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.[19] 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 this 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." [20]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 that 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 conclusion of that war, he would pursue "only
one foreign policy, a fraternal union with Spain; only one policy
for war, and that is England."[21] In this policy of revenge, the
possibility of a war of revenge 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.[22]
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 government 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
Common's approval for placing 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 legislation 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.[23] 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 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. The 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.
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) 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. [24]
The defeats of the
Seven Years' War, particularly 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."[25] 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 ordered to consist of two battalions only; those regiments
with four battalions saw their 2nd and 4th 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.
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 ordered to consist of two battalions only; those regiments
with four battalions saw their 2nd and 4th 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 [26]
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, for the expédition.
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.[27] 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.[28] 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. This 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 the 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.[29]
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).[30]
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. [31]
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. [32] 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."[33] 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.[34] 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 1776, His Most Christian Majesty granted
Beaumarchais a loan of 1 million livres; Spain added another million
in August.[35]
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,[36]
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.[37]
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.[38] 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 him 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."[39]
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.[40]
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: some 34 French officers
and about half a dozen NCOs who had volunteered their services to
the nascent Continental Army. 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 half-dozen
or so officiers-de-fortune, rankers who had served their way up to
sub-lieutenant 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."[41]
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,[42] 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.[43]
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 before his return
to France in 1778. No one in Coudray's company received a commission
until after the "fortunate" death of Coudray in September
1777, when Congress promoted Coudray posthumously to major general
and granted him the position it could not possibly give him while
he was alive. Concurrently it passed legislation providing funds for
the return of those officers in Coudray's entourage that it could
not, or would not, employ to Europe.
Congress had a lot
to learn, but it learned quickly. Once those start-up problems were
overcome, Franco-American relations proceeded considerably more smoothly.
Of the ten ships dispatched by Beaumarchais and which reached American
shores between March and November 1777, only one ran into trouble
with the British and had to be blown up with its thousands of pounds
of gunpowder by the captain. The vast majority of the almost 100 foreign
volunteers either hired by Deane, Lee, or Franklin with the tacit
consent of the French crown for the express purpose of serving in
America, whether they traveled on ships owned by Beaumarchais or whether
they came on their own, whether they were French like the Marquis
de Lafayette, Presle du Portail or Pierre l'Enfant, Polish like Taduesz
Kosciuszko or Casimir Pulaski or German like Baron von Steuben and
Baron von Kalb: they all brought much-needed expertise to the Continental
Army, served faithfully and occasionally even laid down their lives
for America's freedom.
The Continental
Army put Beaumarchais' supplies to good use. The defeat of General
Johnny Burgoyne and his army on October 17, 1777, to Horatio Gates
at Saratoga, was a major turning point in the American Revolutionary
War. It was won by American soldiers, even if 90% of the gunpowder
used had been supplied by and paid for by France, and was used in
French M 1763-66 pattern (Charleville) muskets, which by then had
become standard in the Continental Army. The victory at Saratoga proved
to the French that the American rebellion could be sustained with
a possibility of success. News of Burgoyne's capitulation reached
Paris in the evening of December 4, 1777; on the 17th Vergennes promised
to recognize the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, with or without
Spanish support. On January 30, the king authorized the Secrétaire
du Conseil d'Etat Conrad Alexandre Gérard to sign the Treaty
of Amity and Commerce and a secret Treaty of Alliance on his behalf.
On February 6, 1778,Gérard carried out the order and Deane,
Franklin, and Lee signed for the United States. By these treaties,
France offered "to maintain … the liberty, sovereignty,
and independence" of the United States in case of war between
her and Great Britain. France promised to fight on until the independence
of the United States was guaranteed in a peace treaty. All the United
States had to do in exchange was not "conclude either truce or
peace with Great Britain without the formal consent of the other first
obtained.[44]
On March 13, 1778,
His Most Christian Majesty officially informed the Court of St. James
of this decision.[45] A week later, the three Americans were introduced
to the king as Ambassadors of the Thirteen United Provinces while
Gérard in turn was appointed French resident at Congress in
Philadelphia. Copies of the treaties reached Congress in early May,
which ratified it unanimously and without debate and ordered them
published without waiting for the French government to ratify the
treaties as well.[46]
A treaty of military
alliance is not a declaration of war: but the causes for war between
France and Great Britain were present even before the treaty was signed
and ratified, and both sides understood it as a declaration of war.
