French Revolutionary Army The French Revolutionary Army is the term used to refer to the military of France during the period between the fall of the " ancien regime " under Louis XVI in 1792 and the formation of the First French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804 . These armies were characterised by their revolutionary fervour and their poor equipment . Although they experienced early disastrous defeats , the revolutionary armies successfully expelled foreign forces from French soil and then overran many neighboring countries , establishing client republics . Leading generals included Jourdan , Bonaparte , Masséna and Moreau . Formation . As the " ancien regime " gave way to a constitutional monarchy , and then to a republic , the entire structure of France was transformed to fall into line with the Revolutionary principles of " Liberty , Equality and Fraternity " . The signing of the Declaration of Pillnitz between Leopold II , Holy Roman Emperor and King Frederick William II of Prussia and the subsequent French declaration of war meant that from its formation , the Republic of France was at war , and it required a potent military force to ensure its survival . As a result , one of the first major elements of the French state to be restructured was the army . Almost all of the " ancien regime " officer class had been drawn from the aristocracy . During the period preceding the final overthrow of the Monarchy , large numbers of officers left their regiments and emigrated . Between 15 September and 1 December 1791 alone 2 , 160 officers of the royal army fled France eventually to join the " émigré " army of Louis Joseph , Prince of Condé . Of those who stayed numbers were either imprisoned or killed during the Reign of Terror . The small remaining cadre of officers were promoted swiftly ; this meant that the majority of the Revolutionary officers were far younger than their Monarchist counterparts . Those high ranking aristocratic officers who remained , among them Marquis de la Fayette , Comte de Rochambeau and Comte Nicolas Luckner , were soon accused of having monarchist sympathies and either killed or forced into exile . Revolutionary fervour , along with calls to save the new regime , resulted in a large influx of enthusiastic yet untrained and undisciplined volunteers ( the first " sans - culottes " , so called because they wore peasants trousers rather than the knee - breeches used by the other armies of the time ) . The desperate situation meant that these men were quickly inducted into the army . One reason for the success of the French Revolutionary Army is the " amalgamation " ( " amalgame " ) organized by the military strategist Lazare Carnot , later Napoleon ' s Minister of War , who assembled in the same regiment , but in different battalions , young volunteers full of enthusiasm at the thought of dying for liberty and old veterans from the former royal army . " 1791 Reglement " . Officially , the Revolutionary Armies were operating along the guidelines set down in the " 1791 Reglement " , a set of regulations created during the years before the Revolution . The " 1791 Reglement " laid down several complex tactical maneuvers , maneuvers which demanded well trained soldier s , officer s and NCO s to perform correctly . The Revolutionary Army was lacking in all three of these areas , and as a result the early efforts to conform to the " 1791 Reglement " were met with disaster . The untrained troops could not perform the complex maneuvers required , unit cohesion was lost and defeat was ensured . Realizing that the army was not capable of conforming with the " 1791 Reglement " , commanders began experimenting with formations which required less training to perform . Many eminent French military thinkers had been clamoring for change decades before . In the period following the humiliating performance of the French Army during the Seven Years ' War , they began to experiment with new ideas . Guibert wrote his epic " Essai général de Tactique " , Bourcet focused on staff procedures and mountain warfare , and Mesnil - Durand spent his time advocating " l ' ordre profond " , tactics of maneuvering and fighting in heavy columnar formations , placing emphasis on the shock of cold steel over firepower . In the 1770s , some commanders , among them the brilliant duc de Broglie performed exercises testing these tactics . It was finally decided to launch a series of experiments to try out the new tactics , and comparing them to the standard Fredrickian linear formation known as " l ' ordre mince " which was universally popular throughout Europe . De Broglie decided that " l ' ordre profond " worked best when it was supported by artillery and large numbers of skirmishers . Despite these exercises , " l ' ordre mince " had strong and powerful supporters in the Royal Armée Française , and it was this formation which went into the " 1791 Reglement " as the standard . Trial by fire . The French struck first , with an invasion of the Austrian Netherlands proposed by foreign minister Charles François Dumouriez . This invasion soon turned into a debacle when it was found that the hastily - trained Revolutionary forces badly lacked obedience : on one occasion , troops murdered their general to avoid a battle ; on another , troops insisted on putting their commander ' s orders to a vote . The Revolutionary forces retreated from the Austrian Netherlands in disarray . In August 1792 , a large Austro - Prussian army commanded by the Duke of Brunswick crossed the frontier and began its march on Paris with the declared intention of restoring full power to Louis XVI . Several Revolutionary armies were easily defeated by the professional Austrian , Hessian , Brunswick and Prussia n troops . The immediate result of this was the storming of the Tuileries Palace and the overthrow of the king . Successive Revolutionary forces failed to halt Brunswick ' s advance , and by mid - September it appeared that Paris would fall to the monarchists . The Convention ordered the remaining armies to be combined under the command of Dumouriez and François Christophe Kellermann . At the Battle of Valmy on 20 September 1792 , the Revolutionary forces defeated Brunswick ' s advance guard , causing the invading army to begin retreating to the border . Much of the credit to the victory must go to the French artillery , widely viewed as the best in Europe thanks to the technical improvements of Jean Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval . The Battle of Valmy ensured that the Revolutionary armies were respected by their enemies , and for the next ten years they not only defended the fledgling First French Republic , but under the command of Generals such as Moreau , Jourdan , Kléber , Desaix and Bonaparte expanded the borders of the French republic . Lazare Carnot . While the " Cannonade of Valmy " had saved the Republic from imminent destruction and caused its enemies to take pause , the guillotining of Louis XVI in January 1793 and the convention ' s proclamation that it would ' export the revolution ' hardened the resolve of France ' s enemies to destroy the Republic and reinstate a monarchy . In early 1793 , the First Coalition was formed , not only from Prussia and Austria , but also Sardinia , Naples , The Dutch United Provinces , Spain and Great Britain . The Republic was under attack on several fronts , and in the fiercely Catholic region of La Vendée an armed revolt had broken out . The Revolutionary army was greatly overstretched , and it seemed that the fall of the republic was imminent . In early 1793 Lazare Carnot , a prominent mathematician , physicist , and delegate to the Convention , was promoted to the Committee of Public Safety . Displaying an exceptional talent for organization and for enforcing discipline , Carnot set about rearranging the disheveled Revolutionary Armies . Realizing that no amount of reforming and discipline was going to offset the massive numerical superiority enjoyed by France ' s enemies , Carnot ordered ( 24 February 1793 decree of the national Convention ) each département to provide a quota of new recruits , a number totaling around 300 , 000 . By mid - 1793 , the Revolutionary Army had increased around 645 , 000 men . " Levée en masse " . On 23 August 1793 , at Carnot ' s insistence , the Convention issued the following proclamation ordering a " levée en masse " All unmarried able bodied men aged between 18 and 25 were to report immediately for military service . Those married , as well as the remaining men , women and children , were to focus their efforts on arming and supplying the army . This increased the size of the Revolutionary Armies dramatically , providing the armies in the field with the manpower to hold off the enemy attacks . Carnot was hailed by the government as the " Organizer of Victory " . By September 1794 , the Revolutionary Army had 1 , 500 , 000 men under arms . Carnot ' s " levée en masse " had provided so much manpower that it was not necessary to repeat it again until 1797 . Tactics . Seeing the failure of the " 1791 Reglement " , several early revolutionary commanders followed de Broglie ' s example and experimented with the pre - revolutionary ideas , gradually adapting them until they discovered a system that worked . The final standard used by the early Revolutionary Armies consisted of the following . Infantry . Following the dissolution of the " ancien regime " , the system of named regiments was abandoned . Instead , the new army was formed into a series of numbered " demi - brigades " . Consisting of two or three battalion s , these formations were designated " demi - brigade s " in an attempt to avoid the feudal connotations of the term " Regiment " . In mid - 1793 , the Revolutionary Army officially comprised 196 infantry " demi - brigades " . After the initial dismal performance of the " federe " volunteer battalions , Carnot ordered that each " demi - brigade " was to