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 T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD., LONDON
 
 WITH AMERICANS OF 
 PAST AND PRESENT DAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 J. J. JUSSERAND 
 
 AMBASSADOR OF FRANCE TO THE UNITED STATES 
 
 LONDON 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD. 
 
 ADELPHI TERRACE 
 
 1916
 
 Copyright, 1916, by Charles Scribner's Sons, for the 
 United States of America. 
 
 Printed by the Scribner Press 
 New York, U. S. A.
 
 Coileft 
 Library 
 
 E 
 
 176 
 
 DEDICATION 
 
 t 
 
 This day, thirteen years ago, a new French am- 
 bassador presented his credentials. The ambassador 
 was not very old for an ambassador. The President 
 was very young for a president, the youngest, in 
 fact, the United States ever had. Both, according to 
 custom, read set speeches, and there followed a first 
 conversation, which had a great many successors, 
 touching on a variety of subjects not connected, all 
 of them, with diplomacy. In which talk took part 
 the genial, learned, and warm-hearted author of the 
 "Pike County Ballads" and of the Life of Lincoln, 
 present at the meeting as Secretary of State of the 
 United States. 
 
 This was the first direct impression the newcomer 
 had of broad-minded, strenuous America, his earliest 
 ones, as a child, having been derived from the illus- 
 trated weekly paper received by his family, and which 
 
 1222059
 
 vi DEDICATION 
 
 offered to view fancy pictures of the battles between 
 the bearded soldiers of Grant and Lee, the ' ' poilus ' ' of 
 those days; another impression was from Cooper's 
 tales, Deerslayer sharing with Ivanhoe the enthu- 
 siasm of the young people at the family hearth. 
 Another American impression was received by them 
 a little later, when, the Republic having been pro- 
 claimed, the street where the family had their winter 
 home ceased to be called "Rue de la Reine" and be- 
 came "Rue Franklin." 
 
 Thirteen years is a long space of time in an 
 ambassador's life; it is not an insignificant one 
 in the life of such a youthful nation as the United 
 States ; I have now witnessed the eleventh part of 
 that life. Something like one-fourth or one-fifth of 
 the population has been added since I began service 
 here. There were forty-five States then instead of 
 forty-eight; the commercial intercourse with France 
 was half of what it is now; the tonnage of the 
 American navy was less than half what it is at 
 present; the Panama Canal was not yet American; 
 the aeroplane was unknown; the automobile prac-
 
 DEDICATION vii 
 
 tically unused. Among artists, thinkers, humorists, 
 critics, scientists, shone La Farge, McKim, Saint- 
 Gaudens, William James, Mark Twain, Furness, 
 Newcomb, Weir Mitchell, who, leaving a lasting 
 fame, have all passed away. 
 
 The speech at the White House was followed by 
 many others. Little enough accustomed, up to then, 
 to addressing any assembly at any time, I did not 
 expect to have much to do in that line; but I had. 
 I soon found that it was not a question of taste and 
 personal disposition, but one of courtesy and friend- 
 liness. The quick-witted, kindly-disposed, warm- 
 hearted audiences of America, ever ready to show 
 appreciation for any effort, greatly facilitated mat- 
 ters. 
 
 I was thus led by degrees to address gatherings of 
 many kinds, in many places, on many subjects, from 
 the origins of the War of Independence to refores- 
 tation in America, and from the Civil War to in- 
 fantile mortality. Many such speeches had to be 
 delivered impromptu; others, luckily for both orator 
 and listeners, were on subjects which the former had
 
 viii DEDICATION 
 
 studied with as much care as the fulfilling of a vari- 
 ety of tasks and duties had allowed him. 
 
 An examination of the development of the two coun- 
 tries will, I believe, lead any impartial mind to the 
 conclusion that, with so many peculiar ties between 
 them in the past, a similar goal ahead of them, and, to 
 a great extent, similar hard problems to solve, it cannot 
 but be of advantage to themselves and to the liberal 
 world that the two Republics facing each other across 
 the broad ocean, one nearly half a century old, the 
 other three times as much, should ever live on terms 
 of amity, not to say intimacy, comparing experiences, 
 of help to one another whenever circumstances allow : 
 this they have been on more than one occasion, and 
 will doubtless be again in the future. During 'our 
 present trials the active generosity of American men 
 and women has exerted itself in a way that can never 
 be forgotten. 
 
 The dean now, not only of the diplomatic corps in 
 Washington, but of all my predecessors from the 
 early days, when, on a raised platform in Inde- 
 pendence Hall, my diplomatic ancestor, Gerard de
 
 DEDICATION ix 
 
 Rayneval, presented to Congress the first credentials 
 brought here from abroad (and Gerard was then, he 
 alone, the whole diplomatic body), I have presumed 
 to gather together a few studies on some of the men 
 or events of most interest from the point of view of 
 Franco-American relations. Three addresses are 
 added, just as they were delivered. May these 
 pages find among readers the same indulgent recep- 
 tion their author found among listeners. 
 
 And so, having now lived in America thirteen 
 years, offering good wishes to the forty-eight of 
 to-day, I dedicate, in memory of former times, the 
 following pages 
 
 TO 
 THE THIRTEEN ORIGINAL STATES. 
 
 J. J. JUSSERAND. 
 WASHINGTON, February 7, 1916.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 DEDICATION v 
 
 ROCHAMBEAU AND THE FRENCH IN AMERICA, 
 
 FROM UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS ... 3 
 
 MAJOR L/ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 137 
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 199 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 277 
 
 THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 309 
 
 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 319 
 
 FROM WAR TO PEACE 333
 
 ROCHAMBEAU AND THE FRENCH IN 
 AMERICA 
 
 FROM UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS
 
 ROCHAMBEAU AND THE FRENCH IN 
 AMERICA 
 
 FROM UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS 
 
 THE American war had been for five years 
 in progress; for two years a treaty of alli- 
 ance, having as sole object "to maintain 
 effectually the liberty, sovereignty, and indepen- 
 dence, absolute and unlimited, of the United 
 States," bound us French to the "insurgents"; 
 successes and reverses followed each other in 
 turn: Brooklyn, Trenton, Brandywine, Saratoga. 
 Quite recently the news had come of the double 
 victory at sea and on land of d'Estaing at Grenada, 
 and Paris had been illuminated. The lights were 
 scarcely out when news arrived of the disaster 
 of the same d'Estaing at Savannah. All France 
 felt anxious concerning the issue of a war which 
 had lasted so long and whose end continued to 
 be doubtful. 
 
 When, in the first months of 1780, the report 
 went about that a great definitive effort was to 
 be attempted, that it was not this time a question 
 of sending ships to the Americans, but of sending 
 an army, and that the termination of the great 
 drama was near, the enthusiasm was unbounded. 
 
 3
 
 4 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 All wanted to take part. There was a prospect 
 of crossing the seas, of succoring a people fight- 
 ing for a sacred cause, a people of whom all our 
 volunteers praised the virtues; the people led by 
 Washington, and represented in Paris by Franklin. 
 An ardor as of crusaders inflamed the hearts of 
 French youths, and the intended expedition was, 
 in fact, the most important that France had 
 launched beyond the seas since the distant time 
 of the crusades. The cause was a truly sacred 
 one, the cause of liberty, a magical word which 
 then stirred the hearts of the many. "Why is 
 liberty so rare?" Voltaire had said "Because 
 the most valuable of possessions." 
 
 All those who were so lucky as to be allowed 
 to take part in the expedition were convinced 
 that they would witness memorable, perhaps 
 unique, events, and it turned out, indeed, that 
 they were to witness a campaign which, with the 
 battle of Hastings, where the fate of England was 
 decided in 1066, and that of Bouvines, which 
 made of France in 1214 a great nation, was to be 
 one of the three military actions with greatest 
 consequences in which for the last thousand 
 years the French had participated. 
 
 A striking result of this state of mind is that 
 an extraordinary number of those who went noted 
 down their impressions, kept journals, drew 
 sketches. Never perhaps during a military cam-
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 5 
 
 paign was so much writing done, nor were so 
 many albums filled with drawings. 
 
 Notes, letters, journals, sketches have come 
 down to us in large quantities, and from all man- 
 ner of men, for the passion of observing and nar- 
 rating was common to all kinds of people: jour- 
 nals and memoirs of army chiefs like Rochambeau, 
 or chiefs of staff like Chastellux, a member of 
 the French Academy, adapter of Shakespeare, 
 and author of a F elicit e Publique, which, Franklin 
 said, showed him to be "a real friend of human- 
 ity"; narratives of a regimental chaplain, like 
 Abbe Robin, of a sceptical rake like the Duke de 
 Lauzun, the new Don Juan, whose battle stories 
 alternate with his love reminiscences, handsome, 
 impertinent, licentious, an excellent soldier withal, 
 bold and tenacious, marked, like several of his 
 companions, to mount the revolutionary scaffold ; 
 journals of officers of various ranks, like Count de 
 Deux-Ponts, Prince de Broglie, he, too, marked for 
 the scaffold; Count de Segur, son of the marshal, 
 himself afterward an Academician and an ambas- 
 sador; Mathieu-Dumas, future minister of war of 
 a future King of Naples, who bore the then un- 
 known name of Joseph Bonaparte; the Swedish 
 Count Axel de Fersen, one of Rochambeau's aides, 
 who was to organize the French royal family's 
 flight to Varennes, and to die massacred by the 
 mob in his own country; notes, map, and sketches
 
 6 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 of Baron Cromot-Dubourg, another of Rocham- 
 beau's aides ; journal, too, among many others, of a 
 modest quartermaster like Blanchard, who gives a 
 note quite apart, observes what others do not, 
 and whose tone, as that of a subordinate, is in 
 contrast with the superb ways of the "seigneurs" 
 his companions. 
 
 From page to page, turning the leaves, one sees 
 appear, without speaking of Lafayette, Kosciusko, 
 and the first enthusiasts, many names just emerg- 
 ing from obscurity, never to sink into it again: 
 Berthier, La Perouse, La Touche-Treville, the 
 Lameth brothers, Bougainville, Custine, the 
 Bouille of the flight to Varennes, the La Cloche- 
 terie of the fight of La Belle Poule, the Duportail 
 who was to be minister of war under the Constit- 
 uent Assembly, young Talleyrand, brother of the 
 future statesman, young Mirabeau, brother of 
 the orator, himself usually known for his portly 
 dimensions as Mirabeau-tonneau, ever ready with 
 the cup or the sword, young Saint-Simon, not yet 
 a pacifist, and not yet a Saint-Simonian, 1 Suf- 
 fren, in whose squadron had embarked the future 
 Director Barras, an officer then in the regiment of 
 Pondichery. All France was really represented, 
 
 1 Concerning his American campaign, in which he greatly distin- 
 guished himself, he wrote later: "In itself, war did not interest me, 
 but its object interested me keenly, and I willingly took part in its 
 labors. I said to myself: ' I want the end; I must adopt the means.' " 
 (Euvres, 1865, I, n. He was wounded and promoted.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 7 
 
 to some extent that of the past, to a larger one 
 that of the future. 
 
 Many of those journals have been published 
 (Cromot-Dubourg's only in an English version 
 printed in America 1 ) ; others have been lost ; others 
 remain unpublished, so that after all that has been 
 said, and well said, it still remains possible, with 
 the help of new guides and new documents, to 
 follow Washington and Rochambeau once more, 
 and in a different company, during the momen- 
 tous journey which led them from the Hudson to 
 the York River. The Washington papers and the 
 Rochambeau papers, used only in part, are pre- 
 served in the Library of Congress. A juvenile 
 note, in contrast with the quiet dignity of the 
 official reports by the heads of the army, is given 
 by the unprinted journal, a copy of which is 
 also preserved in the same library, kept by one 
 more of Rochambeau's aides, Louis Baron de 
 Closen, an excellent observer, gay, warm-hearted, 
 who took seriously all that pertained to duty, 
 and merrily all the rest, especially mishaps. Use- 
 ful information is also given by some unprinted 
 letters of George Washington, some with the 
 superscription still preserved: "On public service 
 to his Excellency, Count de Rochambeau, Wil- 
 liamsburg, Virginia," the whole text often in the 
 great chief's characteristic handwriting, clear and 
 
 1 Magazine of American History, March, 1880, ff.
 
 8 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 steady, neither slow nor hasty, with nothing 
 blurred and nothing omitted, with no trepidation, 
 no abbreviation, the writing of a man with a 
 clear conscience and clear views, superior to for- 
 tune, and the convinced partisan, in every cir- 
 cumstance throughout life, of the straight line. 
 
 The British Government has, moreover, most 
 liberally opened its archives, so that, both through 
 the recriminatory pamphlets printed in London 
 after the disaster and the despatches now acces- 
 sible, one can know what was said day by day in 
 New York and out of New York, in the redoubts 
 at Yorktown, and in the French and American 
 trenches around the place.
 
 Lieutenant-General Jean-Baptiste Donatien de 
 Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, aged then fifty- 
 five, and Washington's senior by seven years, was 
 in his house, still in existence, Rue du Cherche- 
 Midi, Paris, 1 at the beginning of March, 1780; 
 he was ill and about to leave for his castle of Ro- 
 chambeau in Vendomois; post-horses were in 
 readiness when, in the middle of the night, he re- 
 ceived, he says in his memoirs, 2 a "courrier bring- 
 ing him the order to go to Versailles and receive 
 the instructions of his Majesty." For some time 
 rumors had been afloat that the great attempt 
 would soon be made. He was informed that the 
 news was true, and that he would be placed at 
 the head of the army sent to the assistance of the 
 Americans. 
 
 The task was an extraordinary one. He would 
 have to reach the New World with a body of 
 troops packed on slow transports, to avoid the 
 English fleets, to fight in a country practically un- 
 
 1 A quite handsome house, now the offices of the Ministry of Labor. 
 The gardens no longer exist. 
 
 2 Memoires militaires, historiques et politiques de Rochambeau, ancien 
 marechal de France et grand officier de la Ltgion d'honneur, Paris, 
 1809, 2 vols., I, 235. 
 
 9
 
 10 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 known, by the side of men not less so, and whom 
 we had been accustomed to fight rather than be- 
 friend, and for a cause which had never before 
 elicited enthusiasm at Versailles, the cause of re- 
 publican liberty. 
 
 This last point was the strangest of all, so 
 strange that even Indians, friends of the French in 
 former days, asked Rochambeau, when they saw 
 him in America, how it was that his King could 
 think fit to help other people against "their own 
 father," their King. Rochambeau replied that 
 the latter had been too hard on his subjects, that 
 they were right, therefore, in shaking off the yoke, 
 and we in helping them to secure "that natural 
 liberty which God has conferred on man." 
 
 This answer to "Messieurs les Sauvages," is an 
 enlightening one; it shows what was the latent 
 force that surmounted all obstacles and caused 
 the French nation to stand as a whole, from be- 
 ginning to end, in favor of the Americans, to ap- 
 plaud a treaty of alliance which, while entailing 
 the gravest risks, forbade us all conquest, and to 
 rejoice enthusiastically at a peace which after a 
 victorious war added nothing to our possessions. 
 This force was the increasing passion among the 
 French for precisely "that natural liberty which 
 God has conferred on man." 
 
 Hatred of England, quickened though it had 
 been by the harsh conditions of the treaty of
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 11 
 
 Paris bereaving us of Canada, in 1763, had much 
 less to do with it than is sometimes alleged. Such 
 a feeling existed, it is true, in the hearts of some 
 of the leaders, but not of all; it did in the minds 
 also of some of the officers, but again not of all. 
 What predominated in the mass of the nation, 
 irrespective of any other consideration, was sym- 
 pathy for men who wanted to fight injustice and 
 to be free. The cause of the insurgents was pop- 
 ular because it was associated with the notion of 
 liberty; people did not look beyond. 1 
 
 It is often forgotten that this time was not in 
 France a period of Anglophobia, but of Anglo- 
 mania. Necker, so influential, and who then held 
 the purse-strings, was an Anglophile; so was 
 Prince de Montbarey, minister of war; so was 
 that Duke de Lauzun who put an end for a time 
 to his love-affairs and came to America at the head 
 of his famous legion. All that was English was 
 admired and, when possible, imitated: manners, 
 philosophy, sports, clothes, parliamentary insti- 
 tutions, Shakespeare, just translated by Le Tour- 
 neur, with the King and Queen as patrons of the 
 
 1 "On a soutenu," said Pontgibaud, later Comte de Mor6, one of 
 Lafayette's aides, in a conversation with Alexander Hamilton, 
 "que 1'interet bien entendu de la France 6tait de rester neutre et 
 de profiler de 1'embarras de 1'Angleterre pour se faire restituer le 
 Canada." But this would have been going against the general 
 trend of public opinion, and a contrary course was followed. Mi- 
 moires du Comte de Mori, Paris, 1898, p. 169.
 
 12 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 undertaking; but, above all, wrote Count de 
 Segur, "we were all dreaming of the liberty, at 
 once calm and lofty, enjoyed by the entire body 
 of citizens of Great Britain." 1 
 
 Such is the ever-recurring word. Liberty, phi- 
 lanthropy, natural rights, these were the magic 
 syllables to conjure with. "All France," read we 
 in Grimm and Diderot's correspondence, "was 
 rilled with an unbounded love for humanity," and 
 felt a passion for "those exaggerated general max- 
 ims which raise the enthusiasm of young men and 
 which would cause them to run to the world's 
 end to help a Laplander or a Hottentot." The 
 ideas of Montesquieu, whose Esprit des Lois had 
 had twenty-two editions in one year, of Voltaire, 
 of d'Alembert were in the ascendant, and liberal 
 thinkers saw in the Americans propagandists for 
 their doctrine. General Howe having occupied 
 New York in 1776, Voltaire wrote to d'Alembert: 
 "The troops of Doctor Franklin have been beaten 
 by those of the King of England. Alas ! philos- 
 ophers are being beaten everywhere. Reason and 
 liberty are unwelcome in this world." 
 
 Another of the master minds of the day, the 
 economist, thinker, and reformer Turgot, the one 
 whose advice, if followed, would have possibly 
 secured for us a bloodless revolution, was of the 
 
 1 Mimoires, souvenirs el anecdotes, Paris, 1824, 3 vols., I, 140. Eng- 
 lish translation, London, 1825.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 13 
 
 same opinion. In the famous letter written by 
 him on the 22d of March, 1778, to his English 
 friend, Doctor Price, Turgot showed himself, just 
 as the French nation was, ardently pro- American, 
 but not anti-English. He deplored the impend- 
 ing war, which ought to have been avoided by 
 England's acknowledging in time "the folly of its 
 absurd project to subjugate the Americans. . . . 
 It is a strange thing that it be not yet a common- 
 place truth to say that no nation can ever have 
 the right to govern another nation; that such a 
 government has no other foundation than force, 
 which is also the foundation of brigandage and 
 tyranny; that a people's tyranny is, of all tyran- 
 nies, the most cruel, the most intolerable, and 
 the one which leaves the least resources to the 
 oppressed . . . for a multitude does not calculate, 
 does not feel remorse, and it bestows on itself 
 glory when all that it deserves is shame." 
 
 The Americans, according to Turgot, must be 
 free, not only for their own sake, but for the sake 
 of humanity; an experiment of the utmost import 
 is about to begin, and should succeed. He added 
 this, the worthy forecast of a generous mind: "It 
 is impossible not to form wishes for that people to 
 reach the utmost prosperity it is capable of. 
 That people is the hope of mankind. It must 
 show to the world by its example, that men can 
 be free and tranquil, and can do without the chains
 
 14 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 that tyrants and cheats of all garb have tried to 
 lay on them under pretense of public good. It 
 must give the example of political liberty, religious 
 liberty, commercial and industrial liberty. The 
 shelter which it is going to offer to the oppressed 
 of all nations will console the earth. The ease 
 with which men will be able to avail themselves 
 of it and escape the effects of a bad government 
 will oblige governments to open their eyes and to 
 be just. The rest of the world will perceive by 
 degrees the emptiness of the illusions on which 
 politicians have festered." Toward England Tur- 
 got has a feeling of regret on account of its poli- 
 cies, but no trace of animosity; and, on the con- 
 trary, the belief that, in spite of what some people 
 of note were alleging, the absolutely certain loss 
 of her American colonies would not result in a 
 diminution of her power. "This revolution will 
 prove, maybe, as profitable to you as to America." 1 
 Not less characteristic of the times and of the 
 same thinker's turn of mind is a brief memorial 
 written by him for the King shortly after, when 
 Captain Cook was making his third voyage of 
 discovery, the one from which he never returned. 
 "Captain Cook," Turgot said, "is probably on 
 his way back to Europe. His expedition having 
 no other object than the progress of human knowl- 
 edge, and interesting, therefore, all nations, it 
 
 1 (Euvres, vol. IX, Paris, 1810, pp. 377 ff.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 15 
 
 would be worthy of the King's magnanimity not 
 to allow that the result be jeopardized by the 
 chances of war." Orders should be given to all 
 French naval officers "to abstain from any hos- 
 tile act against him or his ship, and allow him to 
 freely continue his navigation, and to treat him 
 in every respect as the custom is to treat the offi- 
 cers and ships of neutral and friendly countries." 1 
 The King assented, and had our cruisers notified 
 of the sort of sacred character which they would 
 have to recognize in that ship of the enemy: a 
 small fact in itself, but showing the difference be- 
 tween the wars in those days and in ours, when 
 we have had to witness the wanton destruction of 
 the Louvain library, the shelling of the Reims 
 cathedral, and the Arras town hall. 
 
 An immense aspiration was growing in France 
 for more equality, fewer privileges, simpler lives 
 among the great, less hard ones among the lowly, 
 more accessible knowledge, the free discussion by 
 all of the common interests of all. A fact of 
 deepest import struck the least attentive: French 
 masses were becoming more and more thinking 
 masses. One should not forget that between the 
 end of the American Revolution and the begin- 
 ning of the French one only six years elapsed, be- 
 tween the American and the French Constitu- 
 tions but four years. At the very time of the 
 
 1 (Euvres, IX, 417.
 
 16 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 Yorktown campaign Necker was issuing his cele- 
 brated Compte Rendu, which he addressed, "pro 
 forma" to the King, and in reality to the nation. 1 
 This famous account of the condition of France, 
 the piece of printed matter which was most widely 
 read in those days, began, "Sire," but ended: 
 "In writing this I have proudly counted on that 
 public opinion which evil-minded persons may try 
 to crush or to distort, but which, in spite of their 
 efforts, Truth and Justice carry along in their 
 wake." 
 
 To which may be added as another token of 
 the same state of mind that the then famous 
 Count de Guibert had some time before printed 
 his Essay on Tactics, so full of advanced ideas, 
 notably on the necessary limitation of the power 
 of kings, that it had been suppressed by the au- 
 thorities ; and he had dedicated it not to a prince 
 nor to any man, but to his mother country: "A 
 ma Patrie." 2 
 
 Six years after the end of the American war, on 
 January 24, 1789, the King of France ordered 
 the drawing up of the famous Cahiers, desiring, 
 
 'January, 1781. 
 
 2 He ends his dedication stating that he may fail and may have 
 dreamed a mere dream, but he should not be blamed: "Le delire d'un 
 citoyen qui rve au bonheur de sa patrie a quelque chose de respec- 
 table." Essai General de Tactique precede d'un Discours sur I'etat 
 acluel de la politique et de la science militaire en Europe, London, 
 1772 ; Liege, 1775.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 17 
 
 he said, that "from the extremities of his kingdom 
 and the most unknown habitations every one 
 should be assured of a means of conveying to 
 him his wishes and complaints." And the Cahiers, 
 requesting liberties very similar to those of the 
 Americans, came indeed from the remotest parts 
 of France, the work of everybody, of quasi-peasants 
 sometimes, who would offer excuses for their wild 
 orthography and grammar. The notes and let- 
 ters of the volunteers of our Revolution, sons of 
 peasants or artisans, surprise us by the mass of 
 general ideas and views which abound in them. 
 It was not, therefore, a statement of small import 
 that Franklin had conveyed to Congress when he 
 wrote from France: "The united bent of the 
 nation is manifestly in our favor." And he de- 
 plored elsewhere that some could think that an 
 appeal to France's own interest was good policy: 
 "Telling them their commerce will be advantaged 
 by our success and that it is their interest to help 
 us, seems as much as to say : ' Help us and we shall 
 not be obliged to you.' Such indiscreet and im- 
 proper language has been sometimes held here by 
 some of our people and produced no good effect." 
 The truth is, he said also, that "this nation is 
 fond of glory, particularly that of protecting the 
 oppressed." 1 
 
 The treaty of commerce, accompanying the 
 
 1 Writings, Smythe, VIII, 390, 391.
 
 18 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 treaty of alliance of I778, 1 had been in itself a 
 justification of this judgment. Help from abroad 
 was so pressingly needed in America that almost 
 any advantages requested by France as a condi- 
 tion would have been granted; but that strange 
 sight was seen : advantages being offered, unasked, 
 by one party, and declined by the other. France 
 decided at once not to accept anything as a recom- 
 pense, not even Canada, if that were wrested from 
 the English, in spite of Canada's having been 
 French from the first, and having but recently 
 ceased to be such. The fight was not for recom- 
 pense but for liberty, and Franklin could write 
 to Congress that the treaty of commerce was one 
 to which all the rest of the world, in accordance 
 with France's own wishes, was free to accede, 
 when it chose, on the same footing as herself, 
 England included. 2 
 
 This was so peculiar that many had doubts; 
 John Adams never lost his; Washington himself 
 had some, and when plans were submitted to him 
 for an action in Canada he wondered, as he wrote, 
 whether there was not in them "more than the 
 
 x Both signed at Paris on the same day, February 6, 1778. 
 
 2 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 our- 
 selves 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 a I'etablisse- 
 ment des Etats Unis, II, 822.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 19 
 
 disinterested zeal of allies." 1 What would take 
 place at the peace, if the allies were victorious ? 
 Would not France require, in one form or another, 
 some advantages for herself? But she did not; 
 her peace was to be like her war, pro- American 
 rather than anti-English. 
 
 Another striking trait in the numerous French 
 accounts which have come down to us of this cam- 
 paign against the English is the small space that 
 the English, as a nation, occupy in them. The 
 note that predominates is enthusiasm for the 
 Americans, not hatred for their enemies. "In 
 France," wrote Segur in his memoirs, "in spite 
 of the habit of a long obedience to arbitrary power, 
 the cause of the American insurgents fixed the 
 attention and excited the interest of all. From 
 every side public opinion was pressing the royal 
 government to declare itself in favor of republican 
 liberty, and seemed to reproach it for its slowness 
 and timidity." Of any revenge to be taken on 
 the enemy, not a word. "No one among us," he 
 said further, "thought of a revolution in France, 
 but it was rapidly taking place in our minds. 
 Montesquieu had brought to light again the long- 
 buried title-deeds consecrating the rights of the 
 people. Mature men were studying and envying 
 the laws of England." 
 
 Summing up the motives of the new crusaders, 
 
 'November n, 1778.
 
 20 ROCHAMBEAU IX AMERICA 
 
 who were "starting off to the war in the name of 
 philanthropy," he found two: "One quite reason- 
 able and conscientious, the desire to well serve 
 King and country . . . another more unique, a 
 veritable enthusiasm for the cause of American 
 liberty." Ministers hesitated, on account of the 
 greatness of the risk, "but they were, little by 
 little, carried away by the torrent." During the 
 sea voyage only the chiefs knew exactly whither 
 they were going; some officers thought at one 
 time they might have to fight elsewhere than in 
 America. One of Rochambeau's officers, the afore- 
 mentioned Mathieu-Dumas, confided his misgiv- 
 ings to his journal: "Above all," he wrote, "I 
 had heartily espoused the cause of the inde- 
 pendence of the Americans, and I should have 
 felt extreme regret at losing the honor of combat- 
 ing for their liberty." 1 Of the English, again, not 
 a word; what he longed for, like so many others, 
 was less to fight against the English than for the 
 Americans. 
 
 More striking, perhaps, than all the rest: 
 shortly after we had decided to take part in the 
 war, the question of our motives and of a possible 
 annihilation of England as a great power was 
 plainly put, in the course of a familiar conversa- 
 tion, by the president of Yale University to the 
 
 l Soiaexirs dit Lieutenant Gfnerd Comic Matkieu-Dumas, de 1770 
 d i8j6, Paris, 3 vois., I, 36.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IX AMERICA 21 
 
 future signer of the Louisiana Treaty, Barbe- 
 Marbois, then secretary of our legation in the 
 United States. "Mons. Marbois," Ezra Stiles 
 confided to his diary, on the occasion of the French 
 minister, La Luzerne, and his secretary's visit to 
 Yale, "is a learned civilian, a councillor of the 
 Parliament of Metz, act. 35, as I judge; speaks 
 English very tolerably, much better than his Ex- 
 cellency the minister. He was very inquisitive 
 for books and American histories, . . . Among 
 other things I asked Mons. Marbois whether the 
 Powers of Europe would contentedly see Great 
 Britain annihilated. 
 
 "He said, no; it would be for the interest of 
 Europe that Britain should have weight in the 
 balances of power. . . . France did not want to 
 enlarge her dominions by conquest or otherwise." 1 
 
 For the French diplomat, a rnan of great ability 
 and well informed, addressing, as he was, one to 
 whom a "yes" instead of a "no" would have 
 caused no pain, far from it, the motive of oar 
 actions was neither a prospective loss by England 
 of her rank nor the increase of our own posses- 
 sions, but simply American independence. 
 
 1 literary Diary, September n, 1779; Xev Yodt, 1901, 3 vob.
 
 II 
 
 Aware of the importance and difficulty of the 
 move it had decided upon, the French Govern- 
 ment had looked for a trained soldier, a man of 
 decision and of sense, one who would understand 
 Washington and be understood by him, would 
 keep in hand the enthusiasts under his orders, 
 and would avoid ill-prepared, risky ventures. The 
 time of the d'Estaings was gone; definitive results 
 were to be sought. The government considered 
 it could do no better than to select Rochambeau. 
 It could, indeed, do no better. 
 
 The future marshal of France had been first 
 destined to priesthood for no other reason than 
 that he was a second son, and he was about to 
 receive the tonsure when his elder brother died, 
 and Bishop de Crussol, who had been supervising 
 Donatien's ecclesiastical studies, came one day to 
 him and said: "You must forget all I have told 
 you up to now; you have become the eldest of 
 your family and you must now serve your coun- 
 try with as much zeal as you would have served 
 God in the ecclesiastical state." 
 
 Rochambeau did so. He was appointed an 
 officer and served on his first campaign in Ger-
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 23 
 
 many at sixteen, fought under Marshal de Saxe, 
 was a colonel at twenty-two (Washington was to 
 become one also at twenty- two), received at Lau- 
 feldt his two first wounds, of which he nearly died. 
 At the head of the famous Auvergne regiment, 
 "Auvergne sans tache" (Auvergne the spotless), 
 as it was called, he took part in the chief battles 
 of the Seven Years' War, notably in the victory 
 of Klostercamp, where spotless Auvergne had 58 
 officers and 800 soldiers killed or wounded, the 
 battle made memorable by the episode of the 
 Chevalier d'Assas, who went to his heroic death 
 in the fulfilment of an order given by Rochambeau. 
 The latter was again severely wounded, but, lean- 
 ing on two soldiers, he could remain at his post 
 till the day was won. 
 
 On the opposite side of the same battle-fields 
 were fighting many destined, like Rochambeau 
 himself, to take part in the American war; it was 
 like a preliminary rehearsal of the drama that 
 was to be. At the second battle of Minden, in 
 1759, where the father of Lafayette was killed, 
 Rochambeau covered the retreat, while in the 
 English ranks Lord Cornwallis was learning his 
 trade, as was too, but less brilliantly, Lord George 
 Germain, the future colonial secretary of the 
 Yorktown period. At Johannisberg, in the same 
 war, Clinton, future commander-in-chief at New 
 York, was wounded, while here and there in the
 
 24 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 French army such officers distinguished them- 
 selves as Bougainville, back from Ticonderoga, 
 and not yet a sailor, Chastellux, already a colonel, 
 no longer a secretary of embassy, not yet an Acad- 
 emician, and my predecessor, La Luzerne, an offi- 
 cer of cavalry, not yet a diplomat, who was to 
 be the second minister ever accredited to America, 
 where his name is not forgotten. 
 
 When still very young Rochambeau had con- 
 tracted 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 ; she has been for me a cause of constant 
 happiness throughout life, and I hope, on my 
 side, to have made her happy by the tenderest 
 amity, which has never varied an instant during 
 nearly sixty years." The issue of that union, 
 Viscount Rochambeau, from his youth the com- 
 panion in arms of his father, an officer at four- 
 teen, accompanied him to the States, and was, 
 after a career of devotion to his country, to die a 
 general at Leipzig, in the " Battle of Nations." 
 
 Informed at Versailles of the task he would
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 25 
 
 have to perform, the exact nature of which was 
 kept a secret from the troops themselves now 
 gathered at Brest, Rochambeau hastened to for- 
 get his "rhumatisme inflammatoire " and set to 
 work to get everything in readiness, collecting in- 
 formation, talking with those who knew America, 
 and noting down in his green-garbed registers, 
 which were to accompany him in his campaign, 
 the chief data thus secured. He also addressed 
 to himself, as a reminder, a number of useful 
 recommendations such as these: "To take with 
 us a quantity of flints, . . . much flour and bis- 
 cuit; have bricks as ballast for the ships, to be 
 used for ovens; to try to bring with us all we 
 want and not to have to ask from the Americans 
 who are themselves in want ... to have a copy 
 of the Atlas brought from Philadelphia by Mr. 
 de Lafayette ... to have a portable printing- 
 press, like that of Mr. d'Estaing, handy for proc- 
 lamations . . . siege artillery is indispensable." 
 Some of the notes are of grave import and were 
 not lost sight of throughout the campaign : ' ' Noth- 
 ing without naval supremacy." 
 
 To those intrusted with the care of loading the 
 vessels he recommends that all articles of the 
 same kind be not placed on the same ship, "so 
 that in case of mishap to any ship the whole sup- 
 ply of any kind of provisions be not totally lost." 
 
 As to the pay for himself and his officers, he
 
 26 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 writes to the minister that he leaves that to him: 
 "Neither I nor mine desire anything extravagant; 
 we should like to be able to go to this war at our 
 own expense." But the government did not 
 want him to be hampered by any lack of funds, 
 and allotted him the then considerable sum of 
 twelve thousand francs a month, and four thou- 
 sand a month the generals under him. 
 
 At Brest, where he now repaired, Rochambeau 
 found that the ships were not so numerous as 
 expected, so that only the first division of his 
 army could embark under Admiral Chevalier 
 de Ternay: a sad blow for the commander-in- 
 chief. He prescribed that care be at least taken 
 to select for the passage the most robust men, 
 and, in order to save space, that all horses be left 
 behind, himself giving the example. "I have," 
 Rochambeau writes to Prince de Montbarey, the 
 minister of war, "to part company with two battle- 
 horses that I can never replace. I do so with the 
 greatest sorrow, but I do not want to have to re- 
 proach myself with their having taken up the 
 room of twenty men who could have embarked 
 in their stead." Officers, soldiers, ammunition, 
 artillery, spare clothing for the troops, and even 
 the printing-press go on board at last. Men and 
 things are close-packed, but end by shaking down 
 into place; all will go well, Rochambeau writes to 
 the minister, "without any overcrowding of the
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IX AMERICA 27 
 
 troops ; the rule for long journeys having been ob- 
 served, namely one soldier for every two tons 
 burden." 
 
 When all were there, however, forming a total 
 of 5,000 men, the maximum was so truly reached 
 that a number of young men, some belonging to 
 the best-known French families, who were arriv- 
 ing at Brest from day to day, in the hope of being 
 added to the expedition, had to be sent back. 
 The fleet was already on the high seas when a 
 cutter brought the government's last instructions 
 to Rochambeau. On the boat were two brothers 
 called Berthier, who besought to be allowed to 
 volunteer. "They have joined us yesterday," the 
 general writes to the minister, "and have handed 
 us your letters. . . . They were dressed in linen 
 vests and breeches, asking to be admitted as mere 
 sailors." But there was really no place to put 
 them. "Those poor young men are interesting 
 and in despair." They had, nevertheless, to be 
 sent back, but managed to join the army later, 
 and so it was that Alexander Berthier began in 
 the Yorktown campaign a military career which 
 he was to end as marshal of France, and Prince 
 of Wagram and Neufchatel. 
 
 The departure, which it was necessary to hasten 
 while the English were not yet ready, was beset 
 with difficulties. Tempests, contrary winds and 
 other mishaps had caused vexatious delay; the
 
 28 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 Comtesse de Noailles and the Conquerant had come 
 into collision and had had to be repaired. ' ' Luck- 
 ily," wrote Rochambeau to Montbarey, with his 
 usual good humor, "it rains also on Portsmouth." 
 At last, on the 26. of May, 1780, the fleet of seven 
 ships of the line and two frigates conveying thirty- 
 six transports, weighed anchor for good. "We 
 shall have the start of Graves," the general wrote 
 again, "for he will have to use the same wind to 
 leave Portsmouth," and he added, with a touch 
 of emotion at this solemn moment : "I recommend 
 this expedition to the friendship of my dear old 
 comrade, and to his zeal for the good of the state." 
 
 At sea now for a long voyage, two or three 
 months, perhaps, with the prospect of calms, of 
 storms, of untoward encounters, of scurvy for the 
 troops. On board the big Due de Bourgogne, of 
 eighty guns, with Admiral de Ternay, Rocham- 
 beau adds now and then paragraphs to a long 
 report which is a kind of journal, assuring the 
 minister, after the first fortnight, that all is well 
 on board: "We have no men sick other than 
 those which the sea makes so, among whom the 
 Marquis de Laval and my son play the most 
 conspicuous part." He prepares his general in- 
 structions to the troops. 
 
 On board the smaller craft life was harder and 
 numerous unflattering descriptions have come 
 down to us in the journals kept by so many
 
 ROCHAMBEATJ IN AMERICA 29 
 
 officers of the army, especially in that of the afore- 
 mentioned young captain, Louis Baron de Closen, 
 later one of the aides of Rochambeau. 
 
 He confesses, but with no undue sentimentalism, 
 that he was saddened at first to some extent at 
 the prospect of an absence that might be a long 
 one, particularly when thinking "of a charming 
 young fiancee, full of wit and grace. . . . My 
 profession, however, does not allow me to yield 
 too much to sensibility; so I am now perfectly 
 resigned." He was assigned to the Comtesse de 
 Noailles, of three hundred tons (the Ecureuil, 
 that kept her company, was of only one hundred 
 and eighty). Each officer had received fifty 
 francs for extra purchases; they found it was 
 little, but when they had made their purchases 
 they found that it had been much, so great was 
 the difficulty in stowing their possessions on the 
 ship. At last, "after much trouble and many 
 words a few crowns here and there each of us 
 succeeded in squeezing himself and his belong- 
 ings in those so-detested sabots.'' 1 Closen, for 
 his part, had provisioned himself with "sugar, 
 lemons, and syrups in quantity." 
 
 The crew consisted of forty-five men, "half of 
 
 them Bretons, half Provencals," speaking their 
 
 own dialect, "and who, little accustomed to the 
 
 language used by their naval officers when giving 
 
 1 Wooden shoes, a nickname for a ship of mean estate.
 
 30 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 their orders," were apt to misunderstand them, 
 hence the bad manoeuvring which sent the Com- 
 tesse de Noaiiles right across the Conquerant. A 
 sad case; would they be left behind, and miss 
 taking part in the expedition ? By great luck 
 "there were but the bowsprit, the spritsails, and 
 the figure of the charming countess which were 
 broken to pieces." Repairs are begun with all 
 speed. Mr. de Deux-Ponts promises fifteen louis 
 to the workmen if the ship is ready the next day 
 at noon. "One more reassuring circumstance 
 was that Mr. de Kersabiec, a very expert naval 
 officer, was intrusted with the care of looking 
 after the workmen." He never left them, and 
 "encouraged them by extra distributions. I was 
 intimate with all the family, having spent the 
 winter at Saint- Pol-de- Leon ; the souvenir of 
 which still gives me pleasure." The next day all 
 was right once more: "After eleven, the amiable 
 countess was taken again with no head, it is 
 true, like so many other countesses beyond the 
 harbor chain." It was possible to start with the 
 rest of the fleet: the high fortifications overlook- 
 ing the harbor, the villages along the coast, so 
 many sails curved by a wind "joli-frais," the clear 
 sky, "all united to form the most beautiful pic- 
 ture at the time of our start. ... So many 
 vessels under way offered a truly imposing sight." 
 Every-day life now begins on the small craft;
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 31 
 
 it is hard at first to get accustomed, so tight- 
 packed is the ship, but one gets inured to it, in 
 spite of the "buzzing of so numerous a company," 
 of the lack of breathing-space, and of what peo- 
 ple breathe being made unpleasant by all sorts 
 of "exhalations" from the ship, the masses of hu- 
 manity on board, "and a few dogs." Closen has 
 the good luck not to be inconvenienced by the 
 sea, settles in his corner, and from that moment 
 till the end takes pleasure in watching life around 
 him. He learns how to make nautical observa- 
 tions, describes his companions in his journal, and 
 especially the captain, a typical old tar who has 
 an equal faith in the efficacy of hymns and of 
 oaths. "Prayer is said twice a day on the deck, 
 which does not prevent there being much irre- 
 ligion among seamen. I have often heard our 
 captain swear and curse and freely use the worst 
 sailors' language, while he was praying and chant- 
 ing: 
 
 Je mets ma confiance, 
 Vierge, en votre secours, 
 Et quand ma derniere heure 
 Viendra, guidez mon sort; 
 Obtenez que je meure 
 De la plus sainte mort." 
 
 Various incidents break the monotony of the 
 journey. On the i8th of June the Surveillante
 
 32 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 captures an English corsair, which is a joy, but 
 they learn from her the fall of Charleston and 
 the surrender of Lincoln, which gives food for 
 thought. Nothing better shows the difference 
 between old-time and present-time navigation 
 than the small fact that while on the way they 
 indulge in fishing. On board the Comtesse de 
 Noailles they capture flying-fishes, which are 
 "very tender and delicious to eat, fried in fresh 
 butter, like gudgeons." 
 
 An occasion offers to open fight, with the ad- 
 vantage of numerical superiority, on six English 
 vessels; some shots are exchanged, but with great 
 wisdom, and, in spite of the grumblings of all his 
 people, Ternay refuses to really engage them, and 
 continues his voyage. "He had his convoy too 
 much at heart," says Closen, "and he knew too 
 well the importance of our expedition, his positive 
 orders being that he must make our army arrive 
 as quickly as possible, for him not to set aside 
 all the entreaties of the young naval officers 
 who, I was told, were very outspoken on that 
 score, as well as most of the land officers, who 
 know nothing of naval matters." 
 
 The event fully justified Ternay, for Graves, 
 whose mission it had been to intercept him and 
 his slow and heavy convoy, missed his oppor- 
 tunity by twenty-four hours only, reaching New 
 York, where he joined forces with Arbuthnot
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 33 
 
 just as our own ships were safe at Newport. The 
 slightest delay on Ternay's part might have been 
 fatal. 
 
 The more so since, when nearing the coast our 
 fleet had fallen into fogs. "Nothing so sad and 
 dangerous at sea as fogs," Closen sententiously 
 writes; "besides the difficulty of avoiding col- 
 lisions in so numerous a fleet, each vessel, in order 
 to shun them, tries to gain space; thus one .may 
 chance to get too far from the centre. The stand- 
 ing orders for our convoy were, in view of avoid- 
 ing those inconveniences, to beat the drums every 
 quarter of an hour or fire petards. The men-of- 
 war fired their guns or sent rockets. The speed- 
 limit was three knots during the fog, so that each 
 vessel might, as far as possible, continue keeping 
 company with its neighbor." In spite of all 
 which the lie de France was lost, and there was 
 great anxiety; she was not seen again during the 
 rest of the journey, but she appeared later, quite 
 safe, at Boston. 
 
 The landing orders of Rochambeau, making 
 known now to all concerned the intentions of the 
 government, were clear and peremptory. Drawn 
 up by him on board the Due de Bourgogne, he had 
 caused copies to be carried to the chiefs of the 
 several corps on board the other ships: 
 
 "The troops which his Majesty is sending to 
 America are auxiliary to those of the United
 
 34 ROCHAMBEATJ IN AMERICA 
 
 States, his allies, and placed under the orders of 
 General Washington, to whom the honors of a 
 marshal of France will be rendered. The same 
 with the President of Congress," which avoided 
 the possibility of any trouble as to precedence, 
 no one in the French army having such a rank. 
 "In case of an equality of rank and duration of 
 service, the American officer will take command. 
 . . . The troops of the King will yield the right 
 side to the allies ; French troops will add black to 
 their cockades, black being the color of the United 
 States," and some such hats, with black and 
 white cockades, are still preserved at Fraunces' 
 Tavern, 1 New York. "The intention of his 
 Majesty," the general continues, "is that there 
 be perfect concert and harmony between the gen- 
 erals and officers of the two nations. The severest 
 discipline will be observed. ... It is forbidden 
 to take a bit of wood, a sheaf of straw, any kind 
 of vegetables, except amicably and in paying. . . . 
 All faults of unruliness, disobedience, insubordina- 
 tion, ill-will, brutal and sonorous drunkenness 
 . . . will be punished, according to ordinances 
 with strokes of the flat of the sword." Even 
 "light faults of lack of cleanliness or attention" 
 will be punished. "To make the punishment the 
 
 1 So called after its owner, Samuel Fraunces (Francis or Francois), 
 from the French West Indies, nicknamed "Black Sam" for the 
 color of his skin.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 35 
 
 harder for the French soldier, he will be barred 
 from military service during his detention." 
 
 The army, but not the fleet, had been placed 
 under the orders of Washington. Ternay's in- 
 structions specified, however, that while his 
 squadron had no other commander than himself, 
 it was expected that he would "proffer all assis- 
 tance that might facilitate the operations of the 
 United States," and that he would allow the use 
 of our ships "on every occasion when their help 
 might be requested." Good- will was obviously 
 the leading sentiment, and the desire of all was 
 to give as little trouble and bring as much useful 
 help as possible.
 
 Ill 
 
 On the nth day of July the fleet reached New- 
 port, after seventy days at sea, which was longer 
 than Columbus had taken on his first voyage, but 
 which was nothing extraordinary. Abbe Robin, 
 a chaplain of the army, arrived later, after a jour- 
 ney of eighty-five days, none the less filled with 
 admiration for those "enormous machines with 
 which men master the waves" 1 a very mi- 
 nute enormity from our modern point of view. 
 "There were among the land troops," says Closen, 
 "endless shouts of joy" at the prospect of being 
 on terra firma again. The troops, owing to their 
 having been fed on salt meat and dry vegetables, 
 with little water to drink (on board the Comtesse 
 de Noailles water had become corrupt; it was 
 now and then replaced by wine, "but that heats 
 one very much"), had greatly suffered. Scurvy 
 had caused its usual ravages; 600 or 700 soldiers 
 and 1,000 sailors were suffering from it; some had 
 died. 
 
 They were now confronted by the unknown. 
 What would that unknown be ? Rochambeau 
 
 1 Nouveau Voyage dans V Amerique Septentrionale en I'annee 1781 
 el campagne de I'armee de M. le comte de Rochambeau, Philadelphia, 
 1782. 
 
 36
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 37 
 
 had only his first division with him ; would he be 
 attacked at once by the English, who disposed of 
 superior naval and land forces about New York ? 
 And what would be the attitude of the Americans 
 themselves ? Everybody was for them in France, 
 but few people had a real knowledge of them. 
 Lafayette had, but he was young and enthusi- 
 astic. Would the inhabitants, would their leader, 
 Washington, would their army answer his descrip- 
 tion? On the arrival of the fleet Newport had 
 fired "thirteen grand rockets" and illuminated its 
 windows, but that might be a mere matter of 
 course: of these illuminations the then president 
 of Yale, Ezra Stiles, has left a noteworthy record : 
 "The bell rang at Newport till after midnight, 
 and the evening of the i2th Newport illuminated; 
 the Whigs put thirteen lights in the windows, the 
 Tories or doubtfuls four or six. The Quakers 
 did not choose their lights should shine before 
 men, and their windows were broken." 1 
 
 The game was, moreover, a difficult one, and 
 had to be played on an immense chess-board, in- 
 cluding North and South Boston, New York, 
 Charleston, and the Chesapeake including even 
 "the Isles," that is, the West Indies; and what 
 took place there, which might have so much im- 
 portance for continental operations, had constantly 
 to be guessed or imagined, for lack of news. 
 
