With Americans of Past and Present Days Part 4

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, but a landowner." It takes him thirty to forty years to rise from "the house made of logs and posts," with the house "of well-joined boards" as an intermediary stage, to the "house in bricks, which is the acme of their architecture." Labor is expensive and is paid a dollar a day. The country has three million inhabitants, but will easily support a little more than thirty, which was not such a bad guess since the thirteen States of Rochambeau's day have now thirty-seven. Men are fond of English furniture, and women "have a great liking for French fashions." In every part where the ravages of the war have not been felt people live at their ease, "and the little negro is ever busy clearing and laying the table."

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 racc.o.o.ns, 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 c.o.c.k-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 Vaudreuil, in command of our fleet, Closen becomes acquainted "with a very curious animal which the people of the region call a musk-cat, but which I believe to be the _puant_" (the stinking one), and a careful description shows that, in any case, the name well fitted the animal. He also studies groundhogs on the same occasion. The charm and picturesqueness of wild life in American forests is a trait which French officers noted with amused curiosity in their journals. Describing his long journey on foot from the Chesapeake, where he had been shipwrecked, to Valley Forge, where he was to become aide to his Auvergnat compatriot, Lafayette, youthful Pontgibaud, with no luggage nor money left, sleeping in the open, writes of the beauty of birds, and the delightful liveliness of innumerable little squirrels, "who jumped from branch to branch, from tree to tree, around me. They seemed to accompany the triumphal march of a young warrior toward glory.... It is a fact that, with their jumps, their gambols, that quant.i.ty of little dancers, so nimble, so clever, r.e.t.a.r.ded my walk.... Such is the way with people of eighteen; the present moment makes them forget all the rest."[59]

Rochambeau, his son, and two aides, one of whom was Closen, journey to visit at Monticello the already famous Jefferson; they take with them fourteen horses, sleep in the houses where they chance to be at nightfall, a surprise party which may, at times, have caused embarra.s.sment, but this accorded with the customs of the day. The hospitality is, according to occasions, brilliant or wretched, "with a bed for the general, as ornamented as the canopy for a procession," and elsewhere "with rats which come and tickle our ears." They reach the handsome house of the "philosopher," adorned with a colonnade, "the platform of which is very prettily fitted with all sorts of mythological scenes."

The lord of the place dazzles his visitors by his encyclopaedic 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."

Numerous addresses expressing fervent grat.i.tude were received by Rochambeau, from Congress, from the legislatures of the various States, from the universities, from the mayor and inhabitants of Williamsburg, the latter offering their thanks not only for the services rendered by the general in his "military capacity," but, they said, "for your conduct in the more private walks of life, and the happiness we have derived from the social, polite, and very friendly intercourse we have been honored with by yourself and the officers of the French army in general, during the whole time of your residence among us." The favorable impression left by an army permeated with the growing humanitarian spirit, is especially mentioned in several of those addresses: "May Heaven," wrote "the Governor, council and representatives of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in General a.s.sembly convened," "reward your exertions in the cause of humanity and the particular regard you have paid to the rights of the citizens."

Writing at the moment when departure was imminent, the Maryland a.s.sembly 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 prejudices_ was reserved for you.... We view with regret the departure of troops which have so conducted, so endeared, and so distinguished themselves, and we pray that the laurels they have gathered before Yorktown may never fade, and that victory, to whatever quarter of the globe they direct their arms, may follow their standard."

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."[60]

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 prost.i.tuted 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: "Among the many substantial advantages which this country hath already derived, and which must ever continue to flow from its connection with France, we are persuaded that the improvement of useful knowledge will not be the least. A number of distinguished characters in your army afford us the happiest presage that science as well as liberty will acquire vigor from the fostering hand of your nation."

They concluded: "You have reaped the n.o.blest 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 gla.s.s 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, however, to count in history for something else than his _Traite sur l'Atlantide de Platon_, for he was the same Bailly who a few years later presided over the National a.s.sembly, sending to the royal purchaser of his works the famous reply: "The nation a.s.sembled can receive no orders," and who, two days after the fall of the Bastille, was acclaimed by the crowd mayor of Paris, while Lafayette was acclaimed commander-in-chief of the National Guard.

