HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

5.1         France and Great Britain on the Eve of American Independence

     On February 6, 1778, His Most Christian Majesty Louis XVI, By the Grace of God, King of France and Navarre, absolutist ruler par excellence, whose right to rule rested on his position as representative of God on earth, whose theory of govern ment knew but subjects without rights, a man who could and did proudly proclaim: l'état, c'est moi! - I am the state! - entered into an alliance with a government that was in a state of rebellion against fellow monarch George III, By the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland. Absolutist France backed and bankrolled a government that justified its existence by claiming to "derive[d] its just powers from the consent of the governed," which proclaimed the seditious idea that "all men are created equal" and turned subjects into citizens by endowing them with "certain unalienable rights" such as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

     In retrospect it is hard to imagine two allies more diverse than France and the United States in 1778. What formed the basis of this alliance and what held it together were not shared ideologies and ideals, nor common territorial or financial interests. France bankrolled a bankrupt, reluctant ally, and in the very treaty creating the alliance renounced all territorial gain in the New World. The one and only reason why the France of Louis XVI would so generously share her resources with American rebels was a passion to defeat and to humiliate a common enemy, the desire for revenge, the urge to destroy the British tyrannie des mers, which threatened to swallow the final remnants of France's once powerful colonial empire that had survived the humiliation of 1763. [1] It was for this goal that France spent nearly 1 billion livres between 1775 and 1783, it was for this goal that the fleurs-de-lis flew on the ramparts of Yorktown, and it was for this goal that His Most Christian Majesty threw all ideological considerations overboard and provided the United States with the military, financial, and economic support she needed to win her independence.

     The American Revolutionary War was both the last traditional war of cabinets as well as the first modern popular conflict in a century characterized by almost continuous warfare. From the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701, to the French Revolutionary Wars in the 1790s, Europe witnessed barely a dozen years of peace. In all of these wars, Great Britain and France fought on opposite sides. During the first half of the century, the Bourbon kings in Versailles were able to hold their ground against the Hanoverians in London, but the Seven Year's War from 1756 to 1763, appropriately known as the French and Indian War on this side of the Atlantic, ended in disaster. In the (First) Peace of Paris, France lost virtually all her possessions in India and in the New World, where Canada became British and Louisiana was given to Spain. All that was left of France's erstwhile globe-circling empire were the sugar islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe and the fever-infested swamps of Cayenne and French Guyana.

     But there was some posturing behind France's ostentatious anger at this humiliation as well. Much as it hurt French pride, Étienne François, duc de Choiseul-Stainville, her chief minister during negotiations in 1762, had insisted that Britain was to retain Canada. Despite the misgivings of many of his colleagues and popular opinion at home, which clamored for the retention of Canada, Choiseul realized that giving up the colony would free his foreign policy in the New World. His adversary Lord Bedford, the chief British negotiator, seems to have anticipated Choiseul's fondest dreams when he saw an alarming mirage emerge across the Atlantic. He wondered "whether the neighborhood of the French to our North American colonies was not the greatest security for their dependence on the mother country, which I feel will be slighted by them when their apprehension of the French is removed." [2] Bedford's worst fears soon became reality.

     The ink was barely dry on the peace treaty when France began her preparations for the war of revenge Louis XV and his ministers considered necessary to restore la gloire to the crown of Louis XIV. If revenge in America and India was one goal of French foreign policy after 1763, the restoration of French prestige and political influence on the European continent was another. How little she mattered in European affairs was driven home to France in 1764, when Catherine the Great had her protegee Stanislas Poniatowski elected King of Poland by the Seijm over France's opposition. Eight years later, France was forced to watch helplessly as Austria, Russia, and Prussia carved large chunks of territory out of France's traditional ally in Eastern Europe. The annexation of Corsica in 1769 was but a small plaster on the festering sore of French pride.