 1 Literary Diary, New York, 1901, II, 454.
 
 38 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 Worse than all, the reputation of the French was, 
 up to then, in America such as hostile English 
 books and caricatures, and inconsiderate French 
 ones, had made it. We knew it, and so well, 
 too, that the appropriateness of having our troops 
 winter in our colonies of the West Indies was, at 
 one time, considered. Our minister, Gerard, was 
 of that opinion: "The Americans are little accus- 
 tomed to live with French people, for whom they 
 cannot have as yet a very marked inclination." 1 
 "The old-time prejudice kept up by the English," 
 wrote Mathieu-Dumas in his Souvenirs, "about 
 the French character was so strong that, at the 
 beginning of the Revolution, the most ardent 
 minds and several among those who most desired 
 independence, rejected the idea of an alliance 
 with France." "It is difficult to imagine," said 
 Abbe Robin, "the idea Americans entertained 
 about the French before the war. They consid- 
 ered them as groaning under the yoke of despot- 
 ism, a prey to superstition and prejudices, almost 
 idolatrous in their religion, 2 and as a kind of light, 
 
 1 To Rochambeau; n. d., but 1780. (Rochambeau papers.) 
 
 2 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,
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 39 
 
 brittle, queer-shapen mechanisms, only busy friz- 
 zling their hair and painting their faces, without 
 faith or morals." How would thousands of such 
 mechanisms be received ? 
 
 With his usual clear-headedness, Rochambeau 
 did the necessary thing on each point. To begin 
 with, in case of an English attack, which was at 
 first expected every day, he lost no time in forti- 
 fying the position he occupied, "having," wrote 
 Mathieu-Dumas, "personally selected the chief 
 points to be defended, and having batteries of 
 heavy artillery and mortars erected along the chan- 
 nel, with furnaces to heat the balls." During "the 
 first six days," says Closen, "we were not quite 
 at our ease, but, luckily, Messieurs les Anglais 
 showed us great consideration, and we suffered 
 from nothing worse than grave anxieties." After 
 the second week, Rochambeau could write home 
 that, if Clinton appeared, he would be well re- 
 ceived. Shortly after, he feels sorry the visit is 
 delayed; later, when his own second division, so 
 ardently desired, did not appear, he writes to the 
 war minister : "In two words, sir Henry Clinton 
 and I are very punctilious, and the question is 
 between us who will first call on the other. If 
 we do not get up earlier in the morning than the 
 English and the reinforcements they expect from 
 
 297. See also, concerning the prevalent impressions about the 
 French the Mlmoires du Comte de More, 1898, p. 69.
 
 40 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 Europe reach them before our second division ar- 
 rives, they will pay us a visit here that I should 
 prefer to pay them in New York." 
 
 Concerning the reputation of the French, Ro- 
 chambeau and his officers were in perfect accord: 
 it would change if exemplary discipline were main- 
 tained throughout the campaign. There is noth- 
 ing the chief paid more attention to than this, 
 nor with more complete success. Writing to 
 Prince de Montbarey a month after the landing, 
 Rochambeau says: "I can answer for the dis- 
 cipline of the army; not a man has left his camp, 
 not a cabbage has been stolen, not a complaint 
 has been heard." 1 To the President of Congress 
 he had written a few days before: "I hope that 
 account will have been rendered to your Excel- 
 lency 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." 2 Mentioning in his memoirs 
 the visit of those "savages" who had been for- 
 merly under French rule and persisted in remaining 
 friendly to us, he adds: "The sight of guns, troops, 
 and military exercises caused them no surprise; 
 but they were greatly astonished to see apple- 
 
 1 August 8, 1 780. (Rochambeau papers.) 
 1 August 3, 1780. (Ibid.)
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 41 
 
 trees with their apples upon them overhanging 
 the soldiers' tents." "This result," he concludes, 
 "was due not only to the zeal of officers, but more 
 than anything else to the good disposition of the 
 soldiers, which never failed." 
 
 Another fact which proved to our advantage 
 was that the French could then be seen in num- 
 bers and at close quarters. The difference be- 
 tween the portrait and the original was too glaring 
 to escape notice. 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 here- 
 tofore taught to believe them. They are as large 
 and likely men as can be produced by any na- 
 tion." 1 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. The letters thus 
 exchanged, generally unpublished, give a vivid 
 picture of the life then led in the Isles. Cut off 
 from the world most of the time, not knowing 
 what was taking place in France, in America, on 
 the sea, or even sometimes on the neighboring 
 
 1 Stiles's Literary Diary, II, 458.
 
 42 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 island, unaware of the whereabouts of Rodney, 
 having to guess which place he might try to storm 
 and which they should therefore garrison, these 
 men, suffering from fevers, having now and then 
 their ships scattered by cyclones, played to their 
 credit and with perfect good humor their difficult 
 game of hide and seek. 1 They send their letters 
 in duplicate and triplicate, by chance boats, give 
 news of the French court when they have any, 
 and learn after a year's delay that their letters 
 of October, 1780, have been duly received by Ro- 
 chambeau in June, 1781. The Marquis de Bouille, 
 who was to cover himself with glory at Brimstone 
 Hill, and is now chiefly remembered for the part 
 he played in Louis XVI's flight to Varennes, 
 writes most affectionately, and does not forget to 
 convey the compliments of his brave wife, who 
 had accompanied him to Martinique. The Mar- 
 
 1 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 disap- 
 peared 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 
 Bouill6 to Rochambeau, Fort Royal (Fort de France), October 27, 
 1780. (Rochambeau papers.)
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 43 
 
 quis de Saint-Simon 1 writes from Santo Domingo 
 to say how much he would like to go and fight 
 under Rochambeau on the continent: "I would 
 be delighted to be under your orders, and to give 
 up for that the command in chief I enjoy here." 
 And he supplies him, in the same unpublished 
 letter, with a most interesting account of Cuba, 
 just visited by him: "This colony has an air of 
 importance far superior to any of ours, inhabited 
 as it is by all the owners of the land, so that the 
 city (Havana) looks rather a European than a 
 colonial one; society is numerous and seems opu- 
 lent. If Spain would extend and facilitate the 
 trade of Cuba the island would become exceed- 
 ingly rich in little time. But prohibitory laws are 
 so harsh and penalties so rigorous that they cramp 
 industry everywhere." 
 
 A postscript in the same letter shows better 
 than anything else what was the common feeling 
 among officers toward Rochambeau: "Mont- 
 brun," writes Saint-Simon, "who has been suffer- 
 ing from the fever for a long time, asks me to as- 
 sure you of his respectful attachment, and says 
 that he has written you twice, that your silence 
 
 1 Three Saint-Simons took part in the American War of Indepen- 
 dence, 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.
 
 44 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 afflicts him very much, and that a token of friend- 
 ship and remembrance from you would be for him 
 the best of febrifuges. All your former subor- 
 dinates of Auvergne think the same, and have 
 the same attachment for you, in which respect I 
 yield to none." 1 
 
 The stanch devotion of Rochambeau to his 
 duties as a soldier, his personal disinterestedness, 
 his cool-headedness and energy as a leader, his 
 good humor in the midst of troubles had secured 
 for him the devotion of many, while his brusquery, 
 his peremptoriness, the severity which veiled his 
 real warmth of heart whenever the service was at 
 stake, won him a goodly number of enemies, the 
 latter very generally of less worth as men than 
 the former. In the affectionate letter by which 
 he made up early differences with "his son La- 
 fayette," shortly after his arrival, he observes, 
 concerning his own military career: "If I have 
 been lucky enough to preserve, up to now, the 
 confidence of the French soldiers . . . the reason 
 is that out of 15,000 men or thereabout, who have 
 been killed or wounded under my orders, of dif- 
 ferent rank and in the most deadly actions, I 
 have not to reproach myself with having caused 
 a single one to be killed for the sake of my own 
 fame." He seemed, Segur said in his memoirs, 
 "to have been purposely created to understand 
 
 'January 7, 1781. (Rochambeau papers.)
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 45 
 
 Washington, and be understood by him, and to 
 serve with republicans. A friend of order, of 
 laws, and of liberty, his example more even than 
 his authority obliged us scrupulously to respect 
 the rights, properties, and customs of our allies."
 
 IV 
 
 Nothing without my second division, Rocham- 
 beau thought. He had urged the government in 
 his last letters before leaving France to send it 
 not later than a fortnight after he himself had 
 sailed: "The convoy will cross much more safely 
 now under the guard of two warships," he had 
 written to Montbarey, "than it will in a month 
 with an escort of thirty, when the English are 
 ready." And again, after having embarked on 
 the Due de Bourgogne: "For Heaven's sake, sir, 
 hasten that second division. . . . We are just 
 now weighing anchor." But weeks and months 
 went by, and no news came of the second division. 
 Washington with his ardent patriotism, Lafay- 
 ette with his youthful enthusiasm, were pressing 
 Rochambeau to risk all, in order to capture New 
 York, the stronghold of the enemy and chief 
 centre of their power. "I am confident," Ro- 
 chambeau answered, "that our general (Wash- 
 ington) does not want us to give here a second 
 edition of Savannah," and he felt the more anx- 
 ious that, with the coming of recruits and going of 
 veterans, and the short-term enlistments, "Wash- 
 ington would command now 15,000 men, now 
 5,000." 
 
 46
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 47 
 
 Rochambeau decided in October to send to 
 France his son, then colonel of the regiment of 
 Bourbonnais, to remonstrate. As capture was 
 possible and the envoy might have to throw his 
 despatches overboard, young Rochambeau, be- 
 ing blessed with youth and a good memory, had 
 learned their contents by heart. One of the best 
 sailors of the fleet had been selected to convey him, 
 on the frigate Amazone. On account of superior 
 forces mounting guard outside, the captain waited 
 for the first night storm that should arise, when 
 the watch was sure to be less strict, started in the 
 midst of one, after having waited for eight days, 
 was recognized, but too late, was chased, had his 
 masts broken, repaired them, and reached Brest 
 safely. The sailor who did so well on this oc- 
 casion, and who was to meet a tragical death 
 at Vanikoro. bore the name, famous since, of La 
 Perouse. 
 
 Time wore on, a sad time for the American 
 cause. One day the news was that one of the 
 most trusted generals, famous for his services on 
 land and water, Benedict Arnold, had turned 
 traitor; another day that Gates had been routed 
 at Camden and Kalb killed. In December Ter- 
 nay died. In January, worse than all, the sol- 
 diers of the Pennsylvania line mutinied; unpaid, 
 underfed, kept under the flag long after the time 
 for which they had enlisted, "they went," Closen
 
 48 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 writes in his journal, "to extremities. In Europe 
 they would not have waited so long." 
 
 There was no doubt, in fact, that the life they 
 had to lead did not closely resemble that which, 
 in accordance with the uses then prevailing in 
 every country, the posters urging enlistment de- 
 picted to them. One such poster, preserved in 
 Philadelphia, announces "to all brave, healthy, 
 able-bodied, and well-disposed young men in this 
 neighborhood who have any inclination to join the 
 troops now raising, under General Washington, 
 for the defense of the liberties and independence 
 of the United States," a "truly liberal and gener- 
 ous [encouragement], namely, a bounty of twelve 
 dollars, an annual and fully sufficient supply of 
 good and handsome clothing, a daily allowance 
 of a large and ample ration of provisions, together 
 with sixty dollars a year in gold and silver money 
 on account of pay." The appeal vaunted, by 
 way of conclusion, "the great advantages which 
 these brave men will have who shall embrace this 
 opportunity of spending a few happy years in 
 viewing the different parts of this beautiful con- 
 tinent, in the honorable and truly respectable 
 character of a soldier, after which he may, if he 
 pleases, return home to his friends with his pockets 
 full of money and his head covered with laurels. 
 God save the United States !" Pretty engravings 
 showed handsome soldiers, elegantly dressed, prac- 
 tising an easy kind of military drill.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 49 
 
 The danger was great, but brief; tempted by 
 the enemy to change sides and receive full pay, 
 the Pennsylvania line refused indignantly. "We 
 are honest soldiers, asking justice from our com- 
 patriots," they answered, "we are not traitors." 
 On the margin of a French account of those events, 
 published in Paris in 1787, Clinton scribbled a 
 number of observations hitherto unprinted. 1 They 
 are in French, or something like it. Opposite this 
 statement the British general wrote: "Est bien 
 dit et c'est dommage qu'il n'est pas vrai." We can- 
 not tell, but one thing is sure, namely, that in 
 accordance with those words, spoken or not, the 
 rebellious soldiers acted. Owing to Washington's 
 influence, order soon reigned again, but the alarm 
 had been very great, as shown by the instruc- 
 tions which he handed to Colonel Laurens, now 
 sent by him to Versailles with a mission similar 
 to that of young Rochambeau. The emotion 
 caused by the last events is reflected in them: 
 "The patience of the American army is almost 
 exhausted. . . . The great majority of the in- 
 habitants is still firmly attached to the cause of 
 independence," but that cause may be wrecked 
 if more money, more men, and more ships are 
 not immediately supplied by the French ally. 2 
 
 While the presence of the American and French 
 
 1 Histoire des Troubles de VAmtrique Anglaise, by Soules; Clinton's 
 copy, in the Library of Congress, p. 360. 
 
 2 January 15, 1781.
 
 50 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 troops in the North kept Clinton and his power- 
 ful New York garrison immobile where they were, 
 the situation in the South was becoming worse 
 and worse, with Cornwallis at the head of supe- 
 rior forces, Lord Rawdon holding Charleston, and 
 the hated Arnold ravaging Virginia. 
 
 Against them the American forces under Greene, 
 Lafayette, and Morgan (who had partly de- 
 stroyed Tarleton's cavalry at Cowpens, January 
 17) were doing their utmost, facing fearful odds. 
 With a handful of men, knowing that the slightest 
 error might be his destruction, young Lafayette, 
 aged twenty-four, far from help and advice, was 
 conducting a campaign in which his pluck, wisdom, 
 and tenacity won him the admiration of veterans. 
 Irritated ever to find him on his path, Cornwallis 
 was writing a little later to Clinton: "If I can 
 get an opportunity to strike a blow at him with- 
 out loss of time, I will certainly try it." But La- 
 fayette would not let his adversary thus employ 
 his leisure. 
 
 To arrest the progress of Arnold two French 
 expeditions were sent, taking advantage of mo- 
 ments when access to the sea was not blocked by 
 the English fleet before Newport, one in Feb- 
 ruary, under Tilly, who pursued Arnold's convoy 
 up the Elizabeth River as high as the draft of 
 his ships permitted, but had to stop and come 
 home, having only captured the Romulus, of 44
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 51 
 
 guns, some smaller ships, a quantity of supplies 
 destined for Arnold, and made 550 prisoners; an- 
 other of more importance under the Chevalier Des- 
 touches, in March, with part of Rochambeau's 
 army on board, in case a landing were possible. 
 In spite of all precautions, Destouches's intentions 
 were discovered; the English fleet engaged ours; 
 the fight, in which 72 French lost their lives and 
 112 were wounded, was a creditable one and 
 might easily have ended in disaster, for the enemy 
 had more guns, and several of our ships, on ac- 
 count of their not being copper-lined, were slow; 
 but clever manoeuvring, however, compensated 
 those defects. Congress voted thanks, but the 
 situation remained the same. "And now," Closen 
 noted down in his journal, "we have Arnold free 
 to act as he pleases, Virginia desolated by his in- 
 cursions, and M. de Lafayette too weak to do 
 anything but keep on the defensive."
 
 One day, however, something would have to be 
 done, and, in order to be ready, Rochambeau kept 
 his army busy with manoeuvres, military exer- 
 cises, sham warfare ("le simulacre de la petite 
 guerre"), and the building of fortifications. As 
 for his officers, he encouraged them to travel, for 
 a large part of the land was free of enemies, and 
 to become better acquainted with these "Ameri- 
 can brothers," whom they had come to fight for. 
 French officers were thus seen at Boston, Albany, 
 West Point, Philadelphia. It was at this period 
 that Chastellux went about the country with 
 some of his companions, and gathered the material 
 for his well-known Voyages dans VAmerique du 
 Nord, the first edition of which, in a much abbre- 
 viated form, was issued by that printing-press of 
 the fleet which Rochambeau had recommended to 
 himself not to forget: "De rimprimerie Roy ale 
 de 1'Escadre," one reads on the title-page. Only 
 twenty-three copies were struck off; the "Im- 
 primerie Roy ale" of the fleet had obviously no 
 superabundance of type nor of paper. 
 
 Closen, who, to his joy and surprise, had been 
 made a member of Rochambeau's "family," that 
 is, had been appointed one of his aides, as soon 
 
 52
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 53 
 
 as his new duties left him some leisure, began, 
 with his methodical mind, to study, he tells us, 
 "the Constitution of the thirteen States and of 
 the Congress of America," meaning, of course, at 
 that date, their several constitutions, which or- 
 ganization, "as time has shown, is well adapted 
 to the national character and has made the hap- 
 piness of that people so respectable from every 
 point of view." He began after this to examine 
 the products of the soil of Rhode Island, "per- 
 haps one of the prettiest islands on the globe." 
 
 The stay being prolonged, the officers began to 
 make acquaintances, to learn English, to gain 
 access to American society. It was at first very 
 difficult; neither French nor American understood 
 each other's language; so recourse was bravely 
 had to Latin, better known then than to-day. 
 "Quid de meo, mi carissime Drowne, cogitas si- 
 lentio f" A long letter follows, in affectionate 
 terms addressed to Doctor Drowne, a Newport 
 physician, and signed: "Silly, officier au regiment 
 de Bourbonnois," September 9, 1780. Sublieuten- 
 ant de Silly announced, however, his intention to 
 learn English during the winter season : "Inglicam 
 linguam noscere conabor." His letters of an after- 
 date are, in fact, written in English, but a be- 
 ginner's English. 1 
 
 1 Specimens exhibited by the doctor's descendant in the Fraunces's 
 Tavern Museum.
 
 54 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 For the use of Latin the commander-in-chief of 
 the French army was able to set the example, and 
 Ezra Stiles could talk at a dinner in that language 
 with Rochambeau, still reminiscent of what he 
 had learned when studying for priesthood. The 
 president of Yale notes in his journal: 
 
 "5 [October, 1780]. Introduced to the com- 
 mander-in-chief of the French allied army, the 
 Count de Rochambeau. . . . 
 
 "7. Dined at the General de Rochambeau's, 
 in a splendid manner. There were, perhaps, thirty 
 at table. I conversed with the general in Latin. 
 He speaks it tolerably." 
 
 Beginning to know something of the language, 
 our officers risk paying visits and go to teas and 
 dinners. Closen notes with curiosity all he sees: 
 "It is good behavior each time people meet to 
 accost each other, mutually offering the hand and 
 shaking it, English fashion. Arriving in a com- 
 pany of men, one thus goes around, but must re- 
 member that it belongs to the one of higher rank 
 to extend his hand first." 
 
 Unspeakable quantities of tea are drunk. "To 
 crave mercy, when one has taken half a dozen 
 cups, one must put the spoon across the cup; for 
 so long as you do not place it so, your cup is al- 
 ways taken, rinsed, filled again, and placed be- 
 fore you. After the first, the custom is for the 
 pretty pourer (verseuse) most of them are so
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 55 
 
 to ask you: Is the tea suitable?" 1 "An insipid 
 drink," grumbles Chaplain Robin, over whom the 
 prettiness of the pourers was powerless. 
 
 The toasts are also a very surprising custom, 
 sometimes an uncomfortable one. "One is ter- 
 ribly fatigued by the quantity of healths which are 
 being drunk (toasts). From one end of the table 
 to the other a gentleman pledges you, sometimes 
 with only a glance, which means that you should 
 drink a glass of wine with him, a compliment 
 which cannot be politely ignored." 
 
 In the course of an excursion to Boston the 
 young captain visits an assembly of Quakers, 
 "where, unluckily, no one was inspired, and ennui 
 seemed consequently to reign." 
 
 But what strikes him more than anything else 
 is the beauty of those young ladies who made him 
 drink so much tea: "Nature has endowed the 
 ladies of Rhode Island with the handsomest, finest 
 features one can imagine; their complexion is 
 clear and white; their hands and feet usually 
 small." But let not the ladies of other States 
 be tempted to resent this preference. One sees 
 later that in each city he visits young Closen is 
 similarly struck, and that, more considerate than 
 the shepherd Paris, he somehow manages to re- 
 fuse the apple to none. On the Boston ladies he 
 is quite enthusiastic, on the Philadelphia ones not 
 
 1 In English in the original.
 
 56 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 less; he finds, however, the latter a little too 
 serious, which he attributes to the presence of 
 Congress in that city. 
 
 But, above all, the object of my compatriots' 
 curiosity was the great man, the one of whom 
 they had heard so much on the other side, the 
 personification of the new-born ideas of liberty 
 and popular government, George Washington. 
 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. "From the moment we began to corre- 
 spond with one another," Rochambeau wrote in 
 his memoirs, "I never ceased to enjoy the sound- 
 ness of his judgment and the amenity of his style 
 in a very long correspondence, which is likely 
 not to end before the death of one of us." 
 
 Chastellux, who saw him at his camp, where the 
 band of the American army played for him the 
 "March of the Huron," could draw from life his 
 well-known description of him, ending: "North- 
 ern America, from Boston to Charleston, is a
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 57 
 
 great book every page of which tells his praise." 1 
 Count de Segur says that he apprehended his ex- 
 pectations could not be equalled by reality, but 
 they were. "His exterior almost told his story. 
 Simplicity, grandeur, dignity, calm, kindness, 
 firmness shone in his physiognomy as well as in 
 his character. He was of a noble and high sta- 
 ture, his expression was gentle and kindly, his 
 smile pleasing, his manners simple without famili- 
 arity. . . . All in him announced the hero of a 
 republic." "I have seen Washington," says Abbe 
 Robin, "the soul and support of one of the great- 
 est revolutions that ever happened. ... In a 
 country where every individual has a part in su- 
 preme authority ... he has been able to main- 
 tain his troops in absolute subordination, render 
 them jealous of his praise, make them fear his 
 very silence." Closen was one day sent with de- 
 spatches to the great man and, like all the others, 
 began to worship him. 
 
 As a consequence of this mission Washington 
 came, on the 6th of March, 1781, to visit the 
 French camp and fleet. He was received with 
 the honors due to a marshal of France, the ships 
 were dressed, the troops, in their best uniforms, 
 "dans la plus grande tenue," lined the streets from 
 
 1 Voyages de M. le Marquis de Chastellux dans VAmerique Seplen- 
 trionale, dans les annees 1780, 1781 el 1782, Paris, 1786, 2 vols., I, 
 118.
 
 58 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 Rochambeau's house (the fine Vernon house, still 
 in existence 1 ) to the harbor; the roar and smoke 
 of the guns rose in honor of the "hero of liberty." 
 Washington saw Destouches's fleet sail for its 
 Southern expedition and wished it Godspeed; 
 and after a six days' stay, enlivened by "illumina- 
 tions, dinners, and balls," he left on the i3th. 
 "I can say," we read in Closen's journal, "that 
 he carried away with him the regrets, the at- 
 tachment, the respect, and the veneration of all 
 our army." Summing up his impression, he adds: 
 "All in him betokens a great man with an excel- 
 lent heart. Enough good will never be said of 
 him." 
 
 1 Now the property of the Charity Organization Society. See A 
 History of the Vernon House, by Maud Lyman Stevens, Newport, 
 R. I., 1915. Illustrated.
 
 VI 
 
 On the 8th of May, 1781, the Concorde arrived 
 at Boston, having on board Count de Barras, "a 
 commodore with the red ribbon," of the same 
 family as the future member of the "Directoire," 
 and who was to replace Ternay. With him was 
 Viscount Rochambeau, bringing to his father the 
 unwelcome news that no second division was to 
 be expected. "My son has returned very soli- 
 tary," was the only remonstrance the general sent 
 to the minister. But the young colonel was able 
 to give, at the same time, news of great impor- 
 tance. A new fleet under Count de Grasse had 
 been got together, and at the time of the Con- 
 corde's departure had just sailed for the West 
 Indies, so that a temporary domination of the 
 sea might become a possibility. "Nothing with- 
 out naval supremacy," Rochambeau had written, 
 as we know, in his note-book before starting. 
 
 In spite, moreover, of "hard times," wrote 
 Vergennes to La Luzerne, and of the already dis- 
 quieting state of our finances, a new "gratuitous 
 subsidy of six million livres tournois" was granted 
 to the Americans. Some funds had already been 
 sent to Rochambeau, one million and a half in 
 
 59
 
 60 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 February, with a letter of Necker saying: "Be 
 assured, sir, that all that will be asked from the 
 Finance Department for your army will be made 
 ready on the instant." Seven millions arrived a 
 little later, brought by the Astree, which had 
 crossed the ocean in sixty-seven days, without 
 mishap. As for troops, only 600 recruits arrived 
 at Boston, in June, with the Sagittaire. 
 
 Since nothing more was to be expected, the 
 hour had come for definitive decisions. A great 
 effort must now be made, the great effort in view 
 of which all the rest had been done, the one which 
 might bring about peace and American liberty 
 or end in lasting failure. All felt the importance 
 and solemnity of the hour. The great question 
 was what should be attempted the storming of 
 New York or the relief of the South ? 
 
 The terms of the problem had been amply dis- 
 cussed in letters and conferences between the 
 chiefs, and the discussion still continued. The 
 one who first made up his mind and ceased to 
 hesitate between the respective advantages or 
 disadvantages of the two projects, and who plainly 
 declared that there was but one good plan, which 
 was to reconquer the South, that one, strange to 
 say, was neither Washington nor Rochambeau, 
 and was not in the United States either as a 
 sailor or a soldier, but as a diplomat, and in draw- 
 ing attention to the fact I am only performing
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 61 
 
 the most agreeable duty toward a justly admired 
 predecessor. This wise adviser was La Luzerne. 
 In an unpublished memoir, drawn up by him on 
 the 2oth of April and sent to Rochambeau on 
 May 19 with an explanatory letter in which he 
 asked that his statement (a copy of which he also 
 sent to B arras) be placed under the eyes of Wash- 
 ington, he insisted on the necessity of immediate 
 action, and action in the Chesapeake: "It is in 
 the Chesapeake Bay that it seems urgent to con- 
 vey all the naval forces of the King, with such 
 land forces as the generals will consider appro- 
 priate. This change cannot fail to have the most 
 advantageous consequences for the continuation 
 of the campaign," which consequences he points 
 out with singular clear-sightedness, adding: "If 
 the English follow us and can reach the bay only 
 after us, their situation will prove very different 
 from ours; all the coasts and the inland parts of 
 the country are full of their enemies. They have 
 neither the . means nor the time to raise, as at 
 New York, the necessary works to protect them- 
 selves against the inroads of the American troops 
 and to save themselves from the danger to which 
 the arrival of superior forces would expose them." 
 If the plan submitted by him offers difficulties, 
 others should be formed, but he maintains that 
 "all those which have for their object the relief 
 of the Southern States must be preferred, and that
 
 62 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 no time should be lost to put them in execu- 
 tion." 
 
 At the Weathersfield conference, near Hart- 
 ford, Conn., between the Americans and French, 
 on the 23d of May (in the Webb house, still in 
 existence), Washington still evinced, and not 
 without some weighty reasons, his preference for 
 an attack on New York. He spoke of the ad- 
 vanced season, of "the great waste of men which 
 we have found from experience in long marches 
 in the Southern States," of the "difficulty of 
 transports by land"; all those reasons and some 
 others, "too well known to Count de Rochambeau 
 to need repeating, show that an operation against 
 New York should be preferred, in the present cir- 
 cumstances, to the effort of a sending of troops 
 to the South." On the same day he was writing 
 to La Luzerne: "I should be wanting in respect 
 and confidence were I not to add that our object 
 is New York." 
 
 La Luzerne, however, kept on insisting. To 
 Rochambeau he wrote on the ist of June: "The 
 situation of the Southern States becomes every 
 moment more critical; it has even become very 
 dangerous, and every measure that could be taken 
 for their relief would be of infinite advantage. 
 . . . The situation of the Marquis de Lafayette 
 and that of General Greene is most embarrassing, 
 since Lord Cornwallis has joined the English divi-
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 63 
 
 sion of the Chesapeake. If Virginia is not helped 
 in time, the English will have reached the goal 
 which they have assigned to themselves in the 
 bold movements attempted by them in the South : 
 they will soon have really conquered the Southern 
 States. ... I am going to write to M. de Grasse 
 as you want me to do; on your side, seize every 
 occasion to write to him, and multiply the copies 
 of the letters you send him," that is, in duplicate 
 and triplicate, for fear of loss or capture. "His 
 coming to the rescue of the oppressed States is 
 not simply desirable; the thing seems to be now 
 of the most pressing necessity." He must not 
 only come, but bring with him all he can find of 
 French troops in our isles: thus would be com- 
 pensated, to a certain extent, the absence of the 
 second division. 
 
 Rochambeau soon agreed, and, with his usual 
 wisdom, Washington was not long in doing the 
 same. On the 28th of May the French general 
 had already written to de Grasse, beseeching him 
 to come with every means at his disposal, to bring 
 his whole fleet, and not only his fleet, but a sup- 
 ply of money, to be borrowed in our colonies, 
 and also all the French land forces from our gar- 
 risons which he could muster. The desire of Saint- 
 Simon to come and help had, of course, not been 
 forgotten by Rochambeau, and he counted on 
 his good- will. After having described the ex-
 
 64 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 treme importance of the effort to be attempted, 
 he concluded : ' ' The crisis through which America 
 is passing at this moment is of the severest. The 
 coming of Count de Grasse may be salvation." 
 
 Events had so shaped themselves that the fate 
 of the United States and the destinies of more 
 than one nation would be, for a few weeks, in the 
 hands of one man, and one greatly hampered by 
 imperative instructions obliging him, at a time 
 when there was no steam to command the wind 
 and waves, to be at a fixed date in the West 
 Indies, owing to certain arrangements with Spain. 
 Would he take the risk, and what would be the 
 answer of that temporary arbiter of future events, 
 Francois Joseph Paul Comte de Grasse, a sailor 
 from the age of twelve, now a lieutenant-gen- 
 eral and "chef d'escadre," who had seen already 
 much service on every sea, in the East and West 
 Indies, with d'Orvilliers at Ushant, with Guichen 
 against Rodney in the Caribbean Sea, a haughty 
 man, it was said, with some friends and many 
 enemies, the one quality of his acknowledged by 
 friend and foe being valor? "Our admiral," his 
 sailors were wont to say, "is six foot tall on ordi- 
 nary days, and six foot six on battle days." 
 
 What would he do and say? People in those 
 times had to take their chance and act in accor- 
 dance with probabilities. This Washington and 
 Rochambeau did. By the beginning of June all
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 65 
 
 was astir in the northern camp. Soldiers did not 
 know what was contemplated, but obviously it 
 was something great. Young officers exulted. 
 What joy to have at last the prospect of an 
 "active campaign," wrote Closen in his journal, 
 "and to have an occasion to visit other provinces 
 and see the differences in manners, customs, prod- 
 ucts, and trade of our good Americans!" 
 
 The camp is raised and the armies are on the 
 move toward New York and the South; they are 
 in the best dispositions, ready, according to cir- 
 cumstances, to fight or admire all that turns up. 
 "The country between Providence and Bristol," 
 says Closen, "is charming. We thought we had 
 been transported into Paradise, all the roads being 
 lined with acacias in full bloom, filling the air with 
 a delicious, almost too strong fragrance." Steeples 
 are climbed, and "the sight is one of the finest 
 possible." Snakes are somewhat troublesome, but 
 such things will happen, even in Paradise. The 
 heat becomes very great, and night marches are 
 arranged, beginning at two o'clock in the morn- 
 ing; roads at times become muddy paths, where 
 wagons, artillery, carts conveying boats for the 
 crossing of rivers cause great trouble and delay. 
 Poor Abbe Robin, ill-prepared for martyrdom, 
 becomes pathetic, talking of his own fate, fearful 
 of being captured by the English and of becoming 
 "the victim of those anti-republicans." He sleeps
 
 66 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 on the ground, under a torrential rain, "in front 
 of a great fire, roasted on one side, drenched on the 
 other." He finds, however, that "French gayety 
 remains ever present in these hard marches. 
 The Americans whom curiosity brings by the 
 thousand to our camps are received," he writes, 
 "with lively joy ; we cause our military instruments 
 to play for them, of which they are passionately 
 fond. Officers and soldiers, then, American men 
 and women mix and dance together; it is the 
 Feast of Equality, the first-fruits of the alliance 
 which must prevail between those nations. . . . 
 These people are still in the happy period when 
 distinctions of rank and birth are ignored; they 
 treat alike the soldier and the officer, and often 
 ask the latter what is his profession in his country, 
 unable as they are to imagine that that of a war- 
 rior may be a fixed and permanent one." 
 
 Washington writes to recommend precautions 
 against spies, who will be sent to the French 
 camp, dressed as peasants, bringing fruit and 
 other provisions, and who "will be attentive to 
 every word which they may hear drop." 1 
 
 Several officers, for the sake of example, dis- 
 card their horses and walk, indifferent to mud 
 and heat; some of them, like the Viscount de 
 Noailles, performing on foot the whole distance 
 of seven hundred and fifty-six miles between 
 
 1 To Rochambeau, June 30, 1781.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 67 
 
 Newport and Yorktown. Cases of sickness were 
 rare. "The attention of the superior officers," 
 says Abbe Robin, "very much contributed to 
 this, by the care they took in obliging the soldiers 
 to drink no water without rum in it to remove 
 its noisome qualities." It is not reported that 
 superior officers had to use violence to be obeyed. 
 This precaution, up to a recent date, was still 
 considered a wise one; in the long journeys on 
 foot that we used to take in my youth across the 
 Alps, our tutor was convinced that no water mi- 
 crobe could resist the addition of a little kirsch. 
 Anyway, we resisted the microbes. 
 
 On the 6th of July the junction of the two 
 armies took place at Phillipsburg, "three leagues," 
 Rochambeau writes, "from Kingsbridge, the first 
 post of the enemy in the island of New York," 1 
 the American army having followed the left bank 
 of the Hudson in order to reach the place of 
 meeting. On the receipt of the news, Lord Ger- 
 main, the British colonial secretary, wrote to 
 Clinton, who commanded in chief at New York: 
 "The junction of the French troops with the 
 
 1 This island's aspect fifteen years later is thus described by Duke 
 de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt: "Enfin nous sommes arriv6s a 
 King's Bridge dans File de New York, ou le terrain, genralement 
 mauvais, est encore en mauvais bois dans les parties les plus eloign6es 
 de la ville, et ou 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 riviere du Nord et le 
 bras de mer qui spare cette ile de Long Island." Voyage, V, 300.
 
 68 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 Americans will, I am persuaded, soon produce 
 disagreements and discontents, and Mr. Wash- 
 ington will find it necessary to separate them very 
 speedily, either by detaching the Americans to 
 the southward or suffering the French to return 
 to Rhode Island. . . . But I trust, before that 
 can happen, Lord Cornwallis will have given the 
 loyal inhabitants on both sides of the Chesapeake 
 the opportunity they have so long ago earnestly 
 desired of avowing their principles and standing 
 forth in support of the King's measures." Similar 
 proofs of my lord's acumen abound in his partly 
 unpublished correspondence. He goes on rejoicing 
 and deducting all the happy consequences which 
 were sure to result from the meeting of the French 
 and American troops, so blandly elated at the 
 prospect as to remind any one familiar with La 
 Fontaine's fables, of Perrette and her milk-pot. 
 
 Washington, in the meantime, was reviewing 
 the French troops (July 9), and Rochambeau 
 the American ones, and a fact which would 
 have greatly surprised Lord Germain the worse 
 equipped the latter were, the greater the sym- 
 pathy and admiration among the French for 
 their endurance. "Those brave people," wrote 
 Closen, "it really pained us to see, almost naked, 
 with mere linen vests and trousers, most of them 
 without stockings; but, would you believe it? 
 looking very healthy and in the best of spirits."
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 69 
 
 And further on: "I am full of admiration for the 
 American troops. It is unbelievable that troops 
 composed of men of all ages, even of children of 
 fifteen, of blacks and whites, all nearly naked, 
 without money, poorly fed, should walk so well 
 and stand the enemy's fire with such firmness. 
 The calmness of mind and the clever combina- 
 tions of General Washington, in whom I discover 
 every day new eminent qualities, are already 
 enough known, and the whole universe respects 
 and admires him. Certain it is that he is admi- 
 rable at the head of his army, every member of 
 which considers him as his friend and father." 
 These sentiments, which were unanimous in the 
 French army, assuredly did not betoken the 
 clash counted upon by the English colonial secre- 
 tary, and more than one of our officers who had, a 
 few years later, to take part in another Revolu- 
 tion must have been reminded of the Continental 
 soldiers of '81 as they led to battle, fighting for a 
 similar cause, our volunteers of '92. 
 
 No real hatred, any more than before, appeared 
 among the French troops for those enemies whom 
 they were now nearing, and with whom they had 
 already had some sanguinary skirmishes. Dur- 
 ing the intervals between military operations re- 
 lations were courteous, and at times amicable. 
 The English gave to the French news of Europe, 
 even when the news was good for the latter, and
 
 70 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 passed to them newspapers. "We learned that 
 news" (Necker's resignation), writes Blanchard, 
 "through the English, who often sent trumpeters 
 and passed gazettes to us. We learned from the 
 same papers that Mr. de La Motte-Picquet had 
 captured a rich convoy. 1 These exchanges be- 
 tween the English and us did not please the 
 Americans, nor even General Washington, who 
 were unaccustomed to this kind of warfare." 
 The fight was really for an idea, but, what might 
 have dispelled any misgivings, with no possibility 
 of a change of idea. 
 
 1 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.
 
 VII 
 
 Two unknown factors now were for the gen- 
 erals the cause of deep concern. What would de 
 Grasse do? What would Clinton do? The 
 wounded officer of Johannisberg, the winner of 
 Charleston, Sir Henry Clinton, a lieutenant- 
 general and former member of Parliament, en- 
 joying great repute, was holding New York, not 
 yet the second city of the world nor even the 
 first of the United States, covering only with its 
 modest houses, churches, and gardens the lower 
 part of Manhattan, and reduced, owing to the 
 war, to 10,000 inhabitants. But, posted there, 
 the English commander threatened the road on 
 which the combined armies had to move. He 
 had at his disposal immense stores, strong forti- 
 fications, a powerful fleet to second his move- 
 ments, and troops equal in number and training 
 to ours. 
 
 There are periods in the history of nations 
 when, after a continuous series of misfortunes, 
 when despair would have seemed excusable, sud- 
 denly the sky clears and everything turns their 
 way. In the War of American Independence, 
 such a period had begun. The armies of Wash- 
 ington and Rochambeau, encumbered with their 
 
 71
 
 72 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 carts, wagons, and artillery, had to pass rivers, 
 to cross hilly regions, to follow muddy tracks; 
 any serious attempt against them might have 
 proved fatal, but nothing was tried. It was of 
 the greatest importance that Clinton should, as 
 long as possible, have no intimation of the real 
 plans of the Franco- Americans ; everything helped 
 to mislead him: his natural dispositions as well 
 as circumstances. He had an unshakable con- 
 viction that the key to the whole situation was 
 New York, and that the royal power in America, 
 and he, too, Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Clin- 
 ton, would stand or fall with that city. Hence 
 his disinclination to leave it and to attempt any- 
 thing outside. His instructions ordered him to 
 help Cornwallis to his utmost, the plan of the 
 British court being to conquer the Southern 
 States first and then continue the conquest north- 
 ward. But he, on the contrary, was day after 
 day asking Cornwallis to send back some of his 
 troops. And while, as he never ceased to point 
 out afterward, he was careful to add, "if you 
 could spare them," he also remarked in the same 
 letter : "I confess I could not conceive you would 
 require above 4,000 in a station where General 
 Arnold has represented to me, upon report of 
 Colonel Simcoe, that 2,000 men would be amply 
 sufficient." 1 
 
 1 July 8, 1781.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 73 
 
 A great source of light, and, as it turned out, of 
 darkness also, was the intercepting of letters. 
 This constantly happened in those days, to the 
 benefit or bewilderment of both parties, on land 
 or at sea. But luck had decidedly turned, and 
 the stars shone propitious for the allies. We cap- 
 tured valuable letters, and Clinton misleading 
 ones. It was something of a retribution after he 
 had so often used or tried to use such captures to 
 his advantage, as when, having seized an intimate 
 letter of Washington, a passage of which might 
 have given umbrage to Rochambeau, he had it 
 printed in the newspapers. But the two com- 
 manders were not to be ruffled so easily, and all 
 that took place was a frank explanation. Spon- 
 taneously acting in the same spirit, La Luzerne 
 had written to Rochambeau concerning Wash- 
 ington and this incident: "I have told all those 
 that have spoken to me of it that I saw nothing 
 in it but the zeal of a good patriot, and a citizen 
 must be very virtuous for his enemies not to find 
 other crimes to reproach him with." 1 
 
 More treasures had now fallen into the hands 
 of Clinton: a letter of Chastellux to La Luzerne, 
 speaking very superciliously of his unmanageable 
 chief, Rochambeau, and of his "bourrasques." 
 In it he congratulated himself, as Rochambeau 
 narrates, on having "cleverly managed to cause 
 
 1 April 13, 1781. (Rochambeau papers.)
 
 74 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 me to agree with General Washington," the re- 
 sult being that "a siege of the island of New York 
 had at last been determined upon. . . . He 
 added complaints about the small chance a man 
 of parts had to influence the imperiousness of a 
 general always wanting to command." Clinton 
 caused that letter to be sent to Rochambeau, "ob- 
 viously with no view," writes the latter, "to the 
 preservation of peace in my military family." 
 Rochambeau showed it to Chastellux, who blush- 
 ingly acknowledged its authorship; the general 
 thereupon threw it into the fire and left the un- 
 fortunate Academician "a prey to his remorse," 
 and to his ignorance, for he was careful not to 
 undeceive him as to the real plans of the com- 
 bined army. 
 
 A text of the conclusions reached at the Weath- 
 ersfield conferences was no less happily captured 
 by Clinton, and we have seen how clearly Wash- 
 ington had there expressed his reluctance to at- 
 tempt striking the chief blow in the South. 
 A letter of Barras to La Luzerne, of May 27, 
 was also intercepted, and as luck would have it, 
 the sailor declared in it his intention to take the 
 fleet, of all places, to Boston (a real project, but 
 abandoned as soon as formed and replaced by 
 another which took him to the Chesapeake). A 
 most important letter of Rochambeau to La 
 Luzerne, explaining the real plan, was thereupon
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 75 
 
 intercepted; it was in cipher and the English 
 managed to decipher it. But, as the stars shone 
 propitious to the allies, it was only the English 
 in London, and not those in New York, who could 
 do it, and when the translation reached Clinton 
 at last, he had no longer, for good causes, any 
 doubt as to the real aims of Washington and 
 Rochambeau. 
 
 The colonial secretary was, in the meantime, 
 kept in a state of jubilation by so much treasure- 
 trove and the news forwarded by Clinton, to 
 whom he wrote: "The copies of the very impor- 
 tant correspondence which so fortunately fell into 
 your hands, inclosed in your despatch, show the 
 rebel affairs to be almost desperate, and that noth- 
 ing but the success of some extraordinary enter- 
 prise can give vigor and activity to their cause, 
 and I confess I am well pleased that they have 
 fixed upon New York as the object to be at- 
 tempted. ' ' x Clinton acknowledged a little later to 
 Lord Germain the receipt of a "reinforcement of 
 about 2,400 German troops and recruits," which 
 he was careful to hold tight in New York till the 
 end. 
 
 The combined armies had, in the meantime, 
 done their best to confirm the English commander 
 in such happy dispositions. They had built in 
 the vicinity of New York brick ovens for baking 
 
 !July 14, 1781.
 
 76 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 bread for an army, as in view of a long siege. 
 There had been reconnaissances, marches, and 
 countermarches, a sending of ships toward Long 
 Island without entering, however, "dans la baie 
 d' Oyster," skirmishes which looked like prelimi- 
 naries to more important operations, and in one 
 of which, together with the two Berthiers and 
 Count de Vauban, Closen nearly lost his life in 
 order to save his hat. A camp proverb about 
 hats had been the cause of his taking the risk. 
 When he returned, "kind Washington," he writes 
 in his journal, "tapped me on the shoulder, say- 
 ing: 'Dear Baron, this French proverb is not yet 
 known among our army, but your cold behavior 
 during danger will be it' " (in English in the orig- 
 inal as being the very words of the great man to 
 the young one, though cold does probably duty 
 for cool, and the final it is certainly not Washing- 
 ton's). 
 
 Then on the sudden, on the i8th of August, 
 the two armies raised their camps, disappeared, 
 and, following unusual roads, moving northward 
 at first for three marches, reached in the midst 
 of great difficulties, under a torrid heat, greatly 
 encumbered with heavy baggage, the Hudson 
 River and crossed it at King's Ferry, without 
 being more interfered with than before. How 
 can such an inaction on the part of Clinton be ex- 
 plained ? "It is for me," writes Count Guillaume
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 77 
 
 de Deux-Ponts in his journal, the manuscript of 
 which was found on the quays in Paris, 1 and printed 
 in America, "an undecipherable enigma, and I 
 hope I shall never be reproached for having puz- 
 zled people with any similar ones." 
 
 The river once crossed, the double army moved 
 southward by forced marches. Rochambeau, in 
 order to hasten the move, prescribed the leaving 
 behind of a quantity of effects, and this, says 
 Closen, "caused considerable grumbling among 
 the line," which grumbled but marched. The 
 news, to be sure, of so important a movement 
 came to Clinton, but, since the stars had ceased to 
 smile on him, he chose to conclude, as he wrote 
 to Lord Germain on the yth of September, "this 
 to be a feint." When he discovered that it was 
 not "a feint," the Franco- American army was 
 beyond reach. "What can be said as to this?" 
 Closen writes merrily. "Try to see better another 
 time," and he draws a pair of spectacles on the 
 margin of his journal. 
 
 The march southward thus continued unham- 
 pered. They crossed first the Jerseys, ' ' a land of 
 Cockayne, for game, fish, vegetables, poultry." 
 Closen had the happiness to "hear from the lips 
 of General Washington, and on the ground itself, a 
 
 1 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.
 
 78 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 description of the dispositions taken, the move- 
 ments and all the incidents of the famous battles 
 of Trenton and Princeton." The young man, who 
 had made great progress in English, was now used 
 by the two generals as their interpreter; so nothing 
 escaped him. The reception at Philadelphia was 
 triumphal; Congress was most courteous; toasts 
 were innumerable. The city is an immense one, 
 "with seventy-two streets in a straight line. . . . 
 Shops abound in all kinds of merchandise, and 
 some of them do not yield to the Petit Dunkerque 
 in Paris." Where is now the Petit Dunkerque? 
 "Mais ou sont les Neiges d'antan?" 1 Women 
 are very pretty, "of charming manners, and very 
 well dressed, even in French fashion." Benezet, 
 the French Quaker, one of the celebrities of the 
 city, is found to be full of wisdom, and La Luzerne, 
 "who keeps a state worthy of his sovereign," 
 gives a dinner to one hundred and eighty guests. 
 From Philadelphia to Chester, on the 5th of 
 September, Rochambeau and his aides took a 
 boat. As they were nearing the latter city, "we 
 saw in the distance," says Closen, "General Wash- 
 ington shaking his hat and a white handkerchief, 
 
 J The house at the entrance of the Pont-Neuf, where the Petit 
 Dunkerque was established, being then the most famous "magasin 
 de frivolites" 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.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 79 
 
 and showing signs of great joy." Rochambeau 
 had scarcely landed when Washington, usually 
 so cool and composed, fell into his arms; the 
 great news had arrived; de Grasse had come, and 
 while Cornwallis was on the defensive at York- 
 town the French fleet was barring the Chesa- 
 peake. 1 
 
 On the receipt of letters from Washington, Ro- 
 chambeau, and La Luzerne telling him to what 
 extent the fate of the United States was in his 
 hands, the sailor, having "learned, with much 
 sorrow," he wrote to the latter, "what was the 
 distress of the continent, and the need there was 
 of immediate help," had decided that he would 
 leave nothing undone to usefully take part in the 
 supreme effort which, without his help, might be 
 attempted in vain. Having left, on the 5th of 
 August, Cap Francais (to-day Cap Ha'itien), he 
 had added to his fleet all the available ships he 
 could find in our isles, including some which, hav- 
 ing been years away, had received orders to go 
 back to France for repairs. He had had great diffi- 
 
 1 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 quar- 
 ter. . . . 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.
 