consist of one regular ( ex - Royal Army ) and two " federe " battalions . These new formations , intended to combine the discipline and training of the old army with the enthusiasm of the new volunteers , were proven successful at Valmy in September 1792 . In 1794 , the new " demi - brigade " was universally adopted . The Revolutionary Army had been formed from a hodgepodge of different units , and as such did not have a uniform appearance . Veterans in their white uniforms and tarleton helmets from the " ancien regime " period served alongside national guardsmen in their blue jackets with white turnbacks piped red and " federes " dressed in civilian clothes with only the red phrygian cap and the tricolour cockade to identify them as soldiers . Poor supplies meant that uniforms which had worn out were replaced with civilian clothes , and so the Revolutionary Army lacked any semblance of uniformity , with the exception of the tricolour cockade which was worn by all soldiers . As the war progressed , several " demi - brigades " were issued specific coloured uniform jackets , and the Revolutionary " Armée d ' Orient " which arrived in Egypt in 1798 was uniformed in purple , pink , green , red , orange and blue jackets . Along with the problem of uniforms , many men of the Revolutionary Army lacked weapons and ammunition . Any weapons captured from the enemy were immediately absorbed into the ranks . After the Battle of Montenotte in 1796 , 1 , 000 French soldiers who had been sent into battle unarmed were afterwards equipped with captured Austrian muskets . As a result , uniformity was also lacking in weapons . Besides the regular " demi - brigades " , light infantry " demi - brigades " also existed . These formations were formed from soldiers who had shown skill in marksmanship , and were used for skirmishing in front of the main force . As with the line " demi - brigades " , the light " demi - brigades " lacked uniformity in either weapons or equipment . Artillery . Supporting the skirmishers was the French artillery . The artillery had suffered least from the exodus of aristocratic officers during the early days of the Revolution , as it was commanded mostly by men drawn from the middle class . The man who would shape the era , Napoleon Bonaparte , himself was an artilleryman . The various technical improvements of Général Jean Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval in the years preceding the Revolution , and the subsequent efforts of Baron du Teil and his brother Chevalier Jean du Teil meant that the French artillery was the finest in Europe . The Revolutionary Artillery was responsible for several of the Republic ' s early victories ; for example at Valmy , on 13 Vendémiaire , and at Lodi . The revolutionary cannon played a vital role in their success . The cannon continued to have a dominating role on the battlefield throughout the Napoleonic Wars . Cavalry . The cavalry was seriously affected by the Revolution . The majority of officers had been of aristocratic birth and had fled France during the final stages of the monarchy or to avoid the subsequent Terror . Many French cavalrymen joined the émigré army of the Prince du Conde . Two entire regiments , the " Hussards du Saxe " and the " 15éme Cavalerie ( Royal Allemande ) " defected to the Austrians . Lacking not only trained officers , but also mounts and equipment , the Revolutionary Cavalry became the worst equipped arm of the Revolutionary Army . By Mid 1793 , the paper organisation of the Revolutionary Army included twenty six heavy cavalry regiments , two regiments of carabiniers , twenty dragoon regiments , eighteen regiments of " chasseurs à cheval " and ten hussar regiments . In reality , it was seldom that any of these regiments reached even half strength . However , unlike the infantry , where all battalions of the old Royal Army were merged with freshly raised volunteers to form new " demi - brigades " , the cavalry retained their regimental identities throughout the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods . As one example , the " Regiment de Chasseurs d ' Alsace " ( raised in 1651 ) was renamed the " 1er Regiment de Chasseurs " in 1791 but otherwise remained unchanged until it was finally disbanded after Waterloo . Aerostatic corps . The French Aerostatic Corps ( " compagnie d ' aérostiers " ) was the world ' s first air force , founded in 1794 to use balloons , primarily for reconnaissance . The first military use of the balloon occurred on 2 June 1794 , when it was used for reconnaissance during an enemy bombardment . On 22 June , the corps received orders to move the balloon to the plain of Fleurus , in front of the Austrian troops at Charleroi . On 1 October , the " Armée de la Rochelle " was redesignated as the armée de l ' Ouest . See also . Émigré armies of the French Revolutionary Wars Royalist French forces in opposition to the Revolutionary government of France . References . < div class = " references - small " >