     But the eastward orientation of three of Europe's five major powers also held advantages for France. Choiseul knew that France could not count on much help from other European powers in her quest for revenge. Unable to gain allies of her own, her foreign policy after 1763, set itself three goals. First she had to try and isolate Great Britain on the continent. This task was made easier by Russia's war with the Sultan in Constantinople from 1768 to 1774, by Austria's continued attempts throughout the 1770s to trade Bavaria from the Wittelsbachs for the Netherlands, and by Prussia's considerable animosity with Britain for abandoning her continental ally in 1761, once her overseas war aims had been achieved. The second task had to be the strengthening of King Carlos III on the throne of Spain and of the Bourbon Family Compact of 1761, between the ruling houses in Paris and Madrid. As collateral, Paris needed to keep colonial tensions between Madrid and London, especially over Florida, given to Great Britain in 1763, simmering. Lastly she had to avoid all continental entanglements which could infringe upon her ability to wage war against England whenever and wherever the opportunity arose.    

     In February 1762, a full year before the Treaty of Paris was signed, Choiseul declared that after the end of that war, he would pursue "only one foreign policy, a fraternal union with Spain; only one policy for war, and that is England." [3] In his policy of revenge, the possibility of a war in the New World loomed large in the mind of Choiseul. The French minister worked from the assumption that England had to be attacked where she was weakest, and that was in her American Empire. Versailles was convinced that the most effective way to hurt England and her trade, which was the foundation of her wealth, was through the separation of her American colonies. This would severely weaken British trade and sea power and since France would take over transatlantic trade from Britain, lead to a corresponding increase in the relative strength of France. British policy versus her colonies, combined with the free hand France had gained with the cession of Canada, would give her the opportunity to achieve her goals. [4]

     The Seven Years' War had not only brought huge territorial gains for Great Britain, it had also resulted in some £ 137 million of debt. Interest on the debt amounted to £ 5 million annually, more than half the governmental revenues of some £ 8 million. Parliament in London wanted the colonies to help pay for these debts and asked them to defray one third of the cost of maintaining 10,000 Redcoats in the New World. In 1764, Prime Minister Sir George Grenville received the House of Common's approval to place import duties on lumber, foodstuffs, molasses, and rum in the colonies. The Sugar Act of 1764 was immensely unpopular in the New World and hostility increased even more when the Quartering Act of 1765 required colonists to provide food and quarters for British troops. Hard on its heels came the 1765 Stamp Act, probably the most infamous law concerning the colonies ever passed by a British Parliament. Vehement opposition forced the Commons to repeal the act in March 1766. To make up for the lost revenue, the Townshend Acts of 1767 levied new taxes on glass, painter’s lead, paper and tea.

     Relations with the motherland had barely been smoothed over when long-standing military-civilian tensions in Boston erupted on March 5, 1770, when British troops fired into a mob. [5] The infamous Boston Massacre killed five people, including Crispus Attucks, a black man reportedly the group's leader. In the fall of 1773, tensions flared up again in Boston and all along the coast when East India Company tea ships were turned back at Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. A cargo ship was burned at Annapolis on October 14; another ship had its cargo thrown overboard, once again, in Boston at the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, to protest the new tax on tea. Parliament responded with what the colonists called the "Intolerable Acts" of 1774, which curtailed Massachusetts' self-rule and barred the use of Boston harbor until the tea was paid for.

     Of equal, if not greater importance for the rapid deterioration of British-Colonial relations was the Quebec Act of 1774. This act not only granted Roman Catholics in Canada the freedom to practice their religion, more importantly it placed all lands between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River under the administration of the governor of formerly French Quebec. With that decision, the House of Commons seemed to have closed off forever all chances of continued westward expansion. Until ten years earlier, the French had stood in the way of land-hungry colonists, now Parliament in London had assumed that role. When the First Continental Congress convened, after ten years of conflict with the crown, in Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia on September 5, 1774, Great Britain had become the antagonist for expansion-minded colonists who in ever larger numbers saw independence as a potentially viable option.