 80 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 culty in obtaining the money asked for, although 
 he had offered to mortgage for it his castle of 
 Tilly, and the Chevalier de Charitte, in command 
 of the Bourgogne, had made a like offer. But at 
 last, thanks to the Spanish governor at Havana, 
 he had secured the desired amount of twelve hun- 
 dred thousand francs. He was bringing, more- 
 over, the Marquis de Saint-Simon, with the 3,000 
 regular troops under his command. De Grasse's 
 only request was that operations be pushed on 
 with the utmost rapidity, as he was bound to be 
 back at the Isles at a fixed date. 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 coun- 
 try, while in the streets impromptu orators, stand- 
 ing on chairs, delivered mock funeral orations on 
 the Earl of Cornwallis. "You have," Rocham- 
 beau wrote to the admiral, "spread universal joy 
 throughout America, with which she is wild." 1 
 
 Anxiety was renewed, however, when it was 
 learned shortly after that the French men-of-war 
 had left the Chesapeake, the entrance to which 
 
 1 September 7, 1781.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 81 
 
 now remained free. The English fleet, of twenty 
 ships and seven frigates, under Hood and Graves, 
 the same Graves who had failed to intercept Ro- 
 chambeau's convoy, had been signalled on the 
 5th of September, and de Grasse, leaving behind 
 him, in order to go faster, some of his ships and a 
 number of sailors who were busy on land, had 
 weighed anchor, three-quarters of an hour after 
 sighting the signals, to risk the fight upon which 
 the issue of the campaign and, as it turned out, 
 of the war, was to depend. "This behavior of 
 Count de Grasse," wrote the famous Tarleton, 
 is "worthy of admiration." Six days later the 
 French admiral was back; he had had 21 officers 
 and 200 sailors killed or wounded, but he had 
 lost no ship, and the enemy's fleet, very much 
 damaged, with 336 men killed or disabled, and 
 having lost the Terrible, of 74 guns, and the 
 frigates Iris and Richmond of 40, * had been 
 compelled to retreat to New York. Admiral 
 Robert Digby thereupon arrived with naval re- 
 
 1 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 Par- 
 ticidier, by Count de Revel, sublieutenant in the regiment of "Mon- 
 sieur-Infanterie," p. 131.) On the isth 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 hav- 
 ing driven the British fleet from the coast and taking two of their 
 frigates."
 
 82 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 inf orcements ; "yet I do not think," La Luzerne 
 wrote to Rochambeau, "that battle will be offered 
 again. If it is, I am not anxious about the re- 
 sult." Nothing was attempted. This "superi- 
 ority at sea," Tarleton wrote in his History of the 
 Campaigns, "proved the strength of the enemies 
 of Great Britain, deranged the plans of her gen- 
 erals, disheartened the courage of her friends, and 
 finally confirmed the independency of America." 1 
 "Nothing," Rochambeau had written in his note- 
 book at starting, "without naval supremacy." 
 
 On re-entering the bay de Grasse had the plea- 
 sure to find there another French fleet, that of his 
 friend Barras. As a lieutenant-general de Grasse 
 outranked him, but as a "chef d'escadre" Barras 
 was his senior officer, which might have caused 
 difficulties; the latter could be tempted, and he 
 was, to conduct a campaign apart, so as to per- 
 sonally reap the glory of possible successes. "I 
 leave it to thee, my dear Barras," de Grasse had 
 written him on the 28th of July, "to come and 
 join me or to act on thy own account for the good 
 of the common cause. Do only let me know, so 
 that we do not hamper each other unawares." 
 Barras preferred the service of the cause to his 
 own interest; leaving Newport, going far out on 
 
 1 History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1787, by Lieutenant-Colonel 
 Tarleton, commandant of the late British Legion, Dublin, 1787, 
 pp. 403 ff.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 83 
 
 the high seas, then dashing south at a great dis- 
 tance from the coast, he escaped the English and 
 reached the Chesapeake, bringing the heavy siege 
 artillery now indispensable for the last operations. 
 The stars had continued incredibly propitious. 
 
 The well-known double siege now began, that 
 of Yorktown 1 by Washington and Rochambeau, 
 and that of Gloucester, on the opposite side of 
 the river, which might have afforded a place of 
 retreat to Cornwallis. De Grasse had consented 
 to land, in view of the latter, 800 men under Choisy, 
 whom Lauzun joined with his legion, and both 
 acted in conjunction with the American militia 
 under Weedon. 2 The two chiefs on the Yorktown 
 side were careful to conduct the operations ac- 
 cording to rules, "on account," says Closen, "of 
 the reputation of Cornwallis, and the strength of 
 the garrison." Such rules were certainly familiar 
 to Rochambeau, whose fifteenth siege this one was. 
 
 From day to day Cornwallis was more narrowly 
 pressed. As late as the 2pth of September he 
 was still full of hope. "I have ventured these 
 
 1 A minute "Journal of the Siege" was kept by Mr. de Menonville, 
 aide major-general, a translation of which is in the Magazine of 
 American History, 1881, VII, 283. 
 
 2 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.)
 
 84 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 two days," he wrote to Clinton, "to look General 
 Washington's whole force in the face in the posi- 
 tion on the outside of my works; and I have the 
 pleasure to assure your Excellency that there was 
 but one wish throughout the whole army, which 
 was that the enemy would advance." A dozen 
 days later the tone was very different. "I have 
 only to repeat that nothing but a direct move to 
 York River, which includes a successful naval 
 action, can save me . . . many of our works are 
 considerably damaged . ' ' 
 
 Lord Germain was, in the meantime, writing to 
 Clinton in his happiest mood, on the i2th of 
 October: "It is a great satisfaction to me to find 
 . . . that the plan you had concerted for conduct- 
 ing the military operations in that quarter (the 
 Chesapeake) corresponds with what I had sug- 
 gested." The court, which had no more misgiv- 
 ings than Lord Germain himself, had caused to 
 sail with Digby no less a personage than Prince 
 William, one of the fifteen children of George III, 
 and eventually one of his successors as William IV; 
 but his presence could only prove one more en- 
 cumbrance. 
 
 After the familiar incidents of the siege in which 
 the American and French armies displayed similar 
 valor and met with about the same losses, the de- 
 cisive move of the night attack on the enemy's 
 advanced redoubts had to be made, one of the
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 85 
 
 redoubts to be stormed by the Americans with 
 Lafayette, and the other by the French under 
 Viomesnil. Rochambeau addressed himself es- 
 pecially to the grenadiers of the regiment of 
 Gatinais, which had been formed with a portion 
 of his old regiment of Auvergne, and said: "My 
 boys, if I need you to-night, I hope you will not 
 have forgotten that we have served together in 
 that brave regiment of Auvergne sans tache (spot- 
 less Auvergne), an honorable surname deserved 
 by it since its formation." They answered that 
 if he would promise to have their former name 
 restored to them he would find they were ready 
 to die to the last. They kept their word, losing 
 many of their number, and one of the first requests 
 of Rochambeau when he reached Paris was that 
 their old name be given back to them, which was 
 done. Gatinais thus became Royal Auvergne, 
 and is now the i8th Infantry. 
 
 On the igth of October, after a loss of less than 
 300 men in each of the besieging armies, an act 
 was signed as great in its consequences as any 
 that ever followed the bloodiest battles, the capit- 
 ulation of Yorktown. It was in a way the rati- 
 fication of that other act which had been pro- 
 posed for signature five years before at Phila- 
 delphia by men whose fate had more than once, 
 in the interval, seemed desperate, the Declaration 
 of Independence.
 
 86 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 On the same day Closen writes: "The York 
 garrison marched past at two o'clock, before the 
 combined army, which was formed in two lines, 
 the French facing the Americans and in full dress 
 uniform. . . . Passing between the two armies, 
 the English showed much disdain for the Ameri- 
 cans, who so far as dress and appearances went rep- 
 resented the seamy side, many of those poor boys 
 being garbed in linen habits-vestes, torn, soiled, a 
 number among them almost shoeless. The Eng- 
 lish had given them the nickname of Yanckey- 
 Dudle. What does it matter? the man of sense 
 will think; they are the more to be praised and 
 show the greater valor, fighting, as they do, so 
 badly equipped." As a "man of sense," Rocham- 
 beau writes in his memoirs: "This justice must 
 be rendered to the Americans that they behaved 
 with a zeal, a courage, an emulation which left 
 them in no case behind, in all that part of the siege 
 intrusted to them, in spite of their being unaccus- 
 tomed to sieges." 
 
 The city offered a pitiful sight. "I shall never 
 forget," says Closen, "how horrible and painful 
 to behold was the aspect of the town of York. 
 . . . One could not walk three steps without 
 rinding big holes made by bombs, cannon-balls, 
 splinters, barely covered graves, arms and legs 
 of blacks and whites scattered here and there, 
 most of the houses riddled with shot and devoid
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 87 
 
 of window panes. . . . We found Lord Corn- 
 wallis in his house. His attitude evinced the no- 
 bility of his soul, his magnanimity and firmness of 
 character. He seemed to say: I have nothing to 
 reproach myself with, I have done my duty and 
 defended myself to the utmost." This impression 
 of Lord Cornwallis was general. 
 
 As to Closen's description of the town, now so 
 quiet and almost asleep, by the blue water, amid 
 her sand-dunes, once more torn and blood-stained 
 during the Civil War, resting at the foot of the 
 great marble memorial raised a hundred years 
 later by Congress, 1 it is confirmed by Abbe Robin, 
 who notices, too, "the quantity of human limbs 
 which infected the air," but also, being an abbe, 
 the number of books scattered among the ruins, 
 many being works of piety and theological con- 
 troversy, and with them ' ' the works of the famous 
 Pope, and translations of Montaigne's Essays, of 
 
 1 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 mo- 
 notonous 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.
 
 88 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 Gil Bias, and of the Essay on Women by Monsieur 
 Thomas," that stern essay, so popular then in 
 America, in which society ladies were invited to 
 fill their soul with those "sentiments of nature 
 which are born in retreat and grow in silence." 
 
 Nothing better puts in its true light the domi- 
 nant characteristic of the French sentiment 
 throughout the war than what happened on this 
 solemn occasion, and more shows how, with their 
 new-born enthusiasm for philanthropy and liberty, 
 the French were pro-Americans much more than 
 anti-English. No trace of a triumphant attitude 
 toward a vanquished enemy appeared in anything 
 they did or said. Even in the surrendering, the 
 fact remained apparent that this was not a war 
 of hatred. "The English," writes Abbe Robin, 
 "laid down their arms at the place selected. 
 Care was taken not to admit sightseers, so as to 
 diminish their humiliation." Henry Lee (Light- 
 horse Harry), who was present, describes in the 
 same spirit the march past: "Universal silence 
 was observed amidst the vast concourse, and the 
 utmost decency prevailed, exhibiting in demeanor 
 an awful sense of the vicissitudes of human life, 
 mingled with commiseration for the unhappy." 1 
 
 1 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." Memoires du Comte de Afor 
 (Pontgibaud), 1898, p. 104.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 89 
 
 The victors pitied Cornwallis and showed him 
 every consideration; Rochambeau, learning that 
 he was without money, lent him all he wanted. 
 He invited him to dine with him and his officers 
 on the 2d of November. "Lord Cornwallis," 
 writes Closen, "especially distinguished himself 
 by his reflective turn of mind, his noble and 
 gentle manners. He spoke freely of his cam- 
 paigns in the Carolinas, and, though he had won 
 several victories, he acknowledged, nevertheless, 
 that they were the cause of the present misfor- 
 tunes. All, with the exception of Tarleton, spoke 
 French, O'Hara in particular to perfection, but 
 he seemed to us something of a brag. " l A friendly 
 correspondence began between the English gen- 
 eral and some of the French officers, Viscount de 
 Noailles, the one who had walked all the way, 
 lending him, the week after the capitulation, his 
 copy of the beforementioned famous work of 
 Count de Guibert on Tactics, which was at that 
 time the talk of Europe, and of which Napoleon 
 
 1 Same good feeling on the Gloucester side. After the surrender, " les 
 officiers anglais vinrent voir nos officiers qui etaient de service, leur 
 firent toutes les honnetetes possible, et burent a leur sant6." (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 2Qth they 
 were no longer seen. "Nous avons su depuis," Revel writes, "que 
 PAmiral Graves avait dans son armee le general Clinton, avec des 
 troupes venues de New York pour secourir lord Cornwallis. Mais 
 il etait trop tard; la poule 6tait mangee, et 1'un et 1'autre prirent le 
 parti de s'en retourner." (Ibid., p. 178.)
 
 90 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 said later that "it was such as to form great men," 
 the same Guibert who expected lasting repute 
 from that work and from his military services, 
 and who irony of fate general and Academician 
 though he was, is chiefly remembered as the hero 
 of the letters of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. 
 
 Cornwallis realized quite well that the French 
 had fought for a cause dear to their hearts more 
 than from any desire to humble him or his nation. 
 He publicly rendered full justice to the enemy, 
 acknowledging that the fairest treatment had 
 been awarded him by them. In the final report 
 in which he gives his own account of the catas- 
 trophe, and which he caused to be printed when 
 he reached England, he said: "The kindness and 
 attention that has been shown us by the French 
 officers . . . their delicate sensibility of our situa- 
 tion, their generous and pressing offers of money, 
 both public and private, to any amount, has really 
 gone beyond what I can possibly describe and 
 will, I hope, make an impression on the breast of 
 every British officer whenever the fortunes of war 
 should put any of them in our power." 
 
 The French attitude in the New World was in 
 perfect accord with the French sentiments in the 
 Old. On receiving from Lauzun and Count de 
 Deux-Ponts, who for fear of capture had sailed 
 in two different frigates, the news of the taking 
 of Cornwallis, of his 8,000 men (of whom 2,000
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 91 
 
 were in hospitals), 800 sailors, 214 guns, and 22 
 flags, the King wrote to Rochambeau : ' ' Monsieur 
 le Comte de Rochambeau, the success of my arms 
 flatters me only as being conducive to peace." 
 And, thanking the "Author of all prosperity," he 
 announced the sending of letters to the arch- 
 bishops and bishops of his kingdom for a Te Deum 
 to be sung in all the churches of their dioceses. 
 
 It was a long time since the old cocks of the 
 French churches had quivered at the points of the 
 steeples to the chant of a Te Deum for a victory 
 leading to a glorious peace. The victory was 
 over those enemies who, not so very long before, 
 had bereft us of Canada. Nothing more signifi- 
 cant than the pastoral letter of "Louis Apolli- 
 naire de la Tour du Pin Montauban, by the grace 
 of God first Bishop of Nancy, Primate of Lor- 
 raine," appointing the date for the thanksgiving 
 ceremonies, and adding: "This so important ad- 
 vantage has been the result of the wisest measures. 
 Reason and humanity have gauged it and have 
 placed it far above those memorable but bloody 
 victories whose lustre has been tarnished by al- 
 most universal mourning. Here the blood of our 
 allies and of our generous compatriots has been 
 spared, and why should we not note with satis- 
 faction that the forces of our enemies have been 
 considerably weakened, their efforts baffled, the 
 fruits of their immense expense lost, without our
 
 92 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 having caused rivers of their blood to be spilt, 
 without our having filled their country with un- 
 fortunate widows and mothers?" For this, too, 
 as well as for the victory, thanks must be offered ; 
 and for this, too, for such a rare and such a hu- 
 mane feeling, the name of Bishop de la Tour du 
 Pin Montauban deserves to be remembered. 
 
 The nation at large felt like the bishop. One 
 of the most typical of the publications inspired 
 in France by the war and its outcome was the 
 Fragment of Xenophon, newly found in the ruins 
 of Palmyra . . . translated from the Greek, anony- 
 mously printed, in I783, 1 in which under the names 
 of Greeks and Carthaginians, the story of the 
 campaign is told; the chief actors being easily 
 recognized, most of them, under anagrams : Tusin- 
 gonas is Washington; Cherambos, Rochambeau; 
 the illustrious Filaatete, Lafayette; Tangides, 
 d'Estaing, and the wise Thales of Milet, Franklin. 
 
 Critical minds, the author observes, will per- 
 haps think they discover anachronisms, but such 
 mean nothing; he will soon give an edition of 
 the Greek original, splendidly printed, "so the 
 wealthy amateurs will buy it, without being able 
 to read it; the learned, who could read it, will be 
 unable to buy it, and everybody will be pleased." 
 
 1 The work of Gabriel Brizard, a popular writer in his day: Frag- 
 ment de Xenophon, nouvellement trouve dans les mines de Palmyre par 
 un Anglois et depose au Museum Britannicum Traduit du Grec par 
 un Francois, Paris, 1783.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 93 
 
 The author gives a detailed description of the 
 Greeks and of the Carthaginians, that is, the 
 French and their former enemies, the English: 
 "Greece, owing to her intellectual and artistic 
 predominance, seemed to lead the rest of the 
 world, and Athens led Greece. The Athenians 
 were, truth to say, accused of inconstancy; they 
 were reproached for the mobility of their character, 
 their fondness for new things, their leaning toward 
 raillery; but there was something pleasing in 
 their defects. Justice was, moreover, rendered to 
 their rare qualities: gentle as they were and soft- 
 ened by their fondness for enjoyment, they none- 
 theless were attracted by danger and prodigal of 
 their blood. They felt as much passion for glory 
 as for pleasure; arbiters in matters of taste, they 
 played the same role in questions of honor, an 
 idol with them ; somewhat light-minded, they were 
 withal frank and generous. . . . This brilliant 
 and famous nation was such that those among her 
 enemies that cast most reproaches at her envied 
 the fate of the citizens living within her borders." 
 
 Whether succeeding events have cured or not 
 some of that light-mindedness, any one can see 
 to-day and form his judgment. 
 
 As to Carthaginians (the English), no ani- 
 mosity, no hatred, but, on the contrary, greater 
 praise than was accorded to his own com- 
 patriots by many an English writer: "It must
 
 94 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 be acknowledged that they never made a finer 
 defense. . . . They faced everywhere all their 
 enemies, and, disastrous as the result may have 
 proved for them, this part of their annals will 
 remain one of the most glorious. Why should 
 we hesitate to render them justice? Yes, if the 
 intrepid defender of the columns of Hercules 1 were 
 present in person at our celebration, he would 
 receive the tribute of praise and applause that 
 Greeks know how to pay to any brave and gen- 
 erous enemy." 
 
 This way of thinking had nothing exceptional. 
 One of the most authoritative publicists of the 
 day, Lacretelle, in 1785, considering, in the Mer- 
 cure de France, the future of the new-born United 
 States, praised the favorable influence exercised 
 on them by the so much admired British Constitu- 
 tion "the most wonderful government in Europe. 
 For it will be England's glory to have created 
 peoples worthy of throwing off her yoke, even 
 though she must endure the reproach of having 
 forced them to independence by forgetfulness of 
 her own maxims." 
 
 As to the members of the French army who 
 had started for the new crusade two years before, 
 they had at once the conviction that, in accor- 
 
 1 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 Fere.
 
 ROCHAMBEATJ IN AMERICA 95 
 
 dance with their anticipation, they had witnessed 
 something great which would leave a profound 
 trace in the history of the world. They brought 
 home the seed of liberty and equality, the "virus," 
 as it was called by Pontgibaud, who, friend as 
 he was of Lafayette, resisted the current to 
 the last and remained a royalist. "The young 
 French nobility," says Talleyrand in his memoirs, 
 "having enlisted for the cause of independence, 
 clung ever after to the principle which it had 
 gone to defend." 1 Youthful Saint-Simon, the 
 future Saint-Simonian, thus summed up his im- 
 pressions of the campaign: "I felt that the 
 American Revolution marked the beginning of a 
 
 1 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-General Comte Mathieu- 
 Dumas, publics par son fils, I, 108.) The writer notices the early 
 formation of a "national character, in spite of the similitude of lan- 
 guage, customs, manners, religion, principles of government with the 
 English." (Ibid., 113.)
 
 96 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 new political era; that this revolution would 
 necessarily set moving an important progress in 
 general civilization, and that it would, before 
 long, occasion great changes in the social order 
 then existing in Europe." 1 Many experienced 
 the feeling described in the last lines of his jour- 
 nal by Count Guillaume de Deux-Ponts, wounded 
 at the storming of the redoubts: "With troops as 
 good and brave and well-disciplined as those 
 which I have had the honor to lead against the 
 enemy, one can undertake anything. ... I owe 
 them the greatest day in my life, the souvenir of 
 which will never die out. . . . Man's life is 
 mixed with trials, but one can no longer com- 
 plain when having enjoyed the delightful moments 
 which are their counterpart; a single instant 
 effaces such troubles, and that instant, well re- 
 sented, causes one to desire new trials so as to 
 once more enjoy their recompense." 
 
 l (Euvres, 1865, I, 12.
 
 VIII 
 
 For one year more Rochambeau remained in 
 America. Peace was a possibility, not a certainty. 
 In London, where so late as November 20, the 
 most encouraging news continued to be received, 
 but where that of the catastrophe, brought by 
 the Rattlesnake, arrived on the 25th, George III 
 and his ministers refused to yield to evidence, Lord 
 Germain especially, for whom the shock had been 
 great, and who was beseeching Parliament "to 
 proceed with vigor in the prosecution of the war 
 and not leave it in the power of the French to 
 tell the Americans that they had procured their 
 independence, and were consequently entitled to 
 a preference, if not an exclusive right, in their 
 trade." This was not to know us well ; our treaty 
 of commerce had been signed three years before, 
 at a time when anything would have been granted 
 to propitiate France, but there was not in it, as 
 we saw, one single advantage that was not equally 
 accessible to any one who chose, the English 
 included. 
 
 As for King George, he decided that the 8th of 
 February, 1782, would be a day of national fast- 
 ing, to ask pardon for past sins, and implore 
 
 97
 
 98 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 Heaven's assistance in the prosecution of the 
 war. Franklin was still beseeching his com- 
 patriots to be on their guard: "It seems the [Eng- 
 lish] nation is sick of [the war] . . . but the King 
 is obstinate. . . . The ministry, you will see, 
 declare that the war in America is for the future 
 to be only defensive. I hope we shall be too pru- 
 dent to have the least dependence on this declara- 
 tion. It is only thrown out to lull us; for, de- 
 pend upon it, the King hates us cordially, and will 
 be content with nothing short of our extirpation." l 
 
 With his French admiratrices the sage ex- 
 changed merry, picturesque letters. Madame 
 Brillon writes, in French, from Nice on the nth 
 of December, 1781: "My dear Papa, I am sulky 
 with you . . . yes, Mr. Papa, I am sulky. What ! 
 You capture whole armies in America, you burgoy- 
 nize Cornwallis, you capture guns, ships, ammu- 
 nition, men, horses, etc., etc., you capture every- 
 thing and of everything, and only the gazette 
 informs your friends, who go off their heads 
 drinking your health, that of Washington, of in- 
 dependence, of the King of France, of the Mar- 
 quis de Lafayette, of Mr. de Rochambeau, Mr. 
 de Chastellux, etc., and you give them no sign of 
 life! . . ." 
 
 With his valiant pen, which feared nothing, not 
 even French grammar, Franklin answered : ' ' Passy, 
 x To Robert Livingston, Passy, March 4, 1782.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 99 
 
 25 Decembre 1781. Vous me boudes, ma chere 
 amie, que je n'avois pas vous envoye tout de suite 
 1'histoire de notre grande victoire. Je suis bien 
 sensible de la magnitude de notre avantage et de 
 ses possibles bonnes consequences, mais je ne 
 triomphe pas. Scachant que la guerre est pleine 
 de varietes et d'incertitudes, dans la mauvaise 
 fortune j'espere la bonne, et dans la bonne je 
 crains la mauvaise." 
 
 The future continued doubtful. In June Wash- 
 ington was still writing: "In vain is it to expect 
 that our aim is to be accomplished by fond wishes 
 for peace, and equally ungenerous and fruitless 
 will it be for one State to depend upon another to 
 bring this to pass." 1 French and American regi- 
 ments remained, therefore, under arms and waited, 
 but scarcely did anything on the continent but 
 wait. For if George III was still for war, the mass 
 of his people were not. Rochambeau availed 
 himself of his leisure to visit the accessible parts 
 of the country, give calls and dinners to his neigh- 
 bors, study the manners and resources of the in- 
 habitants, 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- 
 
 J To Archibald Gary, June 15, 1782.
 
 100 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 ment. "On New Year's Day the custom of the 
 French to embrace, even in the street, caused much 
 American laughter," but, the young aide observes 
 with some spite, "their shake hands, on the other 
 side, those more or less prolonged and sometimes 
 very hard-pressed twitchings of the hands are cer- 
 tainly on a par with European embracings." 
 
 Rochambeau had established himself at Wil- 
 liamsburg, the quiet and dignified capital of the 
 then immense State of Virginia, noted for its 
 "Bruton church," its old College of William and 
 Mary, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and the 
 birthplace of the far-famed Phi Beta Kappa fra- 
 ternity, its statue of the former English governor, 
 Lord Botetourt, 1 in conspicuous marble wig and 
 court mantle. "America, behold your friend," 
 the inscription on the pedestal reads. 
 
 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 num- 
 ber 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 habita- 
 tion is neither a castellated lord nor a tenant, 
 
 1 White marble; signed and dated, Richard Hayward, London, 
 1773-
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 101 
 
 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 coun- 
 try 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 pro- 
 motion 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 raccoons, investigates opossums, 
 and visits a marsh "full of subterranean habita- 
 tions of beavers," and he sees them at work. He is 
 also present at one of those cock-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
 
 102 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 Vaudreuil, in command of our fleet, Closen be- 
 comes 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 tri- 
 umphal march of a young warrior toward glory. 
 ... It is a fact that, with their jumps, their 
 gambols, that quantity of little dancers, so nim- 
 ble, so clever, retarded my walk. . . . Such is 
 the way with people of eighteen; the present mo- 
 ment makes them forget all the rest." 1 
 
 Rochambeau, his son, and two aides, one of 
 
 1 Mtmoires du Comte de More (formerly Chevalier de Pontgibaud), 
 1898, p. 56; first ed., Paris, 1827, one of Balzac's ventures as a 
 printer.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 103 
 
 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 embarrassment, 
 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 orna- 
 mented as the canopy for a procession," and else- 
 where "with rats which come and tickle our ears." 
 They reach the handsome house of the "philos- 
 opher," 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, agri- 
 culture, 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 fa- 
 miliar 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."
 
 104 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 Numerous addresses expressing fervent grati- 
 tude were received by Rochambeau, from Con- 
 gress, from the legislatures of the various States, 
 from the universities, from the mayor and inhabi- 
 tants 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 favor- 
 able 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 rep- 
 resentatives of the State of Rhode Island and 
 Providence Plantations in General Assembly con- 
 vened," "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 im- 
 minent, the Maryland Assembly 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
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 105 
 
 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 cen- 
 turies." 1 
 
 The "President and professors of the Univer- 
 sity 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 
 prostituted 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 intellec- 
 tual intercourse between the two nations, saying: 
 
 'October 8, 1782. This letter, as well as the addresses, in the 
 Rochambeau papers.
 
 106 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 "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 improve- 
 ment 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 fos- 
 tering hand of your nation." 
 
 They concluded: "You have reaped the noblest 
 laurels that victory can bestow, and it is, perhaps, 
 not an inferior triumph to have obtained the sin- 
 cere affection of a grateful people." 
 
 In order to "foster," as the authors of the ad- 
 dress said, such sentiments as to a possible in- 
 tellectual 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 
 glass 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,
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 107 
 
 however, to count in history for something else 
 than his Traite sur I'Atlantide de Platon, for he 
 was the same Bailly who a few years later pre- 
 sided over the National Assembly, sending to 
 the royal purchaser of his works the famous reply : 
 "The nation assembled 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 disap- 
 peared, 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 Benedic- 
 tins (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 congratula- 
 tions, rode at the rate of over one hundred miles
 
 108 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 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 dis- 
 position, so prepossessing, with such perfect edu- 
 cation, 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 nth 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 hand- 
 some furniture, and is admirably kept, without
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 109 
 
 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 vis- 
 itor, 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 neighbor- 
 hood, are also received. "Mr. de Bellegarde came 
 ahead of Mr. de Custine, and brought, on his be- 
 half, a porcelain service, from his own manufac- 
 ture, at Niderviller, near Phalsbourg, of great 
 beauty and in the newest taste, with the arms of 
 General Washington, and his monogram sur- 
 mounted by a wreath of laurel. 1 Mrs. Washing- 
 ton was delighted with Mr. de Custine's atten- 
 tion, and most gracefully expressed her gratitude." 
 
 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." 
 
 1 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.
 
 110 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 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 passed, 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 1 4th of August Washington and Ro- 
 chambeau 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 manoeuvres 
 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
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 111 
 
 us by Segur: "Mr. de Rochambeau, desirous to 
 the very last of proving by the details of his con- 
 duct, as well as by the great services he had ren- 
 dered, how much he wished to keep the affection 
 of the Americans and to carry away their regrets, 
 gave in the city of Providence frequent assemblies 
 and numerous balls, to which people flocked from 
 ten leagues around. 
 
 "I do not remember to have seen gathered to- 
 gether 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 classes, 
 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." l 
 
 1 Memoir es, souvenirs et anecdotes, I, 402.
 
 IX 
 
 In the autumn of 1782 a general parting took 
 place, Rochambeau returning to France 1 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. 2 
 On the i pth of October, being the anniversary of 
 
 1 On which occasion the Marquis de Vaudreuil, in command of the 
 fleet, wrote him from Boston, November 18, 1782: " Je suis vraiment 
 touch6, Monsieur, de ne pouvoir pas avoir 1'honneur de vous voir 
 ici; je m'estimais heureux de renouveler la connaissance que j'avais 
 faite avec vous a Brest chez M. d'Orvilliers. Mais je ne puis qu'ap- 
 plaudir au parti que vous prenez d'eviter la tristesse des adieux 
 et les temoignages de la sensibilite de tous vos officiers en se voyant 
 separes de leur chef qu'ils respectent et cherissent sincferement." 
 (Rochambeau papers.) 
 
 2 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 reach- 
 ing Mulhouse in 1795, finding it "full of troops," with no accommo- 
 dation 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?' 
 
 lite
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 113 
 
 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 even- 
 ing," says Closen, "we took leave of General 
 Washington and of the other officers of our ac- 
 quaintance, our troops being to sail on the 226.. 
 There is no sort of kindness and tokens of good 
 will we have not received from General Wash- 
 ington ; the idea of parting from the French army, 
 probably forever, seemed to cause him real sor- 
 row, having, as he had, received the most convinc- 
 ing proofs of the respect, the veneration, the es- 
 teem, and even the attachment which every in- 
 dividual in the army felt for him." 
 
 '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 charme. . . . 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."
 
 114 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 After having taken leave, "in tenderest fash- 
 ion," 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, 1 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 Ro- 
 chambeau, adding: "You have restored to our 
 arms all their lustre, and you have laid the corner- 
 stone for the raising, which we expect, of an honor- 
 able 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 2oth of January, 1783. 
 
 1 " . . . An inscription engraved on them, expressive of the occa- 
 sion. 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.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 115 
 
 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. 1 Rochambeau received the blue ribbon of 
 the Holy Ghost, was appointed governor of Pic- 
 ardy, 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, Ad- 
 miral 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." 
 
 x 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.
 
 116 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 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 "com- 
 panions 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 hu- 
 manity less agitated than that he had known, 
 dreaming dreams which were not to be soon re- 
 alized, 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, 1 Washington 
 
 1 Jefferson seems to have feared that the souvenir of Rochambeau 
 might soon fade. He wrote to Madison, February 8, 1 786 : " Count
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 117 
 
 often gave those going abroad letters of introduc- 
 tion 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 magni- 
 tude." 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." 1 The 
 poet was that Joel Barlow, of Hartford, who, hav- 
 ing 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 else- 
 where than in Russia, the year being 1812, and 
 the sovereign Emperor Napoleon. 2 
 The poem alluded to by Washington was an 
 
 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. 
 
 !May 28, 1788. 
 
 2 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.
 
 118 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 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, be- 
 stows 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 Corn- 
 wallis at Calais: "I have seen Cornwallis last 
 summer at Calais. ... I gave him a supper in 
 little committee; 1 he was very polite, but, as you 
 may believe, I could not drink with him your 
 health in toast." 2 
 
 He tells Washington of Franklin's departure 
 from France, very old, very ill, greatly admired, 
 "having the courage to undertake so long a voy- 
 age to go and die in the bosom of his native 
 country. It will be impossible for him, at his 
 
 1 Fr., "en petit comit6" a small party of friends. 
 
 2 January 7, 1 786. Washington papers.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 119 
 
 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 con- 
 sideration 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." 1 
 
 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." 2 
 
 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. 3 The request was at once 
 granted. 
 
 1 Paris, June, 1785 (ibid). 
 
 2 " Rochambeau near Venddme, April u, 1790." 
 
 * Here is this letter in full: 
 
 Paris the i8th 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 Ameri- 
 can war. He longs with the desire to be a member of the associa-
 
 120 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 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 represent- 
 ing 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 
 
 tion 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.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 121 
 
 drawn both by the truth and by an excellent de- 
 sign by the young Berthier, who was deputed 
 quartermaster at the said siege." 1 
 
 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 compli- 
 ments him on the "philosophical" but not defini- 
 tive quiet he now enjoys under the shadow "of 
 his laurel-tree." 2 
 
 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 Ro- 
 chambeau, 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 
 
 1 June, 1785. Two of the Berthier brothers had taken part, as we 
 saw, in the expedition. The one alluded to here is the younger, 
 C6sar-Gabriel, not the older, Louis-Alexandre, who became Prince 
 de Wagram. Both are described in their "6tats de service," pre- 
 served among the Rochambeau papers, as expert draftsmen. The 
 notice concerning the younger, who was a captain of dragoons, reads: 
 "II s'est fait remarquer ainsi que son frere par son talent a dessiner 
 et lever des plans." 
 
 2 Concerning this correspondence, as continued during the French 
 Revolution, see below, pp. 245 ff.
 
 122 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 "Citizen President of the Revolutionary Tri- 
 bunal," 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, Rocham- 
 beau escaped the scaffold. He lived long enough 
 to see rise to glory that young man who was teach- 
 ing 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 pre- 
 sented 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 
 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 Vendo- 
 mois, and aged eighty-two. He was buried in 
 the neighboring village of Thore, 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
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 123 
 
 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 spot- 
 less 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 vir- 
 tues, as a token of gratitude 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 por- 
 trait, 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 Vi- 
 meur, 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 Washing- 
 ton, 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 Revolu-
 
 124 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 tion. In front of the simple and noble facade 
 of the slate-roofed castle, at the foot of the ter- 
 race, 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 Thore, 
 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 Ro- 
 chambeau's monument: two elms, two maples, 
 two redbuds, and six plants of ivy from Wash- 
 ington's tomb. The last news received about 
 them showed that they had taken root and were 
 growing.
 
 Some will, perhaps, desire to know what be- 
 came 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 silhou- 
 ettes 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 sepa- 
 rated 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,
 
 126 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 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 de- 
 tested "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 per- 
 petual 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." 1 
 
 1 December 29, 1782.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 127 
 
 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 dis- 
 pleases the captain. The latter, who is from Bor- 
 deaux, 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 Curacao, 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 re- 
 suming 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" (Ca- 
 racas) keeps the people in a state of restraint 
 and slavery. Taxation is enormous." Religious 
 intolerance is very troublesome: "Though the In- 
 quisition 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
 
 128 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 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 accom- 
 paniment 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 cease- 
 lessly repeat: Malacca Christiana a bad Chris- 
 tian!" 
 
 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 Fran- 
 cais, Santo Domingo (now Cap Ha'itien). "A few 
 days before our arrival at the Cape Prince William,
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 129 
 
 Duke of Lancaster, third son of the King of Eng- 
 land, 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 tran- 
 scribing the "notes and journals on the two 
 Americas," and enlivened by the saving of the 
 parrakeet of a Spanish lady who had been ad- 
 mitted 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, reap- 
 pears, 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
 
 130 ROCHAMBEATJ IN AMERICA 
 
 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 com- 
 pany, a noisy one and difficult to maintain clean 
 and in good order. . . . The next day (June 22) 
 I was at Saint-Pol-de-Leon, my last quarters be- 
 fore sailing for America, and saw again with 
 hearty rejoicings the respectable Kersabiec family 
 which had so well tended me throughout my con- 
 valescence 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 
 3oth 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 fore- 
 head, 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 
 Segur, who granted the young officer a flattering
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 131 
 
 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 fiancee, 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 en- 
 dowed 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. 1 
 
 Faded inks, hushed voices. The remembrance 
 of the work remains, however, and cannot fade; 
 
 1 A lithographed portrait mentions the later-day titles and dig- 
 nities of: "I. C. Louis, Baron de Closen, Marechal de Camp, cham- 
 bellan et chevalier des ordres francais pour le M6rite et de la L6gion 
 d'honneur, ainsi que de celui de Cincinnatus des Etats Unis de 
 1'Ame'rique Septentrionale." Reproduced by C. W. Bowen, who 
 first drew attention to this journal, Century Magazine, February, 
 1907. Closen died in 1830, aged seventy-five.
 
 132 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 
 
 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 inhabi- 
 tants 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 citi- 
 zens. Partly owing again to France, ceding, un- 
 asked, 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, 1 and kept her word 
 not to accept any material advantage, the whole 
 
 1 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.
 
 ROCHAMBEAU IN AMERICA 183 
 
 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 disposi- 
 tions 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.
 
 II 
 
 MAJOR L'ENFANT AND THE 
 FEDERAL CITY
 
 MAJOR L'ENFANT AND THE 
 FEDERAL CITY 
 
 EETLE more than a century ago the hill 
 on which rises the Capitol of the federal 
 city and the ground around it were cov- 
 ered 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 sur- 
 roundings. 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 dis- 
 covered; 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 
 
 137
 
 138 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 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 glori- 
 ous 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 King- 
 ston, 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 solu- 
 tion had been early thought of, for Washington 
 had written on October 12, 1783, to Chevalier de 
 Chastellux: "They (Congress) have lately deter- 
 mined 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 i6th 
 of July, 1790, and decided that the President 
 should be intrusted with 'the care of choosing "on
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 139 
 
 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 de- 
 cision ; a great rider all his life, the hills and vales 
 of the region were familiar to him; it soon be- 
 came 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 resi- 
 dential one for statesmen, legislators, and judges, 
 or a commercial one with the possibilities, con- 
 sidered 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 cen- 
 tury 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,
 
 140 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 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 Leul- 
 lier, 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 vic- 
 tories: 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 sur- 
 roundings, and, as subsequent events showed, re- 
 ceived 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 lieu- 
 tenant in the French colonial troops, he sailed 
 for America on one of those ships belonging to
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 141 
 
 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 an- 
 other 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 en- 
 gineers, and by leave of Congress attached to the 
 Inspector-general. . . . Seeing [after the winter 
 of 1778-9] no appearance of an active campaign
 
 142 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 to the northward, my whole ambition was to at- 
 tend the Southern army, where it was likely the 
 seat of war would be transferred." He was, ac- 
 cordingly, 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." 1 
 
 Not "to advantage," however, did he fight at 
 Savannah, when the French and Americans, un- 
 der d'Estaing and Lincoln, were repulsed with ter- 
 rible loss. The young captain was leading one of 
 the vanguard columns in the American contin- 
 gent 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." 2 He took part, however, in the fight, 
 replacing a wounded major, and was made a 
 prisoner at the capitulation. Rochambeau ne- 
 gotiated his exchange in January, 1782, for Cap- 
 tain von Heyden, a Hessian officer. 
 
 "Your zeal and active services," Washington 
 wrote back to L'Enfant, "are such as reflect the 
 
 1 Philadelphia, February 18, 1782. Washington papers, Library 
 of Congress. 
 
 2 Same letter.
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 143 
 
 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." l 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, 2 in 
 devising the earliest "system of discipline and 
 exercises which was finally adopted in the Ameri- 
 can 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 Wash- 
 
 1 March i, 1782. Washington papers. 
 
 2 Brother of the minister to the United States, New York, Decem- 
 ber 10, 1787; unpublished. Archives of the French Ministry of 
 Colonies.
 
 144 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 ington "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'En- 
 fant was, as a matter of course, appealed to, 
 whether the question was of a portrait, of a ban- 
 queting 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 Phila- 
 delphia, 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 din- 
 ner 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 fete 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
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 145 
 
 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. Barbe de Marbois, 1 coun- 
 selor 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 re- 
 turned home, bringing to the old continent new 
 and fruitful ideas, those especially pertaining to 
 equality and to the unreasonableness of class dis- 
 tinctions. Liberty had been learned from Eng- 
 land; 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 Ameri- 
 can war." 2 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 
 
 1 Mentioned before, p. 21. 
 
 * Brevet 14,302. Archives of the Ministry of War, Paris.
 
 146 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 as usual to the artist of the army, 1 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 so- 
 ciety. 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 
 Segur, 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 mem- 
 ber). 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 
 
 1 Steuben writes him from West Point on July i, 1783, sending him 
 "a resolution of the convention of the Cincinnati of June 19, 1783, 
 by which I am requested," he says, "to transmit their thanks to 
 you for your care and ingenuity in preparing the designs which were 
 laid before them by the president on that day." Original in the 
 L'Enfant papers, in the possession of Doctor James Dudley Morgan, 
 of Washington, a descendant of the Digges family, the last friends of 
 L'Enfant. To him my thanks are due for having allowed me to use 
 those valuable documents.
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 147 
 
 advantageous it is, and that it should be perpetu- 
 ated." Concerning the institution itself the min- 
 ister 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." 1 
 
 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. 2 
 
 What proved for L'Enfant, according to cir- 
 cumstances, 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 re- 
 sources had been, as Duportail testified, freely 
 spent by him during the war for the good of the 
 cause, and little enough was left him. Never- 
 
 1 December 18, 1783. Rochambeau papers. 
 
 2 Asa Bird Gardner, The Order of the Cincinnati in France, 1905, 
 pp. 9 ff.
 
 148 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 theless, did he write to Alexander Hamilton, 
 "being arrived in France, everything there con- 
 curred to strengthen the sentiment which had 
 made me undertake that voyage, and the recep- 
 tion which the Cincinnati met with soon induced 
 me to appear in that country in a manner con- 
 sistent with the dignity of the society of which I 
 was regarded as the representative." He spent 
 without counting: "My abode at the court pro- 
 duced 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," 1 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 2gth 
 of April, 1784, and after some discussion and de- 
 lay, the society "Resolved, that, in consideration 
 of services rendered by Major L'Enfant, the gen- 
 eral meeting make arrangements for advancing 
 him the sum of one thousand five hundred and 
 forty-eight dollars, being the amount of the loss 
 
 1 An undated memoir (May, 1787?), in the Hamilton papers, 
 Library of Congress.
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 149 
 
 incurred by him in the negotiation for a number 
 of eagles, or orders, of the Cincinnati." 1 
 
 1 Text annexed to L'Enfant's letter to Rochambeau, June 15, 1786. 
 (Rochambeau papers.) On August i, 1787, however, Francastel was 
 still unpaid, for at that date one of L'Enfant's friends, Duplessis, 
 *. e., the Chevalier de Mauduit du Plessis, who, like himself, had 
 served as a volunteer in the American army, writes him: "J'ai vu 
 ici M. Francastel le bijoutier qui vous a fait une fourniture con- 
 sidrable de me'dailles de Cincinnatus et qui m'a dit que vous lui 
 deviez 20,000 livres, je crois, plus ou moins. Je 1'ai fort rassure" 
 sur votre probit6." (L'Enfant papers.)
 
 II 
 
 The country was free; war was over now, 
 people felt; for ever, many fondly hoped. Set- 
 tled in New York, where appeals to his talents 
 as an architect and engineer made him prosperous 
 for a time, L'Enfant believed such hopes to be 
 vain, and that the country should at once make 
 preparations so exhaustive that its wealth and de- 
 fenselessness should not tempt any greedy enemy. 
 He placed the problem before Congress, in a 
 memoir still imprinted, which offers particular in- 
 terest in our days, when the same problem is being 
 again discussed. 
 
 "Sensible," wrote L'Enfant, in the creditable 
 if not faultless English he then spoke, 1 "of the 
 situation of affairs, and well impregnated with the 
 spirit of republican government, I am far from 
 intimating the idea of following other nations in 
 their way of securing themselves against insult or 
 invasions, surrounded as they are with powerful 
 neighbors, who, being the objects of reciprocal 
 jealousy, are forced to secure not only their fron- 
 
 1 Only his orthography is corrected in the quotations. Orthog- 
 raphy was not L'Enfant's strong point in any language. His mis- 
 takes are even worse in French than in English, the reason being, 
 probably, that he took even less pains. 
 
 150
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 151 
 
 tier, but even their inland towns with fortifica- 
 tions, the much happier situation of the United 
 States rendering those measures of little or no 
 necessity." 
 
 The States must act differently; but not to 
 act at all would be folly. "How and upon what 
 foundations could it be supposed that America 
 will have nothing to fear from a rupture between 
 any of the European Powers ? . . . A neutral 
 Power, it will be said, receives the benefit of a 
 universal trade, has his possessions respected, as 
 well as his colors, by all the Powers at war. This 
 may be said of a powerful nation, but this America 
 is not to expect; a neutral Power must be ready 
 for war, and his trade depends on the means of 
 protecting and making his colors respected. 
 America, neutral without [a] navy, without troops 
 or fortified harbors could have nothing but ca- 
 lamity to expect." She cannot live free and de- 
 velop in safety without "power to resent, ability 
 to protect." 
 
 A noteworthy statement, to be sure, and which 
 deserves to be remembered. L'Enfant draws, 
 thereupon, a plan of defense, especially insisting, 
 of course, on the importance of his own particular 
 branch, namely engineering. 1 
 
 1 Unpublished, n. d., but probably of 1784. (Papers of the Con- 
 tinental Congress Letters, vol. LXXVIII, p. 583, Library of Con- 
 gress.) His ambition would have been to be asked to realize his 
 own plan, "as Brigadier-General Kosciusko, at leaving this conti-
 
 152 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 Houdon's brief visit, shortly after, in order to 
 make Washington's statue for the State of Vir- 
 ginia, 1 must have been particularly pleasant to 
 the major, to whom the great sculptor could bring 
 news of his co- Academician, the old painter of the 
 Gobelins Manufacture, father of the officer. 
 
 An imprinted letter of L'Enfant to the secre- 
 tary of Congress, sitting then in New York, gives 
 a number of details on Houdon's stay in America. 
 The Federal Congress had thought of ordering, 
 in its turn, a statue of Washington, which would 
 have been an equestrian one; but what would the 
 cost be? A most important question in those 
 days. On behalf of Houdon, who knew no Eng- 
 lish, L'Enfant wrote to Charles Thomson that 
 Mr. Houdon could not "properly hazard to give 
 him any answer relating [to] the cost of the 
 general's equestrian statue"; there are a great 
 many ways of making such work, and Congress 
 must say which it prefers. A book belonging to 
 Mr. Houdon will shortly reach these shores, where 
 particulars as to the "performance of the several 
 statues which have been created in Europe are 
 mentioned, together with their cost." The book 
 is on a vessel, soon expected, and which brings 
 back Doctor Franklin's "bagage." 
 
 nent, gave me the flattering expectation of being at the head of 
 [such] a department." 
 1 On this visit, see below, p. 225.
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 153 
 
 Congress had thought also of a marble bust for 
 the hall where it sat. Houdon was taking home 
 with him a finished model of the head of the great 
 man, and had exhibited it, for every one to say 
 his say, in the "room of Congress." 
 
