Place Kléber
The Place Kléber is the central square of Strasbourg, France. Place Kleber, the largest square at the center of the city of Strasbourg in the heart of the city's commercial area, was named after general Jean-Baptiste Kléber, born in Strasbourg in 1753. In the square is a statue of Kléber, under, a vault containing his remains. On the north side of the square is the Aubette, built by Blondel in 1765-1772. Located in Strasbourg's historic center the area was classified a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1988, the first time such an honor was placed on an entire city center. Most of the luxury brands have opened their shops in this prestigious and historical area of the city; the first name of Place Kléber was Barfüsserplatz. In the 17th century the name changed to Waffenplatz. On 24 June 1840 the square was renamed for the French general Jean-Baptiste Kléber going by'Kléberplatz' after German annexation. During German occupation in 1940-1944, the place was renamed after Karl Roos, a local ethnically German politician executed by French authorities in 1940 on the charges of espionage for Germany.
The Aubette Palace was built in 1765-1772 by Jacques François Blondel, architect to king Louis XV of France. In 2006, after a long and careful restoration, the inner decoration of the Aubette, made in the 1920s by Hans Arp, Theo van Doesburg, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and destroyed in the 1930s, was made accessible to the public again; the work of the three artists had been called "the Sistine Chapel of abstract art". After his assassination in 1800 in Cairo, the body of Jean-Baptiste Kléber, general during the French Revolutionary Wars born in Strasbourg in 1753, was repatriated to France. Napoleon, fearing that his tomb would become a symbol to Republicanism, ordered it to stay at the Château d'If, on an island near Marseille, it stayed there for 18 years until Louis XVIII granted him a burial place in his hometown in Strasbourg. He was buried on 15 December 1838 below his statue located in the middle of Place Kléber, his heart is in an urn in the caveau of the Governors beneath the altar of the St. John Chapel in Les Invalides, Paris.
The statue, designed by Philippe Grass, was completed in 1838. Traditionally, a huge fir tree coming from the Vosges mountains is erected every year on the south west of the Place Kléber and inhabitants deposited gifts for the poor. During the Marché de Noël, the booths of 50 charitable associations make the Village du Partage. Christkindelsmärik, Strasbourg Place Kléber on photo-alsace.com
Siege of Acre (1799)
The Siege of Acre of 1799 was an unsuccessful French siege of the Ottoman-defended, walled city of Acre and was the turning point of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and Syria. It was Napoleon`s first strategic defeat as three years he had been tactically defeated at the Second Battle of Bassano. Acre was a site of significant strategic importance due to its commanding position on the route between Egypt and Syria. Bonaparte wanted to capture it following his invasion of Egypt, he hoped to threaten British rule in India. After the Siege of Jaffa, followed by two days and nights of massacre and rape by the French forces, the defenders of the citadel were more fierce; the French attempted to lay siege on 20 March using only their infantry. Napoleon believed the city would capitulate to him. In correspondence with one of his subordinate officers he voiced his conviction that a mere two weeks would be necessary to capture the linchpin of his conquest of the Holy Land before marching on to Jerusalem. However, the troops of the capable Jezzar Pasha, refusing to surrender, withstood the siege for one and a half months.
Haim Farhi, al-Jazzar's Jewish adviser and right-hand man, played a key role in the city's defense, directly supervising the battle against the siege. After Napoleon's earlier conquest of Jaffa, rampaging French troops had savagely sacked the conquered city, thousands of Albanian prisoners of war were massacred on the sea-shore, prior to the French move further northwards; these facts were well known to the townspeople and defending troops in Acre, the prospect is to have stiffened their resistance. A Royal Navy flotilla under Commodore Sidney Smith helped to reinforce the Ottoman defences and supplied the city with additional cannon manned by sailors and marines. Smith used his command of the sea to capture the French siege artillery being sent by a flotilla of gunboats from Egypt and to bombard the coastal road from Jaffa. An artillery expert from the fleet, Antoine Le Picard de Phélippeaux redeployed against Napoleon's forces the artillery pieces which the British had intercepted. Smith anchored the line-of-battle ships Tigre and Theseus so their broadsides could assist the defence.
