LECTURE 7 IRS

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE EMERGENCE OF TOTAL WAR

IN THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM AND WHY IT IS A TOTAL WAR
FROM VARIOUS ASPECTS.

World War I is often referred to as the first "total war." People at the time used this
term to describe the size and devastation of the war. It helped them understand how
the roles of soldiers and civilians became difficult to separate. The classic
20th-century work on total war Erich Ludendorff's Der totale Krieg (1935; The
“Total” War), based on the author's experience in directing Germany's war effort in
World War I. He envisaged total mobilization of manpower and resources for war.
When Revolutionary France declared war on the Austrian empire in the spring of
1792, its leaders promised a short, sweet and victorious campaign. These wars
marked something fundamentally new in Western history, and collectively deserve
the title of the first 'total war. Total war in WWI. Total War is when the entire
resources and population are mobilized towards the war effort, which takes priority
over everything else. Further, Total War also involves prosecuting the war against
the entire population of the enemy, not just against its military.

The French Revolutionary Wars (French: Guerres de la Révolution française) were

a series of sweeping military conflicts lasting from 1792 until 1802 and resulting
from the French Revolution. They pitted France against Great Britain, the Holy
Roman Empire, Prussia, Russia, and several other monarchies. They are divided in
two periods: the War of the First Coalition (1792–97) and the War of the Second
Coalition (1798–1802). Initially confined to Europe, the fighting gradually
assumed a global dimension. After a decade of constant warfare and aggressive
diplomacy, France had conquered a wide array of territories, from the Italian
Peninsula and the Low Countries in Europe to the Louisiana Territory in North
America. French success in these conflicts ensured the spread of revolutionary
principles over much of Europe.

As early as 1791, the other monarchies of Europe looked with outrage at the
revolution and its upheavals; and they considered whether they should intervene,
either in support of King Louis, to prevent the spread of revolution, or to take
advantage of the chaos in France. France declared war on Prussia and Austria in
the spring of 1792 and they responded with a coordinated invasion that was
eventually turned back at the Battle of Valmy in September. This victory
emboldened the National Convention to abolish the monarchy. A series of victories
by the new French armies abruptly ended with defeat at Neerwinden in the spring
of 1793. The French suffered additional defeats in the remainder of the year and
these difficult times allowed the Jacobins to rise to power and impose the Reign of
Terror to unify the nation.

In 1794, the situation improved dramatically for the French as huge victories at
Fleurus against the Austrians and at the Black Mountain against the Spanish
signaled the start of a new stage in the wars. By 1795, the French had captured the
Austrian Netherlands and knocked Spain and Prussia out of the war with the Peace
of Basel. A hitherto unknown general named Napoleon Bonaparte began his first
campaign in Italy in April 1796. In less than a year, French armies under Napoleon
decimated the Habsburg forces and evicted them from the Italian peninsula,
winning almost every battle and capturing 150,000 prisoners. With French forces
marching towards Vienna, the Austrians sued for peace and agreed to the Treaty of
Campo Formio, ending the First Coalition against the Republic.
The War of the Second Coalition began in 1798 with the French invasion of Egypt,
headed by Napoleon. The Allies took the opportunity presented by the French
effort in the Middle East to regain territories lost from the First Coalition. The war
began well for the Allies in Europe, where they gradually pushed the French out of
Italy and invaded Switzerland – racking up victories at Magnano, Cassano and
Novi along the way. However, their efforts largely unraveled with the French
victory at Zurich in September 1799, which caused Russia to drop out of the war.[4]
Meanwhile, Napoleon's forces annihilated a series of Egyptian and Ottoman armies
at the battles of the Pyramids, Mount Tabor and Abukir. These victories in Egypt
further enhanced Napoleon's popularity back in France, and he returned in triumph
in the fall of 1799, though the Egyptian Campaign ultimately ended in failure.
Furthermore, the Royal Navy had won the Battle of the Nile in 1798, further
strengthening British control of the Mediterranean and weakening the French
Navy.

Napoleon's arrival from Egypt led to the fall of the Directory in the Coup of 18
Brumaire, with Napoleon installing himself as Consul. Napoleon then reorganized
the French army and launched a new assault against the Austrians in Italy during
the spring of 1800. This brought a decisive French victory at the Battle of Marengo
in June 1800, after which the Austrians withdrew from the peninsula once again.
Another crushing French triumph at Hohenlinden in Bavaria forced the Austrians
to seek peace for a second time, leading to the Treaty of Lunéville in 1801. With
Austria and Russia out of the war, Britain found itself increasingly isolated and
agreed to the Treaty of Amiens with Napoleon's government in 1802, concluding
the Revolutionary Wars. However, the lingering tensions proved too difficult to
contain, and the Napoleonic Wars began over a year later with the formation of the
Third Coalition, continuing the series of Coalition Wars.
While the First Coalition attacked the new Republic, France faced civil war and
counter-revolutionary guerrilla war. Here, several insurgents of the Chouannerie
have been taken prisoner. Spain and Portugal entered the anti-French coalition in
January 1793. Britain began military preparations in late 1792 and declared that
war was inevitable unless France gave up its conquests, notwithstanding French
assurances they would not attack Holland or annex the Low Countries. [10] Britain
expelled the French ambassador following the execution of Louis XVI and on 1
February France responded by declaring war on Great Britain and the Dutch
Republic.