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 Benedictins (_Art de verifier 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 a day, slept "a few hours in a bed not meant to let any one oversleep himself, thanks either to its comfort or to the biting and abundant company in it," met by chance at Alexandria "the young, charming, and lovely daughter-in-law of General Washington," Mrs.

Custis, and the praise of her is, from now on, ceaseless: "I had already heard pompous praise of her, but I confess people had not exaggerated.

This lady is of such a gay disposition, so prepossessing, with such perfect education, that she cannot fail to please everybody." He hands his despatches to Congress, some to Washington, returns at the same rate of speed, having as guide a weaver, so anxious to be through with his job (two couriers had just been killed), that he rode at the maddest pace. He reached Williamsburg on the 11th of May, having covered, deduction made of the indispensable stoppings, "nine hundred and eighty miles in less than nine times twenty-four hours."

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 luxury. There are two pavilions connected with it, and a number of farm buildings.... Behind the pavilion on the right is an immense garden, with the most exquisite fruit in the country."

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.[61] Mrs.

Washington was delighted with Mr. de Custine's attention, and most gracefully expressed her grat.i.tude."

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."

Moving northward by night marches, the troops again start not later than two o'clock in the morning, as in the previous summer; the French officers notice the extraordinary progress realized since their first visit. At Wilmington, says Closen, "some fifty brick houses have been built, very fine and large, since we first pa.s.sed, which gives a charming appearance to the main street." At Philadelphia La Luzerne is ready with another magnificent entertainment; a Dauphin has been born to France, and a beautiful hall has been built on purpose for the intended banquet by "a French officer serving in the American corps of Engineers," Major L'Enfant, the future designer of the future "federal city."

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 manuvres 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 fetes, a charming picture of which, as well as of the American society attending them, is furnished us by Segur: "Mr.

de Rochambeau, desirous to the very last of proving by the details of his conduct, as well as by the great services he had rendered, how much he wished to keep the affection of the Americans and to carry away their regrets, gave in the city of Providence frequent a.s.semblies and numerous b.a.l.l.s, to which people flocked from ten leagues around.

"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 cla.s.ses, 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."[62]

IX

In the autumn of 1782 a general parting took place, Rochambeau returning to France[63] and the army being sent to the Isles, believed now to be threatened by the English; for if the war was practically at an end for the Americans on the continent, it was not yet the same elsewhere for us, and Suffren especially was prosecuting in the Indies his famous naval campaign, which, owing to the lack of means of communication, was to be continued long after peace had been signed.

So many friendships had been formed that there was much emotion when the last days arrived.[64] On the 19th of October, being the anniversary of Yorktown, Washington offered a dinner to the French officers, who on the same day took leave of him, never to see him again. "On that evening,"

says Closen, "we took leave of General Washington and of the other officers of our acquaintance, our troops being to sail on the 22d. There is no sort of kindness and tokens of good will we have not received from General Washington; the idea of parting from the French army, probably forever, seemed to cause him real sorrow, having, as he had, received the most convincing proofs of the respect, the veneration, the esteem, and even the attachment which every individual in the army felt for him."

After having taken leave, "in tenderest fashion," of the American commander, who promised "an enduring fraternal friendship," Rochambeau, carrying with him two bronze field-pieces taken at Yorktown, presented by Congress, and adorned with inscriptions, the engraving of which had been supervised by Washington,[65] sailed for France on the _Emeraude_, early in January, 1783. An English warship which had been cruising at the entrance of the Chesapeake nearly captured him, and it was only by throwing overboard her spare masts and part of her artillery that the _Emeraude_, thus become lighter and faster, could escape. The general learned, on landing, of the peace which Vergennes had considered, from the first, as a certain, though not immediate, consequence of the taking of Yorktown. "The homages of all Frenchmen go to you," he had written to Rochambeau, adding: "You have restored to our arms all their l.u.s.tre, and you have laid the cornerstone for the raising, which we expect, of an honorable peace." The hour for it had now struck, and while Suffren had yet to win the naval battle of Goudelour, the preliminaries had been signed at Versailles on the 20th of January, 1783.

