I
Little more than a century ago the hill on which rises the Capitol of
the federal city and the ground around it were covered with woods and
underbrush; a few scattered farms had been built here and there, with
one or two exceptions mere wooden structures whose low roofs scarcely
emerged from their leafy surroundings. Not very long before, Indians had
used to gather on that eminence and hold their council-fires.
As far now as the eye can reach the picturesque outline of one of the
finest cities that exist is discovered; steeples and pinnacles rise
above the verdure of the trees lining the avenues within the unaltered
frame supplied by the blue hills of Maryland and Virginia.
The will of Congress, the choice made by the great man whose name the
city was to bear, the talents of a French officer, caused this change.
Debates and competitions had been very keen; more than one city of the
North and of the South had put forth pleas to be the one selected and
become the capital: Boston, where the first shot had been fired;
Philadelphia, where independence had been proclaimed; Yorktown, where it
had been won--Yorktown, modest as a city, but glorious by the events its
name recalled, now an out-of-the-way borough, rarely visited, and where
fifty white inhabitants are all that people the would-be capital of the
new-born Union. New York also had been in the ranks, as well as
Kingston, Newport, Wilmington, Trenton, Reading, Lancaster, Annapolis,
Williamsburg, and several others. Passions were stirred to such an
extent that the worst was feared, and that, incredible as it may now
seem, Jefferson could speak of the "necessity of a compromise to save
the Union."
A compromise was, in fact, resorted to, which consisted in choosing no
city already in existence, but building a new one on purpose. This
solution had been early thought of, for Washington had written on
October 12, 1783, to Chevalier de Chastellux: "They (Congress) have
lately determined to make choice of some convenient spot near the Falls
of the Delaware for the permanent residence of the sovereign power of
these United States." But would-be capitals still persisted in hoping
they might be selected.
Congress made up its mind for good on the 16th of July, 1790, and
decided that the President should be intrusted with the care of choosing
"on the river Potomac" a territory, ten miles square, which should
become the "Federal territory" and the permanent seat of the Government
of the United States.
Washington thereupon quickly reached a decision; a great rider all his
life, the hills and vales of the region were familiar to him; it soon
became certain that the federal city would rise one day where it now
stands. The spot seemed to him a particularly appropriate one for a
reason which has long ceased to be so very telling, and which he
constantly mentions in his letters as the place's "centrality."
But what sort of a city should it be? A residential one for statesmen,
legislators, and judges, or a commercial one with the possibilities,
considered then of the first order, afforded by the river, or a mixture
of both? Should it be planned in view of the present or of the future,
and of what sort of future?
With the mind of an artist and in some sense of a prophet, perceiving
future time as clearly as if it were the present, a man foresaw, over a
century ago, what we now see with our eyes. He was a French officer who
had fought for the cause of independence, and had remained in America
after the war, Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant.
Some researches in French and American archives have allowed me to trace
his ancestry, and to add a few particulars to what was already known of
him.
Born at Paris, on August 2, 1754, he was the son of Pierre L'Enfant,
"Painter in ordinary to the King in his Manufacture of the Gobelins."
The painter, whose wife was Marie Charlotte Leullier, had for his
specialty landscapes and battle-scenes. Born at Anet, in 1704, on a farm
which he bequeathed to his children, he was a pupil of Parrocel and had
been elected an Academician in 1745. Some of his pictures are at Tours;
six are at Versailles, representing as many French victories: the taking
of Menin, 1744; of Fribourg, 1744; of Tournay, 1745; the battle of
Fontenoy, 1745 (a favorite subject, several times painted by him); the
battle of Laufeldt, 1747, where that young officer, destined to be
Washington's partner in the Yorktown campaign, Count Rochambeau,
received, as we have seen before, his first wounds. The painter died a
very old man, in the Royal Manufacture, 1787.
Young L'Enfant grew up among artistic surroundings, and, as subsequent
events showed, received instruction as an architect and engineer. The
cause of the United States had in him one of its earliest enthusiasts.
