hard to for the um crown to make much of a cause for itself after the overthrow, and it becomes increasingly difficult to do so.

I think the um absolute turning point will be just a little later when the uh French revolutionaries discover in the Tuileries Palace where the king has been living since seventeen eighty nine a wall safe in which there's a credible amount of very incriminating evidence, letters and things to the Allied forces, including about the

movements of the armies and things like that.

After that, there's absolutely no chance.

But I think even on September the 20th, within Paris,

there are royalists still, and probably quite a few, but they're keeping their heads pretty low beneath the parapets, partly because of the 10th of August, partly because of the September massacres.

Thank you.

Michael Rowe.

Well, there is a very interesting sort of observer to what's going on at Valni in that campaign.

That's somebody called Henry Clinton, who'd been the commander-in-chief of British forces in North America in 1778 to 1782.

So he had been, well, I don't think one could blame him for the loss of the 13 colonies, because there's probably no way Britain could have won that particular conflict.

But he's interesting.

You know, he's dealt with a revolution himself or failed to deal with it.

He's fought a revolutionary war.

He knows Brunswick.

He's been his aide-de-camp earlier on in the, I think it's in the Seven Years' War.

And he does think that the Prussians will win Valmy, but he's rather, he does sort of pose interesting questions about what they'll do with that victory.

He does fear it'll probably be the end of a French royal family, you know, even a Prussian victory,

they'll probably be murdered.

And he does sort of say, you know, how is a Prussian army going to advance in a country full of 20 million enemies?

And, you know, Clinton's sort of lesson from America is do not believe in exiles and

who say that there's a large body of kind of support, you know, when you invade a country, that it's going to rise up in your favour.

Heidi, what changed in Paris after the victory?

So we've got the Battle of Ormy on the 20th of September, which also happens the first day of the convention getting together.

It's the opening session of the convention.

And on the next day, the 21st of September, the monarchy is officially abolished and the republic is declared.

So these are two parallel events.

I don't think we can think that the Battle of Vanille decides that there will be a republic in France, but these events happen basically at the same time.

Because, you know, it takes a long time to elect members for the convention.

And plans to establish a republic had been around for a while, like get rid of the constitutional system and establish a republic instead.

And this had become a lot more likely after the storming of the Tuileries and the invasion.

So, this happens at the same time, but I think the Battle of Valmy, once the news reached Paris, it created some sort of justification for the Republic and acceptance.

You know, suddenly it looked like the forces of the Republic would be successful in battle and strong in battle as well.

And it created some sort of legitimacy, I think, for the Republic.

I think that's a major symbolic boost and morale boost for the new political scheme.

Would you

go along with that?

I absolutely endorse that.

I think it is rather strange, and one of these sort of bizarre conjunctions that we have a massive battle in terms of

the future of the French Republic and the future of the Republican tradition in France, which actually fought before a republic is actually declared.

The news of Valmy, yeah, probably the news of what happened on the 20th gets back, but actually the forces remained on the battlefield and there was quite some possibility they would have continued to fight.

So it's only a week or so later that people really start rejoicing and saying a great victory has been won.

But I think the idea that

you know this army, this new type of army, which has galvanised France, which has got, you know, the Republic has

the patriotic citizen who's willing to take up arms for the defense of the Republic is

enormously important and will become part of the Republican myth.

I think as long as there's a republic in France, that republic will always have a Valmy.

Yes.

What did Brunswick himself do

after he'd been, as it were, defeated?

It's difficult to say defeated because they just left the battlefield, didn't they?

It wasn't a straightforward, I've won.

What happened?

Well, he retreats back to the Rhine, and he does retreat back maybe a little bit further than even

professional military opinion opinion of the period actually expected him to.

And this is where one then enters into sort of rather complicated coalition politics between Prussia and Austria and the sense that they both blame each other for the setback at Valmy and the Austrians who are further to the north, they withdraw.

The Prussians, well, very shortly thereafter, a few years thereafter, in 1795, actually sign a peace treaty with the French Republic and exit the conflict.

Brunswick is still there.

He's there in 1806, you know, when Napoleon invades Prussia, and that's where he gets killed.

So

he keeps his hand in as a military commander.

But I suppose Brunswick has come to sort of symbolise, and I think perhaps a little bit unfairly, a sort of ancient regime form of warfare, which is plodding armies, supply lines, being perhaps only concerned with supply lines, and so on and so forth.

That's not fair.