5.2         French Aid Prior to the Alliance of 1778

     The war Choiseul had foreseen was about to break out. France was prepared militarily and politically. Ever since the Peace of Paris, Choiseul and his successor Charles Gravier, the comte de Vergennes, who replaced Choiseul as foreign minister in 1774, had embarked on an ambitious naval build-up. It called for a fleet of 80 ships of the line and 47 frigates, almost twice the 47 ships of the line in French service in 1763.  Helped by an enthusiastic response from provincial estates and the generosity of municipalities such as Paris, the French navy grew to 64 ships of the line, mostly of 74 guns, plus 50 frigates in 1770. In 1765, Choiseul issued the first major new navy regulations since 1689, retired numerous incompetent officers, emphasized training, and the following year re-established the navy as an independent service within France's armed forces. Gabriel de Sartines, Choiseul's successor as navy minister (1774-1780), continued these programs: when France entered the war in 1778, her order of battle listed 52 ships of the line of at least 50 guns (plus 60 frigates) with a crew of about 1,250 officers and 75,000 men. They were arrayed against Britain's 66, and there was hope that Spain would join in the fight, adding another 58. Parity with Great Britain had been achieved; since she had to keep some 20 ships of the line close to home to counter the threat of French raids, naval superiority in select theatres of war such as the Caribbean had become a possibility. [6]

     The defeats of the Seven Years' War, particularly at Rossbach in 1757, had also laid painfully bare the inefficiency of the French army, which was "still basically functioning as in the days of Louis XIV." [7] Beginning in 1762, Choiseul's ministry carried out long-overdue reforms. At last all infantry regiments were organized in the same way --equipment and training were standardized throughout the army and recruiting was centralized. The Maréchal de Saxe's dream of the 1740s that some day the French army would march in step was finally coming true. The artillery was re-organized along the ideas of General Jean Baptiste de Gribeauval, and the cavalry got its first riding school.

     Reforms were pushed further in 1774, when Louis XVI succeeded to the throne of France. The comte de Saint-Germain, Louis XVI's Minister of War, forbade the sale of officers' commissions, retired some 865 of over 900 colonels in the army and eventually abolished the King's Guards, including the Horse Grenadiers and the famous Musketeers, as too expensive. In March/April of 1776, all regiments (except the Guards and the Régiment du Roi) were reduced to two battalions only; regiments with four battalions saw their 2^nd and 4^th battalions transformed into new regiments. The most famous of these newly created units is undoubtedly the Gâtinais, created from the Auvergne, whose grenadiers and chasseurs stormed Redoubt No. 9 before Yorktown in 1781. Concurrently St. Germain also reduced the number of companies per battalion from nine to six and used the savings in officers' salaries to add personnel to each company.

     The concept of a two-battalion regiment of five companies each as set up in the ordonnance of March 25, 1776, was further clarified on June 1, 1776. It set the strength of an infantry regiment at two battalions of five companies each and an auxiliary company of variable strength. Each regiment had one Grenadier company consisting of 6 officers, 14 non-commissioned officers, 1 cadet gentilhomme, 1 surgeon's assistant, 84 grenadiers and 2 drummers for a total of 6 officers and 102 men. Besides the Grenadiers stood one of the newly created chasseur or light infantry companies and four companies of fusiliers. The authorized strength of those companies stood at 6 officers, 17 NCOs, 1 cadet gentilhomme, 1 surgeon's assistant, 116 chasseurs (or fusiliers) and 2 drummers for a total of 6 officers and 137 men. A regimental staff of twelve, i.e. the Colonel, the Second Colonel, 1 Lieutenant Colonel, 1 Major, 1 Quarter-Master Treasurer, 2 Ensigns, 1 Adjutant, 1 Surgeon-Major, 1 Chaplain, 1 Drum-Major, and 1 Armourer. By the spring of 1780, subsequent ordinances had set the authorized strength of a regiment at 67 officers [8] and 1,148 men (excluding the auxiliary company), which for bookkeeping purposes was fixed at 1,003 men for French, and 1,004 men for foreign, infantry.

     When France decided to provide aid to the American colonies in 1775, the paper strength of her land forces amounted to some 140,000 men, though the actual strength was probably 8,000-10,000 men below that number. [9] Of these, some 77,500 served in one of the 79 French line regiments, about 12,000 in one of the eight German, three Irish, the Royal Corse and the Royal Italien regiments, and 12,000 served in one of the eleven regiments of Swiss infantry. [10] The royal household troops, including one regiment each of French and Swiss Guards, were authorized at almost 9,000 men. Almost 6,000 served in the artillery; the cavalry added about 22,000 men and the Light Troops about 3,500.

