Category: History
The First Balkan War
The Battle of Bemis Heights
By early October, 1777, the feud between Horatio Gates, the commander of the Continental Army in the Hudson Valley, and his best general, Benedict Arnold came to a head. Arnold was furious that Gates had not mentioned him in the dispatches to Washington about the victory at Freeman’s Farm, a victory that was solely due to the aggressive Arnold. Gates confined him to his tent, and Arnold offered to return to Washington in Pennsylvania, but he didn’t.
The Battle at Freeman’s Farm prevented Gen Burgoyne from attacking Bemis Heights, where Gates had entrenched his Army, blocking the passage south to Albany. Burgoyne was short on all types of supplies, particularly food. The Battle of Bennington had stripped him of his Indian allies, who lost faith in Burgoyne after the Hessian defeat there. Moreover, Daniel Morgan’s Riflemen were expert woodsman and harassed the British formations day and night, and even worse, prevented Burgoyne’s foraging parties from scouring the countryside for supplies. Burgoyne decided to wait for relief by Henry Clinton’s columns that were supposed to attack up the Hudson Valley from New York City. But Clinton wouldn’t arrive for another two weeks. Burgoyne’s Army would starve before then.Uncharacteristically, Burgoyne called for a council of war with his officers, and they almost all advocated to retreat back to Canada. The proud Burgoyne refused. He decided to attack. The entire army would punch through Gate’s left flank on the Bemis Heights and continue on to Albany, while the Continental Army was reeling from the assault.
On the morning of 7 October, 1777, Burgoyne launched a 1500 man reconnaissance in force to identify weak points in Gate’s left flank. The Americans, swollen with militia from the surrounding area after the recent victories, outnumbered the British nearly 2-1 and Gates saw an opportunity to make the odds even better.
Gates attacked the British force. Morgan’s Riflemen, with no British light infantry or Indians to oppose their movement through the woods, snuck around to their rear and took a frightful toll on the British and Hessian officers and NCOs. Morgan’s men even almost killed Burgoyne, who while observing the battle from afar still had a hole in his coat, hat, and saddle from the riflemen. Gates nearly destroyed the force, and was prepared to return to the entrenchments: A day’s work well done. But then Arnold showed up.
Arnold took the force forward against Gates’ orders and attacked the British camp. Gates had no choice but to reinforce the aggressive Arnold and Morgan as they stormed the British redoubts. The fighting was fierce, but reinforcements in the form of Benjamin Lincoln’s men from the right half of the Bemis Heights’ entrenchments carried the day. In the final moments Arnold’s horse was hit, and when he fell, crushed Arnold’s leg. Gates’ messenger finally caught up to Arnold, and he returned to his tent, carried by his men in a litter.
As darkness fell, Burgoyne realized he couldn’t hold the camp against a determined American attack the next day. He retreated to Saratoga, harassed by Morgan the entire time. Gates’ initially couldn’t follow, his two best line commanders, Arnold and Lincoln, were both wounded, and the army disorganized. But it didn’t matter, Burgoyne couldn’t go anywhere – he was surrounded, and out of supplies.
On 17 October, 1777, Burgoyne surrendered his command at Saratoga to Gates. 5900 British, German and Canadian troops marched into American captivity. Gates and Arnold moved south to deal with Clinton’s excursion up the Hudson Valley, and the British and Canadian troops around Lake Champlain and Fort Ticonderoga retreated back to Canada.
The American victory at Saratoga sent shockwaves throughout the world. News of the victory reached Paris in December, and by February, Benjamin Franklin convinced France’s King Louis XVI to support the nascent American republic against the British monarchy.
In 1778, the American Revolution became a world war.
