Tagged: FrenchRevolution

The Paris Commune

After the French Second Empire fell in its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Paris demanded more representation in the interim Third Republic ruled by the National Assembly at Versailles. Paris was administered directly by the Assembly the same way Washington DC was administered the US Congress for many years. Furthermore, many Parisians felt that they were not adequately represented in the Assembly (they weren’t) and that the Assembly was going to bring back the monarchy (they weren’t). On 18 March 1871, the Paris Commune, or city council, revolted against Republican rule with the support of the National Guard which was not disarmed by the Prussians at the end of the war as was the French army.

The “Communards”, as they were known, were very progressive minded and even managed to put some reforms into place, such as women’s suffrage, the separation of the church and state, pensions for widows of National Guardsmen, and some worker’s rights, particularly the abolition of shift work and worker’s fines. But by the same token, many radical ideas were forced upon the Parisians at the barrel of a gun, such as banishment of rent, debt, and interest, and workers forcibly taking over their employer’s enterprises. The Commune ruled by decree and acted as the three branches of govt: executive, legislative and judicial, backed by the guns of the National Guard. The French Tricolor was immediately abandoned for the Socialist Red.

Like any organization with absolute power, absolute corruption soon followed. And the “Tyranny of the Majority” became progressively worse over the next two months. First they came for the Catholics, then the businessmen, then the managers, then the property owners, then finally anyone deemed “Enemies of the People”. Within two weeks, social order broke down and culminated in early May with the establishment of the Committee for Public Safety, which was just as brutal as it was during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution. But instead of guillotines, the preferred method of executing “undesirables” was firing squad.

By mid-April, the chaos descended to the point that the units of the National Guard, which were recruited and based on Parisian neighborhoods, became mere neighborhood gangs and protection rackets against the excesses of rival neighborhoods and their National Guard units, or muscle to prevent spurious denunciations of its members as “Enemies of the People”. This prevented the National Guard from coordinating the defense of Paris against the rearmed French Army supported by the Prussians. On 21 May, the “Versaillier” Army entered the city through an unguarded gate and began seizing neighborhoods. The Communards had no organized defense, so like their grandparents in 1830, and their parents in 1848, the Communards resorted to the time honored barricade, where furniture, bricks, carts and wagons formed impromptu ramparts across Parisian streets. But the French army was prepared for this and bypassed the barricades by blowing through or knocking down walls inside the buildings along the street. As the French army steadily pacified each neighborhood in turn, they shot any Communard that was found with a weapon, or had powder stains on their person. 21-28 May 1871 was known as “Bloody Week” and tens of thousands more were killed and much of Paris burned to the ground.

Future communists, socialists and anarchists would see the Paris Commune as a model. Karl Marx praised the Paris Commune, calling it the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, but felt that the Communards did not go far enough fast enough. Marx would later write that Communards should have immediately eliminated all undesirables, and in the moment of the initial fervor, formed the supporters into an army to export the revolution, or at the very least defeat and “reactionaries and their armies”. Marx’s disciples: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Ho, Kim, Castro, Mugabe, Chavez, and many others would put the lessons of the Paris Commune into action to great, and deadly, effect in the 20th Century.

The Third Partition

Toward the end of the Age of Enlightenment, the game changed. Though Enlightenment principles were celebrated in the salons of Europe, the aristocracy and their power structures were too entrenched to torment radical change. It took the revolt by Britain’s thirteen North American colonies, an ocean away from the Empire’s power base in England, to show that governance by Enlightenment ideals was possible. It also took a little over a decade of war and a failed experiment called the Articles of Confederation, before the disciples of the Enlightenment could look upon the countries of the world for a success story. The American Revolution, the adoption of the US Constitution, and the impending inclusion of amendments protecting individual rights sent shock waves throughout the world where small aristocracies still held most of the power. Just the idea that all men are equal in the eyes of the law was a radical notion that directly resulted in bloody revolution in many countries. America’s “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” not only inspired the “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” in France, but also the “For Our Freedom and Yours” of Poland. But whereas France’s revolution devolved into an internal bloodbath, Poland’s was relatively peaceful, at least internally.

