La Révolution n'est pas Sûre
The Battle of Paris would rage throughout March 4, as Croix de Feu Escadrons attempted to break through loyalist lines before the army arrived. Successfully driving into the heart of the city, the final battle would occur at the Place de la Concorde at 17:00. The loyalists, outnumbered but determined to hold no matter what, faced an enemy that outnumbered them three to one. The fighting would rage for half an hour as Roland Beaumont himself fought alongside his supporters.
The relief for the loyalists would come from an unexpected place. Throughout the day, everyone had believed that the army would make or break the coup, as word of their imminent arrival invigorated early loyalist resistance. But rather than help, the military would become stuck in its own standoff between Escadron members and pro-Beaumont factions after the Escadrons seized the artillery. Bloodshed would only be avoided by a mutual agreement early in the day to take a neutral stance. With this agreement, Paris was left to its own devices to decide the future of France. Nobody in the city was aware of this, however, as both sides fought bitterly to either beat the clock or to stall just one minute more.
Instead the loyalists would be saved by the citizenry of Paris. While inhabitants had picked up weapons to fight alongside their preferred faction, the majority were far too confused about what was going on to make a decision. As the fighting turned from scattered clashes across the city to a concerted battle near the heart of the government and the uniforms of the Escadrons marched down the streets, the situation became clear and the people took up arms.
The first came in a group of several hundreds. Armed with hunting rifles and weapons scavenged from the fallen, they struck into the rear of the Escadrons, the Marseillaise on their lips. Soon, they were joined by tens of thousands of other citizens. Armed with cudgels, swords, old muskets, and hammers, they overwhelmed the Escadrons in a sudden wave of furor and scattered them to the winds. By 19:00, the fighting had died down, and the stunned loyalists greeted their saviors across a field of corpses.
Despite being victorious, the loyalists were in utter disarray. The capital was littered with the remnants of the fighting, clogging up the street and taking away key resources, while the loyalists had no idea who they could trust. Although the military swiftly arrested the mutineers after receiving word of the coup’s failure, its inaction weakened trust in them at a critical moment. Most disturbingly of all, Roland Beaumont, who had taken part in the fighting at the Place de la Concorde, was missing. Eye witnesses had last seen him standing in the open firing at Escadrons before he became lost in the chaos of battle.
Taking advantage of the chaos, the Croix de Feu’s leadership fled Paris for Rouen, where the Croix de Feu had established a secondary headquarters. From here they planned on rallying sympathetic army units and marching on Paris once again. Arriving with a scant 2,500 men, they set about preparing their grand return and put out a call for all patriots to rally to their banner.
It took the government several days to reorganize into something cohesive. A provisional government, formed under Guarde Republicaine leader Colonel Julien Dufieux, forged a united front to stabilize the situation and put down the Croix de Feu. The continuing war in Belgium also competed for government attention, with war exhaustion and a growing desire for the five-year long war to end in both the leadership and the country at large. The Provisional Government moved to solve both issues with overwhelming force.
As the government prepared their counterblow, the Croix de Feu learned just how limited their popularity was. Despite their attempts at creating a mass movement, the Croix de Feu was most popular among the party elite of l’Esprit du Nation and portions of the officer corps. Their influence came from the positions they held, not the popularity of their ideas. In the week after their arrival in Rouen, less than 500 men had rallied to their banner.
As the realization dawned on the Croix de Feu that their revolution had failed with the loss of the Battle of Paris, the leadership began to fragment. Recriminations between members dominated the sole attempt to determine a new direction. By March 8, the Croix de Feu had practically ceased to exist as the fallout from the failure tore the group apart. Some members, such as Charles Lanrezac, took their own lives while others fled the nation. A small cadre, gathered around the former Minister of Security and leader Thomas Giraud, elected to stay in the city and await their fate.
5,000 Guardsmen arrived in Rouen on March 10, expecting fierce resistance, only to find the denizens going about their days as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Advancing carefully, they reached the Croix de Feu’s headquarters convinced that the Escadrons would be waiting for them. Instead, all they found was Giraud standing out front alone and a handful of faces peering out through the windows. Moving swiftly, the Guardsmen arrested him and secured the building. The Croix de Feu was officially extinct.
