“‘War is absolutely not a garden party with a military band for accompaniment!’” This came from Robespierre’s speech at the Jacobin Club in mid-March 1792.

  One had to admit that, in this restless and turbulent age of revolution, with fog hanging over everything, Robespierre’s eye was indeed shrewd. Even André admired him sincerely. No wonder so many outstanding men were willing to follow that slight man of Arras, with his cat-green eyes, all the way down a single road—until it ended in abyss and hell.

  By late April, from the very day the King walked into the Assembly hall onward, the Manège Hall was packed from morning to night, ringed so tightly by expectant Parisians that there was scarcely room to breathe. When the news of war reached them, men and women alike rejoiced as if a burden had been lifted, dancing the revolutionary Carmagnole and laughing as they sang .

  It felt as though the Austrians had already collapsed in rout, and revolutionary France had already won a great victory—not only taking Brussels, but seizing the whole of the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium), the Prince-Bishopric (Duchy) of Liège, and the Duchy of Luxembourg. And that, precisely, was the ultimate objective of the Army of the North and the Army of the Moselle.

  The news of the war against Austria sped across France like lightning, and everyone was exhilarated. War made the already agitated population of twenty-five million even more active. From south to north, from east to west, provinces, towns, and popular associations all submitted petitions: some called for raising troops, some volunteered donations, some manufactured pikes. All France seemed to rise as one to meet Europe’s attack—or to attack Europe. Yet fanatical passion might bring certain victories; it could not, at the outset, replace an organized army.

  On April twenty-six—one week after the declaration of war—at the request of the Legislative Assembly’s Military Affairs Committee, General Servan, the Minister of War, came to the committee’s large office on the second floor of The Manège Hall to brief more than ten members on the offensive situation of France’s three major army groups. In principle, the Ministry of War could have sent a senior staff officer to handle such a briefing with propriety; perhaps because Deputy André, the next executive secretary of the Military Affairs Committee, would be present to observe, General Servan decided to appear in person, as a sign of respect to the Assembly and to Deputy André.

  Only fifteen minutes into the meeting, André’s brow was already tightly furrowed. He had assumed that the new Minister of War would correct certain mistaken practices of the former minister, the Comte de Narbonne; in reality, Servan was almost merely carrying over the military plans of his two predecessors. The only difference was that the war budget was raised from twenty million to fifty million livres—Servan’s gesture of favor toward the three army commanders. As for whether such an enormous sum could actually be raised, that was for the Minister of the Interior, Roland, and the Minister of Finance, Clavière, to consider.

  In Servan’s dull recital, the northern field forces—the right-wing army group under Marshal de Rochambeau, the Army of the North—remained unchanged. Its headquarters were at Lille, and its defensive line ran from Dunkirk to Philippeville, with about forty thousand infantry and eight thousand cavalry.

  The Army of the Moselle was under Marshal de Lafayette. Its line ran from Philippeville to Wissembourg; it had forty-five thousand infantry and seven thousand cavalry, and had already moved its headquarters from Metz to Sedan.

  The left-wing army group, the Army of the Rhine, was still commanded by Marshal Luckner. Its headquarters lay at Strasbourg on the Rhine, on the Franco-German border. Its line ran from Wissembourg to Basel, and the army consisted of thirty-five thousand infantry and eight thousand cavalry.

  In the south, General Montesquiou-Fézensac was responsible for the Pyrenees frontier. His force was under twenty thousand men, but the danger there was not great, for more than half the Spanish cabinet opposed early intervention in the war between France and the German powers (chiefly Austria and Prussia), and refused to mobilize in the Iberian Peninsula to join the fighting.

  On the Swiss and Italian fronts, the formidable Alps stood between France and her neighbors. Frenchmen, Austrians, and Sardinians alike had no desire to wage war there—at least, not now.

  “…In sum,” Servan concluded, speaking fluently before an enormous map, “our preliminary offensive plan will take the Army of the North and the Army of the Moselle as its core, while the Army of the Rhine, the Swiss and Alpine formations, and the Pyrenees forces maintain a defensive posture in place… As for the Army of the Moselle, its plan is to set out from the headquarters at Sedan, march along Mézières and Givet, and by forced marches cross the Ardennes (the forest) to advance upon Namur in the Bishopric of Liège. Meanwhile, the Army of the North: this morning General Dillon led his infantry brigade—about four thousand men—from Lille toward Tournai (the former capital of the Franks); at the same time, the division of General Biron will advance from Valenciennes toward Mons…”

  Servan, talking at length before the huge map, was full of self-confidence. He naively believed that raising pay would raise morale and combat power. Worse still, the Minister of War grossly overestimated the “patriotic Brabanters” (the Belgians), imagining that those resisting Habsburg rule would treat the French advance as a path to liberation and support it.