Upon hearing the news, the Court of St. James recalled its ambassador
from France; in early June British ships chased the French frigate
Belle Poule off the coast of Normandy. The Belle Poule held her ground
and limped, badly damaged and with half of her crew dead or wounded,
into Brest. Louis XVI responded by ordering his navy on July 10 to
give chase to Royal Navy vessels. The war France had planned for since
1763 was on at last.[47]
5.3 The Failed Invasion of 1779 and the Decision to send Troops to America
Choiseul had always
wanted to fight the war overseas, and Vergennes continued this policy.
Even before the Belle-Poule affair, Vergennes had sent Admiral d'Estaing
with 17 ships of the line, 6,200 naval personnel and 4,000 infantry
to the Caribbean, where they arrived in July 1778. But the first two
years of military cooperation did not go well. The siege of Newport
in August 1778 ended in failure. So did the siege of Savannah, taken
by British troops under Henry Clinton in December 1778, in September
and October 1779. Once d'Estaing had raised the siege, British troops
began the invasion of South Carolina where Charleston fell in May
1780.
The apparent inability
of French forces "to make a difference" in the war severely
strained the alliance. But the criticism was quite undeserved: without
massive French aid the Continental Army would probably not have existed
any more. France had been active in Europe as well: in February 1778,
already, she had begun to concentrate troops on the Channel coast
for a possible invasion of the British Isles. By June 30, 28 battalions
of infantry, some 14,000 officers and men, 10 escadrons of cavalry
and 25 companies of artillery were concentrated in the Le Havre, Cherbourg,
Brest coastal area. By the end of the year, the numbers had almost
tripled to 71 battalions, and more troops were arriving daily. By
late spring 1779, 2,608 officers, 31,963 men, 4,918 domestiques, 1,818
horses plus large amounts of artillery, almost 1/4 of France's armed
might, is waiting around le Havre and Honfleur to board almost 500
transports to take them to the Isle of Wight. [48]
This policy had
largely been dictated by the interests of Spain, which had entered
the war in April 1779 and whose interests lay in fighting Britain
in Europe, in Gibraltar, Minorca, and Portugal -- not overseas. But
Spain was nowhere near ready for war against Great Britain. French
naval forces under 69-year-old Admiral d'Orvilliers spent valuable
weeks in June and July cruising at the southern entrance of the British
Channel, waiting for the Spanish fleet to arrive. The rendezvous for
the two fleets had been set for May 15. When the French and Spanish
fleets finally joined up in the last days of July, smallpox was sweeping
through the French fleet. 140 of d'Orvilliers sailors had already
died, some 600 were in Spanish hospitals, another 1,800 sick were
on board his ships. On August 15 the combined fleets turned into the
Channel only to be driven out by a violent storm. The next day d'Orvilliers
received instructions that the place of attack of French land forces
had been changed to the coast of Cornwall. First, however, he had
to find and defeat the Royal Navy to gain control of the channel.
On the 25th his lookouts report the British fleet: 34 ships of the
line, 8 frigates, and 20 smaller vessels carrying 26,000 sailors and
3,260 cannon commanded by Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy. The combined Franco-Spanish
fleet consists of 66 ships of the line, 12 frigates, and 16 smaller
vessels. D'Orvilliers wanted to give battle out on the Atlantic, but
Hardy refused to swallow the bait and stayed close to his homeports.