France drafted hundreds of thousands of men, beginning a policy of using mass

conscription to deploy more of its manpower than the autocratic states could
manage to do (first stage, with a decree of 24 February 1793 ordering the draft of
300,000 men, followed by the general mobilization of all the young men able to be
drafted, through the famous decree of 23 August 1793). Nonetheless, the Coalition
allies launched a determined drive to invade France during the Flanders Campaign.

France suffered severe reverses at first. They were driven out of the Austrian
Netherlands, and serious revolts flared in the west and south of France. One of
these, at Toulon, was the first serious taste of action for an unknown young
artillery officer Napoleon Bonaparte. He contributed to the siege of the city and its
harbor by planning an effective assault with well-placed artillery batteries raining
projectiles down on rebel positions. This performance helped make his reputation
as a capable tactician, and it fueled his meteoric rise to military and political
power. Once the city was occupied, he participated in pacifying the rebelling
citizens of Toulon with the same artillery that he first used to conquer the city.
By the end of the year, large new armies had turned back foreign invaders, and the
Reign of Terror, a fierce policy of repression, had suppressed internal revolts. The
French military was in the ascendant. Lazare Carnot, a scientist and prominent
member of the Committee of Public Safety, organized the fourteen armies of the
Republic, and was then nicknamed the Organizer of the Victory.

The year 1794 brought increased success to the French armies. On the Alpine
frontier, there was little change, with the French invasion of Piedmont failing. On
the Spanish border, the French under General Dugommier rallied from their
defensive positions at Bayonne and Perpignan, driving the Spanish out of
Roussillon and invading Catalonia. Dugommier was killed in the Battle of the
Black Mountain in November.

On the northern front in the Flanders Campaign, the Austrians and French both
prepared offensives in Belgium, with the Austrians besieging Landrecies and
advancing towards Mons and Maubeuge. The French prepared an offensive on
multiple fronts, with two armies in Flanders under Pichegru and Moreau, and
Jourdan attacking from the German border. The French withstood several
damaging but inconclusive actions before regaining the initiative at the battles of
Tourcoing and Fleurus in June. The French armies drove the Austrians, British,
and Dutch beyond the Rhine, occupying Belgium, the Rhineland, and the south of
the Netherlands.

On the middle Rhine front in July, General Michaud's Army of the Rhine
attempted two offensives in July in the Vosges, the second of which was successful
but not followed up, allowing for a Prussian counter-attack in September.
Otherwise this sector of the front was largely quiet over the course of the year.
At sea, the French Atlantic Fleet succeeded in holding off a British attempt to
interdict a vital cereal convoy from the United States on the Glorious First of June,
though at the cost of one quarter of its strength. In the Caribbean, the British fleet
landed in Martinique in February, taking the whole island by 24 March and
holding it until the Treaty of Amiens, and in Guadeloupe in April, where they
captured the island briefly but were driven out by Victor Hugues later in the year.
In the Mediterranean, following the British evacuation of Toulon, the Corsican
leader Pasquale Paoli agreed with admiral Samuel Hood to place Corsica under
British protection in return for assistance capturing French garrisons at Saint-
Florent, Bastia, and Calvi, creating the short-lived Anglo-Corsican Kingdom. By
the end of the year French armies had won victories on all fronts, and as the year
closed they began advancing into the Netherlands.

The year opened with French forces in the process of attacking the Dutch Republic
in the middle of winter. The Dutch people rallied to the French call and started the
Batavian Revolution. City after city was occupied by the French. The Dutch fleet
was captured, and the stadtholder William V fled to be replaced by a popular
Batavian Republic, a sister republic which supported the revolutionary cause and
signed a treaty with the French, ceding the territories of North Brabant and
Maastricht to France on 16 May.

In addition to opening a flood of tactical and strategic opportunities, the

Revolutionary Wars also laid the foundation for modern military theory. Later
authors that wrote about "nations in arms" drew inspiration from the French
Revolution, in which dire circumstances seemingly mobilized the entire French
nation for war and incorporated nationalism into the fabric of military history. [30]
Although the reality of war in the France of 1795 would be different from that in
the France of 1915, conceptions and mentalities of war evolved significantly.
Clausewitz correctly analyzed the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras to give
posterity a thorough and complete theory of war that emphasized struggles
between nations occurring everywhere, from the battlefield to the legislative
assemblies, and to the very way that people think. [31] War now emerged as a vast
panorama of physical and psychological forces heading for victory or defeat.