The Battle of Valmy, 1792. Levee en Masse. Nationalism Takes Root. Goethe Comments.

The Prussian retreat at Valmy marked more than just a military withdrawal—it was the salvation of France itself. Brunswick’s decision to pull back shattered the illusion of an unstoppable invasion, leaving the gates of Paris firmly shut to foreign boots. This retreat solidified the strength of the French revolutionary government, whose grip on power tightened with each passing day. It was a turning point, the first great triumph of levée en masse, the revolutionary call to arms that swept common men into the ranks, transforming France into a nation in arms.

Valmy. September 20, 1792.
Austro-Prussian Forces: ~ 30,000 to 34,000 Soldiers and 54 Cannon.
French Revolutionary Government Forces: ~ 36,000 Soldiers and 36 Cannon.

* Author's Note on Pronunciation: I don't speak French. Apologies.

Additional Reading and Research:

• Fuller, J.F.C. A Military History of the Western World.
• Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution.
• Lynn, John. "Valmy," Military History Quarterly. 1992.
• Rothenberg, Gunther. The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon.

[!] Subscribe and Share this Podcast.
www.HistorysGreatestBattles.com

Transcript

Thanks for tuning into this episode of History's Greatest Battles. If you're not yet, please subscribe and share this episode with a friend. As you may know by now, I am a huge fan of the Napoleonic Era.

Obviously each step on the ladder has a rung that proceeds it. When Napoleon came into power he revolutionized warfare. There was prior a proceeding rung, which was the actual French Revolution itself. Prior to him commanding on battlefields, there were others. According to gale.com "The French Revolution invented modern revolution—the idea that humans can transform the world according to a plan—and so has a central place in the study of the social sciences. It ushered in modernity by destroying the foundations of the “Old Regime”—absolutist politics, legal inequality, a “feudal” economy (characterized by guilds, manorialism, and even serfdom), and an alliance of church and state. It created a vision for a new moral universe: that sovereignty resides in nations; that a constitution and the rule of law govern politics; that people are equal and enjoy inalienable rights; and that church and state should be separate." 

Without the triumph at Valmy the French revolution would have stopped in its tracks. 

If you're listening to this in a country with religious liberties, with constitutional liberties, with some form of personal freedom; then you can tie that nearly directly back to today's battle. Let's now experience, the Battle of Valmy 

Welcome to History's Greatest Battles. Season 01, Episode 54: The Battle of Valmy; the 20th of September, 1792.

Austro-Prussian Forces: roughly 30 to 34 thousand soldiers and 54 cannon.

French Revolutionary Government Forces: roughly 36 thousand soldiers and 36 cannon.

The Prussian retreat at Valmy marked more than just a military withdrawal—it was the salvation of France itself. Brunswick’s decision to pull back shattered the illusion of an unstoppable invasion, leaving the gates of Paris firmly shut to foreign boots. This retreat solidified the strength of the French revolutionary government, whose grip on power tightened with each passing day. It was a turning point, the first great triumph of levée en masse, the revolutionary call to arms that swept common men into the ranks, transforming France into a nation in arms.

On July 14, 1789, the restless masses of Paris converged on the Bastille, that infamous fortress of tyranny. Though only a handful of prisoners tasted freedom, the act itself sent shockwaves through France, igniting the unstoppable engine of revolution.

Soon after, the French Revolution bared its teeth. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen was unleashed, a manifesto that shattered the old order, demanding a constitutional monarchy to chain the absolute power of kings.

By June 1791, Louis XVI, the beleaguered king, tried to slip through the cracks of his collapsing kingdom, seeking sanctuary among the crowned heads of Europe. His desperate flight, however, ended in failure—his escape thwarted, his throne crumbling beneath him.

Louis' disgrace sent tremors through the aristocracy. Hundreds of noble families fled into the shadows, abandoning their estates and titles. Among them, 6,000 officers of the royal army turned their backs on France, seeking exile rather than face the rising fury.

For a brief, pitiful moment, Louis was allowed to return as a constitutional monarch, forced to bend his royal will to the commands of a legislative assembly he despised but could no longer defy.