 Such busts, L'Enfant wrote, are "generally paid 
 in Europe five thousand French livres"; but as 
 many duplicates will probably be ordered from 
 him, Houdon will lower the price to one hundred 
 guineas. "He begs leave, however, to observe 
 that a bust of the size of nature only may be fit 
 for a private and small room, but not for such a 
 large one as that devoted for the assembly of a 
 Congress, where it should be necessary to have 
 a bust of a larger size to have it appear to ad- 
 vantage." 
 
 The price had been asked, too, of duplicates in 
 plaster of Paris, for private citizens. The answer 
 was: four guineas, also in the thought that a 
 goodly number would be wanted, "provided that 
 there be a subscription for a large number, and 
 that the gentlemen who will have any of these 
 busts in their possession consider themselves as 
 engaged to prevent any copy from being taken; 
 this last condition he humbly insists upon." 
 
 As for the original, Houdon is anxious to know 
 what the compatriots of the general think of it; 
 any criticism would be welcome: "Mr. Houdon 
 hopes that Congress is satisfied with the bust he
 
 154 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 has had the honor to submit to their examination, 
 begs the gentlemen who may have some objections 
 to communicate them to him, and he flatters him- 
 self that Congress will favor him with their opin- 
 ion in writing, which he will consider as a proof 
 of their satisfaction and keep as a testimony of 
 their goodness." 
 
 He is just about to sail, and the bust has to be 
 removed at once : ' ' Mr. Houdon, being to embark 
 to-morrow morning, begs leave to take out the 
 general's bust from the room of Congress this 
 afternoon." 1 
 
 L'Enfant's chief work in New York consisted 
 in the remodelling of the old, or rather older (but 
 not oldest), City Hall, the one which preceded that 
 now known, in its turn, as the old one. The 
 undertaking was of importance, the question being 
 of better accommodating Congress, which had 
 left Philadelphia with a grudge toward that city, 
 and was now sitting in New York. A large sum, 
 for those days, had been advanced by patriotic 
 citizens, which sum, however, L'Enfant's habit 
 to see things "en grand" caused to be insufficient 
 by more than half. The city hoped that the de- 
 vising of such a structure would be for it one more 
 title to be selected as the federal capital, and it 
 therefore did not protest, but on the contrary 
 
 1 New York, 3d November, 1785. Papers of the Continental 
 Congress Letters, 1. 78, vol. XIV, p. 677.
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 155 
 
 caused a "testimonial" to be officially presented 
 to L'Enfant, highly praising his work: "While 
 the hall exists it will exhibit a most respectable 
 monument of your eminent talents, as well as of 
 the munificence of the citizens." 1 L'Enfant re- 
 ceived "the freedom of the city" by "special 
 honorifick patent," as he wrote later, and he was, 
 moreover, offered ten acres of land near Provost 
 Lane, "which latter he politely declined." 2 
 
 The building won general admiration for its 
 noble appearance, the tasteful brilliancy of its 
 ornamentation, and its commodious internal ar- 
 rangements. The only objections came from the 
 Anti-Federalists, who called it the "Fools' Trap," 
 in which appellation politics had, obviously, more 
 to do than architecture. 
 
 L'Enfant, a man of ideas, had tried to make of 
 the renovated hall something characteristically 
 American, if not in the general style, which was 
 classical, at least in many details. National re- 
 sources had been turned into use; in the Senate 
 chamber the chimneys were of American marble, 
 which, "for beauties of shade and polish, is equal to 
 any of its kind in Europe." 3 The capitals of the 
 pilasters were "of a fanciful kind, the invention of 
 Major L'Enfant, the architect. . . . Amidst their 
 
 1 October 13, 1789. 
 
 1 Taggart, Records of the Columbia Historical Society, XI, 215. 
 Thomas E. V. Smith, The City of New York in 1789, p. 46, quoting 
 contemporary magazines.
 
 156 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 foliage appears a star and rays, and a piece of 
 drapery below suspends a small medallion with 
 U. S. in a cipher. The idea is new and the effect 
 pleasing; and although they cannot be said to be of 
 any ancient order, we must allow that they have 
 an appearance of magnificence." x The frieze out- 
 side was so divided as to give room for thirteen 
 stars in so many metopes. A much-talked-of 
 eagle, with thirteen arrows in its talons, which, 
 unluckily, could not be ready for March 4, 1789, 
 when Congress met in the hall for the first time 
 under the newly voted Constitution, was the chief 
 ornament on the pediment. On the 22d of April 
 the news could be sent to the Salem Mercury: 
 "The eagle in front of the Federal State-House 
 is displayed. The general appearance of this 
 front is truly august." 2 The emblem was thus 
 at its proper place when the chief event that 
 Federal Hall, as it was then called, was to witness 
 occurred, on the 3oth of the same month, the day 
 of the first inauguration of the first President of 
 the United States. 
 
 Crowds came to visit what was then the most 
 beautiful building in the country; but better than 
 crowds came, and one visit was for the major 
 more touching and flattering than all the others 
 
 1 C. M. Bowen, The Centennial Celebration of the Inauguration of 
 George Washington, 1892, pp. 15, 16.
 
 I/ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 157 
 
 put together the wife of his general, now the 
 President, Mrs. Washington, caused Colonel Hum- 
 phreys and Mr. Lear to make arrangements with 
 L'Enfant for her to inspect the hall, in June of the 
 inauguration year. 1 
 
 The expensive and greatly admired monument 
 was to experience the strange fate of being sur- 
 vived by its author. Becoming again City Hall 
 when Congress, soon after, left New York to go 
 back, reconciled, to Philadelphia, it was pulled 
 down in 1812, the building itself being sold at 
 auction for four hundred and twenty-five dollars: 
 and thus disappeared, to the regret of all lovers 
 of ancient souvenirs, the beautiful chimneys in 
 American marble, the "truly august" eagle with 
 its thirteen arrows, and the first really American 
 capitals ever devised, and which, though in a new 
 style, were yet "magnificent." 
 
 One solitary souvenir of the building remains, 
 however, that is, the middle part of the railing on 
 which Washington must have leaned when taking 
 the oath; a piece of wrought iron of a fine orna- 
 mental style, now preserved with so many other 
 interesting relics of old New York on the ground 
 floor of the New York Historical Society's Mu- 
 seum. In the same room can be seen several 
 
 1 "Mr. Lear does himself the honor to inform Major L'Enfant that 
 Mrs. Washington intends to visit the federal building at six o'clock 
 this evening. Saturday morning, i3th June, 1789." (L'Enfant 
 papers.)
 
 158 I/ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 contemporary views of Federal Hall, one in water- 
 color, by Robertson, 1798; another, an engrav- 
 ing, showing every detail of the facade, represents, 
 as the inscription runs, "Federal Hall, the Seat 
 of Congress. Printed and sold by A. Doolittle, 
 New Haven, 1790. A. Doolittle Sc. Pet. Lacour 
 del." 
 
 Shortly before the inauguration of the first 
 President, L'Enfant had had to lend his help for 
 the devising of a grand, artistic, historical, and es- 
 pecially political procession, a Federalist one, 
 arranged in the hope of influencing public opinion 
 and securing the vote of the Constitution by the 
 State of New York. This now revered text was 
 then the subject of ardent criticism; famous pa- 
 triots like Patrick Henry had detected in it some- 
 thing royalistic, which has long ceased to be ap- 
 parent, and were violent in their denunciation 
 of this instrument of tyranny. New York was 
 in doubt ; its convention had met at Poughkeepsie 
 in June, 1788, and it seemed as if an adverse vote 
 were possible. The procession was then thought of. 
 
 It took place on Monday, the 23d of July, and 
 was a grand affair, with artillery salute, trumpe- 
 ters, foresters, Christopher Columbus on horse- 
 back, farmers, gardeners, the Society of the Cincin- 
 nati "in full military uniform," brewers showing 
 in their ranks, "mounted on a tun of ale, a beauti- 
 ful boy of eight years, in close-fitting, flesh-colored
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 159 
 
 silk, representing Bacchus, with a silver goblet in 
 his hand," butchers, tanners, cordwainers "sur- 
 rounding the car of the Sons of Saint Crispin," 
 furriers exhibiting "an Indian in native costume, 
 loaded with furs, notwithstanding it was one of 
 the hottest days in July." l 
 
 The chief object of wonder was the good 
 ship Hamilton, presented by the ship-carpenters, 
 mounted on wheels, a perfect frigate of thirty- 
 two guns, with its crew, complete, firing salutes 
 on its way. The confectioners surrounded an 
 immense "Federal cake." The judges and law- 
 yers were followed by "John Lawrence, John 
 Cozine, and Robert Troup, bearing the new Con- 
 stitution elegantly engrossed on vellum, and ten 
 students of law followed, bearing in order the rati- 
 fication of the ten States." 2 The tin-plate work- 
 ers exhibited "the Federal tin warehouse, raised 
 on ten pillars, with the motto: 
 
 When three more pillars rise, 
 
 Our Union will the world surprise." 
 
 tin-plate poetry, for the tin warehouse. Then 
 came learned men, physicians, clergymen, the re- 
 
 1 Martha J. Lamb, History of the City of New York, 1881, vol. II, 
 pp. 321 ff. 
 
 * Ten had already voted the Constitution, which made its enact- 
 ment certain, for Congress had decided that an adoption by nine 
 States would be enough for that. As is well known, there remained 
 in the end only two dissenting States, North Carolina and Rhode 
 Island.
 
 160 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 gent and students of Columbia University, schol- 
 ars, and among them Noah Webster, famous 
 since as a lexicographer, and then as a professor 
 and journalist, now admired by everybody, but, 
 in those days of strife, only by Federalists "a 
 mere pedagogue," disdainfully wrote Jefferson 
 later, "of very limited understanding and very 
 strong prejudices," in saying which he himself, 
 maybe, showed some prejudice, too. 1 
 
 A grand banquet, at which, according to the 
 New York Journal and Weekly Register, 2 bullocks 
 were roasted whole for the "regale" of the guests, 
 was held at the extreme point reached by the pro- 
 cession, called by the same paper the "parade des 
 fetes champetres." The President and members 
 of Congress sat under a dome devised by L'En- 
 fant. It was "surmounted by a figure of Fame, 
 with a trumpet proclaiming a new era, and hold- 
 ing a scroll emblematic of the three great epochs 
 of the war: Independence Alliance with France 
 Peace. 1 ' 3 
 
 This was greatly admired. "The committee," 
 we read in a note printed by their order in the 
 Imperial Gazetteer, "would be insensible of the 
 zeal and merit of Major L' Enfant were they to 
 omit expressing the obligation which they are 
 under to him for the elegance of the design and 
 
 1 To James Madison, August 12, 1801. 
 
 'Number of July 24, 1788. 3 Martha J. Lamb, ibid.
 
 I/ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 161 
 
 the excellence of the execution of the pavilion and 
 tables." 1 
 
 The whole was a considerable success. "As it 
 redounds much to the credit of the citizens, ..." 
 another paper observes, "it ought to be remarked 
 that there was not the least outrage, or even in- 
 decency, notwithstanding 6,000 or 7,000 people 
 (as supposed, spectators included) had collected, 
 and that the whole company was dismissed at 
 half after five o'clock." 2 
 
 Three days after the procession the vote was 
 taken at Poughkeepsie, and if any influence at all 
 could be attributed to the effect on public opinion 
 of the quasi-mediaeval pageant, its organizers must 
 have felt proud, for in an assembly of fifty-seven 
 the Constitution was actually voted by a majority 
 of two. 
 
 1 July 26, 1788. * New York Journal, July 24.
 
 Ill 
 
 The same year in which the New York Federal 
 Hall had seen the inauguration of the first Presi- 
 dent, the chance of his life came to L'Enfant. He 
 deserved it, because he not only availed himself 
 of it, but went forth to meet it, giving up his abode 
 in New York, "where I stood at the time," he 
 wrote later, "able of commanding whatever 
 business I liked." This was the founding of the 
 federal city. 
 
 The impression was a general one among the 
 French that those insurgents whom they had 
 helped to become a free nation were to be a great 
 one, too. Leaving England, where he was a 
 refugee during our Revolution, Talleyrand de- 
 cided to come to the United States, "desirous 
 of seeing," he says in his memoirs, "that great 
 country whose history begins." General Mo- 
 reau, also a refugee, a few years later spoke with 
 the same confidence of the future of the country: 
 "I had pictured to myself the advantages of liv- 
 ing under a free government ; but I had conceived 
 only in part what such happiness is: here it is 
 enjoyed to the full. ... It is impossible for men 
 who have lived under such a government to allow 
 themselves ever to be subjugated ; they would be 
 
 162
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 163 
 
 very great cowards if they did not perish to the 
 last in order to defend it." 1 
 
 L'Enfant, with his tendency to see things "en 
 grand," could not fail to act accordingly, and the 
 moment he heard that the federal city would be 
 neither New York nor Philadelphia, nor any other 
 already in existence, but one to be built expressly, 
 he wrote to Washington a letter remarkable by 
 his clear understanding of the opportunity offered 
 to the country, and by his determined purpose to 
 work not for the three million inhabitants of his 
 day, but for the one hundred of ours, and for all 
 the unborn millions that will come after us. 
 
 The letter is dated from New York, nth of 
 September, 1789. "Sir," he said, "the late deter- 
 mination of Congress to lay the foundation of a 
 city which is to become the capital of this vast 
 empire offers so great an occasion of acquiring 
 reputation to whoever may be appointed to con- 
 duct the execution of the business that your 
 Excellency will not be surprised that my ambi- 
 tion and the desire I have of becoming a useful 
 citizen should lead me to wish a share in the 
 undertaking. 
 
 "No nation, perhaps, had ever before the op- 
 portunity offered them of deliberately deciding 
 on the spot where their capital city should be 
 
 1 To his brother, Philadelphia, November 17, 1806. Revue des 
 Deux Mondes, November 15, 1908, p. 421.
 
 164 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 fixed. . . . And, although the means now within 
 the power of the country are not such as to pur- 
 sue the design to any great extent, it will be ob- 
 vious that the plan should be drawn on such a 
 scale as to leave room for that aggrandizement and 
 embellishment which the increase of the wealth 
 of the nation will permit it to pursue at any period, 
 however remote. Viewing the matter in this light, 
 I am fully sensible of the extent of the under- 
 taking." 1 
 
 Washington knew that L' Enfant was afflicted, 
 to be sure, with an "untoward" temper, being 
 haughty, proud, intractable, but that he was 
 honest withal, sincere, loyal, full of ideas, and re- 
 markably gifted. He decided to intrust him with 
 the great task, thus justifying, a little later, his 
 selection : ' ' Since my first knowledge of the gentle- 
 man's abilities in the line of his profession, I have 
 received him not only as a scientific man, but one 
 who has added considerable taste to professional 
 knowledge; and that, for such employment as he 
 is now engaged in, for prosecuting public works 
 and carrying them into effect, he was better quali- 
 fied than any one who had come within my knowl- 
 edge in this country." 2 The President informed 
 L'Enfant that he was to set to work at once, and 
 
 1 Original (several times printed in part) in the Library of Con- 
 gress, Miscellaneous Personal. The rest of the letter treats of the 
 necessity of fortifying the coasts. 
 
 2 To David Stuart, November 20, 1791.
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 165 
 
 so bestir himself as to have at least a general 
 plan to show a few months later, when he himself 
 would return from a trip South. On March 2, 
 1791, Washington announced to Colonel Dickens, 
 of Georgetown, the coming of the major: "An 
 eminent French military engineer starts for George- 
 town to examine and survey the site of the federal 
 city." A few days later the arrival of "Major 
 Longfont" was duly recorded by the Georgetown 
 Weekly Ledger. 1 
 
 L'Enfant's enthusiasm and his desire to do 
 well and quickly had been raised to a high pitch. 
 He reached the place a few days later and found it 
 wrapped in mist, soaked in rain, but he would 
 not wait. ' ' I see no other way, ' ' he wrote to Jeffer- 
 son on the nth, "if by Monday next the weather 
 does not change, but of making a rough draft as 
 accurate as may be obtained by viewing the 
 ground in riding over it on horseback, as I have 
 already done yesterday through the rain, to ob- 
 tain a knowledge of the whole. ... As far as 
 I was able to judge through a thick fog, I passed 
 on many spots which appeared to me really beau- 
 tiful, and which seem to dispute with each other 
 [which] commands." 2 
 
 When he could see the place to better advan- 
 tage, his admiration knew no bounds. In an un- 
 
 1 W. B. Bryan's History of the National Capital, 1914, p. 127. 
 
 2 Records of the Columbia Historical Society, II, 151.
 
 166 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 published letter to Hamilton he says: "Now, 
 when you may probably have heard that I am 
 finally charged with delineating a plan for the 
 city, I feel a sort of embarrassment how to speak 
 to you as advantageously as I really think of the 
 situation determined upon; for, as there is no 
 doubt, I must feel highly interested in the suc- 
 cess of the undertaking, I become apprehensive 
 of being charged with partiality when I assure 
 you that no position in America can be more 
 susceptible of grand improvement than that be- 
 tween the eastern branch of the Potomac and 
 Georgetown." 1 
 
 A few weeks later L'Enfant was doing the 
 honors of the spot to a brother artist, the painter 
 Trumbull, just back from Yorktown, where he 
 had been sketching in view of his big picture of 
 the surrendering of Cornwallis, and who wrote in 
 his autobiography: "Then to Georgetown, where 
 I found Major L'Enfant drawing his plan of the 
 city of Washington; rode with him over the 
 ground on which the city has since been built. 
 Where the Capitol now stands was then a thick 
 wood." (May, 1791.) 
 
 Another visitor of note came in the same year, 
 namely the French minister, a former companion 
 in arms of Lafayette and of L'Enfant himself, 
 Ternant, back from a three days' stay at Mount 
 
 1 April 8, 1791. Hamilton Papers, vol. XI, Library of Congress.
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 167 
 
 Vernon, and who gave his government an account 
 of what he had observed: "I would not leave 
 Georgetown without having seen the ground des- 
 tined for the federal city. The position seemed 
 to me a most interesting one from every point of 
 view. The French engineer who has already 
 traced the streets, is busy preparing a detailed 
 plan. . . . The President shows the greatest in- 
 terest in this new Salente, which is to bear his 
 name." l 
 
 The city, L'Enfant thought, must be great, 
 beautiful, and soon peopled, drawn "on that grand 
 scale on which it ought to be planned"; 2 meant 
 to absorb "Georgetown itself, whose name will 
 before long be suppressed, and its whole district 
 become a part of the cession." 3 It must be 
 quickly filled with inhabitants, because this will 
 strengthen the Union: "I earnestly wish all that 
 the Eastern States can spare may come this way, 
 and believe it would answer as good a purpose 
 as that of their emigration to the West. It would 
 deface that line of markation which will ever 
 
 1 September 30, October 24, 1791. Correspondence of the French 
 Ministers, ed. F. J. Turner, 1904, p. 62. "Salente," the ideal city, 
 in F6nelon's Telemaque. During the War of Independence Chevalier 
 Jean de Ternant had served as a volunteer officer in the American 
 army. He was at Valley Forge, at Charleston, took part under 
 Greene in the Southern campaign and was promoted a colonel by a 
 vote of Congress. 
 
 2 To Jefferson, March n, 1791. 
 'To Hamilton, April 8, 1791.
 
 168 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 oppose the South against the East, for when ob- 
 jects are seen at a distance the idea we form of 
 them is apt to mislead us ... and we fancy 
 monstrous that object which, from a nearer view, 
 would charm us. ... Hence arises a natural 
 though unwarrantable prejudice of nations against 
 nations, of States against States, and so down to 
 individuals, who often mistrust one another for 
 want of being sufficiently acquainted with each 
 other." l 
 
 The city must be beautiful, due advantage 
 being taken of the hilly nature of the spot for 
 grand or lovely prospects, and of its water re- 
 sources for handsome fountains and cascades: 
 "five grand fountains intended, with a constant 
 spout of water a grand cascade" at the foot of 
 Capitol Hill, 2 etc., a part of the plan which was, 
 unluckily, left in abeyance. Some had spoken of 
 a plain rectangular plan, "a regular assemblage 
 of houses laid out in squares, and forming streets 
 all parallel and uniform." This might be good 
 enough, L'Enfant declared, "on a well-level plain, 
 where, no surrounding object being interesting, 
 it becomes indifferent which way the opening 
 street may be directed." But the case is quite 
 different with the future federal city: "Such 
 
 1 Same letter to Hamilton. 
 
 1 L'Enfant's Observations Explanatory of the Plan, inscribed on the 
 plan itself.
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 169 
 
 regular plans, however answerable they may ap- 
 pear on paper . . . become at last tiresome and 
 insipid, and it could never be, in its origin, but 
 a mean continence of some cool imagination want- 
 ing a sense of the really grand and truly beauti- 
 ful, only to be met with where nature contributes 
 with art and diversifies the objects." 1 We may 
 imagine what his feelings would be if he saw, in 
 our days, the steam-shovel busy around the city, 
 dumping as many hills as possible into as many 
 vales, and securing a maximum platitude. 
 
 But the city must be more than that; besides 
 being beautiful, healthy, commodious, it should 
 be full of sentiment, of associations, of ideas; 
 everything in it must be evocative and have a 
 meaning and a "raison d'etre." Rarely was a 
 brain more busy than that of L'Enfant during the 
 first half of the year 1791. Surveying the ground, 
 mapping out the district, sketching the chief 
 buildings of the model city that was to be, 2 he 
 presented three reports to Washington, the first, 
 giving only his general ideas, before the end of 
 
 1 First report to the President, March 26, 1791. 
 
 2 For he was depended upon for that, too: "M. L'Enfant," Ter- 
 nant wrote, "aura aussi la direction des batimens que le CongrSs se 
 propose d'y faire 61ever." September 30, 1791. See also the docu- 
 ments quoted by W. B. Bryan, History of the National Capital, 1914, 
 p. 165, note. L'Enfant actually made drawings for the Capitol, the 
 President's house, the bridges, the market, etc., which he complained 
 later the commissioners to have unjustly appropriated. Records of 
 the Columbia Historical Society, II, 140.
 
 170 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 March, the second in June, the last in August, 
 the two latter accompanied with plans, the last 
 of which being the one which was followed in 
 the building of the city. 
 
 By the amplitude of its scope, the logic of the 
 arrangements, the breadth of the streets and 
 avenues, the beauty of the prospects cleverly 
 taken into account, the quantity of ground set 
 apart for gardens and parks, the display of waters, 
 the plan was a unique monument. The selection 
 of the place for what we call the Capitol and the 
 White House, which were then called the Federal 
 House and the Palace for the President, near 
 which the ministerial departments were to be 
 built, had been the result of a good deal of think- 
 ing and comparing. "After much menutial [sic] 
 search for an eligible situation, prompted, as I 
 may say, from a fear of being prejudiced in favor 
 of a first opinion, I could discover no one so ad- 
 vantageously to greet the congressional building 
 as is that on the west end of Jenkins heights, 
 which stand as a pedestal waiting for a monu- 
 ment. . . . Some might, perhaps, require less 
 labor to be made agreeable, but, after all assistance 
 of arts, none ever would be made so grand." On 
 that very pedestal now rises the Capitol of the 
 United States. 
 
 As for the "Presidential Palace," L'Enfant made 
 his choice with the object, he says, of "adding to
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 171 
 
 the sumptuousness of a palace the convenience 
 of a house and the agreeableness of a country 
 seat," which are the three main qualities actually 
 combined in the present White House. He se- 
 lected a spot which Washington had himself 
 noticed as a convenient one, at some distance 
 from Congress, it is true, but that would not matter 
 much, L'Enfant thought, with his old-world no- 
 tions of etiquette, for "no message to nor from 
 the President is to be made without a sort of 
 decorum which will doubtless point out the pro- 
 priety of committee waiting on him in carriage, 
 should his palace be even contiguous to Congress." 
 Since it was a question of driving, it little mat- 
 tered whether the drive was to be a little more 
 or less long. 
 
 For different reasons President Washington ap- 
 proved of that distance ; major e longinquo amicitia, 
 he apparently thought. "Where and how," he 
 once wrote to Alexander White, "the houses for 
 the President and other public officers may be 
 fixed is to me as an individual a matter of moon- 
 shine, but . . . the daily intercourse which the 
 secretaries of the departments must have with 
 the President would render a distant situation 
 extremely inconvenient to them; and not much 
 less so would one be close to the Capitol, for it was 
 the universal complaint of them all, that while 
 the legislature was in session they could do little
 
 172 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 or no business, so much were they interrupted by 
 the individual visits of members (in office hours) 
 and by calls for papers. Many of them have de- 
 clared to me that they have often been obliged 
 to go home and deny themselves in order to 
 transact the current business." 1 In that respect, 
 carriage or no carriage, distance would have its 
 merits. 
 
 L'Enf ant's letters and the notes accompanying 
 his plans show that everything in the future city 
 had been devised, indeed, with an intention: 
 ever-flowing fountains and a cascade for health 
 and beauty; an avenue of noble buildings, lead- 
 ing from the Capitol to the Presidential House, 
 and increasing the dignified appearance of both: 
 "The grand avenue," he wrote, "connecting both 
 the Palace and the Federal House will be most 
 magnificent and most convenient," with a num- 
 ber of handsome monuments, a very character- 
 istic one being a temple for national semireligious 
 celebrations, "such as public prayer, thanks- 
 givings, funeral orations, etc., and assigned to 
 the special use of no particular sect or denomi- 
 nation, but equally opened to all." It would also 
 be a pantheon for the illustrious dead, "as may 
 hereafter be decreed by the voice of a grateful 
 nation." A column, as yet never bui-lt, was "to 
 be erected to celebrate the first rise of a navy, 
 
 1 March 25, 1798.
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 173 
 
 and to stand a ready monument to consecrate 
 its progress and achievements." The squares 
 were to be allotted, one to each of the States 
 forming the Union: "The centre of each square 
 will admit of statues, columns, obelisks, or any 
 other ornaments ... to perpetuate not only the 
 memory of such individuals whose counsels or 
 military achievements were conspicuous in giving 
 liberty and independence to this country, but also 
 those whose usefulness hath rendered them worthy 
 of general imitation, to invite the youth of suc- 
 ceeding generations to tread in the paths of those 
 sages or heroes whom their country has thought 
 proper to celebrate." This was a way, L'Enfant 
 considered, of fortifying the Union and of giving 
 to the very city that educational value to which 
 he attached so much importance. 
 
 Chief among those patriotic objects was to be, 
 at some distance north of the place where the 
 Washington monument now rises, "the equestrian 
 figure of George Washington, a monument voted 
 in 1783 by the late Continental Congress." And 
 L'Enfant must certainly have hoped that the 
 author would be his illustrious compatriot, the 
 sculptor Houdon, on whose behalf we have seen 
 him writing to Congress, in 1785, as to the prob- 
 able cost. 
 
 Distant views and prospects were, of course, 
 to be used to the best advantage: "Attention has
 
 174 L^EXFANT AND THE FEDERAL CTTY 
 
 been paid to the passing of those IpaHfng avenues 
 over the most favorable ground for prospect and 
 convenience." But. above all, L'Enfant was per- 
 sistent in his request that, on no account, the 
 grandeur of his conception be in any way cur- 
 tailed: it was to remain commensurate with the 
 greatness of the United States of future times. 
 The plan "must leave to posterity a grand idea 
 of the patriotic interest which promoted it." 1 
 He foresaw much opposition to some of his ideas, 
 but besought the President to stand by hitn, and 
 especially to prevent any dwarfing of his views: 
 "I remain assured you will conceive it essential 
 to pursue with dignity the operation of an under- 
 taking of a magnitude so worthy of the concern 
 of a grand empire . . . over whose progress the 
 eyes of every other nation, envying the oppor- 
 tunity denied them, will stand judge."* 
 
 To make a man of that temper and enthusiasm, 
 having a reason for each of his propositions, ac- 
 cept hints and change his mind was almost an 
 impossibility. In vain did Jefferson object "to 
 the obligation to build the houses at a given dis- 
 tance from the street. ... It produces a dis- 
 gusting monotony; all persons maVg this com- 
 plaint against Philadelphia." In the same record 
 of his views, however, and much more to his credit, 
 
 1 I/Enfant's Obsenatumt Explanatory of Ike flan, inscribed on it. 
 * CondnBOB of Ins third repot L
 
 I/ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 175 
 
 Washington's sectelaxy of state is seen foreseeing 
 the sky-scraper and its dangers: "In Paris it is 
 forbidden to build a house beyond a given h^ffi^ 
 and it is admitted to be a good restriction. It 
 keeps down the price of grounds, keeps the houses 
 low and convenient, and the siieete fight and any. 
 Fires aze TIUMJI more ma * >a g pg ^f>fo when Jmnat'g 
 axe low/' 1 as was only too well evidenced since 
 in the fixes at Chicago, Baltimore, and San Fran- 
 cisco. 
 
 As for the President frtmsplf^ he had Hell-deter- 
 mined, practical ideas on some points, such as the 
 befitting distance between the places of abode 
 of Congress and of the chief of the state, and. 
 what was of more import, the necessarily large 
 extent of the ground to be reserved for the build- 
 ing of the future capital. 8 On the rest, with his 
 habit of trusting those who knew, he seems to 
 
 1 "Opinion on Capital," November 991, 1790. Writers, ed. Font, 
 
 V, S3- 
 
 s Which agreed petfeoly with L'Enfant's oawrmf desire to ever 
 do iMru "en grand." Washington writes ID han that, "nMhougfa 
 it may not be f MaM^M^j vviting^" a bu^ tract of graaod mii^ be 
 lummd. The bads to be set apart, "in my opinion an those be- 
 tween ^***^ Greet, the Potowmac Kivu, and the Eastern Branch, 
 and as far op the latter as the torn of the channel above Events 
 point; thence JIM luffing the fiat hack of Jcrfihafc height; thence 
 to the road leading from Georgetown to Bhdadhwg as far caatebV 
 
 _:-;::_: >_-; :.- -...-._.-. :: .;-..-.:. :. . : : ..:^ ... : -.>? : >:-.:- 
 where near the exterior of the Georgetown Session. Thence in A 
 piopei (Election to Rock Creek aft or above the ford, according to 
 the situation of ground."* Mount Vernon, April 4, 1791, Wasb- 
 
 -r._j-.r.;.: :...;:- 5. . ,: -. ;, XI Lrrar] rfCoBVICm
 
 176 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 have left free rein to L'Enfant. Submitting to 
 him certain suggestions, some from Jefferson, he 
 allows him to use them or not, as he pleases, 
 and he personally seems to incline toward not: 
 "Sir, although I do not conceive that you will 
 derive any material advantage from an examina- 
 tion of the inclosed papers, yet, as they have been 
 drawn under different circumstances and by differ- 
 ent persons, they may be compared with your own 
 ideas of a proper plan for the federal city. . . . 
 The rough sketch by Mr. Jefferson was done 
 under an idea that no offer worthy of considera- 
 tion would come from the landholders in the 
 vicinity of Carrollsburgh, from the backwardness 
 which appeared in them, and therefore was ac- 
 commodated to the grounds about Georgetown." 1 
 Criticism of L'Enfant's plan turned out to be 
 insignificant, and the approbation general. "The 
 work of Major L'Enfant, which is greatly admired, 
 will show," Washington said, "that he had many 
 objects to attend to and to combine, not on paper 
 merely, but to make them correspond with the 
 actual circumstances of the ground." 2 Jefferson, 
 who had the good taste not to stick to his own 
 former suggestions, was sending, a little later, 
 copies of the plan to Gouverneur Morris, then 
 minister to France, for him to exhibit in various 
 
 1 Same letter. 
 
 2 To the Commissioners, December 18, 1791.
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 177 
 
 cities as a thing for the United States to be proud 
 of: "I sent you by the way of London a dozen 
 plans of the city of Washington in the Federal 
 territory, hoping you would have them displayed 
 to public view where they would be most seen by 
 those descriptions of men worthy and likely to be 
 attracted to it. Paris, Lyons, Rouen, and the 
 seaport towns of Havre, Nantes, Bordeaux, and 
 Marseille would be proper places to send them 
 to." 1 
 
 Three assistants had been given to L'Enfant, 
 two of the Ellicot brothers (Andrew and Ben- 
 jamin) and Isaac Roberdeau, the major's trustiest 
 second. Three Commissioners of the District had 
 been appointed, Thomas Johnson and Daniel 
 Carroll, both of Maryland, and David Stuart, of 
 Virginia. They notified L'Enfant, on the gth of 
 September, 1791, that a name had been selected 
 for the district and the city: "We have agreed 
 that the federal district shall be called 'the 
 Territory of Columbia,' and the federal city 
 'the City of Washington.' The title of the map 
 will therefore be 'A map of the City of Washing- 
 ton in the District of Columbia." 
 
 For the expropriation of the ground with a 
 minimum actual outlay, an ingenious system, also 
 applied elsewhere, had been adopted: "The terms 
 entered into by me," Washington wrote to Jeffer- 
 
 1 Philadelphia, March 12, 1793.
 
 178 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 son, "on the part of the United States with the 
 landowners of Georgetown and Carrollsburgh, are 
 that all the land from Rock Creek along the river 
 to the Eastern Branch ... is ceded to the pub- 
 lic, on condition that, when the whole shall be 
 surveyed and laid off as a city, which Major L'En- 
 fant is now directed to do, the present proprietors 
 shall retain every other lot, and for such parts 
 of the land as may be taken for public use they 
 shall be allowed at the rate of twenty-five pounds 
 per acre, the public having the right to reserve 
 such parts of the wood on the land as may be 
 thought necessary to be preserved for ornament; 
 the landholders to have the use and profit of all 
 the grounds until the city is laid off into lots, 
 which by this agreement became public property. 
 Nothing is to be allowed for the ground which 
 may be occupied as streets or alleys." The Presi- 
 dent was confident that everybody would acquiesce 
 and show good-will, "even the obstinate Mr. 
 Burns." 1 
 
 But it turned out that there were other obsti- 
 nate people besides Mr. Burns, L'Enfant himself 
 chief among them. He had evinced from the 
 first a great fear of speculators, and was at once 
 at war with them. "How far," he boldly wrote 
 to Hamilton, ' ' I have contributed to overset that 
 plotting business, it would not do for me to tell; 
 
 1 March 31, 1791.
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 179 
 
 besides, I am not wholly satisfied whether I would 
 be thanked for by the people among whom you 
 live." 1 The three Commissioners had notions of 
 their own, but could never bring L'Enfant to 
 take into account either their persons or their 
 ideas; he would acknowledge no chief except 
 Washington, who, gently at first, firmly after- 
 ward, sternly later, and vainly throughout, tried 
 to make the major understand that he was one 
 of the Commissioners' subordinates. A great re- 
 ciprocal irritation, which even the President's 
 painstaking diplomacy could not assuage, began 
 between them from the first. Out of fear of specu- 
 lators, L'Enfant wanted the sale of the lots to be 
 delayed, while the Commissioners desired to make 
 a beginning as soon as possible. The officer kept, 
 accordingly, his plan to himself, and refused to 
 have it shown to would-be purchasers. How, then, 
 Washington exclaimed, could they be "induced 
 to buy, to borrow an old adage, a pig in a poke 1 '? 2 
 The major would not be persuaded, and, giving 
 an early example of an unconquerable fear of 
 what would now be called a "trust," he persisted 
 in refusing to show his plan to any individual or 
 association. He had declared beforehand, in one 
 of his reports to the President, what were his views 
 and how things should be delayed until the plan 
 
 1 April 8, 1791. Hamilton papers, vol. XI. 
 
 2 To David Stuart, November 20, 1791.
 
 180 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 could be engraved, distributed all over the coun- 
 try, and made known to all people at the same 
 time: "A sale made previous the general plan of 
 the distribution of the city is made public, and 
 before the circumstance of that sale taking place 
 has had time to be known through the whole 
 continent, will not call a sufficient concurrence, 
 and must be confined to a few individuals specu- 
 lating . . . and the consequence of a low sale in 
 this first instance may prove injurious to the sub- 
 sequent ones by serving as precedents." He was 
 afraid of the "plotting of a number of certain de- 
 signing men," of the forming of a "society" or- 
 ganized "to engross the most of the sale and 
 master the whole business." 1 
 
 When one of the chief landowners of the dis- 
 trict, Daniel Carroll, of Duddington, a relative of 
 one of the Commissioners, decided, in spite of all 
 warnings, to go on with the building of a house 
 across what was to be New Jersey Avenue, mat- 
 ters came to a crisis. Washington tried to pacify 
 L'Enfant, whose indignation knew no bounds. 
 "As a similar case," he wrote to him, "cannot 
 happen again (Mr. Carroll's house having been 
 begun before the federal district was fixed upon), 
 no precedent will be established by yielding a 
 little in the present instance; and it will always 
 be found sound policy to conciliate the good-will 
 
 'Report to the President, August 19, 1791.
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 181 
 
 rather than provoke the enmity of any man, 
 where it can be accomplished without much diffi- 
 culty, inconvenience, or loss." 
 
 But even at the request of a leader whom he 
 worshipped, L'Enfant would not be persuaded. 
 With no authority from the Commissioners, he 
 sent his faithful Roberdeau to raze the house to 
 the ground, which was but partly done when the 
 Commissioners had Roberdeau arrested. L'En- 
 fant thereupon came in person with some labor- 
 ers, and saw the work of destruction perfected 
 (November 22). He barely escaped arrest him- 
 self. Washington, who, as he wrote to Jefferson, 
 was loath to lose "his services, which in my opin- 
 ion would be a serious misfortune," severely re- 
 monstrated now with the major. "In future I 
 must strictly enjoin you to touch no man's prop- 
 erty without his consent, or the previous order 
 of the Commissioners," adding in kindlier tones: 
 "Having the beauty and regularity of your plan 
 only in view, you pursue it as if every person or 
 thing were obliged to yield to it." 1 
 
 But so they are, thought L'Enfant. For him 
 the city was his city, his child, and a father has a 
 right to rear his child as he pleases. Remon- 
 strating went on some time. Jefferson came to 
 the rescue of the President, used the fairest means, 
 asked the major to dine with him "tete a tete," 
 
 1 December 2, 1791.
 
 182 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 so as to quietly discuss the federal city, the hour 
 for the meal differing rather widely from ours: 
 "Mr. Jefferson presents his compliments to Major 
 L'Enfant, and is sorry to have been absent when 
 he was so kind as to call on him, as he wishes to 
 have some conversation with him on the subject 
 of the federal city. He asks the favor of him to 
 come and take a private dinner with him to- 
 morrow at half after three, which may afford 
 time and opportunity for the purpose. Saturday 
 January 7, 1792."* Nothing resulted. Another 
 landowner, Notley Young, had been found in De- 
 cember building a house which had, "contrary to 
 expectation, fallen into a principal street. But I 
 hope," Washington wrote the Commissioners, "the 
 major does not mean to proceed to the demolition 
 of this also." 
 
 On no point would L'Enfant yield, so that on 
 March 6, 1792, Jefferson wrote to the Commis- 
 sioners: "It having been found impracticable to 
 employ Major L'Enfant in that degree of sub- 
 ordination which was lawful and proper, he has 
 been notified that his services were at an end." 
 
 A consolation and a comfort to him was the 
 immediate signing by all the landowners of the 
 district, except two, of a testimonial "lamenting" 
 his departure, wishing for his return, praising his 
 work, "for we well know that your time and the 
 
 1 L'Enfant papers.
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 183 
 
 whole powers of your mind have been for months 
 entirely devoted to the arrangements in the city 
 which reflect so much honor on your taste and 
 judgment." 1 
 
 'March 9, 1792. Records of the Columbia Historical Society, II, 
 137-
 
 IV 
 
 The bright part of L'Enf ant's life was over. 
 His fame was great, and appeals continued for 
 some time to be made to him when important 
 works were contemplated. But his same ten- 
 dency to ever see things "en grand," his unyield- 
 ing disposition, his increasing and almost morbid 
 fear of speculators wrecked more than one of his 
 undertakings. 
 
 Almost on his leaving his work at Washington 
 he was asked to draw the plans of the first manu- 
 facturing city, devised as such, in the United 
 States, and which is to-day one of the most im- 
 portant in existence, Paterson, N. J. "Major 
 L'Enf ant, it is said," wrote Washington, who still 
 retained a friendly feeling for him, "is perform- 
 ing wonders at the new town of Paterson." 1 
 The moving spirit was Hamilton, under whose 
 influence had been founded the "Society for the 
 Establishing Useful Manufactures." The chief 
 point was to transform into a city a spot where 
 only ten houses were in existence, and to make 
 of it an industrial one by turning into use the 
 Falls of the Passaic. Several letters of the major 
 to Hamilton, giving an account of the work, in 
 
 1 To the Commissioners, November 30, 1792. 
 184
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 185 
 
 which faithful Roberdeau was helping, and of the 
 increasing difficulties with all sorts of people, are 
 preserved in the Library of Congress. After one 
 year's toil, L'Enfant was once more notified that 
 his services were no longer wanted. 
 
 He is found in the same year and the following 
 one working as an engineer at Fort MifHin, on the 
 Delaware, and as an architect at a mansion in 
 Philadelphia which was to surpass in magnifi- 
 cence any other in the States. It had been ordered 
 of him by Robert Morris, the financier of the 
 Revolution, and the richest man in America. 1 
 Here was, if ever, an occasion to do things "en 
 grand." L'Enfant, however, did them "en plus 
 grand" than even the financier had dreamed; 
 improvements and afterthoughts, the use of mar- 
 ble for columns and facades increased the delay 
 and the expense. His being busy at Paterson had 
 also been at first another cause of complaint. 
 "Dear Sir," Morris beseechingly wrote him from 
 Philadelphia, "I had like to have stopped my 
 house for fear of wanting money; that difficulty 
 being removed, it will now be stopped for want 
 of Major L'Enfant." 2 The roof had at last been 
 put on, and one could judge of the beauty of the 
 ensemble, quite remarkable, as we can see from 
 
 1 Morris had bought for it a whole block, limited on its four sides 
 by Chestnut, Walnut, Seventh, and Eighth Streets. 
 
 2 May 9, 1793. (L'Enfant papers.).
 
 186 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 a sketch by Birch the Elder preserved in the 
 Philadelphia Library, when Morris's catastrophe 
 occurred, putting an end to the work, and swallow- 
 ing part, if not all, of L'Enfant's savings. 1 
 
 In his delight at being intrusted with the plan 
 of the federal city he had never said a word about 
 any remuneration, and he had not copyrighted 
 his plan. At the time of his dismissal Washing- 
 ton had written to the Commissioners : ' ' The plan 
 of the city having met universal applause (as far 
 as my information goes), and Major L'Enfant 
 having become a very discontented man, it was 
 thought that less than from two thousand five 
 hundred to three thousand dollars, would not be 
 proper to offer him for his services; instead of 
 this, suppose five hundred guineas and a lot in 
 a good part of the city were substituted?" 
 
 The offer was made; L'Enfant refused, with- 
 out giving reasons. More and more gloomy times 
 were in store for him; mishaps and disappoint- 
 ments multiplied. He had laid great store on 
 the selling of copies of his plan, but since he had 
 not copyrighted it, no royalty on the sale was re- 
 
 1 He seems to have tried to help the financier rather than to be 
 helped by him. Ill-satisfied as he was with the house, for which 
 he, apparently, never paid 1'Enfant anything, Morris wrote: "But 
 he lent me thirteen shares of bank stock disinterestedly, and on this 
 point I feel the greatest anxiety that he should get the same number 
 of shares with the dividends, for the want of which he has suffered 
 great distress." Written about 1800. W. B. Bryan, History of the 
 National Capital, 1914, p. 181.
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 187 
 
 served for him. He protested against this, 
 against the way in which the engraving had been 
 made, with grievous "errors of execution," and 
 against the suppression of his name on it, "de- 
 priving me of the repute of the projector." Con- 
 trary, however, to the fear expressed at first by 
 Washington, that out of spite he might, in his 
 discontent, side with the many who disapproved 
 of the vast and difficult undertaking, he remained 
 loyal to it, and "there is no record of any act or 
 word that tarnishes his life history with the 
 blemish of disloyalty to the creation of his genius. 
 He bore his honors and disappointments in hu- 
 mility and poverty." 1 
 
 Poverty was, indeed, at his door, and soon in 
 his house. Haunted by the notion of his wrongs, 
 some only too real, some more or less imaginary, 
 he sent to Congress memoir after memoir, recall- 
 ing what he had done, and what was his destitu- 
 tion, the "absolute destruction of his family's 
 fortune in Europe," owing to the French Revolu- 
 tion, his being reduced "from a state of ease and 
 content to one the most distressed and helpless," 
 living as he did, upon "borrowed bread"; but he 
 would not doubt of "the magnanimity and justice 
 of Congress." 2 
 
 1 S. C. Busey, Pictures of the City of Washington in the Past, 1898, 
 p. 108. 
 
 2 Memoirs of 1801, 1802, 1813, in the Jefferson papers, Library of 
 Congress.
 
 188 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 The family's fortune had been reduced, indeed, 
 to a low ebb, his own lack of attention to his 
 financial affairs making matters worse. His in- 
 ability to properly attend to them is only too well 
 evidenced by some letters from French relatives, 
 showing that, while he was himself in absolute 
 want, he neglected to receive the pension be- 
 stowed on him by the French Government, and 
 which, in spite of the Revolution, had been main- 
 tained. He had also inherited from the old 
 painter, his father, a small farm in Normandy, 
 but had taken no steps about it, so that the 
 farmer never ceased to pocket the revenues. 1 
 
 One of these letters, which tells him of the 
 death of his mother, who "died with the piety of 
 an angel," shows what reports reached France as 
 to the major's standing among his American 
 friends: "All the persons whom I have seen and 
 who know you, assured me that you enjoyed 
 public esteem. This is everything in a country 
 of which people praise the morals, the virtues, and 
 the probity as worthy of our first ancestors." 2 
 
 On two occasions, after many years, Congress 
 
 1 Letter from his cousin, Destouches, Paris, September 15, 1805, 
 greatly exaggerating, as shown by the letter mentioned below, his 
 mother's state of poverty. (L'Enfant papers.) 
 
 1 From his cousin, Mrs. Roland, ne Mallet, whose husband had 
 a modest position at the Ministry of the Navy; Paris, May 5, 1806. 
 The mother's furniture and silver plate was valued at 1,500 livres. 
 Allusion is made to L'Enfant's deceased sister and to her "mariage 
 projet avec Mr. Leclerc." (L'Enfant papers.)
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 189 
 
 voted modest sums for L'Enfant, but they were 
 at once appropriated by his creditors. He was, 
 moreover, appointed, in 1812, "professor of the 
 art of military engineering in the Military Academy 
 of the United States," a nomination which, in 
 spite of the entreaties of James Monroe, then 
 secretary of state, he declined. He is found in 
 September, 1814, working at Fort Washington, 
 when fifty men with spades and axes are sent 
 him. 
 
 He survived eleven years, haunting the lobbies 
 of the Capitol, pacing the newly marked avenues 
 of "his" city, watching its growth, deploring the 
 slightest deviation from his original design, for, 
 as Washington had early noticed, he was "so te- 
 nacious of his plans as to conceive that they would 
 be marred if they underwent any change or altera- 
 tion," l visiting the friends he had among the 
 early settlers. "Mr. W. W. Corcoran, who lately 
 departed this life in the city of Washington, full 
 of years and honor . . . had a very distinct recol- 
 lection of the personal appearance of L'Enfant, 
 the latter having been a frequent visitor at his 
 father's house. He described him to me as a 
 tall, erect man, fully six feet in height, finely pro- 
 portioned, nose prominent, of military bearing, 
 courtly air, and polite manners, his figure usually 
 enveloped in a long overcoat and surmounted by 
 
 1 To David Stuart November 20, 1791.
 
 190 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 a bell-crowned hat a man who would attract 
 attention in any assembly." 1 
 
 He ended his days, the permanent guest of the 
 Digges family, in their house near Washington. 
 His death occurred there in 1825, and he was 
 buried in their property at the foot of a tree. 
 An inventory of his "personal goods and chattels" 
 showed that they consisted in three watches, 
 three compasses, some books, maps, and survey- 
 ing instruments, the whole being valued at forty- 
 six dollars. 
 
 The federal city, Washington had written in 
 1798 to Mrs. Sarah Fairfax, then in England, 
 will be a great and beautiful one ' ' a century hence, 
 if this country keeps united, and it is surely its 
 policy and interest to do it." It took, indeed, a 
 great many years, and for a long time doubters 
 could enjoy their doubts, and jokers their jokes. 
 The Duke de La Rochefoucauld- Liancourt visited 
 the incipient town in 1797; he found that it pos- 
 sessed one hundred and fifty houses, scattered 
 here and there; the house for the President was 
 ready to be covered the same year, and the only 
 wing of the Capitol yet begun was to receive its 
 roof the year following, both being "handsome 
 buildings, in white stones very well wrought." 
 