In 1777, being then twenty-three, possessed of a commission of
lieutenant in the French colonial troops, he sailed for America on one
of those ships belonging to Beaumarchais's mythical firm of "Hortalez
and Co.," a firm whose cargoes consisted in soldiers and ammunition for
the insurgents, and which was as much a product of the dramatist's brain
as Figaro himself. Figaro, it is averred, has had a great influence in
this world; Hortalez and Co. had not a small one, either. The ship had
been named after the secretary of state, who was to sign, the following
year, the United States' only alliance, _Le Comte de Vergennes_, a name,
wrote Beaumarchais, "fit to bring luck to the cargo, which is superb."
The superb cargo consisted, as usual, in guns and war supplies, also in
men who might be of no less use for the particular sort of trade
Hortalez and Co. were conducting. "Some good engineers and some cavalry
officers will soon arrive," Silas Deane was then writing to Congress.
One of the engineers was Pierre Charles L'Enfant. His coming had
preceded by one month the sailing of another ship with another
appropriate name, the ship _La Victoire_, which brought Lafayette.
L'Enfant served first as a volunteer and at his own expense. "In
February, 1778," we read in an unpublished letter of his to Washington,
"I was honored with a commission of captain of engineers, and by leave
of Congress attached to the Inspector-general.... Seeing [after the
winter of 1778-9] no appearance of an active campaign to the northward,
my whole ambition was to attend the Southern army, where it was likely
the seat of war would be transferred." He was, accordingly, sent to
Charleston, and obtained "leave to join the light infantry, under
Lieutenant-Colonel Laurens; his friendship furnished me," he relates,
"with many opportunities of seeing the enemy to advantage."[80]
Not "to advantage," however, did he fight at Savannah, when the French
and Americans, under d'Estaing and Lincoln, were repulsed with terrible
loss. The young captain was leading one of the vanguard columns in the
American contingent and, like d'Estaing himself, was grievously wounded.
He managed to escape to Charleston. "I was," he said, "in my bed till
January, 1780. My weak state of health did not permit me to work at the
fortifications of Charleston, and when the enemy debarked, I was still
obliged to use a crutch."[81] He took part, however, in the fight,
replacing a wounded major, and was made a prisoner at the capitulation.
Rochambeau negotiated his exchange in January, 1782, for Captain von
Heyden, a Hessian officer.
"Your zeal and active services," Washington wrote back to L'Enfant, "are
such as reflect the highest honor on yourself and are extremely
pleasing to me, and I have no doubt they will have their due weight with
Congress in any future promotion in your corps."[82] They had, in fact,
in the following year, when, by a vote of the assembly, L'Enfant was
promoted a major of engineers, 1783.
His knowledge of the art of fortification, his merit as a
disciplinarian, the part he had taken, as he recalls in a letter to
Count de La Luzerne,[83] in devising the earliest "system of discipline
and exercises which was finally adopted in the American army" (all that
was done in that line was not by Steuben alone), rendered his services
quite useful. His gifts as an artist, his cleverness at catching
likenesses made him welcome among his brother officers. He would in the
dreary days of Valley Forge draw pencil portraits of them, one, we know,
of Washington, at the request of Lafayette, who wanted also to have a
painted portrait. "I misunderstood you," the general wrote him from
Fredericksburg, on September 25, 1778; "else I would have had the
picture made by Peale when he was at Valley Forge. When you requested me
to sit to Monsieur Lanfang"--thus spelled, showing how pronounced by
Washington--"I thought it was only to obtain the outlines and a few
shades of my features, to have some prints struck from."
Some such pencil portraits by L'Enfant subsist, for example in the
Glover family at Washington, and are creditable and obviously
true-to-nature sketches.
Whenever, during the war or after, something in any way connected with
art was wanted, L'Enfant was, as a matter of course, appealed to,
whether the question was of a portrait, of a banqueting hall, of a
marble palace, a jewel, a solemn procession, a fortress to be raised, or
a city to be planned. A man of many accomplishments, with an overflow of
ideas and few competitors, he was the factotum of the new nation. When
the French minister, La Luzerne, desired to arrange a grand banquet in
honor of the birth of the Dauphin (the first one, who lived only eight
years), he had a hall built on purpose, in Philadelphia, and L'Enfant
was the designer. Baron de Closen, Rochambeau's aide, writes as to this
in his journal: "M. de La Luzerne offered a dinner that day to the
legion of Lauzun, which had arrived the same morning (August 2, 1782).