Across Europe, monarchs watched France with a mixture of dread and disgust. They saw the revolution tear apart France and feared its contagion—the fire that had swept British power from America now threatened to consume their own thrones.

In August 1791, answering the panicked cries of the exiled French nobles, William II of Prussia and Leopold II of Austria drew their swords, determined to stamp out this revolutionary plague before it reached their borders.

The coalition gathered strength as Russia, Sweden, and Spain, seeing the revolution as a threat to all monarchies, offered their gold and their allegiance to the cause of crushing France.

By February 1792, a military alliance was forged in iron and blood. The northern Italian kingdom of Savoy joined the fray, its soldiers lining the frontiers, side by side with the Austrian and Prussian armies, poised to strike.

In April, the French legislature, with revolution burning in their veins, answered this threat the only way they knew how—by declaring war on Austria, throwing the gauntlet in the face of Europe's mightiest powers.

With thousands of aristocratic officers abandoning their posts, the backbone of the French army—the hardened noncommissioned officers—seized their moment, rising to positions of command that had long been denied to men of their stature.

The rise of commoners through the ranks and the surge of volunteers—driven by revolutionary fervor—swelled the French army to sizes unimagined before 1789, an unstoppable tide of raw recruits.

The recruits summoned in 1791, hastily trained under the new officers, were soon outnumbered by waves of eager volunteers. Yet, for all their passion, many lacked the hardened discipline needed for the war they would soon face.

Throughout the summer of 1792, French forces hurled themselves into the Austrian Netherlands, now Belgium, but their efforts floundered. Success eluded them at every turn, their advances crushed by even the smallest resistance.

The French soldiers, still green and untested, broke and ran at the sight of the enemy. Emboldened by these early failures, the Austro-Prussian coalition was convinced that an invasion of France would be no more than a formality—a march to glory.

To lead this triumphal march, the coalition placed their trust in Prussian Field Marshal Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, the Duke of Brunswick, a veteran of wars and a man whose reputation was as unyielding as the steel of his blade.

In 1787, Brunswick had led the Prussian invasion of Holland, orchestrating a near bloodless conquest through sheer mastery of the rigid, predictable rules of war. His every move outmaneuvered his adversaries with cold precision.

What Brunswick—and every seasoned officer in Europe—failed to grasp was that the French Revolution had ripped the rulebook to shreds. War itself had been transformed.

After 1791, French soldiers were no longer mere conscripted bodies to be thrown into battle. These were men on fire, driven not by orders but by the relentless force of revolutionary ideals.

A commander who could channel this raw fervor commanded an army no longer bound by traditional tactics. These men would not just stand and fight—they would charge with a fury that shattered the rigid lines of 18th-century warfare.

Though their enthusiasm had faltered in the Netherlands, when the Austrians and Prussians dared cross into French soil, challenging the very heart of the revolution, the army did not buckle—it rose to meet the threat.

The invasion was meticulously planned, with the coalition forces advancing along three parallel lines, a hammer poised to strike the rebellious nation.

Brunswick, under the watchful eye of his king, led the central thrust. His army—a formidable force of 42,000 Prussians, 5,000 Hessian mercenaries, and 8,000 embittered French royalist emigrants—marched from Coblenz into the heart of Lorraine.

To the north, 15,000 Austrian soldiers surged forth from the Austrian Netherlands, while a second Austrian column of 14,000 pressed from the south, emerging from Speyer like wolves closing in on their prey.

These three advancing forces, though spread across a wide front, aimed to penetrate the heart of France between two of its main armies: the Armée du Nord, commanded by the cunning General Charles-François Dumouriez, and the Armée du Centre, under the steady hand of General François-Christophe Kellerman.

The invaders, however, faced one crippling flaw—an agonizingly slow march, which threatened to undo all their strategic brilliance.

In the age of empire, an army carried its world with it. Supply wagons groaned under the weight of provisions, while cooks, clerks, and the endless stream of camp followers dragged the invasion’s pace into the mud.

