Game of the Week, September 21-27

From September 21 through September 27, this week’s Game of the Week is Napoleonic Battles: Republican Bayonets on the Rhine, featured at 25% off. The game has just been updated to the latest version, 4.09.4. It follows the French Republic from the first battles of the Revolutionary Wars through the campaigns that carried French armies across the Rhine to Hohenlinden. The game brings together the uncertain armies, shifting coalitions, and rapidly changing methods of war that defined the years before Napoleon’s empire.

This is a period of transformation as much as a sequence of battles. Our essay From Subjects to Citizens, published on September 18, traces how the Revolution changed the political legitimacy and administrative reach behind French military mobilization. Republican Bayonets on the Rhine’s sister game, Campaign Marengo, carries that story through the parallel campaigns in northern Italy, while this title follows the armies fighting in the Rhine, the Low Countries, Switzerland, and southern Germany. French commanders must turn revolutionary energy, mass armies, and aggressive attacks into coherent operations, while Coalition commanders try to use professional troops, fortresses, and cavalry to contain a state whose military power is still developing.

From Valmy to Hohenlinden

The French Revolutionary Wars began when a political crisis became an international war. In 1792, the revolutionary government declared war on Austria, and Prussia joined the effort to restore the old order. France’s army was divided between professional soldiers inherited from the monarchy, volunteers who had answered the call to defend the Republic, and National Guard formations whose enthusiasm could not always compensate for limited training. The early campaigns exposed the danger of this mixture, but they also showed how quickly France could mobilize when an invasion threatened.

At Valmy on 20 September 1792, the French army held the heights against the Prussian advance. The battle was not a simple tactical triumph: artillery, weather, illness, supply problems, and the uncertainty of the Coalition position all mattered. Yet the Prussian decision to withdraw gave the Republic time to consolidate. The next year brought much greater danger. France faced invasion on several fronts, rebellion at home, and the defection or suspicion of commanders. The response was the levée en masse, the expansion of the army, and the political decision to demand energy and initiative from officers who were often learning their trade in wartime.

„Von hier und heute geht eine neue Epoche der Weltgeschichte aus, und ihr könnt sagen, ihr seid dabei gewesen.“

“From here and today begins a new epoch in the history of the world, and you can say that you were there.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kampagne in Frankreich 1792,
describing the evening after Valmy, 20 September 1792.

At Jemappes on 6 November, the French victory pushed the Austrians out of the Austrian Netherlands and allowed the Republic to occupy foreign territory. The army was still an unstable combination of volunteers and line soldiers, but its aggressive attacks and growing numbers had begun to produce strategic results. The contrast with the following spring was stark. At Neerwinden in March 1793, Dumouriez’s defeat and subsequent defection revealed the political and military fragility of the new regime.

In the north, however, the Republic gradually learned to combine mass with operational pressure. The victories at Tourcoing and Fleurus in 1794 were products of hard fighting, but also of persistent attacks, multiple army groupings, and the ability to keep raising and replacing troops. Fleurus was especially symbolic: French forces defeated the Coalition army threatening the southern Netherlands, and a balloon was used to observe the battlefield. The victory helped secure Belgium and shifted the strategic balance in France’s favor.

The war then moved into a more complicated phase. The Peace of Basel removed Prussia from the First Coalition in 1795, while France established control over the left bank of the Rhine. The campaigns of 1796 showed that neither side could rely on a single battle to settle the conflict. Archduke Charles maneuvered against Jourdan and Moreau, using the geography of the Rhine and Danube theaters to defeat separated French forces at battles including Amberg and Würzburg. The French commanders, for their part, had to advance across a broad front while protecting crossings, maintaining contact between armies, and coping with supply lines that stretched back toward the river.

The struggle widened again in 1798 and 1799 when the Second Coalition brought Austria, Russia, Britain, and other powers back into the war. French armies suffered serious reverses in Germany and Switzerland, and the campaign became a contest of recovery as much as advance. At First Zürich, Masséna defeated the Austrians, but a later Allied offensive brought Russian troops under Rimsky-Korsakov into the theater. Masséna’s victory at Second Zürich in September 1799 ended the immediate danger to Switzerland and demonstrated how a commander could restore a broken strategic position through concentration and timely attacks.

