Part 8

[13] Vergennes had written in the same way to the Marquis de Noailles, French ambassador in London: "Our engagements are simple; they are aggressive toward nobody; we have desired to secure for ourselves no advantage of which other nations might be jealous, and which the Americans themselves might regret, in the course of time, to have granted us." Doniol, _Participation de la France à l'établissement des Etats Unis_, II, 822.

[14] 1 November 11, 1778.

[15] _Souvenirs du Lieutenant Général Comte Mathieu-Dumas, de 1770 à 1836_, Paris, 3 vols., I, 36.

[16] _Literary Diary_, September 11, 1779; New York, 1901, 3 vols.

[17] Wooden shoes, a nickname for a ship of mean estate.

[18] So called after its owner, Samuel Fraunces (Francis or François) from the French West Indies, nicknamed "Black Sam" for the color of his skin.

[19] _Nouveau Voyage dans l'Amérique Septentrionale en l'année 1781 et campagne de l'armée de M. le comte de Rochambeau_, Philadelphia, 1782.

[20] _Literary Diary_, New York, 1901, II, 454.

[21] To Rochambeau; n.d., but 1780. (Rochambeau papers.)

[22] Writing to the president of Yale, July 29, 1778, Silas Deane, just about to return to France, recommended the creation of a chair of French: "This language is not only spoke in all the courts, but daily becomes more and more universal among people of business as well as men of letters, in all the principal towns and cities of Europe." Ezra Stiles consulted a number of friends; the majority were against or in doubt, "Mr. C---- violently against, because of popery." _Literary Diary_, August 24, 1778, New York, 1901, II, 297. See also, concerning the prevalent impressions about the French the _Mémoires du Comte de Moré_, 1898, p. 69.

[23] August 8, 1780. (Rochambeau papers.)

[24] August 3, 1780. (_Ibid._)

[25] Stiles's _Literary Diary_, II, 458.

[26] Rodney "has left here two months ago without our being able to guess whither he was going.... Maybe you know better than I do where he may presently be....

"We have just suffered from a terrible tornado, which has been felt in all the Windward Islands; it has caused cruel havoc. A convoy of fifty-two sails, arrived the day before in the roadstead of Saint-Pierre, Martinique, has been driven out to sea, and has disappeared for now a fortnight; five ships only returned here, the others may have reached San Domingo or must have perished. An English ship of the line of 44 guns, the _Endymion_, and two frigates, the _Laurel_ and the _Andromeda_, of the same nationality, have perished on our coasts; we have saved some of their sailors." Marquis de Bouillé to Rochambeau, Fort Royal (Fort de France), October 27, 1780. (Rochambeau papers.)

[27] Three Saint-Simons took part in the American War of Independence, all relatives of the famous duke, the author of the memoirs: the Marquis Claude Anne (1740-1819), the Baron Claude (retired, 1806), and the Count Claude Henri (1760-1825), then a very young officer, the future founder of the Saint-Simonian sect, and first philosophical master of Auguste Comte.

[28] January 7, 1781. (Rochambeau papers.)

[29] _Histoire des Troubles de l'Amérique Anglaise_, by Soulès; Clinton's copy, in the Library of Congress, p. 360.

[30] January 15, 1781.

[31] Specimens exhibited by the doctor's descendant in the Fraunces's Tavern Museum.

[32] In English in the original.

[33] _Voyages de M. le Marquis de Chastellux dans l'Amérique Septentrionale, dans les années 1780, 1781 et 1782_, Paris, 1786, 2 vols., I, 118.

[34] Now the property of the Charity Organization Society. See _A History of the Vernon House_, by Maud Lyman Stevens, Newport, R.I., 1915. Illustrated.

[35] To Rochambeau, June 30, 1781.

[36] This island's aspect fifteen years later is thus described by Duke de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt: "Enfin nous sommes arrivés à King's Bridge dans l'île de New York, où le terrain, généralement mauvais, est encore en mauvais bois dans les parties les plus éloignées de la ville, et où il est cependant couvert de fermes et surtout de maisons de campagne dans les six ou sept milles qui s'en approchent davantage et dans les parties qui avoisinent la rivière du Nord et le bras de mer qui sépare cette île de Long Island." _Voyage_, V, 300.