     During these same years, the army budget increased only modestly from 91.9 million livres in 1766, to 93.5 million in 1775. The relatively small increase in expenditures hides the real significance of the changes that took place within the French army during those years. The armed forces of 1775, had been thoroughly streamlined and funds available were spent much more efficiently. Through the reduction in strength of unreliable but costly elements such as the militia, detached companies, and separate recruit units, the paper strength of the armed forces had declined from roughly 290,000 to 240,000 men. Within the regular army, the guards had remained virtually unchanged and the foot contingent declined by 5,000 through the abolition of units such as the Grenadiers de France in 1771. A decrease in the number of foreign infantry, which cost the French taxpayer 368 livres per year as opposed to 230 livres for a French soldier, freed additional funds which were used, e.g., to increase the number of French infantry, of mounted units (from 25,000 to nearly 46,000) and of light troops. [11] At the end of these reforms stood the introduction of the new Model 1777 Charleville musket, a .69 caliber weapon that was lighter, stronger and more reliable than the .75 caliber "Brown Bess" used by the British.

     The same holds true for the artillery. After 1765 it consisted of seven regiments named after the community in which they were stationed. In November 1776, each regiment was divided into two battalions of ten companies each: fourteen of gunners, four bombardiers, and two sappers. Each company consisted of four officers and 71 other ranks. Unattached were nine companies of sappers and six companies of miners for a total of 909 officers and 11,805 men authorized strength in the Royal Artillery. This was well above its actual strength of almost 6,000 men, and the artillery, the most technically advanced branch, always had problems keeping its ranks filled. But what it lacked in numbers it made up in quality: contemporaries considered the French artillery second to none, a well-deserved reputation as Lord Cornwallis would find out much to his dismay at Yorktown.

      These reforms, necessary as they were, brought St. Germain numerous and powerful enemies in the officer corps, but it was the introduction of a new and universally hated Prussian-style uniform in 1776, that caused his downfall in 1777, and replacement by the Prince de Montbarey (minister until 1780). [12] By then, the French navy, infantry, cavalry, and artillery had been transformed into well-trained, efficient, and well-equipped organizations ready to take on the British foe once again. The fleet that Admiral de Grasse arrayed at the mouth of the York River in September 1781, and the troops that General Rochambeau would take to America and to victory at Yorktown, had little in common with the French army that had suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of Frederick the Great and the British between 1756 and 1763.

     While politicians and administrators in Versailles were preparing for the impending war, they also kept a close watch on American developments. As early as 1767, Choiseul had dispatched the German-born (and self-styled Baron) Major-General Johann von Kalb on a secret fact-finding mission to the British colonies and again his successor Vergennes followed this policy. Throughout the late 1760s and early 1770s, the French crown repeatedly sent agents to British America in order to keep informed of developments in the lower thirteen colonies. [13]

     Vergennes was well aware of the tense situation along America's eastern seashore when the First Continental Congress adjourned in October 1774, with an appeal to King George III to help restore harmony between Britain and the colonies. They also knew that the Congress had called on the colonies to boycott trade with Britain. As the tense winter months of 1774/75, turned to spring, it became only a question of time until civil disobedience would erupt into open violence. That moment arrived in mid-April 1775, when patriots alerted by Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott attacked British troops at Lexington and Concord on April 19. On May 10, the day the Second Continental Congress opened its debates, Colonels Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold captured Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York. Next colonials headed for Bunker Hill near Boston, where they repulsed British Redcoats under General William Howe twice before retreating on June 17, 1775. Two days earlier Congress had appointed General George Washington Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army.