By 1800, the balance had changed once more. In the Rhine theater, General Moreau conducted the campaign against the Austrian army of Archduke John and General Kray. The French success at Hohenlinden on 3 December 1800 was prepared by movement through difficult winter country, confused intelligence, and the Coalition army’s advance along several roads. Moreau’s army struck when the Austrian columns were not mutually supporting one another. The resulting defeat helped bring the War of the Second Coalition to an end and confirmed that the Republic’s armies had become a formidable operational system. The parallel victory at Marengo belongs to Campaign Marengo, which completes the Italian side of the story.

Hohenlinden was therefore more than a contest of frontal firepower. The Austrians entered the forested approaches in several columns, and the French had to hold long enough for their divisions to come into action without losing the ability to counterattack. Once the Coalition advance became entangled, French pressure against the center and flanks turned a difficult march into a general retreat. The battlefield rewarded timely concentration, but it also punished any commander who treated a road network as if it guaranteed coordination.

« Je me rappelle sans cesse que j’ai l’honneur de commander des Républicains, des hommes libres. Le moment approche où nous marcherons avec courage contre les ennemis de notre liberté ! Préparez vos baïonnettes, elles sont la terreur des esclaves ! Je vous conduirai au champ de l’honneur. »

“I constantly remind myself that I have the honour of commanding Republicans, free men. The moment approaches when we shall march courageously against the enemies of our liberty! Prepare your bayonets; they are the terror of slaves! I shall lead you to the field of honour.”

— Jean-Baptiste Jourdan,
proclamation to the Army of the Moselle, 19 March 1794.

Republican Bayonets on the Rhine covers this evolution across the battles listed in the game and their surrounding campaign settings. The player must decide when to attack, when to hold a river or ridge, how much to risk with an inexperienced formation, and how to exploit an enemy whose columns have become separated. The result is a battlefield portrait of the Revolutionary Wars in which success depends not only on courage or numbers, but on learning how to command an army that is changing as the war continues.

What's in the Game

• Republican Bayonets on the Rhine includes 296 Scenarios – covering all sizes and situations, including a solo tutorial scenario plus specialized versions for both head-to-head play and vs. the computer AI.
• Included Campaigns:
  • The Battles of the War of the First Coalition - seven historical battles of the 1792-94 campaigns
  • The 1796 Rhine Campaign - The Archduke Charles's greatest triumph
  • The 1799 Rhine Campaign - Massena overcomes initial French defeats to lead his army to glory
  • The 1800 Rhine Campaign - Moreau leads the French army against Kray and the Austrian army
• The largest map (256,650 hexes) includes large swaths of territory the armies fought over, but also ample ground to create custom "what if" battles.
• 37 different maps covering a wide array of battlefield terrain.
• The order of battle files cover the French and Coalition forces that participated in the campaign, with other formations added in for hypothetical situations.
• Campaign and Scenario Editors, which allow players to customize the game.
• Design notes, which cover the production of the game, campaign notes, and a bibliography that includes the sources used by the designer team to produce this simulation game.
• Republican Bayonets on the Rhine provides multiple play options, including play against the computer AI, Play by E-mail (PBEM), LAN & Internet "live" play, as well as two-player hot seat.

Book and Video recommendations

Arnold, James R. Marengo and Hohenlinden: Napoleon’s Rise to Power. Lexington, VA: Napoleon Books, 1999.

Bertaud, Jean-Paul. The Army of the French Revolution: From Citizen-Soldiers to Instrument of Power. Translated by Robert R. Palmer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019.

Lynn, John A. The Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France, 1791–94. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019.

Phipps, Ramsay Weston. The Armies of the First French Republic and the Rise of the Marshals of Napoleon. 5 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1926–1939.

Smith, Digby. The Greenhill Napoleonic Wars Data Book: Actions and Losses in Personnel, Colours, Standards and Artillery, 1792–1815. London: Greenhill Books, 1998.

Screenshots

We hope you enjoy this week’s Game of the Week: Napoleonic Battles: Republican Bayonets on the Rhine. Like all WDS titles, it provides countless hours of rich historical gameplay at a very attractive price.