The gunboats, which were of shallower draft, could come in closer, together they helped repel repeated French assaults. On 16 April a Turkish relief force was fought off at the Mount Tabor. By early May, replacement French siege artillery had arrived overland and a breach was forced in the defences. At the culmination of the assault, the besieging forces managed to make a breach in the walls. However, after suffering many casualties to open this entry-point, Napoleon's soldiers found, on trying to penetrate the city, that Farhi and DePhelipoux had, in the meantime, built a second wall, several feet deeper within the city where al-Jazzar's garden was. Discovery of this new construction convinced Napoleon and his men that the probability of their taking the city was minimal. Moreover, after the assault was again repelled, Turkish reinforcements from Rhodes were able to land. Having underestimated the stubborn attitude of the defending forces combined with a British blockade of French supply harbours and harsh weather conditions, Napoleon's forces were left hungry and damp.
Plague had struck the French camp as a result of the desperate condition of the men, had by now led to the deaths of about 2,000 soldiers. Throughout the siege, both Napoleon and Jezzar sought in vain the assistance of the Shihab leader, Bashir—ruler of much of present-day Lebanon. Bashir remained neutral; as things turned out, it was the French side which suffered most from the attitude of Bashir, whose intervention on their side might have turned the balance. The siege was raised. Napoleon Bonaparte retreated two months on 21 May after a failed final assault on 10 May, withdrew to Egypt. In 1805, Napoleon asserted that if he had: been able to take Acre, I would have put on a turban, I would have made my soldiers wear big Turkish trousers, I would have exposed them to battle only in case of extreme necessity. I would have made them into a Sacred Battalion--my Immortals. I would have finished the war against the Turks with Arabic and Armenian troops. Instead of a battle in Moravia, I would have won a Battle of Issus, I would have made myself emperor of the East, I would have returned to Paris by way of Constantinople.
The allusions from Classical Antiquity included in the speech are to the Sacred Band of Thebes and the Persian Immortals—elite units of the city state of Thebes and the Achaemenid Kings of Persia. Some hold that a statement attributed to Napoleon during the war, according to which he promised to return the land to the Jews if he were to succeed in his conquest of Palestine, was meant to capture Farhi’s, a Syrian Jew and betray his master by switching his support to the French. Whether this is true or not, Farhi defended the city with the rest of the Turks. However, Napoleon never showed any particular interest in winning over the Jews during his campaign, though the account of Las Cases in "Mémorial de Sainte Hélène" about Napoleon's military campaign records that a rumour among Syrian Jews had it that after Napoleon took Acre, he would go to Jerusalem and restore Solomon's temple and decrees were passed in favour of Jews in French-controlled Egypt. Whatever Napoleon's actual intentions, these stories and rumors are considered to be among the earl
Flanders Campaign
The Flanders Campaign 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, Great Britain, the Dutch Republic 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, abolished the monarchy and executed the deposed king Louis XVI of France, vied to spread the Revolution beyond France's borders, by violent means if necessary. 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, Hessian, Imperial Austrian and, south of the river Sambre, Prussian troops faced the Republican Armée du Nord, 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 forced to withdraw by a series of French counter-offensives, 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 evacuated; the victorious French were aided in their conquest by Patriots from the Netherlands, 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. Austria would not acknowledge the loss of the Southern Netherlands until the 1797 Treaty of Leoben and the Treaty of Campo Formio; the Dutch stadtholder William V, Prince of Orange, who had fled to England initially refused to recognise the Batavian Republic, 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, his son William Frederick accept the Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda as compensation for the loss of the hereditary stadtholderate. Austria and Prussia had been at war with France since 20 April 1792, although Britain and the Dutch Republic maintained a neutral policy towards the revolution in France. Only after the execution of the French king Louis XVI on 21 January 1793 and the declaration of war by the Revolutionary Government did they mobilize. British Prime Minister Pitt the Younger pledged to finance the formation of the First Coalition, consisting of Britain, the Dutch Republic, Prussia and member states of the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Sardinia and Spain.
