Jean Jules Jusserand (1855–1932). With Americans of Past and Present Days. 1916.
VIIII. Rochambeau and the French in America
From Unpublished DocumentsAs for King George, he decided that the 8th of February, 1782, would be a day of national fasting, to ask pardon for past sins, and implore
With his French admiratrices the sage exchanged merry, picturesque letters. Madame Brillon writes, in French, from Nice on the 11th of December, 1781: “My dear Papa, I am sulky with you … yes, Mr. Papa, I am sulky. What! You capture whole armies in America, you burgoynize Cornwallis, you capture guns, ships, ammunition, men, horses, etc., etc., you capture everything and of everything, and only the gazette informs your friends, who go off their heads drinking your health, that of Washington, of independence, of the King of France, of the Marquis de Lafayette, of Mr. de Rochambeau, Mr. de Chastellux, etc., and you give them no sign of life! …”
With his valiant pen, which feared nothing, not even French grammar, Franklin answered: “Passy,
The future continued doubtful. In June Washington was still writing: “In vain is it to expect that our aim is to be accomplished by fond wishes for peace, and equally ungenerous and fruitless will it be for one State to depend upon another to bring this to pass.” French and American regiments remained, therefore, under arms and waited, but scarcely did anything on the continent but wait. For if George III was still for war, the mass of his people were not. Rochambeau availed himself of his leisure to visit the accessible parts of the country, give calls and dinners to his neighbors, study the manners and resources of the inhabitants, go fox-hunting “through the woods, accompanied by some twenty sportsmen. We have forced more than thirty foxes; the packs of hounds of the local gentlemen are perfect,” states Closen. The different usages of the French and the Americans are for each other a cause of merriment.
Rochambeau had established himself at Williamsburg, the quiet and dignified capital of the then immense State of Virginia, noted for its “Bruton church,” its old College of William and Mary, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and the birthplace of the far-famed Phi Beta Kappa fraternity, its statue of the former English governor, Lord Botetourt, in conspicuous marble wig and court mantle. “America, behold your friend,” the inscription on the pedestal reads.
That other friend of America, Rochambeau, took up his quarters in the college, one of the buildings of which, used as a hospital for our troops, accidentally took fire, but was at once paid for by the French commander. Seeing more of the population, Rochambeau was noting a number of traits which were to be taken up again by Tocqueville, the diffusion of the ideas of religious tolerance, the absence of privileges, equality put into practise. “The husbandman in his habitation is neither a castellated lord nor a tenant,
Faithful Closen, who had been proposed for promotion on account of his gallant conduct at the siege, accompanied the general everywhere, and also explored separately, on his own account, led sometimes by his fondness for animals, of which he was making “a small collection, some living and some stuffed ones, only too glad if they can please the persons for whom I destine them.” He takes notes on raccoons, investigates opossums, and visits a marsh “full of subterranean habitations of beavers,” and he sees them at work. He is also present at one of those cock-fights so popular then in the region, “but the sight is a little too cruel to allow one to derive enjoyment from it.”
Sent to Portsmouth with letters for Mr. de
Rochambeau, his son, and two aides, one of
The lord of the place dazzles his visitors by his encyclopædic knowledge. Closen describes him as “very learned in belles-lettres, in history, in geography, etc., etc., being better versed than any in the statistics of America in general, and the interests of each particular province, trade, agriculture, soil, products, in a word, all that is of greatest use to know. The least detail of the wars here since the beginning of the troubles is familiar to him. He speaks all the chief languages to perfection, and his library is well chosen, and even rather large in spite of a visit paid to the place by a detachment of Tarleton’s legion, which has proved costly and has greatly frightened his family.”
Writing at the moment when departure was imminent, the Maryland Assembly recalled in its address the extraordinary prejudices prevailing shortly before in America against all that was French: “To preserve in troops far removed from their own country the strictest discipline and to convert into esteem and affection deep and ancient
The important result of a change in American sentiment toward the French, apart from the military service rendered by them, was confirmed to Rochambeau by La Luzerne, who wrote him: “Your well-behaved and brave army has not only contributed to put an end to the success of the English in this country, but has destroyed in three years prejudices deep-rooted for three centuries.”
