On 29 August, the Prussian and Austrian forces besieged Verdun, the gate of Paris. By the morning of 2 September, the royal party had launched a rebellion in Verdun, killed the commander of the city's defenses, and Verdun surrendered to the Prussian and Austrian forces, and the gates of Paris were opened.

Verdun was lost because of the rebellion, which was completely unexpected by the French. In the plans of the French, Verdun, with its treacherous terrain and easy to defend, should serve as an impregnable anvil, and the French army would become a heavy hammer. They cooperate with each other and smash the enemy to pieces. However, the anvil of Verdun was easily captured because of the traitors inside. This made all the French people extremely angry and at the same time very frightened - because everyone was worried that there would be traitors to the great motherland around them, ready to betray the motherland at any time.

The National Assembly reacted swiftly, and now their first important task was to suppress the counter-revolution. Danton, the recently wanted criminal, Minister of Justice of the new government, presided over the work of eliminating traitors to the Motherland. In the afternoon of the same day, he delivered his famous speech in the National Assembly, "Be brave, be brave, be brave again!" and began to lead the suppression of the counter-revolution in Paris.

A large number of nobles, as well as those who were related to the nobility, or who were suspected of sympathizing with the king and the nobility, were put in prison "preventively" without any investigation or trial.

It's not too much to just do that. Later, after the outbreak of Pearl Harbor, the Lighthouse Nation also imprisoned the Nihoni expatriates in concentration camps regardless of the 3721.

In the midst of fear and anger, the policy adopted in this "preventive" arrest was naturally to "suspect the guilt from the guilty" and to "rather catch a thousand by mistake than let one go." The prisons of Paris were quickly filled, and the "traitor" suspects were constantly being sent in.

At this time, a rumor appeared. According to this rumor, the royalists would launch a rebellion, storm the prisons, rescue the "traitors", and join forces with the nearby Prussian and Austrian forces to suppress the revolution in Paris. The Austrians have already said that they are going to wash the streets of Paris with blood in revenge for their bullying of the king.

The people of Paris quickly armed themselves and prepared for the royalist rebellion. But at this time, the royalists were either arrested and put in prison or escaped from Paris, where was there any capital for rebellion? However, a sudden event made the whole situation out of control.

Because a prison is stuffed. So the National Guard is ready to send all the "suspects" here to another prison where there is still space. In order to make room for the next batch of "suspects". When they left the prison, they were seen by some citizens. Nervous citizens, mistaking them for royalists, had now robbed the prison and were about to rescue the "traitors" when they cried out loud. Then the citizens of Paris, armed with weapons of all kinds, gathered around.

The National Guard was simply not willing to clash with the citizens for the sake of these damned "traitors", so they simply left those "traitors" and ran away.

Naturally, the citizens could not catch up with the National Guard, but they at least stopped the "traitors" who were "trying to escape". Angry and excited, the citizens killed all these "traitors" who "wanted to escape". Others shouted: "Why are these traitors being locked up? They all deserve to die! ”

The crowd then proceeded to the other prisons, where they rushed and killed all the other people in the prison, whether he was a "traitor" or not, as long as he was in prison.

The Queen's best friend, De. Princess Rambara was also killed by the angry townspeople, and her head was cut off, stuck in a spear, and paraded outside the tower where the king and queen were imprisoned. People shouted towards the tower: "You will do the same one day!" ”

Some Brissotan parliamentarians suggested to Justice Minister Danton that order should be restored and that such a massacre should not be allowed to continue. But Danton, while ostensibly refutating and even agreeing with the assertion that order should be restored, has not actually taken any action.

"We can't be on the side of the people." Danton later explained.

However, many Brissotan parliamentarians believed that Danton was deliberately indulging in such an act in order to tie all of Paris to the chariot against the Austro-Prussian army. And in this way, after eliminating the hidden danger neatly and at once, Paris can devote more forces to the battle against foreign intervention forces.

Indeed, in the wake of this frenzied massacre, within two days the government quickly mobilized another 20,000 volunteers to support the front-line operations.

On Napoleon's suggestion, General Dumourier placed his army near the Valmy Heights in Saint-Meneut. This place is not on the boulevard from Verdun to Paris. But if the Austro-Prussian army dared to pounce directly on Paris, then Di Mourieux's army could easily cut off the back of the coalition army from here.

