Flanders Campaign

This article is about a conflict during the French Revolutionary Wars 1793–1795.
For the Flanders

campaigns during the First World War 1914–1918, see Battle of Flanders (disambiguation).
Flanders Campaign
Part of the War of the First Coalition
French commander Jourdan at the Battle of Fleurus. 1837 painting by Mauzaisse.

Date 6 November 1792 – 7 June 1795 (2 years, 7 months, and 1 day)
Location Belgium, Northern France, Netherlands, and the Rhineland
• French victory
• Austrian Netherlands and Liège annexed by France
Result
• Batavian Republic created as a French satellite.
Belligerents
Dutch Republic
Great Britain
Holy Roman Empire
• Austria
• Hanover
French First Republic
• Hesse-Kassel
• Hesse-Darmstadt
Kingdom of Prussia
Armée des émigrés

Commanders and leaders
• Adam Philippe, Comte de Custine • Prince of Saxe-Coburg
• Auguste Marie Henri Picot de • François Sébastien de Croix de
Dampierre Clerfayt
• Charles François Dumouriez • Johann Peter Beaulieu
• Jean Nicolas Houchard • Franz von Kaunitz-Rietberg
• Charles Kilmaine • Mack von Lieberich
• Charles Pichegru • William, Hereditary Prince of Orange
• Joseph Souham • Duke of York
• Jean Moreau • William Harcourt
• William Erskine
• Alexander von Knobelsdorff
• Jean-Baptiste Jourdan • Ludwig von Wurmb
• Heinrich von Freytag
• Johann von Wallmoden-Gimborn
•
War of the First Coalition
•
Flanders Campaign
The Flanders Campaign (or Campaign in the Low Countries) was conducted from 6 November
1792 to 7 June 1795 during the first years of the French Revolutionary Wars. A Coalition of states
representing the Ancien Régime in Western Europe – Austria (including the Southern Netherlands),
Prussia, Great Britain, the Dutch Republic (the Northern Netherlands), Hanover and Hesse-Kassel –
mobilised military forces along all the French frontiers, with the intention to invade Revolutionary
France and end the French First Republic. The radicalised French revolutionaries, who broke the
Catholic Church's power (1790), abolished the monarchy (1792) and even executed the deposed
king Louis XVI of France (1793), vied to spread the Revolution beyond France's borders, by violent
means if necessary.
19th-century painting romanticising the Battle of Jemappes.

A quick French success in the Battle of Jemappes in November 1792 was followed by a major
Coalition victory at Neerwinden in March 1793. After this initial stage, the largest of these forces
assembled on the Franco-Flemish border. In this theatre a combined army of Anglo-Hanoverian,
Dutch, Hessian, Imperial Austrian and, south of the river Sambre, Prussian troops faced the
Republican Armée du Nord, and (further to the south) two smaller forces, the Armée des Ardennes
and the Armée de la Moselle. The Allies enjoyed several early victories, but were unable to advance
beyond the French border fortresses. Coalition forces were eventually forced to withdraw by a
series of French counter-offensives, and the May 1794 Austrian decision to redeploy any troops in
Poland.
The Allies established a new front in the south of the Netherlands and Germany, but with failing
supplies and the Prussians pulling out they were forced to continue their retreat through the arduous
winter of 1794/5. The Austrians pulled back to the lower Rhine and the British to Hanover from
where they were eventually evacuated. The victorious French were aided in their conquest by
Patriots from the Netherlands, who had previously been forced to flee to France after their own
revolutions in the north in 1787 and in the south in 1789/91 had failed. These Patriots now returned
under French banners as "Batavians" and "Belgians" to 'liberate' their countries. The republican
armies pushed on to Amsterdam and early in 1795 replaced the Dutch Republic with a client state,
the Batavian Republic, whilst the Austrian Netherlands and the Prince-Bishopric of Liège were
annexed by the French Republic.
Prussia and Hesse-Kassel would recognise the French victory and territorial gains with the Peace of
Basel (1795). Austria would not acknowledge the loss of the Southern Netherlands until the 1797
Treaty of Leoben and later the Treaty of Campo Formio. The Dutch stadtholder William V, Prince
of Orange, who had fled to England, also initially refused to recognise the Batavian Republic, and
in the Kew Letters ordered all Dutch colonies to temporarily accept British authority instead. Not
until the 1801 Oranienstein Letters would he recognise the Batavian Republic, and his son William
Frederick accept the Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda as compensation for the loss of the
hereditary stadtholderate.
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This article is about a conflict during the French Revolutionary Wars 1793–1795.

For the Flanders

French commander Jourdan at the Battle of Fleurus. 1837 painting by Mauzaisse.

Armée des émigrés

19th-century painting romanticising the Battle of Jemappes.

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