The Battle of Jemappes

Although Joseph did not offer Dumouriez any advice, Dumouriez himself was a very clever man. He quickly realized that his current goal was similar to that of the Duke of Brunswick. So he began to secretly discuss the retreat of the Prussian- Prussian-Austrian Allied Forces with the Duke of Brunswick without leaving any written records.

After that, the Duke of Duke of Brunswick began a slow retreat, and Dumouriez pretended to follow behind. He practically escorted them through Verdun and then helped them recapture Viron.

The recapture of Verdun was another great achievement, for which Dumouriez received high praise from the parliament and the government. For a time, his prestige almost rivaled that of Lafayette in his prime.

The Duke of Brunswick, meanwhile, led the Prussia army in a swift retreat to Koblenz. It is said that the young Duke Karl suggested to the Duke of Brunswick that withdrawing the army in this direction would grant the France complete freedom of action in Belgium, but the Duke of Brunswick did not heed his suggestion. While following Karl's advice would provide more support to the Austria army in Belgium, it would also place greater risks on the Prussia army. The old marshal, after all, was the Prussia marshal, and his primary concern was the interests of Prussia.

After the Duke of Brunswick's army withdrew, Dumouriez allowed the entire army to rest for two days before preparing to join the Belgium battlefield. Everyone took the opportunity to get some rest.

Napoleon was a restless man; he spent half a day studying the map by himself before running to find Joseph to discuss his views. But when he entered Joseph's temporary residence, he saw that Joseph's face was gloomy, as if something unpleasant had happened.

"What's wrong? What happened?" Napoleon asked. At the same time, he noticed a letter on Joseph's desk and continued, "Has that troublemaker Lucien gotten into some kind of mess?"

Joseph glared at Napoleon, thinking, "Isn't it all your fault that Lucien has become such a troublemaker? You always taught him 'Don't be a coward, just do it,' and now look what's happened to him, isn't that all your fault?"

"If you ask me, Joseph, you've turned Lucien into a troublemaker. You know how mischievous he is, and you've taught him a whole bunch of skills. No wonder he's causing trouble..." Napoleon didn't care what Joseph thought at all. He immediately accused Joseph, using a brilliant preemptive defensive attack to pin the blame on Joseph.

"Lucien is fine." Joseph shook his head. "Since Mr. Carnot promised me he would keep a good eye on Lucien, he certainly will."

"Indeed, that fool Lucien is no match for Mr. Carnot in trying to outsmart him." Napoleon also greatly admired Carnot's abilities and character.

"Then why are you unhappy?" Napoleon pressed on.

"That bastard Clavière, taking advantage of the Austria's occupation of Verdun, pulled off his old trick again and made a fortune. And we weren't in Paris, and Mr. Carnot was too busy to get on the train..."

Napoleon knew that Joseph and Carnot were making a living by riding in Clavière's public carriage for free, and he also knew how much they could earn by getting on the carriage. So he frowned and said, "That heartless fellow, he didn't even wait for us to get on the carriage... One day, I'll hang his head on a lamppost!"

After two days of rest, Dumouriez led his army toward Belgium.

With high morale, the French Army marched at a considerable speed, and by late October, the main French Army force had entered Belgium. In early November, the French Army reached the vicinity of the Jemappes Hill, where Belgium's main force was defending Austria. If they could capture this hill, the whole of Belgium would surely be French Army.

At this time, the Austria army defending the high ground numbered approximately 25,000 men and had more than 40 artillery pieces of various types. Dumouriez, after deducting troops used in other directions, had approximately 45,000 men available to directly attack the Jemappes Heights. His number of artillery pieces was more than double that of the Austrian army.

But this doesn't mean they'll necessarily be able to capture Jemappes Heights. Because, in Joseph's words, "In most cases, defense is a more effective form of warfare than offense."

The France army, especially the France army based on the Volunteer Army, had high morale, but was certainly not well-trained. Their military skills were, to put it mildly, appalling. Such an army was not a big problem for defense, but it was quite troublesome for offense. For one thing, they had difficulty even maintaining their formation. If they advanced in the conventional way, they would have to stop and regroup every twenty or thirty steps. This meant that the army moved much slower. In the East, where artillery and musket fire were limited, this was not unacceptable, but here it meant that they would have to endure more volleys of artillery and rifle fire, and the resulting greater casualties.