The Bridge Over the Mae Klong River
The Japanese offensive in early 1942 against the Allies in Burma wasn’t stopped by any successful defensive action on the part of Allied troops, but by the monsoon and lack of supplies. The British just retreated to India faster than the Japanese could advance. Furthermore, the British retreated towards their supply depots while every step forward took the Japanese further from theirs. Moreover, Japanese supplies couldn’t come directly from their bases in Vietnam due to the harsh terrain of the northern Thai Highlands and the Shan Hills of eastern Burma, both “foothills” of the Himalayas. They had to be shipped down around the Malay Peninsula and Singapore, and then back up to Rangoon, where the transports made excellent targets in the confined waters for Allied submarines. In order to mitigate this extended logistics chain, the Japanese decided to build a railroad through the forbidding jungle and over the steep mountains from Bangkok to Thambyuzayat, Burma, where they could be easily ferried to Rangoon. This would cut weeks off the supply timeline, and save countless ships.
To construct the 250 mile long railroad, the Japanese conscripted 270,000 local civilians, many of whom supported the Japanese (Thailand was a Japanese ally in World War Two), and 61,000 British, Australian, Dutch, and American prisoners of war taken during the successful Japanese campaigns in Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies. The 330,000 workers were overseen by just 14,000 Japanese. Their treatment ranged from lethal neglect to sadistic torture and mass murder. The terrain of western Thailand and southeastern Burma is some of the most forbidding terrain on the planet, and consists of thick jungle, steep gorges, and fast flowing rivers.
The most famous portion of the Burma Railroad was the Bridge over the Mae Klong River, a tributary of the Khwae Noi River whose valley the Burma railroad followed. On 4 October, 1942, the first Australian troops arrived at a prisoner of war camp at Tamarkan, Thailand. They would start work two days later on two bridges over Mae Klong River. Bridge 277 was a temporary wooden trestle bridge. It would be used until Bridge 278 was completed further upstream. Bridge 278 was a permanent metal and concrete structure assembled from a Dutch bridge dismantled in Java and transported to Thailand. The workers were given just 250 grams of rice a day to eat, in addition to what they could scrounge from the jungle. On 6 October, the Australians and British at Tamarkan numbered 1700.
Bridge 277 was completed in February, 1943, and the Bridge 278 in October 1943, about the same time the Burma Railroad itself was completed. The Burma Railroad was completed ahead of schedule but nearly 66,000 workers died as a result, including 1300 during the construction of the Mae Klong bridges. Just 400 remained to repair the damage caused by Allied air attacks later in the war.
The plight of the prisoners at Tamarkan and the construction of Bridge 277 was immortalized in the 1952 of the fictional book “Le Pont de la Rivière Kwai” (The Bridge on the River Kwai) by Pierre Boulle, and the 1957 David Lean movie of the same name, starring Jack Hawkins, Alec Guiness (Obi Wan Kenobi), William Holden and Sessue Hayakawa. “Kwai” (Burmese for water buffalo) is an English bastardization of “Khwae” (Burmese for tributary). Surviving British and Australian workers despised the movie for the “wonderful” treatment of the Allied characters by the Japanese, and Japanese veterans called the movie racist because they were depicted as unable to complete the bridge on time without the willing help of the Allied prisoners.
In 1970, the Thai government renamed to the Mae Klong River to Khwae Yai (“Big Tributary) due to tourists wanting to see “The Bridge over the River Kwai”.
How Dangerous Ideas Crumbled France in Six Weeks: The results of relying on the wisdom of man
“As British historian Paul Johnson wrote, ‘The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which have been to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.’
The Battle of Germantown
After his victories over Washington at Brandywine and Paoli, Gen Howe felt that he had the opportunity to open Philadelphia to the sea. So he sent Hessian detachments to reduce the American forts on the Delaware River, while the bulk of his army camped at Germantown, Pennsylvania.
