Alpine Thunder:
The Battle of Zurich 1799

Introduction

by Major Wilbur E. Gray, US Army

Eyewitnesses to those amazing times did not mince words. One described the Holy Warriors of the Czar as "exactly the same hard, stiff wooden machines which we have reason to figure ourselves as the Russians of the Seven Years War ... they waddled slowly forward to the tap-tap of their monotonous drums; and if they were beaten they waddled slowly back again, without appearing in either case to feel a sense of danger..."

Yet Britain's Military Mentor also noted that "no troops in the world are so careless of being attacked in the flank, or turned..." Of the other warring parties Albrecht Adam wrote in 1797, "I was roused to enthusiasm by the smart and colorful uniforms of the French Revolutionary army, the keen spirit, the very soul, the characteristically wild faces of those soldiers, and their strange way of moving. The most striking contrast was produced by the Austrian armies. We saw them pass by, calm and grave, mostly in serried columns, correctly dressed even in mid-campaign. Resigned to hardship, never forgetting their discipline, they always made an impression to be respected." [1]

Whether they knew it or not, these keen observers had just seen irrefutable proof of one of the most important, yet most neglected, aspects of the Napoleonic period. Simply, it was that the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were notjust armed conflicts between opposing governments, they were wars between vastly different societies as well. This in turn meant that the soldiers, as well as the generals who commanded them, produced by these societies varied greatly in appearance and demeanor to all who saw them.

This betrayed the fact that they often looked at the very nature of war itself in ways that were totally incompatible with each other. It was not a case where one side played by the accepted rules of the game and the other did not. Rather it was a situation where the set of rules for one side was completely different to the those used by the other. Ultimately, it remained an area of armed conflict where the human factor could still determine the difference between victory and defeat.

Understanding this concept focuses many things into crystal clear perspective, but two should be of particular importance to those interested in the period. The first is that it helps explain exactly why the undisciplined and poorly trained armies of the French Republic were able to more than hold their own against their professional adversaries. While differences in doctrine had much to do with this, the influence of the human perspective can not be discounted.

Second, and perhaps of far greater importance, is that it helps us realize that the Allied generals who fell so hard under the hammer blows of the French, particularly in the early career of a young upstart Corsican named Bonaparte, were not the idiots many have made them out to be. They were commanders who potentially could have done quite well in the era of Frederick the Great. They were simply men who played the game of war with rules far out of date. It was not their fault, as no one had told them the rules had changed.

This clash between opposing military values, and the decisive results it often produced, took many forms during the wars of the French Revolution. But perhaps no where can one find a more fascinating example than the lush mountainous landscape around the picturesque Swiss fortress of Zurich. The date was 25 September 1799, and a battle was about to fought and decided largely on pure human perception, to include the rather innocuous subject of a person's taste in music.

Alpine Thunder The Battle of Zurich 1799

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