 1 Hugh T. Taggart, in Records of the Columbia Historical Society, 
 XI, 216.
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 191 
 
 But the unredeemable fault, in his eyes, was the 
 very magnitude and beauty of the plan. "The 
 plan," he wrote, "is fine, cleverly and grandly 
 designed, but it is its very grandeur, its magnifi- 
 cence, which causes it to be nothing but a dream." 
 The distance, so heartily approved of by Wash- 
 ington, between the President's house and the 
 Capitol, seemed to the traveller a serious objec- 
 tion; the raising of five hundred houses would be 
 necessary to connect the two buildings ; not one is 
 in existence. ' ' If this gap is not filled, communica- 
 tion will be impracticable in winter, for one can 
 scarcely suppose that the United States would 
 undergo the expense for pavement, footpaths, and 
 lamps for such a long stretch of uninhabited 
 ground." 1 This wonder has, however, been 
 seen. 
 
 For a long time, for more than half the present 
 duration of the city's life, deriders could deride 
 to their heart's content. Few cities have ever 
 been so abundantly nicknamed as Washington, 
 the "wilderness city," the city "of magnificent 
 distances," the "village monumental," the city, 
 as reported by Jean-Jacques Ampere, the son of 
 the great scientist, who visited it in 1851, of 
 "streets without houses, and of houses without 
 streets." He saw in its fate "a striking proof of 
 this truth that one cannot create a great city at 
 
 1 Voyage en Amerique, VI, 122 ff.
 
 192 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 will." But this truth, as some others, has proved 
 an untruth. 
 
 The growth was slow, indeed, but constant, 
 and when the century was over, Washington's 
 prophecy and L'Enfant's foresight were justi- 
 fied by the event. A city had risen, ample and 
 beautiful, a proper capital for a wealthy and power- 
 ful nation, one quite apart, copied on no other, 
 "not one of those cities," as was remarked, in 
 our days, by one of Washington's successors, Mr. 
 Roosevelt, "of which you can cut out a piece and 
 transplant it into another, without any one per- 
 ceiving that something has happened." 
 
 Then at last came L'Enfant's day. What he 
 had always expected for "his" city took place; 
 what he had never expected for himself took place 
 also. In January, 1902, both the "Park Com- 
 mission," composed of Daniel H. Burnham, 
 Charles F. McKim, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and 
 F. L. Olmsted, and the Senate committee pre- 
 sented their reports on the improvement and de- 
 velopment of Washington; the conclusions were: 
 "The original plan of the city of Washington, 
 having stood the test of a century, has met uni- 
 versal approval. The departures from that plan 
 are to be regretted, and wherever possible, reme- 
 died." It was thus resolved to revert, as much as 
 circumstances allowed, and in spite of a heavy 
 outlay, to several of L'Enfant's ideas, especially
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 193 
 
 to one which he considered of greatest importance, 
 and which had been kept so long in abeyance, the 
 giving of its proper character to that "grand 
 avenue" between the Capitol and the White 
 House, meant to be "most magnificent and most 
 convenient." It is now going to be both. 
 
 As for L'Enfant himself, one more appropria- 
 tion, this time not to go to his creditors, was 
 voted by Congress on account of the major, and 
 it was resolved that his ashes, the place of which 
 continued to be marked only by a tree, should be 
 removed to Arlington National Cemetery, to lie 
 in that ever-growing army of the dead, former 
 members of the regiments of that Republic for 
 which he had fought and bled. His remains were 
 brought to what had been "Jenkins's Hill," and 
 placed under the great dome of the Capitol. In 
 the presence of the chief of the state, President 
 Taft, of representatives of Congress, the Supreme 
 Court, the Society of the Cincinnati, and other 
 patriotic and artistic societies, and of a vast 
 crowd, on the 28th of April, 1909, orations were 
 delivered by the Vice-President of the United 
 States, James Sherman, and by the Chief Com- 
 missioner of the District, Henry B. McFarland, 
 the latter amply making up, by his friendly and 
 eloquent address, for the long-forgotten troubles 
 of his predecessors with L'Enfant. The Vice- 
 President courteously concluded thus : "And turn-
 
 194 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 
 
 ing to you, Mr. Ambassador ... I express the 
 hope that the friendship between our nations, 
 which has existed for more than a century, will 
 be but intensified as time passes, and that we will 
 in the future join hands in advancing every good 
 cause which an all- wise Providence intrusts to our 
 care." The hearse, wrapped in the three colors 
 of France and America, was accompanied to Ar- 
 lington by the French naval and military attaches, 
 and an escort from one of those regiments of en- 
 gineers to which the major himself had belonged. 
 A handsome monument was unveiled two years 
 later by Miss E. C. Morgan, the great-grand- 
 daughter of William Digges, who had befriended 
 L' Enfant in his last days, the chief speeches being 
 delivered by President Taft, and by the secretary 
 of state, Elihu Root. 1 "Few men," Mr. Root said, 
 "can afford to wait a hundred years to be remem- 
 bered. It is not a change in L'Enfant that brings 
 us here. It is we who have changed, who have 
 just become able to appreciate his work. And 
 our tribute to him should be to continue his work." 
 The monument, by W. W. Bosworth, who, like 
 L'Enfant had received in Paris his artistic educa- 
 tion, is in the shape of a table, on which has been 
 engraved a facsimile of the original plan of the 
 city by the French soldier-artist. From the slope 
 where it has been raised can be seen, on the other 
 
 1 May 22, 1911.
 
 L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY 195 
 
 side of the river, the ceaselessly growing federal 
 capital, called Washington, "a revered name," 
 another French officer, the Chevalier de Chastel- 
 lux, had written, when visiting, in 1782, another 
 and earlier town of the same name in Connecticut, 
 "a revered name, whose memory will undoubtedly 
 last longer than the very city called upon to per- 
 petuate it."
 
 Ill 
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 WASHINGTON'S acquaintance with 
 things French began early and was of 
 a mixed nature. As a pupil of the 
 French Huguenot Maryes, who kept a school at 
 Fredericksburg, and did not teach him French, 1 
 we find him carefully transcribing, in his elegant 
 youthful hand, those famous "Rules of Civility 
 and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversa- 
 tion," which have recently been proved to be 
 French. Whether this French teaching given 
 him by a Frenchman engraved itself in his mind 
 or happened to match his natural disposition, or 
 both, certain it is that he lived up to the best 
 among those maxims, those, for example, and 
 they are remarkably numerous, that deprecate 
 
 1 He kept all his life a feeling that his early education had been in- 
 complete. Strongly advised by David Humphreys to write an ac- 
 count of the great events in which he had taken part, he answered 
 that he would not, on account of a lack of leisure, and a "conscious- 
 ness of a defective education." July 25, 1785. When Lafayette 
 was beseeching him to visit France some day, he answered: "Re- 
 member, my good friend, that I am unacquainted with your language, 
 that I am too far advanced in years to acquire a knowledge of it." 
 September 30, 1779. Franklin added later his entreaties to those 
 of Lafayette; see Washington's answer, October n, 1780. 
 
 199
 
 200 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 jokes and railing at the expense of others, or 
 those of a noble import advising the young man 
 to be "no flatterer," to "show no sign of choler 
 in reproving, but to do it with sweetness and 
 mildness," those prescribing that his "recreations 
 be manful, not sinful," and giving him this advice 
 of supreme importance, which Washington ob- 
 served throughout life: "Labor to keep alive in 
 your breast that little spark of celestial fire 
 called conscience." 
 
 Another chance that Washington had to be- 
 come acquainted with things French was through 
 his reading, and was less favorable to them. An 
 early note in his hand informs us that, about the 
 year 1748, he, being then sixteen, had, "in the 
 Spectator, read to No. 143." All those numbers 
 had been written by Steele and Addison at a 
 period of French wars, at the moment when we 
 were fighting "Monsieur Malbrouk." Not a 
 portrait of the French in those numbers that is 
 not a caricature; they are a "ludicrous nation"; 
 their women are "fantastical," their men "vain 
 and lively," their fashions ridiculous; not even 
 their wines find grace in the eyes of Steele, who 
 could plead, it is true, that he was not without 
 experience on the subject, and who declares that 
 this "plaguy French claret" is greatly inferior 
 to "a bottle or two of good, solid, edifying port." 
 
 Washington was soon to learn more of French
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 201 
 
 people, and was to find that they were something 
 else than mere ludicrous and lively puppets. 
 
 A soldier born, with all that is necessary to 
 prove a good one and to become an apt leader, 
 having, as he himself wrote, "resolution to face 
 what any man durst." 1 Washington rose rapidly 
 in the ranks, becoming a colonel in 1754, at the 
 age of twenty-two. He was three times sent, in 
 his younger days, to observe, and check if he could, 
 the progress of his future allies, in the Ohio and 
 Monongahela Valleys. His journal and letters 
 show him animated toward them with the spirit 
 befitting a loyal subject of George II, none of his 
 judgments on them being spoiled by any undue' 
 leniency. 
 
 On the first occasion he was simply ordered to 
 hand to the commander of a French fort a letter 
 from the governor of Virginia, and to ask him to 
 withdraw as having "invaded the King of Great 
 Britain's territory." To which the Frenchman, 
 an old officer and Knight of Saint Louis, Mr. de 
 Saint-Pierre, who shortly before had been leading 
 an exploration in the extreme West, toward the 
 Rockies, 2 politely but firmly declined to assent, 
 
 ^'For my own part I can answer I have a constitution hardy 
 enough to encounter and undergo the most severe trials and, I flat- 
 ter myself, resolution to face what any man durst." To Governor 
 Dinwiddie, May 29, 1754. 
 
 2 In continuation of the La Verendrie's (father and sons) bold at- 
 tempt to reach the great Western sea, a token of which, a leaden
 
 202 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 writing back to the governor: "I am here by the 
 orders of my general, and I entreat you, sir, not 
 to doubt but that I shall try to conform myself 
 to them with all the exactness and resolution 
 which must be expected from a good officer." 
 He has "much the air of a soldier," Washington 
 wrote of him. 
 
 Mr. de Saint-Pierre added, on his part, a word 
 on the bearer of Governor Dinwiddie's message, 
 who was to be the bearer also of his answer, and 
 in this we have the first French comment on 
 Washington's personality: "I made it my par- 
 ticular care to receive Mr. Washington with a 
 distinction suitable to your dignity as well as to 
 his own personal merit. From the Fort on the 
 Riviere-aux-Bceufs, December 15, 1753." Hav- 
 ing received plentiful supplies as a gift from the 
 French, but entertaining the worst misgivings as 
 to their "artifices," the young officer began his 
 return journey, during which, in spite of all 
 trouble, he managed to pay a visit to Queen 
 Aliquippa: " I made her a present," he wrote, 
 " of a match-coat and a bottle of rum, which latter 
 was thought much the best present of the two." 
 On the 1 6th of January, 1754, he was back at 
 Williamsburg, handed to the governor Mr. de Saint 
 
 tablet with a French and Latin inscription and the arms of France, 
 was recently discovered near Fort Pierre, South Dakota. See South 
 Dakota Historical Collections, 1914, pp. 89 ff.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 203 
 
 Pierre's negative answer, and printed an account 
 of his journey. 1 
 
 The second expedition, a military one, was 
 marked next year by the sad and famous Jumon- 
 ville incident and by the surrendering, to the 
 brother of dead Jumonville, of Fort Necessity, 
 where the subjects of King George and their 
 youthful colonel, after a fight lasting from eleven 
 in the morning till eight in the evening, had to 
 capitulate, being permitted, however, by the 
 French to withdraw with "full military honors, 
 drum-beating, and taking with them one small 
 piece of ordnance. " (July 3, 1754.) The fort and 
 the rest of the artillery remained in the hands of 
 the captors, as well as part of that diary which, 
 although with interruptions, Washington was fond 
 of keeping, whenever he could, his last entry being 
 dated Friday, December 13, 1799, the day before 
 his death. The part found at Fort Necessity 
 March 31 to June 27, 1754 was sent to Paris, 
 translated into French, printed in 1756 by the 
 royal government, 2 and the text given in Wash- 
 ington's writings is only a retranslation from 
 
 1 The Journal of Major George Washington, sent by the Hon. Robert 
 Dinwiddie, Esq., his Majesty's Lieut. -Governor and Commander in 
 chief of Virginia, to the commandant of the French forces in Ohio. 
 Williamsburg, 1754. 
 
 2 Memoire contenant le precis des fails avec leurs pieces justificative* 
 pour servir de response aux observations envoyees par les minislres 
 d'Angleterre dans les cours d' Europe, Paris, 1756.
 
 204 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 the French, the original English not having been 
 preserved. 
 
 The third occasion was the terrible campaign 
 of 1755, which ended in Braddock's death and the 
 defeat of the English regulars on the Mononga- 
 hela, not far from the newly built Fort Duquesne, 
 later Pittsburgh (July 9). Contrary to expecta- 
 tion 1 (there being "about three hundred French 
 and Indians," wrote Washington; "our numbers 
 consisted of about thirteen hundred well-armed 
 men, chiefly regulars" 2 ), the French won the 
 day, nearly doing to death their future com- 
 mander-in-chief. A rumor was even spread that 
 he had actually succumbed after composing a 
 "dying speech," and Washington had to write 
 to his brother John to assure him that he had had 
 as yet no occasion for such a composition, though 
 very near having had it: "By the all-power- 
 ful dispensation of Providence, I have been pro- 
 tected beyond all human probability and expecta- 
 tion; for I had four bullets through my coat, 
 and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, 
 although death was levelling my companions on 
 every side of me. We have been most scandal- 
 ously beaten." 3 
 
 1 "As to any danger from the enemy, I look upon it as trifling." 
 Washington to his brother, John, May 14, 1755. 
 
 2 Washington to Dinwiddie, July 18, 1755. 
 
 3 Same date. Washington revisited the region in October, 1770, 
 but the entries in his journal contain no allusion to previous events:
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 205 
 
 By an irony of fate, in this expedition against 
 the French, in which George Washington acted 
 as aide-de-camp to the English general, the means 
 of transportation had been supplied by Post- 
 master Benjamin Franklin. 
 
 The French were indubitably different from 
 the airy fops of Addison's Spectator, but they 
 were as far as ever from commanding young 
 Washington's sympathy. It was part of his 
 loyalism to hate them and to interpret for the 
 worst anything they could do or say. The 
 master of an ampler vocabulary than he is some- 
 times credited with, we find him writing to Rich- 
 ard Washington, in 1757, that the means by 
 which the French maintain themselves in the 
 Ohio Valley are "hellish." 1 
 
 "We lodged [at Fort Pitt] in what is called the town, about three 
 hundred yards from the fort. . . . These houses, which are built 
 of logs, and ranged into streets, are on the Monongahela, and, I sup- 
 pose, may be twenty in number, and inhabited by Indian traders, 
 etc. The fort is built on the point between the rivers Allegheny 
 and Monongahela, but not so near the pitch of it as Fort Duquesne." 
 1 To Richard Washington, merchant, London; from Fort Loudoun, 
 April 15, 1757. The same letter enlightens us as to Washington's 
 tastes concerning things material. He orders "sundry things" to 
 be sent him from London, adding: "Whatever goods you may send 
 me where the prices are not absolutely limited, you will let them be 
 fashionable, neat and good in their several kinds." Same tastes 
 shown in his letter to Robert Gary and Co., ordering a chariot "in 
 the new taste, handsome, genteel, and light," painted preferably 
 green, but in .that he would be "governed by fashion." (June 6, 
 1768.) The chariot was sent in September; it was green, "all the 
 framed work of the body gilt, handsome scrawl, shields, ornamented 
 with flowers all over the panels."
 
 206 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 A few years later the tone is greatly altered, 
 not yet toward the French, but toward the 
 British Government and King. In sad, solemn 
 words, full already of the spirit of the Washing- 
 ton of history, he warns his friend and neighbor 
 George Mason, the one who was to draw the 
 first Constitution of Virginia, of the great crisis 
 now looming: "American freedom" is at stake; 
 "it seems highly necessary that something should 
 be done to avert the stroke and maintain the 
 liberty which we have derived from our ancestors. 
 But the manner of doing it, to answer the purpose 
 effectually, is the point in question. 
 
 "That no man should scruple or hesitate a mo- 
 ment to use a-ms [sic] in defense of so valuable a 
 blessing, on which all the good and evil of life 
 depends, is clearly my opinion. Yet a-ms, I 
 would beg leave to add, should be the last resource, 
 the dernier resort." 1 Absolutely firm, absolutely 
 moderate, such was Washington to continue to 
 the end of the impending struggle, and, indeed, 
 of his days. The life of the great Washington 
 was now beginning. 
 
 1 Mount Vernon, April 5, 1765.
 
 II 
 
 Some more years elapse, and when the curtain 
 rises again on scenes of war, momentous changes 
 have occurred. To the last hour the former 
 officer of the colonial wars, now a man of forty- 
 two, was still expressing the wish "that the dis- 
 pute had been left to posterity to determine: but 
 the crisis has arrived when we must assert our 
 rights or submit to every imposition that can be 
 heaped upon us, till custom and use make us 
 as tame and abject slaves as the blacks we rule 
 over with such arbitrary sway." It was hard for 
 him to reconcile himself to the fact that the Eng- 
 lish were really to be the enemy; he long tried to 
 believe that the quarrel was not with England and 
 her King, but only with the ministry and their 
 troops, which he calls the "ministerials." Writ- 
 ing on the 3ist of May, 1775, from Philadelphia, 
 where he was attending the second Continental 
 Congress, to G. W. Fairfax in England, he gave 
 him an account of the clash between the "pro- 
 vincials" of Massachusetts and "the ministerial 
 troops: for we do not, nor can we yet prevail 
 upon ourselves to call them the King's troops." 1 
 
 1 This continued until the proclamation of independence. By 
 letter of March 19, 1776, Washington notified the President of Con- 
 
 207
 
 208 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 The war was to be, in his eyes, a fratricidal 
 one: "Unhappy it is, though, to reflect that a 
 brother's sword has been sheathed in a brother's 
 breast, and that the once happy and peaceful 
 plains of America are either to be drenched 
 with blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alter- 
 native! But can a virtuous man hesitate in his 
 choice?" 
 
 Two weeks later the signer of this letter was 
 appointed, on the proposition of John Adams, of 
 Massachusetts, commander-in-chief of a new body 
 of troops just entering history, and called the 
 "Continental Army." l Braddock's former aide 
 was to become the leader of a yet unborn nation, 
 in an eight-year conflict with all-powerful Britain, 
 mistress of the coasts, mistress of the seas. 
 
 What that conflict was, and what the results 
 have been, all the world knows. There were sad 
 days and bright days; there were Valley Forge 
 and Saratoga. "No man, I believe," Washington 
 
 gress of the taking of Boston, and the retreat of the "ministerial 
 army." The flag of the "insurgents" was then the British flag with 
 thirteen white and red stripes, emblematic of the thirteen colonies. 
 1 An appointment accepted in a characteristically modest spirit, 
 as shown by his letter to his "dear Patsy," his wife, giving her the 
 news, and that to Colonel Bassett, where he says: "I can answer but 
 for three things, a firm belief in the justice of our cause, close atten- 
 tion in the prosecution of it, and the strictest integrity. If these 
 cannot supply the place of ability and experience, the cause will 
 suffer, and, more than probable, my character along with it, as 
 reputation derives its principal support from success." June 9, 
 I77S-
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 209 
 
 wrote concerning his own fate, "had a greater 
 choice of difficulties." 1 
 
 The French had ceased by then to inspire 
 Washington with disdain or animosity; he was 
 beginning to render them better justice, but his 
 heart was far as yet from being won. French 
 volunteers had early begun to flock to the Ameri- 
 can army, some of them as much an encumbrance 
 as a help. "They seem to be genteel, sensible 
 men," wrote Washington to Congress, in October, 
 1776, "and I have no doubt of their making good 
 officers as soon as they can learn so much of our 
 language as to make themselves well understood." 
 One of them, the commander-in-chief learned, 
 was a young enthusiast who had left wife and 
 child to serve the American cause as a volunteer, 
 and without pay, like George Washington him- 
 self. He had crossed the ocean, escaping the 
 British cruisers, on a boat called La Victoire, he 
 being called Lafayette. One more encumbrance, 
 audibly muttered the general, who wrote to Ben- 
 jamin Harrison: "What the designs of Congress 
 respecting this gentleman were, and what line of 
 conduct I am to pursue to comply with their 
 design and his expectation, I know no more than 
 the child unborn, and beg to be instructed." 2 
 
 "Give me a chance," pleaded Lafayette, still 
 
 1 To his brother, John, December 18, 1776. 
 * August 19, 1777.
 
 210 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 in Philadelphia ; " I do not want to be an honorary 
 soldier." He came to camp, and it was a case 
 of friendship at first, or at least second, sight, 
 which would need the pen of a Plutarch to be told. 
 In August, Washington had been wondering what 
 to do with the newcomer. On the ist of Novem- 
 ber he wrote to Congress: "... Besides, he is 
 sensible, discreet in his manner, has made great 
 proficiency in our language, and from the dis- 
 position he discovered in the battle of Brandy- 
 wine possesses a large share of bravery and' 
 military ardor." 
 
 Then it was that Washington had a chance to 
 learn what those men really were who had lodged 
 so many bullets in his coat on the occasion of 
 Braddock's defeat; not at once, but by degrees 
 he came to consider that one peculiar trait in 
 those former enemies made them worthy of his 
 friendship: their aptitude for disinterested en- 
 thusiasm for a cherished idea. 
 
 Not at once; early prejudices and associations 
 had left on him too deep an imprint to be easily 
 removed. He resisted longer than old Franklin, 
 and with a stiffer pen than that of the Philadelphia 
 sage he would note down his persisting suspicions 
 and his reluctance to admit the possibility of 
 generous motives inspiring the French nation's 
 policy. "I have from the first," he wrote, in 1777, 
 to his brother, John, "been among those few
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 211 
 
 who never built much upon a French war. I 
 never did and still do think they never meant 
 more than to give us a kind of underhand assis- 
 tance; that is, to supply us with arms, etc., for our 
 money and trade. This may, indeed, if Great 
 Britain has spirit and strength to resent it, bring 
 on a war; but the declaration of it on either 
 side must, I am convinced, come from the last- 
 mentioned Power." It was not, however, to be so. 
 
 Even after France alone had recognized the 
 new nation, and she had actually begun war on 
 England, Washington remained unbending, his 
 heart would not melt. "Hatred of England," 
 he wrote, "may carry some into an excess of con- 
 fidence in France. ... I am heartily disposed 
 to entertain the most favorable sentiments of our 
 new ally, and to cherish them in others to a reason- 
 able degree. But it is a maxim founded on the 
 universal experience of mankind that no nation 
 is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its 
 interest, and no prudent statesman or politician 
 will venture to depart from it." 1 
 
 After the Declaration of Independence, envoys 
 had been sent to Europe intrusted with the mis- 
 sion of securing the alliance, not especially of 
 France, but of all nations who might be touched 
 by the fate of the struggling colonists and inclined 
 to help them in their fight for liberty. Some of the 
 
 1 November 14, 1778.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 envoys were not even admitted to the capitals of 
 the countries assigned to their efforts; others re- 
 ceived only good words. 
 
 Sent to Prussia, Arthur Lee, who had been 
 previously refused admittance to Madrid, could 
 reach the capital (June 4, 1777), but not the 
 King. "There is no name," Lee wrote appeal- 
 ingly to the monarch, ' ' so highly respected among 
 us as that of your Majesty. Hence there is no 
 King the declaration of whose friendship would 
 inspire our own people with so much courage." 
 But the King would not be persuaded; he re- 
 fused all help in "artillery, arms, and money," 
 though, Lee wrote to the committee of foreign 
 affairs, "I was well informed he had a consider- 
 able sum in his treasury." Frederick would not 
 relent, giving as a reason that, if he agreed, the 
 result would be much "inconvenience" for him- 
 self. He even refused to receive Lee, whom he, 
 however, allowed to see his army: a mechanism 
 without peer, the American envoy wrote to Wash- 
 ington, but only a mechanism: 
 
 "The Prussian army, which amounts to 220,000 
 horse and foot, are disciplined by force of hourly 
 exercise and caning to move with a rapidity and 
 order so as to certainly exceed any troops in 
 Europe." They practise each day: "Every man 
 is filed off singly, and passes in review before 
 different officers, who beat his limbs into the posi-
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 213 
 
 tion they think proper, so that the man appears 
 to be purely a machine in the hand of a work- 
 man." 1 
 
 The furthest Frederick consented to go was to 
 cause Lee to be assured, when he left Prussia the 
 following month (July, 1777), that he would al- 
 ways receive with pleasure the news of any Eng- 
 lish reverse. 
 
 To the American appeal France alone answered, 
 Adsum: for what motives, has been shown above, 2 
 love of liberty rather than hatred of England 
 being the chief reason, and the rebellious colonies 
 being popular in France not so much because they 
 wanted to throw off an English yoke as because 
 they wanted to throw off a yoke. 
 
 Up to the time when Rochambeau arrived 
 Washington had seen during the war more or less 
 numerous specimens of the French race, but only 
 isolated specimens. He had heard of what they 
 were doing as soldiers and sailors, without him- 
 self seeing them in action. As gentlemen and 
 
 1 To Washington, June 15, 1777. Same impression later (1785) 
 on Lafayette, who saw the Prussian grand manoeuvres, and sent 
 an account of them to Washington: "The Prussian army is a per- 
 fectly regular piece of machinery. . . . All the situations which 
 may be imagined in war, all the movements which they may cause, 
 have been by constant habit so well inculcated in their heads that 
 all those operations are performed almost mechanically." February 
 8, 1786. Memoires, correspondance et manuscrits du General La- 
 fayette, Bruxelles, 1838, I, 204. 
 
 2 Pp. 10 ff.
 
 214 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 soldiers he held them, at that date, to be fit rep- 
 resentatives of a nation "old in war, very strict 
 in military etiquette, and apt to take fire where 
 others scarcely seem warmed." 1 He noticed, 
 however, after Savannah, that with all that 
 warmth they could, when put to the test, prove 
 steady, level-headed, and careful of their words: 
 "While," he said to General Lincoln, "I regret 
 the misfortune, I feel a very sensible pleasure in 
 contemplating the gallant behavior of the offi- 
 cers and men of the French and American army; 
 and it adds not a little to my consolation to 
 learn that, instead of the mutual reproaches which 
 often follow the failure of enterprises depending 
 upon the co-operation of troops of different na- 
 tions, their confidence in and esteem of each 
 other is increased." 2 
 
 Concerning the French as sailors Washington 
 did not conceal, however, to his intimate friends 
 his misgivings. He early felt that the issue of 
 the whole war and the independence of his coun- 
 try might depend on an at least momentary 
 domination of the sea, but felt great doubt as to 
 the possibility of this goal being reached. "In 
 all probability," he thought, "the advantage 
 will be on the side of the English. And then 
 what would become of America ? We ought not 
 
 1 To General Sullivan, September, 1778. 
 "December 12, 1779.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 215 
 
 to deceive ourselves. ... It is an axiom that 
 the nation which has the most extensive com- 
 merce will always have the most powerful marine. 
 ... It is true, France in a manner created a 
 fleet in a very short space, and this may mislead 
 us in the judgment we form of her naval abilities. 
 . . . We should consider what was done by 
 France as a violent and unnatural effort of the 
 government, which for want of sufficient founda- 
 tion cannot continue to operate proportionable 
 effects." Moreover, though "the ability of her 
 present financier (Necker) has done wonders," 
 France is not a rich country. 1 
 
 When Rochambeau came with his 5,000 troops, 
 on Ternay's fleet, which carried numerous naval 
 officers and sailors besides, Washington took, so 
 to say, personal contact with France herself, and 
 was no longer dependent upon his reading of 
 hostile books, his souvenirs of the colonial wars, 
 or his impression from acquaintanceship with sepa- 
 rate individuals. The portraits in the Spectator 
 could less and less be considered as portraits. 
 Washington found himself among men of steady 
 mind and courteous manners, noteworthy not 
 only for their fighting qualities, but their sense of 
 duty, their patience and endurance, their desire 
 to do well. As for the troops, they observed, as 
 is well known, so strict a discipline that the in- 
 
 To President Reed, May 28, 1780.
 
 216 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 habitants, wiio expected nothing of the sort, 
 rather the reverse, were astonished and delighted. 
 
 Little by little Washington's heart was won. 
 We did not, in that war, conquer any land for 
 ourselves, but we conquered Washington. For 
 some time more he remained only officially ours; 
 the praise bestowed by him on his allies and 
 their country found place in his letters to them- 
 selves, or in his reports to Congress, which were, 
 in fact, public documents. At last the day came 
 when, writing only for himself, in a journal 
 not meant to be seen by anybody, he inscribed 
 those three words: "our generous allies." That 
 day, May i, 1781, Washington's heart was really 
 won. 
 
 From that moment what Washington wrote 
 concerning the French, were it addressed to them- 
 selves or to Congress, can be taken at its face 
 value, and very pleasant reading it is to this 
 day for the compatriots of those officers and 
 soldiers who had the great man for their com- 
 mander-in-chief such statements as this one, 
 for example, sent to Congress seven days before 
 the Yorktown capitulation: "I cannot but ac- 
 knowledge the infinite obligations I am under to 
 his Excellency, the Count de Rochambeau, the 
 Marquis de Saint-Simon, commanding the troops 
 from the West Indies, the other general officers, 
 and indeed the officers of every denomination in
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH -217 
 
 the French army, for the assistance which they 
 afford me. The experience of many of those 
 gentlemen in the business before us is of the ut- 
 most advantage in the present operation. . . . 
 The greatest harmony prevails between the two 
 armies. They seem actuated by one spirit, that 
 of supporting the honor of the allied armies." l 
 When, in the course of the following year, the two 
 armies which have never met since, were about 
 to part, their leader thus summed up his impres- 
 sions: "It may, I believe, with much truth be 
 said that a greater harmony between two armies 
 never subsisted than that which has prevailed 
 between the French and Americans since the first 
 junction of them last year." a 
 
 By the beginning of 1783 peace and American 
 independence had been practically secured. Wash- 
 ington is found duly solemnizing the anniversary 
 of the French alliance which had rendered those 
 events possible. "I intended," he says to Gen- 
 eral Greene, "to have wrote you a long letter on 
 sundry matters, but Major Burnet popped in 
 unexpectedly at a time when I was preparing for 
 the celebration of the day, and was just going to 
 a review of the troops, previous to the/m d* /ow." 
 The orders issued by him on the occasion read 
 thus: "The commander-in-chief, who wishes on 
 
 1 "Before York," October it, 17*1. 
 1 To Lafayette, October Jo, 178*.
 
 218 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 the return of this auspicious day to diffuse the 
 feelings of gratitude and pleasure as extensively 
 as possible, is pleased to grant a full and free 
 pardon to all military prisoners now in confine- 
 ment." l 
 
 The orderly book used by Washington is still 
 in existence, and from it we learn that the parole 
 given for the day was "America and France," 
 and the countersigns, "United," "Forever." 
 
 February 6, 1783.
 
 Ill 
 
 No less characteristic of Washington's senti- 
 ments thereafter is the correspondence continued 
 by him with a number of French people when the 
 war was a thing of the past and no further help 
 could be needed. With Rochambeau, with d'Es- 
 taing, Chastellux, La Luzerne, then ambassador 
 in London, whom he had seen with keen regret 
 leave the United States, 1 and, of course, with 
 Lafayette, he kept up a correspondence which 
 affords most pleasant reading: a friend writes to 
 his friends and tells them of his feelings and ex- 
 pectations. The attitude of France at the peace 
 is the subject of a noble letter to La Luzerne: 
 "The part your Excellency has acted in the cause 
 of America and the great and benevolent share 
 you have taken in the establishment of her inde- 
 pendence are deeply impressed on my mind, and 
 will not be effaced from my remembrance, or that 
 
 1 Sending him a farewell letter in which he said: "You may rest 
 assured that your abilities and dispositions to serve this country 
 were so well understood, and your service so properly appreciated 
 that the residence of no public minister will ever be longer remembered 
 or his absence more sincerely regretted. It will not be forgotten 
 that you were a witness to the dangers, the sufferings, the exertions 
 and the successes of the United States from the most perilous crises 
 to the hour of triumph." February 7, 1788. 
 
 219
 
 220 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 of the citizens of America. . . . The articles of 
 the general treaty do not appear so favorable to 
 France, in point of territorial acquisitions, as 
 they do to the other Powers. 1 But the magnani- 
 mous and disinterested scale of action which that 
 great nation has exhibited to the world during 
 this war, and at the conclusion of peace, will 
 insure to the King and nation that reputation 
 which will be of more consequence to them than 
 every other consideration." 2 
 
 Washington keeps his French friends aware of 
 the progress of the country and of his hopes for 
 its greatness; he wants to visit the United States 
 to the limit of what was then the extreme West. 
 "Prompted by these actual observations," he 
 writes to Chastellux, "I could not help taking a 
 more contemplative and extensive view of the 
 vast inland navigation of these United States 
 from maps and the information of others, and 
 could not but be struck with the immense diffusion 
 and importance of it, and with the goodness of 
 that Providence which has dealt her favors to us 
 with so profuse a hand. Would to God we may 
 have wisdom enough to improve them. I shall 
 not rest contented till I have explored the Western 
 
 1 They merely sanctioned some territorial exchanges and restitu- 
 tions on both sides in the colonies, and stipulated that the British 
 agent in Dunkirk, who had been expelled at the beginning of the war, 
 would not return. 
 
 2 March 29, 1783.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 221 
 
 country and traversed those lines, or great part 
 of them, which have given new bounds to a new 
 empire." * To La Luzerne he wrote some years 
 later: "The United States are making great prog- 
 ress toward national happiness, and if it is not 
 attained here in as high a degree as human nature 
 will admit of, I think we may then conclude that 
 political happiness is unattainable." 2 
 
 That rest for which Washington had been long- 
 ing ("I pant for retirement," he had written to 
 Gary in June, 1782) had been granted him by 
 the end of 1783, when, the definitive treaty having 
 been concluded, he had resigned his commission 
 in the hands of Congress, at Annapolis on the 
 23d of December, "bidding an affectionate fare- 
 well," he said, "to this august body under whose 
 orders I have so long acted." It was at first 
 difficult for him to enjoy, in his dear Mount Ver- 
 non, that so-much-desired quiet life, and "to get 
 the better," he wrote to General Knox, "of my 
 custom of ruminating as soon as I waked in the 
 morning on the business of the ensuing day, and 
 of my surprise at finding, after revolving many 
 things in my mind, that I was no longer a public 
 man, nor had anything to do with public transac- 
 tions." But he soon came to the thorough en- 
 
 1 Princeton, October 12, 1783. He started for that journey the 
 following autumn. 
 
 2 September 10, 1791.
 
 222 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 joyment of his peaceful surroundings and happy 
 family life, writing about his new existence to 
 Rochambeau and Lafayette, not without a tinge 
 of melancholy, as from one whose life's work is 
 a thing of the past. To the man of all men for 
 whom his manly heart felt most tenderness, to 
 Lafayette, it is that he wrote the beautiful 
 letter of February i, 1784, unaware that his rest 
 was only temporary, and that he was to become 
 the first President of the country he had given 
 life to: 
 
 "At length, my dear marquis, I am become a 
 private citizen on the banks of the Potomac, and 
 under the shadow of my own vine and my own 
 fig-tree, free from the bustle of a camp and the 
 busy scenes of public life, I am solacing myself 
 with those tranquil enjoyments of which the sol- 
 dier who is ever in pursuit of fame, the statesman 
 whose watchful days and sleepless nights are 
 spent in devising schemes to promote the welfare 
 of his own, perhaps the ruin of other countries, 
 as if the globe was insufficient for us all ... can 
 have very little conception. I have not only re- 
 tired from all public employments, but I am re- 
 tiring within myself, and shall be able to view 
 the solitary walk of private life with heartfelt 
 satisfaction. Envious of none, I am determined 
 to be pleased with all; and this, my dear friend, 
 being the order for my march, I will move gently
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 223 
 
 down the stream of life until I sleep with my 
 fathers." 
 
 With Lafayette the great man unbends, he 
 becomes affectionate, poetical as in the passage 
 just quoted, sometimes even jocose, which was 
 so rare with him. He wants Madame de La- 
 fayette to come to America and visit Mount 
 Vernon, saying to her: "Your own doors do not 
 open to you with more readiness than mine 
 would." l She never came, but her husband re- 
 turned for a few months, the same year, and this 
 was the first of his two triumphant journeys to 
 the freed United States; it was then that he 
 parted at Annapolis from his chief, never to see 
 him again; a very sad parting for both, Washing- 
 ton sending him from Mount Vernon, in time for 
 it to reach him before he sailed, the most touching, 
 perhaps, of all his letters : 
 
 "In the moment of our separation, upon the 
 road as I travelled, and every hour since, I have 
 felt all that love, respect, and attachment for you 
 which length of years, close connection, and your 
 merits have inspired me. I often asked myself, 
 when our carriages separated, whether that was 
 the last sight I should ever have of you. And 
 though I wished to say, no, my fears answered, 
 yes. I called to mind the days of my youth and 
 found they had long since fled, to return no more ; 
 
 1 Mount Vernon, April 4, 1784.
 
 224 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 that I was now descending the hill I had been 
 fifty- two years climbing, and that, though I was 
 blessed with a good constitution, I was of a short- 
 lived family and might soon expect to be entombed 
 in the mansion of my fathers. These thoughts 
 darkened the shades and gave a gloom to the pic- 
 ture, and consequently to my prospect of seeing 
 you again. But I will not repine; I have had 
 my day." 1 
 
 A portrait of Lafayette, his wife, and children 
 was received the following year by Washington, 
 and caused him great pleasure; this, he said to 
 the sender, "I consider as an invaluable present 
 and shall give it the best place in my house." 2 
 
 He continued to the end to be Lafayette's con- 
 fidant and adviser. In one of his most notable 
 letters, passing judgment on the great warrior 
 Frederick II and on his brother, Prince Henry, 
 whom Lafayette had recently visited, he clearly 
 outlined what should be his correspondent's ideal 
 as to the government of men. "To be received," 
 he says, "by the King of Prussia and Prince 
 Henry, his brother (who as soldiers and politicians 
 yield the palm to none), with such marks of 
 attention and distinction, was as indicative of 
 their discernment as it is of your merit. ... It 
 is to be lamented, however, that great characters 
 
 1 December 8, 1784. Bayard Tuckerman, Lafayette, 1889, I, 165. 
 *July 25, 1785.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 225 
 
 are seldom without a blot. That one man should 
 tyrannize over millions will always be a shade in 
 that of the former, while it is pleasing to hear 
 that due regards to the rights of mankind is char- 
 acteristic of the latter." 
 
 During those years of comparative rest only 
 comparative, for he had to receive innumerable 
 visitors, to answer an unbelievable quantity of 
 letters, because everybody wanted his counsels, 
 to take part in the framing of the Constitution 
 as a delegate of Virginia in 1787 his fame went 
 on increasing in France from whence tokens of 
 admiration came for him of every kind, some noble, 
 some simple, some high-flown, like that letter 
 from the Chevalier de Lormerie, who made bold 
 to "present a Plan of Perpetual Peace to a general 
 who is even more of a philosopher than a warrior." 1 
 
 Besides letters, French visitors would now and 
 then appear at the door of Mount Vernon. One 
 did so by appointment, and even in virtue of a 
 law, namely Jean Antoine Houdon, the famous 
 sculptor, whose coming was the result of an act 
 passed by the Assembly of Virginia, prescribing 
 ' ' that the executive be requested to take measures 
 for procuring a statue of General Washington, to 
 
 1 " Excellence, Vos vertus civiles et vos talents militaires ont donn6 
 a votre patrie la Iibert6 et le bonheur; mais leur influence sur celui 
 du globe en tier est encore preferable jl mes yeux. C'est a ce grand 
 but que tend tout homme qui se sent digne d'arriver a I'immortalit6," 
 etc. May 28, 1 789. Papers of the Continental Congress, LXXVIII, 
 759, Library of Congress.
 
 226 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 be of the finest marble and the best workman- 
 ship." 
 
 The sculptor might be of any nationality, pro- 
 vided he were the best alive. "The intention of 
 the Assembly," the Governor informed Jefferson, 
 then in Paris, "is that the statue should be the 
 work of the most masterly hand. I shall therefore 
 leave it to you to find out the best in any of the 
 European states." 1 Once more it was France's 
 good fortune to be able to answer, Adsum. 
 
 The "executive," Governor Harrison, not over- 
 well versed in matters artistic, had thought that 
 all a sculptor could need to perform his task was 
 a painted portrait of the model, so he ordered one 
 from Peale, which would, he thought, enable the 
 artist "to finish his work in the most perfect 
 manner." 2 Houdon decided that he would rather 
 undertake the journey, insisting only that, as he 
 was the support of his father, mother, and sisters, 
 his life be insured, a condition which, owing to 
 the risks, was not fulfilled without difficulty. It 
 finally was, however, so that we know, to a cent, 
 what the life of the great sculptor was worth: it 
 was worth two thousand dollars. 
 
 Houdon came on the same ship which brought 
 
 J June 22, 1784. Jean Antoine Houdon, by C. H. Hart and Ed. 
 Biddle, Philadelphia, 1911, p. 182. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 189. Peale's full-length portrait, with "a perspective 
 view of York and Gloucester, and the surrender of the British army," 
 price thirty guineas, reached Paris in. April, 1785, and has since 
 disappeared.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 227 
 
 back Franklin after his long mission to France, 
 and he reached Mount Vernon on October 2, 
 1785, having been preceded by a letter, in which 
 Jefferson had thus described him to Washington: 
 "I have spoken of him as an artist only, but I 
 can assure you also that, as a man, he is disin- 
 terested, generous, candid, and panting for glory; 
 in every circumstance meriting your good opin- 
 ion. ' ' l He remained at Mount Vernon a fortnight, 
 an interpreter having been provided from Alex- 
 andria for the occasion. The antique costume 
 with which the artist and the model had been 
 threatened at one time was discarded; Wash- 
 ington was represented, not as a Greek, which he 
 was not, but as an American general, which he 
 was, the size being "precisely that of life." Any 
 one who wants to see with his eyes George Wash- 
 ington, to live in his atmosphere, to receive the 
 moral benefit of a great man's presence, has only 
 to go to Richmond. To those who know how to 
 listen the statue will know how to speak. No 
 work of art in the whole United States is of 
 greater worth and interest than this one, and no 
 copy gives an adequate idea of the original, copies 
 being further from the statue than the statue was 
 from the model. One must go to Richmond. 
 
 Unfortunately, no notes on his journey, and on 
 his stay at Mount Vernon, were left by Houdon. 
 
 'July 10, 1785. Ibid., p. 191.
 
 228 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 As was usual with him, what he had to say he 
 said in marble. 
 
 Other French visitors of more or less note called 
 at Mount Vernon. Popular in France, even at 
 the time of their worst troubles, when failure 
 seemed threatening, the United States were much 
 more so now, and men wanted to go and see with 
 their own eyes what was the power of liberty, and 
 whether it could, as reported, transform a coun- 
 try into an Eden, and cities into modern "Sa- 
 lentes." The year of the alliance, 1778, Sebas- 
 tien Mercier, in his De la Litterature, had drawn 
 up a picture of the French people's expectation: 
 "Perhaps it is in America that the human race 
 will transform itself, adopt a new and sublime 
 religion, improve sciences and arts, and become 
 the representative of the nations of antiquity. 
 A haven of liberty, Grecian souls, all strong and 
 generous souls will develop or meet there, and this 
 great example given to the universe will show 
 what men can do when they are of one mind and 
 combine their lights and their courage." Tur- 
 got, as mentioned before, had written in the same 
 strain, the same year. 1 
 
 The results of the war had increased those 
 hopes; the success of the unprecedented crusade 
 for liberty caused an enthusiasm which found its 
 expression in verse and prose. The very year of 
 
 1 Above, p. 12.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 229 
 
 the treaty securing independence an epic poem 
 was published, written in French Alexandrine 
 verse, divided into cantos, adorned with all the 
 machinery of the Greek models, Jupiter and the 
 gods playing their part: 
 
 Ainsi park des Dieux le monarque supreme 
 with invocations to abstract virtues: 
 
 Fille aimable des Dieux, divine Tolerance. 
 
 Preceding by several years Joel Barlow's own, 
 this epic, due to the pen of L. de Chavannes de 
 La Grandiere, appeared with ample annotations 
 by the author himself, and dedicated to John 
 Adams, under the title of UAmerique Delivree. 1 
 
 The new Tasso, who justly foresaw the immense 
 influence that the change in America would have 
 on Europe, addressed, in tones of the most ardent 
 admiration, Washington and Congress: 
 
 Illustre Washington, heros dont la memoire 
 
 Des deux mondes venges embellira 1'histoire; 
 
 Toi que la main des Dieux, en nos siecles pervers, 
 
 Envoya consoler, etonner 1'univers 
 
 Par le rare assemblage et 1'union constante 
 
 D'un cceur pur et sans fard, d'une ame bienfaisante, 
 
 Aux talents de Turenne, aux vertus des Catons, 
 
 Et qui te vois plus grand que les deux Scipions, 
 
 Jouis de ton triomphe, admire ton ouvrage. 
 
 1 Amsterdam, 1783. The author is strongly anti-English and is 
 indignant at the "guilty Anglomania" still existing in France.
 
 230 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 Congress is a Greek Areopagus, whose members 
 have Themis and Minerva for their advisers: 
 
 Auguste Areopage, ou Minerve elle-meme 
 
 Prononce avec Themis par 1'organe supreme 
 
 De tant de Senateurs, ornements des Etats, 
 
 Une foule d'arrets ou tous les potentats 
 
 Du droit des nations devraient venir apprendre 
 
 Les principes sacres, et jusqu'ou peut s'etendre 
 
 Le sceptre qu'en leurs mains les peuples ont commis, 
 
 you have cast on us "a torrent of light and 
 shown us how to break the detestable bonds of 
 tyrants." A prophetical foot-note, commenting 
 on this passage, announces that "this will per- 
 haps, be seen sooner than one thinks. Happy 
 the sovereigns who will know how to be nothing 
 but just, pacific, and benevolent." Six years 
 later the French Revolution began. 
 
 Using humble prose, but reaching a much wider 
 public, Lacretelle, of the same group of thinkers 
 as d'Alembert, Condorcet, and Turgot, himself 
 later a member of the French Academy, was also 
 writing in a strain of exultant admiration : ' ' Since 
 Columbus's discovery, nothing more important 
 has happened among mankind than American in- 
 dependence" ; and addressing the new-born United 
 States, he told them of the world's expectation 
 and of their own responsibilities, so much depend- 
 ing on their success or failure: "New-born Re-
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 231 
 
 publics of America, I salute you as the hope of 
 mankind, to which you open a refuge, and promise 
 great and happy examples. Grow in force and 
 numbers, amid our benedictions. . . . 
 
 "In adopting a democratic regime, you pledge 
 yourself to steadfast and pure morality. . . . 
 But you do not give up those comforts in life, 
 that splendor of society brought with them by 
 riches, sciences, and arts. . . . The vicinity of 
 corruption will not alter your morals; you will 
 allow the vicinity, not the invasion. While per- 
 mitting wealth to have its free play, you will see 
 that exorbitant fortunes be dispersed, and you 
 will correct the great inequality in enjoyments 
 by the strictest equality in rights. . . . 
 
 "Lawmaking peoples, never lose sight of the 
 majesty of your function and of the importance 
 of your task. Be nobly proud and holily enthusi- 
 astic at the prospect of your destinies' vast influ- 
 ence. By you the universe is held in expectation; 
 fifty years from now it will have learned from you 
 whether modern peoples can preserve republican 
 constitutions, whether morals are compatible with 
 the great progress of civilization, and whether 
 America is meant to improve or to aggravate the 
 fate of humanity." 1 
 
 1 In the Mercure de France, 1785, prefacing a review of Cre'vecceur's 
 Letters from an American Farmer, and reproduced at the beginning of 
 the French edition of the Letters, 1787.
 
