as soon as he had landed, began to correspond. The letters thus exchanged, generally unpublished, give a vivid picture of the life then led in the Isles. Cut off from the world most of the time, not knowing what was taking place in France, in America, on the sea, or even sometimes on the neighboring island, unaware of the whereabouts of Rodney, having to guess which place he might try to storm and which they should therefore garrison, these men, suffering from fevers, having now and then their ships scattered by cyclones, played to their credit and with perfect good humor their difficult game of hide and seek.
They send their letters in duplicate and triplicate, by chance boats, give news of the French court when they have any, and learn after a year's delay that their letters of October, 1780, have been duly received by Rochambeau in June, 1781.
The Marquis de Saint-Simon writes from Santo Domingo to say how much he would like to go and fight under Rochambeau on the continent: “I would be delighted to be under your orders, and to give up for that the command-in-chief I enjoy here.”
Rochambeau's warm heart and strict discipline
The stanch devotion of Rochambeau to his duties as a soldier, his personal disinterestedness, his cool-headedness and energy as a leader, his good humor in the midst of troubles, had secured for him the devotion of many, while his brusquerie, his peremptoriness, the severity which veiled his real warmth of heart whenever the service was at stake, won him a goodly number of enemies, the latter very generally of less worth as men than the former.
In the affectionate letter by which he made up early differences with “his son Lafayette,” shortly after his arrival, he observes, concerning his own military career: “If I have been lucky enough to preserve, up to now, the confidence of the French soldiers, . . . the reason is that out of 15,000 men or thereabout who have been killed or wounded under my orders, of different rank and in the most deadly actions, I have not to reproach myself with having caused a single one to be killed for the sake of my own fame.”
“He seemed,” Ségur said in his memoirs, “to have been purposely created to understand Washington and be understood by him, and to serve with republicans. A friend of order, of law, and of liberty, his example more even than his authority obliged us scrupulously to respect the rights, properties, and customs of our allies.”
Waiting for the second division
Nothing without my second division, Rochambeau thought. He had urged the government in his last letters before leaving France to send it not later than a fortnight after he himself had sailed: “The convoy will cross much more safely now under the guard of two warships,” he had written to Montbarey, “than it will in a month with an escort of thirty, when the English are ready.” And again, after having embarked on the Duc de Bourgogne: “For Heaven's sake, sir, hasten that second division. . . . We are just now weighing anchor.”
But weeks and months went by and no news came of the second division. Washington with his ardent patriotism, Lafayette with his youthful enthusiasm, were pressing Rochambeau to risk all in order to capture New York, the stronghold of the enemy and chief center of their power. “I am confident,” Rochambeau answered, “that our general (Washington) does not want us to give here a second edition of Savannah,” and he felt the more anxious that, with the coming of recruits and going of veterans and the short term enlistments, “Washington would command now 15,000 men, now 5,000.”
Rochambeau decided in October to send to France his son, then colonel of the regiment of Bourbonnais, to remonstrate. As capture was possible and the envoy might have to throw his dispatches overboard, young Rochambeau, being blessed with youth and a good memory, had learned their contents by heart. One of the best sailors of the fleet had been selected to convey him, on the frigate Amazone.
On account of superior forces mounting guard outside, the captain waited for the first night storm that should arise, when the watch was sure to be less strict, started in the midst of one, after having waited for eight days, was recognized, but too late, was chased, had his masts broken, repaired them, and reached Brest safely. The sailor who did so well on this occasion and who was to meet a tragic death at Vanikoro, bore the name, famous since, of La Pérouse.
Dark days for the patriot cause
Time wore on—a sad time for the American cause. One day the news was that one of the most trusted generals, famous for his services on land and water—Benedict Arnold—had turned traitor; another day that Gates had been routed at Camden and Kalb killed. In December Ternay died. In January, worse than all, the soldiers of the Pennsylvania line mutinied; unpaid, underfed, kept under the flag long after the time for which they had enlisted, “they went,” Closen writes in his journal, “to extremities. In Europe they would not have waited so long.”
The danger was great, but brief; tempted