But the Continental Army wasn’t defeated. Mistakes were made at Brandywine and Paoli, but they were due more to the relative lack of professionalism in the Army, than in any collapse in morale. The Continental Army had fought well at Brandywine, and was still full of fight. Washington planned to make Howe pay for the arrogance of splitting his army. Washington decided to recreate the Battle of Trenton from the previous Christmas: He’d surprise Howe at Germantown in a dawn attack. But instead of crossing the Delaware River in secrecy, he’d march four separate columns through the exceptionally dark and foggy autumn night. Then he’d have all four columns converge on Howe precisely as the sun broke the horizon. Howe would never expect it.
Washington did surprise Howe, but of the four columns, only two arrived, and neither at the same time. The plan was for Sullivan and Greene to attack the center, as two columns of militia attacked the flanks of the British camp. The militia columns never arrived, one got lost and the other was held up by a small Hessian outpost. In the foggy morning, Sullivan arrived on time, but Greene was delayed and began his attack later than Sullivan, whom he still didn’t have contact with. Both columns pushed the British light infantry, who fought savagely to give the line regiments time to organize. Sullivan’s advanced guard almost captured an incredulous Howe and his staff, who rode forward to admonish the light infantry for running from “skirmishers and foraging parties”.
Washington’s plan further broke down when the 40th Regiment of Foot barricaded itself in Clivden, the name for the stout stone mansion of the chief justice of the Pennsylvania Judiciary, John Chew. Sullivan wisely left a regiment to contain the British in Clivden, and bypassed to continue the assault. However, Henry Knox and the reserve arrived, and he convinced Washington to let him reduce the house with his guns. While Knox was setting up his cannon, one of Greene’s brigades, who was lost, stumbled into one of Sullivan’s brigades in the fog. They mistook each other for redcoats and opened fire. Both brigades broke.
At Clivden, Knox poured fire from his light guns into the mansion, which proved amazingly resilient. Unfortunately, Sullivan’s men, who were so far successful, heard Knox’s cannon behind them, and assumed they were out maneuvered just as they had been at Brandywine. Furthermore, their officers were coming to the realization that the militia attacks on the flanks had not materialized and Greene’s men were nowhere to be found (They were at least fighting though, just not where Sullivan expected them to be). Sullivan’s two remaining brigades felt they were out maneuvered, outnumbered, and alone. They too broke and ran.
Howe never expected a dawn surprise assault by the Washington because the bold plan was beyond the capabilities of his army, much less the Continental Army. Nonetheless it was the best chance Washington had to seize the initiative and defeat Howe before setting into winter quarters. If it would have worked, we’d be talking about Germantown instead of Saratoga as one of the decisive battles of the American Revolution. But it was not to be.
The General Offensive, The General Uprising: The Border Battles
Although the devastating battles in 1966 and early 1967 killed nearly 100,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, it wasn’t enough. Analysis of population estimates of North Vietnam found that 200,000 North Vietnamese reached draftable age every year. “Body Count” wasn’t going to work, and Gen. Westmoreland, the commander of the American Military Assistance Command – Vietnam, knew it.
The alternative was to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail at its junctions in Laos and Cambodia, thereby preventing the North Vietnamese Army from replacing the losses suffered by the Main Force units and the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. In the early spring of 1967, Westmoreland’s planners devised Operation York, the simultaneous assault on the Laotian Panhandle opposite Khe Sahn and Hue near the DMZ, and the “Fishhook” in Cambodia. These attacks would have severed the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and “was our worst fear” according to Col. Bui Tuin, a senior North Vietnamese member of Giap’s staff. Westmoreland requested 200,000 more troops to conduct Operation York.
The air war was routinely working over the eastern portions of Laos and Cambodia, but to little effect. The expansion of the ground war into both countries would come at a significant political cost at home. And President Johnson was unwilling to pay it. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told Westmoreland to find a “Plan B”. The decision effectively made the war militarily unwinnable for America and its allies, unless the North Vietnamese did something rash (like launch themselves into the teeth of American firepower and be slaughtered… *cough* Tet *cough*).
