“Soldiers, you are naked and ill-fed! Government owes you much and can give you nothing. 

The patience and courage you have shown in the midst of these rocks are admirable; but they gain you no renown; no glory results to you from your endurance. It is my design to lead you into the most fertile plains of the world.

The patience and courage you have shown in the midst of these rocks are admirable; but they gain you no renown; no glory results to you from your endurance. It is my design to lead you into the most fertile plains of the world.

Rich provinces and great cities will be in your power; there you will find honour, glory, and wealth. Soldiers of Italy! will you be wanting in courage or perseverance?” 

With these words, in March of 1796, followed one of the textbook examples of a successful military campaign. A stalemate which had lasted for months would be broken by a lightning campaign conducted amidst the difficult, rocky mountainsides of northern Italy, with underfed and undersupplied troops managing to win against all odds in a matter of weeks. They would be supplied by Great Britain. 

Who were they? They were the Army of Italy, part of the French revolutionary government. Their opponents? The Austrian Habsburg Empire and the twin Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, both out for blood after seeing the horrors of the French Revolution. What is interesting is that despite supplying the French Army in Italy, Britain was also directly at war with France, landing invasion forces in the Vendée and briefly taking the port-city of Toulon. 

Yet again, Britain was simultaneously aiding and fighting its enemies.

Last week, we discussed how and why opposition, and eventually war, broke out between the major European powers (notably focusing on Britain) and France in the wake of the French Revolution. We had, chronologically, reached the point where the National Convention was usurped by the Jacobins and the Reign of Terror began. 

Fearing royalist support from abroad, the Republican government pre-emptively declared war on the growing coalition around them, beginning a war along 4 fronts - the Dutch Lowlands, Rhine, Italian Alps and Spanish Pyrenees. 

There were too many minor nations involved in the coalition against France to make any considerable note, but the major players were Great Britain, the United Netherlands (who had recently had their own revolution, but this one had ended in favour of more conservative factions), the Kingdom of Prussia, the Holy Roman Empire (Austria), the Kingdom of Spain and the Kingdoms of Sardinia and Piedmont (independent kingdoms which shared a single king). Alongside this, the British were actively supplying and supporting a guerrilla war (which eventually became so organised that armies stopped fighting like insurgents and lined up properly for combat) between royalists and the revolutionaries in the Western Vendée region. Further to this, Pasquale Paoli had entered a deal with the Royal Navy, meaning the French lost both significant influence over Corsica and the Mediterranean.

This war would not begin well for the French.

They suffered defeats in the Lowlands against the forces of the Prussian Duke of Brunswick, and coalition forces got as close to Paris as they would for another 20 years. The Duke of Brunswick chose to issue an ultimatum to the people of Paris: He declared that they should not harm King Louis XVI, or he would burn Paris to the ground. The Parisian people didn’t seem to take this well and did the opposite, putting Louis to the guillotine and beginning the French Republic. The Rubicon had been crossed.

This war - the War of the First Coalition as we now know it - would last a long time. 5 years, in-fact. The war, invasions by the Duke of Brunswick and French victory at Valmy (the turning point in the war - I shall address this in more detail in the future as there is much to be said about the changing nature of warfare between the middle-ages and the Second World War, and this particular battle is of note in that topic) occurred in 1792, whilst the French initiative in Italy under their new commander (a young Corsican general called Napoleon Bonaparte) would only begin in 1796 and end the following year. 

Throughout all of this, revolutionary France would see plenty of internal issues - Jacobin rule, the reign of terror and Robespierre, only for those around him to get fed up with him and overthrow him. The establishment of the more moderate Thermidorian and Directory governments, who ended up appealing to nobody and fighting conflicts against both the royalists and the Jacobins. Multiple famines. The replacement of the calendar. France was in chaos.

Far, far from the top of the list of priorities was the Army of Italy - the collection of French regiments stationed on the Italian front during this time, fighting against the Austrian and Piedmontese forces. France had few resources available and was fighting a conventional war on multiple fronts. Italy was simply not where the war would be won, almost all agreed. It was difficult terrain to manoeuvre in, making it challenging to go on the offensive (especially in such a cautious age of warfare), and the main coalition forces were stationed along the Rhine and Low Countries (Batavian Republic as the United Netherlands would become following French occupation). As such, the Army of Italy would have to do for itself.

When young Bonaparte arrived in 1796, he found the Army of Italy to be a terrible mess. The conscripts were poorly trained and poorly disciplined. Many lacked uniforms or shoes. Their rations were so low that they were no longer able to eat meat. The horses of the cavalry regiments had to be moved away from the front lines to graze. Bonaparte instantly sprung into action. As well as whatever reforms could be undertaken at hand, he began a letter campaign, beseeching the Directory in Paris for more supplies.

Alongside this, he had a new staff officer - a man named Louis-Alexandre Berthier. Berthier wasn’t known much by the public; his exploits were not heroic. However, he would garner the reputation of a genius amongst those in the military. He could seemingly pull supplies out of thin air, organise marches at twice the expected speed, constantly filter what information was and was not needed, and for whom. Berthier would be hugely important were the Army of Italy to get its much needed supplies.

One thing they settled on was to change the uniforms to wool. Much cheaper, though far less comfortable, it was a necessary change. As it so happened, one country in-particular absolutely dominated the wool trade in Europe at the time: The current enemies of France, the British.

The British wool industry dated back centuries. Sheep were first brought to Britain during the Bronze Age, and then more breeds by the Romans, then more by the Danes. By the middle-ages, it was the back-bone of the English economy. The Angevin Empire - the ‘empire’ which consisted of England and much of modern day France under the direct ownership of a short series of England’s monarchs - would come to entirely rely on wool as the base of the economy.

Many sheep were directly owned by the church for this reason. Edward III would actively try to encourage the industry by offering incentives for foreign master weavers in England, and the economic boom from this would play a large part in being able to fund England’s campaigns during the Hundred Years War against the Kingdom of France. More recently, the invention of early industrial apparatus, such as spinning jennies, allowed for the British wool and textile industries to explode, leading the way in the early industrial revolution. It would have to be British wool that would supply the French Army of Italy.

And so it was. The French would wear British wool uniforms into battle.

They wore this wool at Lodi, at Milan, at Mantua, and at Arcole. It would have been difficult to persuade these soldiers to go into battle without uniforms, and as such it is perfectly reasonable to make the claim that without British wool, France would never have won the War of the First Coalition.