[37] The convoy was carrying to England the enormous booty taken by Rodney at St. Eustatius. Eighteen of its ships were captured by La Motte-Picquet (May 2, 1781) and thus reached France instead of England.

Toward the Hessians, however, the feeling was different. Some had deserted to enlist in Lauzun's legion, but they almost immediately counterdeserted, upon which Rochambeau wrote to Lauzun: "You have done the best in deciding never to pester yourself again with Hessian deserters, of whom, you know, I never had a good opinion." Newport, December 22, 1780.

[38] July 8, 1781.

[39] April 13, 1781. (Rochambeau papers.)

[40] July 14, 1781.

[41] In June, 1867, by S.A. Green, who printed it with an English translation: _My Campaigns in America, a journal kept by Count William de Deux-Ponts_, Boston, 1868.

[42] The house at the entrance of the Pont-Neuf, where the _Petit Dunkerque_ was established, being then the most famous "magasin de frivolités" in existence, survived until July, 1914. The sign of the shop, a little ship with the inscription, "Au Petit Dunkerque," was still there. It has been preserved and is now in the Carnavalet Museum.

[43] Washington's joy was in proportion to the acuteness of his anxieties; only three days before he was writing to Lafayette: "But, my dear marquis, I am distressed beyond expression to know what has become of Count de Grasse, and for fear that the English fleet, by occupying the Chesapeake, toward which, my last accounts say, they were steering, may frustrate all our prospects in that quarter.... Adieu, my dear marquis; if you get anything new from any quarter, send it, I pray you, _on the spur of speed_, for I am almost all impatience and anxiety." Philadelphia, September 2, 1781.

[44] September 7, 1781.

[45] Graves had rightly supposed that, to have been able to start so quickly, de Grasse must have caused some of his ships to cut their anchors' cables, marking the spot with buoys. The two frigates had been sent to gather those buoys, and were bringing several as a prize to the English admiral, when they were captured. (_Journal Particulier_, by Count de Revel, sublieutenant in the regiment of "Monsieur-Infanterie," p. 131.) On the 15th of September Washington wrote to de Grasse: "I am at a loss to express the pleasure which I have in congratulating your Excellency ... on the glory of having driven the British fleet from the coast and taking two of their frigates."

[46] _History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1787_, by Lieutenant-Colonel Tarleton, commandant of the late British Legion, Dublin, 1787, pp. 403 ff.

[47] A minute "Journal of the Siege" was kept by Mr. de Ménonville, aide major-general, a translation of which is in the _Magazine of American History_, 1881, VII, 283.

[48] The city of Gloucester consisted of "four houses on a promontory facing York," but very well defended by trenches, ditches, redoubts, manned by a garrison of 1,200 men. (Count de Revel, _Journal Particulier_, p. 171.) A detailed account of the Gloucester siege is in this journal. Choisy "had previously won a kind of fame by his defense of the citadel of Cracow, in Poland." (_Ibid._, p. 139.)

[49] As early as 1796, when La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt visited it, the city, formerly a prosperous one, had become a borough of 800 inhabitants, two-thirds of which were colored. "The inhabitants," says the traveller, "are without occupation. Some retail spirits or cloth; some are called lawyers, some justices of the peace. Most of them have, at a short distance from the town, a small farm, which they go and visit every morning, but that scarcely fills the mind or time; and the inhabitants of York, who live on very good terms with each other, occupy both better in dining together, drinking punch, playing billiards; to introduce more variety in this monotonous kind of life, they often change the place where they meet.... The name of Marshal de Rochambeau is still held there in great veneration." _Voyage dans les Etats-Unis_, Paris, "An VII," vol. VI, p. 283.

[50] _Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States_, Philadelphia, 1812, II, 343. In the same spirit Pontgibaud notes that the British army laid down its arms "to the noble confusion of its brave and unfortunate soldiers." _Mémoires du Comte de Moré_ (Pontgibaud), 1898, p. 104.