The anticlimactic end of the Croix de Feu was a surprise for the Provisional Government, but a welcome one. Although a division of Guardsmen would remain in Paris to secure the government, the full might of France’s striking power could be deployed against Belgium. While 500,000 men covered the Rhine, guarding against potential German betrayal, 700,000 soldiers lined up against the Belgians as the Provisional Government gave them one final ultimatum. Unlike Beaumont, they were ill in the mood for leniency. While France had maintained a strong force along the German frontier until they had demobilized, Belgian forces had inflicted a slow rate of attrition using whatever they could. When the French ultimatum arrived on March 26, the only peace they were willing to accept was one of unconditional surrender.
While France had been distracted, the 650,000 strong Belgian Army had scrambled to replace the holes in their lines left by the Germans and further entrench their positions. The Germans, who had been in such a hurry to evacuate that they left behind the majority of their heavy equipment and vast quantities of munitions, had been kind enough to instruct their former comrades-in-arms on how to use those arms while they were in Belgium. As a result, the Belgians were far better equipped in 1921 than they had been in 1915. Although morale was shaky due to now standing on their own, the Belgian government still felt strong enough to reject the French demands.
French efforts to break Belgium were aimed at separating the Belgians in and around Ypres from the remainder of their forces, trapping them against the Channel and annihilating them as France advanced first to Ghent and then to Antwerp. To accomplish this, the French chose to attack near the city of Courtrai, to the northeast of their intended quarry. France concentrated a third of their forces, 300,000 men, in the region and unleashed a withering barrage on April 8 for several hours before assault squads advanced.
Utilizing the largest combined arms offensive of the war, the French deployed the military theories they had drawn up but not had a chance to test after reaching their natural borders. French spotters, wielding cutting edge radios, called coherers by the French, called in artillery fire on Belgian positions while their cousins in the fighter and bomber corps targeted Belgian formations behind the lines. The Legion Mecanique advanced with infantry support, punching holes in enemy lines that infantry exploited. Although the Belgians put up stiff resistance, the weight of French arms swept their nascent air force aside and cracked their lines after a week of fierce fighting.
Courtrai’s fall began a cascade of events that saw the Belgian lines collapse over the April and May. 40,000 men, trapped in the Ypres Pocket, would capitulate on April 28 while the Battle of Ghent between April 24 and May 10 would see the Belgians lose 100,000 men as casualties and prisoners. Despite Belgian attempts to reestablish their lines, superior French firepower and numbers repeatedly thwarted their attempts.
The Belgian Army’s last stand occurred in the Second Battle of Waterloo, between May 21 and 24. 150,000 Belgians, the last cohesive military force in the country, erected hasty defensive lines anchored on the escarpment at Mont-Saint-Jean to halt the French drive from the south. French forces, having advanced swiftly through Belgian screens at Quatre Bras and Genappe, smashed into Belgian defensive lines mid-day on the 21, facing a bloody defeat as the unsupported infantry came under fire from artillery. Initially withdrawing, the French would return during the night with probing attacks while the Legion Mecanique was tasked with breaking through the Belgians screening the northern flank along the Dender River.
The 22 would see fierce artillery duels as the French artillery arrived and the Belgians burned through any remaining stores without concerns of sustainability. As the day wore on, Belgian batteries would steadily fall silent as French artillery bombarded and aircraft strafed their positions. Despite the extremely harrowing conditions, with some batteries taking over 500% casualties as their crews were decimated by strafing runs, Belgian gun crews maintained a steady rate of fire as their crews fought to the bitter end.
The 23 and 24 would see French forces pry their way through Belgian lines, with Halle falling midday on the 23 and allowing French forces to begin enveloping the positions at Waterloo. Waterloo would fall early on the 24 as the Belgians began withdrawing into Brussels proper, joining their citizens in constructing barricades along the city streets and digging trenches.
Brussels would only be saved from a siege by the arrival of the Legion Mecanique in Asse to the north. The Belgian government, not expecting the French to break through so soon, knew they did not have enough men to defend the north as well. After a brief discussion with their high command on the night of the 24, the Belgians officially asked for a ceasefire. A brief one, lasting for 24 hours, was called for in the region as France reiterated its demand for unconditional surrender. Another round of discussions between the government and military, now receiving reports that the holdouts in Antwerp were beginning to suffer from a cholera epidemic and the attempt to rally at Hasselt had barely mustered 20,000 men, ended in a solemn decision. As the commander of the French forces in the area, General Jean Degoutte, steeled himself for the need to return to the offensive the following morning before he went to bed, the Belgian message arrived.
After nearly a year of fighting on by itself, Belgium would unconditionally surrender.