Westmoreland’s “Plan B” was to block the major Ho Chi Minh Trail outlets into South Vietnam. He couldn’t defend the entire border with the available troops, so his only alternative was to prevent infiltration in several key areas. To this end, Johnson approved an increase in total American personnel in Vietnam by 47,000 (to 536,100, the highest it would go in war). Westmoreland ordered his commanders to seal the major infiltration routes into South Vietnam at or near the border, and leave securing the population in the interior to the South Vietnamese. In the south in the III Corps sector, this was already being done in War Zones C and D by the 1st and 25th Infantry Divisions opposite the Fishhook, and they continued for the rest of 1967.
II Corps was the main effort, with a series of continuous operations in the Central Highlands and the Coastal Plains to secure Central Vietnam. Along the coast was a massive clearing operation, Operation Pershing, in the Binh Long province by the 1st Cavalry Division. In the Central Highlands, the 4th Infantry Division embarked on Operation Francis Marion to establish a mobile defense in depth based on a series of hills, near Dak To, along the border where Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam met.
In the north along the DMZ opposite the middle Laotian Panhandle, the Marines would continue the series of successful Lam Son, Prairie, and Hickory operations with the ARVN (I mean, as successful as you can be when the enemy can just scoot back across the border after being defeated). However, until the remaining troops Johnson approved arrived in country, which would take some months, Giap’s superhighway into South Vietnam, the A Shau Valley in I Corps sector, would be left to the ARVN, CIDG, and Special Forces around Hue, with supporting airpower. The city with its massive citadel is located at the narrowest portion of Vietnam. (“The ancient city of Hue” was established in the mid-17th Century, which makes it “about as ancient as Philadelphia”).
At the time, the population of Hue, like all urban areas in South Vietnam, was mostly in support of the Thieu regime, though not completely. Westmoreland’s planners surmised that if there was an area that allowed for an economy of force, it was around Hue. In any case, the A Shau Valley was the largest Communist sanctuary in South Vietnam and couldn’t be cleared without a massive expenditure of resources. The A Shau would have to wait until II and III Corps were finished further to the south.
For the rest of 1967, Westmoreland sent the Americans to the border, while the ARVN and CIDG, stiffened by the Korean divisions and the Special Forces, held the interior. Though he had no choice, Westmoreland inadvertently played directly into the North Vietnamese hands.
Into North Vietnamese hands, but not Giap’s. An internal power struggle raged inside North Vietnam between those who wanted to return to guerrilla operations in the south, (to offset the massive casualties of 66 and 67) led by Giap and Ho, and those that wanted continue main force operations (which was how they defeated the French) led by the COSVN commander Nguyen Chi Thanh, and Le Duan, the General Secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party. In the eyes of Giap, Thanh was thoroughly discredited by his failure to destroy any significant American force with his costly assaults on the Junction City troops. In May 1967, Thanh returned north to plead his case for continued main force operations, but suddenly died “of a heart attack” in June. Giap won, or so he thought.
Unfortunately for Giap and a few hundred thousand North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, the last thing Thanh did before his “heart attack”, was brief the North Vietnamese politburo on a plan to defeat South Vietnam in early 1968. The plan had six key elements: First, North Vietnamese units would infiltrate South Vietnam in large numbers to replace Viet Cong casualties. Second, the NVA would begin a series of large scale border operations to bring American forces away from the population centers, which the Americans had obliging agreed to do. Thirdly, the NVA would make every effort to overrun the remote US Marine outpost at Khe Sanh along the Laotian border. The hope was for a repeat of their victory at Dien Ben Phu, which decisively swayed world opinion against the French a decade before. Next, as part of a comprehensive information operations campaign against the South Vietnamese government, the Viet Cong would begin a massive campaign of terrorist bombings in the cities to weary the population. As the final point of the preparation the North Vietnamese would return to negotiations to stop the disruptive bombing of the Trail (which surprisingly for North Vietnam, Johnson agreed to as a condition just for the North to return to the table). Finally, after all was prepared, Communist forces would attack every major South Vietnamese, American, and Allied government and military facility during the annual Tet cease fire in late January 1968. By Thanh’s reasoning, this would spark a massive uprising among the South Vietnamese civilian population and disintegrate the South Vietnamese government and army. With the American troops at the border, their airbases overrun, and the North in control of the population, Johnson would have no choice but to withdraw American and Allied troops from Vietnam immediately. The Politburo approved Thanh’s plan, known as “Tong-Tan-cong-Noi-day”, “The General Offensive – The General Uprising”, and ordered Giap to execute it.
