In the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars, the artillery arm lost the fewest officers by emigration. That was because many of its officers came from middle-class instead of aristocratic families. Thanks to the Gribeauval system, the French field artillery was Europe's finest. The artillerists had to rely on hired civilian drivers and horses to carry their guns into battle. This problem was not rectified until shortly after 1800, when the drivers became soldiers. At the Battle of Jemappes in 1792, the French superiority in artillery contributed to the victory. The commanding general Charles François Dumouriez remarked that French soldiers were more impetuous when their guns dominated the enemy, and that when the artillery was not successful, the infantry hung back. Historian Ramsay Weston Phipps noted that the French artillery in the War of the First Coalition was "excellent" and helped overcome some of the failings of the new armies. After the Battle of Wattignies in 1793, one Allied observer wrote that the French victory was due to "their immense artillery".