Allied armies mobilised along all of the French frontiers, the largest and most important in the Flanders Franco-Belgian border region. In the north, the allies' immediate aim was to eject the French from the Dutch Republic and the Austrian Netherlands march on Paris to end the chaotic and bloody French version of republican government. Austria and Prussia broadly supported this aim. Britain agreed to invest a million pounds to finance a large Austrian army in the field plus a smaller Hanoverian corps, dispatched an expeditionary force that grew to twenty thousand British troops under the command of the king's younger son, the Duke of York. Just fifteen hundred troops landed with York in February 1793. Overall Allied command was led by the Austrian commander Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, with a staff of Austrian advisers answering to Emperor Francis II and the Austrian Foreign Minister Johann, Baron Thugut; the Duke of York was obliged to follow objectives set by Pitt's Foreign Minister Henry Dundas.
Thus Allied military decisions in the campaign were tempered by political objectives from Vienna and London. The defences of the Dutch Republic were in poor condition, its States Army not having fought in a war for 45 years. In the period 1785-1787 opponents of Stadtholder William V, Prince of Orange, the Patriots, had launched the Patriot revolt which only with difficulty had been suppressed after Prussian and British intervention in 1787, after which the leaders of the Patriots fled to France. William's main concern therefore was the preservation of the House of Orange and the authoritarian Stadtholderate regime. Opposing the Allies, the armies of the French Republic were in a state of disruption. Many of the old officer class had emigrated. Only the artillery arm, less affected by emigration, had survived intact; the problems would become more acute following the introduction of mass consc
Cairo
Cairo is the capital of Egypt. The city's metropolitan area is one of the largest in Africa, the largest in the Middle East, the 15th-largest in the world, is associated with ancient Egypt, as the famous Giza pyramid complex and the ancient city of Memphis are located in its geographical area. Located near the Nile Delta, modern Cairo was founded in 969 CE by the Fatimid dynasty, but the land composing the present-day city was the site of ancient national capitals whose remnants remain visible in parts of Old Cairo. Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life, is titled "the city of a thousand minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture. Cairo is considered a World City with a "Beta +" classification according to GaWC. Cairo has the oldest and largest film and music industries in the Middle East, as well as the world's second-oldest institution of higher learning, Al-Azhar University. Many international media and organizations have regional headquarters in the city.
With a population of over 9 million spread over 3,085 square kilometers, Cairo is by far the largest city in Egypt. An additional 9.5 million inhabitants live in close proximity to the city. Cairo, like many other megacities, suffers from high levels of traffic. Cairo's metro, one of two in Africa, ranks among the fifteen busiest in the world, with over 1 billion annual passenger rides; the economy of Cairo was ranked first in the Middle East in 2005, 43rd globally on Foreign Policy's 2010 Global Cities Index. Egyptians refer to Cairo as Maṣr, the Egyptian Arabic name for Egypt itself, emphasizing the city's importance for the country, its official name al-Qāhirah means "the Vanquisher" or "the Conqueror" due to the fact that the planet Mars, an-Najm al-Qāhir, was rising at the time when the city was founded also in reference to the much awaited arrival of the Fatimid Caliph Al-Mu'izz who reached Cairo in 973 from Mahdia, the old Fatimid capital. The location of the ancient city of Heliopolis is the suburb of Ain Shams.
The Coptic name of the city is Kashromi which means "man breaker", akin to Arabic al-Qāhirah . Sometimes the city is informally referred to as Kayro by people from Alexandria; the area around present-day Cairo Memphis, the old capital of Egypt, had long been a focal point of Ancient Egypt due to its strategic location just upstream from the Nile Delta. However, the origins of the modern city are traced back to a series of settlements in the first millennium. Around the turn of the 4th century, as Memphis was continuing to decline in importance, the Romans established a fortress town along the east bank of the Nile; this fortress, known as Babylon, was the nucleus of the Roman and the Byzantine city and is the oldest structure in the city today. It is situated at the nucleus of the Coptic Orthodox community, which separated from the Roman and Byzantine churches in the late 4th century. Many of Cairo's oldest Coptic churches, including the Hanging Church, are located along the fortress walls in a section of the city known as Coptic Cairo.