I think there's the politics of Europe which come into play, and you know, the politics of the relationship between Prussia and Austria in particular, and the Polish petition.

And I think the Poles actually deserve a little bit of credit in this, in that they,

by resisting, if you like, the partition of their country, in a way, distract the Eastern powers from dealing with France.

Colin, how significant was Valmy for France?

I think it's enormously significant.

As I said, it really gives legitimacy to the newly founded French Republic.

It shows that the Republic can't be pushed around as most people thought it was going to be

in battle, that people will

stand in their ranks and not run away, even under incredibly heavy cannon fire, which actually many people on the day say is as loud and as heavy a cannon fire as they've ever heard in their lives.

They sort of show their patriotic metal, if you like.

And moreover, once the battle is over and obviously

the Prussians are moving away, the French move more onto the attack and take the battle further to the north.

And by a couple of months' time, you've got Dumourier, the French commander, moving into the Low Countries and having some success there.

Yeah, I think this is the moment where we can speak of a crusade.

Can you develop that?

Oh, no, I was just picking up on this point of the spirit of the French soldiers changing from

like how they gained the self-confidence to go out and show their strength and basically take on enemies on their own terms.

I think we can see this really further developed from 1799 when Napoleon Bonaparte takes over and

basically Europe is in flames just shortly after.

So you can see that this is the spirit developing here.

So you think they laid the basis, the Valmier laid the basis for Bonaparte?

Yes, yes, in many ways.

The new formations of the army, Valmy as a first step, the victory at Jamap at the second step.

I think in some ways Valmy shows a winning formula, which will be the formula which goes in a straight line really into Bonaparte's campaigns.

And

that is revolutionary ardour and patriotism and commitment to the La Patri, the fatherland, but plus military expertise and plus talent.

I mean, one of the interesting things we haven't talked about really is this emigration of the high officer corps.

It gives a wonderful opportunity to very talented

under officers, people who are not at such high rank, who would never be able under before 1789 to reach the highest rank.

Obviously later Bonaparte will be one of these, but there are many, many examples.

So this winning formula, if you like, of patriotism plus expertise is really, really significant, I think.

And talent and talent.

Yes, highly.

I think we can see the relevance of modernizing the army, the ardor and the expertise that goes into this.

We can see this for Prussia as well.

When they are being occupied and defeated in 1806, what do they do?

They initiate reforms, a massive reform.

program.

I think this is so interesting.

The king of Prussia initiates reforms from above and his capable ministers, Stein Hardenberg, they set out to put these reforms into practice.

And these are military reforms, for example, bring in compulsory military service, but these are also stately reforms, policy reforms.

There's a sense that in order to keep up with new rising forces like France, we have to modernize ourselves and we have to change our ways in order to be in a competitive position as a nation state.

So I think that's really relevant.

This is maybe how Valmi then

radiates further into the European situation in the first decade of the 19th century.

Michael, Michael Rowe.

Yes, a great deal flows from Valmy.

And I agree.

I don't think Goethe actually did make that comment.

He probably wished he had made that comment looking back.

But it should have been said.

Perhaps we can leave that part there.

I think we can perhaps indulge in a little bit of counterfactual speculation.

You know, what if the French had run away at Valmy?

I think the French Revolution wouldn't have been snuffed out.

I think too much had been achieved in 1789, 1991.

I don't think you could have gone back to 1789.

But I think what Valmy and the French victory there does mean is that the revolution will be exported.

It will be exported to large parts of Europe.

That in itself is a bit problematic because I think Robespierre is right, people don't like armed missionaries.

And it means that actually progress to an extent in much of German-speaking Europe, for example, becomes associated with foreign domination.

And I think going forward into the 19th century, that leads to a Germany which is in many ways more conservative politically than it otherwise might have been.

Valmy also ensures that Belgium will be invaded and that brings in Britain.

So the French Revolutionary War turns into not only a French affair and a European affair, but it becomes global, of huge implications in the Western Hemisphere and the Caribbean, for example.

Hey, what do you think would have happened if the French had lost?

That's a very interesting question, very difficult to answer.

I think what we might have seen less violence in Paris.

What I find so fascinating about this is that we have a war scenario, but it's actually, you know, war is always terrible, but it's actually in many ways way less violent than what's going on, what it triggers in Paris, like the violence, the violent storming of the Tuileries, for example, the September massacres.

The situation in August 1792 is we have a highly politically unstable situation.