In the late 18th century, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was ripe for constitutional revolution. The Commonwealth was the only country in Europe who already enjoyed “democracy of the nobility” where all nobles, no matter their wealth and status, were equal in the eyes of the law (if only in theory). Still, it was not beyond the realm of belief to take this concept to the next logical step and apply this equality under the law to all citizens. Furthermore, the super wealthy magnates, and their foreign backers, had sabotaged the political process to the Commonwealth’s detriment, through the abuse of the ”liberum veto”. The abuse was so obvious, and the corruption so blatant, that reform was obviously needed, and desperately desired by the rest of the szlachta (petty nobility), the burghers, merchants, peasants, and clergy. Finally, the Russian, Prussian, and Austrian Empires sensed the weakness, and encroached on Polish territory — partitioning off pieces of the country in 1772. In the Commonwealth, rule by the super wealthy aristocracy and their elected King was obviously not working.

In 1784, after the end of the American Revolution, Continental Army general and godfather of the US Army Engineer Corps, Tadeusz Kościuszko, returned to his Polish homeland. His arrival sparked the action necessary for Commonwealth to pass the Constitution of 1791 — the “world’s second oldest constitution”, and a near mirror of the US Constitution with the Bill of Rights. (Though the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was adopted in France in 1789, it was not a governing document; the new French Constitution wasn’t passed until September 1791). Unfortunately the autocratic and aristocratic Empires of Austria, Prussia, and Russia could not abide a nation of free men on their borders. They invaded, overwhelmed, and partitioned Poland a second time just a year later. Tadeusz Kościuszko led an uprising against Russia in 1794, and though initially successful, the country was again overwhelmed. The great empires of Eastern and Central Europe were tired of the rebellious Poles. Kościuszko’s rebellion saved the French Revolution by diverting resources from the victorious First Coalition campaign against the French which allowed the French revolutionaries just enough breathing room to reorganize and call the mass levy. The “Polish Question” needed a permanent answer.

On 24 October 1795, the foreign ministers of the three empires assembled in St Petersburg and formally dismembered the remains of the newly formed Commonwealth of Poland. There would be no Polish rump state as there had been for the previous two partitions. Poland was to be wiped from the map of Europe. They found that a Polish rump state served only to inspire revolution and give sanctuary to radicals. Finally, the subversive Polish culture was to be eradicated. The three foreign ministers abolished all Polish institutions, divided up the country, and declared the official suppression of Polish language and culture.

Poland would not exist as a state again until after the First World War, 123 years later.

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.

War Song for the Army of the Rhine

In 1792, the War of the First Coalition pitted the monarchies of Europe against Revolutionary France in a war to prevent the spread of the Enlightenment ideas of self-rule by its citizens. The US Constitution, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizen, and the recent Polish and French Constitutions of 1791, were direct threats to their authority. So the armies of Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, Austria and Spain invaded France.

With the loss of so much of their officer corps (who were mostly noblemen), the War of the First Coalition began poorly for the French. The armies of her enemies descended upon the traditional invasion corridors into the country. In Alsace/Lorrarine, the Prussian army approached, and the French were not prepared. The mayor of the fortress city of Strasbourg asked a young captain, Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, to write a song to rally the troops of the garrison. On 24 April 1792, he composed the “War Song for the Army of the Rhine”. The song was a bloody and zealous anthem to the revolution and quickly spread across the country.

Toward the end of May, Provencal volunteers for the French National Guard arrived in Paris from Marseille. The desperately needed troops marched into the city singing Rouget’s song. They were such a sight and sang with such gusto that the song acquired the name we know of it today, the French National Anthem,

La Marseillaise

The Battle of Fishguard

Most learned scholars would say the last invasion of Britain occurred in 1066 when William of Normandy kicked the living shit out of the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. This is not correct. The Norman attack was the last *successful* invasion of Britain. The *last* invasion of Britain was by the French, during the French revolutionary wars, and was led by an American (because after 700 years, only an American would look at the moat that is the English Channel and dismissively say, “Pshaw, I got this”.)

Col William Tate was an Irishman born in America, and had fought in the American Revolutionary War. An avowed Francophile, he fell out of favor with the United States when he was involved in a plot to seize New Orleans for France from one of America’s other allies in the American Revolution, Spain. In the 1790s, the Mississippi trade was booming and the new country did not want to lose the use of New Orleans’ docks and warehouses. Tate escaped to France, one step ahead of American G-Men (such as they were), before he could be made an example of for Spain. In France, he joined the revolutionary army, where he quickly rose to command a regiment because of his experience in the American Revolution. (French officers of the time were mostly aristocrats, and French aristocrats were only good for one thing: filling the baskets at the bottom of French guillotines.)