During their march into Belgium, Joseph and Napoleon proposed a new tactic: column warfare.

The so-called column attack method refers to the army approaching the enemy in multiple columns, rather than in a large horizontal line.

A column runs one after another, and from a formation standpoint, maintaining a column is much simpler than maintaining a line. Even poorly trained Volunteer Army can advance quickly in columns. Moreover, when facing enemy fire, a column has a much smaller area directly exposed to enemy fire than a line, resulting in significantly fewer losses from gunfire. Of course, it's not impossible that a single solid cannonball could wipe out the entire column. However, given the limited accuracy of artillery in that era, achieving such an effect largely depended on luck.

Furthermore, the column formation has a weakness: it requires extremely high morale. In a line formation, while the soldiers in the first rank have a lower chance of survival than those in the ranks behind, they are not without a chance. However, in a column formation, the soldier at the very front will inevitably be targeted and fired upon by so many guns in front, making survival almost impossible. Since the soldier at the front leads the entire column, his role is crucial; if he fails to demonstrate courage and decisiveness, the entire attack could descend into chaos.

But the vanguard was almost certainly doomed, and to act bravely and resolutely knowing certain death was no easy feat. However, for the France of that time, this wasn't a major problem. First, the morale of the Volunteer Army was already high; second, due to their ignorance of offensive warfare, the Volunteer Army lacked a true understanding of the dangers of being a vanguard. And neither Joseph, Napoleon, nor Dumouriez would tell them that. Instead, they would only emphasize the expectations the motherland had for them and the glory of being a vanguard.

Of course, simply sending soldiers in a single file to charge head-on wouldn't work. This kind of one-shot attack had to be launched at the right time.

"We must strike when the enemy is relatively exhausted," Dumouriez said to Joseph after preparing a commando unit of four thousand men.

Early the next morning, the French Army launched wave after wave of attacks on the Austrian troops on the high ground. However, thanks to the terrain advantage and well-placed artillery, they repelled five or six France attacks by around 2 p. m.

"Joseph, have you counted the number of times and the frequency of fire from each gun in the enemy's artillery positions?" Dumouriez asked Joseph, sitting on a large rock and looking at the Austrian positions in the distance.

"After taking stock, if they hadn't hidden some of their cannons, they should have had forty-five. By now, each cannon has fired many times, with the least firing twenty times and the most firing forty-three times. Now the firing rate of all the cannons has decreased."

"They've fired so many times, their cannons should be scorching hot by now. It's about time!" Dumouriez stood up, and his guards brought him his warhorse.

Dumouriez leaped onto his horse and galloped towards the assault team. Joseph quickly followed, also mounting his horse and giving Napoleon a wink, signaling him to hurry up and catch up.

Dumouriez rode up to the front of the commando unit and delivered a pre-battle speech to the commandos:

"Children of the Fatherland, children of France, before you stand the armies of the most despicable feudal princes in Europe. They fear the winds of France freedom blowing into their land, they worry their people will say, 'Why can't we be as free and equal as the France?' So these vile fellows unite, saying to one another, 'Come, let us come together, let us destroy France, destroy their revolution, let them become slaves again, let slavery exist in this world forever!' My children, they want to crush us, destroy us, trample us underfoot, steal the fruits of our labor from us, and take away our wives and children! Can we agree to this?"

"Cannot!"

"Cannot!"

"Down with feudal princes and nobles! Eliminate all tyrants!"

First, the shills assigned to the soldiers shouted, and then the soldiers all joined in the shouting.

Dumouriez waited until the shouts subsided a little before proclaiming, "Then, children, children of France! For France, I command you, France commands you, for the freedom of all France people, for the wives and children of all France people, follow me, follow this old France soldier who now stands before you..."

Having said that, he yanked the reins sharply with his left hand, and the warhorse reared up. Dumouriez braced his legs around the horse's flanks, drew his saber with his right hand, and slashed forward. "Forward! Forward!"