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 lustre, 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 Grasse, 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
ambassador 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 gratitude 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 assistance 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 Parnassus
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 Ségur 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 Maréchal, here are your pupils";
and the old man answered: "They have surpassed 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 Thoré,
in a tomb of black and white marble, in the classical 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 vassals 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 gratitude for fifty years of happiness." On a
parallel slab one reads: "Here lies Jeanne Thérèse 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 noble façade 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.
Visiting some years ago the place and the tomb, and standing beside the
grave of the marshal, it occurred to me that it would be appropriate if
some day trees from Mount Vernon could spread their shade over the
remains of that friend of Washington and the American cause. With the
assent of the family and of the mayor of Thoré, and thanks to the good
will of the ladies of the Mount Vernon Association, this idea was
realized, and half a dozen seedlings from trees planted by Washington
were sent to be placed around Rochambeau's monument: two elms, two
maples, two redbuds, and six plants of ivy from Washington's tomb. The
last news received about them showed that they had taken root and were
growing.
X
Some will, perhaps, desire to know what became of Closen. Sent to the
Islands (the West Indies) with the rest of the army, he felt, like all
his comrades, greatly disappointed, more even than the others, on
account of his bride, whom American beauties had not caused him to
forget. He had inserted in his journal a page of silhouettes
representing a dozen of the latter, with the name inscribed on each; but
he had taken care to write underneath: "Honni soit qui mal y pense."
When about to go on board he writes: "I scarcely dare say what I
experienced and which was the dominating sentiment, whether my
attachment to all that I love or ambition added to sensitiveness on the
principles of honor. Reason, however, soon took the lead and decided in
favor of the latter.... Let me be patient and do my duty."
To leave Rochambeau was for him one more cause of pain: "I shall never
insist enough, nor sufficiently describe the sorrow I felt when
separated from my worthy and respectable general; I lose more than any
one else in the army.... Attentive as I was to all he had to say about
battles, marches, the selection of positions, sieges, in a word, to all
that pertains to the profession, I have always tried to profit by his so
instructive talks.... I must be resigned."
Once again, therefore, life begins on those detested "sabots," a
large-sized _sabot_, this time, namely the _Brave_, of seventy-four
guns, "quite recently lined with copper," a sad place of abode, however,
in bad weather, or even in any weather: "One can scarcely imagine the
bigness of the sea, the noise, the height of the waves, such pitching
and rolling that it was impossible to stand; the ships disappearing at
times as if they had been swallowed by the sea, to touch it the instant
after only with a tiny bit of the keel. What a nasty element, and how
sincerely we hate it, all of us of the land troops! The lugubrious noise
of the masts, the _crics-cracs_ of the vessel, the terrible movements
which on the sudden raise you, and to which we were not at all
accustomed, the perpetual encumbrance that forty-five officers are for
each other, forty having no other place of refuge than a single room for
them all, the sad faces of those who are sick ... the dirt, the boredom,
the feeling that one is shut up in a _sabot_ as in a state prison ...
all this is only part of what goes to make life unpleasant for a land
officer on a vessel, even a naval one.... Let us take courage."[77]
Few diversions. They meet a slave-ship under the Austrian flag, an
"abominable and cruel sight," with "that iron chain running from one end
of the ship to the other, the negroes being tied there, two and two,"
stark naked and harshly beaten if they make any movement which
displeases the captain. The latter, who is from Bordeaux, salutes his
country's war flag with three "Vive le Roi!" They signal to him an
answer which cannot be transcribed. No one knows where they go. "Sail
on," philosophically writes Closen.
They touch at Porto Rico, at Curaçao, where the fleet is saddened by the
loss of the _Bourgogne_, at Porto Cabello (Venezuela), where they make
some stay, and where Closen loses no time in resuming his observations
on natives, men and beasts, tatous, monkeys, caimans, "enormous lizards
quite different from ours," houses which consist in one ground floor
divided into three rooms. The "company of the Caracque" (Caracas) keeps
the people in a state of restraint and slavery. "Taxation is enormous."
Religious intolerance is very troublesome: "Though the Inquisition is
not as rigorous in its searches as in Europe, for there is but one
commissioner at Caracque, there is, however, too much fanaticism, too
many absurd superstitions, in a word, too much ignorance among the
inhabitants, who can never say a word or walk a step without saying an
_Ave_, crossing themselves twenty times, or kissing a chaplet which they
ever have dangling from their neck with a somewhat considerable
accompaniment of relics and crosses. One gentleman, in order to play a
trick on me, in the private houses where I had gained access so as to
satisfy my curiosity and desire of instruction, told a few people that I
was a Protestant. What signs of the cross at the news! And they would
ceaselessly repeat: _Malacco Christiano_--a bad Christian!"
On the 24th of March (1783) great news reached them: the French vessel
_Andromaque_ arrived, "with the grand white flag on her foremast, as a
signal of peace. The minute after all our men-of-war were decked with
flags." There were a few more incidents, like the capture of some French
officers, who were quietly rowing in open boats, by "the _Albemarle_, of
twenty-four guns, commanded by Captain Nelson, of whom these gentlemen
speak in the highest terms." As soon as the news of the peace was given
him they were released by the future enemy of Napoleon.