     The colonies were at war, and France stepped in as the natural ally of the rebellious colonies against the British motherland. America reached out, and France responded. From mid-March to early April 1775, a secret plan to aid the Americans was drawn up in Versailles. When news of Lexington and Concord reached Paris, the government of His Most Christian Majesty, despite all ideological differences, became the first foreign power to provide aid and support to the fledgling United States. [14] In September, Vergennes' emissary Julien-Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir arrived in Philadelphia to establish relations and to encourage the Americans in their rebellion. Concurrently Silas Deane arrived in Paris as Congress' commercial agent and covert representative. Deane had been instructed to buy clothes, arms and ammunition for 25,000 men, and to negotiate treaties of alliance and commerce with the French.

     To supplement Deane's efforts, Vergennes co-opted the playwright Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, author of The Barber of Seville, into his service. As early as the fall of 1775, Beaumarchais had approached Vergennes with a plan to support the American rebels. In January 1776, Vergennes submitted the proposal to King Louis XVI, informing him that the plan was "not so much to terminate the war between America and England, as to sustain and keep it alive to the detriment of the English, our natural and pronounce enemies." [15] After some hesitation - in March Louis XVI told Vergennes that he "disliked the precedent of one monarchy giving support to a republican insurrection against a legitimate monarchy" -- the king eventually agreed to let Beaumarchais act as the secret agent of the crown. [16] In April 1776, substantial military supplies were made available to Beaumarchais, who set up the trading company of Roderigue Hortalez & Co. as a front to channel aid to the Americans. In June, Louis XVI granted Beaumarchais, i.e. the American rebels, a loan of 1 million livres. [17] Spain added another million in August. [18]

     When news of the disaster at Long Island and the occupation of New York by troops under Sir William Howe in September reached Europe in late 1776, Versailles feared that Britain might succeed in snuffing out the rebellion. France and Spain stepped up their support. A royal order forwarded by Jose de Galvez, Minister of the Indies, to Luis de Unzaga, Spanish Governor of Louisiana, of December 24, 1776, [19] informed Unzaga that he would soon "be receiving through the Havana and other means that may be possible, the weapons, munitions, clothes and quinine which the English colonists (i.e., Americans) ask and the most sagacious and secretive means will be established by you in order that you may supply these secretly with the appearance of selling them to private merchants." Concurrently Galvez informed Diego Jose Navarro, governor of Cuba, that he would soon "receive various items, weapons and other supplies" which he was to forward to Unzaga together with "the surplus powder available" in Havana and "whatever muskets might be in that same Plaza in the certainty that they will be quickly replaced."

     With the covert backing and financial support of the Spanish and French governments, Beaumarchais' ships carried much-needed supplies to the Americans, frequently via the tiny Dutch island of St. Eustatius in the Caribbean. [20] By September of 1777, France had dispatched clothing for 30,000 men, 4,000 tents, 30,000 muskets with bayonets, over 100 tons of gunpowder, 216 (mostly 4-pound) cannons and gun carriages, 27 mortars, almost 13,000 shells and 50,000+ round shot. Most of this equipment was still on the high seas when Congress compiled its instructions to Arthur Lee and Benjamin Franklin in September 1776. They were about to join Deane in France, and Congress re-stated its needs in quite unusual candor. "As the Scarcity of Arms, Artillery and other military Stores is so considerable in the United States, you will solicit the Court of France for on immediate Supply of twenty or thirty thousand Muskets and Bayonets, and a large Supply of Ammunition and brass Field Pieces, to be sent under Convoy by France. The United States will engage for the Payment of the Arms, Artillery and Ammunition, and to indemnify France for the Expense of the Convoy." If possible, they were to "Engage a few good Engineers in the Service of the United States."

     The last sentence points to another deficiency in the American military establishment: the Continental Army was desperately short of experts to work some of the sophisticated material provided by France, though there was no lack of applicants from all over Europe! As soon as Benjamin Franklin arrived in Paris in late December 1776, he soon found himself flooded with requests for employment in the Continental Army. [21] Deane had already entered into contracts with some twenty-seven (mostly French) officers, among them the marquis de LaFayette and fourteen additional officers, including the Baron de Kalb, who accompanied LaFayette to America on the Victoire. But he had also granted to Philippe Jean-Baptiste Tronson du Coudray, a gifted but exceedingly vain artillery major, permission to recruit forty more officers on his own. The pressing need for experts, inexperience, and difficulties of communication led to numerous embarrassments. Deane had promised Coudray a commission as major general and command of artillery and engineers in the Continental Army: Henry Knox' and Presle du Portail's positions! Coudray's death by drowning at the Schuylkill Ferry in September 1777, saved Congress from this embarrassment and caused Lafayette to comment cynically that "the loss of this quarrelsome spirit was probably a fortunate accident." [22]