Following the Muslim conquest in 640 AD, the conqueror Amr ibn As settled to the north of the Babylon in an area that became known as al-Fustat. A tented camp Fustat became a permanent settlement and the first capital of Islamic Egypt. In 750, following the overthrow of the Umayyad caliphate by the Abbasids, the new rulers created their own settlement to the northeast of Fustat which became their capital; this was known as al-Askar. A rebellion in 869 by Ahmad ibn Tulun led to the abandonment of Al Askar and the building of another settlement, which became the seat of government; this was al-Qatta ` closer to the river. Al Qatta'i was centred around a ceremonial mosque, now known as the Mosque of ibn Tulun. In 905, the Abbasids re-asserted control of the country and their governor returned to Fustat, razing al-Qatta'i to the ground. Since 1860s, Cairo expanded west as far as what is called now In 968, the Fatimids were led by general Jawhar al-Siqilli to establish a new capital for the Fatimid dynasty.
Egypt was conquered from their base in Ifriqiya and a new fortified city northeast of Fustat was established. It took four years to build the city known as al-Manṣūriyyah, to serve as the new capital of the caliphate. During that time, Jawhar commissioned the construction of the al-Azhar Mosque by order of the Caliph, which developed into the third-oldest university in the world. Cairo would become a centre of learning, with the library of Cairo containing hundreds of thousands of books; when Caliph al-Mu'izz li Din Allah arrived from the old Fatimid capital of Mahdia in Tunisia in 973, he gave the city its present name, al-Qāhiratu. For nearly 200 years after Cairo was established, the administrative centre of Egypt remained in Fustat. However, in 1168 the Fatimids under the leadership of vizier Shawar set fire to Fustat to prevent Cairo's capture by the Crusaders. Egypt's capital was permanently moved to Cairo, expanded to include the ruins of Fustat and the previous capitals of
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital of Sweden and the most populous urban area in the Nordic countries. The city stretches across fourteen islands. Just outside the city and along the coast is the island chain of the Stockholm archipelago; the area has been settled since the Stone Age, in the 6th millennium BC, was founded as a city in 1252 by Swedish statesman Birger Jarl. It is the capital of Stockholm County. Stockholm is the cultural, media and economic centre of Sweden; the Stockholm region alone accounts for over a third of the country's GDP, is among the top 10 regions in Europe by GDP per capita. It is an important global city, the main centre for corporate headquarters in the Nordic region; the city is home to some of Europe's top ranking universities, such as the Stockholm School of Economics, Karolinska Institute and Royal Institute of Technology. It hosts the annual Nobel Prize ceremonies and banquet at the Stockholm Concert Hall and Stockholm City Hall. One of the city's most prized museums, the Vasa Museum, is the most visited non-art museum in Scandinavia.
The Stockholm metro, opened in 1950, is well known for the decor of its stations. Sweden's national football arena is located north of the city centre, in Solna. Ericsson Globe, the national indoor arena, is in the southern part of the city; the city was the host of the 1912 Summer Olympics, hosted the equestrian portion of the 1956 Summer Olympics otherwise held in Melbourne, Australia. Stockholm is the seat of the Swedish government and most of its agencies, including the highest courts in the judiciary, the official residencies of the Swedish monarch and the Prime Minister; the government has its seat in the Rosenbad building, the Riksdag is seated in the Parliament House, the Prime Minister's residence is adjacent at Sager House. Stockholm Palace is the official residence and principal workplace of the Swedish monarch, while Drottningholm Palace, a World Heritage Site on the outskirts of Stockholm, serves as the Royal Family's private residence. After the Ice Age, around 8,000 BC, there were many people living in what is today the Stockholm area, but as temperatures dropped, inhabitants moved south.