The hall which he caused to be built on purpose for the fête he gave on
the occasion of the birth of the Dauphin, is very large and as beautiful
as it can be. One cannot imagine a building in better taste; simplicity
is there united with an air of dignity. It has been erected under the
direction of Mr. de L'Enfant, a French officer, in the service of the
American corps of engineers." Closen adds that "Mr. Barbé de
Marbois,[84] counselor of embassy of our court, is too modest to admit
that his advice had something to do with the result."
When peace came, those officers who had fought shoulder to shoulder with
the Americans returned home, bringing to the old continent new and
fruitful ideas, those especially pertaining to equality and to the
unreasonableness of class distinctions. Liberty had been learned from
England; equality was from America.
L'Enfant was one of those who went back to France, but he did not stay.
He had been away five years and wanted to see his old father, the
painter, whose end now was near. A royal brevet of June 13, 1783, had
conferred on the officer a small French pension of three hundred livres,
"in consideration of the usefulness of his services, and of the wounds
received by him during the American war."[85] He sailed for France late
in the same year, reaching Havre on the 8th of December.
The Society of the Cincinnati had been founded in May. For the insignia
appeal had been made as usual to the artist of the army,[86] L'Enfant,
who was, moreover, commissioned by Washington, first president of the
association, to avail himself of his journey to order from some good
Paris jeweller the eagles to be worn by the members, L'Enfant himself
being one. He was also to help in organizing the French branch of the
society. Difficulties had first been encountered, for the reason that no
foreign order was then allowed in France, but it was recognized that
this could scarcely be considered a foreign one. In an unpublished
letter to Rochambeau, Marshal de Ségur, minister of war, said: "His
Majesty the King asks me to inform you that he allows you to accept this
honorable invitation (to be a member). He even wants you to assure
General Washington, in his behalf, that he will always see with extreme
satisfaction all that may lead to a maintenance and strengthening of the
ties formed between France and the United States. The successes and the
glory which have been the result and fruit of this union have shown how
advantageous it is, and that it should be perpetuated." Concerning the
institution itself the minister wrote: "It is equally honorable because
of the spirit which has inspired its creation and of the virtues and
talents of the celebrated general whom it has chosen as its
president."[87]
L'Enfant sent to Washington glowing accounts of the way the idea had
been welcomed in France, and told him of the first meetings held, one at
the house of Rochambeau, Rue du Cherche-Midi, for officers in the French
service, and another at the house of Lafayette, Rue de Bourbon, for
French officers who held their commissions from Congress, both groups
deciding thereupon to unite, under Admiral d'Estaing as
president-general.[88]
What proved for L'Enfant, according to circumstances, one of his chief
qualities, as well as one of his chief defects, was that, whatever the
occasion, he ever saw "en grand." It had been understood that he would
pay the expenses of his journey, and that the Society of the Cincinnati
would only take charge of those resulting from the making of the eagles.
His own modest resources had been, as Duportail testified, freely spent
by him during the war for the good of the cause, and little enough was
left him. Nevertheless, did he write to Alexander Hamilton, "being
arrived in France, everything there concurred to strengthen the
sentiment which had made me undertake that voyage, and the reception
which the Cincinnati met with soon induced me to appear in that country
in a manner consistent with the dignity of the society of which I was
regarded as the representative." He spent without counting: "My abode at
the court produced expenses far beyond the sums I had at first thought
of." He ordered the eagles from the best "artists, who rivalled each
other for the honor of working for the society,"[89] but wanted,
however, to be paid; and a letter to Rochambeau, written later, shows
him grappling with the problem of satisfying Duval and Francastel of
Paris, who had supplied the eagles on credit, and to whom the large sum
of twenty-two thousand three hundred and three livres were still due.
These money troubles caused L'Enfant to shorten his stay in France; he
was back in New York on the 29th of April, 1784, and after some
discussion and delay, the society "Resolved, that, in consideration of
services rendered by Major L'Enfant, the general meeting make
arrangements for advancing him the sum of one thousand five hundred and
forty-eight dollars, being the amount of the loss incurred by him in
the negotiation for a number of eagles, or orders, of the
Cincinnati."[90]