The King, the ministers, the whole country gave Rochambeau the welcome he deserved. At his first audience on his return he had asked Louis XVI, as being his chief request, permission to divide the praise bestowed on him with the unfortunate de Gra.s.se, now a prisoner of the English after the battle of the Saintes, where, fighting 30 against 37, he had lost seven ships, including the _Ville de Paris_ (which had 400 dead and 500 wounded), all so damaged by the most furious resistance that, owing to grounding, to sinking, or to fire, not one reached the English waters.[66] Rochambeau received the blue ribbon of the Holy Ghost, was appointed governor of Picardy, and a few years later became a marshal of France. Owing to the proximity of his new post, he was able twice to visit England, where he met again his dear La Luzerne, now French amba.s.sador in London, and his former foe, Admiral Hood, who received him with open arms. But the tokens of friendship which touched him most came from officers of Cornwallis's army: "They manifested," he writes, "in the most public manner their grat.i.tude for the humanity with which they had been treated by the French army after their surrender."

Rochambeau was keeping up with Washington a most affectionate correspondence, still partly unpublished, the great American often reminding him of his "friendship and love" for his "companions in war,"

discussing a possible visit to France, and describing his life now spent "in rural employments and in contemplation of those friendships which the Revolution enabled me to form with so many worthy characters of your nation, through whose a.s.sistance I can now sit down in my calm retreat."

Dreaming of a humanity less agitated than that he had known, dreaming dreams which were not to be soon realized, he was writing to Rochambeau, from Mount Vernon, on September 7, 1785: "Although it is against the profession of arms, I wish to see all the world at peace."

"Much as he may wish to conceal himself and lead the life of a plain man, he will ever be the first citizen of the United States," La Luzerne had written to Vergennes, and the truth of the statement was shown when a unanimous election made of the former commander-in-chief the first President of the new republic, in the year when the States General met in France and our own Revolution began.

Knowing the friendly dispositions preserved by Rochambeau toward Americans,[67] Washington often gave those going abroad letters of introduction to him; one day the man was Gouverneur Morris, so well known afterward; another day it was a poet of great fame then, of not so great now. Less sure of his ground when the question was of Parna.s.sus than when it was of battle-fields, Washington had described this traveller to Lafayette as being "considered by those who are good judges to be a genius of the first magnitude." To Rochambeau he introduced him as "the author of an admirable poem in which he has worthily celebrated the glory of your nation in general, and of yourself in particular."[68]

The poet was that Joel Barlow, of Hartford, who, having become later minister of the United States to France, died in a Polish village in the course of a journey undertaken to present his credentials to the chief of the state, who, for important reasons, had been unable to grant him an audience elsewhere than in Russia, the year being 1812, and the sovereign Emperor Napoleon.[69]

The poem alluded to by Washington was an epic one, called the _Vision of Columbus_, in which an angel appears to the navigator in his legendary prison and reveals to him, in Virgilian fashion, the future of America. Washington, Wayne, Greene are thus shown him, as well as

Brave Rochambeau in gleamy steel array'd,

a description which, if brave Rochambeau ever saw it, must have made him smile.

Rochambeau's letters are in such English as we have seen he had been able, with commendable zeal, to learn late in life. The French general keeps the American leader informed of what goes on in France, in England, and Europe, bestows the highest praise on Pitt, "a wise man who sets finances (of the English) in good order," and gives an account of a visit paid him by Cornwallis at Calais: "I have seen Cornwallis last summer at Calais.... I gave him a supper in little committee;[70] he was very polite, but, as you may believe, I could not drink with him your health in toast."[71]

He tells Washington of Franklin's departure from France, very old, very ill, greatly admired, "having the courage to undertake so long a voyage to go and die in the bosom of his native country. It will be impossible for him, at his coming back [to] America, to go and visit you, but I told him that you would certainly go and see him, and that I had always heard you speaking of him in the best terms and having a great consideration for his respectable character. He will have a great joy to see you again, and I should be very happy if I could enjoy the same pleasure."[72]

An affectionate interest for one another and one another's families appears in all these letters, as well as a cherishing of common souvenirs. Rochambeau asks to be remembered to his former American comrades: "A thousand kindness[es] and compliments to Mr. Jefferson, to Mr. Knox, and to all my _anciens camarades_ and friends which are near you."[73]

The Countess de Rochambeau sometimes takes up the pen, and in one of her letters appeals to Washington in favor of dear Closen who, though he had every right to be included in it, had been forgotten when the list of the original Cincinnati had been drawn up.[74] The request was at once granted.