  André was certain that, under this extremely foolish and timeworn plan, the forward units of the two army groups would suffer who knew what losses. Moreover, André knew clearly that a copy of this very plan had, two weeks earlier, been successfully sent—through the Austrian embassy’s secret diplomatic channel in Paris—by Queen Marie to the desk of the Austrian commander in the Netherlands, the Field Marshal of Saxe-Coburg.

  “Minister,” André could not help interrupting. He then asked bluntly: “Forgive my frankness. If some crisis arises at the front, causing the offensive to stall—or even to fail—does the Ministry of War have any remedial plan, so as to prevent the war from spreading into our own borders?”

  Though he carried a hundred grievances in his heart, General Servan—wigged, well-dressed, and proper—still answered patiently. His tone was firm:

  “The Ministry of War and the commanders of the two forward army groups agree unanimously that, under the pressure of one hundred thousand strong French troops, the Austrian forces in the Netherlands—only thirty-five to forty thousand men—cannot conduct any serious counteroffensive. Moreover, the people of the Low Countries, summoned by the banner of liberty and equality, will actively join the struggle against Habsburg rule, leaving the Austrian occupation forces constantly off balance and exhausted. Therefore, the flames of war cannot reach France!”

  André sighed and shook his head. “I am sorry, Minister. I do not agree.”

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  He rose from his seat, walked straight to the map, and pointed to the southeast of Brussels. “Here: thirty thousand men of the Bohemian corps, veterans of the Turkish war, have been resting here for more than two months, ready day by day for battle. If our forces suffer a severe reverse on the frontier, this Bohemian corps will join the counterattack. As for the Netherlandish people you speak of—those who long for liberty and equality—I can tell you responsibly that the great majority will watch from the sidelines. They will not rashly join either side before the war’s outcome is clear. The uprising of 1790 had already taught the ‘patriotic Brabanters’ a lesson written in blood and tears. Therefore, I am deeply concerned about the outcome for the Army of the North, and I hope the Ministry of War will draft countermeasures as soon as possible.”

  These words threw the committee members into alarm. They had imagined that occupying the Austrian Netherlands would be a relaxed military parade: shout a few revolutionary slogans, wave the tricolor that symbolized liberty, equality, and fraternity, plant a few trees of liberty—and every opposing force would collapse on its own.

  Very quickly, the members began whispering among themselves, repeatedly expressing their anxiety to the Minister of War, as if the front were already in an irreparable crisis and the war were about to reach Paris.

  “I support Committee Member André—the Ministry of War must produce a plan of response.”

  “Not only that: the cabinet and the Assembly should also pursue the commanders’ responsibility for defeat.”

  “I propose we simply let Committee Member André draft the plan!”

  “Agreed!”

  …

  Hearing this, André felt irritation rise. The men before him were a pack of unreliable comrades: the moment the fighting began, they were already panicking in confusion. Their stirring passion at the time of the declaration of war, a few days earlier, had vanished without a trace, replaced by pessimism of every sort.

  André waved his hand sharply, signaling everyone to be silent and to keep the hall quiet. He then seized control of the committee proceedings into his own hands—and the deputy who was about to step down as executive secretary of the Military Affairs Committee said nothing, tacitly allowing André’s overbearing manner.

  The Minister of War was trembling with anger as well. Yet after André cowed the room, he did not continue tormenting the unfortunate General Servan. He simply declared the briefing concluded and personally escorted the Minister of War out of the Legislative Assembly building.

  Half an hour later, Brissot stormed into the office of the Committee of the Interior and launched into a fierce tirade at André. Unlike the politically dull General Servan, Brissot, as the leader, understood very clearly what André had been doing in the committee meeting: either make Servan the scapegoat for defeat, or hand the initiative over to the Army of the North to the Military Affairs Committee under André’s control.

  Plainly, André was not satisfied with securing the defensive authority over the National Guard forces of the five northern provinces. He wanted more—because his ambition had grown larger as well. If Robespierre had held power, André might not have dared to seize authority so openly, but faced with Brissot’s faction, famous for its softness, André acted without the least restraint.

