The Low Countries theatre of the War of the First Coalition, also known as the Flanders campaign, was a series of campaigns in the Low Countries conducted from 20 April 1792 to 7 June 1795 during the first years of the War of the First Coalition. As the French Revolution radicalised, the revolutionary National Convention and its predecessors broke the Catholic Church's power (1790), abolished the monarchy (1792) and even executed the deposed king Louis XVI (1793), vying to spread the Revolution beyond the new French Republic's borders, by violent means if necessary. The First Coalition, an alliance of reactionary states representing the Ancien Régime in Central and Western Europe – Habsburg Austria (including the Southern Netherlands), Prussia, Great Britain, the Dutch Republic (the Northern Netherlands), Hanover and Hesse-Kassel – mobilised military forces along all the French frontiers, threatening to invade Revolutionary France and violently restore the monarchy. The subsequent combat operations along the French borders with the Low Countries and Germany became the primary theatre of the War of the First Coalition until March 1796, when Napoleon took over French command on the Italian front.
The April–June 1792 French incursions into the Austrian Netherlands were a disaster, eventually leading frustrated radical revolutionaries to depose the king in August. An unexpected French success in the Battle of Jemappes in November 1792 was followed by a major Coalition victory at Neerwinden in March 1793. After this initial stage, the largest of these forces assembled on the Franco-Flemish border. In this theatre a combined army of Anglo-Hanoverian, Dutch, Hessian, Imperial Austrian and (south of the river Sambre) Prussian troops faced the republican Armée du Nord, and (further to the south) two smaller forces, the Armée des Ardennes and the Armée de la Moselle. The Allies enjoyed several early victories, but were unable to advance beyond the French border fortresses. Coalition forces were eventually forced to withdraw by a series of French counter-offensives, and the May 1794 Austrian decision to redeploy any troops in Poland.
The Allies established a new front in the south of the Netherlands and Germany, but with failing supplies and the Prussians pulling out, they were forced to continue their retreat through the arduous winter of 1794/5. The Austrians pulled back to the lower Rhine and the British to Hanover from where they were eventually evacuated. The victorious French were aided in their conquest by Patriots from the Northern and Southern Netherlands, who had previously been forced to flee to France after their own revolutions in the north in 1787 and in the south in 1789/91 had failed. These Patriots now returned under French banners as "Batavians" and "Belgians" to 'liberate' their countries. The republican armies pushed on to Amsterdam and early in 1795 replaced the Dutch Republic with a client state, the Batavian Republic, whilst the Austrian Netherlands and the Prince-Bishopric of Liège were annexed by the French Republic.
Prussia and Hesse-Kassel would recognise the French victory and territorial gains with the Peace of Basel (1795). Austria would not acknowledge the loss of the Southern Netherlands until the 1797 Treaty of Leoben and later the Treaty of Campo Formio. The Dutch stadtholder William V, Prince of Orange, who had fled to England, also initially refused to recognise the Batavian Republic, and in the Kew Letters ordered all Dutch colonies to temporarily accept British authority instead. Not until the 1801 Oranienstein Letters would he recognise the Batavian Republic, and his son William Frederick accept the Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda as compensation for the loss of the hereditary stadtholderate.
The Low Countries theatre of the War of the First Coalition, also known as the Flanders campaign, was a series of campaigns in the Low Countries conducted from 20 April 1792 to 7 June 1795 during the first years of the War of the First Coalition. As the French Revolution radicalised, the revolutionary National Convention and its predecessors broke the Catholic Church's power (1790), abolished the monarchy (1792) and even executed the deposed king Louis XVI (1793), vying to spread the Revolution beyond the new French Republic's borders, by violent means if necessary. The First Coalition, an alliance of reactionary states representing the Ancien Régime in Central and Western Europe – Habsburg Austria (including the Southern Netherlands), Prussia, Great Britain, the Dutch Republic (the Northern Netherlands), Hanover and Hesse-Kassel – mobilised military forces along all the French frontiers, threatening to invade Revolutionary France and violently restore the monarchy. The subsequent combat operations along the French borders with the Low Countries and Germany became the primary theatre of the War of the First Coalition until March 1796, when Napoleon took over French command on the Italian front.
The April–June 1792 French incursions into the Austrian Netherlands were a disaster, eventually leading frustrated radical revolutionaries to depose the king in August. An unexpected French success in the Battle of Jemappes in November 1792 was followed by a major Coalition victory at Neerwinden in March 1793. After this initial stage, the largest of these forces assembled on the Franco-Flemish border. In this theatre a combined army of Anglo-Hanoverian, Dutch, Hessian, Imperial Austrian and (south of the river Sambre) Prussian troops faced the republican Armée du Nord, and (further to the south) two smaller forces, the Armée des Ardennes and the Armée de la Moselle. The Allies enjoyed several early victories, but were unable to advance beyond the French border fortresses. Coalition forces were eventually forced to withdraw by a series of French counter-offensives, and the May 1794 Austrian decision to redeploy any troops in Poland.
The Allies established a new front in the south of the Netherlands and Germany, but with failing supplies and the Prussians pulling out, they were forced to continue their retreat through the arduous winter of 1794/5. The Austrians pulled back to the lower Rhine and the British to Hanover from where they were eventually evacuated. The victorious French were aided in their conquest by Patriots from the Northern and Southern Netherlands, who had previously been forced to flee to France after their own revolutions in the north in 1787 and in the south in 1789/91 had failed. These Patriots now returned under French banners as "Batavians" and "Belgians" to 'liberate' their countries. The republican armies pushed on to Amsterdam and early in 1795 replaced the Dutch Republic with a client state, the Batavian Republic, whilst the Austrian Netherlands and the Prince-Bishopric of Liège were annexed by the French Republic.
Prussia and Hesse-Kassel would recognise the French victory and territorial gains with the Peace of Basel (1795). Austria would not acknowledge the loss of the Southern Netherlands until the 1797 Treaty of Leoben and later the Treaty of Campo Formio. The Dutch stadtholder William V, Prince of Orange, who had fled to England, also initially refused to recognise the Batavian Republic, and in the Kew Letters ordered all Dutch colonies to temporarily accept British authority instead. Not until the 1801 Oranienstein Letters would he recognise the Batavian Republic, and his son William Frederick accept the Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda as compensation for the loss of the hereditary stadtholderate.
Background
France, Britain and the Dutch Republic
By the end of the American Revolutionary War in the early 1780s, France was providing significant financial support to the American rebels to help the Thirteen Colonies break away from the British Empire. Although London had to recognise the United States' independence in 1783, this French foreign policy success came at a terrible financial cost, as the Bourbon kingdom struggled with enormous debts. The Eden Agreement of 1786 ended the Anglo-French economic war and allowed both countries to somewhat recover, but the terms were very unfavourable to the French, stoking resentment.
The Dutch Republic had been divided on the American Revolution; whilst the stadtholderian regime of William V, Prince of Orange sought to back his cousin George III of Britain against the American rebels, a large group of democratic-republican Dutch Patriotregenten supported the rebels and sought to trade with them. Rising tensions led to Britain declaring the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–1784), which thoroughly decimated the Dutch navy. The land defences of the Northern Netherlands were also in poor condition, its States Army not having fought in a war for 45 years. Growing Patriot dissatisfaction with the Orangist government during the war prompted the so-called Batavian Revolution, spurred on by the 1781 pamphlet Aan het Volk van Nederland (spread anonymously by Joan Derk van der Capellen), which called on all citizens to arm themselves, overthrow the stadtholder and form an alliance with the United States and France against Britain. Tensions between the two factions escalated to a brief, low-level civil war in 1786–1787.
William V only managed to suppress the Patriot revolt with great difficulty after the Prussian and British intervention in 1787, exiling many Patriots to France. William's Anglo-Prussian allies enabled him to preserve the House of Orange, and strengthen his authoritarian stadtholderate regime by the Act of Guarantee (April 1788). Under the August 1788 Triple Alliance, the United Provinces became a de facto Anglo-Prussian protectorate. When the French Revolution broke out in May–June 1789, Britain and the Dutch Republic initially adopted a neutral policy towards the revolution in France, which temporarily withdrew from the international stage to deal with internal problems. Even when Southern Netherlandish revolutionaries offered William to unite the Low Countries under his house in May 1789 and early 1790, the Northern stadtholder rejected the advances and refused to get involved.
Southern Netherlands, Austria and Prussia
While the French Revolution unfolded, simultaneous political crises were brewing in the Austrian Netherlands, as emperor Joseph II had been seeking to force through various political reforms since 1787, in the face of opposition from the conservative nobility and clergy. Revolutionary Henri Van der Noot had vainly lobbied at the Orangist and British courts in May 1789 for a military intervention in the Southern Netherlands to drive out the Habsburg Austrians. Only Prussia showed limited interest in his request; it rejected revolutionary ideas, but found any chance to weaken its Habsburg rival attractive. Matters came to a head when Joseph II launched a coup d'état on 18 June 1789, unilaterally abolishing the States-General and revoking all noble privileges. Archbishop Joannes-Henricus de Franckenberg eventually called for armed resistance to defend the Catholic Church, and the secret society Pro aris et focis of Jan Frans Vonck and Jan-Baptist Verlooy began recruiting troops for a rebel army. Some exiled Northern Patriots living in Brussels joined. With the French Revolution to the south escalating, and the Liège Revolution erupting in the neighbouring Prince-Bishopric of Liège in August 1789, the Brabant Revolution finally broke out in the Austrian Netherlands in October 1789. The Brabantine rebel army defeated the Austrian forces at the Battle of Turnhout in October, and by January 1790, revolutionary Patriots led by Van der Noot and Vonck had taken control of most of the Southern Netherlands, and proclaimed the United Belgian States, alongside the Liège Republic. Both rebel states were unofficially protected by a Prussian army occupying Liège to thwart possible Austrian attempts at restoration.
However, aside from the small Prussian force, no foreign power supported the young Belgian polity. And although many revolutionaries in Brussels wore orange cockades in January and February 1790, in hopes of uniting the Northern and Southern Netherlands under the House of Orange, William V once again showed no interest. Moreover, divisions within the Brabantine rebellion soon led to conflict between the conservative Statists led by Van der Noot and the liberal Vonckists, who were expelled. Finally, after Joseph II died and was succeeded by his brother Leopold II, he reconciled himself with Frederick William II of Prussia with the Treaty of Reichenbach (27 July 1790), as they both feared French aggression and decided to cooperate. Due to Anglo-Austrian diplomatic pressure, Prussian troops were withdrawn from Liège to allow an Austrian restoration. Vienna's truce with the Ottomans in September freed up 30,000 troops for an expedition to the Southern Netherlands, ending both the United Belgian States and the Liège Republic by January 1791. Most Statists would reconcile themselves with Leopold II's conservative government. Revolutionary fervour had not perished, however, and when French Republican forces invaded the South in November 1792, Liégeois and Vonckist Patriots would aid in their conquest. About 2,500 Liégeois and Southern Netherlandish emigrants fought on the French side in the Battle of Jemappes.
Ernst Kossmann (1986) analysed: 'In the end, the whole conflict in North and South had the same conclusion: the Prussian army met just as little resistance in the [Dutch] Republic as the Austrian did in Belgium. And just like the restored Orangist regime turned the Patriots into Francophile extremists, the Vonckists exiled to France forgot the nationalism out of which their movement had emerged, and eventually they would gleefully welcome the foreign revolution into their country. The major fact of subsequent years is the denationalisation of the democratic reform faction that had originated from nationalism.'
Outbreak of war
Meanwhile, the failed June 1791 Flight to Varennes of king Louis XVI and his Austrian-born queen Marie Antoinette (Leopold II's sister) sparked more anti-royalist and republican sentiment, radicalising the French Revolution further. With their differences settled and the Brabant and Liège Revolutions in the Southern Netherlands crushed, Austria and Prussia turned their attention to France, issuing the Declaration of Pillnitz (27 August 1791) that it was "in the common interest of all sovereigns of Europe" that no harm may come to the French royal family, and that if necessary, they would militarily intervene in order to protect the monarchy. The Girondins, the dominant faction in the Legislative Assembly, sought to export the revolution abroad and also break the power of other European monarchs, while Louis XVI hoped that his full royal powers would be restored if France lost a war with Austria and Prussia, which had concluded a defensive alliance on 7 February 1792. Thus, supported by the Girondin Assembly, king Louis XVI of France declared war on Austria on 20 April 1792; Prussia immediately joined its Austrian ally against France. Britain and the Northern Netherlands sought to maintain their neutrality, but the British government was increasingly concerned about the security of the United Provinces.
Overall Allied command was led by the Austrian commander Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, with a staff of Austrian advisers answering to Emperor Francis II and the Austrian Foreign Minister Johann, Baron Thugut. When Britain entered the war in February 1793, the Duke of York was obliged to follow objectives set by Pitt's Foreign Minister Henry Dundas. Thus Allied military decisions in the campaign were tempered by political objectives from Vienna and London.
Opposing the Allies, the armies of the French Republic were in a state of disruption; old soldiers of the Ancien Régime fought side by side with raw volunteers, urged on by revolutionary fervour from the représentant en mission. Many of the old officer class had emigrated, leaving the cavalry in particular in chaotic condition. Only the artillery arm, less affected by emigration, had survived intact. The problems would become even more acute following the introduction of mass conscription, the Levée en Masse, in 1793. French commanders balanced between maintaining the security of the frontier, and clamours for victory (which would protect the regime in Paris) on the one hand, and the desperate condition of the army on the other, while they themselves were constantly under suspicion from the representatives. The price of failure or disloyalty was the guillotine.
1792 campaign
Initial French disasters
The first skirmishes on the northern front took place during the battles of Quiévrain and Marquain (28–30 April 1792), in which ill-prepared French revolutionary armies were easily expelled from the Austrian Netherlands. The revolutionaries were forced on the defensive for months, losing Verdun and barely saving Thionville until the Coalition's unexpected defeat at Valmy (20 September 1792) turned the tables, and opened up a new opportunity for a northward invasion. The fresh momentum emboldened the revolutionaries to definitively abolish the monarchy and proclaim the French First Republic the very next day.
Battle of Jemappes and Austrian retreat
On 6 November 1792, French commander Charles François Dumouriez managed to achieve a surprise victory over the Imperial command under the Duke of Saxe-Teschen and Clerfayt at the Battle of Jemappes. By the end of 1792, Dumouriez had marched largely unopposed across most of the Austrian Netherlands and the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, an area that roughly corresponds to present-day Belgium. As the Austrians retreated, Dumouriez saw an opportunity with the Patriot exiles to overthrow the weak Dutch Republic by making a bold move north. A second French Division under Francisco de Miranda manoeuvred against the Austrians and Hanoverians in eastern Belgium.
The French government issued a declaration on 16 November to end the closure of the Scheldt and reopen the river for navigation after 200 years, as well as asserting the right of the French armies to pursue Austrian troops into neutral territory. Another decree on 19 November stated that the French Republic would support revolutionaries abroad. The British government regarded these statements and initial incursions into Dutch territory as violating the Netherlands' sovereignty and neutrality, and began preparing for war. Meanwhile, William V had joined the anti-French coalition, leading French forces to justify an invasion of Staats-Brabant. In December 1792, Miranda conquered Roermond.
1793 campaign
Dumouriez's invasion of the Dutch Republic
The execution of the deposed French king Louis XVI on 21 January 1793 stoked more fears amongst the other European monarchs that they would be next. France formally declared war on Britain and the Netherlands on 1 February 1793, and soon afterwards against Spain as well. Throughout 1793, the Holy Roman Empire, Sardinia, Portugal, Naples, and Tuscany declared war on France. Allied armies mobilised along all of the French frontiers, the largest and most important in the Flanders Franco-Belgian border region. British Prime Minister Pitt the Younger pledged to finance the formation of the First Coalition.