Valmy (2)

On August 29, the Prussian-Austrian Allied Forces besieged Verdun, the gateway to Paris. By the morning of September 2, Royalist Party launched a rebellion in Verdun, killing the city's garrison commander. Verdun surrendered to the combined Prussian and Prussian-Austrian Allied Forces, and the gates of Paris were opened.

The Verdun due to a mutiny was completely unexpected by the France. In France plan, the strategically important and easily defensible Verdun was intended to act as an impregnable anvil, with the France army as the heavy hammer. Together, they would crush the enemy. However, this anvil of Verdun was easily captured due to an internal traitor. This enraged and terrified all France people—they worried that there might be traitors within their own ranks, ready to betray their country at any moment.

The National Assembly reacted swiftly; their first priority was now to suppress the counter-revolutionaries. Danton, the recently wanted fugitive and the new government's Minister of Justice, took charge of eliminating the traitors to the motherland. That afternoon, he delivered his famous speech to the National Assembly, "Courage, courage, and more courage!", and began leading the crackdown on the counter-revolutionaries in Paris.

A large number of nobles, as well as those associated with the nobles or suspected of sympathizing with the king and the nobles, were imprisoned "precautionarily" without any investigation or trial.

If it were just this, it wouldn't be too excessive. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Lighthouse Country also indiscriminately imprisoned Nepalese expatriates in concentration camps.

In the midst of fear and anger, this "preventive" arrest naturally adopted the principle of "presumption of guilt," and the attitude of "better to arrest a thousand innocent people than let one guilty person go free." Paris's prisons were quickly filled, while "traitor" suspects continued to be sent in.

At this time, a rumor emerged. According to this rumor, royalists would launch a rebellion, storm the prisons, rescue the "traitors," and join forces with the nearby Prussian-Austrian Allied Forces to suppress the revolution in Paris. The Austria had already declared that they would wash the streets of Paris in blood to avenge their humiliation of the King.

The people of Paris quickly armed themselves in preparation for a royalist rebellion. But by then, the royalists were either imprisoned or had fled Paris; they had no resources to launch a rebellion. However, a sudden event caused the entire situation to spiral out of control.

Because one prison was full, the National Guard planned to transfer the "suspects" there to another prison with more space to make room for another group of "suspects." As they left the prison, some citizens saw them. The tense citizens mistook them for royalists who had stormed the prison and were about to rescue the "traitors," and began shouting. Then, Paris citizens armed with various weapons surrounded them.

The National Guard had no intention of clashing with the citizens for the sake of these damned "traitors," so they simply abandoned the "traitors" and ran away.

The citizens, of course, couldn't catch up with the National Guard, but they at least stopped the "traitors" who were "trying to escape." In a fit of rage and anger, the citizens slaughtered all the "traitors" who were trying to flee. Some even shouted, "Why are these traitors being kept in jail? They all deserve to die!"

The crowd then moved on to the other prisons, stormed in, and killed everyone else imprisoned there—regardless of whether they were "traitors" or not, as long as they were in prison.

The Queen's confidante, Princess Delambara, was also killed by the enraged citizens, her head chopped off and impaled on a spear, then paraded outside the tower where the King and Queen were imprisoned. The people shouted towards the tower, "You will suffer the same fate one day!"

Some Brissotins lawmakers urged Justice Minister Danton to restore order and prevent the massacre from continuing. However, while Danton outwardly did not refute this and even expressed agreement with the call to restore order, he took no action in practice.

"We cannot stand against the people," Danton later explained.

However, many Brissotins members of parliament believed that Danton was deliberately condoning such behavior in order to bind all of Paris to the fight against the Prussian-Austrian Allied Forces. Moreover, by eliminating the threat in one fell swoop, Paris could devote more resources to the fight against foreign interventionist forces.

Indeed, immediately after this frenzied massacre, the government quickly mobilized another 20,000 Volunteer Army within two days to support the frontline operations.

Following Napoleon's advice, General Dumouriez positioned his army near the Valmy Hill in Saint-Meneaut. This location was not on the main road from Verdun to Paris. However, if the Prussian-Austrian Allied Forces dared to march directly on Paris, Dumouriez's army could easily cut off their retreat from here.