The hour for the return home had struck at last. It was delayed by brief
stays in some parts of the French West Indies, notably Cap Français,
Santo Domingo (now Cap Haïtien). "A few days before our arrival at the
Cape Prince William, Duke of Lancaster, third son of the King of
England, had come and spent there two days, while the English squadron
was cruising in the roads. Great festivities had been arranged in his
honor,"--for there was really no hatred against the enemy of the day
before.
Some calms and some storms also delayed the return, with the usual
"criiiiicks craaaaaks" of the masts, the journey being occupied in
transcribing the "notes and journals on the two Americas," and enlivened
by the saving of the parrakeet of a Spanish lady who had been admitted
with her family on board the _Brave_. "Frightened by something, the
little parrakeet flies off and falls into the sea. The lady's negro,
luckily happening to be on the same side, jumps just as he is, with no
time to think, dives, reappears, cries, 'Cato! Cato!' joins the
parrakeet, puts her on his woolly head, and returns to the ship."
Delighted, the lady "allows this black saviour to kiss her hand, a
unique distinction for a slave, and bestows on him a life pension of one
hundred francs. Many sailors would have liked to do the same, had they
known."
Land is now descried; they see again the sights noted when sailing for
America: these "coasts thick-decked with live people, fruit-trees and
other delightful objects." All is delightful; the joy is universal; they
make arrangements to reach Paris, which Closen did in magnificent
style. "And I," we read in his journal, "after having bought a fine
coach where I could place, before, behind, on the top, my servants,
consisting of a white man and of my faithful and superb black Peter, and
with them three monkeys, four parrots, and six parrakeets, posted to
Paris in this company, a noisy one and difficult to maintain clean and
in good order.... The next day (June 22) I was at Saint-Pol-de-Léon, my
last quarters before sailing for America, and saw again with hearty
rejoicings the respectable Kersabiec family which had so well tended me
throughout my convalescence after a deadly disease." He thought he could
do no less than present them with one of his parrakeets as a token of
"gratitude and friendship."
At Guingamp he finds the Du Dresnays, other friends of his, and reaches
Paris, he writes, on the 30th of June, with "all my live beings of all
colors, myself looking an Indian so tanned and sun-burnt was my face,
exception made for my forehead, which my hat had preserved quite white."
The Rochambeau family made him leave his inn and stay with them in their
beautiful house of the Rue du Cherche-Midi. The general ("my kind and
respectable military father," says Closen) presented him to the minister
of war, Marshal de Ségur, who granted the young officer a flattering
welcome, and the journal closes as novels used to end in olden days, and
as the first part of well-ordered, happy lives will ever continue to
end. Leaving Paris with the promise of a colonelcy _en second_--"a very
eventual ministerial bouquet"--he went home to Deux-Ponts: "There I
found my beautiful fiancée, my dear, my divine Doris, who had had the
constancy to keep for me her heart and her hand during the four years of
my absence in America, in spite of several proposals received by her,
even from men much better endowed with worldly goods, my share
consisting only in the before mentioned ministerial promise and in the
reputation of an honest man and a good soldier."
I shall only add that the ministerial promise was kept, and that it was
as a colonel and a knight of Saint Louis that Closen found himself
aide-de-camp again to his old chief, Rochambeau, charged with the
defense of the northern frontier at the beginning of the Revolution.[78]
* * * * *
Faded inks, hushed voices. The remembrance of the work remains, however,
and cannot fade; for its grandeur becomes, from year to year, more
apparent. In less than a century and a half New York has passed from the
ten thousand inhabitants it possessed under Clinton to the five million
and more of to-day. Philadelphia, once the chief city, "an immense
town," Closen had called it, has now ten times more houses than it had
citizens. Partly owing again to France, ceding, unasked, the whole
territory of Louisiana in 1803, the frontier of this country, which the
upper Hudson formerly divided in its centre, has been pushed back to the
Pacific; the three million Americans of Washington and Rochambeau have
become the one hundred million of to-day. From the time when the flags
of the two countries floated on the ruins of Yorktown the equilibrium of
the world has been altered.
There is, perhaps, no case in which, with the unavoidable mixture of
human interests, a war has been more undoubtedly waged for an idea. The
fact was made obvious at the peace, when victorious France, being
offered Canada for a separate settlement, refused,[79] and kept her word
not to accept any material advantage, the whole nation being in accord,
and the people illuminating for joy.
The cause was a just one; even the adversary, many among whom had been
from the first of that opinion, was not long to acknowledge it. Little
by little, and in spite of some fitful re-awakening of former
animosities, as was seen in the second War of Independence, hostile
dispositions vanished. The three nations who had met in arms in
Yorktown, the three whose ancestors had known a Hundred Years' War, have
now known a hundred years' peace. "I wish to see all the world at
peace," Washington had written to Rochambeau. For over a century now the
three nations which fought at Yorktown have become friends, and in this
measure at least the wish of the great American has been fulfilled.