Thousands of years as the ground thawed, the climate became tolerable and the lands became fertile, people began to migrate back to the North. At the intersection of the Baltic Sea and lake Mälaren is an archipelago site where the Old Town of Stockholm was first built from about 1000 CE by Vikings, they had a positive trade impact on the area because of the trade routes they created. Stockholm's location appears in Norse sagas as Agnafit, in Heimskringla in connection with the legendary king Agne; the earliest written mention of the name Stockholm dates from 1252, by which time the mines in Bergslagen made it an important site in the iron trade. The first part of the name means log in Swedish, although it may be connected to an old German word meaning fortification; the second part of the name means islet, is thought to refer to the islet Helgeandsholmen in central Stockholm. According to Eric Chronicles the city is said to have been founded by Birger Jarl to protect Sweden from sea invasions made by Karelians after the pillage of Sigtuna on Lake Mälaren in the summer of 1187.
Stockholm's core, the present Old Town was built on the central island next to Helgeandsholmen from the mid-13th century onward. The city rose to prominence as a result of the Baltic trade of the Hanseatic League. Stockholm developed strong economic and cultural linkages with Lübeck, Gdańsk, Visby and Riga during this time. Between 1296 and 1478 Stockholm's City Council was made up of 24 members, half of whom were selected from the town's German-speaking burghers; the strategic and economic importance of the city made Stockholm an important factor in relations between the Danish Kings of the Kalmar Union and the national independence movement in the 15th century. The Danish King Christian II was able to enter the city in 1520. On 8 November 1520 a massacre of opposition figures called the Stockholm Bloodbath took place and set off further uprisings that led to the breakup of the Kalmar Union. With the accession of Gustav Vasa in 1523 and the establishment of a royal power, the population of Stockholm began to grow, reaching 10,000 by 1600.
The 17th century saw Sweden grow into a major European power, reflected in the development of the city of Stockholm. From 1610 to 1680 the population multiplied sixfold. In 1634, Stockholm became the official capital of the Swedish empire. Trading rules were created that gave Stockholm an essential monopoly over trade between foreign merchants and other Swedish and Scandinavian territories. In 1697, Tre Kronor was replaced by Stockholm Palace. In 1710, a plague killed about 20,000 of the population. After the end of the Great Northern War the city stagnated. Population growth halted and economic growth slowed; the city was in shock after having lost its place as the capital of a Great power. However, Stockholm maintained its role as the political centre of Sweden and continued to develop culturally under Gustav III. By the second half of the 19th century, Stockholm had regained its leading economic role. New industries emerged and Stockholm was transformed into an important trade and service centre as well as a key gateway point within Sweden.
The population grew during this time through immigration. At the end
Napoleon
Napoléon Bonaparte was a French statesman and military leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the French Revolutionary Wars. He was Emperor of the French as Napoleon I from 1804 until 1814 and again in 1815 during the Hundred Days. Napoleon dominated European and global affairs for more than a decade while leading France against a series of coalitions in the Napoleonic Wars, he won most of these wars and the vast majority of his battles, building a large empire that ruled over much of continental Europe before its final collapse in 1815. He is considered one of the greatest commanders in history, his wars and campaigns are studied at military schools worldwide. Napoleon's political and cultural legacy has endured as one of the most celebrated and controversial leaders in human history, he was born in Corsica to a modest family of Italian origin from minor nobility. He was serving as an artillery officer in the French army when the French Revolution erupted in 1789.
He rose through the ranks of the military, seizing the new opportunities presented by the Revolution and becoming a general at age 24. The French Directory gave him command of the Army of Italy after he suppressed a revolt against the government from royalist insurgents. At age 26, he began his first military campaign against the Austrians and the Italian monarchs aligned with the Habsburgs—winning every battle, conquering the Italian Peninsula in a year while establishing "sister republics" with local support, becoming a war hero in France. In 1798, he led a military expedition to Egypt, he became First Consul of the Republic. Napoleon's ambition and public approval inspired him to go further, he became the first Emperor of the French in 1804. Intractable differences with the British meant that the French were facing a Third Coalition by 1805. Napoleon shattered this coalition with decisive victories in the Ulm Campaign and a historic triumph over the Russian Empire and Austrian Empire at the Battle of Austerlitz which led to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire.
