Battle of Fleurus

But this was not the first military application of the aerial vessel.

It was used by the French against the Austrians in the Battle of Flores.

and also during the american civil war these operations however were of a sporadic character They were not part and parcel of an organized military section.

It is not generally known that the British War Office virtually pioneered the military use of balloons, and subsequently the methods perfected in Britain became recognized as a kind of standard and were adopted generally by the powers with such modifications as local exigencies seemed to demand.

That idea would take about a decade to develop into actual practice.

By the time of the French Revolutionary Wars of the 1790s, the French army had a dedicated balloon corps, the Compagnie d'Aérostiers, using hydrogen observation balloons at engagements like the Battle of Fleurus in 1794.

It was the first military use of air power in history.

70 years later, during the American Civil War, the Union army ran an entire balloon corps under a man named Thaddeus Lowe.