Dangerously low on supplies, d'Orvilliers in the first days of September
received with relief the order to return to Brest where he disembarked
some 8,000 sick sailors. The campaign of 1779 was over. It had cost
France the lives of hundreds of sailors and millions of livres without
achieving anything. Montbarey called the campaign off in October;
in November the army moved into winter quarters.[49]
Neither Louis XVI
nor Vergennes had placed high hopes on the success of an invasion
of Britain. The project went against decades of planning which had
always assumed that the war would be fought in America. Now that the
project had failed, the voices in favor of fighting England in her
colonies grew stronger again. The first suggestions of such an operation
had surfaced in late1777 as France was contemplating the recognition
of the United States. That proposal had not been pursued, but now
a most important voice was clamoring for just such an expedition:
that of the Marquis de Lafayette, who had returned to France in the
spring of 1779. It may well have been at Lafayette's urging that Franklin
addressed his memorandum to Vergennes in February 1779, suggesting
the dispatch of a corps of 4,000 soldiers to America.[50] In July, Vergennes
asked Lafayette for a detailed memorandum on the feasibility of such
an expedition, and ordered an internal study. When Admiral d'Estaing
limped into Brest with his battered flagship the Languedoc in early
December, the matter took on additional urgency. Louis XVI and his
chief ministers feared that unless the new year would bring at least
one instance of successful Franco-American cooperation, the colonists
might be forced to make peace with Great Britain, leaving France to
continue the war by herself.
The decisive shift
in favor of sending troops to America came in late January 1780, and
on February 2, the king approved the plan code-named expédition
particulière. The campaign of 1780 would see the transportation
of a force large enough to decide the outcome of the rebellion in
America across the ocean onto the New World. Naval forces in the Caribbean
would be strengthened and put in a position to support the expeditionary
force. In Europe, military action would be confined to diversionary
actions such as the siege of Gibraltar aimed at binding British land
and naval forces to Europe.
5.4 The Comte de Rochambeau
and the Troops of the expédition particulière
Once the decision
to send troops was made, the next questions were 1) who would go,
and 2) who would command? Vergennes and his colleagues agreed that
the command did not call for brilliance but for level-headedness,
ability to compromise, and willingness to cooperate. Harmonious relations
with the American ally as well as within the French force was of paramount
importance. If the former pointed toward the appointment of the 23-year-old
Lafayette, the latter all but ruled it out.[51]
Lafayette's recent promotion to colonel in the French army had already
ruffled quite a few feathers, and numerous officers made it very clear
that they would not serve under the young marquis. In early February,
the cabinet appointed the chevalier de Ternay, a chef d'escadre with
40 years experience, to command the naval forces. For the land forces
the choice fell on 55-year-old Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte
de Rochambeau, a professional soldier with 37 years of experience,
an officer who was more comfortable in an army camp than in the ballrooms
of Versailles, and who had already been selected to command the advance
guard in the cancelled invasion of Britain. On March 1, 1780, Louis
XVI promoted Rochambeau to lieutenant general and placed him at the
head of the expedition.
Both men wasted
little time to get ready for the expedition. Ternay had been ordered
to find shipping for 6,000 men. Rochambeau spent much of March at
Versailles trying to have his force increased, but only succeeded
in adding the 2nd battalion of the Auxonne artillery (some 500 men),
a few dozen engineers and mineurs, [52]and
600 men from the Légion de Lauzun as a light force to the four
regiments of infantry, some 4,000 men, he would be able to take. Quartermaster
staff under Pierre François de Beville, a medical department
of about 100 under Jean-François Coste,[53]
a commissary department under Claude Blanchard,[54]
a provost department headed by Pierre Barthélémy Revoux
de Ronchamp with a hangman and two schlagueurs, i.e., corporals who
were experts with the cat-o'-nine-tails,[55]
not to mention the dozens of domestiques, brought what was supposed
to be the first division of the expédition particulière
to about 6,000 officers and men. Everyone else would have to form
part of a second division that Rochambeau hoped would join him in
1781. [56]But as Rochambeau's "wish-list"
grew, so did Ternay's anger: the admiral saw no reason to take 140
horses across the ocean to please some members at court who insisted
on taking their favorite chargers. Each horse would take the space
of ten men, not to mention the vast amounts of forage and the roughly
45,000 gallons of water it would take to transport the animals across
the ocean! The horses stayed behind.
5.4.1 The Officer
Corpse
These were only
some of Rochambeau's problems. Once the numbers had been agreed upon,
the decision as to which units to take was to be Rochambeau's. He
chose them from among the forces quartered along the coast for the
aborted invasion of England. Lee Kennett's description of Rochambeau's
decision-making process, i.e., that the regiments selected "were
neither the oldest nor the most prestigious regiments, in the army,
but (Rochambeau) judged them to be well-officered and disciplined
… and at full strength," [57]
is only part of the story. A look at the units suggests that outside
considerations may have played a role in their selection as well.
