#16october

Battle of Wattignies

The Battle of Wattignies was a significant battle in the War of the First Coalition, part of the wider French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802). It was fought on 15-16 October 1793 between a ragtag army of the First French Republic and a professional army of the Coalition. A French victory, the battle hindered the Coalition's encroachment onto French soil.

The battle was the capstone in a trilogy of French victories during the Flanders Campaign of 1792-1795, in which the French defeated the Coalition armies piecemeal; they defeated the British on 6-8 September at the Battle of Hondschoote and then beat the Dutch at the Battle of Menin on 13 September. Wattignies, fought against a mostly Austrian force, solidified the victories gained in the previous battles, weakening Coalition presence in Flanders and ensuring the survival of the French Revolution (1789-1799) for another year.

Background

The First Coalition was an alliance of Europe's great powers, united against the French Revolution. Unnerved by the trial and execution of Louis XVI and by the revolutionaries' promise to spread their revolution into the corners of Europe, the rulers of Europe's Ancien Régimes had assembled a multinational army to kill the infant French Republic in its cradle. Commanded by the Austrian nobleman Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, this army numbered over 100,000 men at its peak, comprised of soldiers from Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Hanover, Hessen-Cassel, and the Dutch Republic. Sweeping the French out of Belgium in March 1793, this massive army laid siege to the French fortifications near the French-Belgian border, taking Condé-sur-l'Escaut and Valenciennes in July. With the French Army of the North still in disarray after a second defeat at the Battle of Raismes, it seemed to most observers that the Coalition was within arm's reach of victory.

Yet in August 1793, the mighty allied host split in two. After Valenciennes fell to the Coalition, the British contingents received orders from the government of Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, instructing them to capture the port city of Dunkirk with all haste. Over protests from Coburg himself, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, commander of the British army, dutifully peeled his 35,000 men off from the main army and marched westwards to Dunkirk. Coburg, determined to finish capturing the French border fortifications, turned his 45,000 Austrians in the opposite direction, laying siege to Le Quesnoy, while detachments of Dutch soldiers maintained a thin line of communication between the British and Austrian armies. Many military historians consider this move to be a massive blunder that might have cost the Coalition victory.

Meanwhile, France was busy reorganizing itself. While the Coalition was preoccupied with the border fortifications, the Committee of Public Safety, France's de facto executive government, prioritized the defense of the Republic. Implementing the Reign of Terror to uncover counter-revolutionary enemies and foreign spies, the Committee purged the armies of officers suspected of disloyalty. Scores of generals and officers were carted off to Paris where they were arrested, tried, and in some cases, executed. Meanwhile, the Committee applied a policy of mass conscription, the levée en masse, which allowed France to field 14 armies and 800,000 soldiers by year's end. By September, these policies had the effect of swelling France's armies with undisciplined, untrained conscripts commanded by officers reluctant to act against the orders of the representatives-on-mission, lest they find themselves without heads. The effectiveness of these reforms was yet to be seen.