Battle of Wattignies

Battle of Wattignies
Part of the French Revolution
Lazare Carnot at Wattignies by Georges Moreau de Tours. Carnot constructed his own narrative of the battle with himself as hero and the French army as minor players.
Date 15–16 October 1793 Location Wattignies-la-Victoire, near Maubeuge, France Result French victory
Belligerents
Republican France	Habsburg Austria Dutch Republic
Commanders and leaders
Jean-Baptiste Jourdan Lazare Carnot Jacques Ferrand	Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld Count of Clerfayt Prince of Orange
Strength
Engaged: 45,000 Jourdan: 45,000 Ferrand: 25,000	Engaged: 22,400 Observation Army: 37,000 Siege Army: 26,000
Casualties and losses
3,000–5,000	2,487–3,000

The Battle of Wattignies (15–16 October 1793) saw a Republican French army commanded by Jean-Baptiste Jourdan attack a Coalition army directed by Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. After two days of combat Jourdan's troops compelled the Habsburg Austrian covering force led by François Sébastien Charles Joseph de Croix, Count of Clerfayt to withdraw. The War of the First Coalition victory allowed the French to raise the Siege of Maubeuge. At a time when failed generals were often executed or imprisoned, Jourdan had to endure interference from Lazare Carnot from the Committee of Public Safety. The village, renamed Wattignies-la-Victoire in honor of the important success, is located 9 kilometres (6 mi) southeast of Maubeuge.

Coburg's main army encircled 25,000 French soldiers in Maubeuge while about 22,000 Austrians under Clerfayt were formed in a semi-circle, covering the southern approaches to the fortress. On the first day, 45,000 French soldiers mounted a clumsy attack which was easily repulsed, except near the village of Wattignies. On the second day, Jourdan concentrated half his army at Wattignies and after a tough fight, forced Coburg to concede defeat. Though the Coalition army was better trained than the French, its units were spread out too thinly and the different nationalities failed to cooperate. Soon the Coalition army went into winter quarters, finishing a campaign that started with great promise and ended in disappointment. Carnot rewrote history so that he and the political representatives got most of the credit for the triumph; Jourdan was dismissed in January 1794.

In the summer of 1793, the 118,000-strong Coalition army punched a gap in the line of French fortresses along the frontier with the Austrian Netherlands, with the Siege of Condé concluding on 12 July and the Siege of Valenciennes on 27 July. In the Battle of Caesar's Camp, the Coalition army under Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld hustled the French Army of the North out of a position near Cambrai on 7 August. At this moment, the Coalition allies unwisely split their forces. Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany headed west toward Dunkirk with 37,000 British, Austrians, Hanoverians and Hessians.

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