By August 1792, Brunswick’s proud Prussian forces could manage only six miles a day—each step heavy with the burdens of their own grandeur.

Yet even at this slow crawl, the Prussians reached the gates of Longwy by August 23. The French fortress crumbled within hours, its surrender swift and inevitable under the might of Brunswick’s guns.

A week later, Verdun, another key bastion, fell in kind. With its defenses shattered, the road to Paris now lay wide open before the coalition, as if daring them to seize the French capital.

But fate, ever a cruel mistress, turned against the Prussians. The weather conspired with the French, and the rigid formality of the Prussian military would soon prove their undoing.

The French, leaner and more resourceful, endured on meager rations and foraged from the land itself. Their reaction was swift, their resolve sharpened by the hardships they had long endured.

Initially, Dumouriez, ever the tactician, sought to strike back into the Austrian Netherlands, hoping to lure the invaders away. But with Longwy and Verdun fallen, the situation demanded a direct confrontation on French soil.

Without hesitation, Dumouriez led his army south, to the dark, imposing Argonne Forest—the only gateway through which Brunswick’s forces could advance.

He positioned his forces like a steel trap between the advancing Prussians and the dense forest, then pulled back into the woods, ready to defend the five narrow passes that threaded through this natural fortress.

The Argonne stretched in rugged defiance, its hills steep, its marshes treacherous. The few paths that cut through this inhospitable terrain were a defender’s dream—a place where an outnumbered force could hold back an army.

Yet there was a fatal weakness—one of the key routes, the northern road through La Croix aux Bois, was poorly manned, a vulnerability Brunswick’s forces would not hesitate to exploit.

When the Prussians moved swiftly along that neglected path, Dumouriez had no choice but to relinquish his dominant position at Grandpré. He fell back southward to Ste. Menchoud, where the rivers Aisne and Auve met—his new line of defense.

Dumouriez, always calculating, left men to hold the southern routes of the Argonne and sent out an urgent call for reinforcements, preparing to face the full might of the coalition.

On September 19, the reinforcements arrived. Marquis de Beurnonville marched in from Chalons, and with him came General Kellerman, bringing 18,000 battle-hardened men from the Armée du Centre. The French numbers swelled to 58,000, ready for the coming storm.

The French forces took up position in a broad, open square. To the east ran the Aisne, the Auve cut along the south, and the Bionne River held the north. At the heart of this defensive formation stood Valmy, flanked by hills on all sides—natural strongholds that would soon become battlegrounds.

That night, tensions flared between the French commanders. Kellerman and Dumouriez clashed over strategy. Kellerman, resolute, declared his intention to shift his forces south of the Auve, anchoring them in the villages of Dampièrre and Voilement by dawn.

But before Kellerman could act, Brunswick struck first. At dawn, the Prussians surged south from Somme-Bionne, moving with deadly precision to encircle the French and sever their route to Chalons.

Kellerman, with no time to lose, wheeled his forces westward, taking position on the hills that rose like sentinels outside Valmy, ready to meet the Prussian advance head-on.

At the tavern of La Lune, a small but determined French force dug in and held the line, buying precious time for Kellerman. Their sacrifice slowed Brunswick’s advance just enough for him to fully deploy his men.

The cover of thick morning fog played to the French advantage, concealing Kellerman's repositioning from Brunswick’s gaze. Amid the haze, French infantry, cavalry, and artillery moved into formation, though in the chaos of the moment, confusion briefly reigned as these units jockeyed for position.

The fierce resistance at La Lune revealed the French position to Brunswick, prompting him to halt and mirror their movements, taking up his own position on the western hills, staring down his enemy from across the valley.

By midday, the fog lifted, and there they stood—two armies, steel and gunpowder at the ready, glaring at one another across the battlefield, each side braced for the coming clash.

The relentless rain had taken its toll on Brunswick’s army. His once-mighty force had been whittled down, with many of his men doubled over from dysentery, their strength sapped by illness as much as by the march.

Worse still, Brunswick had failed to unite the three wings of his invasion force. The army he now led into battle was a shadow of its full strength, numbering between 30,000 and 34,000 soldiers.

