"Exhortations to use the cold steel were nevertheless particularly common during the early years of the Revolution, when it was generally acknowledged that the troops were poorly trained for firing, assuming they even had muskets. Indeed, in one of their classic panics (on Mount Faron, Toulon, 30 September 1793), the volunteers even seemed amazed that the enemy did have muskets, and indignantly exclaimed 'They're firing shot!'. Unfortunately a lack of muskets was not only commonplace among the French, but it also implied a still greater lack of bayonets, and in fact there was usually a very great scarcity of that easily-snapped weapon. Amid the shortages on the Eastern Pyrenees, Representative Fabre called for warfare by other means: 'You have no guns, but you have pikes, pitchforks, hatchets. It doesn't matter what the instrument is, so long as it carries death!'. In fact one of the rare cases of a successful pike charge had taken place in that theatre in September 1793, at Prades, when two Spanish cannon had been captured; while at Tresserres on 30 April 1794 it would be felt useful to hold 8,000 unarmed requisitioned troops in the third line, visible to the enemy, in order 'to add to the overall effect of the army's dispositions by the imposing superiority of numbers." "There can be no doubt that French cavalry was generally badly inferior to its opponents; but apart from moments when the cavalry retired back into its own infantry, thereby panicking them as well, it should not be written off as an entirely bad job. There seems little reason to suppose that generals would have prefered to do without whatever horsemen they could get hold of. Besides, even poor French cavalry units did sometimes enjoy rare moments of glory. For example when the Austrian cuirassiers devastatingly counter-attacked General Burcy's infantry at Gundershoffen on 26 November 1793, and the newly-mounted 11th French Hussars ran back into their own men, the 2nd Chasseurs a Cheval held their ground steadfastly and saved the day - although not, alas, the life of the ex-gendarme Burcy himself, who was 'literally hacked to pieces by sabre cuts'." Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 84 Table of Contents Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Greenhill Books This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com