The upper echelons of the officer corps belonged to the very top of
aristocratic society whom Rochambeau could not very well afford to
alienate. For these members of the noblesse de race, the wealthy and
influential court nobility, promotion to the highest ranks and participation
in prestigious enterprises at an early age was a birthright. They
alone had the influence and the money, 25,000 to 75,000 livres, that
it took to purchase a line regiment. Nobles such as François
Jean chevalier de Beauvoir marquis de Chastellux, a member of the
Academie Française since 1775, were simply too famous or influential
to be ignored once they expressed interest in the expedition. [58]
Other such as the duc de Lauzun were, in his own words, "too
much in fashion not to be employed in some brilliant manner."
[59]
From among the French
regiments Rochambeau picked the Bourbonnais, commanded by Anne Alexandre
marquis de Montmorency-Laval, who had become colonel of the Toraine
regiment at 23. He was all of 28 when he took over the Bourbonnais
in 1775. The fact that Rochambeau's son, 25-year-old Donatien Marie
was mestre-de-camp-en-second, i.e., second in command of the regiment,
may well have influenced this decision. When Donatien became colonel
of the Saintonge in November 1782, his place was taken by Charles
Louis de Secondat baron de Montesquieu, a grandson of the famous philosopher.
Soissonnais' mestre de camp Jean-Baptiste Félix d'Ollière
comte de Saint Maisme was all of 19 1/2 when he took over that unit
in June 1775. St. Maisme's second in command, 24-year-old Louis Marie
vicomte de Noailles, a son of the duc de Mouchy, was not only a member
of the highest nobility, but also Lafayette's brother-in-law. He received
his new position on March 8, 1780. When Noailles became colonel of
the Roi-Dragons in January 1782, he was replaced by Louis Philippe
comte de Ségur, the 29-year-old son of the minister of war.
Though he had started his military career at the age of 5 (!) and
become colonel of the Custine Dragoons at age 22, Adam Philippe, comte
de Custine, the 38-year-old colonel of the Saintonge, was by far the
oldest (and most difficult) of these regimental commanders. Since
his second in command, 24-year-old Armand de la Croix comte de Charlus,
appointed to the position in March 1780, was the son of the Navy minister,
the decision of whether to take the regiment or not may not have been
Rochambeau's alone. [60]
One stipulation imposed
upon Rochambeau by the marquis de Jaucourt, who was in charge of the
operational planning of the expédition, was that 1/3 of the
force consist of Germans. Jaucourt argued, overly optimistic as it
turned out, that losses in such units could be made up by recruiting
deserters from Britain's German auxiliaries.[61]
Politics may very well have decided the selection of the Royal Deux-Ponts.
The German Royal Deux-Ponts was 'suggested' to Rochambeau by Marie
Camasse, Countess Forbach,[62]
a former dancer and morganatic wife of its colonel propriétaire
Duke Karl II August of Zweibrücken. Their eldest son Christian
de Deux-Ponts, who had been two months short of his 20th birthday
when he was given the Royal Deux-Ponts in 1772, had income from estates
in Germany and France amounting to over 7,200 livres annually. To
this needs to be added another annuity of 14,400 livres, 9,000 livres
pay as colonel of his regiment, doubled to 18,000 livres for the American
campaign, plus additional financial support from his mother, which
brought his annual income for the American campaign to well over 40,000
livres![63] Second in command was
Christian's younger brother William, who distinguished himself during
the storming of Redoubt # 9 before Yorktown and received his own regiment,
the Deux-Ponts Dragoons, in January 1782.
The ships that left
Brest in May 1780 were not necessarily carrying the "flower of
the French nobility," but Rochambeau's staff was certainly rather
heavily laced with court nobility. Competition for these positions
was fierce. The slow pace of peacetime advancement in an army where
promotion was strictly based on seniority left many officers hoping
for an opportunity to "make a name for themselves" as the
only way for faster advancement. War alone gave that opportunity.