 232 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 This sense of the responsibility of the new re- 
 public toward mankind of the future, and of the 
 importance for all nations of its success or failure 
 caused French thinkers to concern themselves 
 with the problem, to express faith and admira- 
 tion, but to submit also such recommendations 
 as their studies of humanity's past made them 
 consider of use. The Observations on the Govern- 
 ment and the Laws of the United States, of modest, 
 liberal, and noble-minded Abbe de Mably, are, 
 for example, the outcome of such reflections. 1 
 
 The visitor most representative of the views 
 thus prevalent in the French nation, knocked at 
 the gate of Mount Vernon, provided with that 
 infallible open sesame, 2 a letter of introduction 
 from Lafayette. "This gentleman," the letter 
 read, "intends to write a history of America, and 
 you would, therefore, make him very happy if 
 
 1 Observations sur le gouvernement el les loix des Etats Unis d'Ameri- 
 que, Amsterdam, 1784, i2mo; in the form of letters to John Adams. 
 The Constitutions under discussion are those of the original States. 
 "Tandis," says Mably, "que presque toutes les nations de 1'Europe 
 ignorent les principes constitutifs de la societe et ne regardent les 
 citoyens que comme les bestiaux d'une ferme qu'on gouverne pour 
 1'avantage particulier du proprietaire, on est etonn6, on est 6difie 
 que vos treize R6publiques ayent connu a la fois la dignite de 1'homme 
 et soient alle puiser dans les sources de la plus sage philosophic les 
 principes humains par lesquels elles veulent se gouverner." (P. 2.) 
 
 2 Wanting, on his return to America, to make Washington's ac- 
 quaintance, Franklin's own grandson called similarly provided. 
 Lafayette to Washington, warmly praising the young man, July 14, 
 1785. Memoires, correspondance et manuscrits du Central Lafayette, 
 publics par sa Fatnille, Brussels, 1837, I, 201.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 233 
 
 you allowed him to glance at your papers. He 
 seems to deserve this favor, since he loves America 
 very much, writes well, and will represent things 
 under their true light." l 
 
 The bearer, a sincere admirer and friend of 
 the new republic, and who had the advantage of 
 speaking English fluently, was Brissot, so famous 
 shortly after for the part he played in the French 
 Revolution, then already penetrated with its prin- 
 ciples, and having written, young as he was, on 
 the reform of criminal laws, declared in favor 
 of the emancipation of the Jews, founded a 
 "Society of the Friends of the Blacks " and, what 
 is more to the point, a Societe Gallo-Americaine, 
 first of its kind, for the members thereof to "ex- 
 change views on the common interests of France 
 and the United States." To become a member 
 one had to prove "able and willing to bring to the 
 notice of the others universal ideas on the happi- 
 ness of man and societies, because, though its 
 special and titular object be the interest of France 
 and the United States, nevertheless, it fully em- 
 braces in its considerations the happiness of man- 
 kind." 2 In which appears the vastness of hu- 
 manitarian plans so fondly cherished among us 
 six years before the Reign of Terror. 
 
 1 May 25, 1788. J. P. Brissot, Carres pondance et Papiers, ed. 
 Perroud, Paris, 1912, p. 192. 
 1 1787. Text of the reports of the sittings. Ibid., pp. 105 ff.
 
 234 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 The "particular object" of the association was, 
 however, to "help the two countries to better 
 know each other, which can only be realized by 
 bringing nearer together the French individual 
 and the American individual." Books were to 
 be published by the society, the first one to be 
 dedicated "to the Congress of the United States 
 and the friends of America in the two worlds." 
 Newspapers, books, the texts of laws, the journals 
 of Congress were to be imported from "free 
 America." The society would "welcome Amer- 
 icans whom their business should call to France, 
 and whose knowledge would enable them to im- 
 part useful information there"; nothing more 
 natural, since the aim of the society was "the 
 welfare of the two nations." Lafayette and Jef- 
 ferson had been asked to join. One of the found- 
 ers was Saint-Jean de Crevecceur, already known 
 by his Letters from an American Farmer, who 
 when he left France to return to the United 
 States was intrusted with the care of "making 
 the society known to the Americans, availing 
 himself of newspapers, or of other means; his 
 expenses, if any, to be repaid." 1 But the farmer- 
 consul, very active in other matters, proved in 
 this one very remiss. 
 
 Brissot reached Boston in July, 1788, and 
 found that America was exactly what he had ex- 
 
 1 Ibid., pp. 114, 116, 126, 127, 136.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 235 
 
 pected it to be: "Sanctuary of liberty," he wrote 
 on landing, ' ' I salute thee ! . . . Would to heaven 
 thou wert nearer Europe; fewer friends of liberty 
 would vainly bewail its absence there." The in- 
 habitants, he wrote, "have an air of simplicity 
 and kindness, but they are full of human dignity, 
 conscious of their liberty, and seeing in all men 
 their brothers and equals. ... I thought I was 
 in that Salente, so attractively depicted by 
 Fenelon." 
 
 Equality is what strikes him most, as it does the 
 mass of his compatriots; this was the particularly 
 American trait which, as mentioned before, was 
 imported from the United States into France on 
 the eve of our Revolution. 
 
 Luxury, the visitor admits, is, of course, a 
 danger; but they know it and arm against it: 
 "The most respectable inhabitants of the State 
 of Massachusetts have formed a society to pre- 
 vent the increase of luxury" an attempt which, 
 however, never succeeded, but at Salente. 
 
 After having seen the chief cities and paid a 
 visit to Franklin, found very ill but with his 
 great mind unimpaired, Brissot reached Mount 
 Vernon in November, and remained there three 
 days. Different from Houdon, he luckily took 
 notes on the place and on the inhabitants thereof: 
 "The general arrived only in the evening; he re- 
 turned very tired from a tour over part of his
 
 236 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 domains where he was having a road traced. 
 You have often heard him compared to Cin- 
 cinnatus; the comparison is a just one. This 
 celebrated general is now but a good farmer, ever 
 busy with his farm, as he calls it, improving cul- 
 tivation and building barns. He showed me one 
 of enormous dimensions, just being erected from 
 a plan sent him by the famous English agricul- 
 turist Arthur Young, but greatly improved by 
 him. . . . 
 
 "All is simple in the house of the general. His 
 table is good, without luxury ; regularity is every- 
 where apparent in his domestic economy. Mrs. 
 Washington has her eye on everything, and joins 
 to the qualities of an excellent housekeeper the 
 simple dignity which befits a woman whose hus- 
 band has played a great role. She adds to it 
 that amenity, those attentions toward strangers 
 which lend so much sweetness to hospitality. 
 The same virtues shine in her niece, so interest- 
 ing, but who, unluckily, seems to be in a very 
 delicate state of health." 
 
 As for the general himself, "kindness appears 
 in his looks. His eyes have no longer that lustre 
 which his officers noticed when he was at the head 
 of his army, but they get enlivened in conversa- 
 tion. . . . Good sense is the dominant trait in 
 in all his answers, great discretion and diffidence 
 of himself goes with it, and at the same time a
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 237 
 
 firm and unshakable disposition when he has once 
 made up his mind." 
 
 His modesty is great : ' ' He talks of the American 
 war as if he had not been the leader thereof, and 
 of his victories with an indifference which strangers 
 could not equal. . . . The divisions in his coun- 
 try break his heart ; he feels the necessity of call- 
 ing together all the friends of liberty around one 
 central point, the need of imparting energy to 
 the government. He is still ready to give up 
 that quiet which causes his happiness. . . . He 
 spoke to me of Mr. de Lafayette with emotion; 
 he considers him as his child." 
 
 Not only on agriculture and government, but 
 also on manners the future President gave his 
 visitor much information: "The general told me 
 that a great reform was going on among his com- 
 patriots ; people drank much less ; they no longer 
 forced their guests to drink; it had ceased to be 
 good form to send them home inebriated; those 
 noisy parties at taverns so frequent in former 
 times were not to be the fashion any more; dress 
 was becoming simpler." 
 
 On receiving news of the convocation of the 
 French States General, Brissot, who felt that this 
 was the beginning of immense changes, hastened 
 back to France and published an account of his 
 journey. He stated in his preface, written in 
 1790, why he had undertaken it, and what lessons
 
 238 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 we might learn from our neighbors of over the 
 sea: 
 
 "The object of this journey has not been to 
 study antique statues, or to find unknown plants, 
 but to observe men who had just conquered their 
 liberty : to Frenchmen free men can no longer be 
 strangers. 
 
 "We, too, have conquered our liberty. We have 
 not to learn from Americans how to conquer it, 
 but how to preserve it. This secret consists 
 especially in morality. . . . What is liberty ? It 
 is the most perfect state of society, a state in 
 which man depends only upon the laws made by 
 himself i 1 and to make good ones, he must improve 
 his reason; and to apply them he must again 
 have recourse to his reason. . . . Morals are but 
 reason applied to all the acts of life. . . . They 
 are among free men what irons, whipping-posts, 
 and gibbets are among peoples in slavery. . . . 
 This journey will show you the wondrous effects 
 of liberty on morals, on industry, and on the ameli- 
 oration of men. . . . My desire has been to de- 
 pict to my compatriots a people with whom it 
 behooves, from every point of view, that they be- 
 come intimately united." 2 
 
 1 "Under that name of liberty the Romans, as well as the Greeks, 
 pictured to themselves a state where no one was subject save to the 
 law, and where law was more powerful than men." (Bossuet.) 
 
 2 Nouveau Voyage dans les Etats Unis de VAmtriqiie Septentri- 
 onale, Paris, 3 vols., April, 1791, but begun to be printed, as shown
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 239 
 
 by a note to the preface, in the spring of 1790. The work greatly 
 helped to make America better and very favorably known in Europe, 
 for it was translated into English, German, and Dutch. While 
 Brissot was returning to France (January, 1789), his brother-in-law, 
 Francois Dupont, was sailing for the United States, to settle there 
 among free men and, scarcely landed, was writing to a Swiss friend 
 of his, Jeanneret, who lived in Berlin, of his delight at having left 
 "a small continent like that of Europe, partitioned among a quan- 
 tity of petty sovereigns bent upon capturing each other's posses- 
 sions, causing their subjects to slaughter one another, in ceaseless 
 mutual fear, busy tightening their peoples' chains and impoverishing 
 them and I am now on a continent which reaches from pole to 
 pole, with every kind of climate and of productions, among an in- 
 dependent nation which is now devising for itself, in the midst of 
 peace, the wisest of governments. We are not governed here by 
 a foolish or despotic sovereign. . . . Farmers, craftsmen, merchants, 
 and manufacturers are encouraged and honored; they are the true 
 nobles. . . . Between the man who sells his labor and the one 
 who buys it the agreement is between equals. The French are, 
 however, very popular in this country." Brissot, Correspondance, 
 ed. Perroud, pp. 218, 219.
 
 IV 
 
 During the early stages of the French Revolu- 
 tion, Washington had followed with the keenest 
 sympathy and anxiety the efforts of our ances- 
 tors, taking pride in the thought that the Ameri- 
 can example had something to do, as it un- 
 doubtedly had, with what was happening. "The 
 young French nobility enrolled for the cause of 
 [American] independence," wrote Talleyrand in his 
 memoirs, "attached itself afterward to the prin- 
 ciples it had gone to fight for." Pontgibaud, who 
 remained a royalist, who hated the Revolution and 
 became an emigre, observes the same fact, although 
 deploring what occurred: "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 philanthrophy 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 Revo- 
 lution, without being its unique cause people 
 will agree that all those red-heeled young philos- 
 ophers had much better, for their sake and ours, 
 have stayed at court. . . . Each of them fan- 
 
 240
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 241 
 
 cied he would be called upon to play the part of 
 Washington." Asked to join Lafayette and 
 "his former brothers-in-arms of beyond the sea," 
 he refused: "It has been justly said that in a 
 revolution the difficulty lies not in doing one's 
 duty, but in knowing where it is. I did mine 
 because I knew where it was," and he joined the 
 princes and emigrated. 1 
 
 Of this American influence Washington was 
 aware, and spoke, as may be surmised, in terms 
 nearer those of Talleyrand than those of Pont- 
 gibaud. "I am glad to hear," he wrote to Jeffer- 
 son, "that the Assemblee des Notables has been 
 productive of good in France. . . . Indeed the 
 rights of mankind, the privileges of the people, 
 and the true principles of liberty seem to have been 
 more generally discussed and better understood 
 throughout Europe since the American Revolution 
 than they were at any former period." 2 
 
 Few of Washington's observations are a greater 
 credit to him, as a statesman, than those con- 
 cerning this extraordinary upheaval. From the 
 first he felt that the change would not prove a 
 merely local one, but would have world- wide con- 
 sequences; that, in fact, a new era was beginning 
 for mankind. "A spirit for political improve- 
 
 1 Memoires du [Chevalier de Pontgibaud] Comte de Mori, 1827, 
 pp. 105, 132. Writing at that date, Lafayette's former companion 
 thought that monarchy had been re-established in France forever. 
 
 'January i, 1788.
 
 242 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 ments seems to be rapidly and extensively spread- 
 ing through the European countries," he wrote 
 to La Luzerne. "I shall rejoice in seeing the 
 condition of the human race happier than ever 
 it has been." But let the people at the helm be 
 careful not to make "more haste than good speed 
 in their innovations." 1 
 
 No less clearly did he foresee, long before the 
 event, and when all was hope and rejoicing, that 
 it was almost impossible to count upon a peace- 
 ful, gradual, and bloodless development where so 
 many long-established, hatred-sowing abuses had 
 to be corrected. This, however, was what, as a 
 friend of France, he would have liked to see, and 
 even before the Revolution had really started he 
 had expressed to Lafayette, in striking words, his 
 wish that it might prove a "tacit" one: "If I 
 were to advise, I should say that great modera- 
 tion should be used on both sides. . . . Such a 
 spirit seems to be awakened in the kingdom as, if 
 managed with extreme prudence, may produce a 
 gradual and tacit revolution, much in favor of the 
 subjects." 2 
 
 The movement is started, the Bastile falls, and 
 Lafayette sends the key thereof to his former 
 chief. "It is a tribute," he wrote, "which I owe 
 as a son to my adopted father, as an aide-de- 
 camp to my general, as a missionary of liberty to 
 
 'New York, April 29, 1790. 2 June 18. 1788.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 243 
 
 its patriarch." Washington placed the key at 
 Mount Vernon, where it is still, and returned 
 thanks for this ' ' token of victory gained by liberty 
 over despotism." * 
 
 The beginnings were promising. The great 
 leader was full of admiration, of awe, of appre- 
 hension. To Gouverneur Morris, then American 
 minister to France, President Washington, as he 
 now was, wrote on the i3th of October, 1789, in 
 these prophetic terms: "The Revolution which 
 has been effected in France is of so wonderful a 
 nature that the mind can hardly realize the fact. 
 If it ends as our last accounts to the ist of 
 August predict, that nation will be the most 
 powerful and happy in Europe ; but I fear, though 
 it has gone triumphantly through the first par- 
 oxysm, it is not the last it has to encounter be- 
 fore matters are finally settled. In a word, the 
 Revolution is of too great a magnitude to be 
 effected in so short a space, and with the loss of 
 so little blood. The mortification of the King, 
 the intrigues of the Queen, and the discontent of 
 the princes and the noblesse will foment divi- 
 sions, if possible, in the National Assembly." 
 The "licentiousness of the people" is not less to 
 be feared. "To forbear running from one ex- 
 
 1 March 17, 1790; August n, 1790. The key is the one which gave 
 access to the main entrance; those at the Carnavalet Museum in 
 Paris opened the several towers.
 
 244 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 treme to the other is no easy matter; and should 
 this be the case, rocks and shoals, not visible at 
 present, may wreck the vessel." 1 
 
 The grandeur and importance of the change 
 fills him, in the meanwhile, with wonder. In his 
 before-quoted letter of April 29, 1790, to La 
 Luzerne he said: "Indeed, the whole business is 
 so extraordinary in its commencement, so wonder- 
 ful in its progress, and may be so stupendous in 
 its consequences that I am almost lost in the con- 
 templation. Of one thing, however, you may rest 
 perfectly assured, that nobody is more anxious 
 for the happy issue of that business than I am, 
 as nobody can wish more sincerely for the pros- 
 perity of the French nation than I do." To an- 
 other correspondent, Mrs. Graham, he described 
 "the renovation of the French Constitution," as 
 "one of the most wonderful events in the history 
 of mankind." So late as the 2oth of October, 
 1792, he was writing to Gouverneur Morris: "We 
 can only repeat the sincere wish that much hap- 
 piness may arise to the French nation and to 
 mankind in general out of the severe evils which 
 are inseparable from so important a revolution." 
 
 1 To this remarkable forecast of the Terror, and of the ruin of such 
 great hopes, Jared Sparks, in his edition of the Writings, caused 
 Washington to add a prophecy of Napoleon's rule, described as a 
 "higher-toned despotism than the one which existed before." But 
 this is one of the embellishments which Sparks, who prophesied d coup 
 sur, since he wrote after the events, thought he was free to introduce 
 in the great man's letters.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 245 
 
 Throughout the unparalleled crisis, the French 
 friends of Washington kept him informed of 
 events, of their hopes and fears. Lafayette's let- 
 ters have been printed; those of Rochambeau, 
 written in his own English, have not, and many 
 of them are of great interest. The French gen- 
 eral had early foreseen the necessity for profound 
 changes, owing to abuses, to the excessive privi- 
 leges of the few, the burdens of the many, the 
 increasing maladministration, especially since 
 Necker had been replaced by "a devil of fool 
 named Calonne." 1 Maybe the States General 
 will provide an adequate remedy, by devising a 
 constitution: "I hope very much of this General 
 States to restore our finances and to consolidate a 
 good constitution." 2 But he has doubts as to 
 what "aristocratical men" will do. 
 
 Himself a member of the Assembly, Rocham- 
 beau considers that there are not, in reality, 
 three orders the nobles, the clergy, and the 
 third estate but two: "the privileged people and 
 the unprivileged." The vote being, in accor- 
 dance with law and custom, taken per estate or 
 order, the two privileged ones always vote in the 
 same way and can ever prevail. Rochambeau in- 
 forms Washington that, as for himself, he "voted 
 in favor of the equal representation of the third 
 
 1 Paris, May 12, 1787. Washington papers, Library of Congress. 
 'Calais, April 3, 1789.
 
 246 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 order; your pupil Lafayette has voted for the 
 same opinion, as you may believe it; but we have 
 here a great number of aristocratical men that 
 are very interested to perpetuate the abuses." l 
 
 He agrees with Washington that, in order to 
 reach safe results, developments should be slowly 
 evolved; but the temper of the nation has been 
 wrought up, and it is, moreover, a fiery temper. 
 "Do you remember, my dear general," he writes, 
 "of the first repast that we have made together 
 at Rod-Island ? I [made] you remark from the 
 soup the difference of character of our two na- 
 tions, the French in burning their throat and all 
 the Americans waiting wisely [for] the time that 
 it was cooled. I believe, my dear general, you 
 have seen, since a year, that our nation has not 
 change[d] of character. We go very fast God 
 will that we [reach] our aims." 2 
 
 In his moments of deepest anxiety Rochambeau 
 is pleased, however, to remember "a word of the 
 late King of Prussia," Frederick II, who, consid- 
 ering what France was, what misfortunes and 
 dangers she had encountered, and what concealed 
 sources of strength were in her, once said to the 
 French minister accredited to him: "I have been 
 brought up in the middle of the unhappiness of 
 France; my cradle was surrounded with refugee 
 
 1 Paris, July 31, 1789. 
 
 2 "Rochambeau near Vend6me," April u, 1790.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 247 
 
 Protestants that, about the end of the reign of 
 Louis XIV and the beginning of the regency of 
 the Due d' Orleans, told me that France was at 
 the agony and could not exist three years. I 
 [have] known in the course of my reign that 
 France has such a temper that there [is] no bad 
 minister nor bad generals [who] be able to kill it, 
 and that constitution has made it rise again of 
 all its crises, with strength and vigor. It wants 
 no other remedy but time and keep a strict course 
 of diet." 1 
 
 Events followed their course, but, while every- 
 thing else was changing in France, the feeling for 
 Washington and the United States remained the 
 same. The two countries felt nearer than before, 
 and showed it in many ways. At the death of 
 Franklin the National Assembly, on the proposal 
 of Mirabeau, went into mourning for three days; 
 our first Constitution, of 1791, was notified to 
 the American Government: "President Washing- 
 ton," the French minister informed his chief, 
 "received the King's letter with the tokens of 
 the greatest satisfaction; and in accordance with 
 your orders a copy of the Constitution and of 
 the King's letter to the National Assembly was 
 given to him as well as to Mr. Jefferson." 2 Tom 
 
 'Paris, May 12, 1787. 
 
 2 Ternant to Montmorin, Philadelphia, March 13, 1792. Corres- 
 pondence of the French Ministers, ed. Turner, Washington, 1904.
 
 248 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 Paine, though an American, or rather because 
 an American, was elected by several depart- 
 ments a member of the Convention, took his 
 seat, but, as he knew no French, had his speeches 
 translated and read for him; he played an im- 
 portant part in the drafting of our second Consti- 
 tution, the republican one of 1793. As a sacred 
 emblem of liberty, the American flag was displayed 
 in the hall where the Convention held its sittings. 
 A quite extraordinary decree was rendered by 
 this body in the second year of the Republic, 
 "after having heard the petition of American 
 citizens," deciding, and this at a time when every- 
 body was liable to arrest, that "the wives of 
 American citizens, whatever the place of their 
 birth, should be exempted from the law on the 
 arrestation of foreigners." 
 
 The 1 4th of July was, in the meantime, cele- 
 brated in America, just as in France, as mark- 
 ing a new progress in the development of man- 
 kind. Our minister, Ternant, gave Dumouriez 
 a glowing account of such a celebration: "It af- 
 fords me great satisfaction to inform you that, in 
 spite of the news received the day before of the 
 bad success of our first military operations, the 
 Americans have given, on the occasion of this 
 anniversary, touching signs of their attachment 
 for France and proof of the interest they take in 
 the success of our arms. You will see by the
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 249 
 
 bulletins and newspapers accompanying this letter 
 that the same sentiments have been manifested 
 in almost all the cities which count in the Union, 
 and that the i4th has been celebrated with the 
 same ardor as the 4th, which is the anniversary 
 of American independence." * 
 
 For the person of the President French tokens 
 of veneration and friendship multiplied. In the 
 same year year I of the Republic the Con- 
 vention had conferred on him the title of French 
 citizen, as being "one of the benefactors of 
 mankind." French officers had united to offer 
 Mrs. Washington a dinner service, each piece 
 ornamented with a star and her initials in the 
 centre, and the names of the States in medal- 
 lions around the border, the whole surrounded 
 by a serpent biting its tail, the emblem of per- 
 petuity. 
 
 French dramatists could not wait until the 
 great man should belong to the past to make of 
 him the hero of a tragedy in Alexandrine verse: 
 Vashington ou la Liberte du Nouveau Monde, par 
 M. de Sauvigny, performed for the first time on 
 the Theatre of the Nation (as the ' ' Comedie Fran- 
 caise" was then called), on the 1 3th of July, 1791, 
 and in which a nameless predecessor of mine, 
 ' T Ambassadeur de France," brought the play 
 to a conclusion with praise of Washington, of 
 
 1 July 28, 1792.
 
 250 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 Franklin, of Congress, and of the whole American 
 people : 
 
 Magistrals dont 1'audace etonna 1'univers, 
 Calmes dans la tempete et grands dans les revers, 
 Vous sutes, par 1'effet d'une sage harmonic, 
 Enfanter des vertus, un peuple, une patrie. 
 
 And in a kind of postcript, the author, com- 
 menting on the events related in his play, ob- 
 served with truth: "The great American Revo- 
 lution has been the first result of one greater still 
 which had taken place in the empire of opinion." 
 Of any animosity against the English, the same 
 comment offers no trace. 
 
 Gloomy days succeeded radiant ones. Past 
 abuses, danger from abroad, general suffering, 
 passions let loose, were not conducive to that 
 coolness and moderation which Washington had 
 recommended from the first. Ternant, had been 
 succeeded as representative of France by that 
 famous citizen Genet, who, in spite of his having 
 some diplomatic experience gathered as Charge 
 d' Affaires in Russia, and being in a way a man of 
 parts, an authority on Swedes and Finns, had his 
 head turned the moment he landed, so completely, 
 indeed, that it is impossible, in spite of the gravity 
 of the consequences involved, not to smile when 
 reading his high-flown, self-complacent, self -adver- 
 tising, beaming despatches: "My journey (from
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 251 
 
 Charleston to Philadelphia) has been an uninter- 
 rupted succession of civic festivities, and my entry 
 in Philadelphia a triumph for liberty. True 
 Americans are at the height of joy." ] 
 
 In his next letters he insists and gloats over 
 his own matchless deeds: "The whole of America 
 has risen to acknowledge in me the minister of 
 the French Republic. ... I live in the midst 
 of perpetual feasts; I receive addresses from all 
 parts of the continent. I see with pleasure that 
 my way of negotiating pleases our American 
 brothers, and I am founded to believe, citizen 
 minister, that my mission will be a fortunate 
 one from every point of view. I include here- 
 with American gazettes in which I have marked 
 the articles concerning myself." 
 
 Encouraged by the Anti-Federalists, who 
 thought they could use him for their own pur- 
 poses, Genet shows scant respect for "old Wash- 
 ington, who greatly differs from him whose name 
 has been engraved by history, and who does not 
 pardon me my successes"; a mere "Fayettist," he 
 disdainfully calls him elsewhere. But Genet will 
 have the better of any such opposition: "I am 
 in the meantime provisioning the West Indies, I 
 excite Canadians to break the British yoke, I 
 arm the Kentukois, and prepare a naval expedi- 
 
 1 Philadelphia, May 18, 1793. Correspondence of the French Minis- 
 ters in the United States, ed. Turner, Washington, 1904, p. 214.
 
 252 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 tion which will facilitate their descent on New 
 Orleans." 1 
 
 He had, in fact, armed in American waters, 
 quite a fleet of corsairs, revelling in the bestowal 
 on them of such names as the Sans-Culotte, the 
 Anti-George, the Patriote Genet, the Vainqueur de 
 la Bastille, La Petite Democrate. 
 
 His triumphs, his lustre, his listening to ad- 
 dresses in his own honor, and reading articles 
 in his own praise, his being "clasped in the arms 
 of a multitude which had rushed to meet him," 
 his naval and military deeds were short-lived. 
 Contrary to the current belief, the too well- 
 founded indignation of "Fayettist" Washing- 
 ton had nothing to do with his catastrophe. On 
 receipt of the very first letter of the citizen- 
 diplomat, and by return of mail, the foreign min- 
 ister of the French Republic took the initiative 
 and wrote him: 
 
 "I see that you have been received by an hos- 
 pitable and open-hearted people with all the mani- 
 festations of friendship of which your predecessors 
 had also been the recipients. . . . You have fan- 
 cied, thereupon, that it belonged to you to lead 
 the political actions of this people and make 
 them join our cause. Availing yourself of the 
 flattering statements of the Charleston authori- 
 ties, you have thought fit to arm corsairs, to or- 
 
 1 May 31, June 19, 1793. Ibid., pp. 216, 217.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 253 
 
 ganize recruiting, to have prizes condemned, be- 
 fore even having been recognized by the American 
 Government, before having its assent, nay, with 
 the certitude of its disapproval. You invoke 
 your instructions from the 'Conseil executif of 
 the Republic; but your instructions enjoin upon 
 you quite the reverse: they order you to treat 
 with the government, not with a portion of the 
 people; to be for Congress the spokesman of the 
 French Republic, and not the leader of an Ameri- 
 can party." The diplomat's relations with Wash- 
 ington are the opposite of what France desires: 
 "You say that Washington does not pardon you 
 your successes, and that he hampers your moves in 
 a thousand ways. You are ordered to treat with 
 the American Government; there only can you 
 attain real successes; all the others are illusory 
 and contrary to the interests of your country. 
 Dazzled by a false popularity, you have estranged 
 the only man who should represent for you the 
 American people, and if your action is hampered, 
 you have only yourself to blame." 1 
 
 While this letter was slowly crossing the ocean, 
 others from Genet were on the way to France, 
 written in the same beaming style. He continued 
 to gloat over his successes and mercilessly to 
 abuse all Federalists, those confessed partisans of 
 "monocracy." 
 
 1 June 19, 1793. Ibid., p. 230.
 
 254 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 People were not for half-measures at Paris, in 
 those terrible days. Instead of prolonging a use- 
 less epistolary correspondence, the Committee of 
 Public Safety rendered a decree providing that 
 a commission would be sent to Philadelphia, with 
 powers to disavow the "criminal conduct of 
 Genet," to disarm his Sans-Culotte and other cor- 
 sairs, to revoke all consuls who had taken part in 
 such armaments, and, as for Genet himself, to 
 have him arrested and sent back to France. 
 What such an arrest meant was made evident by 
 the signatures at the foot of the decree : ' ' Barere, 
 Herault, Robespierre, Billaud-Varennes, Collot 
 d'Herbois, Saint- Just." 1 
 
 Better than any one, Genet knew the meaning. 
 But that same government which he had abused 
 was generous and protected him. "We wanted 
 his dismissal, not his punishment," said Secretary 
 of State Randolph, who refused to have him ar- 
 rested. Genet hastened to give up a country 
 so hard to please, he thought, as that of his birth, 
 became an American, and as, with all his faults, 
 he was not without some merits, being welcomed 
 in many families, and especially in the house of 
 "General Clinton, Governor," he wrote, "of the 
 State of New York, and chief of the Anti-Federal- 
 ist party," he married his daughter, and died at 
 Schodack, N. Y., a respected citizen and agricul- 
 
 1 October n, 1793. Ibid., p. 287.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 255 
 
 turist, in 1834. His name has once more promi- 
 nently appeared, and in the most honorable 
 fashion, in those gazettes whose articles in his 
 favor pleased him so much: a descendant of his 
 has enlisted for the old country during the present 
 war, and has cast lustre on the name by his 
 bravery. 
 
 The last years of the former commander-in- 
 chief of the American and French armies were 
 saddened by difficulties, troubles, and quarrels 
 with American political parties and with the 
 French nation. The Jay treaty with England 
 (November 19, 1794) had raised a storm: "At 
 present the cry against the treaty is like that 
 against a mad dog; and every one in a manner 
 is running it down. . . . The string which is 
 most played on, because it strikes with most 
 force the popular ear, is the violation, as they 
 term it, of our engagements with France." 1 Anti- 
 Federalists were indignant; the French not at 
 all pleased, and their "captures and seizures," 
 coupled with a desire to be allowed (which they 
 were not) to sell their prizes in American harbors, 
 increased the discontent. The opposition press 
 was unspeakably virulent, and the great man 
 sadly confessed he would never have believed that, 
 he said, "every act of his administration would 
 be tortured, and the grossest and most insidious 
 
 1 Washington to Alexander Hamilton, July 29, 1795.
 
 256 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 misrepresentations of them be made, by giving 
 one side only of a subject, and that, too, in such 
 exaggerated and indecent terms as could scarcely 
 be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter, or 
 even to a common pickpocket." 1 
 
 The time came at last for his definitive re- 
 treat to Mount Vernon. He reached it a sad- 
 dened, grand old man, longing to be at last an 
 American farmer and nothing more, and never 
 to go "beyond twenty miles" from his home. 
 "To make and sell a little flour annually, to re- 
 pair houses going fast to ruin, to build one for 
 the security of my papers of a public nature, 
 and to amuse myself in agricultural and rural pur- 
 suits, will constitute employment for the few years 
 I have to remain on this terrestrial globe." 2 
 
 His desire was to continue to the end in the 
 regular occupations he describes to McHenry, in 
 a letter giving us the best picture we have of every- 
 day life at Mount Vernon. Wondering what he 
 might say that would interest a secretary of war, 
 he writes: "I might tell him that I begin my di- 
 urnal course with the sun; that if my hirelings 
 are not at their places at that time I send them 
 messages expressive of my sorrow for their in- 
 disposition; that, having put these wheels in 
 motion, I examine the state of things further, 
 
 1 To Jefferson, June 6, 1796. 
 
 2 To Oliver Wolcott, May 15, 1797.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 257 
 
 and the more they are probed, the deeper, I find, 
 the wounds are which my buildings have sustained 
 by an absence and neglect of eight years; by the 
 time I have accomplished these matters, break- 
 fast (a little after seven o'clock, about the time, 
 I presume, you are taking leave of Mrs. McHenry) 
 is ready; that, this being over, I mount my horse 
 and ride round my farms, which employs me until 
 it is time to dress for dinner, at which I rarely 
 miss seeing strange faces, come, as they say, out 
 of respect for me. Pray, would not the word 
 curiosity answer as well ? And how different 
 this from having a few social friends at a cheerful 
 board ! The usual time of sitting at table, a 
 walk, and tea brings me within the dawn of 
 candle-light; previous to which, if not prevented 
 by company, I resolve that as soon as the glim- 
 mering taper supplies the place of the great lu- 
 minary, I will retire to my writing-table and 
 acknowledge the letters I have received ; but when 
 the lights are brought I feel tired and disin- 
 clined to engage in this work, conceiving that the 
 next night will do as well. The next comes and 
 with it the same causes for postponement and 
 effect, and so on. . . . 
 
 "It may strike you that in this detail no men- 
 tion is made of any portion of time allotted for 
 reading. The remark would be just, for I have 
 not looked into a book since I came home; nor
 
 258 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 shall I be able to do it until I have discharged 
 my workmen, probably not before nights grow 
 longer, when possibly I may be looking in Doomes- 
 day Book." l 
 
 But in this calm retreat, described with a truth 
 and charm almost reminding one of William 
 Cowper's familiar letters, and where he was to 
 spend such a small number of years, trouble, as 
 previously, soon knocked at the door. It seemed 
 at one time as if the former commander-in-chief 
 of Franco-American armies would have to lead 
 the Americans against the French. In spite of the 
 preparations which he had himself to superintend, 
 he refused to believe that war would really occur: 
 "My mind never has been alarmed by any fears 
 of a war with France." 2 But in his judgments 
 of the French, as governed by the Directoire, 
 Washington was gradually receding toward the 
 time when he knew them only through Steele and 
 Addison, and had, "in the Spectator, read to No. 
 
 He died without knowing that the threatening 
 clouds would soon be dispelled; that the next 
 important event which would count in the annals 
 of the United States and make their greatness 
 secure would come from those same French 
 people: the cession by them, unexpected and un- 
 
 1 Mount Vemon, May 29, 1797. 
 
 2 To T. Pickering, August 29, 1797.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 259 
 
 asked-for, not of New Orleans, but of the im- 
 mense territory then called Louisiana; and that, 
 while his feelings toward the French had under- 
 gone changes, those of the French toward him had 
 remained unaltered. 
 
 When the news came that on Saturday, i4th 
 of December, 1799, the great leader had passed 
 away, 1 the French Republic went into mourn- 
 ing; for ten days officers wore crape, flags were 
 flown at half-mast, and the head of the state, 
 young Bonaparte, issued an order in which he 
 said: "Washington is dead. This great man 
 fought tyranny. He established on a safe basis 
 the liberty of his country. His memory will ever 
 be dear to the French people as well as to all the 
 free men of the two worlds, and especially to 
 French soldiers, who, like himself and the Ameri- 
 can soldiers, fight now for equality and liberty." 
 
 An impressive and unparalleled ceremony there- 
 upon took place at the Invalides, the Temple of 
 Mars, as it was then called. Detachments from 
 
 1 "Nulli flebilior quam ntihi," wrote Lafayette, in learning the 
 news, to Crevecceur, who had just dedicated to Washington his 
 Voyage dans la haute Pennsylvanie, adorned, by way of frontispiece, 
 with a portrait of Washington, "grav6 d'apres le camee peint par 
 Madame Brehan, a New York, en 1789." Crevecceur wanted to 
 offer a copy of his book to Bonaparte. "Send it," a friend of his 
 who knew the young general told him; "it is a right you have as 
 an associate member of the Institute; add a letter of two or three 
 lines, mentioning in it the name of Washington." St. John de Creve- 
 cceur, by Robert de Crevecceur, 1883, p. 399.
 
 260 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 the Paris garrison lined the aisles ; all that counted 
 in the Republic was present, Bonaparte included, 
 and Fontanes, the most famous orator of the day, 
 delivered the funeral eulogy on the departed 
 leader: "Washington's work is scarcely per- 
 fected," he said, "and it is already surrounded 
 by that veneration that is usually bestowed only 
 on what has been consecrated by time. The 
 American Revolution, of which we are contem- 
 poraries, seems now consolidated forever. Wash- 
 ington began it by his energy, and achieved it by 
 his moderation. In rendering a public homage 
 to Washington, France pays a debt due to him 
 by the two worlds." 
 
 In one of the first sentences of the oration, 
 England (with whom we were at war) was courte- 
 ously associated to the homage rendered by us 
 to the great man: "The very nation," said Fon- 
 tanes, "that recently called Washington a rebel, 
 now looks upon the emancipation of America as 
 one of those events consecrated by the verdict 
 of centuries and of history. Such is the privilege 
 of great characters." 1 
 
 In the centre of the nave stood the bust of 
 Washington, wreathed in flags and laurels. Years 
 before, in Independence Hall at Philadelphia, on 
 
 1 " Eloge funebre de Washington, prononce' dans le temple de Mars 
 (H6tel des Invalides) le 20 pluviose, an VIII (8 fdvrier, 1800)," in 
 GtLuvres de M. de Fontanes, recueillies pour la premiere fois, Paris, 
 1839, 2 vols., II, 147.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 261 
 
 a spot now marked by an inscription, the flags 
 taken at Yorktown had been laid at the feet of 
 the President of Congress and of the minister 
 from France, Gerard de Rayneval. Now Gen- 
 eral Lannes, the future marshal, came forth and 
 with appropriate words laid before the image of 
 the former commander ninety-six flags taken from 
 the enemy by the troops of republican France. 
 
 A plan was formed thereupon, the realization 
 of which troublous days did not allow, to erect 
 a statue of Washington in Paris (he now has two 
 there and one in Versailles, gratefully accepted 
 gifts from America) , and a decree was prepared by 
 Talleyrand recalling, as a motive, the similitude 
 of feelings between France and that "nation 
 which is sure to be one day a great nation, and 
 is even now the wisest and happiest in the world, 
 and which mourns for the death of the man who 
 did more than any, by his courage and genius, 
 to break her shackles and raise her to the rank 
 of independent peoples. . . . One of the noblest 
 lives which have honored mankind has just 
 passed into the domain of history. . . . Wash- 
 ington's fame is now imperishable; Fortune had 
 consecrated his titles to it; and the posterity 
 of a people which will rise later to the highest 
 destinies continuously confirms and strengthens 
 those titles by its very progress." 
 
 Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Guizot, Cornelis de
 
 262 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 Witt, Laboulaye, Joseph Fabre, many other 
 French thinkers and writers, vied with each other 
 in their praise and admiration throughout the 
 century. Chateaubriand, who had seen the great 
 man at Philadelphia in 1791, inserted in his Voy- 
 age en Amerique his famous parallel between Bona- 
 parte and Washington: "The republic of Wash- 
 ington subsists; the empire of Bonaparte is no 
 more; it came and went between the first and 
 second journey of a Frenchman 1 who has found a 
 grateful nation where he had fought for some 
 oppressed colonists. . . . The name of Wash- 
 ington will spread, with liberty, from age to age; 
 it will mark the beginning of a new era for man- 
 kind. . . . His fame rises like one of those 
 sanctuaries wherein flows a spring inexhaustible 
 for the people. . . . What would be the rank 
 of Bonaparte in the universe if he had added 
 magnanimity to what there was heroical in him, 
 and if, being at the same time Washington and 
 Bonaparte, he had appointed Liberty for the 
 heiress of his glory?" 
 
 Lamartine, receiving an Italian delegation in 
 1848, asked them to hate the memory of Machia- 
 velli and bless that of Washington : ' ' His name is 
 the symbol of modern liberty. The name of a 
 politician, the name of a conqueror is no longer 
 what is wanted by the world, but the name of 
 
 1 Lafayette's journeys to America.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 the most disinterested of men, and the most de- 
 voted to the people." Guizot published his note- 
 worthy study on the first President of the United 
 States, and the American colony in Paris, to com- 
 memorate the event, had the portrait of the 
 French statesman painted by Healy in 1841, and 
 presented it to the city of Washington, where it 
 is preserved in the National Museum. 
 
 Publishing, during the early years of the Second 
 Empire, the series of lectures he had delivered 
 at the College de France during our Second 
 Republic, the great Liberal, Laboulaye, who did 
 so much to make America and the Americans 
 popular in France, wrote in his preface: "Wash- 
 ington has established a wise and well-ordered 
 republic, and he has left to after-times, not the 
 fatal example of crime triumphant, but a whole- 
 some example of patriotism and virtue. In less 
 than fifty years, 1 owing to the powerful sap of 
 liberty, we have seen an empire arise, having for 
 its base, not conquest, but peace and industry, 
 an empire which before the end of the century 
 will be the greatest state in the civilized world, 
 and which, if it remains faithful to the thought of 
 its founders, if ambition does not arrest the course 
 of its fortune, will offer to the world the prodigious 
 sight of a republic of one hundred million inhabi- 
 tants, richer, happier, more brilliant than the 
 
 1 An exact justification of Lacretelle's prediction; above, p. 94.
 
 264 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 monarchies of the old world. All this is Wash- 
 ington's work." 1 
 
 Nearer our. time, Joseph Fabre, the well-known 
 historian of Joan of Arc, wrote: "This sage was 
 a wonder of reasoned enthusiasm, of thoughtful 
 intrepidity, of methodical tenacity, of circumspect 
 boldness, facing from abroad oppression, at home 
 anarchy, both vanquished by his calm genius." 2 
 
 1 Histoire des Etats Unis, 3 vols.; preface dated 1855; the lectures 
 had been delivered in 1849. Washington is the hero of the work, 
 which is carried on only to 1789. 
 
 * Washington, liberateur de I'Amtrique, 1882, often reprinted, dedi- 
 cated: "A la m6moire de Lazare Hoche, le soldat citoyen, qui 
 aurait t notre Washington s'il efit v6cu."
 
 V 
 
 Once more now a republic has been established 
 in France, which, having, we hope, something of 
 the qualities of "coolness and moderation" that 
 Washington wanted us to possess, will, we trust, 
 prove perpetual. It has already lasted nearly 
 half a century: an unexampled phenomenon in 
 the history of Europe, no other republic of such 
 magnitude having thus survived in the old world 
 since the fall of the Roman one, twenty centuries 
 ago. 
 
 If the great man were to come again, we enter- 
 tain a fond hope that he would deem us not un- 
 deserving now of the sympathies he bestowed on 
 our ancestors at the period when he was living 
 side by side with them. Most of the leading 
 ideas followed by him throughout life are those 
 which we try to put in practise. We have our 
 faults, to be sure; we know them, others know 
 them, too; it is not our custom to conceal them, 
 far from it; may this serve as an excuse for re- 
 viewing here by preference something else than 
 what might occasion blame. 
 
 That equality of chances for all, which caused 
 the admiration of the early French visitors to 
 
 265
 
 266 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 this country, which was one of the chief things 
 for which Washington had fought, and continues 
 to be to-day one of the chief attractions offered 
 to the immigrant by these States, has been secured 
 in the French Republic, too, where no privileges 
 of any sort remain, the right to vote is refused to 
 none, taxation is the same for all, and military 
 service is expected from everybody. No principle 
 had more importance in the eyes of Washington 
 than that of "equal liberty." "What triumph 
 for our enemies to verify their predictions!" 
 Washington had written to John Jay, in a mo- 
 ment of depression, when he feared that what 
 Genet was to call "monocracy" was in the ascen- 
 dant; "what triumph for the advocates of des- 
 potism to find that we are unable of governing 
 ourselves, and that systems founded on the 
 basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and falla- 
 cious." 1 
 
 In France, as in the United States, the unique 
 source of power is the will of the people. In our 
 search for the solution of the great problem which 
 now confronts the world, that of the relations 
 of capital and labor, we endeavor to practise the 
 admirable maxim of one of our statesmen of 
 to-day: "Capital must work, labor must pos- 
 sess." And though we are still remote from this 
 goal, yet we have travelled so far toward it that, 
 
 1 August i, 1786.
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 267 
 
 at the present day, one out of every two electors 
 in France is the possessor of his own house. 1 
 
 The development of instruction was one of the 
 most cherished ideas of Washington, as it is now 
 of his descendants. "You will agree with me in 
 opinion," he said in a speech to both houses of 
 Congress in 1790, "that there is nothing that can 
 better deserve your patronage than the promo- 
 tion of science and literature. Knowledge is in 
 every country the surest basis of happiness." 
 Instruction has become, under the Republic, obli- 
 gatory for all in France, and is given free of cost 
 to all. Not a village, not a hamlet, lost in the 
 recesses of valleys or mountains, that is without 
 its school. The state expenditure for primary 
 instruction during the Second Empire amounted 
 only to twelve million francs; the mere salary of 
 school-teachers alone is now twenty times greater. 
 We try to live up to the old principle : three things 
 should be given free to all air, water, knowledge : 
 and so it is that at the Sorbonne, the College de 
 France, in the provincial universities, all one has to 
 do in order to follow the best courses of lectures is 
 to push open the door. The man in the street 
 may come in if he chooses, just to warm himself 
 in winter or to avoid a shower in summer. Let 
 him; perhaps he will listen too. 
 
 1 "It is estimated that there are more small holdings of land in 
 France than in Germany, England, and Austria combined." Re- 
 port of the [U. S.} Commissioner of Education, 1913, p. 714.
 
 268 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 Very wisely, being, in many ways, very modern, 
 Washington attached great importance to inven- 
 tions. In a speech to Congress on January 9, 
 1790, he said: "I cannot forbear intimating to you 
 the expediency of giving effectual encouragement 
 as well to the introduction of new and useful in- 
 ventions from abroad as to the exertions of skill 
 and genius in producing them at home, and of 
 facilitating the intercourse between the distant 
 parts of our country by a due attention to the 
 post-office and the post-roads." 
 
 Distances having immensely increased in 
 America (as well as means to cover them), these 
 latter remarks are certainly still of value. With 
 a much less difficult problem to solve, we believe 
 that, in the matter of post-roads, and with a sys- 
 tem of rural delivery coextensive with the national 
 territory, we would pass muster in the presence 
 of the great man. As for inventions, we hope that 
 even the compatriots of Franklin, Fulton, Whit- 
 ney, Horace Wells, W. T. G. Morton, Morse, Bell, 
 Edison, the Wright brothers, and many more, 
 would consider that our show is a creditable one, 
 with Jacquard's loom, the laws of Ampere on 
 electricity, Seguin's tubular boilers, Sauvage's 
 screw, Niepce and Daguerre's photography, Re- 
 nard and Kreb's first dirigible, Lumiere's cinemato- . 
 graph, Curie's radium, with the automobile, which 
 is transforming our way of life (decentralizing
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 269 
 
 overcentralized countries) as much as the railroads 
 did in the last century; and, more than all, be- 
 cause so beneficent to all, with the discoveries 
 of Chevreul, Flourens, Claude Bernard, Laveran, 
 Berthelot, and especially Pasteur. 
 
 On the question of the preservation of natural 
 resources, to which, and not too soon, so much 
 attention has been paid of late, Washington had 
 settled ideas; so have we, ours being somewhat 
 radical, and embodying, for mines especially, the 
 French principle that "what belongs to nobody 
 belongs to everybody," and by everybody must 
 be understood the nation. Concerning this prob- 
 lem and the best way to solve it, Washington 
 sent once a powerful appeal to the President of 
 Congress, saying: "Would there be any impro- 
 priety, do you think, sir, in reserving for special 
 sale all mines, minerals, and salt springs, in the 
 general grants of land belonging to the United 
 States ? The public, instead of the few knowing 
 ones, might in this case receive the benefits which 
 would result from the sale of them, without in- 
 fringing any rule of justice that is known to me." l 
 
 1 To Richard H. Lee, December 14, 1 784. On French exertions 
 in that line, Consul-General Skinner wrote: "If correspondents 
 could penetrate, as the writer has done, the almost inaccessible 
 mountain villages of this country, and there discover the enthusiastic 
 French forester at work, applying scientific methods to a work 
 which can not come to complete fruition before two or three hundred 
 years, they would retire full of admiration and surprise and carry the 
 lesson back to the United States." Daily Consular Reports, Novem- 
 ber 2, 1907.
 