The “President and professors of the University of William and Mary,” using a style which was to become habitual in France but a few years later, desired to address Rochambeau, “not in the prostituted language of fashionable flattery, but with the voice of truth and republican sincerity,” and, after thanks for the services rendered and the payment made for the building destroyed “by an accident that often eludes all possible precaution,” they adverted to the future intellectual intercourse between the two nations, saying:
They concluded: “You have reaped the noblest laurels that victory can bestow, and it is, perhaps, not an inferior triumph to have obtained the sincere affection of a grateful people.”
In order to “foster,” as the authors of the address said, such sentiments as to a possible intellectual intercourse, the French King sent to this university, as the college was then called, “two hundred volumes of the greatest and best French works,” but, La Rochefoucauld adds after having seen them in 1796, they arrived greatly damaged, “because the Richmond merchant who had undertaken to convey them to the college forgot them for a pretty long time in his cellar in the midst of his oil and sugar barrels.” Fire has since completed the havoc, so that of the two hundred only two are now left, exhibited under glass in the library-museum of the college. They are parts of the works of Bailly, then of European fame as an astronomer and scientist, who was,
Another gift of books was sent, with the same intent, by the King of France to the University of Pennsylvania, and, though many have disappeared, the fate of this collection has been happier. A number of those volumes are still in use at Philadelphia, works which had been selected as being likely to prove of greatest advantage, on science, surgery, history, voyages, and bearing the honored names of Buffon, of Darwin’s forerunner, Lamarck, of Joinville, Bougainville, the Bénédictins (Art de vérifier les Dates), and the same Bailly.
Rochambeau, who had begun learning English, set himself the task of translating the addresses received by him, and several such versions in his handwriting figure among his papers.
Closen, intrusted with the care of taking to Congress the general’s answer to its congratulations, rode at the rate of over one hundred miles
As the summer of 1782 was drawing near, the French army, which had wintered in Virginia, moved northward in view of possible operations. This was for Closen an occasion to visit Mount Vernon, where Rochambeau had stopped with Washington the year before when on their way to Yorktown. “The house,” says the aide, “is quite vast and perfectly distributed, with handsome furniture, and is admirably kept, without
Mrs. Washington gracefully entertains the visitor, as well as Colonel de Custine, the same who was to win and lose battles and die beheaded in the French Revolution. Some ten officers of the Saintonge regiment, which was in the neighborhood, are also received. “Mr. de Bellegarde came ahead of Mr. de Custine, and brought, on his behalf, a porcelain service, from his own manufacture, at Niderviller, near Phalsbourg, of great beauty and in the newest taste, with the arms of General Washington, and his monogram surmounted by a wreath of laurel. Mrs. Washington was delighted with Mr. de Custine’s attention, and most gracefully expressed her gratitude.”
All leave that same evening except Closen, who had again found there the incomparable Mrs. Custis (whose silhouette he took and inserted in his journal), and who remained “one day more, being treated with the utmost affability by these ladies, whose society,” he notes, “was most sweet and pleasant to me.” He leaves at last, “rather sad.”
On the 14th of August Washington and Rochambeau were again together, in the vicinity of the North River, and the American troops were again reviewed by the French general. They are no longer in tatters, but well dressed, and have a fine appearance; their bearing, their manœuvres are perfect; the commander-in-chief, “who causes his drums,” Rochambeau relates, “to beat the French March,” is delighted to show his soldiers to advantage; everybody compliments him.
During his stay at Providence, in the course of his journey north, Rochambeau gave numerous fêtes, a charming picture of which, as well as of the American society attending them, is furnished
“I do not remember to have seen gathered together in any other spot more gayety and less confusion, more pretty women and more happily married couples, more grace and less coquetry, a more complete mingling of persons of all classes, between whom an equal decency allowed no untoward difference to be seen. That decency, that order, that wise liberty, that felicity of the new Republic, so ripe from its very cradle, were the continual subject of my surprise and the object of my frequent talks with the Chevalier de Chastellux.”