On 6 November 1792 the French Army of the North under General Charles-François Dumouriez, about 40,000 men, many of them new volunteers, stormed the ridge held by some 13,000 to 14,000 Austrians at Jemappes, outside Mons in today's Belgium, and opened the Austrian Netherlands to French conquest. In 1917 Canadian troops took Passchendaele.
Battle of Jemappes
6 November 1792 · 233 years ago
After Valmy: the march on Mons
In September 1792 the Prussian-led invasion of France was turned back at Valmy. General Charles-François Dumouriez then carried the war into the Austrian Netherlands, today's Belgium, and his army advanced on Mons.1
A ridge in front of Mons
Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen made his stand on the heights by the village of Jemappes, in front of Mons. The armies were badly mismatched: Dumouriez had about 40,000 men, many of them new volunteers, against some 13,000 to 14,000 Austrians, by Chuquet's count 13,200.2
Noon: the line breaks, and rallies
Around noon Dumouriez ordered a general attack. It did not go smoothly. On the right, Chuquet writes, a charge by fresh Austrian dragoons drove back the French horse and infantry from redoubts they had just taken, and in the center battalions driven out of a wood by Tyrolean riflemen began to waver under grapeshot. Kieswetter, too, describes the French attacks thrown back several times before they were rallied.3
Who rallied them depends on whom you read. James Kieswetter gives the credit to Dumouriez. Chuquet names several officers who rallied the center, Dumouriez among them, but above all the young Duke of Chartres, the future King Louis-Philippe, who commanded the center. In Chuquet's account Chartres gathered the stragglers into a big column he called the battalion of Mons and led it against the redoubts, carrying the whole center with him. The historian Munro Price writes that he "broke through a strongly held Austrian position", and the National Gallery in London that he led the charge that brought about the French victory.4
Caught between two fires, the Austrians fell back on Mons.5
The cost of the ridge
The figures differ widely. Chuquet puts the Austrian loss at 4,000 killed, wounded or deserted and 13 guns, while Kieswetter estimates 4,500 to 7,000 casualties on each side.6
Brussels and the fraternity decree
About a week later, on 14 November, the French entered Brussels. Kieswetter calls Jemappes the first real field victory of the revolutionary armies, and the battle cost the Austrians, in Chuquet's words, all of Belgium up to the Meuse.7
Success went to the Republic's head. On 19 November 1792 the National Convention declared that it would grant fraternity and help to all peoples who wished to recover their liberty, and on 15 December it decreed the liberty and sovereignty of the peoples in every land its armies entered. The gains did not last: after Dumouriez's defeat at Neerwinden in March 1793 Belgium was evacuated.8
The King of Jemappes
The Duke of Chartres, later Duke of Orléans, became King Louis-Philippe in 1830. He commissioned Horace Vernet to paint his battles, and the National Gallery, which holds Vernet's Battle of Jemappes, says the series was meant to show his military career and Republican sympathies and that he was sometimes known as the "King of Jemappes". At Versailles the 1792 Room, the only remnant of the rooms Louis-Philippe devoted to the Revolution, hangs Henry Scheffer's 1834 Battle of Jemmapes after Vernet's composition, the painting at the top of this page.9
Battle of Droop Mountain, 1863: the last big fight in West Virginia
6 November 1863 · 162 years ago
A Union brigade under William Averell attacked John Echols's smaller Confederate force on Droop Mountain, West Virginia, in the Civil War. The Confederates were driven off but escaped south, and some see the battle as ending organized Confederate resistance in the state.
Read the full story of Battle of Droop Mountain, 1863: the last big fight in West Virginia ›Also on this day
In 1632 the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus was killed at Lützen, in battle against Wallenstein's Imperial army. Swedish sources date it 6 November, by the Julian calendar Sweden then used; by today's reckoning it fell on 16 November, the date most histories give. Streiff, the horse he rode that day, is preserved in the Royal Armoury in Stockholm.10
In 1917 the 1st and 2nd Canadian Divisions took the ruined village of Passchendaele, and a last attack on 10 November ended the offensive. Two Canadians, Colin Fraser Barron and James Robertson, won the Victoria Cross on 6 November. Robertson carried one of two wounded snipers back under fire and was killed by a shell as he returned with the second. The battle is told on our 31 July page and in our article on Passchendaele.11