I think

it's very difficult to say exactly, and the counterfactuals are going to be met by counter-counterfactuals, I think.

But one thing just to mention is that the invading forces have been told by the émigré princes that it will be a walkover, not just on the battlefield, but actually

in the countryside, that the peasants will welcome them, they'll be throwing flowers at the troops.

It doesn't happen.

And in fact, many of their supply trains are attacked.

There's attacks on personnel that wander off the beaten track.

So, actually, I agree with what Michael said before.

France got through so much at that time.

It's very difficult to imagine going back to before the 14th of July, 1789.

Too much has happened, but what exactly, who knows?

Well, thank you very much.

Thanks to Colin Jones, Heidi Merkins, and

Michael Rowe.

Next week, Plato's Crito and Phaedo, which cover the last days of Socrates and why he chose to drink hemlock rather than escape from prison.

Thank you very much for listening.

And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests.

What did you not have time to say you would like to have said?

Heidi, what about you?

What I find so fascinating about this topic is the whole aspect of the constitutional monarchy and what it actually means in 1791 and 1792.

The concept of the constitutional monarchy is

to find this balance between the monarchical power and the authority of elected political institutions.

And in 1792, the French decided that this is not how they want to run their show.

They came up with a new project, which was the Republic.

What I find so fascinating is that then the constitutional monarchical system comes back into the mix in 1814 in France, but also across Europe and starts a massive victory ride across the nineteenth century.

So it becomes the most important, the most relevant political system.

So we've got all three dynasties competing for the French throne, the Orleans, the Bonaparte, the Bourbons, and they all go with a constitutional monarchical system.

So it just shows, I think, how they decided at some point that they would endeavour and would try and find this negotiation and the balance between the monarchical side of things and the elected political side of things.

It just shows us constitutional monarchies always have this aspect of negotiation.

As in there is a document, not in the British case, but in most other cases, there's a document, the constitution.

But how it comes to life and how it's actually filled with meaning and with practice depends on the people negotiating the terms.

Yeah, I think that's very interesting.

But also,

I'd throw in, I think, that the 19th century discussions about constitutional monarchy and desirability in many cases of the constitutional monarchy are deeply, deeply influenced by what happens in France between September 20th, 1792, and the middle of 1794.

So, this period of terror, which obviously is about violence, authoritarian government, and violence metered out through the guillotine, revolutionary tribunal, etc., but also is about social reforms, social welfare reforms, etc., etc., which are often lost sight of.

But for everyone coming out of the terror and beyond it, and that includes many of the revolutionaries as well as the counter-revolutionaries, they think that's not the way forward.

We've got to work on this system, which seemed to be dead and buried, in fact, in France in the middle of 1792, 93, and basically look at that in one way or the other and how that might work.

I mean, if I may, I'll focus a little bit on the geopolitics and the wider sort of European context, which I think can be developed a bit further.

You know, the myth is that France in 1792 is fighting alone against monarchical Europe.

Well, it is fighting alone, but it's only fighting part of monarchical Europe.

Prussia and Austria, Britain and Russia, you know, the other great powers are sort of looking on from the sidelines.

They, I don't think, see the French Revolution as that kind of existential threat.

The French, I think, do see the invasion of their territory as an existential threat.

So you get this sort of mismatch, I think, in commitment on both sides.

And I think that partly explains why the Prussians under Brunswick

don't engage in that campaign as perhaps fanatically as one might have expected them to have done, if you buy into the myth.

One has to remember at this time the French Revolution isn't the only show in town.

You've got the partition of Poland, you've got the whole disruption of the state system in Central and Eastern Europe.

And that concerns Austria and Prussia probably even more than what's going on in France in 1792.

I think though most rulers are seeing by late 1792, certainly by early 1793, seeing the French Revolution as not just the danger of armies coming in, etc., but seeing it as an ideological contagion, which they're worried about that spreading within their own states in a way that obliges them to try and root it out at source in some ways, and so to take the war into France.

I fully take Michael's point about the importance of what's going on in Central and Eastern Europe, but I don't think

France is just a sideshow.

I think it's a very important part of policy formation right across Europe.

Well, thank you all very much.

Would anyone want your coffee?

Tea would be great.

Teaching.

Coffee would be super coffee, Melvin.

I'll have a cup of tea, please.

That would be lovely.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

In our time with Melvin Bragg, it's produced by Simon Tillotson, and it's a BBC Studios audio production.

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