Battle of Wattignies, 1793: the conscripts who saved Maubeuge

Wattignies was won by an army that even its commander, as Jomini writes, thought it rash to march with: its men and generals had only just been brought together, and most of its battalions were newly organized and poorly armed. It was led by a general whom the Revolution had found a discharged private and who had tried to refuse the command, citing his lack of experience. Beside him rode Lazare Carnot, the member of the Committee of Public Safety in charge of the war. Two days of hard and often clumsy fighting saved the fortress of Maubeuge.²

The threat to Maubeuge

By the summer of 1793 the First Coalition, the alliance of Austria, Prussia, Britain, the Dutch Republic and German states against revolutionary France, had taken the border fortresses of Condé and Valenciennes, then Le Quesnoy. The French victory at Hondschoote and the defeat of the Dutch at Menin in September eased the danger on the coast, but the Austrian commander, Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, turned on Maubeuge.³ › Battle of Rymnik, 1789

According to Phipps, Coburg began the siege of Maubeuge with a corps of 26,000 men, mostly Dutch, covered by a corps of observation of 37,000 under Count Clerfayt, whose line ran from the Sambre near Berlaimont eastward to and beyond Wattignies. Jomini puts all the Allied troops around the town at about 65,000 men.⁴

Jourdan and Carnot

The Army of the North had already lost two commanders. Custine had been guillotined in August, and Houchard, the victor of Hondschoote, was arrested in September. The army passed to Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, born in 1762, whom the Revolution had found a discharged private; he told the representatives that he lacked the talents and experience for so important a command, and gave way only when they reminded him of a decree ordering the arrest of any citizen who refused the post assigned to him. Phipps writes that Jourdan found everything in wild confusion from the arrests among the staff, and reported that he knew neither the strength of his troops nor which generals led them.⁵

Carnot came from Paris to inquire and found that Jourdan had not exaggerated; on 14 October he came again and stayed with Jourdan as his adviser. Jourdan gathered some 44,276 men of the Army of the North and the Army of the Ardennes at Guise. Phipps gives him 45,000 for the battle and notes that Jomini makes him 50,000 to 60,000; Clerfayt's line was stretched so far that he had only about 21,000 men to meet him, or 18,000 according to Langeron, whom Phipps cites.⁶

15 October: a failed first day

Jourdan opened on 15 October with attacks on both Austrian flanks. On the right, Duquesnoy took the villages of Dimont and Demichaux, according to Jomini, but was checked at Wattignies. On the left, Fromentin's division ventured into the plain by the Sambre, against Jourdan's intention, and was thrown back by the Austrian cavalry; Jomini says it lost all its artillery.⁷

Before the left had made enough progress, Balland's division in the center was thrown against the Austrian position at Dourlers. Phipps writes that Carnot pressed for the attack and that Jourdan gave way against his own judgment and led the division himself; Jomini says the representatives ordered it despite all Jourdan's objections. The division was caught by the massed Austrian artillery and fell back in disorder to its starting position. Phipps puts the loss of Balland's division alone at about 1,500 men and the guns lost by the French that day at 12; Jomini puts the cost of the attack on the center at nearly 1,200 men put out of action.⁸

16 October: Wattignies taken

That night Jourdan changed his plan: the decisive attack would be made by the right, while the center and left only held the enemy in front of them. Phipps and Jomini both put the French force on the right at 22,000 men. Phipps writes that a thick fog covered the advance until 9 a.m. and that the French were twice swept back. Then, in Phipps's account, Lecourbe, who commanded four battalions on Duquesnoy's left, rallied the men of several regiments, dismounted, took a musket and led them on again while Duquesnoy's column advanced; all the columns joined in the attack and Wattignies was taken. Jomini describes the village falling to a concentric attack in three columns. Phipps adds that a brigade of young soldiers under Gratien, caught by Austrian cavalry in the open, ran back into the main attack and threw it into confusion.⁹

Phipps puts the French garrison of Maubeuge at 20,000 men in one passage and 25,000 in another. Both sides expected it to make a sortie, but after a badly organized sortie on the first day it hardly moved; Jomini blames its commander, Ferrand. Coburg gave up the siege and withdrew in the night, and the Austrians recrossed the Sambre unhindered. Covered by fog, the Allies slipped away so completely that Jourdan and Carnot entered Maubeuge only at two in the afternoon of 17 October.¹⁰

Losses and the quarrel over credit

Casualty figures differ. Phipps gives Coburg's losses as 365 killed, 1,753 wounded and 369 prisoners or missing, and writes that Jourdan had lost 3,000 men; Jomini puts the French loss in the first day's attack on the center alone at nearly 1,200 men put out of action.¹¹

The credit for the victory became a quarrel. Phipps rejects what he calls the Carnot legend, in which Carnot directs the battle throughout, and gives the victory to Jourdan; he notes that Napoleon later attributed the success to Carnot. Jomini, for his part, lays the blame for the first day's plan and its failed attack on the center on Carnot. In January 1794 the Committee ordered Jourdan dismissed and arrested, in Carnot's own handwriting according to Phipps; the representative Duquesnoy defended him, and he was only removed from command. Phipps follows him back to victory at Fleurus in June 1794.¹²

Why Wattignies mattered

Neither Phipps nor Jomini treats the result as crushing. Jomini writes that Coburg, more timid than had been thought, withdrew in the night to Aumont and Bussières, a retreat he calls somewhat hasty. Phipps writes that Jourdan owed much to the faults of his enemy, and quotes Calvert, a British staff officer who was on the field, for whom it was “their immense artillery” which really won the day. The same date in 1813 saw the opening of the far larger Battle of Leipzig.¹³