Claude Louis Hector de Rochambeau

“ All wanted to see him, and as soon as permission to travel was granted several managed to reach his camp. For all of them, different as they might be in rank and character, the impression was the same and fulfilled expectation, beginning with Rochambeau, who saw him for the first time at the Hartford conferences, in September, 1780, when they tried to draw a first plan for a combined action. A friendship then commenced between the two that was long to survive those eventful years. ”

“ General Rochambeau, who is at Port au Prince, has been sent for by the inhabitants of the Cape to take the command. Much good is expected from the change, he is said to be a brave officer and an excellent man. ”

“ A distinguished veteran of three wars in Europe, Rochambeau came to America at the head of 5,000 French regulars to succor the Thirteen Colonies in their struggle for liberty. A more experienced soldier and an older man than Washington, the French general, with admirable spirit and magnanimity, placed himself and his troops unreservedly under the American commander-in-chief, serving as an integral part of the colonial forces. ”

“ In consequence of this supply, General Christophe (the late Emperor of Hayti) , then second in command of the Blacks, took the field, routed the deserters, and hanged their leaders. It is beyond all doubt, that this event accelerated the surrender of General Rochambeau, at least six weeks or two months. ”

“ 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 merri [100] ment. ”

“ It can truly be said that no single man risked nor did more for the United States than de Grasse, the single one of the leaders to whom no memorial has been dedicated.
The news spread like wild-fire; the camp was merry with songs and shouts; in Philadelphia the joy was indescribable; crowds pressed before the house of La Luzerne, cheering him and his country, while in the streets impromptu orators, standing on chairs, delivered mock funeral orations on the Earl of Cornwallis. "You have," Rochambeau wrote to the admiral, "spread universal joy throughout America, with which she is wild." ”

“ I have the honor to send to your Excellency an open packet for the Count de Rochambeau. You will there find the copy of a letter to me from M. Destouches. I lament the ill success of an expedition, 461 which, if it had succeeded, would have been doubly agreeable to us by its utility to our allies, and by the honor it would have reflected upon the arms of the King. As to the rest, it appears that our commanders have fulfilled this latter point, and all the world is satisfied, that, having a superior force to contend against, the manner of the contest has been highly honorable to them. ”

“ Rochambeau was told to put himself under Washington’s command, and to consider his troops as part of the American army, while American officers were to take precedence of French officers of equal rank. This French army was excellent in discipline and equipment, and among its officers were some, such as the Duke de Lauzun-Biron and the Marquis de Chastellux, who had won high distinction. Rochambeau wrote to Vergennes that on his arrival he found the people of Rhode Island sad and discouraged. Everybody thought the country was going to the dogs. ”

“ Writing to Prince de Montbarey a month after the landing, Rochambeau says: “I can answer for the discipline of the army; not a man has left his camp, not a cabbage has been stolen, not a complaint has been heard.” [22] To the President of Congress he had written a few days before: “I hope that account will have been rendered to your Excellency of the discipline observed by the French troops; there has not been one complaint; not a man has missed a roll-call. We are your brothers and we shall act as such with you; we shall fight your enemies by your side as if we were one and the same nation.” ”

“ 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.
Rochambeau, his son, and two aides, one of whom was Closen, journey to visit at Monticello the already famous Jefferson. They take with them 14 horses, sleep in the houses where they chance to be at nightfall—a surprise party which may, at times, have caused embarrassment ”

“ A happy marriage with annals brief When still very young, Rochambeau had contracted one of those marriages so numerous in the eighteenth, as in every other, century, of which nothing is said in the memoirs and letters of the period, because they were what they should be—happy ones. Every right-minded and right-hearted man will find less pleasure in the sauciest anecdote told by Lauzun 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 ”

“ On the 21st of August a committee of the General Assembly of the State, at that time in session at Newport, presented Rochambeau and De Ternay with a formal address of welcome. De Rochambeau's reply was full of manliness and good-will. He said, "The French troops are restrained by the strictest discipline, and, acting under General Washington, will live with the Americans as their brethren. I assure the General Assembly that as brethren not only my life, but the lives of the troops under my command, are entirely devoted to their service." ”

“ Rosalie's fat shoulders went shrugging up to Rosalie's thick, red ears.
"Is what true?" she asked. "It is certainly true that you have slept fourteen hours, no less; long enough to dream anything. They called it laziness when I was young, my girl."
Mlle de Rochambeau joined both hands about her wrist. "Tell me—only tell me, Madame—I heard—oh, God!—I heard a man in the street—he said"—shuddering—"he said the prisoners were all murdered—and my cousin—oh, my poor cousin!" Words brought her tears, and she covered her face from Rosalie's convincing nod. ”

“ The British army did not come out with drums beating, colours flying, and all the honours of war, but was forced to defile between a double row of French and Americans, and lay down their arms, to the shame and confusion of their brave and unfortunate soldiers. Marquis Cornwallis wished to give up his sword to Comte de Rochambeau, but the French general made a sign with his hand to show that the honour of receiving it belonged to Washington as the commander-in-chief. ”

“ The officers of Count de Rochambeau had nothing better to do [after Yorktown] , I believe, than to visit the country. When one thinks of the false ideas of government and philanthropy with the virus of which these youths were infected in America, and which they were to enthusiastically propagate in France, with such lamentable success—since that mania for imitation has powerfully helped toward the Revolution, without being its unique cause—people will agree that all those red-heeled young philosophers had much better, for their sake and ours, have stayed at court.... ”

“ The approach of the French fleet favoured a plan of attack which might result in a general and decisive engagement, and Comte de Rochambeau at last left Rhode Island. Washington's army embarked, joined the French forces, and we hemmed in the principal British army which then occupied Virginia and was in position at York Town. ”