[51] Same good feeling on the Gloucester side. After the surrender, "les officiers anglais vinrent voir nos officiers qui étaient de service, leur firent toutes les honnêtetés possible, et burent à leur santé." (Revel, _Journal Particulier_, p. 168.) The British fleet appeared only on the 27th of October, at the entrance of the capes; thirty-one sails were counted on that day and forty-four on the next; after the 29th they were no longer seen. "Nous avons su depuis," Revel writes, "que l'Amiral Graves avait dans son armée le général Clinton, avec des troupes venues de New York pour secourir lord Cornwallis. Mais il était trop tard; la poule était mangée, et l'un et l'autre prirent le parti de s'en retourner." (_Ibid._, p. 178.)

[52] The work of Gabriel Brizard, a popular writer in his day: _Fragment de Xenophon, nouvellement trouvé dans les ruines de Palmyre par un Anglois et déposé au Museum Britannicum--Traduit du Grec par un François_, Paris, 1783.

[53] General Eliott, later Lord Heathfield, defender of Gibraltar, well known in France not only as an enemy, but as a former pupil of the military school at La Fère.

[54] Mathieu-Dumas availed himself of his stay in Boston before sailing to go and visit, with some of his brother officers, several of the heroes of independence--Hancock, John Adams, Doctor Cooper: "We listened with avidity to the latter, who, while applauding our enthusiasm for liberty, said to us: 'Take care, take care, young men, that the triumph of the cause on this virgin soil does not influence overmuch your hopes; you will carry away with you the germ of these generous sentiments, but if you attempt to fecund them on your native soil, after so many centuries of corruption, you will have to surmount many more obstacles; it cost us much blood to conquer liberty; but you will shed torrents before you establish it in your old Europe.' How often since, during our political turmoils, in the course of our _bad days_, did I not recall to mind the prophetic leave-taking of Doctor Cooper. But the inestimable prize which the Americans secured in exchange for their sacrifices was never absent from my thought." (_Souvenirs du Lieutenant-Général Comte Mathieu-Dumas, publiés par son fils_, I, 108.) The writer notices the early formation of a "national character, in spite of the similitude of language, customs, manners, religion, principles of government with the English." (_Ibid._, 113.)

[55] _OEuvres_, 1865, I, 12.

[56] To Robert Livingston, Passy, March 4, 1782.

[57] To Archibald Cary, June 15, 1782.

[58] White marble; signed and dated, Richard Hayward, London, 1773.

[59] _Mémoires du Comte de Moré_ (formerly Chevalier de Pontgibaud), 1898, p. 56; first ed., Paris, 1827, one of Balzac's ventures as a printer.

[60] October 8, 1782. This letter, as well as the addresses, in the Rochambeau papers.

[61] A large bowl from the original set is preserved in the National Museum (Smithsonian Institution) at Washington. It bears only the monogram and not the family arms. The wreath is of roses with a foliage which may be laurel.

[62] _Mémoires, souvenirs et anecdotes_, I, 402.

[63] On which occasion the Marquis de Vaudreuil, in command of the fleet, wrote him from Boston, November 18, 1782: "Je suis vraiment touché, Monsieur, de ne pouvoir pas avoir l'honneur de vous voir ici; je m'estimais heureux de renouveler la connaissance que j'avais faite avec vous à Brest chez M. d'Orvilliers. Mais je ne puis qu'applaudir au parti que vous prenez d'éviter la tristesse des adieux et les témoignages de la sensibilité de tous vos officiers en se voyant séparés de leur chef qu'ils respectent et chérissent sincèrement." (Rochambeau papers.)

[64] An anecdote in the _Autobiography_ of John Trumbull, the painter, well shows how lasting were the feelings for the land and the people taken home with them by the French. The artist tells of his reaching Mulhouse in 1795, finding it "full of troops," with no accommodation of any sort. He is taken to the old general in command:

"The veteran looked at me keenly and asked bluntly: 'Who are you, an Englishman?'

"'No, general, I am an American of the United States.'

"'Ah! do you know Connecticut?'

"'Yes, sir, it is my native State.'

"'You know, then, the good Governor Trumbull?'

"'Yes, general, he is my father.'

"'Oh! mon Dieu, que je suis charmé.... Entrez, entrez!'"

