We have to realise two points in particular, first the singular and tragic condition of the French armies at the moment—short of pay, short of equipment, short of seasoned soldiers, and especially short of experienced leaders, because most of those who should have led them had been executed or were in prison expecting execution—and secondly the fact that the methods of making war and of fighting battles were in a transition state, from the old fashion to the new.
The old fashion of fighting had been, roughly speaking, for the armies to advance in a mass, firing as they went, until one yielded and fell back or until they clashed together with the bayonet. Now the new method was introduced of keeping a big body of troops in reserve, to throw in, and so gain a decision in the battle, after the first encounter of the others. And gradually that disposition of the troops developed into the throwing forward of a single line of shooters in advance of the main body—skirmishers as they came to be called, when the thinning of the line was brought to its extreme.
Together with that new way of fighting battles, there came in a new idea of war. For the old idea had been chiefly to capture some important city or fortress of the enemy, and so to gain a decision in the campaign. The new idea was that a decision might be most quickly and convincingly reached by destroying the enemy's army. And, with that new idea, the value of time seems to have been appreciated more fully—the importance, that is to say, of arriving in numbers at a certain place before the enemy could have time to mass his forces there, and so of beating his armies piecemeal, before they could be concentrated.
As a very rough sketch, that may perhaps serve to give a notion of the way in which war and battles were changing.
It was out of the great danger menacing her very life as a nation that France was now able to draw new strength. The Government passed a decree that all men of suitable age were liable to conscription to the army. They were called on to fight for their own hearths and homes. It was not unlike the idea which had inspired the earliest Roman legions.
Republican victories
The Allies had lost their opportunity. They did not drive their stroke home. France, with much reinforced armies, took the offensive again. She poured into the Netherlands and into Holland. It was indeed only due to the inexperience of her own commanders, and to the interference of her Government with the generals, that the defeats of the Allies were no heavier than they were. A conclusion, for the time being, of the fighting on that front was reached in 1795, when the Austrians retired from the Netherlands—which were then annexed to the French Republic—when Prussia made a separate peace with her, when the English armies were withdrawn, and when Holland was allowed to retain her nominal independence with the style of the Batavian Republic.
And so, ingloriously for the Allies, ended the first coalition against Revolutionary France. The young Republic was for the moment saved; yet it must have been hard to think that the salvation could be more than temporary, so many and so strong were her foes. Her crisis brought forth, for her rescue, the extraordinary being whom most historians agree in deeming the greatest military genius in the whole course of man's story—Napoleon Bonaparte, born, as we have seen, in that little island of Corsica only lately ceded to France by Genoa. It is ever difficult to say to what degree this or that remarkable man has influenced the story of mankind, but we can hardly have a doubt of the immense effect due to the genius of Napoleon.
He came into notice first in course of the attack by the Republican troops on Toulon, which was held by Royalists aided by some English and Spanish ships. He was a Colonel of Artillery then, and conducted certain artillery operations with a masterly success.
After the death of Robespierre the chief power in the Government was put into the hands of a Council of five Directors. Together, they were called the Directory. It was their special business to see that the laws were carried out. The Paris mob did not appreciate the carrying out of the laws, and rose in protest, with the militia, called the National Guard, supporting them. They marched on the Tuileries, where the Government offices were established. The President, warned in time, summoned that young officer of artillery, Napoleon Bonaparte, who was then in Paris, with his batteries, for their defence. Napoleon placed his guns to command the streets approaching the Tuileries, and when the columns of the mob appeared he opened fire on them with grapeshot. Grapeshot: consider the effect of it on those dense columns of humanity advancing through a street! Even the Paris mob, frantic with enthusiasm, could not stand such butchery. They wavered, halted, then streamed back, mangled and beaten. The Directory, the Government of the country, was saved. The reputation of that artillery officer, first heard of at Toulon, was made. He was appointed to the command of what was known as the Army of the Interior.