Facing him were 36,000 French troops under Kellerman’s command, with another 18,000 held in reserve across the marshland, under the watchful eye of Dumouriez. The French force stood ready, with every man prepared to hold his ground.

Despite the disciplined French deployment, the Prussians remained confident. They were veterans of many campaigns, certain that once the cannons roared, the French lines would crumble like paper before their onslaught.

King Frederick William gave the signal, and the thunder of fifty-four Prussian guns shattered the air, unleashing a deadly barrage meant to break the French spirit. Kellerman’s thirty-six cannons roared back in defiance, steel for steel, as the duel of artillery began.

Valmy would become a battle of iron and smoke—a duel of artillery, where the French excelled. Here, in the precision and power of their gunnery, they stood unmatched on the field.

Back in the 1770s, the French had revolutionized their artillery with a new breed of gun, boasting superior accuracy and range. These guns, manned by crews loyal even after the upheavals of revolution, now proved to be the deadliest force on the field.

As the best-trained men in the French ranks, these gunners unleashed the most fearsome artillery in Europe, turning the battlefield into a killing ground with each well-aimed shot.

Yet for all their power, the guns on both sides faced the limits of their range. At 2,500 yards, cannonballs lost much of their deadly force, and the sodden, rain-soaked earth greedily swallowed their impact. Despite the deafening volleys, the actual destruction remained minimal.

Brunswick and his officers watched in disbelief. The French line held firm, unshaken. The men who had once fled at the first sign of combat now stood their ground like seasoned warriors.

These were no longer the panicked recruits of earlier months. Battle-hardened by a handful of skirmishes and tempered by time, the French soldiers were now a force to be reckoned with.

The Prussians soon faced a grim truth. To break the French would mean marching a mile and a half across open terrain, all the while under relentless artillery fire, only to clash with men who were no longer cowards but soldiers—soldiers willing to fight to the death.

It was a grim, brutal prospect, and they knew it.

But Frederick William, determined to crush the French, gave the order: advance.

The Prussian line moved, boots stomping in unison as they marched forward into the mouth of death. But Kellerman, astride his horse, rode among his men like a man possessed, his voice a battle cry that cut through the din. "Vive la nation!" his men roared in response, their blood boiling with the fervor of revolution.

But after only 200 paces, Brunswick’s resolve wavered. He ordered a halt. The cannonade raged on, when suddenly, at 2 p.m., a stray Prussian cannonball smashed into a French powder caisson. The ground shook with a thunderous explosion.

Months earlier, that blast would have shattered the French lines, sending men scattering in fear. Sensing weakness, Brunswick smelled blood in the air. This was his moment.

Brunswick threw his men forward once more, determined to break the French. Yet the enemy refused to yield, standing firm amidst the smoke and fire. With grim acceptance, Brunswick called the retreat—he could not force them to break.

By 4 p.m., it was clear: a full assault would be nothing short of suicide. Brunswick, the seasoned veteran, ordered his troops to withdraw from the field, unwilling to sacrifice them on the altar of a hopeless cause.

For ten long days, Brunswick and Dumouriez locked horns in fruitless negotiations. But in the end, there was no deal to be struck. Brunswick, his men battered and beaten by weather and failure, turned his forces homeward, defeated.

His soldiers were sick, their spirits broken by defeat and the merciless weather. Even if they had won, it was unlikely they could have pressed on to Paris—too weakened, too dispirited to conquer the revolution.

Frederick William had dreamed of marching on Paris, but Brunswick had known from the start that this folly would lead to ruin. Valmy proved him right.

Brunswick had favored a slower, surer approach—securing control over the towns east of the Argonne, settling in for the winter, and striking anew with fresh strength come spring. But the king’s impatience had overridden wisdom.

Left to his own command, Brunswick’s strategy would have prevailed. But the Prussian king, desperate to save his fellow monarch in France, had given orders that Brunswick could not ignore. The march to Valmy had been forced upon him.

In purely military terms, the Battle of Valmy was a brief affair. It lasted but a few hours, with only a few hundred casualties on each side—a skirmish, by the standards of the coming wars.

