Battle of Valmy
A French army stopped a Prussian invasion at Valmy on 20 September 1792, and almost nobody was killed. The circumstances were as bad as they could be. France had declared war in April, its officer corps had emigrated in large numbers, its armies had run at the first contact in the spring, and a Prussian and Austrian force under the Duke of Brunswick had taken Longwy and Verdun and was on the road to Paris. Brunswick had also issued a manifesto promising to destroy the city if the royal family were harmed, which is a large part of why the monarchy fell in August. The two French armies under Dumouriez and Kellermann joined and took a position on a low ridge near the village of Valmy, across the Prussian line of advance, with a windmill on it. What happened was an artillery duel in fog and rain for most of a day. The Prussians advanced twice and did not press home; the French line, which everyone including its own commanders expected to break, did not, and the gunners of the old royal artillery — the one arm the emigration had not gutted — outshot them. The Prussians lost about 180 men and the French 300. Brunswick withdrew ten days later, with dysentery in his camp and the roads dissolving. Goethe was there in the Prussian suite and wrote that a new epoch in the history of the world had begun that day. The Convention abolished the monarchy the following morning. Kellermann was made Duke of Valmy by Napoleon and had his heart buried on the field. The mill was destroyed in the nineteenth century and rebuilt twice, which is a small illustration of how much the day came to matter to a republic that had not yet been declared when it was fought.
- Year: 1792 CE
- Category: Military