Giap was powerless to refuse. Thanh was replaced by his competent subordinate Tran Van Tra, who proved to be a worthy political adversary for Giap, and effectively neutered any support Giap had inside COSVN. More importantly though, by 1967, Ho Chi Minh was deathly ill, and spent most of his time in a hospital in China (Ho would die in 1968). Without Ho’s influence in the politburo, Giap could not refuse Le Duan, especially since most of Ho’s faction was “purged” (read: assassinated) in June and July.
Giap could not prevent what he was sure would lead to the destruction of the Viet Cong and the needless slaughter of the North Vietnamese Army (He was right). Giap reluctantly agreed to The General Offensive, The General Uprising. However, despite the predicted heavy losses, the Tet Offensive was win-win for pragmatic Giap: If it worked, the plan would end the war and unite Vietnam; if it failed, he could place blame and take advantage of the situation politically. Moreover, the losses would inflame the American anti-war movement.
For the remainder of 1967, Giap fed troops into the Central Highlands into what the Americans were increasingly calling the Battle of Dak To, while laying siege to Khe Sanh in the north. All along the South Vietnamese border with Laos and Cambodia, Americans were drawn into battle with increasingly aggressive NVA attacks. Guerilla attacks on military targets in the interior dropped and bombings of civilian targets in the cities dramatically increased. But the border attacks and the Communist actions in the interior were just ruses: in the last six months of 1967, Giap infiltrated nearly 100,000 new NVA soldiers into South Vietnam. The centerpieces for the Tet Offensive would be the capture of its great cities: Hue, Da Nang, Nha Trang, and Saigon. At the end of the A Shau Valley outside Hue alone, 15,000 NVA soldiers waited patiently, while the VC prepped the battlefield. There were even more outside Saigon. Every South Vietnamese government facility, and every official and senior army officer’s home and family were targeted.
Westmoreland assumed his plan to stop the men and supplies coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail at the border was working, and briefed Johnson and McNamara that he “could see the light at the end of the tunnel”.
He was wrong, but so were La Duan and Tra – Both sides would pay a terrible price in 1968 for their miscalculations.
The Battle of Freeman’s Farm
Burgoyne’s invasion of the Hudson Valley had been fraught with difficulties, but it could still cut the troublesome New England from the Middle and Southern colonies. Baum’s defeat at Bennington was a disaster and the loss in prestige stripped away many of the Indian allies Burgoyne relied on for skirmishing and reconnaissance. To the south, American Major General Horatio Gates massed his army on Bemis Heights, a position Burgoyne would have to secure if he wanted to continue to Albany.
Bemis Heights was a strong position but not impregnable. As the British approached, the command difficulties between the cautious Gates and his aggressive subordinate came to a head. BG Benedict Arnold wanted to go out and meet the British before they got into position.
To placate the irritating Arnold, Gates allowed him to take his division forward to Freeman’s Farm while he stayed on Bemis Heights. The forests north of Freeman’s Farm were well suited to American familiarity with fighting in the wilderness and Arnold slowly wore down the enemy. Morgan’s Riflemen targeted British officers and the cannon crews which sowed chaos in the British lines. Seeing Arnold’s success, Gates fed men into the battle, but never enough at any one time to fully press the advantage. Arnold kept pushing a break in the British lines, but a timely charge led by one of Burgoyne’s few remaining artillery officers finally secured the breach. In the meantime, Hessian troops again marched unwittingly on to the American flank. In the end, Arnold and the Continentals fell back to Bemis Heights.