 270 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 One of the most memorable and striking things 
 done by the French Republic is the building of 
 a vast colonial empire, giving access to undevel- 
 oped, sometimes, as in Dahomey, barbaric and 
 sanguinary races, still indulging in human sacri- 
 fices. Washington has laid down the rule of what 
 should be done with respect to primitive races. 
 "The basis of our proceedings with the Indian 
 natives," he wrote to Lafayette, "has been and 
 shall be justice, during the period in which I 
 have anything to do with the administration of 
 this government. Our negotiations and transac- 
 tions, though many of them are on a small scale 
 as to the objects, ought to be governed by the 
 immutable principles of equality." And address- 
 ing the Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore, John 
 Carroll, he again said : ' ' The most effectual means 
 of securing the permanent attachment of our 
 savage neighbors is to convince them that we 
 are just." 
 
 There is nothing we are ourselves more sincerely 
 convinced of than that such principles are the 
 right ones and should prevail. That we did not 
 lose sight of them in the building of our colonial 
 empire its very vastness testifies; using opposite 
 means, with so many other tasks to attend to, 
 we should have failed. The number of people 
 living under the French flag is about one hundred 
 million now. Judging from the testimony of
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 271 
 
 independent witnesses, 1 it seems that, on this, too, 
 we have acted in accordance with the views of 
 the former commander-in-chief, who had written 
 to Lafayette on August 15, 1786 : "Let me ask you, 
 my dear marquis, in such an enlightened, in such 
 a liberal age, how is it possible that the great 
 maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay 
 an annual tribute to the little piratical states of 
 Barbary ? Would to Heaven we had a navy able 
 to reform those enemies to mankind or crush 
 them into non-existence." The "reform" was 
 begun by Decatur in 1815, and perfected by 
 Bourmont in 1830. 
 
 On one point Washington was very positive; 
 this leader of men, this warrior, this winner of 
 battles, loathed war. He wanted, of course, his 
 nation, as we want ours, never to be without a 
 military academy (our West Point is called Saint- 
 
 1 "The story of French success in the exploration, the civilization, 
 the administration, and the exploitation of Africa, is one of the won- 
 der tales of history. That she has relied on the resources of science 
 rather than those of militarism makes her achievement the more 
 remarkable. . . . Look at Senegambia as it is now under French 
 rule. . . . Contrast the modernized Dahomey of to-day with its 
 railways, schools, and hospitals with the blood-soaked country of 
 the early sixties; remember that Algeria has doubled in population 
 since [the time of] the last Dey and you will have a bird's-eye 
 view, as it were, of what the French have accomplished in the colo- 
 nizing field." E. Alexander Powell, The Last Frontier, New York, 
 1912, p. 25. Concerning the Arabs under French rule, Edgar A. 
 Forbes writes: "The conquered race may thank the stars that its 
 destiny rests in a hand that seldom wears the rough gauntlet." The 
 Land of the White Helmet, New York, 1910, p. 94.
 
 272 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 Cyr), and never to be without a solid, permanent 
 army, for, as he said, in a speech to Congress in 
 1796: "However pacific the general policy of a 
 nation may be, it ought never to be without an 
 adequate stock of military knowledge for emer- 
 gencies . . . war might often depend not upon its 
 own choice." Of this we are only too well aware. 
 There is scarcely, however, a question that 
 oftener recurs under his pen in his letters to his 
 French friends than the care with which wars 
 should be avoided, and no hopes were more 
 fondly cherished by him than that, some day, 
 human quarrels might be settled otherwise than 
 by bloodshed. To Rochambeau, who had in- 
 formed him that war-clouds which had recently 
 appeared in Europe were dissipated (soon, it is 
 true, to return more threatening), he expressed, 
 in 1786, his joy at what he considered a proof that 
 mankind was becoming "more enlightened and 
 more humanized." To his friend David Hum- 
 phreys he had written from Mount Vernon, July 
 25, 1785: "My first wish is to see this plague to 
 mankind (war) banished from off the earth, and 
 the sons and daughters of this world employed 
 in more pleasing and innocent amusements than 
 in preparing implements and exercising them for 
 the destruction of mankind. Rather than quarrel 
 about territory, let the poor, the needy, the op- 
 pressed of the earth, and those who want land,
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 273 
 
 resort to the fertile plains of our Western country, 
 the second land of promise, and there dwell in 
 peace, fulfilling the first and great commandment." 
 His dream was of mankind one day "connected 
 like one great family in fraternal ties." 1 
 
 On this matter, of such paramount importance 
 to all the world, and in spite of so much, so very 
 much remaining to be done, we may, I hope, 
 consider in France that our Republic would de- 
 serve the approval of the departed leader. We 
 have indeed vied with the United States (and 
 praise be rendered to empires and kingdoms who 
 have played also the part of realms of good- will), 
 in an effort to find better means than wars for 
 the settlement of human quarrels. Success could 
 not be expected at once, but it is something to 
 have honestly, earnestly tried. The great man 
 would have judged failures with indulgence, for 
 he well knew how others' dispositions are to be 
 taken into account. "In vain," he had said, "is 
 it to expect that our aim is to be accomplished 
 by fond wishes for peace." 2 
 
 And at the present hour, when it seems to the 
 
 1 To Lafayette, Aug. 15, 1786. Cf. below, p. 347. Same views in 
 Franklin, who had written to his friend David Hartley, one of the 
 British plenipotentiaries for the peace: "What would you think of 
 a proposition, if I should make it, of a family compact between 
 England, France, and America? . . . What repeated follies are those 
 repeated wars ! You do not want to conquer and govern one another. 
 Why, then, should you continually be employed in injuring and de- 
 stroying one another?" Passy, Oct. 16, 1783. 'June 15, 1782.
 
 274 WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH 
 
 author of these lines that, as he writes, his ears 
 are filled with the sound of guns, wafted by the 
 wind over the submarine-haunted ocean, what 
 would be the feeling of our former commander 
 if he saw what is taking place, and the stand made 
 by the descendants of those soldiers intrusted 
 years ago to his leadership ? Perhaps he would 
 think, as he did, when told by Lafayette of a 
 recent visit to the battle-fields of Frederick II of 
 Prussia : "To view the several fields of battle over 
 which you passed could not, among other sensa- 
 tions, have failed to excite this thought: 'Here 
 have fallen thousands of gallant spirits to satisfy 
 the ambitions of their sovereign, or to support 
 them perhaps in acts of oppression and injustice. 
 Melancholy reflection ! For what wise purpose 
 does Providence permit this ? ' ' 
 
 Perhaps who knows? considering the silent 
 resolution, abnegation, and unanimity with which 
 the whole people, from the day when war was de- 
 clared on them by a relentless enemy, tried to up- 
 hold the cause of independence and liberalism in 
 a world- wide conflict, the leader might be tempted 
 to write once more in the pages of his private 
 journal the three words he had written on May 
 i, 1781. Who knows ? Of one thing we are sure, 
 no approval could please us more than that of 
 the commander-in-chief of former days.
 
 IV 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ON two tragic occasions, at a century's dis- 
 tance, the fate of the United States has 
 trembled in the balance : would they be a 
 free nation? Would they continue to be one 
 nation ? A leader was wanted on both occasions, 
 a very different one in each case. This boon was 
 granted to the American people, who had a Wash- 
 ington when a Washington was needed, and a 
 Lincoln when a Lincoln could save them. Neither 
 would have adequately performed the other's task. 
 A century of gradually increasing prosperity 
 had elapsed when came the hour of the nation's 
 second trial. Though it may seem to us small, 
 compared with what we have seen in our days, 
 the development had been considerable, the scat- 
 tered colonies of yore had become one of the 
 great Powers of the world, with domains reaching 
 from one ocean to the other; the immense conti- 
 nent had been explored; new cities were dotting 
 the wilderness of former days. When in 1803 
 France had, of her own will, ceded the Louisiana 
 territories, which have been divided since into 
 fourteen States, minds had been staggered ; many 
 in the Senate had shown themselves averse to the 
 ratification of the treaty, thinking that it might 
 
 277
 
 278 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 prove rather a curse than a boon. "As to Louisi- 
 ana, this new, immense, unbounded world," Sen- 
 ator White, of Delaware, had said, "if it should 
 ever be incorporated into this Union ... I be- 
 lieve it will be the greatest curse that could at 
 present befall us; it may be productive of in- 
 numerable evils, and especially of one that I fear 
 even to look upon." 
 
 What the senator feared to look upon was the 
 possibility, awful and incredible as it might seem, 
 of people being so rash as to go and live beyond 
 the Mississippi. Attempts would, of course, be 
 made, he thought, to prevent actions which would 
 entail such grave responsibilities for the govern- 
 ment; but those meritorious attempts on the 
 part of the authorities would probably fail. "It 
 would be as well to pretend to inhibit the fish from 
 swimming in the sea. ... To every man ac- 
 quainted with the manner in which our Western 
 country has been settled, such an idea must be 
 chimerical." People will go, "that very popula- 
 tion will go, that would otherwise occupy part 
 of our present territory." The results will be 
 unspeakable: "Our citizens will be removed to 
 the immense distance of two or three thousand 
 miles from the capital of the Union, where they 
 will scarcely ever feel the rays of the general gov- 
 ernment; their affections will be alienated; they 
 will gradually begin to view us as strangers ; they
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 279 
 
 will form other commercial connections, and our 
 interests will become distinct." 
 
 The treaty had been ratified, however, and the 
 prediction, not of Senator White, of Delaware, but 
 of Senator Jackson, of Georgia, has proved true, 
 the latter having stated in his answer that if they 
 both could "return at the proper period," that is, 
 "in a century," they would find that the region 
 was not, as had been forecasted, "a howling wil- 
 derness," but "the seat of science and civil- 
 ization." * The fact is that if the two senators 
 had been able to return at the appointed date, 
 they would have seen the exposition of St. Louis. 
 
 Progress had been constant ; modern inventions 
 
 1 Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, vol. 
 XIII, col. 33 ff., November 2 and 3, 1803. Senator White had also ob- 
 jected that the price, of fifteen million dollars, was too high; while 
 the French plenipotentiary, Barbe-Marbois, had observed that the 
 lands still unoccupied, to be handed to the American Government 
 "would have a value of several billions before a century had elapsed," 
 in which he was no bad prophet. Marbois added : "Those who knew 
 the importance of a perfect understanding between these two coun- 
 tries attached more value to the twenty million francs set apart for 
 the American claims than to the sixty offered to France." In ac- 
 cordance again with Senator White, the deciding motive had not 
 been that longing for "a perfect understanding" mentioned by Mar- 
 bois, but a feeling that Louisiana would, at the next war, "inevitably 
 fall into the hands of the British." "Of course, it would," future 
 Marshal Berthier, who was averse to the cession, had observed when 
 the point had been mentioned at the council held at the Tuileries, 
 before the First Consul Bonaparte, on Easter Day, 1803, "but Han- 
 over would just as soon be in our hands, and an exchange would 
 take place at the peace. . . . Remember this: no navy without 
 colonies; no colonies without a navy." Barbe-Marbois, Histoire 
 de la Louisiane, Paris, 1829, pp. 295, 315, 330.
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 had brought the remotest parts of the country 
 nearer together. The telegraph had enabled ' ' the 
 rays of the general government" to reach the 
 farthest regions of the territory. That extraor- 
 dinary attempt, the first transcontinental rail- 
 road, was soon to be begun (1863) and was to be 
 finished six years later. 
 
 And now all seemed to be in doubt again; the 
 nation was young, wealthy, powerful, prosperous; 
 it had vast domains and resources, no enemies, 
 and yet it looked as though her fate would parallel 
 that of the old empires of which Tacitus speaks, 
 and which, without foes, crumble to pieces under 
 their own weight. 
 
 Within her frontiers elements of destruction or 
 disruption had been growing; animosities were 
 embittered among people equally brave, bold, and 
 sure of their rights. The edifice raised by Wash- 
 ington was shaking on its base; a catastrophe was 
 at hand, such a one as he had himself foreseen as 
 possible from the first. Slavery, he had thought, 
 should be gradually but thoroughly abolished. 
 "Your late purchase," he had written to Lafay- 
 ette, "of an estate in the colony of Cayenne, with 
 a view of emancipating the slaves on it, is a gen- 
 erous and noble proof of humanity. Would to 
 God a like spirit would diffuse itself generally into 
 the minds of the people of this country, but I 
 despair of seeing it." l And to John Francis 
 
 J My 10, 1786.
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 281 
 
 Mercer: "I never mean (unless some particular 
 circumstance should compel me to it) to possess 
 another slave by purchase, it being among my 
 first wishes to see some plan adopted by which 
 slavery in this country may be abolished by slow, 
 sure, and imperceptible degrees." 1 For many 
 reasons the steadiness of the new-born Union 
 caused him anxiety. "We are known," he had 
 written to Doctor W. Gordon, "by no other char- 
 acter among nations than as the United States. 
 . . . When the bond of union gets once broken 
 everything ruinous to our future prospects is to 
 be apprehended. The best that can come of it, 
 in my humble opinion, is that we shall sink into 
 obscurity, unless our civil broils should keep us 
 in remembrance and fill the page of history with 
 the direful consequences of them." * 
 
 The dread hour had now struck, and civil broils 
 meant to fill the page of history were at hand. 
 Then it was that, in a middle-sized city of one 
 hundred thousand inhabitants, not yet a world- 
 famous one, Chicago by name, the Republican 
 convention, assembled there for the first time, 
 met to choose a candidate for the presidency, 
 and on Friday, i8th of May, 1860, selected a 
 man whom my predecessor of those days, an- 
 nouncing in an imprinted report the news to his 
 government, described as "a man almost un- 
 known, Mr. Abraham Lincoln." And so he was; 
 
 1 September 9, 1786. July 8, 1783.
 
 282 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 his own party had hesitated to nominate him; 
 only on the third ballot, after two others in which 
 he did not lead, the convention decided that the 
 fate of the party, of abolitionism, and of the 
 Union would be placed in the hands of that "man 
 almost unknown," Mr. Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 The search-light of history has since been 
 turned on the most obscure parts of his career; 
 every incident of it is known; many sayings of 
 his to which neither he nor his hearers attributed 
 any importance at the moment have become 
 household words. Biographies innumerable, in 
 pamphlet form or in many volumes, have told us 
 of the deeds of Abraham Lincoln, of his appear- 
 ance, of his peculiarities, of his virtues, and of 
 the part he played in the history of the world, 
 not alone the world of his day, but that of after- 
 time. For not only the souvenir of his personality 
 and of his examples, and the consequences of 
 what he did, survive among us, but so do also a 
 number of his clean-cut, memorable, guiding sen- 
 tences which continue alive and active among 
 men. His mind is still living. 
 
 Few suspected such a future at the time of his 
 election. "We all remember," wrote, years later, 
 the French Academician, Prevost-Paradol, "the 
 anxiety with which we awaited the first words of 
 that President then unknown, upon whom a 
 heavy task had fallen, and from whose advent to
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 283 
 
 power might be dated the ruin or regeneration of 
 his country. All we knew was that he had sprung 
 from the humblest walks of life; that his youth 
 had been spent in manual labor ; that he had then 
 risen, by degrees, in his town, in his county, and 
 in his State. What was this favorite of the peo- 
 ple ? Democratic societies are liable to errors 
 which are fatal to them. But as soon as Mr. 
 Lincoln arrived in Washington, as soon as he 
 spoke, all our doubts and fears were dissipated, 
 and it seemed to us that destiny itself had pro- 
 nounced in favor of the good cause, since in such 
 an emergency it had given to the country an honest 
 man." 
 
 Well indeed might people have wondered and 
 felt anxious when they remembered how little 
 training in greatest affairs the new ruler had had, 
 and the incredible difficulty of the problems he 
 would have to solve: to solve, his heart bleeding 
 at the very thought, for he had to fight, "not 
 enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies !" 
 
 No romance of adventure reads more like a ro- 
 mance than the true story of Lincoln's youth and 
 of the wanderings of his family, from Virginia to 
 Kentucky, from Kentucky to Indiana, from Indi- 
 ana to the newly-formed State of Illinois, having 
 first to clear a part of the forest, then to build 
 a doorless, windowless, floorless log cabin, with 
 beds of leaves, and one room for all the uses of
 
 284 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the nine inmates : Lincoln, the grandson of a man 
 killed, by the Indians, the son of a father who 
 never succeeded in anything, and whose utmost 
 literary accomplishment, taught him by his wife, 
 and which he had in common with the father of 
 Shakespeare, consisted in "bunglingly writing his 
 own name," the whole family leading a life in 
 comparison with which that of Robinson Crusoe 
 was one of sybaritic enjoyment. That in those 
 trackless, neighborless, bookless parts of the coun- 
 try the future President could learn and educate 
 himself was the first great wonder of his life. 
 His school-days, in schools as primitive as the rest 
 of his surroundings, attended at spare moments, 
 did not amount, put together, to so much as one 
 year, during which he learned, as he stated after- 
 ward, how "to read, write, and cipher to the rule 
 of three, but that was all ... till within his 
 twenty-third year, he was almost constantly 
 handling that most useful instrument" an axe, 
 not a pen. 1 The event proved once more that 
 learning does not so much depend upon the mas- 
 ter's teaching as upon the pupil's desire. This 
 desire never left him; as recorded by himself, he 
 "nearly mastered the six books of Euclid since 
 he was a member of Congress." 
 
 But no book, school, nor talk with refined men 
 
 1 "Short Autobiography, written at the request of a friend," Com- 
 plete Works, ed. Nicolay and Hay, 1905, pp. 26, 27.
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 285 
 
 would have taught him what this rough life did. 
 Confronted every day and every hour of the day 
 with problems which had to be solved, problems 
 of food, of clothing, of shelter, of escaping disease 
 "ague and fever . . . by which they [the people 
 of the place] were greatly discouraged" * of de- 
 veloping mind and body with scarcely any books 
 but those borrowed from distant neighbors, in 
 doubt most of the time as to what was going on 
 in the wide world, he got the habit of seeing, de- 
 ciding, and acting for himself. Accustomed from 
 childhood to live surrounded by the unknown and 
 to meet the unexpected, in a region "with many 
 bears," he wrote later, "and other wild animals 
 still in the woods," his soul learned to be aston- 
 ished at nothing and, instead of losing any time 
 in useless wondering, to seek at once the way 
 out of the difficulty. What the forest, what the 
 swamp, what the river taught Lincoln cannot be 
 overestimated. After long years of it, and shorter 
 years at now-vanished New Salem, then at Spring- 
 field, at Vandalia, the former capital of Illinois, 
 where he met some descendants of his precursors 
 in the forest, the French "coureurs de bois," 2 
 
 1 Ibid., 28, 29. 
 
 2 Some French settlements were still in existence in the region, 
 and were still French. "The French settlements about Kaskaskia 
 retained much of their national character, and the pioneers from the 
 South who visited them or settled among them never ceased to 
 wonder at their gayety, their peaceable industry, and their domestic 
 affection, which they did not care to dissemble and conceal like their
 
 286 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 after years of political apprenticeship which had 
 given him but a limited notoriety, almost sud- 
 denly he found himself transferred to the post 
 of greatest honor and greatest danger. And 
 what then would say the "man almost unknown," 
 the backwoodsman of yesterday ? What would 
 he say ? What did he say ? The right thing. 
 
 He was accustomed not to be surprised, but to 
 ponder, decide, and act. The pondering part was 
 misunderstood by many who never ceased in 
 his day to complain and remonstrate about his 
 supposed hesitancy; many of Napoleon's generals, 
 and for the same cause, spoke with disgust, at 
 times, of their chief's hesitations, as if a weak will 
 were one of his faults. Confronted with circum- 
 stances which were so extraordinary as to be new 
 to all, Lincoln was the man least astonished in 
 the government. His rough and shrewd instinct 
 proved of better avail than the clever minds of his 
 more-refined and better-instructed seconds. It 
 was Lincoln's instinct which checked Seward's 
 complicated schemes and dangerous calculations. 
 Lincoln could not calculate so cleverly, but he 
 could guess better. 
 
 shy and reticent neighbors. It was a daily spectacle which never 
 lost its strangeness for the Tennesseeans and Kentuckians to see the 
 Frenchman returning from his work greeted by his wife and children 
 with embraces of welcome ' at the gate of his dooryard, and in view 
 of all the villagers.' The natural and kindly fraternization of the 
 Frenchmen with the Indians was also a cause of wonder." Nicolay 
 and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, 1904, I, 58.
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 287 
 
 In writing the words quoted above, Prevost- 
 Paradol was alluding to the now famous first in- 
 augural address. But even before Lincoln had 
 reached Washington he had, so to say, given his 
 measure. Passing through Philadelphia on his 
 way to the capital, he had been entertained at 
 Independence Hall and, addressing the audience 
 gathered there, had told how he had often medi- 
 tated on the virtues and dangers of the men who 
 used to meet within those walls in the days when 
 the existence of the nation was at stake, and on 
 the famous Declaration signed there by them. 
 The purport of it, said the new President, is 
 "that in due time the weights should be lifted 
 from the shoulders of all men, and that all should 
 have an equal chance." And he added: "Now, 
 my friends, can this country be saved on that 
 basis ? If it can, I will consider myself one of 
 the happiest of men in the world if I can help to 
 save it. ... If it cannot be saved upon that 
 principle ... I would rather be assassinated on 
 this spot than to surrender it." 1 
 
 France was then an empire, governed by Napo- 
 leon III. During the great struggle of four years, 
 part of the French people were for the North, 
 and part for the South ; they should not be blamed : 
 it was the same in America. 
 
 But, to a man, the increasing numbers of French 
 
 1 February 22, 1861.
 
 288 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Liberals, making ready for a definitive attempt at 
 a republican form of government in their own 
 land, were for the abolition of slavery and the 
 maintenance of the Union. The American exam- 
 ple was the great one which gave heart to our 
 most progressive men. Americans had proved 
 that republican government was possible in a 
 great modern country by having one. If it 
 broke to pieces, so would break the hopes of those 
 among us who trusted that one day we would 
 have one, too as we have. These men followed 
 with dire anxiety the events in America. 
 
 They had all known Lafayette, who died only 
 in 1834, a lifelong apostle of liberty and of the 
 American cause. The tradition left by him had 
 been continued by the best thinkers and the most 
 enlightened and generous minds France had pro- 
 duced in the course of the century, such men as 
 Tocqueville, Laboulaye, Gasparin, Pelletan, and 
 many others. Constant friends of the United 
 States, and stanch supporters of the liberal prin- 
 ciples, they had, so to say, taken the torch from 
 the hands of dying Lafayette and passed it on 
 to the new generation. Tocqueville, who was 
 not to see the great crisis, had published in 1835, 
 with extraordinary success, his work on American 
 democracy, showing that individual liberty, equal- 
 ity for all, and decentralization were the goal 
 toward which mankind was steadily moving, and
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 289 
 
 that such a system, with all its defects, was better 
 than autocratic government with all its guar- 
 antees. Although living under a monarchy, he 
 could not help sneering at the kindness of those 
 omnipotent governments who, in their paternal 
 desire to spare the people they govern all trouble, 
 would like to spare them even the "trouble of 
 thinking." 
 
 Those who felt like him eloquently defended 
 in their books, pamphlets, and articles, when 
 the crisis came, the cause of the Union, and 
 strongly influenced public opinion in European 
 countries. Such was the case, for example, with 
 the America before Europe of Agenor de Gasparin, 
 full of enthusiasm for the States, and of confidence 
 in the ultimate issue. "No," said the author in 
 the conclusion of his work, published early in 1862, 
 "the sixteenth President of the Union will not 
 be its last; no, the eighty-fifth year of that na- 
 tion will not prove her last ; her flag will come out 
 of the war, rent by bullets, blackened by powder, 
 but more glorious than ever, and without having 
 dropped in the storm any of its thirty-four stars." 1 
 
 To Gasparin Lincoln wrote thereupon: "You 
 are much admired in America for the ability of 
 your writings, and much loved for your gener- 
 osity to us and your devotion to liberal principles 
 generally. ... I am very happy to know that 
 
 1 L'Amtrique devant I' Europe, Paris, 1862; conclusion.
 
 290 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 my course has not conflicted with your judgment 
 of propriety and policy. I can only say that I 
 have acted upon my best convictions without 
 selfishness or malice, and that, by the help of 
 God, I shall continue to do so." 1 
 
 But there were, withal, men among us who, 
 remembering the trials of our revolutionary years, 
 the most terrible any nation had gone through, 
 inclined to consider that, as Tocqueville had said, 
 "to think" was indeed a real trouble, and that 
 thinkers might prove very troublesome people. 
 Those men, too, watched with care what was 
 going on in America; the quiet development of 
 the country under democratic institutions caused 
 them little enough joy, as being the actual con- 
 demnation of their most cherished theories. They 
 kept saying: the country has no neighbors, it is 
 exposed to no storm; any system is good enough 
 under such exceptional conditions. If there was 
 any storm, the worthlessness of such institutions 
 would soon be obvious. And it had come to pass 
 that the storm had arisen, and that a man "al- 
 most unknown" had been placed at the helm. 
 
 Then developed that famous struggle between 
 equally brave opponents, with its various fortunes, 
 its miseries, its hecatombs, and the coming of 
 days so dark that it often seemed as though 
 there remained little chance for the survival of 
 
 1 Washington, August, 4, 1862.
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 291 
 
 one great, powerful, united nation: the hatreds 
 were so deep, the losses so immense. One of the 
 generals who served the cause of the Union was 
 French, and as a colonel first commanded a regi- 
 ment, the 55th New York, otherwise called the 
 Lafayette Guards, in which French blood pre- 
 dominated, and who wore the red trousers, red 
 kepi, and blue coats of the French army. It was 
 before the war one of those regiments whose func- 
 tions, owing to the prevalen.ee of peace, had for 
 a long time been of the least warlike, mainly 
 consisting in parades and banquets, so much so 
 that, with that tendency to irony rarely lacking 
 in Gauls, those Gardes Lafayette had nicknamed 
 themselves "Gardes La fourchette." 1 War came, 
 the country was changed, a new spirit pervaded 
 the nation, and the Gardes La fourchette became 
 Lafayette again, and worthy of the name. 
 
 General de Trobriand has left a captivating 
 account of the campaign 2 and of what his first 
 regiment did in it, beginning with military in- 
 
 1 "L'esprit Gaulois, toujours moqueur, avait saisi le c6te plaisant 
 de cet inutile 6talage d'epaulettes et de tambours, et les officiers du 
 55" New York qui, a 1'heure du danger, prodiguerent pour leur 
 nouvelle patrie le sang francais sous la direction d'un chef habile et 
 vaillant, M. de Trobriand, s'etaient donnes & eux-memes, dans 1'un 
 des repas de corps qui terminent toujours ces ceremonies, le titre 
 joyeux de 'Gardes La fourchette.'" Comte de Paris, Histoire de la 
 Guerre civile en Amerique, 1874, I, 311. 
 
 2 Quatre ans de campagnes d I'armee du Potomac, par Regis de 
 Trobriand, ex-Major General au service volontaire des Etats Unis
 
 292 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 struction hastily imparted before the start by 
 French sergeants, "some of whom had made war 
 in Algeria, others in the Crimea or Italy, familiar, 
 all of them, with field service"; then the coming 
 of his soldiers to Washington, as yet a small, 
 sparsely peopled city, with ' ' Pennsylvania Avenue 
 for its principal artery"; their following Rock 
 Creek, not yet a public park, "cadencing their 
 march by singing the Marseillaise or the Chant 
 des Girondins, hymns unknown to the echoes of 
 the region, which repeated them for the first 
 time, perhaps the last," and crossing Chain 
 Bridge to camp beyond the Potomac. 
 
 On one memorable day, in the winter of 1862, 
 the regiment, encamped then at Tennallytown, 
 entertained Lincoln himself. The occasion was 
 the presentation to it by the hands of the President 
 of two flags, a French and an American one. 
 The day chosen had been the 8th of January, as 
 being the anniversary of the battle of New Or- 
 leans, won by Andrew Jackson, some of whose 
 
 d'Amtrique, Paris, 1867, 2 vols. As is well known, two French princes 
 took part in the war as staff -officers in the Army of the Potomac, 
 the Comte de Paris and the Due de Chartres. An American officer 
 who was present told me that, whether on foot or on horseback, the 
 Comte de Paris had the habit of stooping. During a severe engage- 
 ment he was asked to carry an order across an open field, quite ex- 
 posed to the enemy's fire. He took the order, straightened on his 
 saddle, crossed the field quite erect, fulfilled his mission, recrossed 
 the field, keeping perfectly straight, and when back in the lines, 
 stooped again.
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 293 
 
 troops were French Creoles, who, they too, had 
 fought to the sound of the Marseillaise. 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln had accompanied the President. 
 There was a banquet which the regiment had had 
 cooked by its own soldier-cooks, who surpassed 
 themselves. "The President heartily partook of 
 the meal. Never, was he pleased to say, had he 
 eaten so well since he had entered the White 
 Hpuse. He wanted to taste of everything, and 
 his gayety and good humor showed well enough 
 how much he enjoyed this diversion in the midst 
 of the anxious cares with which he was oppressed 
 at that moment." 1 
 
 There were toasts, of course; the then Colonel 
 de Trobriand drank to the "prompt re-establish- 
 ment of the Union, not so prompt, however, that 
 the 55th may not first have time to do something 
 for it on the battlefield." President Lincoln an- 
 swered good-humoredly : "Since the Union is not 
 to be re-established before the 55th has had its 
 battle, I drink to the battle of the 55th, and wish 
 that it may take place as soon as possible." 
 
 The 55th had its battle, and many others, too; 
 the beautiful American flag handed to it on the 
 8th of January was torn to shreds by grape-shot; 
 at Fredericksburg only the staff was left; during 
 the course of that terrible day even the staff was 
 broken, and that was the end of it. It was also 
 
 l Qualre ans de campagnes, I, 131.
 
 294 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the end of the 55th: reduced to 210 men, it was 
 merged into the 33d. 
 
 Lincoln's instinct, his good sense, his personal 
 disinterestedness, his warmth of heart for friend 
 or foe, his high aims, led him through the awful 
 years of anguish and bloodshed during which, 
 ceaselessly, increased the number of fields dotted 
 with tombs, and no one knew, so great were the 
 odds, whether there would be one powerful nation 
 or two less powerful, inimical to one another. 
 They led him through the worst and through the 
 best hours; and that of triumph found him none 
 other than what he had ever been before, a shrewd 
 man of sense, a convinced man of duty, the de- 
 voted servant of his country, but with deeper fur- 
 rows on his face and more melancholy in his heart. 
 "We must not be enemies." 
 
 A French traveller who saw him at his second 
 inauguration has thus described him: "I shall 
 never forget the deep impression I felt when I saw 
 come on to the platform the strange-looking great 
 man to whom the American people had been so 
 happy as to intrust their destinies. The gait was 
 heavy, slow, irregular; the body long, lean, over 
 six feet, with stooping shoulders, the long arms of 
 a boatman, the large hands of a carpenter, ex- 
 traordinary hands, with feet in proportion. . . . 
 The turned-down shirt-collar uncovered the pro- 
 truding muscles of a yellow neck, above which
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 295 
 
 shot forth a mass of black hair, thick, and bris- 
 tling as a bunch of pine-boughs; a face of irre- 
 sistible attraction. 
 
 "From this coarse bark emerged a forehead 
 and eyes belonging to a superior nature. In this 
 body was sheathed a soul wondrous by its great- 
 ness and moral beauty. On the brow, deep-fur- 
 rowed with lines, could be detected the thoughts 
 and anxieties of the statesman; and in the large 
 black eyes, deep and penetrating, whose dominant 
 expression was good-will and kindness mixed 
 with melancholy, one discovered an inexhaustible 
 charity, giving to the word its highest meaning, 
 that is, perfect love for mankind." 1 
 
 The nation was saved, and when the work was 
 done Lincoln went to his doom and fell, as he had 
 long foreseen, a victim to the cause for which he 
 had fought. 
 
 When the news of his tragic death reached 
 
 1 Abraham Lincoln, by Alphonse Jouault. The work was begun 
 in Washington at the time of Lincoln's assassination, which the 
 author witnessed, but printed only in 1875. The text of the second 
 inaugural address had been read in France with great admiration. 
 The famous bishop of Orleans, Dupanloup, wrote concerning it to 
 Augustin Cochin: "Mr. Lincoln expresses with solemn and touch- 
 ing gravity the feelings which, I am sure, pervade superior souls 
 in the North as in the South. ... I thank you for having made 
 me read this beautiful page of the history of great men, and I beg 
 you to tell Mr. Bigelow of my sympathetic sentiments. I would 
 hold it an honor if he were so good as to convey an expression of 
 them to Mr. Lincoln." Orleans, April 2, 1865; an appendix to 
 Montalembert's Victoire du Nord, Paris, 1865.
 
 296 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 France, the emotion was intense; party lines at 
 that solemn hour disappeared for a moment, and 
 the country was unanimous in the expression of 
 her horror. The Emperor and Empress tele- 
 graphed their condolences to Mrs. Lincoln; the 
 Senate and Chamber voted addresses of sympathy; 
 M. Rouher, the premier, interrupted by applause 
 at every word, expressed himself as follows in pro- 
 posing the vote: "Mr. Abraham Lincoln has dis- 
 played in the afflicting struggle which convulses 
 his country that calm firmness which is a neces- 
 sary condition for the accomplishment of great 
 duties. After victory he had shown himself gen- 
 erous, moderate, and conciliatory." Then fol- 
 lowed these remarkable words: "The first chas- 
 tisement that Providence inflicts on crime is to 
 render it powerless to retard the march of good. 
 . . . The work of appeasement commenced by 
 a great citizen will be completed by the national 
 will." 
 
 Addressing the Chamber in the same strain, its 
 President, Mr. Schneider, said: "That execrable 
 crime has revolted all that is noble in the heart 
 of France. Nowhere has more profound or more 
 universal emotion been felt than in our country. 
 . . . After having shown his immovable firmness 
 in the struggle, Mr. Lincoln, by the wisdom of his 
 language and of his views, seemed destined to bring 
 about a fruitful and durable reconciliation be-
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 297 
 
 tween the sons of America. . . . France ardently 
 desires the re-establishment of peace in the midst 
 of that great nation, her ally and her friend." 
 
 But more noteworthy than all was the feeling 
 of unofficial France, that of the whole people. 
 Trying to describe it, the American minister to 
 France, but recently taken from among us, Mr. 
 Bigelow, wrote home: "The press of the metrop- 
 olis shows sufficiently how overwhelming is the 
 public sentiment"; and sending, only as samples, 
 a number of testimonials of sympathy received 
 by him, he added: "They will suffice to show not 
 only how profoundly the nation was shocked by 
 the dreadful crime which terminated President 
 Lincoln's earthly career, but how deep a hold he 
 had taken upon the respect and affections of the 
 French people." 
 
 Once more, owing to the death of a great Amer- 
 ican, the whole nation had been moved. From 
 thirty-one French cities came addresses of con- 
 dolence; students held meetings, unfavorably 
 seen by the imperial police, little pleased to find 
 how closely associated in the sentiments expressed 
 therein were admiration for Lincoln's work and 
 the longing for a republic similar to that over 
 which he had presided. The youthful president 
 of such a meeting thus conveyed to Mr. Bigelow 
 the expression of what was felt by "the young 
 men of the schools": "In President Lincoln we
 
 298 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 mourn a fellow citizen; for no country is now 
 inaccessible, and we consider as ours that coun- 
 try where there are neither masters nor slaves, 
 where every man is free or is fighting to become 
 free. 
 
 "We are the fellow citizens of John Brown, of 
 Abraham Lincoln, and of Mr. Seward. We young 
 people, to whom the future belongs, must have 
 the courage to found a true democracy, and we 
 will have to look beyond the ocean to learn how 
 a people who have made themselves free can pre- 
 serve their freedom. . . . 
 
 "The President of the great republic is dead, 
 but the republic itself shall live forever." 
 
 Deputations flocked to the American legation, 
 "so demonstrative" that the police more than 
 once interfered, as if to remind the delegates that 
 they were not living as yet in a land of liberty. 
 "I have been occupied most of the afternoon," 
 Bigelow wrote to Seward, "in receiving deputa- 
 tions of students and others who have called to 
 testify their sorrow and sympathy. Unfortu- 
 nately, their feelings were so demonstrative in 
 some instances as to provoke the intervention of 
 the police, who would only allow them in very 
 limited numbers through the streets. ... I am 
 sorry to hear that some have been sent to prison 
 in consequence of an intemperate expression of 
 their feelings. I can now count sixteen policemen
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 299 
 
 from my window patrolling about in the neigh- 
 borhood, who occasionally stop persons calling to 
 see me, and in some instances, I am told, send 
 them away." 1 
 
 A unique thing happened, unparalleled any- 
 where else. A subscription was opened to offer a 
 commemorative medal in gold to the unfortunate 
 widow, and this again did not overplease the 
 police. The idea had occurred to a provincial 
 paper, the Phare de la Loire; its success was im- 
 mediate. All the great names in the Liberal party 
 appeared on the list of the committee, Victor 
 Hugo's conspicuous among them, and with his 
 those of Etienne Arago, Louis Blanc, Littre, 
 Michelet, Pelletan, Edgar Quinet, and others. 
 In order to allow the poorer classes to take part, 
 and so as to show that the offering was a truly 
 national one, the maximum for each subscriber 
 was limited to two cents. 
 
 The poorer classes took part, indeed, with 
 alacrity; the necessary sum was promptly col- 
 lected; the medal was struck, and it was pre- 
 sented by Eugene Pelletan to Mr. Bigelow, with 
 these words: "Tell Mrs. Lincoln that in this 
 little box is the heart of France." The inscrip- 
 tion, in French, is an excellent summing up of 
 
 1 April 28, 1865. Text as well as that of the documents just 
 quoted in The Assassination of President Lincoln. Appendix to 
 Diplomatic Correspondence of 1865, Government Printing Office, 1866.
 
 300 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Lincoln's character and career: "Dedicated by 
 French Democracy to Lincoln, President, twice 
 elected, of the United States Lincoln, honest 
 man, who abolished slavery, re-established the 
 Union, saved the Republic, without veiling the 
 statue of liberty." 1 
 
 The French press had been unanimous; from 
 the Royalist Gazette de France to the Liberal Jour- 
 nal des Debats came expressions of admiration and 
 sorrow, by the writers of greatest repute, present 
 or future members, in many cases, of the French 
 Academy, Prevost-Paradol, John Lemoine, Emile 
 de Girardin, the historian Henri Martin, the pub- 
 licist and future member of the National Assem- 
 bly of 1871, Peyrat, and with them some ardent 
 Catholics, like Montalembert. 
 
 "Who among us," said the Gazette de France, 
 "would think of pitying Lincoln ? A public man, 
 he enters by the death which he has received in 
 the midst of the work of pacification after victory 
 into that body of the elite of the historic army 
 which Mr. Guizot once called the battalion of 
 Plutarch. A Christian, he has just ascended be- 
 fore the throne of the final Judge, accompanied 
 by the souls of four million slaves created, like 
 
 1 " D6die par la Democratic Francaise a Lincoln, President deux 
 fois 61u des Etats Unis Lincoln, honnete homme, abolit Pesclavage, 
 rdtablit 1'union, sauva la R6publique, sans voiler la statue de la 
 Iibert6." The medal is now the property of the President's son, 
 Mr. Robert T. Lincoln.
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 301 
 
 ours, in the image of God, and who by a word from 
 him have been endowed with freedom." 1 
 
 In his La Victoire du Nord aux Etats Unis, 
 Montalembert expressed, with his usual eloquence 
 and warmth of heart, the same sorrow at Lin- 
 coln's death, and the same joy also at the "success 
 of a good cause served by honorable means and 
 won by honest people. . . . God is to be thanked 
 because, according to the surest accounts, victory 
 has remained pure, unsullied by crimes or ex- 
 cesses. . . . That nation rises now to the first 
 rank among the great peoples of the world. . . . 
 Some used to say: Don't talk to us of your Amer- 
 ica with its slavery. She is now without slaves; 
 let us talk of her." 
 
 But happy as he was at the results, Montalem- 
 bert rendered, nevertheless, full justice to the 
 South and its great leaders: "The two parties, 
 the two camps, have shown an equal courage, the 
 same indomitable tenacity, the same wonderful 
 energy . . . the same spirit of sacrifice. All our 
 sympathies are for the North, but they in no way 
 diminish our admiration for the South. . . . 
 How not to admire the Southerners, while regret- 
 ting that such rare and high qualities had not been 
 dedicated to an irreproachable cause ! What men, 
 and also, and especially, what women ! Daugh- 
 ters, wives, mothers, those women of the South 
 
 1 A very long article by L. de Gaillard, April 30, 1868.
 
 302 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 have revived, in the midst of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, the patriotism, devotion, abnegation of the 
 Roman ones in the heyday of the republic. Clelia, 
 Cornelia, Portia have found their equals in many 
 a hamlet, many a plantation of Louisiana or 
 Virginia." 1 
 
 Many among the Liberals seized this oppor- 
 tunity to praise the American system of govern- 
 ment as opposed to European ones: "Democ- 
 racy," said Peyrat, "is not incompatible with 
 great extent of territory or the power and duration 
 of a great government. This has been demon- 
 strated on the other side of the Atlantic, and that 
 is the service which the United States have ren- 
 dered to liberty. 
 
 "They have rendered another, equally impor- 
 tant to human dignity, in showing that the citizen 
 has become among them great and powerful, pre- 
 cisely because he has been little governed; they 
 have proved that the real grandeur of the state 
 depends upon the high personal qualities of the 
 individuals. In our old societies, power put man 
 into tutelage, or rather, man put himself in 
 that position at the hands of the government, to 
 which he looked for everything he wanted in life 
 and for solutions which no government, whether 
 monarchical or republican, could give. 
 
 "The United States, on the contrary, have 
 
 1 La Vidoire du Nord, Paris, 1865, pp. 7, u, 20, 23.
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 303 
 
 granted to public power just what it is fit that 
 that power should possess, neither more nor less." l 
 In the Journal des Debats, Prevost-Paradol, 
 one of the best writers of the day, said: "The 
 political instinct which caused enlightened French- 
 men to be interested in the maintenance of Ameri- 
 can power, more and more necessary to the equi- 
 librium of the world, the desire to see a great 
 democratic state surmount terrible trials and 
 continue to give an example of the most perfect 
 liberty united with the most absolute equality, 
 assured to the cause of the North a number of 
 friends among us. ... Lincoln was indeed an 
 honest man, if we give to the word its full mean- 
 ing, or rather, the sublime sense which belongs to 
 it when honesty has to contend with the severest 
 trials which can agitate states and with events 
 which have an influence on the fate of the world. 
 . . . Mr. Lincoln had but one object in view 
 from the day of his election to that of his death, 
 namely, the fulfilment of his duty, and his im- 
 agination never carried him beyond it. He has 
 fallen at the very foot of the altar, covering it with 
 his blood. But his work was done, and the spec- 
 tacle of a rescued republic was what he could look 
 upon with consolation when his eyes were closing 
 in death. Moreover, he has not lived for his 
 country alone, since he leaves to every one in the 
 
 1 In the Avenir National, May 3, 1865.
 
 304 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 world to whom liberty and justice are dear a 
 great remembrance and a great example." 1 
 
 Accounts of Lincoln's career multiplied in order 
 to answer popular demand. The earliest one, by 
 Achille Arnaud, was printed immediately after 
 his death, and concluded thus: "There is in him 
 a more august character than even that of the 
 statesman and reformer, namely that of the man 
 of duty. He lived by duty and for duty. . . . 
 No mistake is possible; what Europe honors in 
 Lincoln, whether or not she is aware of it, is 
 duty. She thus affirms that there are not two 
 morals, one for the masters, the other for the 
 slaves; one for men in public life, the other for 
 obscure citizens; that there is only one way to 
 be great: never to lie to oneself, nor to others, 
 and to be just." 2 
 
 Regis de Trobriand, whose loyalty to Lincoln 
 never wavered, and who had believed in him even 
 in the darkest hours, well saw the importance for 
 the whole world of the issue of the great conflict, 
 and justly stated that, though more directly con- 
 cerning the United States, the fight had been for 
 "those grand principles of progress and liberty 
 toward which modern societies naturally tend, 
 and to which civilized nations legitimately aspire. 
 
 1 April 29, 1865. 
 
 2 Abraham Lincoln, sa naissance, sa vie, sa mart, par Achille Arnaud, 
 Redacteur a " VOpinion Nationale." Paris, 1865, p. 96. .
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 305 
 
 Such a cause is worth every sacrifice. By defend- 
 ing it at all costs the United States have done 
 more than fulfil a task worthy of their power and 
 patriotism, for their triumph is a victory for man- 
 kind." 
 
 Lectures were delivered in France on Lincoln 
 and America, one, under the chairmanship of 
 Laboulaye, by Augustin Cochin, a member of the 
 Institute, showing that Lincoln was "not only a 
 superior type of the American race, but one of the 
 highest and most respected of the human race," 
 something more than a great man : a great honest 
 man. 1 
 
 As a sort of pendant and counterpart for the 
 funeral ceremony held in the Invalides at the 
 death of Washington, the French Academy gave 
 as the subject of its grand prize in poetry: La 
 mort du President Lincoln. Selected in the year 
 following the event, the subject excited immense 
 interest ; almost a hundred poets (some of whom, 
 truth to say, were only would-be poets) took part 
 in the competition, which was decided in 1867; 
 several of the productions proved of great literary 
 merit. The prize went to a former secretary of 
 embassy, Edouard Grenier, who had already made 
 his mark as a gifted literary artist, and whom 
 many of us still remember: a lovable old man, of 
 
 1 Bibliotheque Libfrale Abraham Lincoln, by Augustin Cochin, 
 Paris, 1869.
 
 306 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 upright ideas, a model of courtesy, counting only 
 friends in the very large circle of his acquain- 
 tances. He ended with these admirable lines: 
 
 f Tous ces fleaux celestes, 
 
 Ces ravageurs d'Etats dont les pieds triomphants 
 Sur les peres broyes ecrasent ies enfants, 
 Grace a toi, desonnais, paliront dans rhistoire. . . 
 L 'human! te te doit 1'esclavage aboli . . . 
 L'Amerique sa force et la paix revenue, 
 L 'Europe un ideal de grandeur inconnue, 
 Et 1'avenir mettra ton image et ton nom 
 Plus haut que les Cesars aupres de Washington. 
 
 When, in a log cabin of Kentucky, over a cen- 
 tury ago, that child was born who was named 
 after his grandfather killed by the Indians, Abra- 
 ham Lincoln, Napoleon I swayed Europe, Jeffer- 
 son was President of the United States, and the 
 second War of Independence had not yet come 
 to pass. It seems all very remote. But the 
 memory of the great man to whom these lines 
 are dedicated is as fresh in everybody's mind as 
 if he had only just left us; more people, indeed, 
 know of him now than was the case in his own 
 day. "It is," says Plutarch, "the fortune of all 
 good men that their virtue rises in glory after 
 their death, and that the envy which any evil 
 man may have conceived against them never sur- 
 vives the envious." Such was the fate of Lincoln.
 
 V 
 THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, APRIL 20, 1906
 
 THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 
 
 ON the occasion of the second centennial of 
 Franklin's birth, a solemn celebration, 
 lasting several days, was held in Phila- 
 delphia, under the auspices of the American 
 Philosophical Society, founded by himself more 
 than a century and a half before. 
 
 Many Americans of fame took part in the cele- 
 bration, such men as the Secretary of State 
 Elihu Root, Senator Lodge, Horace H. Furness, 
 former Ambassador Joseph Choate, the President 
 (not yet emeritus) of Harvard, Charles W. Eliot, 
 Doctor Weir Mitchell, and many others. Sev- 
 eral foreign nations were represented; England 
 notably by one of her sons who has succeeded in 
 the difficult task of adding lustre to the name he 
 bears, Sir George Darwin. 
 