Two _gouaches_ had been painted by the famous miniaturist Van Blarenberghe, one representing the storming of the redoubts at Yorktown, the other the surrender of the garrison. They were for the King, and are well known nowadays to every one familiar with the Versailles Museum.

Their topographical accuracy is so remarkable that it had always been believed the painter had had the help of some French officer present at the siege. Rochambeau writes to Washington about those pictures and gives us the name of the officer who had actually helped the miniaturist, a well-known name, that of Berthier: "[There have] been presented yesterday to the King, my dear general, two pictures to put in his closet (study), which have been done by an excellent painter, one representing the siege of York, and the other the defile of the British army between the American and the French armies.

"Mr. le Marshal de Segur promised me copies of them which I will place in my closet on the right and left sides of your picture. Besides that they are excellent paintings, they have been drawn both by the truth and by an excellent design by the young Berthier, who was deputed quartermaster at the said siege."[75]

Washington having alluded, as he was fond of doing, to the rest he had at last secured for the remnant of his life, as he thought, under the shadow of his own vine and fig-tree, Rochambeau in his answer courteously and sincerely compliments him on the "philosophical" but not definitive quiet he now enjoys under the shadow--"of his _laurel_-tree."[76]

The War of the Austrian Succession had found Rochambeau already an officer in the French army; the Revolution found him still an officer in the French army, defending the frontier as a marshal of France and commander-in-chief of the northern troops. In 1792 he definitively withdrew to Rochambeau, barely escaping with his life during the Terror.

A striking and touching thing it is to note that, when a prisoner in that "horrible sepulchre," the Conciergerie, he appealed to the "Citizen President of the Revolutionary Tribunal," and invoked as a safeguard the great name of Washington, "my colleague and my friend in the war we made together for the liberty of America."

Luckier than many of his companions in arms of the American war, than Lauzun, Custine, d'Estaing, Broglie, Dillon, and others, Rochambeau escaped the scaffold. He lived long enough to see rise to glory that young man who was teaching the world better military tactics than even the book of Count de Guibert, Bonaparte, now First Consul of the French Republic. Bonaparte had great respect for the old marshal, who was presented to him by the minister of war in 1803; he received him surrounded by his generals, and as the soldier of Klostercamp and Yorktown entered he said, "Monsieur le Marechal, here are your pupils"; and the old man answered: "They have surpa.s.sed their master."

After having been very near death from his wounds in 1747, Rochambeau died only in 1807, being then in his castle of Rochambeau, in Vendomois, and aged eighty-two. He was buried in the neighboring village of Th.o.r.e, in a tomb of black and white marble, in the cla.s.sical style then in vogue. An inscription devised by his wife at the evening of a very long life, draws a touching picture of those qualities which had won her heart more than half a century before: "A model as admirable in his family as in his armies, an enlightened mind, indulgent, ever thinking of the interests of others ... a happy and honored old age has been for him the crowning of a spotless life. Those who had been his va.s.sals had become his children.... His tomb awaits me; before descending to it I have desired to engrave upon it the memory of so many merits and virtues, as a token of grat.i.tude for fifty years of happiness." On a parallel slab one reads: "Here lies Jeanne Therese Telles d'Acosta, who died at Rochambeau, aged ninety-four, May 19, 1824."

In the castle are still to be seen the exquisite portrait, by Latour, of her who in her old age had written the inscription, several portraits of the marshal, and of his ancestors from the first Vimeur, who had become, in the sixteenth century, lord of Rochambeau, the portrait in the white uniform of Auvergne of the old soldier's son, who died at Leipzig, the sword worn at Yorktown, the eagle of the Cincinnati side by side with the star of the Holy Ghost, the before-mentioned _gouaches_ by Van Blarenberghe, a portrait of Washington, given by him to his French friend and also mentioned in their correspondence, and many other historical relics. But the two bronze field-pieces offered by Congress are no longer there, having been commandeered during the Revolution. In front of the simple and n.o.ble facade of the slate-roofed castle, at the foot of the terrace, the Loir flows, brimful, between woods and meadows, the same river that fills such a great place in French literature, because of a distant relative of the Rochambeaus of old, Pierre de Ronsard.