With Europe at peace (and the fever-infested Caribbean an undesirable
destination), the American campaign alone seemed to hold out hope
for distinction and survival. Rochambeau had been given blank commissions
to fill these positions and subsequently spend much of his time trying
to refuse sons, nephews, and favorites pressed upon him by members
of the court.
The most famous among
these is probably 26-year-old Axel von Fersen, son of the former Swedish
ambassador to France and favorite of Queen Marie Antoinette. Men such
as Fersen belonged to a group just below the very rich. In a letter
to his father of January 1780, Fersen stated his fixed monthly expenses
for, among others, room and board, three domestics, three horses,
and a dog at 1,102 livres, though he promised he would try and economize
in the future.[64] Fersen became
an aide-de-camp to Rochambeau. Antoine Charles du Houx baron de Vioménil,
Rochambeau's second in command, not only secured appointments for
about a dozen of his army buddies from the Polish campaigns, he also
brought along his brother, a cousin, a son-in-law, and two nephews,
as well as his eldest son, 13-year-old Charles Gabriel, who served
as aide-de-camp to his father. Rochambeau took his son, mestre de
camp en second of the Bourbonnais Regiment, as his aide-major général
de logis. Custine's kinsman Jean Robert Gaspar de Custine became a
sous-lieutenant in the Royal Deux-Ponts on April 4, 1780, three days
after his 16th birthday. Quarter-Master General de Beville took his
two sons as members of his staff as well. It was not just Frenchmen
who wanted to see America with Rochambeau. Friedrich Reinhard Burkard
Graf von Rechteren, a Dutch nobleman with 15 years service in the
Dutch military, used his descent from Charlotte de Bourbon, his great-great-great-great-great-grandmother
who had married William of Orange in 1574, to get himself appointed
cadet-gentilhomme in the Royal Deux-Ponts on March 11, 1780.[65]
One of Rochambeau's nephews, the comte de Lauberdière, served
as one of six aides-de-camp, another, George Henry Collot, as his
aide for quartermaster-general affairs.[66]
As late as April 17, 1780, Claude Gabriel marquis de Choisy appeared
in Brest with five officers who wanted to sail to America! Rochambeau
refused to take any, but Choisy and his entourage of now ten officers,
found passage for St. Domingo on the Sybille. They left Brest on June
25, and arrived via Santo Domingo, on the La Gentille in Newport on
September 29, 1780.
Rochambeau was also
under siege by numerous French volunteers who had returned to Europe
upon news of the treaties of 1778. They assumed, correctly, that it
was better for their careers to serve out the war in the French rather
than the American Army. Rochambeau realized that he needed not only
their expertise, but, since neither he nor many of his officers spoke
English, their language skills as well. These appointments caused
much jealousy and resentment: when Rochambeau chose Du Bouchet as
an aide, Charlus wrote scathingly in his diary that du Bouchet was
but "a brave man who has been to America, [and] who has no other
talent than to get himself killed with more grace than most other
people." [67]Another beneficiary
of Rochambeau's need for "American" experts was much-decorated
de Fleury, who volunteered to serve as a common soldier when he could
not find a position as an officer. Rochambeau made him a major in
Saintonge, which too caused considerable grumbling among Fleury's
new comrades. [68]Officers such
as Fleury belonged to the lower nobility who provided about 90% of
the company-grade officers. They could hardly aspire to retiring as
more than a major and formed the vast majority of the 492 officers
who eventually served in Rochambeau's little army.[69]
Though well-paid in comparison to common soldiers -- a capitaine en
seconde in the French infantry still earned 2,400 livres per year
in America -- they were caught between their limited financial resources
and the obligations rank and status required of them. [70]
A look at the Royal
Deux-Ponts, Rochambeau's German regiment, its history and its officer
corps, provides a representative sample of the troops of the expédition
particulière in America as well as of the nature of the army
of the ancièn régime. The Royal Deux-Ponts was the result
of a business agreement between Louis XV of France and Duke Christian
IV of Zweibrücken (=Deux-Ponts), ruler of a duchy of some 2,477
km2 in southwestern Germany (incl. some 495 km2 in Alsace), inhabited
by some 80,000 subjects. Trying to win favor with his powerful neighbor
to the west, Christian, on May 30, 1751, entered into an agreement
with Louis XV in which he promised to raise a battalion of infantry
for France when and if needed. In return he was to receive an annual
subsidy of 40,000 fl. The need arose with the outbreak of the Seven
Year's War, and on November 23, 1755, Christian offered a "Regiment
de deux Bataillons" [71]for
service with France. Louis XV accepted the offer and in April 1756
signed the contract that raised "deux mille hommes d'Infanterie"
in exchange for 80,000 fl annually.
