The Battle of Fleurus was fought on 26 June 1794 during the War of the First Coalition between the French Revolutionary Army under Jean-Baptiste Jourdan and an Austro-Dutch army commanded by Prince Josias of Coburg. In what was the most significant battle of the Low Countries theatre of the War of the First Coalition, Jourdan's army was able to concentrate its forces and defeat Coburg and his troops. The Allied defeat led to the permanent loss of the Austrian Netherlands and to the dissolution of the Dutch Republic. The battle marked a turning point for the French army, which remained ascendant for the rest of the War of the First Coalition.
Background
In May 1794, Jean-Baptiste Jourdan was given the command of approximately 96,000 men created by combining the Army of the Ardennes with portions of the Army of the North and the Army of the Moselle. Jourdan was given the task of consolidating the capture of the north bank of the Sambre river, specifically by capturing the fortress of Charleroi, a task that the forces on the Sambre had tried three times and failed to accomplish, being defeated at the battles of Grandreng, Erquelinnes and Gosselies.
On 12 June, Jourdan's army crossed the Sambre for the fourth time and invested the fortress of Charleroi with 70,000 men. On 16 June, an Austrian-Dutch force of about 43,000 men counterattacked in heavy mist, inflicted 3,000 casualties, and drove Jourdan away from Charleroi back across the Sambre in the battle of Lambusart. While it was a setback, the French army withdrew from the field mostly in good order, and took little real damage from the battle. As a result, they were ready to go on the attack again within two days.
The third siege of Charleroi
The fifth crossing of the Sambre
The defeat at Lambusart caused little damage to the French army, with Jourdan sustaining only 3,000 casualties out of a total of 90,000 men under command, of which 70,000 were engaged. Jourdan had withdrawn the army largely intact and in good order, and French morale remained high as all ranks felt that their loss was only due to the heavy mist, the element of surprise, and shortages of ammunition, not because of any deficiency of the French soldiers themselves.
As a result of these factors, Jourdan was quickly ready to go back on the offensive, and he recrossed the Sambre for the fifth time just 2 days after the battle of Lambusart, on 18 June.
The French divisions were to occupy much the same positions as they had during the fourth crossing and second siege of Charleroi. From west to east, they deployed as follows:
- General Guillaume Philibert Duhesme’s division crossed at Aulnes Abbey and Landelies and positioned himself between the towns of Pieton and Souvret.
- General Anne Charles Basset Montaigu’s division (which replaced Muller's division in the attack force) crossed at Rus (south of the modern Terril du Hameau) and Landelies, and deployed to the right of Duhesme with its right on the Pieton river.
- General Antoine Morlot’s division and General Jean-Joseph Ange d’Hautpoul’s brigade of cavalry crossed at Marchienne-au-Pont and deployed north of Gosselies with outposts at Thumeon (modern Thimeon)
- General Jean-Etienne Championnet's division and General Guillaume Anselme Philibert de Soland's brigade of cavalry crossed at Marchienne-au-Pont and deployed between Heppignies and Wagnee, with outposts in Mellet and St Fiacre (currently the company compound of Saspj De Munck Lionel & Maxime)
- General François Joseph Lefebvre crossed at Chatellet and took position between Wagnee and the tavern of Campinaire (at the modern intersection of the N568 and N29), with outposts in Fleurus
- General Jacques Maurice Hatry also crossed at Chatellet, and marched for Charleroi to resume besieging the fortress
- General François Severin Marceau, on the extreme right, crossed at Tergnee (around modern Rue du Tergnee in Farciennes) to take position from Campinaire to the northern edge of the forest of Copiaux (still existent today, south of Velaine-sur-Sambre), with detachments occupying Velaine, Baulet and Wanfersee (the latter two now combined into the town of Baulet-Wanfercee), and his main camp at Baratre (halfway between modern Lambusart and the town of Keumiee).
From the moment of their deployments, the French divisions immediately began constructing entrenchments and redoubts to fortify their positions protecting the siege works.
Allied miscalculations and reactions
Jourdan's recrossing of the Sambre so soon after Lambusart caught the Allies completely by surprise.
Following the previous battle at Lambusart, the Allied high command under Field Marshal Prince Coburg had assumed that the French were morally and materially beaten, and would be unable or unwilling to undertake another offensive after four successive failures. As a result, on 17 June, William V, the Prince of Orange, in command of the forces of the Allied left wing that defended this front, had spread out his forces again, sending a division under General Paul Davidovitch to Erquelinnes while simultaneously preparing to send 4 battalions of infantry to reinforce Coburg's centre at Tournai. Orange's main force was at Chapelle-lez-Herlaimont.
Such was the Allied confidence that the French would not dare make another attempt on Charleroi, that even when the French recrossed the Sambre a fifth time, Orange concluded erroneously that they were aiming for Mons, the original objective of the Sambre campaigns.
Orange ordered his outnumbered force at Chapelle-lez-Herlaimont to withdraw to the main base at Rouveroy to defend Mons and avoid being cut off by French advances. The 4 battalions intended for Coburg were withheld while Beaulieu's corps, which had returned to guard Namur after Lambusart, was ordered to assemble near Quatre-Bras to cover the road to Brussels.
As a result, the French once again effected their crossing unopposed.