Napoleon estimated that the Allied forces' logistics must be under severe strain due to the continuous rain. Once their supply lines were cut off, they would surely collapse quickly. Therefore, they would absolutely not dare to advance on Paris until the threat from the French Army at Valmy was eliminated.

"Our army has courage, but lacks training, making it difficult for them to conduct complex offensive operations. However, they are much easier to defend using the terrain." Joseph also expressed his support for his brother's plan, "In most cases, defense is a more effective form of warfare than offense. If the enemy launches an attack on us, we will certainly be able to defeat them in a defensive battle."

As Napoleon had predicted, the Duke of Brunswick dared not march directly on Paris until the threat to their rear was eliminated. But he also knew that the longer the stalemate lasted, the better for France, because the France army was growing stronger and more well-trained every minute of every second.

Therefore, the Duke of Brunswick decided to first concentrate his forces to defeat Dumouriez's army before advancing towards Paris.

On September 17th, the Prussian-Austrian Allied Forces began to approach Valmy. Initially, the Duke of Brunswick hoped to force the French Army to retreat by threatening French Army supply route, the Vitry Road. However, prior to this, the revolutionary government had already requisitioned a large amount of provisions through price controls and delivered them to Dumouriez's army. Therefore, at least for a considerable period, Dumouriez was not worried about his supply lines being cut off. On the contrary, the Prussian-Austrian Allied Forces's own supply lines became increasingly precarious under the constant attacks of the France Volunteer Army.

This situation also forced the Duke of Brunswick to disregard military principles and launch a strong attack on the pre-arranged positions of a larger enemy force.

The majority of the French Army consisted of the Volunteer Army. These Volunteer Army were poorly trained and could not even form proper ranks on the battlefield. Therefore, they could only fight as skirmishers. However, they were highly motivated and fought bravely, which made them particularly effective as skirmishers.

Generally speaking, skirmish formations were not the main formation in this era because they were no match for cuirassiers. In theory, cuirassiers could easily rout them and wipe them out in the pursuit.

However, the performance of these Volunteer Army stragglers in the initial skirmishes surprised the Austria and Prussia. When they discovered that the French Army was not in a well-organized formation and did not have many cavalry (because the cavalry consisted mostly of nobles, who were relatively unreliable, and the Volunteer Army peasants were not yet skilled in such technical tasks, so the French Army did not have many cavalry at this time), the Duke of Brunswick naturally did not hesitate to send out his own cavalry. He originally thought that his cavalry could easily disperse and eliminate these thugs in blue uniforms (in their minds, these people were not even considered an army). However, when the attack began, he was surprised to find that although the France soldiers could not form a tight hollow square specifically designed to deal with cavalry, when faced with the cavalry, they actually bravely charged forward, firing their guns at the cavalry instead of turning and fleeing normally.

The guns weren't very accurate, but they still inflicted some losses on the Prussia cavalry. However, the cavalry charged forward quickly. Normally, the enemy would have dropped their weapons, turned and fled, easily overtaken and killed. But instead, those men didn't retreat; instead, they charged the cavalry head-on, bayonets at the ready.

Warhorses could easily knock an infantryman to the ground, but such impacts were not without damage to the horses, especially when the rider was wielding a bayonet-equipped rifle. The cavalry, of course, had the upper hand in this melee, cutting down all the blue thugs. However, their own losses were also considerable. Although it took four or five blue thugs to kill for every cavalryman killed, this exchange ratio still pained the Duke of Brunswick terribly.

Keep in mind, how much did the France spend to conscript those blue thugs? These cavalry cost far more. In terms of numbers, Prussia naturally had the advantage; but in terms of cost, Prussia lost far more. Not only were the cavalrymen worth far more, but even the warhorses were worth far more than those blue thugs!

However, the Duke of Brunswick remained confident that his well-trained infantry (at least compared to the France "Volunteer Army") would be able to break through the France mob's defenses.

After repelling the French Army skirmishers, the Prussian-Austrian Allied Forces artillery began to fire heavily on the French Army positions. Following a brief but intense bombardment, the Prussian-Austrian Allied Forces infantry lines began to advance towards the French Army positions.

Napoleon stood behind a trench, watching the approaching Prussian-Austrian Allied Forces, and scoffed, "They've only fired a few shots and they're already up there. Looks like their logistics are indeed having serious problems."