Take the job Jourdan, no pressure

Context

During the height of the French Revolution, the Army of the North which held the frontline in Northern France and Belgium saw three of it’s commanders, Nicolas Luckner, Adam Philippe, the Count of Custine, and Jean Nicolas Houchard be sent to the guillotine for their perceived failures by the National Convention. Another commander, Charles Francois Dumouriez would desert to the Coalition side.

After Houchard’s execution, the future Marshal of the Empire Jean-Baptiste Jourdan would be appointed as the new commander of the Army of the North on September 25th, 1793. Jourdan would object to such a promotion, as he had only commanded a mere division (13,000 troops at the Battle of Hondschoote), and now had to command an army of 104,000 ill-trained and equipped soldiers. However, threatened with arrest, Jourdan would eventually oblige to the promotion.

Jourdan’s task was to lift the siege of Maubeuge, with that city being the last fortress standing between the Coalition armies and Paris. Joining him with this task was Lazare Carnot, a representative of the Committee of Public Safety, who was to watch over the new general. Marching along the Sambre River, Jourdan would concentrate his army on the Coalition’s army’s southern siege lines, where he was in a position to destroy a portion of the Coalition army in detail, and lift the siege.

Jourdan planned to concentrate a local superiority of numbers on the Coalition army’s left flank, in an oblique order attack, however this plan was rejected by Carnot, who wanted to attack along the entirety of the Coalition army’s entrenchments. With this cordon assault with no concentration of force, the French advances would be easily repelled by the Coalition army.

With this failure, Carnot decided to go with Jourdan’s plan on the second day. Concentrating superior numbers on the Coalition’s left flank, the French were able to breakthrough the Coaltion’s siege lines, and this forced the Coalition commander, the Prince of Coburg, to lift the siege and withdraw. The relief of Maubeuge would buy more time for the Revolution, with it forcing the Coalition into winter quarters.

Jourdan however, would not get proper credit for the victory as Carnot quickly traveled back to Paris claim credit for the victory. With the Coalition forces holding formidable positions on the Sambre River, Jourdan was unable to make further advances, and was dismissed in January of 1794. However later that year, Jourdan would eventually be reinstated to command the Army of the Moselle, and would conduct a victorious campaign that saw the Coalition forces defeated at the Battle of Fleurus, and driven out of the Austrian Netherlands. He would go on to become one of the most skilled commanders of Revolutionary France.

In 1804, he would be one of the 14 French commanders to be given their Marshal’s Baton by Napoleon Bonaparte.