Yet this modest clash signaled the end of an era. Valmy would be remembered not for its scale, but for what it represented: the twilight of the old way of war.

For over a century, since the Thirty Years’ War, European conflict had been an intricate dance of maneuvers. Generals fought only when they could be nearly certain of victory, preferring cautious strategies over reckless bloodshed.

This was why Brunswick’s near-bloodless triumph in Holland had earned him such renown—he had mastered the art of winning wars without wasting lives.

But Valmy shattered that old order. Militarily, politically, and socially, it heralded a seismic shift, a new kind of war that would spread across Europe like wildfire.

At Valmy, the French volunteers, raw and untested, stood firm against professional soldiers. In that moment, a new force was born: the national army, where men fought not just for a king but for an idea.

Kellerman’s ranks included some veterans, more than Dumouriez’s army behind him, but the key was this—no man ran. From that moment, it became clear that France could summon legions, vast armies beyond anything Europe had ever seen, ready to die for the republic.

Gustavus Adolphus, during the Thirty Years’ War, had revolutionized warfare by creating the first true standing army—a professional force that fought for a monarch, not for mercenary gold. For centuries, this model had reigned supreme.

Since then, wars had been the domain of small, elite groups of long-serving soldiers—professionals waging battle on behalf of the few.

But Valmy changed everything. After that day, it wasn’t just armies that went to war—it was nations, with every citizen a potential soldier, fighting for something far greater than any king.

The battlefield became a place where men fought not for gold or crown, but for the nation itself—a nation of patriots who would fight and die for their homeland.

With Valmy, nationalism stormed onto the stage of European history, and from that day forward, the old world would never be the same.

Militarily, this transformed everything. Governments could now summon the strength of the entire nation, raising armies not of thousands but of hundreds of thousands—hosts beyond imagining.

Armies of 100,000 and more would soon become the norm. France spread this new gospel of nationalism through its conquests, but soon, the very peoples they subdued would rise against them, driven by that same unstoppable force.

Warfare evolved overnight. Mobile artillery became the hammer of battle, and the once standard line formations gave way to dense columns of troops, their concentrated force capable of smashing through enemy defenses like a battering ram.

The cost, however, was staggering. Deaths mounted by the thousands, and soon, the notion of sacrifice for one’s nation became an almost sacred mantra, repeated in every home, in every paper.

Politically, Valmy was the crucible that cemented the authority of the revolutionary government. The new order in France was here to stay, and it had the blood and steel to prove it.

On the very day of Valmy, the Legislative Assembly gave way to the National Convention. The next day, they declared France a republic, and within months, Louis XVI, once the king of France, would meet the executioner’s blade.

With the king’s head falling to the guillotine, the monarchy—already withering—was formally dead. In its place rose a nation forged in blood, a nation that would fight relentlessly for over two decades, driven by revolutionary zeal and an unquenchable thirst for dominance.

From this crucible of war emerged a figure who would reshape the world—Napoleon Bonaparte. He seized the reins of power and led France to its zenith, a towering empire. But in the end, even he could not outlast the combined might of Europe, which crushed him in 1814 and 1815.

Among those witnessing the storm of Valmy stood none other than Wolfgang von Goethe, the renowned German writer, who observed the drama of the battlefield with an eye for history unfolding before him.

After the dust settled, Goethe captured the weight of the moment with a simple, profound statement: "From this place and from this day forth commences a new era in the world's history, and you can all say you were present at its birth.". In that single sentence, he recognized that Valmy had given birth to a new age—one that would forever change the course of history.

The Prussian retreat at Valmy marked more than just a military withdrawal—it was the salvation of France itself. Brunswick’s decision to pull back shattered the illusion of an unstoppable invasion, leaving the gates of Paris firmly shut to foreign boots. This retreat solidified the strength of the French revolutionary government, whose grip on power tightened with each passing day. It was a turning point, the first great triumph of levée en masse, the revolutionary call to arms that swept common men into the ranks, transforming France into a nation in arms.