Battle of Valmy (1792): The Cannonade That Saved the Revolution

The Battle of Valmy was fought on 20 September 1792 near the village of Valmy in Champagne, north-eastern France, when French armies under François Christophe Kellermann and Charles-François Dumouriez stopped the advance of a Prussian army marching on Paris. Mostly an artillery duel, often called the Cannonade of Valmy, it caused relatively few casualties but turned back the invasion. Coming the day before the monarchy was abolished, it became the founding victory of the First French Republic.

Background: invasion

France had declared war on Austria in April 1792, and Prussia soon joined its ally. The French army, weakened by the emigration of many noble officers, suffered early setbacks. In July the Prussian and Austrian commander, Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, issued the Brunswick Manifesto, threatening Paris with destruction if the royal family were harmed.

The threat helped provoke the storming of the Tuileries on 10 August, which brought down the monarchy. Nine days later Brunswick’s army, with King Frederick William II of Prussia accompanying it, crossed into France together with Austrian troops and French émigré nobles.

The invaders advanced quickly. The fortress of Longwy surrendered on 23 August and Verdun on 2 September. The road to Paris seemed open, and panic in the capital contributed to the September Massacres of political prisoners.

Yet the invasion was slower than its leaders had hoped. Brunswick was a cautious commander who disliked risking his army far from its supply depots, and the late summer weather turned roads into mud. The émigrés had promised that the French population would welcome the allies as liberators, but the countryside proved hostile, and few French soldiers deserted to the invaders.

Manoeuvres in the Argonne

Dumouriez, commanding the Army of the North, moved to block the passes through the Argonne, a wooded ridge east of Paris that he called France’s Thermopylae. The Prussians forced one of the passes in mid-September, and Dumouriez fell back to a position near Sainte-Menehould.

Kellermann, commanding the Army of the Centre, marched from Metz and joined him on 19 September. His troops took up position on high ground near Valmy, around a windmill. Unusually, the Prussian army now stood between the French and Paris, while the French sat across the Prussians’ own line of communication back to Verdun and Germany.

The battle

On the morning of 20 September, as fog lifted, Prussian artillery opened fire on Kellermann’s position. French guns, many of them served by the well-trained gunners of the old royal artillery, replied. The cannonade lasted most of the day, and an estimated tens of thousands of rounds were fired on both sides.

Around midday a Prussian shell blew up several French ammunition wagons near the windmill, causing confusion. Kellermann rode among his troops, raised his hat on the point of his sword and called out “Vive la Nation!” (“Long live the Nation!”), a cry taken up along the line.

Brunswick then formed his infantry for an assault. The Prussian columns advanced a short distance but, seeing the French lines standing firm under fire, Brunswick halted the attack. In the late afternoon he broke it off altogether, and heavy rain fell in the evening. The French still held their ground.

The decision surprised many Prussian officers, who had expected the revolutionary army to break at the first serious assault. Brunswick judged that attacking a well-placed enemy supported by strong artillery would be costly, and that a defeat deep inside France could be disastrous. During the night Kellermann withdrew to a stronger position a little to the west, but the French armies remained intact and still blocked the invaders’ line of retreat.

By the numbers

Figures vary between sources, but all agree that losses were light for a battle of this scale.

Key people

• François Christophe Kellermann commanded the troops at the windmill and held the position; Napoleon later made him Duke of Valmy.
• Charles-François Dumouriez directed the campaign in the Argonne; he went on to win at Jemappes in November but defected to the Austrians in 1793.
• The Duke of Brunswick, one of the most respected generals of his time, chose not to risk his army in a costly assault.
• Frederick William II of Prussia was present and pressed for action but accepted the decision to withdraw.
• Louis-Philippe, duc de Chartres, the future King of the French, fought in the French army as a young general.

Consequences

On the day of the battle the newly elected National Convention held its first session in Paris. On 21 September it abolished the monarchy, and from 22 September its decrees were dated Year I of the Republic. News of Valmy gave the new regime confidence and legitimacy at its very start.

The Prussian army, short of supplies and ravaged by dysentery and rain, could not resume its advance. After inconclusive talks with Dumouriez, Brunswick began to retreat at the end of September. The French recovered Verdun in mid-October and Longwy soon after, and the invaders had left French soil by late October.

The French then went on the offensive. Dumouriez defeated the Austrians at Jemappes on 6 November 1792 and occupied the Austrian Netherlands, while other armies entered the Rhineland and Savoy. Back in Paris, the deposed King was put on trial and executed in January 1793.

Myths and facts

• “A great battle.” Valmy was not a bloody battle in military terms. Its importance lay in its political timing and in the fact that a largely untested revolutionary army held firm.
• An army of untrained volunteers. Many of the troops at Valmy were regular soldiers of the old royal army, and the artillery in particular was professional. New volunteer battalions also took part and held their ground.
• The Prussians were bribed to retreat. Theories that the Prussians were paid off, for example with the French crown jewels stolen in Paris that September, have circulated for centuries but are not supported by reliable evidence. Disease, supply problems and strategy explain the withdrawal.

Legacy

The poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who accompanied the Prussian army, later recalled telling his companions that a new era in the history of the world began from that place and that day. He published the remark in 1822, three decades later, but it captured how Valmy came to be seen: as the moment when a nation in arms stood up to the old monarchies of Europe.

In France, Valmy became a symbol of the Republic and of the French Revolution defending itself. Kellermann asked for his heart to be buried on the battlefield, where a monument stands today. A reconstructed windmill marks the site, and the battle remains a common reference in French patriotic and republican memory.

Timeline

• 1792, 20 April: France declares war on Austria.
• 1792, 19 August: The Prussian-led army crosses the French frontier.
• 1792, 23 August: Longwy surrenders to the invaders.
• 1792, 2 September: Verdun surrenders.
• 1792, 19 September: Kellermann joins Dumouriez near Sainte-Menehould.
• 1792, 20 September: The Battle of Valmy; the National Convention meets for the first time.
• 1792, 21 September: The Convention abolishes the monarchy.
• 1792, late September to October: The Prussian army retreats from France.
• 1792, 6 November: Dumouriez wins the Battle of Jemappes.

Why it matters

The Battle of Valmy saved revolutionary France from an early defeat and gave the new Republic a victory on its first day. It showed that the Revolution could defend itself against the great powers, opening more than two decades of war that would reshape Europe.