1794 Campaign: Introduction

For my first attempt at a campaign I've chosen the old cockpit of Europe, the Low Countries, specifically the Sambre Muese region of Belgium.

There are a couple of reasons for this: firstly, I have a good map of the area; secondly, it was a theatre that pre-occupied the Revolutionary Government in Paris, offering as it did the shortest route for Allied armies to march on the French capital.

That said, the 'sitting tenant' in Belgium at this time, the Austrians, were not particularly interested in what was a troublesome, if wealthy, province and were chiefly interested in using it as a bargaining chip in peace negotiations, should these occur, and trading it for some other province nearer Vienna.

The theatre of operations did offer the most direct route to Brussels in the north and Cambrai - Le Cateau in the south. Whilst both the French and Coalition were focused on maritime Flanders in the west, in our alternative timeline they had nevertheless committed large bodies of troops to this area.

For the purposes of our narrative, the French Armee du Nord had a paper strength of 120,000 in March 1794, although its real numbers were much less. The Austrians could muster some 60000 men in the province and a British army of 15000 was present in Flanders. The British were chiefly interested in the channel ports, both to preserve their lines of communication to those in Allied hands and because they wished to capture the privateering base of Dunkirk. We can therefore ignore them in our campaign. The Austrians had to use a good portion of their strength on garrison duty and can only field around 40000 men for mobile operations across the whole province. Looking at our map and because of the slighting of the famous barrier fortresses by Joseph II, only Namur is a citadel of any strength. Across the frontier, Conde, Valenciennes, Mauberge, Philippeville,are all fortified to varying degrees.

The French forces for our campaign, designated the Armee du Sambre et Meuse, are a part of the Armee du Nord and number around 29000 men. There are 20800 infantry, 6400 cavalry and 48 guns, 16 of which are heavy cannon suitable for siege warfare. They are led by General Henri Deschamps, a former non-commissioned officer in the Royal army. We will introduce his subordinates in a later post. His forces are of varying quality, including some good former soldiers of the old regime, and experienced national guardsmen and other republican troops. The Amalgame of the previous year has been unevenly applied and this, together with an influx of volunteers and conscripts of varying enthusiasm and resilience, means his army will be challenging to handle.

The Austrians for their part have deployed almost two thirds of their mobile strength in this area and so are not outnumbered by the French, which is unusual for this period. They have 23200 infantry; 5600 cavalry; and around 50 guns. These are all experienced, good quality troops, especially the light cavalry. Their leadership is less good: the overall commander Helmuth von Schwarzkopf is a capable enough general but his subordinates, who will also be introduced in a later post, are less so. Suffice to say that collectively, and to varying degrees, they suffer from all of the faults of 'inertness' described by Phil Barker viz: 'lethargy, indecision, timidity, over-confident neglect of elementary precautions, failure to take firm control of subordinates, innate incapacity, dementia, jealousy, extreme pig-headedness, and reluctance to beat the enemy badly...'.