French Wargames- Le Camp de Vaussieux 1778

Historians have long debated, proved, or debunked connections between the revolutions of the United States and of France. The societies which emerged from both upheavals created states which would dominate their spheres of influence in the foreseeable future. For our interests, militarily there are obvious connections between the conflicts in the American colonies and across Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Junior officers of the 1770s and 1780s would go on to become the generals of the early 19th century. In our minds today, the names of two great leaders dominate the conversation about military leadership and development during these two great conflicts, George Washington and Napoleon Boneparte.

The connections to the two are somewhat distant, yet at certain points, in both of their careers people, places, and events line up with for a connection. One which I aim to highlight today is that of the 1778 Camp de Vaussieux. The event in which the French Army prepared to fight alongside George Washington, and ended up forming the basis of the tactics Napoleon would use with the Grande Armée.

Plan du Camp de Vaussieux en Normandie. Aux ordres de M. le Duc de Broglio. Commencé dans les Premiers jours de Septembre et fini dans les Premiers jours d'Octobre 1778. Avec les Grandes Manoeuvres qu'on y a Exécutées pour l'Instruction des Troupes.https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84919125/f1.item

Located just outside of Bayeux in Normandy, this small farming area would witness forty battalions of infantry, along with cavalry and artillery, totaling close to 20,000 men converge in early September 1778 under the command of Maréchal Victor-François, duc de Broglie, a French hero of the Seven Years War. Broglie had three assignments from the Ministry of War. First, he must defend the Norman coast against British incursions. Second, he must himself prepare the troops under his command to invade Great Britain. Finally, he must conduct training exercises to determine the dominance of one of two main theories of land warfare in 1770s France, l'ordre profond (deep order) and l'ordre mince (thin order).

Le maréchal Victor-François de Broglie. Huile sur toile anonyme, château de Versailles.

Both doctrines had their champions and both had their detractors. l'ordre profond had recently been defended by François-Jean de Mesnil-Durand. To English speakers, l'ordre profond would come to be known as columns or attacking columns. These formations harken back to ancient warfare where thickly packed bodies of men used shock and power to punch through enemy formations. Support was felt by all ranks as masses of comrades could be seen in all directions. However, l'ordre profond faced limitations as it was hard for officers to handle large masses of men, who were large targets to enemy infantry and artillery. The French Army of the Seven Years War had seen large columns of men utilizing these deep order tactics be mowed down and routed by disciplined fire from Prussian and British infantry at Rossbach and Minden. The arguments for the continued development of this theory came from the more conservative and aristocratic side of the French Army. Many argued that l'ordre profond was an innately French skill, which utilized the elan possessed only by the soldiers of King Louis. To deviate from this would be treason to the culture and heritage of French arms, and even worse Germanic or even Prussian in nature.

Opposite l'ordre profond lay l'ordre mince. The experience of the Seven Years War had shown that Prussian lines, drawn three ranks deep, could deliver firepower that outweighed the shock of a French column attack. l'ordre mince called for French infantry to emulate the Prussians by forming the entire battalion into a three rank deep line, able to deliver all of its fire into an opponent. However, if the fire of the line was not controlled efficiently, or a massed attack drew too close, the line risked breaking apart. It was also much harder to command formations in l'ordre mince.

In this debate marched the soldiers of Marshal Broglie. Broglie himself was an ardent defender of l'ordre profond, and expected these exercises to help the Army move on to focus on its preparations for combat with the British. Training commenced early in September as units practiced basic maneuvers and large scale operations. Later in the month, the real tests began.

On one day, a brigade under the command of Marshal Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, opposed an attack by a division. Rochambeau's brigade would utilize the tactics highlighted in the 1776 regulations which leaned heavily on the theories of l'ordre mince. The attacking division would use l'ordre profond. The results were decisive. Rochambeau and his smaller force quickly outmaneuvered and outgunned his opponents. Broglie responded on later days by following the advice of the late Marshal de Saxe, and utilized massive waves of chasseurs deployed as skirmishers to screen the advance. This time the attackers proved successful. Grenadiers and chasseurs were split into separate units to act as shock troops, artillery utilising the new Gribeuval system came into action, and 20,000 men were able to hone their newly introduced skills for the first time. These drills carried on for several days as the troops became drilled in the 1776 regulations, as well as the closed columns demanded by l'ordre profond. 

A Chasseur of the Régiment de Saintonge as they would have appeared during the Yorktown Campaign. The Régiment de Saintonge was present at Vaussieux and its chasseurs would have been separated into independent battalions. (Painting by Don Troiani)

By the time the camp had closed the failures of l'ordre profond had broken through to many. However, the old guard of French officers including Broglie remained convinced in the power of the column. Rochambeau had run circles around them utilising l'ordre mince, and yet the debate continued to rage on. It was not until a third option, thought up by philosophers such as Guibert which mixed both the attacking column, with the firepower of the line (unsurprisingly called l'ordre mixte) was adopted, that a solution came forward. Lines of French infantry advancing with protection on their flank by soldiers in closed columns and lines of skirmishers in front of them would be a hard tactic to master. Yet, this was exactly what the French army adopted. Utilizing l'ordre mixte the French soldier would drive countless enemies before it winning battles across Europe and even the world. Yet these soldiers were not the white-coated infantry of Marshals Broglie or rochambeau, these men wore blue. Their officers were not always aristocrats who had paid their way to high rank, as all had to earn the title. The armies of Revolutionary and later Napoleonic France dominated their battlefields. Yet it was the soldiers of Marshal Broglie, many of them preparing to sail to America to assist George Washington on his campaigns, who were beginning the process to move away from the feudal blocks of infantry, into a changing and thinking army. [1]