 In accordance with a law passed by Congress 
 two years before, a commemorative medal was, 
 on that occasion, offered to France. The speech 
 of acceptance is here reproduced solely to have 
 a pretext for reprinting the generous and mem- 
 orable address of presentation by the then Sec- 
 retary of State, Mr. Elihu Root; and also in 
 
 309
 
 310 THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 
 
 order to help in better preserving the souvenir 
 of a more than graceful act of the United States 
 toward France. 
 
 SPEECH BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE PRESENT- 
 ING THE MEDAL 
 
 EXCELLENCY: On the 2;th of April, 1904, 
 the Congress of the United States provided by 
 statute that the Secretary of State should cause 
 to be struck a medal to commemorate the two- 
 hundredth anniversary of the birth of Benjamin 
 Franklin, and that one single impression on 
 gold should be presented, under the direction 
 of the President of the United States, to the 
 Republic of France. 
 
 Under the direction of the President I now 
 execute this law by delivering the medal to you 
 as the representative of the Republic of France. 
 This medal is the work of fraternal collaboration 
 by two artists whose citizenship Americans prize 
 highly, Louis and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The 
 name indicates that they may have inherited 
 some of the fine artistic sense which makes 
 France pre-eminent in the exquisite art of the 
 medallist. 
 
 On one side of the medal you will find the 
 wise, benign, and spirited face of Franklin. On 
 the other side literature, science, and philosophy 
 attend, while history makes her record. The
 
 THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 311 
 
 material of the medal is American gold, as was 
 Franklin. 
 
 For itself this would be but a small dividend 
 upon the investments which the ardent Beau- 
 marchais made for the mythical firm of Hortalez 
 and Company. It would be but scanty interest 
 on the never-ending loans yielded by the steady 
 friendship of de Vergennes to the distressed ap- 
 peals of Franklin. It is not appreciable even 
 as a gift when one recalls what Lafayette, Ro- 
 chambeau, de Grasse, and their gallant comrades 
 were to us, and what they did for us; when one 
 sees in historical perspective the great share of 
 France in securing American independence, loom- 
 ing always larger from our own point of view, in 
 comparison with what we did for ourselves. 
 
 But take it for your country as a token that 
 with all the changing manners of the passing 
 years, with all the vast and welcome influx of 
 new citizens from all the countries of the earth, 
 Americans have not forgotten their fathers and 
 their fathers' friends. 
 
 Know by it that we have in America a senti- 
 ment for France; and a sentiment, enduring 
 among a people, is a great and substantial fact 
 to be reckoned with. 
 
 We feel a little closer to you of France because 
 of what you were to Franklin. Before the re- 
 splendence and charm of your country's history
 
 312 THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 
 
 when all the world does homage to your litera- 
 ture, your art, your exact science, your philo- 
 sophic thought we smile with pleasure, for we 
 feel, if we do not say: "Yes, these are old friends 
 of ours; they were very fond of our Ben Franklin 
 and he of them." 
 
 Made more appreciative, perhaps, by what 
 France did for us when this old philosopher came 
 to you, a stranger, bearing the burdens of our 
 early poverty and distress, we feel that the 
 enormous value of France to civilization should 
 lead every lover of mankind, in whatever land, 
 earnestly to desire the peace, the prosperity, the 
 permanence, and the unchecked development of 
 your national life. 
 
 We, at least, can not feel otherwise; for what 
 you were to Franklin we would be we are to 
 you: always true and loyal friends. 
 
 THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR'S ANSWER 
 
 On behalf of the French Republic, with feel- 
 ings of gratitude, I receive the gift offered to 
 my country, this masterful portrait of Franklin, 
 which a law of Congress ordered to be made, 
 and which is signed with the name, twice famous, 
 of Saint- Gaudens. 
 
 Everything in such a present powerfully ap- 
 peals to a French heart. It represents a man 
 ever venerated and admired in my country the
 
 THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 313 
 
 scientist, the philosopher, the inventor, the leader 
 of men, the one who gave to France her first no- 
 tion of what true Americans really were. "When 
 you were in France," Chastellux wrote to Frank- 
 lin, "there was no need to praise the Americans. 
 We had only to say: Look; here is their repre- 
 sentative." 
 
 The gift is offered in this town of Philadelphia 
 where there exists a hall the very name of which 
 is dear to every American and every French heart 
 the Hall of Independence and at a gathering 
 of a society founded "for promoting useful knowl- 
 edge," which has remained true to its principle, 
 worthy of its founder, and which numbers many 
 whose fame is equally great on both sides of the 
 ocean. 
 
 I receive it at the hands of one of the best 
 servants of the state which this country ever pro- 
 duced, no less admired at the head of her diplo- 
 macy now than he was lately at the head of her 
 army, one of those rare men who prove the right 
 man, whatever be the place. You have listened 
 to his words, and you will agree with me when I 
 say that I shall have two golden gifts to forward 
 to my government: the medal and Secretary 
 Root's speech. 
 
 The work of art offered by America to France 
 will be sent to Paris to be harbored in that unique 
 museum, her Museum of Medals, where her his-
 
 314 THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 
 
 tory is, so to say, written in gold and bronze, from 
 the fifteenth century up to now, without any 
 ruler, any great event, being omitted. Some of 
 the American past is also written there that 
 period so glorious when French and American 
 history were the same history, when first rose a 
 nation that has never since ceased to rise. 
 
 There, awaiting your gift, are preserved medals 
 struck in France at the very time of the events, 
 in honor of Washington, to commemorate the re- 
 lief of Boston in 1776; a medal of John Paul Jones 
 in honor of his naval campaign of 1779; an- 
 other medal representing W. Washington, and one 
 representing General Howard, to commemorate 
 the battle of Cowpens in 1781; one to celebrate 
 the peace of 1783 and the freedom of the thirteen 
 States; one of Lafayette; one of Stiff ren, who 
 fought so valiantly on distant seas for the same 
 cause as Washington ; one, lastly, of Franklin him- 
 self, dated 1784, bearing the famous inscription 
 composed in honor of the great man by Turgot: 
 "Eripuit caelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis." 1 
 
 My earnest hope is that one of the next medals 
 
 1 An official note informed the Secretary of State, in the following 
 December, of the arrangements made by the French Republic for 
 the preservation, among proper surroundings, of the Franklin medal: 
 "In the centre of the Hall of Honor in the Museum of Medals at 
 the Paris Mint, stand four ancient show-cases of the time of Louis 
 XVI. One of these has been selected for the Franklin medal, which 
 has been surrounded with the medals herein below enumerated, which 
 were deemed the fittest to make up a worthy retinue, if the phrase
 
 THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 315 
 
 to be struck and added to the series will be one 
 to commemorate the resurrection of that great 
 city which now, at this present hour, agonizes 
 by the shores of the Pacific. The disaster of 
 San Francisco has awakened a feeling of deepest 
 grief in every French heart, and a feeling of ad- 
 miration, too, for the manliness displayed by the 
 population during this awful trial. So that what 
 will be commemorated will not be only the 
 American nation's sorrow, but her unfailing hero- 
 ism and energy. 
 
 Now your gift will be added to the collection 
 in Paris; it will be there in its proper place. 
 The thousands who visit this museum will be re- 
 minded by it that the ties happily formed long 
 ago are neither broken nor distended, and they 
 will contemplate with a veneration equal to that 
 of their ancestors the features of one whom Mira- 
 beau justly called one of the heroes of mankind. 
 
 The Franklin ceremony had occurred at the 
 time of the San Francisco catastrophe, at a mo- 
 ment when, communication having been cut, 
 anxiety was intense. 
 
 be permissible." There follows a description of sixteen medals com- 
 memorative of Franco-American history, placed in the same case. 
 "House of Representatives," 5Qth Congress, 2d session, Document 
 No. 416.
 
 316 THE FRANKLIN MEDAL 
 
 I had spoken without instructions, but the 
 French Government took their representative's 
 words to the letter. The medal was ordered, and 
 was for Bottee, the artist, a former recipient of the 
 "Grand Prix de Rome," a work of love. It shows 
 on one side the city rising from its ruins, sur- 
 rounded with emblems of recovered youth and 
 prosperity. On the other side the image of the 
 French Republic is seen offering from over the sea 
 a twig of laurel to America. 
 
 One single copy in gold was struck, and the 
 presentation took place in rebuilt San Francisco, 
 in 1909, the medal being received by the states- 
 man and poet, the translator of the sonnets of 
 Heredia, Edward Robeson Taylor, then mayor 
 of the city.
 
 VI 
 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN THE NAME OF THE 
 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, PHILADEL- 
 PHIA, JANUARY 17, 1913
 
 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 
 
 WE meet on a solemn occasion. 
 One has recently disappeared from our 
 midst whose work was a model; whose 
 life, too, was a model; whose benign influence, ex- 
 erted for many years from the seclusion of a quiet 
 retreat, was felt far beyond the limits of his own 
 country; whose views, always expressed in the 
 gentlest terms, will outlive the thunder of many 
 a noisy writer, as ever-renewing flowers survive 
 earthquakes. 
 
 A member of the American Philosophical So- 
 ciety, founded in his own city by Franklin "to 
 promote useful knowledge," Furness was true to 
 the motto of the society and lived the life of a true 
 philosopher. I call him Furness, without Doctor 
 or any other title, not because he is no more, but 
 to obey a request of his. "I do not like titles in 
 the republic of letters," he wrote me in the early 
 times of our acquaintance; "if you will drop all 
 to me, I will do the same to you. One touch of 
 Shakespeare makes the whole world kin." 
 
 All those whom the spirit of philosophy has 
 penetrated and who stanchly adhere to its ideal 
 count among the noblest types of humanity and, 
 
 319
 
 320 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 
 
 whatever their rank in life or the period when 
 they lived, resemble each other. When Furness 
 died numerous eulogies, biographies, and portraits 
 of him, penned, many of them, by the hands of 
 masters, were published. I wonder if any better 
 resembled him than this one: 
 
 "Remember his constancy in the fulfilling of the 
 dictates of reason, the evenness of his humor at 
 all junctures, the serenity of his face, his extreme 
 gentleness, his scorn for vainglory, his applica- 
 tion to penetrate the meaning of things. He 
 never dismissed any point without having first 
 well examined and well understood it. He bore 
 unjust reproaches without acrimony. He did 
 nothing with undue haste. ... A foe to slander, 
 he was neither hypercritical, nor suspicious, nor 
 sophistical. He was pleased with little, modest in 
 his house, his clothing, his food. He loved work, 
 ate soberly, and thus was able to busy himself, 
 for the whole day, with the same problems. Let 
 us remember how constant and equable was his 
 friendship, with what open mind he accepted a 
 frank contradiction of his own views, with what 
 joy he received advice that proved better than 
 his own, and the kind of piety, free from all super- 
 stition, that was his. Do as he did, and your 
 last hour will be comforted, as his was, by the 
 conscience of the good accomplished." 
 
 In those higher regions where true philosophers
 
 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 321 
 
 live, equality reigns ; they resemble each other by 
 their virtues; this portrait, which, to my mind, 
 gives such a vivid idea of the life Furness led at 
 Wallingford, near Philadelphia, was drawn eight- 
 een centuries ago, by that noblest of antique 
 minds, Emperor Marcus Aurelius, describing his 
 predecessor, the first of the Antonines, he who, 
 on the last night of his life, being asked for the 
 password, had answered: "^quanimitas." 
 
 After studies at Harvard and Philadelphia and 
 a visit to Europe and the Levant, having taken 
 such part in the Civil War as his infirmity allowed 
 him, a happy husband, a happy father, Horace 
 Howard Furness decided to devote his life to the 
 "promotion of useful knowledge." He withdrew, 
 in a way, from the world, settling in a quiet re- 
 treat, and started on his life's work with the equip- 
 ment of a modern scientist and the silent en- 
 thusiasm, the indefatigable energy of mediaeval 
 thinkers, the compilers of Summcz of times gone, 
 regretting nothing, happy with his lot, at one with 
 that master mind of old English literature, the 
 author of Piers Plowman. "For," said centuries 
 ago the man "robed in russet," 
 
 "If heaven be on this erthe ' and ese to any soule, 
 It is in cloistre or in scole ' be many skilles I finde; 
 For in cloistre cometh no man ' to chide ne to fihte, 
 But all is buxomnesse there and bokes ' to rede and to 
 lerne."
 
 322 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 
 
 Such a cloister, with ease to his soul, with bux- 
 omness, with books to read and learn, was for 
 our departed friend his house in Wallingford, 
 where he lived surrounded by that extraordinarily 
 gifted family of his: a wife to whom we owe the 
 Concordance to the poems of Shakespeare, a 
 sister who translated for him the German critics, 
 sons and a daughter and a sister's relative 1 who 
 have all made their mark in their country's lit- 
 erature. There, for years, he toiled, never think- 
 ing of self nor of fame, busy with his task, and 
 even in his seclusion, with his tenderness of heart 
 and ample sympathies, listening to 
 
 The still sad music of humanity. 
 
 What that task was all the world now knows. 
 A passionate admirer of Shakespeare, he wanted 
 to make accessible to all every criticism, informa- 
 tion, comment, explanation concerning the poet 
 which had appeared anywhere at any time. 
 Each volume was to be a complete encyclopaedia 
 of all that concerned each play. The first ap- 
 peared in 1871, the sixteenth is the last he will 
 have put his hand to. 
 
 In the introduction to each volume, his pur- 
 poses and methods are explained, and never has 
 any writer more completely and more unwittingly 
 allowed us to look into his own character than 
 
 1 Owen Wister.
 
 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 323 
 
 Furness when writing what he must have con- 
 sidered his very impersonal statements. What 
 strikes the reader, before all, is the philosophical 
 spirit which pervades the whole work. A worthy 
 member of the American Philosophical Society, 
 he wanted to be "useful." Lives are and will be 
 more and more encumbered; the acquisition of 
 knowledge should, therefore, be made more and 
 more easy of reach. "To abridge the labor and 
 to save the time of others" was, said he in his 
 first volume, what impelled him to write. No 
 pains of his were spared to lessen those of others. 
 And all specialists know the extraordinary relia- 
 bility of his texts and statements. "Nowhere, 
 perhaps," Sir Sidney Lee wrote in his Life of 
 Shakespeare, "has more labor been devoted to 
 the study of the works of the poet than that given 
 by Mr. H. H. Furness, of Philadelphia, to the 
 preparation of the new Variorum edition." 
 
 The labor was one of love, and a lover naturally 
 forgets himself for the beloved one. Furness tried 
 not to show the ardor of his sentiments; but it 
 now and then appears, usually in small details 
 when he would, more naturally, be off his guard. 
 Shakespeare calls Caesar's Ambassador Thidias, 
 and not Thyreus, as the later-day editors do, 
 under pretense that it was the real name. They 
 are wrong: "Shakespeare in his nomenclature 
 was, as in all things, exquisite. . . . For certain
 
 324 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 
 
 reasons (did he ever do anything without reason ?) 
 he chose the name of Thidias. ..." 
 
 In the privacy of intimate correspondence Fur- 
 ness would be more outspoken, being not restrained 
 by the thought that he would be imposing his 
 own views upon the mass of readers. On Cleo- 
 patra, about whom I had risked opinions somewhat 
 different from his, he wrote me it seems it was 
 yesterday: "Of course, Shakespeare's Cleopatra 
 is not history. But who cares for history ? Of 
 this be assured, that, if you had lived with her as 
 I have for two years, you would adore her as 
 deeply as I do." 
 
 The truth is that, as he said, he actually lived 
 with the personages of the plays, and he raptur- 
 ously listened to those far-off voices, which came 
 clearer to his infirm ears than to those of any one 
 of us, meant only for commonplace uses. He had 
 a better right than any to form an opinion, but 
 was ever afraid to seem to force it on others. Of 
 his edition itself he had written: "I do not flatter 
 myself that this is an enjoyable edition of Shake- 
 speare. I regard it rather as a necessary evil." 1 
 On another occasion, having been criticised about 
 a certain statement of his, he wrote: "I now wish 
 to state that my critic was entirely right and I 
 entirely wrong." His work was a work of love, 
 but it was also a work of reason, as befits a phi- 
 
 1 Introduction to Hamlet.
 
 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 325 
 
 losopher. He leaned throughout toward conser- 
 vative methods, which have doubtless the fault 
 of attracting less tumultuous attention to the 
 worker: a great fault in the eyes of the many, a 
 great quality in Furness's own. 
 
 His shrewd good sense, seconded by a no less 
 enjoyable good humor, never failed him. When 
 he began, one important question had first to be 
 decided: would he admit in his work only tex- 
 tual and philological criticisms or also aesthetic 
 criticism, mere poetry, sheer literature ? To many 
 the temptation would have been great to exclude 
 the latter, the fashion being among the most 
 haughty, if not the most learned, of the learned 
 to doubt the seriousness, laboriousness, usefulness 
 of any who can enjoy, in a play of Shakespeare's, 
 something else than doubtful readings and mis- 
 prints. This school is less new than is generally 
 believed, and in his Temple du Gofit Voltaire had 
 already represented the superb critics of the 
 matter-of-fact school answering those who asked 
 them whether they would not visit the temple: 
 
 " Nous, Messieurs, point du tout. 
 Ce n'est pas la, grace a Dieu, notre etude; 
 Le gout n'est rien, nous avons 1'habitude 
 De rediger au long, de point en point, 
 Ce qu'on pensa, mais nous ne pensons point." 
 
 The fact is that, as Furness well perceived from 
 the first, the two elements should no more be
 
 326 HORACE HOWARD FURXESS 
 
 separated than soul from body. Without accu- 
 racy, literary criticism is mere trumpery; without 
 a sense of the beautiful, mere accuracy is death- 
 like. Much so-called aesthetic criticism, wrote 
 Furness, "is flat, stale, unprofitable. . . . But 
 shall we ignore the possible existence of a keener 
 insight than our own ? . . . Are we not to listen 
 eagerly and reverently when Coleridge or Goethe 
 talks about Shakespeare?" 
 
 With such a rule in mind he made his selections, 
 pruning what he deemed should be pruned: "re- 
 jectiones et exclusions s debitas," as Bacon would 
 have said. But one more kind of thing he ex- 
 cluded, and this is an eminently characteristic 
 trait of his. His gentleness (not a weak, but a 
 manly one) rebelled at others' acerbity, and when 
 he saw appear that unwelcome and somewhat 
 abundant element in modern criticism, he simply 
 left it out: no admittance for any such thing 
 within the covers of a gentleman-scholar's gentle- 
 manly and scholarly work. True it is that, while 
 Shakespeare is the author most read after the 
 Bible, it is also the one about which the most furi- 
 ous and unchristian disputes have been waged 
 after the Bible. The Philadelphia scholar 
 wanted all the critics admitted within his fold 
 to keep the peace there, and he adopted the fol- 
 lowing rule: "First, all unfavorable criticism of 
 fellow critics is excluded as much as possible. . . .
 
 HORACE HOWARD FURXESS 327 
 
 To confound Goethe, Schlegel, or Tieck is one 
 thing, to elucidate Shakespeare is another." He 
 went even further, and since he could not quote 
 whole books and had to select, "the endeavor," 
 he said, "in all honesty has been to select from 
 every author the passages wherein he appears to 
 best advantage." What critic, then, can be 
 imagined so blind to the service rendered, so 
 much in love with his own harshness, that would 
 not feel toward Furness as Queen Katharine 
 toward Griffith: 
 
 After my death I wish no other herald, 
 No other speaker of my living actions, 
 To keep mine honor from corruption, 
 But such an honest chronicler as Furness. 
 
 His friendly appreciation of French critics (who, 
 with all they lacked in early days, were, after all, 
 the first to form, outside of England, an opinion 
 on Shakespeare, the oldest one being of about 
 1680) cannot but touch a French heart. "It has 
 given me especial pleasure," he said in the Intro- 
 duction to his first volume, "to lay before the 
 English reader the extracts from the French; it is 
 but little known, in this country at least, outside 
 the ranks of Shakespeare students, how great is 
 the influence which Shakespeare at this hour is 
 exerting on French literature, and how many and 
 how ardent are his admirers in this nation." He
 
 328 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 
 
 had even, at a later date, a good word for poor 
 Ducis and his Hamlet, a Hamlet truly Ducis's 
 own. 
 
 Nor shall I ever forget in what tones, amidst 
 friendly applause, the great scholar spoke of 
 France in his own city of Philadelphia, at the 
 memorable gathering of April 20, 1906, when, in 
 accordance with the will of the nation as expressed 
 by Congress, a medal was offered to my country 
 to commemorate her reception of Franklin at the 
 hour when the fate of the States was still weigh- 
 ing in the balance. 
 
 In the early years of manhood one sees, far 
 ahead on the road, those great thinkers, scien- 
 tists, master men, tall, powerful, visible from a 
 distance, ready to help the passer-by, like great 
 oaks offering their shade. They seem so strong, 
 so far above the common that the thought never 
 occurs that we of the frailer sort may see the day 
 when they will be no more. Who was ever pres- 
 ent at the death of an oak? Whoever thought 
 that he could see the day when he would accom- 
 pany Robert Browning's remains to Westminster 
 or mourn for the disappearance of Taine or Gaston 
 Paris ? The feeling I had for them I had for 
 Furness, too. Was it possible to think that this 
 solid oak would fall ? 
 
 He himself, however, had misgivings, and it 
 seemed, of late years, as if the dear ones who had
 
 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 329 
 
 gone before were beckoning to him. "Do you 
 remember," he wrote me in 1909, "my sister, Mrs. 
 Wister, to whom I had the pleasure of introduc- 
 ing you at the Franklin celebration ? I am now 
 living under the black and heavy shadow of her 
 loss. She left me last November, solitary and 
 alone, aching for the 'sound of a voice that is 
 silent. " : And at a more recent date: "I have 
 been so shattered by the blows of fate that I 
 doubt you'll ever again receive a printed forget- 
 me-not from me." 
 
 And now, in our turn, members of the American 
 Philosophical Society, members of the Shakespeare 
 Societies of the world, members innumerable of 
 the republic of letters, we too ache for "the sound 
 of a voice that is silent." On the signet with 
 which he used to seal his letters, Furness had en- 
 graved a motto, which is the best summing up 
 of Emperor Marcus Aurelius's firm and resigned 
 philosophy: "This, too, will pass away." 
 
 For him, too, the august sad hour struck. But 
 so far as anything in this fleeting world may be 
 held to remain, so long as mankind shall be able 
 to appreciate honest work honestly done, the 
 name of Furness will not pass away, but live en- 
 shrined in every scholar's grateful memory.
 
 VII 
 FROM WAR TO PEACE 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE AMERICAN 
 SOCIETY FOR THE JUDICIAL SETTLEMENT OF IN- 
 TERNATIONAL DISPUTES, DECEMBER 17, 1910
 
 FROM WAR TO PEACE 1 
 
 DOES peace mean progress ? Is the disap- 
 pearance of war a sign of improvement or 
 of decay ? At a yet recent date learned 
 men, their eyes to their microscopes, were teach- 
 ing us that among the various kinds of living 
 creatures they had studied, war was the rule; 
 that where struggle ceased, life ceased; and that, 
 since more beings came into the world than the 
 world could feed, the destruction of the weakest 
 was both a necessity and a condition of progress. 
 Struggle, war, violence meant development; 
 peace meant decay. And a bold generalization 
 applied to reasoning man the fate and conditions 
 of unreasoning vermin. Since it was fate, why 
 resist the inevitable and what could be the good 
 of peace debates ? 
 
 But the stumbling-block that Science had 
 placed on the road to better days has been re- 
 moved by Science herself. The sweeping con- 
 clusions attributed to that great man Darwin by 
 pupils less great have been scrutinized; other ex- 
 periments, such as he would have conducted him- 
 
 1 The text of this address is reproduced exactly as it was delivered, 
 December 17, 1910, only a few notes and references being added.
 
 334 FROM WAR TO PEACE 
 
 self had he been living, were tried, and their re- 
 sults added to our book of knowledge. Great 
 results, indeed, and notable ones; it turned out 
 that the explanation of transformism, of progress, 
 of survival, was not to be found in a ceaseless war 
 insuring the predominance of the fittest, but in 
 quiet and peaceful adaptation to environment, to 
 climate, and to circumstances. And we French 
 are excusably proud to see that, for having un- 
 folded those truths years before Darwin wrote, 
 due honor is now rendered almost everywhere, and 
 especially in America, to Jean Baptiste de La- 
 marck, author of the long obscure and now famous 
 Philosophic Zoologique, 1809. 
 
 As for the undue multiplication of individuals, 
 statistics unknown to Darwin have since shown 
 that, whatever may be the case with beetles or 
 fishes (and let them work out their own problems 
 according to their own laws), there is, for man at 
 least, no need of self-destruction to ward off such 
 a peril: the general decrease of the rate of re- 
 production, so striking throughout the world, is 
 all that is wanted, and in some cases is even 
 more than is wanted. 
 
 War, therefore, is not our unavoidable fate, and 
 that much of the road has been cleared: a long 
 road followed amid terrible sufferings by mankind 
 through centuries. The chief danger in times 
 past, and partly still in our own, does not result
 
 FROM WAR TO PEACE 335 
 
 from an ineluctable fate, but from the private 
 disposition of men and of their leaders. And we 
 know what for ages those dispositions were. 
 Former-day chroniclers are wont to mention, as 
 a matter of course, that "the king went to the 
 wars in the season," as he would have gone a-fish- 
 ing. People at large saw not only beauty in war 
 (as there is in a just war, and of the highest order, 
 exactly as there is in every duty fulfilled), but they 
 saw in it an unmixed beauty. Men and nations 
 would take pride in their mercilessness, and they 
 were apt to find in the sufferings of an enemy an 
 unalloyed pleasure. 
 
 Such were the feelings of the time. To none 
 of the master artists who represented the day of 
 judgment on the walls of Rome, Orvieto, or Padua, 
 or on the portals of our northern cathedrals, did 
 the thought occur to place among his fierce angels 
 driving the guilty to their doom, one with a tear 
 on his face: a tear that would have made the 
 artist more famous than all his art; a tear, not 
 because the tortures could be supposed to be un- 
 just or the men sinless, but because they were 
 tortures and because the men had been sinful. 
 Dies ires! 
 
 Artists belonged to their time and expressed 
 their time's thought. The teaching of saints and 
 of thinkers long remained of little avail. War, 
 that "human malady," as Montaigne said, was
 
 336 FROM WAR TO PEACE 
 
 considered as impossible to heal as rabies was 
 until the day when a Pasteur came. Yet protests 
 began to be more perceptibly heard as men better 
 understood what they themselves were and com- 
 menced to suspect that the time might come 
 when all would be equal before the law. Nothing, 
 Tocqueville has observed, is so conducive to 
 mercy as equality. 1 
 
 All those who, in the course of centuries, led 
 men to the conquest of their rights can be truly 
 claimed as the intellectual ancestors of the present 
 promoters of a sane international peace : men like 
 our Jean Bodin, who, while upholding, as was 
 unavoidable in his day, the principle of autocracy, 
 yet based his study of the government of nations 
 on the general interests of the commonwealth, 
 and who, in opposition to Machiavelli, who had 
 called his book The Prince, called his The Republic. 
 To Bodin, who protests against the so-called 
 
 1 On this he is very insistent. He speaks of "cette disposition a 
 la pitie que I'egalit6 inspire." According to him, "les passions 
 guerrires deviendront plus rates et moins vives, a mesure que les 
 conditions seront plus egales," and elsewhere: "Lorsque le principe 
 de I'6galit6 ne se developpe pas seulement chez une nation, mais en 
 meme temps chez plusieurs peuples voisins . . . ils concoivent 
 pour la paix un meme amour . . . et finissent par considerer la 
 guerre comme une calamity presque aussi grande pour le vainqueur 
 que pour le vaincu." But this goal has not yet been reached, and 
 in the meantime, "quel que soil le gout que ces nations aient pour la 
 paix, il faut bien qu'elles se tiennent pretes a repousser la guerre ou, 
 en d'autres termes, qu'elles aient une arme." Democratic en Ameri- 
 que, i4th ed., 1865, III, 444, 445, 473, 474.
 
 FROM WAR TO PEACE 337 
 
 right of the strongest, have been traced some 
 of the principles embodied much later in the 
 American and in the French "Declaration of 
 the Rights of Man." 1 
 
 Such thinkers truly deserve the name of fore- 
 runners; such men as that great Hugo Grotius, 
 whose ever-living fame was not without influence 
 on the selection of his own country as the seat of 
 the peace conferences of our day, and who, being 
 then settled in France, near Senlis, dedicated to 
 
 1 Les six limes de la Republique de Jean Bodin, Angevin, Paris, 
 1576; innumerable editions, so great was the success. The work is 
 expressly written in opposition to that of Machiavelli, "this procurer 
 of tyrants." Kings may be a necessity, yet the thing of the state 
 is not theirs, but is the common property of the citizens, res publica. 
 No one on board the ship can play the part of an onlooker, especially 
 in stormy weather; all on board must bestir themselves and bring 
 such help as they can: "Depuis que 1'orage impe'tueux a tourment6 
 le vaisseau de nostre Republique avec telle violence que le Patron 
 mesme et les pilotes sont comme las et recreus (worn out) d'un travail 
 continuel, il faut bien que les passagers y prestent la main, qui aux 
 voiles, qui aux cordages, qui & 1'ancre, et ceux a qui la force man- 
 quera, qu'ils donnent quelque bon advertissement, ou qu'ils pr6- 
 sentent leurs vceux et prieres a Celuy qui peut commander aux vents 
 et appaiser les tempestes, puisque tous ensemble courent un mesme 
 danger." (Preface, to the magistrate and poet, the friend of Ron- 
 sard, Guy du Faur de Pibrac.) For Bodin, peace is the ideal; yet 
 "war must be waged to repel violence, in case of necessity. . . . 
 The frontier of a well-ordered republic is justice, and not the point 
 of the lance." ("La frontiere d'une r6publique bien ordonnee est 
 la justice . . . et non pas la pointe de la lance.") Such is the ideal, 
 but since it has not been reached yet, the keeping up of a permanent 
 military force is a necessity, "and to bestow on it a third of the 
 revenue is not too much," especially when you have warlike neigh- 
 bors, which is the case of "peoples living in fertile and temperate 
 regions, like France." Bk. V, chap. 5.
 
 338 FROM WAR TO PEACE 
 
 King Louis XIII his famous work on war and 
 peace, so memorable for its denunciation of frivo- 
 lous wars and wanton cruelties. 1 
 
 Soon the names of those to be honored for the 
 same cause became legion: men like Pascal, 
 Saint- Pierre, the Encyclopedists, Kant, Bentham, 
 Tocqueville, and many others. 
 
 Among Pascal's Thoughts is this memorable one, 
 which forecasts and sums up much of what has 
 since been or will be done: "When it is a ques- 
 tion of deciding whether war should be waged, 
 of sentencing so many Spaniards to death, one 
 man only decides, and one who is interested. 
 The decision ought to rest with an impartial third 
 party." 
 
 A little later, that strange Abbe de Saint- Pierre 
 was writing those works considered as so many 
 wild dreams in his day and no longer read at all 
 in ours. But if he were to return now, he would, 
 according to one of his latest critics, feel not at 
 all dismayed, but say: "This is all for the best; 
 you need not study my works, since you have 
 put in practise nearly all my ideas ; there remains 
 only my Perpetual Peace; 2 but, like the others, 
 its turn will come." 
 
 1 De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri III, Paris, 1625. 
 
 2 Projel pour rendre la paix perp&tuelle en Europe, 1713-17, 3 
 vols. The abb6 dreamed of a league of all governments in favor of 
 peace; any of them breaking the pledge, to be attacked by the others. 
 Differences between states should be arbitrated. A French prede-
 
 FROM WAR TO PEACE 339 
 
 If its turn has not come yet, great practical 
 steps have surely been taken toward it, chief 
 among them that move, so unexpected a few 
 years ago, so dubiously wondered at when it oc- 
 curred, and now so thoroughly accepted, that, as 
 in the case of all great inventions, one wonders 
 how things could go on before it existed: the call- 
 ing of the first conference at The Hague by the 
 Emperor of Russia, Nicholas II. 
 
 "The maintenance of general peace," read the 
 Russian circular of August, 1898, "and a possible 
 reduction of the excessive armaments which weigh 
 upon all nations, present themselves in the actual 
 situation of the world, as the ideal toward which 
 should tend the efforts of all governments. . . . 
 The ever-increasing financial expense touches pub- 
 lic prosperity at its very source; the intellectual 
 and physical powers of peoples, labor and capital, 
 are, most of it, turned aside from their natural 
 functions and consumed unproductively. . . . 
 
 cessor of the abbe had been Emeric Cruce, whose Nouveau Cynee ou 
 Discours d'Estat representant les occasions et moyens d'establir une paix 
 generate et la libertt du commerce par tout le monde, was published in 
 Paris, 1623 (modern edition, with an English translation by T. W. 
 Balch, Philadelphia, 1909). Cruce was in favor of the establishment 
 at Venice of a Supreme Court of Arbitration, in which every sovereign 
 would have had his representative: "If any one rebelled against the 
 decree of so notable a company, he would receive the disgrace of all 
 other princes, who would find means to bring him to reason" (Balch's 
 ed., p. 104) a plan which, in fact, is still under discussion. 
 
 In connection with the works of these theorists should be read, 
 e. g., Alberico Gentili's De Jure Belli, 1588-98.
 
 340 FROM WAR TO PEACE 
 
 To put an end to those ceaseless armaments and 
 to find means for preventing the calamities which 
 threaten the entire world, such is the supreme 
 duty which to-day lies upon all states." 
 
 When one man, then another, then another, had 
 come and said: I can draw the lightning from 
 the clouds; I can rise in the air; I can flash your 
 words and thoughts to any distance you please; 
 I can cure rabies by inoculating rabies; I can 
 make you talk with your friend miles away; I 
 can navigate a boat under the sea, scepticism had 
 scarcely been greater than when the circular took 
 the world by surprise. The issue seemed more 
 than doubtful; many among the most sanguine 
 barely hoped to succeed in preventing the abso- 
 lute failure that would have killed such a project 
 for generations. 
 
 Shortly afterward I happened to be in St. 
 Petersburg and had the honor of being received 
 by the Emperor. The conversation fell on the 
 "Great Design," to give it the name used for the 
 very different plan (implying coercion) attributed 
 two centuries before to the French King Henry 
 IV. I was struck by the quiet conviction of the 
 originator of the new movement as to its ultimate 
 results, and his disposition not to give up the 
 plan if at first it met with difficulties and delays. 
 Emperor Nicholas summed up his views with 
 the remark: "One must wait longer when plant- 
 ing an oak than when planting a flower."
 
 FROM WAR TO PEACE 341 
 
 Longer, indeed, yet not so very long, after all. 
 The first conference took place, and in it, I may 
 say, the delegations of our two Republics presided 
 over by such statesmen and thinkers as Andrew 
 D. White and Leon Bourgeois, failed not to fulfill 
 the part assigned to our democracies by their 
 ideals and traditions. In spite of scepticism, that 
 first conference reached an unexpected measure 
 of success. Eight years later a second one was 
 convened on the felicitous suggestion of President 
 Roosevelt, and now the supposedly useless mech- 
 anism from dreamland has been so heartily 
 accepted by mankind at large, all over the globe, 
 that the approximate date for a third one has 
 already been selected. Governments at first 
 doubted that one would be of any use; now they 
 want more. 
 
 The word had been spoken indeed at the proper 
 moment. The teachings of philosophers and of 
 experience, the outcome of revolutions, a more 
 vivid sense of equality among men imbuing them 
 with mercy, according to Tocqueville, had caused 
 the seed to fall on prepared ground. We scarcely 
 realize, looking at it from so near, how great the 
 movement thus started has already become. The 
 practical ideas put forth less than a dozen years 
 ago have progressed so much that more treaties 
 of arbitration have been signed between the first 
 Hague Conference and now than between the 
 day of creation and that conference. I take, if
 
 342 FROM WAR TO PEACE 
 
 I may be permitted to allude to my own feelings, 
 no small pride in having concluded the first one, 
 duly ratified by both countries, ever signed by 
 the United States with any European Power, and 
 I was glad to thus continue an old-established 
 tradition, since, in the matter of treaties with the 
 United States, be they treaties of commerce, alli- 
 ance, or amity, France has been accustomed to 
 take the lead among nations. 1 
 
 Quicker, indeed, than was anticipated by the 
 sower himself, the oak has grown and the nations 
 can rest under its shade. Several important ap- 
 peals have been made to the court of The Hague, 
 the United States taking the lead and giving to 
 all the best example. Those experiments, which 
 most of the great Powers have already tried, have 
 had manifold advantages: they have shown that 
 dangerous quarrels could thus be honorably set- 
 tled; they have shown also that defects in the 
 working of the court exist and should be remedied. 
 
 Public utterances and circulars from Presidents 
 Roosevelt and Taft and from Secretaries of State 
 Root and Knox have pointed out the importance 
 of trying to establish a permanent court, with 
 judges ever present, paid by the associated nations, 
 
 1 First (and only) treaty of alliance, 1778; first treaty of amity 
 and commerce, 1778; first consular convention, 1788; first treaty 
 for the aggrandizement of the territory of the United States, 1803. 
 The only example lacking, and for good reasons, is that of a treaty 
 of peace following a war.
 
 FROM WAR TO PEACE 343 
 
 selected from among men of such a high moral 
 standing as to be above influence of creed or na- 
 tionality, true citizens of the world, fit magis- 
 trates to judge the world. 
 
 In these views, the future realization of which 
 the second conference has insured, France heartily 
 concurred, having indeed, during the first confer- 
 ence, initiated an early preliminary move toward 
 continuity and permanence. 
 
 Given these more and more enlightened disposi- 
 tions among governments, it may seem that the 
 work of a private society like this must needs be 
 of comparatively little import. The reverse is 
 the truth. It has an immense power for good, 
 for it can act directly on the lever that moves the 
 world: public opinion. So powerful is such a 
 lever that even in the past, in times when men 
 were not their own masters, public opinion had 
 to be reckoned with; such imperious leaders of 
 men as a Richelieu or a Napoleon knew it better 
 than any one. Opinio veritate major, had even 
 cynically said the great philosopher Francis Bacon. 
 But if opinion can occasionally defeat truth, much 
 better can it defend truth. With the spreading of 
 instruction and with an easier access to men's 
 minds through books, journals, public meetings, 
 and free discussion, its power against truth has 
 been considerably diminished and its power for 
 good increased and purified.
 
 344 FROM WAR TO PEACE 
 
 You know this and act accordingly. Though 
 doing so in your private capacity, you conform 
 in fact to the instructions drawn by a masterly 
 hand for the American delegates at the second 
 conference at The Hague. In these instructions 
 Secretary Root told the delegates never to forget 
 that "the object of the conference was agreement, 
 not compulsion," and that the agreements readied 
 should be "genuine and not reluctant." 
 
 This is, undoubtedly, the road to follow, a road 
 not yet smooth, nor cleared of its rocks and pit- 
 falls. The dangers continue to be many. One 
 of the dangers is of asking too much too soon 
 and of causing nations to fear that, if they make 
 any little concession, they will be led by degrees 
 to a point where, being peacefully disarmed, their 
 continuance as a nation will depend upon the will, 
 the good faith and the excellent virtues of some 
 one else. Another is to describe war as being 
 such an abominable thing in itself, whatever be 
 its occasion, as to cause that public opinion on 
 which so much depends to rebel against the 
 preacher and his whole doctrine. 
 
 Let us not forget that, even in the land of 
 "Utopia," the country of Nowhere, in which 
 every virtue of good citizenship was practised, 
 and war held as a monstrosity, rent plane beluinam, 
 all wars had not been abolished. Sir Thomas 
 More informs us that Utopians make war for
 
 FBOM WAR TO PEACE 545 
 
 1 _ . j. _ r : : i-T. J. -_ . 7 '. ~.~.~~~.~- ,~~. :_. ~ ~ _ ; 
 
 are: First, "to drfpanf tj*4i- own country"*; 
 "to drive out of then* fgi**ig* land, the 
 that have invaded it. ! We have 'AJgul 
 
 in the past such wars and cannot pretend to fed 
 repentant- 
 
 Soch wars continue to be unavoidable to-day, 
 and to deny this is only to increase the danger of 
 
 a TPvnkimi of fepJfng among -reTUfi|inaprf MJinmg 
 
 ire may hope and must strive for is thai, 
 with the dev^opnient of mankindL a better knovi- 
 edge of oar nrigfthmi's an umli inlMiitin, that A 
 difference is not necessarily a vice, nor a criticism 
 a threat, with that better instruction which a 
 society Hire this one is giving to the many, a time 
 may come when that same public opinion win 
 render impossible the two sorts of asm MK for 
 which More deems war to be not only necessaiy 
 but noble and virnioas. 
 
 . No less dangerous is it to load war with aH the 
 sns in Israel, thus running the same risk of mak- 
 
 j jr *^^ M - ir| m\*r t \jfnr rlrt r^Bt^K^ W^^^C^ VMt ^WWTV^ ^W*OKv4nV^ 11* "t-^k^ 
 
 certen appcnnted daks, kst the>- ^iouid be to seke (idhh3er in ibe 
 Latm) in the f eate otf armes. if nede ^ionld require, yet they never 
 go to K.ti-rfl but "tbr in defence of their owne conntrer, or to 
 
 *" ; . - *. " ". ! : ." I^tT'J.^'r .7-.-: "! - tT t ~. ^'r "."._" 1.^ : -I r&QCC * -T 
 
 etL, 1551; ed. Arber, p. ^jrn.
 
 346 FROM WAR TO PEACE 
 
 ing people rebel not only against the preacher but 
 against his very creed. When we are told by the 
 pacifist that, owing to the wars of the early nine- 
 teenth century, only inferior people were left in 
 France to perpetuate the race, we wonder how it 
 is that she got a Victor Hugo, an Alexandre 
 Dumas, a Louis Pasteur, sons of soldiers of Napo- 
 leon, all three. We wonder how, in spite of this 
 supposed survival of "the weakest," that coun- 
 try got so many thinkers, philosophers, poets, 
 artists, soldiers, explorers; how the venturous 
 spirit of the former "coureurs de bois" awoke 
 again in our days with such notable results in 
 Asia, Africa, and elsewhere; how birth was given 
 in our land to the inventors of the dirigible, the 
 automobile, the submarine, photography, and 
 radium; how the love of sport in the race has re- 
 appeared of late, as active as it had ever been in 
 the remote times when football and cricket found 
 in France their rough-hewn cradle. 
 
 Exaggeration will not help, but on the contrary 
 surely hurt. Truth, if we follow her, is certain 
 to lead to better times. She has already. Wars 
 in former centuries lasted a hundred years, then 
 they lasted thirty years, then seven years; and 
 now, as disastrous as ever, it is true, but separated 
 by longer intervals, they last one year. 1 You are 
 
 1 Most of them much less. In this, however, as in so many other 
 respects, the present war, declared by Germany against Russia,
 
 FROM WAR TO PEACE 347 
 
 about to celebrate a hundred years' peace with 
 England; so are we. 
 
 That move toward truer, longer, perhaps one 
 day definitive peace, has been prophesied long be- 
 fore our time, not merely by a dreamer like Abbe 
 de Saint-Pierre, but by one who had a rare experi- 
 ence of men, of war, and of peace, and who, con- 
 sidering especially the influence of trade on na- 
 tions, once said: 
 
 "Although I pretend to no peculiar informa- 
 tion respecting commercial affairs, nor any fore- 
 sight into the scenes of futurity, yet as the mem- 
 ber of an infant empire, as a philanthropist by 
 character, and (if I may be allowed the expression) 
 as a citizen of the great republic of humanity at 
 large, I cannot help turning my attention some- 
 times to this subject. I would be understood to 
 mean that I cannot help reflecting with pleasure 
 on the probable influence that commerce may 
 hereafter have on human manners and society in 
 general. On these occasions I consider how man- 
 kind may be connected like one great family in 
 fraternal ties. I indulge a fond, perhaps an en- 
 thusiastic idea that, as the world is evidently 
 less barbarous than it has been, its amelioration 
 must still be progressive; that nations are be- 
 
 August i, 1914 (five days before Austria could be persuaded to act 
 likewise), against France the 3d, against Belgium the 4th, which 
 was tantamount to declaring it on England too, is an exception.
 
 348 FROM WAR TO PEACE 
 
 coming more humanized in their policy, that the 
 subjects of ambition and causes for hostility are 
 daily diminishing; and in fine that the period is 
 not very remote when the benefits of a liberal 
 and free commerce will pretty generally succeed 
 to the devastations and horrors of war." 
 
 Thus wrote to Lafayette, on the i5th of August, 
 1786, that "citizen of the great republic of human- 
 ity," George Washington. 1 
 
 That practical results have been secured is cer- 
 tain ; that better ones are in store, if we act wisely, 
 is no less certain. Mankind longs for less troubled 
 days, and moves toward this not inaccessible 
 goal. Such is the truth; and we may feel con- 
 fident that, according to the oft-quoted word of 
 dying Wyclif, "Truth shall conquer." 
 
 1 In connection with Washington's views, those of Franklin con- 
 cerning amicable relations between great countries may appropri- 
 ately be quoted. He wrote from Passy, on October 16, 1783, to his 
 friend David Hartley, one of the British plenipotentiaries for the 
 peace: "What would you think of a proposition, if I sh'd make it 
 of a family compact between England, France, and America? Amer- 
 ica would be as happy as the Sabine girls if she could be the means 
 of uniting in perpetual peace her father and her husband. What re- 
 peated follies are those repeated wars! You do not want to con- 
 quer and govern one another. Why, then, should you continually 
 be employed in injuring and destroying one another? How many 
 excellent things might have been done to promote the internal wel- 
 fare of each country; what bridges, roads, canals, and other public 
 works and institutions tending to the common felicity, might have 
 been made and established with the money and men foolishly spent 
 during the last seven centuries by our mad wars in doing one another 
 mischief!" Works, ed. Smythe, IX, 107.
 
 FROM WAR TO PEACE 349 
 
 A POSTSCRIPT 
 
 A few years after this address had been de- 
 livered threatening clouds began to gather. Ger- 
 many, who had prevented, at the first conference 
 of The Hague, anything being done toward a 
 limitation of armaments as proposed by Russia, 1 
 suddenly, in full peace, when other nations were 
 inclined to think that they were rather too much 
 armed than not enough, passed a law increasing, 
 in a prodigious degree, her military forces. 
 
 On this move of hers, on what peace-loving 
 democracies ought to do in the presence of such 
 an unexpected event, on the future of the peace 
 and arbitration ideas, after such a blow, the 
 former president of the French delegation at The 
 Hague, Mr. Leon Bourgeois, wrote in May, 1913, 
 little more than a year before the present war, a 
 noteworthy letter, 2 in which we read: 
 
 "One fact strikes us most painfully and might 
 at first disturb our minds. The bills presently 
 submitted to the Reichstag are going to increase 
 in a formidable manner the armaments of Ger- 
 many, and to necessitate on the part of France an 
 
 1 "Notwithstanding the support given to the Russian proposition 
 by France, one of the most martial of the nations, and by various 
 other governments, the objections voiced by the German delegates 
 were too serious to be overcome." John W. Foster, Arbitration and 
 The Hague Court, Boston, 1904, p. 32. 
 
 2 Text, e.g., in the Temps, May 12, 1913.
 
 350 FROM WAR TO PEACE 
 
 extraordinary effort, and sacrifices to which we 
 must manfully and promptly consent. . . . 
 
 "No one more than myself deplores that folly 
 of armaments to which Europe is yielding, and I 
 do not forget that it was I who, in 1899, at the 
 first Hague Conference, drew up and defended the 
 resolution in favor of a limitation of the military 
 load weighing on the world. But I do not forget 
 either what I said before the Senate, in 1907, after 
 the second conference: 'As for us, confirmed par- 
 tisans of arbitration and peace, disarmament is a 
 consequence, not a preparation. For disarmament 
 to be possible, one must first feel that one's right 
 is secure. The security of right is what must be 
 organized first of all. Behind that rampart alone, 
 nations will be able to lay down their arms. . . . 
 
 "Let us be pacific, but let us be strong. And 
 let us know how to wait. The very excess of the 
 load weighing on Europe will originate, sooner 
 than is sometimes believed, that irresistible move- 
 ment of opinion which will cause a policy of wis- 
 dom, mutual respect, and real security, to be- 
 come an unavoidable necessity." 
 
 The chief factor will be public opinion. Present 
 events will, one may hope, have served to educate 
 public opinion throughout the world.
 
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