In 1796, blood soaked French revolutionary zeal hadn’t engulfed the rest of Europe only because Great Britain was the financier of France’s continental enemies. General Louis-Lazare Hoche knew the source of the bourgeois and royalist resistance had to be eliminated. He figured the best way to do that was through Britain’s nearby, and most troublesome, possession – Ireland. He eradicated Royalist opposition in Brittany, itself a Celtic nation, and then with Tate, devised a plan to export that Revolution to Ireland. He raised an army and his plan was for a large expedition to land and link up with the United Irishmen, then rebelling against British authority. Britain invaded the island 150 years ago, and was still smarting from Oliver Cromwell’s massacres of that time (among other things). It was believed the Irish proletariat (before Marx made the term sexy) would rise up against the British, and join them. Once Ireland was liberated, Franco-Irish revolution could be brought to Britain. But the British were sure to react to a French landing, so two smaller expeditions were planned to prevent them from interfering: one in Scotland, and one in Wales. It was hoped the oppressed Celtic proletarians of Wales and Scotland would also rise up to fight their hated British overlords.

In late 1796, the Royal Navy sailed south to blockade Spain (see the previous Battle of Cape St Vincent), and Houche launched the three expeditions across the Channel. Now there is a phenomenal (Ha!) reason why the English Channel is the most effective of moats: it basically has its own climate system, and the weather essentially pushes an invader back against the French coast. In the Age of Sail, this is a problem. (William of Normandy had to wait three long weeks just to cross the Channel at its narrowest part in 1066, and was still scattered and almost didn’t arrive.) The fickle Channel weather defeated the Irish and Scottish expeditions, but it didn’t defeat the Welsh one, which was led by Col William Tate. On 22 February 1797, Tate landed on the rocky headland at Carreg Wastad on the Welsh coast.

Tate unloaded his 1400 men, and sent a ship up the coast to reconnoiter the port of Fishguard, three miles away. But all it accomplished was to inform the Welsh of the invasion when the fort there fired a warning shot at the unknown ship. The ship quickly returned and surprise was lost. Soon thereafter, Tate’s squadron departed, because their captains didn’t want to be caught by the weather and stranded in Wales (There’s an omen…) This was disconcerting for many of Tate’s men, as this was their only means of escape should the expedition fail.

Tate’s army was a mixed bag. On one hand, 600 were from his own regiment, the professionals of the French 2nd Legion, known as the “Le Legion Noir”, or the Black Legion because they were clothed in captured British uniforms, whose original red would only take black dye (which turned them a sickly dark brown color, but “The Black Legion” sounds cooler). On the other were 800 Republican volunteers, mercenaries, pirates, former royalist prisoners, and convicts on parole, mostly under Irish officers who sure as shit didn’t want to be in Wales. Like all Revolutionary armies, Tate’s lacked any sort of effective logistics system and was expected to live off the land. He had unloaded a vast quantity of weapons and ammunition, much of it to arm the Welsh, but he had no rations. So that evening, he sent his men out on foraging parties to confiscate provisions for the expedition.

Now there are many famous military blunders, the most famous of which is “Never get involved in a land war in Asia”. Slightly less well-known is this: “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!” But only slightly less well-known than that is, “Never antagonize a Welshman in Wales” (I personally learned this the hard way in Bristol, which I have since been reliably informed is not really Wales, lines on a map be damned). Many of Tate’s foraging parties that weren’t of the Black Legion weren’t exactly disciplined. One group broke into St Nicholas Church, and in a drunken rage born of sacramental wine, burned Bibles and hymnals as secular revolutionaries are wont to do. Furthermore, many had just got out of prison, and were more interested in booze and women than they were in scavenging supplies. The combined effect on the population was not one that encouraged it to rise up in one’s favor.

Once the stories spread, the population literally turned out with their farming implements to repel the French. On the morning of 23 February, the formidable cobbler Jemima Nicholas, attacked one of the drunken parties, gave them a good “what for”, captured 19, and locked them in St. Mary’s Church. Hundreds more rallied and marched on the French with pitchforks and torches. Like Mrs. Nicholas, the women wore the traditional Welsh red skirts and tall black felt hats, and to the drunk Frenchmen, they were mistakenly reported as elite “Grenadier Guards” to Tate. However, pitchforks, sickles, garden hoe’s, and those funny little hedge clippers, a contemporary army does not make. The furious Welsh farmers and townsfolk were reinforced by their husbands, sons, brothers, and cousins in the unofficial and semiofficial militia of the area.