Siege operations
The third siege of Charleroi commenced formally on 19 June with the city's investment, which the garrison, only 2,800 men strong under one Colonel Reynac, was too weak to delay, especially since no one had expected the French to attack again so soon. With only three days between the rising of the second siege and the commencement of the third one, the garrison had neither had time to prepare for a new siege, nor destroy the works from the previous one.
During the third siege, the French benefitted from the reuse of the works from the second siege, giving them a headstart in speed and progress.
As the siege progressed, the various divisions of the army undertook several small divisional operations to clear enemy forces from their perimeter and keep Allied observation forces at a distance.
On 20 June, Kleber took his two divisions, under Duhesme and Montaigu, to Chapelle-lez-Herlaimont, attacking in four columns and driving the enemy forces in the town out, before returning to their defensive positions with Montaigu positioned from Trazegnies back to the town of Pieton, and Duhesme on his right, stretching from Trazegnies to the Pieton river.
On 21 June, Championnet and Morlot attacked Quatre-Bras and drove away the Allied force at the crossroads, before returning to their entrenchments.
On 22 June, Kleber attacked Chapelle-lez-Herlaimont again with his two divisions to drive out the Allies, who had returned.
The surrender of Charleroi
At 7 am on 25 June, seeing that no relief appeared to be forthcoming after a week and that the French were about to begin their third parallel (a trench line close enough to launch infantry assaults from), Reynac asked for terms of surrender.
When presented with Reynac's request for terms by a major from his staff, it was refused by the Representative of the People Louis-Antoine Saint-Just, who was in charge of negotiations. Saint-Just demanded an immediate surrender instead. Armand de Marescot, the chief engineer of the forces on the Sambre at this time, was present at the negotiations and recorded the following exchange in his campaign report:
SAINT-JUST: I don't want this piece of paper (i.e. Reynac's note with proposed terms of surrender), I want the place itself.
MAJOR: But if we surrender at discretion (i.e.unconditionally), we will be dishonoured.
SAINT-JUST: We can neither honour or dishonour you, just as it is not in your power to honour or dishonour the French nation. There is no connection between you and us.
MAJOR: But can we not obtain some form of capitulation (i.e. terms)?
SAINT-JUST: Yesterday we could have listened to you; today you must surrender at discretion. I have spoken; I have used the powers entrusted to me; I will take back nothing. I count on the courage of the army, and mine.
Saint-Just's threat was just a bluff; the French were not actually ready to assault Charleroi. It would have taken at least another eight days for the French to have taken the fortress by assault if resistance had continued under a resolute commander. However, Saint-Just needed to intimidate Reynac into surrendering as soon as possible because the French had been aware for some days that the Allied main army was already nearby and their attack to relieve Charleroi was imminent.
In fact, the Allies were already getting dangerously close; on 25 June itself, as Reynac was negotiating his surrender, a detachment from Coburg's army was already trying to get to the ridge of Heppignies to fire rockets, an agreed-upon signal that the relief army had arrived. However, they were driven away by Championnet, whose division occupied the ridge, before they could get close. They were only able to launch their rockets from Frasne (modern Frasnes-lez-Gosselies), too far away to the north to be seen. Around midnight on the day of the battle, an Austrian cavalry officer, Count Radetzky, did manage to infiltrate the French lines and actually reach the walls of Charleroi to discover it was already captured, but was then injured and chased by a French patrol on the way back later in the morning, and did not make it back to headquarters with his news until the afternoon, when the battle was already in full swing.
Despite the fact that the French were clearly not ready to assault the fortress yet, Reynac had been discouraged by the apparent lack of any relief, and was intimidated by Saint-Just's posturing and threats. Seeing no point in further resistance, he agreed to surrender unconditionally that very afternoon. Forces from Hatry's division, which had been besieging Charleroi, then marched in to take possession of the city.
Reynac's surrender had come in the nick of time for the French. The very next morning, the Allies would commence the battle of Fleurus to relieve Charleroi–just half a day too late. Hatry's division, freed up from siege duties, would make an important contribution as a reserve force during the battle.
Prelude to battle
Coburg seeks decisive battle at Charleroi
The campaigns on the Sambre were only half of the strategy of General Charles Pichegru, who was the commander in chief of the entire front in the Low Countries, which at the time included the Army of the North, and also the Army of the Ardennes. As the Sambre forces attacked from Pichegru's right wing, his left had defeated the Allies in several battles around Courtrai, and had laid siege to Ypres since 1 June.
With the French defeat at the battle of Lambusart on 16 June, Coburg had assumed the danger from that wing was now over, and he felt free to relieve the siege of Ypres on the other wing by reinforcing Count Clerfayt, who was commanding the Austrian forces trying to relieve Ypres.
Marching with 23 battalions of infantry and 30 squadrons of cavalry on 18 June, however, Coburg had only just arrived at Coeyghem (modern Kooigem) later that day when he received the news that Ypres had surrendered and Jourdan had recrossed the Sambre, both on that same day.
With no siege to relieve, but also freed of the immediate need to fight on two fronts, Coburg returned to Tournai, where he opted to seek a decisive battle on the Sambre by uniting the Allied main army, now freed up, with Orange's forces for an all-out attack on the French on the Sambre wing.
Securing the Duke of York's cooperation
Coburg planned to bring the 12,000 Austrians under his command at Tournai towards Charleroi to join with Orange's and Beaulieu's 40,000 in the theatre for the decisive battle against Jourdan. However, the concentration of Austrian forces on the left wing for a decisive battle created two complications: