Battle of Jemappes

Battle of Jemappes

Date	6 November 1792
Location	Near Jemappes, Belgium
Result	French victory

Belligerents

France

Holy Roman Empire

Commanders and leaders

Charles Dumouriez

Albert of Saxe-Teschen

Count of Clerfayt

Strength

40,000 – 43,000,
100 guns

13,796,
56 guns

Casualties and losses

2,000

1,241,
5 guns

The Battle of Jemappes (6 November 1792) took place near the town of Jemappes in Hainaut, Belgium, near Mons during the War of the First Coalition, part of the French Revolutionary Wars. One of the first major offensive battles of the war, it was a victory for the armies of the infant French Republic, and saw the French Armée du Nord, which included a large number of inexperienced volunteers, defeat a substantially smaller regular Austrian army.

General Charles François Dumouriez, in command of an army of French Revolutionary volunteers, faced the Imperial army of Field Marshal Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen and his second-in-command François de Croix, Count of Clerfayt. The French, who outnumbered their opponents by about three-to-one, launched a series of enthusiastic but uncoordinated attacks against the Austrian position on a ridge. At length, the French seized a portion of the ridge and the Austrians were unable to drive them away. Saxe-Teschen conceded defeat by ordering a withdrawal.

Dumouriez, intent on invading the Austrian Netherlands, advanced late in the season and attacked the Austrians with greatly superior forces. Jemappes was won by costly but effective charges against the Austrians' prepared position. Dumouriez overran the Austrian Netherlands within a month, but lost it at the Battle of Neerwinden in March. The French would not reconquer the Austrian Netherlands until the summer of 1794.

In the summer of 1792 Charles Dumouriez, the French foreign minister and commander of the Armée du Nord, had believed that the best way to prevent an Austrian and Prussian invasion of France was to invade the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium), but the Allies had launched their invasion before Dumouriez was ready to move, and he had been forced to move south. The Allied invasion had been at Valmy on 20 September where the French army stood up to an artillery bombardment, and proved that it would not flee at the first sign of opposition The Allied commander, the Duke of Brunswick, was not willing to risk a full-scale assault on the French line, and withdrew after it.

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