     One of the officers recruited by Deane in the autumn of 1776 was Denis Jean Florimont de Langlois, marquis du Bouchet, the brother-in-law of Irishman Thomas Conway. Du Bouchet's Journal d'un emigré; ou cahier d'un etudiant en philosophie, the Journal of an Emigrant; or Memorial of a Student of Philosophy, almost 900 pages in three volumes completed in late 1822 or early 1823, provides a singular and enlightening insight into this semi-official and semi-legal phase of French aid. Observations such as those recorded by Du Bouchet shed a unique light the personalities and motivations of some of the volunteers for the Continental Army in 1775/76 as well as on the confusion that reigned in these early days of Franco-American cooperation. [23]

     In late November 1776, Conway and du Bouchet set out for Le Havre. There the l'Amphitrite, a merchant ship of some 410 tons armed with 16 cannon, was waiting to take them to the New World. Loaded with 50 four-pound cannons, 10,000 muskets, 100,000 flints, and an assortment of war-related materials, she was under the command of one-legged Captain Nicolas Fautrel. Her cargo had been provided by Beaumarchais and was to be smuggled to Philadelphia.

     But the Amphitrite carried an even more valuable human cargo: 21 French officers and ten NCOs who had volunteered their services to the nascent Continental Army. [24] The Amphitrite's passenger list is a veritable Who's Who of French volunteers. Among du Bouchet's travel companions there was indeed many an honest and professional officer who knew his trade and who would return to America with the troops of Rochambeau in 1780. Captain François Louis Teissedre de Fleury is as good an example of these men as can be found. Promoted to lieutenant colonel as a reward for his valiant defense of Fort Mifflin in November 1778, he was the only foreigner to receive one of the eight medals Congress had struck to celebrate American victories. He returned to France in September 1779, joined Rochambeau's expeditionary corps in 1780, and was among the conquerors of Redoubt No. 9 before Yorktown on October 14, 1781.

     Other volunteers of note were Jean Joseph de Gimat de Soubadère, future aide-de-camp to Lafayette and a lieutenant-colonel in the Continental Army by 1778, and Jean-Baptiste de Gouivon, who served throughout the Revolutionary War, eventually as a colonel, as well as Louis François de Pommereul de Martigny, who served faithfully as a lieutenant in the artillery. There was Thomas Antoine de Mauduit du Plessis, another lieutenant in the artillery with a commission as captain from Deane in his pocket, who distinguished himself at Brandywine, Germantown and later at Monmouth. In 1779 he accompanied Lafayette to France but returned with Rochambeau in 1780.

      All of the NCOs had served their way up during 10, 15, even 20 years of service, were thoroughly professional soldiers who had been promised ranks in the Continental Army well beyond reach at home. These were men like François Parison, commissioned a captain by Deane, who returned to France in 1778 only to cross the ocean again in 1780 with Rochambeau. Du Bouchet's favorite traveling companion, Thomas Mullens, an Irishman, had worked his way up from common soldier in 1756 to sub-lieutenant in 1770 and would return to the New World with Rochambeau as his chef des guides.