There were extra-military
reasons for the creation of the Royal Deux-Ponts: Christian Graf von
Forbach, Freiherr von Zweibrücken and his siblings. [72]Born
on July 20, 1752, Christian was the eldest of seven children born
to the Duke and Marie Anne Camasse. In June 1754, his brother Wilhelm
was born; by 1771 two more sons and three daughters had completed
the family created by the union of duke and dancer. Though excluded
from the line of succession, Christian had every intention of providing
for his children, and the Royal Deux-Ponts was raised and leased to
the French crown as a means of support for his eldest sons. On February
19, 1757, the regiment was officially established with Duke Christian
as colonel propriétaire; on April 1, 1757, it entered French
pay. [73]
The French army
reforms of 1776 effected the Royal Deux-Ponts as well. A treaty of
March 31 specified that 3/4 of all officer positions of the regiment
be reserved for the German nobility, the remainder to noblemen from
Alsace or Lorraine. The duke retained the right to recall the regiment
when and if needed, provided it was not against the King of France
or his allies.[74] This treaty
determined the ethnic background and of its officer corps. In French
units, well over 90% of the officer positions were filled by native
Frenchmen, the Royal Deux-Ponts, on the other hand, had a multi-ethnic
officer corps drawn from all across Europe. More than half of the
69 officers who served with the regiment in America came from the
Duchy of Zweibrücken, the Palatinate, from Alsace and from Lorraine;
others came from as far away as Lithuania, Denmark, and the Tyrol.
Zweibrücken: 9
Alsace: 17
Lorraine: 4
Palatinate: 6
Switzerland: 6
Empire: 16
France: 4
Denmark: 1
Belgium: 1
Netherlands: 1
Luxemburg: 1
Sweden: 1
Tyrol: 1
Lithuania: 1
----------------
69
A look at the age
structure of the corps shows that fifteen officers were under 20 years
old, another eighteen were under 25. Eleven more officers were under
30, and 25 of the officers or 36 % were between 31 and 50 years old.
Most of them had received their commissions at a young age, around
their 14th or 15th birthdays, though it is doubtful these "child-officers"
performed many of the duties required of their rank. The youngest
recipients ever of commissions in the Royal Deux-Ponts were Friedrich
Baron von Schwengsfeld, who was 26 days short of his 9th birthday
when he became sous-lieutenant in September 1769 and Christian Friedrich
Baron von Glaubitz from Strasbourg, who became a sous-lieutenant on
October 9, 1770, four days before his 11th birthday.[75]
born before 1740:
13
1740-1744:
9
1745-1749:
3
1750-1754:
11
1755-1759:
18
1760-1764:
15
In America the two
youngest sous-lieutenants of the regiment were born in 1764, i.e.,
16 years old in 1780. The oldest officer, Louis Aimable de Prez de
Crassier, born in Switzerland in 1730, was already 50 years old. He
had entered French service in 1747 as a sous-lieutenant and after
33 years made major in April of 1780 when retirements and transfers
brought some movement into the ranks. But he was still not married:
he received permission to do so only as a 58-year-old in 1788. [76]
Not much younger
were the five or six regimental officiers de fortune, soldiers who
had risen through the ranks to reach sous-lieutenant after decades
of service. The most common stepping-stone toward the coveted commission
was the position as one of the two portes-drapeau (color-bearers or
ensigns) or quartier-maître trésorier (paymaster or quartermaster)
of the regiment. Of the 12 officers commissioned at age 26 or older
in the Royal Deux-Ponts, five were current or former portes-drapeau,
three were or had been quartier-maîtres trésorier.[77]
During the American campaign, both portes-drapeau were promoted to
sous-lieutenant and replaced by men promoted from the ranks.
