ABSTRACT
The performance of its infantry determined triumph or defeat for the Armee du Nord et des Ardennes. Popular wisdom holds that revolutionary infantry sank to the nadir of tactical finesse during the opening years of the war. The infantry drill masters of the Nord were vital to its success, just as their forerunners were to the armies of the ancien regime. Revolutionary armies did not normally have the luxury of surrounding recruits with veteran soldiers. Even special light infantry units underwent the same course of close order drill learned by the heavy infantry. Conditions that encouraged or inhibited training and the arrival of different recruit levies divide an account of training into four periods. Battalions reduced to skeleton force by a rigorous winter, bloody battle, and a disastrous retreat had to be brought up to strength by the massive incorporation of one more levy of fresh troops. French logistical inefficiency ruled out concentration in a few large camps.
