Episode 21: The Republic at War

Living the French Revolution and Age of Napoleon

Dr Suzanne M Desan

Film Review

With the king’s execution, the republican convention took over defending France against Prussian invasion. In part due to the diversion of several Prussian divisions to defend Poland against invasion of by Russia’s czarina Catherine the Great,* French soldiers now outnumbered Prussian troops by 52,000 to 34,000. With two veterans of the Seven Years War leading the French Republican army, they halted the Prussian advance on September 20, 1793 with a decisive victory at  Valmy.*

Jubilant over thwarting the Prussian invasion of France, 120,000 new volunteers joined the French army to defend the republic. The notion of a non-professional citizen soldier was a totally new phenomenon in France. Unfortunately, as two-thirds of the king’s army had fled France, they were relatively few officers left to lead them. Moreover tension between the line army and the new volunteers (in part because the latter were better paid and in part due to the incompatibility between equality and military hierarchy) made for a highly dysfunctional fight force. Many of the new troops wanted to vote on orders their officers gave them.

At the same time, good pay and high morale resulted in an increase from 130,000 to 350,000 volunteers In the 1791-93 recruitment campaign. With the adoption of conscription, by 1794 France had over a million citizens in arms (Europe’s largest army ever). Some of these troops were used in guerilla warfare to su[press counterrevolutionary activity among French peasants.

In 1792, the French army (which included several thousand Belgian revolutionaries) invaded Savoy in the kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, leading the French-speaking Savoy to vote to break away from the Italian kingdom of Sarndinia-Piedmont and join the French republic.

When France occupied most of Belgium a month later, the national Convention debated whether republican principles gave conquered countries had a right to keep their king. Some deputies sought to wanted to extend France’s eastern boundary to the Rhine to make it easier to defend. Although the Edict of Fraternity pledged assistance to all nations wishing to recover their sovereignty (Austria had occupied Belgium prior to the French invasion), some deputies worried an independent Belgium would be too weak to resist the Prussian army and sought to extend France’s eastern boundary to the Rhine (making it easier to defend).

By 1793, France was at war with the UK, Spain, Sardinia Piedmont, the Dutch Republic, Austria, Russia and Holy Roman Empire.

*Catherine invaded Poland to crush the constitutional monarchy the Poles established in 1791. The war would eventually divide the country into Russian and German sectors.

**The German poet Goethe, an eyewitness to the battle, declared, “On this day begins a new era in the history of the world.”

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/149323/149363