  Confronted with Brissot’s accusations and complaints, André remained unmoved and did not take them to heart. He was waiting—waiting for news of a botched offensive from the front. When that happened, Brissot and Servan and the others would have no choice but to bow and compromise. Brissot and his friends had won control of the cabinet government by successfully provoking a foreign war; if they meant to keep that control, there was only one condition: to defeat the enemy swiftly and decisively—or else…

  On the sixth day after the declaration of war—April twenty-six—Marshal de Rochambeau, though unwilling a thousand times over, still ordered the Army of the North to cross the frontier and attack the Austrians. Out of caution, the Marshal’s orders to the divisional and brigade commanders repeatedly stressed three points: do not go more than thirty kilometers beyond the frontier; do not engage in large-scale battle upon encountering the enemy; and treat this action as training, not as a matter of victory or defeat.

  The left column, setting out from Dunkirk toward Furnes, found no Austrians. Although the reconnaissance claimed the enemy had abandoned Furnes and organized defenses thirty kilometers away, the French still did not dare enter the town. After dithering for an hour, the force withdrew from outside Furnes and returned to the Dunkirk camp. It returned without results, but at least the division withdrew intact, with no particular losses.

  The central column’s vanguard from Lille was General Dillon’s infantry brigade, tasked with taking (occupying) Tournai, twenty kilometers away. A Netherlandish officer who had defected to the French reported to Dillon that the Austrian troops had quietly withdrawn from the city on the night of the twenty-fifth and were falling back to Ghent, sixty kilometers away, to await reinforcements from Brussels.

  But it was a trap.

  When Dillon led his infantry brigade across the frontier and entered a dense woodland less than five kilometers from supposedly empty Tournai, he was struck by a sudden Austrian attack. An Austrian prince, said to be called Archduke Charles of Austria, directed a bold sortie with a cuirassier regiment and a hussar regiment; in only twelve minutes, he completely shattered the hastily organized French infantry defensive formation (a three-rank column). Dillon’s brigade collapsed. Those who survived fled in disgrace back across the Austrian-side frontier. Only the Second Battalion of the Paris National Guard performed well: they covered an alternating withdrawal, and dragged back a cannon taken from the enemy.

  Whether out of rage at defeat, or because of a commander’s rebuke, or out of old grudges (Dillon had long docked the troops’ pay), or for some other reason, the fugitives retreated in panic while shouting without cease: “There are traitors—damned traitors have sold us out!”

  When they returned to the Lille camp, more than thirty deserters joined together, were incited by others, and abducted General Dillon. By evening, in an abandoned barn, that gang of traitors murdered their commander, along with four other suspicious persons accused of being spies.

  On the right of the Army of the North, the main force commanded by General Biron on April twenty-eighth successfully occupied a small town southwest of Mons. But the next day, the general officer, on the pretext that the Brabanters in Mons had not opened the gates in response to the French army—despite the laughable fact that Mons was guarded by only one thousand Austrian troops—decided to retreat. During the withdrawal, the soldiers panicked, for someone shouted through the ranks, “Run for your lives!” Discipline collapsed at once, and Biron’s division was forced to flee back in disorder.

  Fortunately, the Austrian commander was also bewildered by the French farce. At first, he even suspected it was a French lure meant to draw him out, and so refused his subordinates’ request to pursue.

  In the direction of the Ardennes, the Army of the Moselle under Marshal de Lafayette—thirty thousand main troops—ought to have departed the Sedan camp, crossed the frontier near Charleville-Mézières, and marched north to seize Namur, thereby threatening Brussels from the flank. In reality, the Army of the Moselle dawdled in the Ardennes forest, turning the operation into an aimless armed stroll. When the stream of defeats from the Army of the North arrived, Lafayette ordered the whole army to halt its advance and hold defensively in place. A few days later, when the food in the supply wagons had been largely consumed, the Army of the Moselle emerged from the Ardennes without incident, established headquarters near Charleville-Mézières, and began refitting and reorganizing.

  In the entire Army of the Moselle, only General Custine, commanding a detached force, achieved the planned objective on the Alsace front. He took and held Landau, and then seized Speyer and Worms.

  As for the Army of the Rhine, it did little more than exchange insults with the Prusso-Austrian Coalition across the river. Each day, the dense gunfire lasted at most twenty to thirty minutes. On both sides, the artillery was trained on empty fields or the broad river surface, and both armies tacitly agreed to fire only blank shots, conserving ammunition.

  An offensive? That was impossible. Only a fool would attempt it.

  Note: the “central army group” is a descriptive label for the Army of the Moselle, first introduced in Chapters 111–112. To avoid confusion, I will use the Army of the Moselle