The British held the field and the Americans were back where they started. But the British paid a heavy price for Arnold’s aggressiveness. Burgoyne took casualties that he couldn’t afford, and Bemis Heights were still an obstacle that he’d have to overcome. He lost a lot of troops because of Arnold, and the task of taking Bemis Height didn’t get any easier.
Computer Science
Science 22 Sep 1967:Vol. 157, Issue 3795, pp. 1373-1374
Allen Newell
Alan J. Perlis
Herbert A. Simon
“Professors of computer science are often asked: “Is there such a thing as computer science, and if there is, what is it?” The questions have a simple answer:
Wherever there are phenomena, there can be a science to describe and explain those phenomena. Thus, the simplest (and correct) answer to “What is botany?” is, “Botany is the study of plants.” And zoology is the study of animals, astronomy the study of stars, and so on. Phenomena breed sciences.
There are computers. Ergo, computer science is the study of computers. The phenomena surrounding computers are varied, complex, rich. It remains only to answer the objections posed by many skeptics.
Objection 1. Only natural phenomena breed sciences, but computers are artificial, hence are whatever they are made to be, hence obey no invariable laws, hence cannot be described and explained. Answer. 1. The objection is patently false since computers and computer programs are being described and explained daily. 2. The objection would equally rule out of science large portions of organic chemistry (substitute “silicones” for “computers”), physics (substitute “superconductivity” for “computers”), and even zoology (substitute “hybrid corn” for “computers”). The objection would certainly rule out mathematics, but in any event, its status as a natural science is idiosyncratic.
Objection 2. The term “computer” is not well defined, and its meaning will change with new developments, hence computer science does not have a well-defined subject matter. Answer. The phenomena of all sciences change over time; the process of understanding assures that this will be the case. Astronomy did not originally include the study of interstellar gases; physics did not include radioactivity; psychology did not include the study of animal behavior. Mathematics was once defined as the “science of quantity.”
Objection 3. Computer science is the study of algorithms (or programs), not computers. Answer. 1. Showing deeper insight than they are sometimes credited with, the founders of the chief professional organization for computer science named it the Association for Computing Machinery. 2. In the definition, “computers” means “living computers” – the hardware, their programs or algorithms, and all that goes with them. Computer science is the study of the phenomena surrounding computers. “Computers plus algorithms,” “living computers,” or simply “computers” all come to the same thing – the same phenomena.
Objection 4. Computers, like thermometers, are instruments, not phenomena. Instruments lead away to their user sciences; the behaviors of instruments are subsumed as special topics in other sciences (not always the user sciences – electron microscopy belongs to physics, not biology). Answer. The computer is such a novel and complex instrument that its behavior is subsumed under no other science; its study does not lead away to user sciences, but to further study of computers. Hence, the computer is not just an instrument but a phenomenon as well, requiring description and explanation.
Objection 5. Computer science is a branch of electronics (or mathematics, psychology, and so forth). Answer. To study computers, one may need to study some or all of these. Phenomena define the focus of a science, not its boundaries. Many of the phenomena of computers are also phenomena of some other science. The existence of biochemistry denies neither the existence of biology nor of chemistry. But all of the phenomena of computers are not subsumed under anyone exiting science.
Objection 6. Computers belong to engineering, not science. Answer. They belong to both, like electricity (physics and electrical engineering) or plants (botany and agriculture). Time will tell what professional specialization is desirable between analysis and synthesis, and between the pure study of computers and their application.
Computer scientists will often join hands with colleagues from other disciplines in common endeavor. Mostly, computer scientists will study living computers with the same passion that others have studied plants, stars. glaciers, dyestuffs, and magnetism; and with the same confidence that intelligent, persistent curiosity will yield interesting and perhaps useful knowledge.”
