showed him to be “a real friend of humanity”; narratives of a regimental chaplain, like Abbé Robin, of a skeptical rake like the Duke de Lauzun; journals of officers of various ranks, like Count de Deux-Ponts, Prince de Broglie, Count de Ségur, son of the marshal, himself afterward an Academician and an ambassador; Mathieu-Dumas, future minister of war of a future king of Naples, who bore the then unknown name of Joseph Bonaparte; the Swedish Count Axel de Fersen, one of Rochambeau's aides, who was to organize the French royal family's flight to Varennes and to die massacred by the mob in his own country; journal, too, among many others, of a modest quartermaster like Blanchard, who gives a note quite apart, observes what others do not, and whose tone, as that of a subordinate, is in contrast with the superb ways of the “seigneurs,” his companions.
From page to page, turning the leaves, one sees appear, without speaking of Lafayette, Kosciusko, and the first enthusiasts, many names just emerging from obscurity, never to sink into it again: Berthier, La Pérouse, La Touche-Tréville, the Lameth brothers, Bougainville, Custine, the Bouillé of the flight to Varennes, the La Clocheterie of the fight of La Belle Poule, the Duportail who was to be minister of war under the Constituent Assembly; young Talleyrand, brother of the future statesman; young Mirabeau, brother of the orator, himself usually known for his portly dimensions as Mirabeau-tonneau, ever ready with the cup or the sword; young Saint-Simon, not yet a pacifist and not yet a Saint-Simonian; Suffren, in whose squadron had embarked the future Director Barras, an officer then in the regiment of Pondichéry.
All France behind America then
All France was really represented—to some extent that of the past, to a larger one that of the future.
A juvenile note, in contrast with the quiet dignity of the official reports by the heads of the army, is given by the unprinted journal, a copy of which is preserved in the Library of Congress, kept by one more of Rochambeau's aides, Louis Baron de Closen, an excellent observer, gay, warm-hearted, who took seriously all that pertained to duty, and merrily all the rest, especially mishaps.
Useful information is also given by some unprinted letters of George Washington, some with the superscription still preserved: “On public service—to his Excellency Count de Rochambeau, Williamsburg, Virginia,” the whole text often in the great chief's characteristic handwriting, clear and steady, neither slow nor hasty, with nothing blurred and nothing omitted, with no trepidation, no abbreviation, the writing of a man with a clear conscience and clear views, superior to fortune, and the convinced partisan, in every circumstance throughout life, of the straight line.
The British Government has, moreover, most liberally opened its archives, so that, both through the recriminatory pamphlets printed in London after the disaster and the dispatches now accessible, one can know what was said day by day in New York and out of New York, in the redoubts at Yorktown, and in the French and American trenches around the place.
An extraordinary task
Lieut. Gen. Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, aged then fifty-five, and Washington's senior by seven years, was in his house, still in existence, Rue du Cherche-Midi, Paris, at the beginning of March, 1780, he was ill and about to leave for his castle of Rochambeau in Vendomois; post-horses were in readiness when, in the middle of the night, he received, he says in his memoirs, a “courier bringing him the order to go to Versailles and receive the instructions of his Majesty.”
For some time rumors had been afloat that the great attempt would soon be made. He was informed that the news was true, and that he would be placed at the head of the army sent to the assistance of the Americans.
The task was an extraordinary one. He would have to reach the New World with a body of troops packed on slow transports, to avoid the English fleets, to fight in a country practically unknown, by the side of men not less so, and whom we had been accustomed to fight rather than befriend, and for a cause which had never before elicited enthusiasm at Versailles—the cause of republican liberty.
This last point was the strangest of all, so strange that even Indians, friends of the French in former days, asked