In 1806, the Fourth Coalition took up arms against him because Prussia became worried about growing French influence on the continent. Napoleon defeated Prussia at the battles of Jena and Auerstedt marched his Grande Armée deep into Eastern Europe and annihilated the Russians in June 1807 at the Battle of Friedland. France forced the defeated nations of the Fourth Coalition to sign the Treaties of Tilsit in July 1807, bringing an uneasy peace to the continent. Tilsit signified the high-water mark of the French Empire. In 1809, the Austrians and the British challenged the French again during the War of the Fifth Coalition, but Napoleon solidified his grip over Europe after triumphing at the Battle of Wagram in July. Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula, hoping to extend the Continental System and choke off British trade with the European mainland, declared his brother Joseph Bonaparte the King of Spain in 1808; the Spanish and the Portuguese revolted with British support. The Peninsular War lasted six years, featured extensive guerrilla warfare, ended in victory for the Allies against Napoleon.
The Continental System caused recurring diplomatic conflicts between France and its client states Russia. The Russians were unwilling to bear the economic consequences of reduced trade and violated the Continental System, enticing Napoleon into another war; the French launched a major invasion of Russia in the summer of 1812. The campaign did not yield the decisive victory Napoleon wanted, it resulted in the collapse of the Grande Armée and inspired a renewed push against Napoleon by his enemies. In 1813, Prussia and Austria joined Russian forces in the War of the Sixth Coalition against France. A lengthy military campaign culminated in a large Allied army defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813, but his tactical victory at the minor Battle of Hanau allowed retreat onto French soil; the Allies invaded France and captured Paris in the spring of 1814, forcing Napoleon to abdicate in April. He was exiled to the island of Elba off the coast of Tuscany, the Bourbon dynasty was restored to power.
Napoleon took control of France once again. The Allies responded by forming a Seventh Coalition which defeated him at the Battle of Waterloo in June; the British exiled him to the remote island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, where he died six years at the age of 51. Napoleon's influence on the modern world brought liberal reforms to the numerous territories that he conquered and controlled, such as the Low Countries and large parts of modern Italy and Germany, he implemented fundamental liberal policies throughout Western Europe. His Napoleonic Code has influenced the legal systems of more than 70 nations around the world. British historian Andrew Roberts states: "The ideas that underpin our modern world—meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, so on—were championed, consolidated and geographically extended by Napoleon. To them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman Empire".
The ancestors of Napoleon descended from minor Italian nobility of Tuscan origin who had come to Corsica fr
French Revolutionary Army
The French Revolutionary Army was the French force that fought the French Revolutionary Wars from 1792 to 1802. These armies were characterised by their revolutionary fervour, their poor equipment and their great numbers. Although they experienced early disastrous defeats, the revolutionary armies expelled foreign forces from French soil and overran many neighboring countries, establishing client republics. Leading generals included Jourdan, Masséna and Moreau; as a general description of French military forces during this period, it should not be confused with the "revolutionary armies" which were paramilitary forces set up during the Terror. As the ancien regime gave way to a constitutional monarchy, to a republic, 1789–92, the entire structure of France was transformed to fall into line with the Revolutionary principles of "Liberty and Fraternity". Reactionary Europe stood opposed after the French king was executed; 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, 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. 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 to join the émigré army of Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé. Of those who stayed numbers were either killed during the Reign of Terror; the small remaining cadre of officers were promoted swiftly. 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 executed 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 desperate situation meant that these men were inducted into the army.
One reason for the success of the French Revolutionary Army is the "amalgamation" organized by the military strategist Lazare Carnot 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. The transformation of the Army was best seen in the officer corps. Before the revolution 90% had been aristocrats, compared to only 3% in 1794. Revolutionary fervor was high, was monitored by the Committee of Public Safety, which assigned Representatives on Mission to keep watch on the general. Indeed, some generals deserted, others were executed; the government demanded. 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 soldiers, officers and NCOs to perform correctly.
The Revolutionary Army was lacking in all three of these areas, 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, 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 decided to launch a series of experiments to try out the new tactics, comparing them to the standard Fredrickian linear formation known as l'ordre mince, 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, it was this formation which went into the 1791 Reglement as the standard; 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; the Revolutionary forces retreated from the Austrian Netherlands in disarray. In August 1792, a large Austro-Prussian army commanded by the Duke of Bru
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Kléber, Jean Baptiste". Encyclopædia Britannica. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 