And all that is best is placed at the disposal of the newcomer by the soldier, who turns out to be a former member of the Lauzun legion. The artist adds: "The old general kept me up almost all night, inquiring of everybody and of everything in America." Some papers are brought for him to sign, which he does with his left hand, and, Trumbull noticing it, "'Yes,' said he, 'last year, in Belgium, the Austrians cut me to pieces and left me for dead, but I recovered, and, finding my right hand ruined, I have learned to use my left, and I can write and fence with it tolerably.'

"'But, sir,' said I, 'why did you not retire from service?'

"'Retire!' exclaimed he. 'Ha! I was born in a camp, have passed all my life in the service, and will die in a camp, or on the field.'

"This is," Trumbull concludes, "a faithful picture of the military enthusiasm of the time--1795."

[65] "... An inscription engraved on them, expressive of the occasion. I find a difficulty in getting the engraving properly executed. When it will be finished, I shall with peculiar pleasure put the cannon into your possession." Washington to Rochambeau, February 2, 1782.

[66] De Grasse died in January, 1788. "The Cincinnati in some of the States have gone into mourning for him." Washington to Rochambeau, April 28, 1788.

[67] Jefferson seems to have feared that the souvenir of Rochambeau might soon fade. He wrote to Madison, February 8, 1786: "Count Rochambeau, too, has deserved more attention than he has received. Why not set up his bust, that of Gates, Greene, Franklin in your new Capitol?" No bust was placed in the Capitol, but the raising of the statue in Lafayette Square, Washington, in 1902, has proved that, after so many years, Rochambeau was not forgotten in America.

[68] May 28, 1788.

[69] In a letter of July 31, 1789, Rochambeau informs Washington of Barlow's arrival, "and I made him all the good reception that he deserves by himself and by the honorable commendation that you give to him." In Rochambeau's English; Washington papers.

[70] Fr., "en petit comité"--a small party of friends.

[71] January 7, 1786. Washington papers.

[72] Paris, June, 1785 (_ibid._)

[73] "Rochambeau near Vendôme, April 11, 1790."

[74] Here is this letter in full:

Paris the 18th November, 1790.

SIR:

I hope that your Excellency will give me the leave to beg a favor of your justice. I think it just to intercede for the Baron de Closen who was an aide-de-camp to Mr. Rochambeau during the American war. He longs with the desire to be a member of the association of the Cincinnati. The officers who were employed in the French army and younger than him in the military service have been decorated with this emblem of liberty, and such a reward given by your Excellency's hand shall increase its value.

I flatter myself that you will receive the assurances of the respect and veneration I have for your talents and your virtue, well known in the whole world.

I have (etc.),

LA COMTESSE DE ROCHAMBEAU.

[75] June, 1785. Two of the Berthier brothers had taken part, as we saw, in the expedition. The one alluded to here is the younger, César-Gabriel, not the older, Louis-Alexandre, who became Prince de Wagram. Both are described in their "états de service," preserved among the Rochambeau papers, as expert draftsmen. The notice concerning the younger, who was a captain of dragoons, reads: "Il s'est fait remarquer ainsi que son frère par son talent à dessiner et lever des plans."

[76] Concerning this correspondence, as continued during the French Revolution, see below, pp. 245 ff.

[77] December 29, 1782.

[78] A lithographed portrait mentions the later-day titles and dignities of: "I.C. Louis, Baron de Closen, Maréchal de Camp, chambellan et chevalier des ordres français pour le Mérite et de la Légion d'honneur, ainsi que de celui de Cincinnatus des Etats Unis de l'Amérique Septentrionale." Reproduced by C.W. Bowen, who first drew attention to this journal, _Century Magazine_, February, 1907. Closen died in 1830, aged seventy-five.

[79] Which was done in a letter giving as a reason "that, whenever the two crowns should come to treat, his Most Christian Majesty would show how much the engagements he might enter into were to be relied on, by his exact observance of those he had already had with his present allies." Quoted, as "a sentence which I much liked," by Franklin, writing to John Adams, April 13, 1782.

II

MAJOR L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY

MAJOR L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY

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.