“ Painful as the feelings of the marquis were, he had the courage to conceal them, and, advancing towards Madame de la Rochaiguë, with a smile on his lips and an ironical gleam in his eye, he said:
"I am very bold, am I not, my dear baroness? But you know, or rather you are ignorant, that one has friends only to impose upon their good nature, at least unless, like Mlle. de la Rochaiguë here," he added, bowing low to that lady, "one has no faults at all, but is nothing more or less than an angel descended from heaven for the edification of the faithful. ”

“ His Rochechouart grandmother was the one precious link between Cardinal de Richelieu and the higher nobility.
M. de Rochechouart was poor, probably extravagant, and his daughter Françoise, whom tradition makes neither young, pretty, nor amiable, seems to have lived in a sort [Pg 5] of dependence on the great Dame Anne de Polignac, dowager of La Rochefoucauld, at Verteuil, where Charles V was royally entertained in 1539. These circumstances may account for the mésalliance which Mademoiselle de Rochechouart certainly made in marrying Louis du Plessis. ”

“ Francis, the fifth count, was created the Duke de la Rochefoucauld in 1622, and was father to Francis, the second duke, the celebrated author of the Maxims, who was born on the 15th December, 1613. The principal events of his life are matter of history rather than biography, as he was a leading actor in the numerous and complicated state intrigues which took place in France after the death of Louis XIII., and during the minority of his successor. ”

“ He learned to speak English so well that on one occasion he conducted a law-suit that lasted fifteen days. Towards the close of the year 1800 his name was removed from the list of émigrés, but his business affairs in the United States were so extensive that he refused to return to France. In 1803 he went to Hayti on business, and there met Rochambeau, who entrusted him with the command of a fort garrisoned by 1800 men, but which was blockaded by a British squadron, whilst "20,000 blacks" (?) besieged it by land. ”

“ A man did I say? An angel, a patriot, a true patriot; none of your swearing, drinking, hiccupping, lolloping loafers, who think if they consume enough strong liquor that the reign of liberty will come floating down their throats of itself. He is a worker this one; sober and industrious is our Citizen Dangeau, and a Deputy of the Commune, too, no less."
Mlle de Rochambeau, slightly dazed by this flow of conversation, felt a cold chill pass over her. Commissioners of the Commune, Deputies of the Commune! Was Paris full of them? And till this morning she had never heard of the Commune ”

“ Into this plot Rochefoucauld threw himself with all his energy; his connexion with the Queen brought him back to his old love Mdlle. d'Hautefort, and led him to her party, which he afterwards followed. The course he took shut him off from all chance of Court favour. The King regarded him with coldness, the Cardinal with irritation. Although the Bastile and the scaffold, the fate of Chalais and Montmorency, were before his eyes, they failed to deter him from plotting. He was about twenty-three; returning to Paris, he warmly sided with the Queen. ”

“ If he had died when he was thirty, or at the close of the career of Richelieu, nothing would have distinguished him from the mob of violent noblemen who made the streets of Paris a pandemonium.
To understand the influence of La Rochefoucauld it is even more needful than in most similar cases to form a clear idea of his character, and this can only be obtained by an outline of his remarkable career. François VI. Duke of La Rochefoucauld, as a typical Parisian, was born in the ducal palace in the rue des Petits-Champs, on September 15, 1613. ”

“ Yet it is difficult to assign a cause for this; no book is perhaps oftener unwittingly quoted, none certainly oftener unblushingly pillaged; upon none have so many contradictory opinions been given.
"Few books," says Mr. Hallam, "have been more highly extolled, or more severely blamed, than the maxims of the Duke of Rochefoucauld, and that not only here, but also in France." Rousseau speaks of it as, "a sad and melancholy book," though he goes on to say "it is usually so in youth when we do not like seeing man as he is." ”

“ The other—coming in my manhood with my worship of Shakespeare—took possession of me and overwhelmed me completely. Love of Art and the artist intermingled, each acting upon and intensifying the other.
Those who cannot understand this will still less understand my vague poetic longings at the scent of a lovely rose, the sight of a beautiful harp. Estelle was the rose that bloomed alone, Henriette the harp that shared my music, my joys, my sorrows and of which alas! I snapped so many, many strings!
To Louis Berlioz. ”

“ William Channing, father of the philanthropist, confides to the same Ezra Stiles, in a letter of August 6, 1780, his delighted surprise: “The French are a fine body of men and appear to be well officered. Neither the officers nor men are the effeminate beings we were heretofore taught to believe them. They are as large and likely men as can be produced by any nation.” So much for the brittle, queer-shaped mechanisms.
With the French officers in the West Indies, most of them former companions in arms and personal friends, Rochambeau, as soon as he had landed, began to correspond. ”

“ Irritated and disgusted, Rochefoucauld went with the Duc d'Enghein, who was then joining the army, on a campaign, and here he found the one love of his life, the Duke's sister, Mdme. de Longueville. This lady, young, beautiful, and accomplished, obtained a great ascendancy over Rochefoucauld, and was the cause of his taking the side of Condé in the subsequent civil war. Rochefoucauld did not stay long with the army. He was badly wounded at the siege of Mardik, and returned from thence to Paris. On recovering from his wounds, the war of the Fronde broke out. ”

“ With the exception that his wife's name was Mdlle. Vivonne, and that she was the mother of five sons and three daughters, nothing is known of her. While Rochefoucauld and his father were at Blois, the Duchesse de Chevreuse, one of the beauties of the Court, and the mistress of Louis, was banished to Tours. She and Rochefoucauld met, and soon became intimate, and for a time she was destined to be the one motive of his actions. The Duchesse was engaged in a correspondence with the Court of Spain and the Queen. ”