One of them was Jean
Mathieu Michel Bayerfalck, born 1739, who had joined the regiment
as a sergeant in 1766 with already eight years service in the Regiment
de Berry. Promoted to porte-drapeau in 1772, he became a sous-lieutenant
on 28 October 1781 after 23 years of military service. His place as
porte-drapeau was taken over by J. Georg Hanck, who had joined the
regiment at age 19 in 1758. By the time he became a sous-lieutenant
in 1787, he had 29 years of service. The second porte-drapeau of the
regiment, Jean Frederic Schleyder, had enlisted as a 17-year-old in
1759. He became porte-drapeau in 1777 and sous-lieutenant after 21
years on 15 April 1780. His place was taken by Philipp Wilhelm Sonntag,
who had signed up at age 17 in 1774. When Sonntag decided to stay
in the United States and resigned in May 1782, Jean Pierre Guillaume
Mittmann became his successor. Born in 1739, Mittmann had joined the
regiment in November 1756; he had almost 26 years of service in the
summer of 1782. It took him another eight years to make sous-lieutenant
in February 1790.
Besides the portes-drapeaux
the regiment had one true officier de fortune, an enlisted man who
had risen from the ranks through long years of service via the quartier-maître
trésorier. Born in Meissenheim in 1732, Henry Schanck joined
the Regiment de Bergh in November 1749 as a common soldier. On 30
November 1756 he transferred to the Royal Deux-Ponts where he was
promoted to sous-lieutenant in August 1770. Ten years later, on April
4, 1780, he was made a captain.
Helpful as these
statistics may be, they do not tell us much about the lives of these
men. A series of ten letters written by Count Wilhelm von Schwerin,
a twenty-six-year-old sub-lieutenant of grenadiers of the Royal Deux-Ponts,
partly in German, partly in French, between August 1780 and December
1781, to his uncle Graf Reingard zu Wied, fills some of this void.
They provide a rare glimpse into the life -- and the precarious finances
-- of a company-grade officer in America[78].
In a letter of March 16, 1780, Schwerin laid bare his financial situation.
His base salary was 60 livres per month. Stoppages included 8 livres
for his uniform and 2 livres to help pay the debts of a retired officer.
His monthly share to pay the salary of Georg Friedrich Dentzel, the
Lutheran minister of the regiment, amounted to 9 sous. That left him
49 livres 11 sous per month or 594 livres 12 sous annually. Anticipating
the high cost of living and the need to pay for everything in the
New World, salaries were doubled in March of 1780, raising Schwerin's
annual income to 1,309 livres 4 sous. His uncle added 48 livres per
month or 576 livres per year for an annual income of 1,885 livres
4 sous or 157 livres 2 sous per month.[79]
In preparation for
the expedition, the king had ordered that the officers be paid three
months in advance plus 50 livres to buy tents, hammocks, shirts etc.
For Schwerin that meant an additional 200 livres, but not much of
it was spent on travel preparations. Some older officers retired rather
than accompany the regiment to the New World. That meant that Schwerin
had to pay the expenses arising from the concordat among the officers
of the Royal Deux-Ponts. The concordat was an agreement stipulating
that every time an officer left the regiment, each officer below him
in rank, who would thereby advance in seniority, if not in rank, was
to pay that officer the equivalent of two months of his own wages
if that officer retired without pension, one month if he retired with
a pension. Count Wilhelm's concordat in the spring of 1780 amounted
to at least 288 livres, the equivalent of 6 months wages. To make
up for the four officers who could not pay their share of the concordat
since they "already sit in prison because of other debts,"
each lieutenant of the regiment had to pay an additional 24 livres
11 sous 6 deniers.[80]
Upon arrival in
America, Schwerin had additional expenses that put a severe drain
on his budget as well. The servant, whom he was required to keep,
cost him 15 livres in cash wages and 35 livres for food each month
plus 3 livres clothing allowance. His lunch alone cost him 80 livres
per month in Newport, which left him with maybe 24 livres per month
from his 157 livres income. In the evenings he ate "but a piece
of bread" and lots of potatoes, as he ruefully informed his uncle,
but at 22 sous for a pound of bread or 4-6 sous for a pound of potatoes
even that was an expensive meal. Shoemakers in Newport charged 40
livres for a pair of boots, and just the material for a shirt was
9 florin or 18 livres 15 sous. A good horse, estimated by Fersen to
cost about 50 louis d'or or 1,200 livres in Newport, was simply out
of reach for 2/3 of the officers in Rochambeau's army. Schwerin was
constantly borrowing money; in the spring of 1781 alone, he borrowed
1,200 livres from his colonel to equip himself for the campaign, which
meant, among others, hiring a second servant and purchasing a horse
for 300 livres.[81] No wonder he
concluded one of his letters by telling his uncle that those who had
remained in Europe "would not believe how everyone is fed up
with waging war in this country here. The reason is quite simple in
that one is obliged to buy one's forage with one's own money, and
no one gives you your ration that is your due in times of war."