If you enjoyed this post, or any of our other posts, please consider liking us on facebook,  or following us on twitter. Finally, we are dedicated to keeping Kabinettskriege ad-free. In order to assist with this, please consider supporting us via the donate button in the upper right-hand corner of the page. As always:

Thanks for Reading,

James Taub

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[1] For further reading I highly suggest: Abel, Jonathan. Guibert: Father of Napoleons Grande Armée. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016.

Series Introduction: Piquet to Chasseur

Interpretive Staff Portray French Troops defending Niagara, 1759

Photo Credit, Davis Tierney

A Plea for the Armies of Ancien Régime France

Dear Reader,

This is not at all meant to be an academic dissection of current historiography regarding the French Army from the Kabitnettskriege era, or even the era from the War of Austrian Succession until the French Revolution. Frankly, it is something that I have long been interested in, but only now am I engaging the topic academically. My background, like many other Americans, turned into Eurocentric military historians, focuses primarily on the British Military. As well, while I’ve had the amazing privilege of work at Fort Ticonderoga, for Campaign 1776, and partaking in several educational projects around 1740-1790 timeframe, I first and foremost would weigh my expertise on the First World War of 1914-1919.

One theme that I have begun to pick up on as I continue my work with the Great War is the deeply rooted national narratives which define the wartime experience. With those narratives so ingrained in modern society, it is only now becoming mainstream to incorporate topics and research to create an international military history of a particular engagement or theme. While British military historians, and in fact, all those of the Anglophone world have grown an appreciation for topics involving the primary enemy power of Imperial Germany, relatively few have thoroughly dissected the Allied heavy hitter of the Western Front, France.

This is unsurprising. As so many modern narratives of the major Allied powers gain traction from their sacrifices during the First World War, it is inevitable that for many Britons the BEF was the elite force on the Western Front, or for Americans the AEF. In Anglophone public perception, those were forces which many times had to pick up the slack of the conscripted masses of the French Army. This is, of course, untrue and fails to appreciate the weight of the war which fell on French shoulders. Yet this opens a theme which brings us back to the wars of the 18th century.

Louis-Nicolas Van Blarenberge, The Siege of Yorktown, 1786;
(Private Collection of Nicholas Taubman)

In the case of the many wars fought during the reigns of Louis XV, and Louis XVI, France and its army have become a force which exists only to teach the British a lesson in warfare on the frontiers of America, only to be outmaneuvered and battered by the Royal Navy at sea and the Germanic forces on land unless in direct coordination with American efforts. Any professional historian would find the fault with this, yet only now is the historiography of the French Army during the Kabitnettskriege-era expanding. The French Army which suffered from “Victor’s Disease” after the War of Austrian Succession went on to be defeated in the Seven Years War. The changes which were introduced to the Troupes de Terre following this debacle did not only modernize the French Army and bring it to victory in the American Revolutionary War/Eight Years War. It also formed the groundwork for France’s (and arguably all of Europe’s) most successful military force, Napoleon’s Grande Armée. The French Army both started and ended the Enlightenment era as the predominant land force in Europe, starting in size and ending in quality. Therefore, they deserve much more of our attention. However, our biggest hurdle is ourselves in our narrowly Anglophone world.

I’ll be the first to admit, I have limited French. I took some French in college, and used it while working overseas on First World War battlefields. I am not alone in saying this is my biggest impediment to further research on the Ancien Régime. A younger generation of historians such as Dr. Jonathan Abel, William Raffle, Andrew Bamford, and Charles Mayhood have all recently (Standby for the reviews of their excellent books soon!) However, these works only form the tip of the iceberg if we are to begin to fully understand the military, political, and social mechanisms which made the French Army operational.

Jonathan Abel's work on French theorist Guibert is one of the newer studies of the French Army during this time period.

Therefore, I put out a plea to the readers to join with me in pursuing the study of the French Army of the Ancien Régime. As a British focused historian, I for one can’t fathom understanding the Redcoats who fought at the Plains of Abraham and Brandywine, without understanding the foe they considered to be their greatest, the French soldiers of Fontenoy, Minden, and Yorktown. We must break free of our Anglo-American biases and preconceptions and open ourselves to truly be experts in the field we all love.

If you enjoyed this post, or any of our other posts, please consider liking us on facebook,  or following us on twitter. Finally, we are dedicated to keeping Kabinettskriege ad-free. In order to assist with this, please consider supporting us via the donate button in the upper right-hand corner of the page. As always:

Thanks for Reading,

James Taub[1]


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[1] James Taub is a military historian specializing in the Modern Era, with an interest in World War One and Early Modern Warfare. He is currently finishing a tenure as the Education Coordinator for the US World War I Centennial Commission. He took an undergraduate degree in History from Dickinson College, and a Master's Degree from the University of Glasgow in War Studies. He is pumped for Top Gun 2.