than in the simple and brief lines written in his old age by Rochambeau: “My good star gave me such a wife as I could desire; she has been for me a cause of constant happiness throughout life, and I hope, on my side, to have made her happy by the tenderest amity, which has never varied an instant during nearly sixty years.”
Informed at Versailles of the task he would have to perform, Rochambeau set to work to get everything in readiness, collecting information, talking with those who knew America, and noting down in his green-garbed registers, which were to accompany him in his campaign, the chief data thus secured.
He also addressed to himself, as a reminder, a number of useful recommendations, such as these: “To take with us a quantity of flints, . . . much flour and biscuit; have bricks as ballast for the ships, to be used for ovens; to try to bring with us all we want and not to have to ask from the Americans, who are themselves in want; . . . to have a copy of the atlas brought from Philadelphia by Mr. de Lafayette; . . . to have a portable printing-press, like that of Mr. d'Estaing, handy for, proclamations . . . siege artillery is indispensable.”
Some of the notes are of grave import and were not lost sight of throughout the campaign: “Nothing without naval supremacy.”
To those intrusted with the care of loading the vessels he recommends that all articles of the same kind be not placed on the same ship, “so that in case of mishap to any ship the whole supply of any kind of provisions be not totally lost.”
When all were there, however, forming a total of 5,000 men, the maximum was so truly reached that a number of young men, some belonging to the best-known French families, who were arriving at Brest from day to day, in the hope of being added to the expedition, had to be sent back.
The departure, which it was necessary to hasten while the English were not yet ready, was beset with difficulties. Tempests, contrary winds, and other mishaps had caused vexatious delay; the Comtesse de Noailles and the Conquérant had come into collision and had had to be repaired. “Luckily,” wrote Rochambeau to Montbarey, with his usual good humor, “it rains also on Portsmouth.” At last, on the 2d of May, 1780, the fleet of seven ships of the line and two frigates, conveying thirty-six transports, weighed anchor for good. “We shall have the start of Graves,” the general wrote again, “for he will have to use the same wind to leave Portsmouth.”
At sea now for a long voyage, two or three months perhaps, with the prospect of calms, of storms, of untoward encounters, of scurvy for the troops. On board the big Duc de Bourgogne, of eighty guns, with Admiral de Ternay, Rochambeau adds now and then paragraphs to a long report which is a kind of journal, assuring the minister, after the first fortnight, that all is well on board: “We have no men sick other than those which the sea makes so, among whom the Marquis de Laval and my son play the most conspicuous part.” He prepares his general instructions to the troops.
On board the smaller craft life was harder, and numerous unflattering, descriptions have come down to us in the journals kept by so many officers of the army, especially in that of the aforementioned young captain, Louis Baron de Closen, later one of the aides of Rochambeau.
A first-hand picture of life in the French fleet
He confesses, but with no undue sentimentalism, that he was saddened at first to some extent at the prospect of an absence that might be a long one, particularly when thinking “of a charming young fiancée, full of wit and grace. . . . My profession, however, does not allow me to yield too much to sensibility; so I am now perfectly resigned.”
It is hard at first to get accustomed, so tight-packed is the ship, but one gets inured to it, in spite of the “buzzing of so numerous a company,” of the lack of breathing space, and of what people