The last Under-Secretary of State for the American Colonies, William Knox, who after being tossed out of the Thirteen Colonies in 1783 learned that to oppose a revolutionary army you needed your own loyal, and local, militia, which he formed as a result of the French Revolution. His Newport Volunteers, and Fishguard and Pembroke Militias marched and assembled at the Fishguard Fort. They in turn were reinforced by sailors from the ships in Goodwick Bay, on which Fishguard sat. They were further aided by the energetic action of LtCol Colby of the Harfordshire militia, who mobilized his men at the first reports of the French and forced marched to Fishguard. Thirty miles away, Lord Cawdor, the Baron of Pembroke, received word of the invasion and immediately set off with his men from the “Castlemartin Troop of the Pembroke Yeomanry Cavalry” whom had been assembled by Cawdor for a funeral for one of their own on the 23rd. By that evening, a thousand Welsh and English militia and sailors, dragging cannon from the ships in the harbor, backed up by a swarm of Welsh civilians, confronted Tate on the high ground outside Goodwick, a mile away, which overlooked Tate’s HQ.

Tate’s officers took one look, and got drunk. On the morning of the 24th, Tate, thinking he was facing a superior force of angry militia backed by British regulars, walked into Carford’s headquarters at the Royal Oak pub, and surrendered his disorganized force.

The Last Invasion of Britain was defeated.

The Battle of Cape St. Vincent

In 1797, the Spanish Empire allied itself with Revolutionary France against Great Britain, just as it did with America twenty years before. The British sent a fleet under Sir John Jervis to blockade the Spanish ports and intercept an important convoy of mercury, which was necessary for gold and silver production.

In the early morning mist of 14 February, 1797, lookouts spotted the convoy off of Cape St Vincent along the Portuguese coast. Jervis ordered his 14 ships to close with the enemy. As the Spanish men of war emerged from the mist, one dutiful midshipman kept a count. When the young man reached 24, Jervis said “Enough, sir, no more of that; the die is cast, and if there are fifty sail I will go through them.” Jervis drove straight into the Spanish line.

Jervis’ confidence was not foolhardy – He knew the quality of the British ships, sailors, and marines were far and above that of the Spanish, who were mostly untrained landsmen and soldiers, with only a few professional sailors to watch over them (part time vs full time). British gunners could fire three rounds for every one the Spanish fired. After less than an hour, and before most of the Jervis’ fleet got into action, the Spanish broke. This wasn’t acceptable to a young up and coming commodore far to the rear in the British line. Commodore Horatio Nelson spotted six Spanish men of war sailing away, so he ordered his ship, the HMS Captain, to break formation and prevent their escape.

The six Spaniards couldn’t flee without going straight past the Captain, so they all attacked. At one point, Nelson was engaged in a broadsides with four ships simultaneously. In the span of 30 minutes, the Captain was a disaster and rudderless, but the destruction and confusion brought on by Nelson’s charge allowed time for other British ships to join the action. The two Spanish ships nearest to the Captain, the San Jose and San Nicolas, had “luffed up and ran afoul” of each other in the confusion (I have no idea what that means, but I’m guessing it’s bad) which locked them together tight. Nelson ordered the closest, the San Nicolas, to be boarded.

Nelson’s sailors and soldiers (He had no Royal Marines, his ship’s company was augmented with soldiers from the 69th Regiment of Foot to act as marines) swarmed the San Nicolas. In a desperate fight, Nelson’s men captured the ship, and pushed the survivors onto the San Jose, a much larger ship. Nelson quickly reorganized his men into a defensive line closer to the Captain as he expected the San Jose’ crew to try and recapture the San Nicolas. When that didn’t happen, Nelson ordered his men to cross over the San Nicolas, and board the San Jose. With Nelson in the van, the British jumped and swung from the San Nicolas and stormed onto the San Jose. After another mass melee of pistols, cutlasses, bayonets, sabers, and boarding pikes, Nelson received another Spanish’s captain’s sword, this time on the forecastle of the San Jose.

The tactic of using an enemy ship to board another enemy ship became known as “Nelson’s Patented Bridge for Boarding”.