     But there were others as well. Young Monsieur Déséspiniers had no military experience whatsoever but was made a major in the Continental Army as a courtesy to his uncle Beaumarchais. Sixty-year-old Philippe Hubert de Preudhomme de Borre, formerly a lieutenant colonel of the Regiment Liègeois d'Orion was clearly past his prime. Rewarded with a commission as brigadier for his troubles involved in crossing the Atlantic Ocean, he returned it less than five months later after the defeat at Brandywine in September to preserve his honor as a soldier which he saw threatened by having to command "such bad troops." [25]

     Some, like 26-year-old artillery officer Anne Philippe Dieudonné de Loyauté, commissioned a captain by Deane in November 1776, were doubtful assets at best. The future inspector general of artillery of Virginia had just been released from the prison in Pierre-en-Cize where his father had him incarcerated for 16 months to cure him of excessive gambling and womanizing. On the eve of departure, a distraught comtesse de Linanges appeared, pleading with de Loyauté to return to her. His "caprice … kept the idle public occupied," not to mention the ever-present British spies. Eventually it was only through the complicity of a harbor official, who as an old family friend chose to ignore an arrest order, that de Loyauté managed to escape "his mistresses as well as his creditors" and to "throw between them and himself the immensity of the oceans."

     On December 14, 1776, the Amphitrite with 12 artillery and engineer officers as well as eight infantry officers departed for the New World. Two days out, Coudray, who thought that Deane had undermined his mission, forced Fautrel to return to L'Orient where they arrived on January 1, 1777. There Coudray ordered Preudhomme de Borre off the ship in a most offensive manner and proceeded to Paris -- where he receive yet another recommendation from Benjamin Franklin. In late January 1777, a total of 27 officers and 12 non-commissioned officers, including Coudray and Borre, sailed from Nantes for Boston, where they arrived on April 20, 1777.

     Meanwhile in L'Orient, the Amphitrite too had once again set sail for America on January 25, 1777, this time with 25 officers on board. Loyauté had used the three-week layover in L'Orient to form yet another "tendre liaison." According to du Bouchet he once again gave a disgusting "spéctacle au public" and had to be forced to re-embark for America. On the night before departure, Armand Charles Tuffin, marquis de la Rouërie, better known as Colonel Armand after the legion he would raise in the American colonies, [26] appeared on board and informed his fellow officers that he "absolument" had to get out of France. Du Bouchet assumed another "affaire d'honneur," i.e., a duel, as the cause for this sudden appearance, since Rouërie had recently wounded the comte de Bourbon-Busset, a cousin of King Louis XVI, in a duel over the love of a belle of the Paris Opera. Rouërie's "trust" in the actress "had been extreme," but apparently there had been some physical contact as well since of late a child had "unexpectedly … appeared on the scene." The marquis vehemently denied paternity, and in his "desperation" over this betrayal had wavered between suicide and "embracing the monastic life." A closer look showed the "rigors" of monastic life not to his liking, and he decided to "throw between his unfaithful" actress and himself "the immensity of the ocean" and to fight for American independence instead. Colonel Armand returned to France in 1784, but he never again wore the white uniform of the ancien régime. He did, however, acknowledge the son "unexpectedly" born in late 1776.

     The arrival of dozens of foreigners, French and otherwise, with claims, if not proof, of high commissions in the Continental Army, combined with sometimes arrogant if not contemptuous behavior displayed by some of them, soon caused considerable friction with their American comrades-in-arms. [27] Increasingly Americans refused to receive into their ranks some of the more quarrelsome "summer soldiers and sunshine patriots," as Thomas Paine called them, sent by Deane, Franklin and Lee. Du Bouchet found that out when he arrived at Stillwater in late August 1777. Gates was not pleased to see another Frenchman walk into camp: "'What do you want from me?' he said to me very brusquely." In his "very bad English" du Bouchet replied: "'Opportunities to gain your esteem, general. ...  Would you have the goodness to allow me to join, as a volunteer, your front-line detachments?'" Growling under his breath how it "'would be very nice if all Frenchmen were that reasonable and moderate in their pretensions,'" Gates allowed him into camp. But when the newcomer dared to ask for a tent, he was immediately put into his place: "'They are only for the soldiers,' the general answered me very brusquely." Du Bouchet made himself a crude shelter from pine branches where he lived "like Robin Crusoe upon arrival on his island."

     Even on pine branches Du Bouchet was more fortunate than men such as French Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Louis vicomte de Mauroy, hired by Deane as major general. Mauroy arrived on June 13, 1777, was not employed and was sent back to France. Major Ludwig Baron von Holtzendorff, whom Deane had commissioned a lieutenant colonel, served as a common soldier be