Napoleon estimated that the logistics of the coalition forces must have been very strained because of the continuous rain. Once the back road is cut off, it will definitely collapse quickly. Therefore, they absolutely did not dare to march on Paris until the threat of Valmy's French army was eliminated.

"Our army has the courage but the lack of training to conduct complex offensive operations, but it is much easier to defend against terrain." Joseph also expressed support for his brother's plan, "In most cases, however, defense is a more powerful way of fighting than offense." If the enemy takes the initiative to attack us, then we will definitely be able to defeat them in a defensive battle. ”

Things were going according to Napoleon's judgment that the Duke of Braunschweig would not dare to lead his troops to Paris until the threat to their rear was eliminated. But he also knows that the longer they hold each other, the better it will be for France. Because the French army is becoming more and more numerous by every minute, every second, and it is also becoming more and more trained.

So the Duke of Braunschweig decided to concentrate his forces first and crush Dumourier's army, and then he could advance towards Paris.

On 17 September, the Austro-Prussian forces began to approach Valmy. At first, the Duke of Braunschweig hoped to force the French army back by threatening the French army's logistical route, Vitley Boulevard. But before that, the revolutionary government had collected a large amount of grain and transported it to Dumourieu's army by means of price fixing. So at least for quite some time, Di Mourieux was not worried about his food route being cut off. On the contrary, the Prussian-Austrian army's own food routes became precarious under the constant attacks of the French volunteers.

This situation also forced the Duke of Braunschweig to violate military principles and launch a strong attack on the preset positions of the more numerous enemy troops.

Most of the French army were volunteers. These volunteers were not well trained and could not even walk out of decent queues on the battlefield. So they can only go into battle as skirmishers. But their morale is high and they are brave in battle, which makes them especially useful when fighting as skirmishers.

In general, in this era, the reason why the straggler formation was not the main body was because such a formation was vulnerable in front of the cuirassiers. Cuirassiers, who could theoretically easily defeat them and kill them in pursuit.

However, in the outpost battle, the performance of these volunteer stragglers was beyond the expectations of the Austrians and Prussians. When they found that the French army did not have a strict formation, and there were not too many cavalry (because there were many nobles in the cavalry, it was relatively unreliable, and those volunteers were still unable to play such technical work, so there were not too many cavalry in the French army at this time), the Duke of Braunschweig naturally did not hesitate to send his own cavalry. He had thought that his cavalry would be able to easily disperse and destroy the thugs in blue uniforms (in their minds, these people were not armies at all), but when the attack began, he was surprised to find that although the French soldiers could not line up a tight hollow phalanx designed to deal with the cavalry, they actually met the cavalry bravely when facing the cavalry, and crackled and fired at the cavalry, instead of turning and fleeing normally.

The accuracy of these guns was not high, but they still caused some losses to the Prussian cavalry. However, the cavalry rushed forward quickly, and under normal circumstances, the enemy should have abandoned their weapons, turned and fled, and then they easily caught up from behind to collect their heads. But those guys did not retreat, but held bayonets and hedged against the cavalry.

A warhorse can easily knock an infantry player to the ground, but such a collision is not undamaging to the horse. Especially when the man was still holding a rifle with a bayonet. The cavalry, of course, had the upper hand in such hand-to-hand combat, and they cut down all the blue thugs. However, their own losses are not small. Although it would take four or five blue thugs to die before one cavalryman would die, this exchange ratio still made the Duke of Braunschweig feel terrible.

You know, how much money did those French spend to recruit those blue thugs? And these cavalrymen cost much more. Such an exchange, in terms of the number of people, naturally Prussia had the advantage; But in terms of cost, Prussia lost much more. Not to mention cavalry, even war horses are far more valuable than those blue thugs!

Still, the Duke of Braunschweig believed that his well-trained infantry (at least compared to the French "Volunteers") would be able to destroy the French mob's defenses.

After repulsing the French skirmishers, the Prussian-Austrian artillery began to fire heavily at the French positions. After a short but heavy artillery bombardment, the Prussian and Austrian infantry lines began to press towards the French positions.

Standing behind a trench, Napoleon looked at the approaching Prussian-Austrian army, pouted and said, "It only took so many shots to rush up, it seems that they do have a lot of problems with logistics and supplies." ”