The Emancipation Proclamation
After the bloody Union victory at Antietam a few days before and the retreat of Robert E. Lee’s Army out of Maryland, President Lincoln felt he now had the political clout to transform the very nature of the American Civil War. On 22 Sep 1862, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which stated that all slaves held in Confederate territory would be freed if the state did not return to the Union by the end of the year. Although a bold step, the Proclamation did not end slavery in slave owning states that didn’t secede, nor did it give former slaves citizenship, nor did it even free very many slaves. It did however turn the war from a partisan political struggle of reunification to a moral crusade against slavery, at least in the eyes of the rest of the world. Although many in the North would be greatly angered by the Proclamation; Great Britain and France, both with anti-slavery laws, could no longer support the Confederate States. The South, with its small population and tiny industrial base, would have to defeat the North on its own.
The Battle of Valmy
In 1791, the nervous monarchies of Europe finally declared war on the Revolutionary France to restore the Bourbon monarchy and prevent the spread of liberte, egalite, and fraternite (liberty, equality, and brotherhood) to their lands. The War of the First Coalition started well for the monarchies, as a large mixed army of Austrians, Prussians, Hessians, and French emigres under the Duke of Brunswick seized several French fortresses and brushed aside any French revolutionary resistance.
By the end of the summer 1792, Brunswick was deep into French territory and advanced on Paris through the Argonne Forest. Brunswick was shadowed by the French Army of the Center under Francois Kellermann. At the time, Revolutionary France’s Army of the North under Charles Dumouriez was invading Austrian Netherlands. But with the threat to Paris, Dumouriez turned south and joined Kellermann. Dumouriez and Kellerman appeared behind Brusnwick and along his lines of communication eastward back to Prussia. Though the French were outnumbered 54,000 to 84,000, morale was high, a good portion of the army were professionals from the old Royal Army, and even though Paris was exposed, the cautious Brunswick would never leave an enemy army to his rear. They were right.
The Napoleonic idea and practice of advancing forward to the objective while foraging off the land was still a decade in future, and Brusnwick’s Army was tied to its depots in the German states. Brunswick could have easily seized Paris but instead turned his army east and attacked the French at Valmy.
In the driving rain, the two armies lined up at opposite ends of the field of battle and commenced an artillery duel. Unlike the bulk of the infantry in the French Army, which were made up of raw but passionate volunteers, the artillery still consisted of the professional gunners from the old Royal Army. For decades, the French artillery was considered the best in Europe. Unlike Brusnwick’s gunners, they kept their powder dry, and a steady stream of accurate fire pounded Brunswick’s lines. Furthermore, Brunswick’s artillery got the worst of the exchange, which demoralized the rest of the army, who would soon have to advance into the teeth of the French cannon. As Brunswick’s Army began to advance, the infantry assault was checked by French fire. And though there was a brief panic after a French ammunition wagon exploded, Kellermann was quickly on the spot, and cried out “Vive’ le Nation!”, which spurred the volunteers to break out into loud and enthusiastic renditions of “Ca Ira” and “La Marseillaise”. Brunswick couldn’t exploit the brief opportunity and broke off the assault completely because he felt the position was too strong and he could fight elsewhere. His army withdrew east away from Paris, never to return.
German poet Wolfgang von Goethe who was present at the battle, told his retreating comrades, “Here and today, a new epoch in the history of the world has begun, and you can boast you were present at its birth.”
Valmy provided a much needed boost to the French Revolution. In 1792, the French Revolution was beginning to collapse as increasing amounts of control was taken by radical elements, which alienated many French citizens (Lafayette being the most famous). Upon the news of the victory at Valmy, the French Legislative assembly formally abolished the monarchy and formed the National Assembly. The French Republic was born. The Battle of Valmy was the best chance the monarchies of Europe had to snuff out the French Revolution. It would take more than two decades, six more “Wars of the Coalition”, and Napoleon’s defeat, for the monarchies of Europe to get that close to Paris again.
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