A final question
to be asked here is: How much did the French officers reflect upon
the reasons for fighting in this war? Did they know, or care, about
the causes, and consequences, of their involvement in the American
Revolution? To put it briefly: very few of them knew or cared. Among
those who put their thoughts on paper, the opinion of the young comte
de Lauberdière is representative for that expressed in the
vast majority of diaries and journals. The war, so Lauberdière,
had been caused by the "violent means employed by the ministry
in England" to raise taxes "in violation of the natural
and civil rights of her colonies." France came to the aid of
the colonies, but one looks in vain for an explanation as to what
these "rights" consisted of. Glory, honor, the opportunity
to make a name for oneself, a chance to escape boredom, creditors,
girlfriends: these are the recurrent themes found in the journals
of participants. France entered the war not because she believed in
the ideals of the revolution, and not because she wanted to fight
FOR America. She entered the war because of the enemy she could fight
AGAINST: Great Britain. By 1780, a whole generation of Frenchmen had
grown up in the shadow cast upon the crown of the Sun King by the
humiliation suffered in the Peace of Paris. This common enemy provided
much, if not most, of the impetus for Franco-American co-operation
The comte de Lauberdière expressed the feelings of his age
group as well as anyone when he wrote that France "was looking
to take revenge for the peace of 1763."
5.4.2 The Rank and the file
Unlike their officers,
the rank and file of the expédition particulière, the
non-commissioned officers and enlisted men, have remained largely
a faceless mass of people. Thanks to the meticulous research of Samuel
F. Scott, we know at least how many there were: Rochambeau took with
him almost 5,300 soldiers. In June 1781, 660 re-enforcements were
sent from France, 160 men were recruited in the US (all but one European-born)
for a total of 6,038 men who served with Rochambeau's forces.
Non-commissioned
officers promoted to their ranks after long years of service formed
the backbone of the French army. Following the army reforms of 1776,
a fusilier or chasseur company had 15 NCOs, five sergeants and ten
corporals, while the smaller grenadier company had four sergeants
and eight corporals. The sergeants formed the elite of a company's
non-commissioned officers. Based on an analysis of the careers of
over 20,000 men, Samuel F. Scott found that in 1789 more than half
of all sergeants were under 35 years of age despite the often ten
or more years of service it took to reach that rank. Every one of
the eight to ten corporals too had reached his rank based on seniority
after long years of service. According to Scott, "[c]orporals
fell into three general categories: a minority of apparently talented
soldiers who were promoted after four to six years' service, soldiers
who followed a more common career pattern and were promoted around
the time of their completion of their first eight-year-enlistment
(sometimes as an inducement to re-enlist); and soldiers with long
service, over ten years, who were promoted on this basis." More
than 3/4 of these men were under 35 years old.[82]
Below them was the
rank and file, and, unlike the Prussian military at the time, where
Frederick the Great preferred older soldiers, the French army was
a young army. In 1789, almost exactly 50% of all enlisted men were
between 18 and 25 years old, another 5% were even younger. About 12%
had less than one year of service, but 60% had been with the colors
between four and ten years, another 20% had served for over ten years.
These data are confirmed by information collected on the troops of
the expédition particulière. Taking the Royal Deux-Ponts
again as our case study, we find that the regiment sailed from Brest
in April 1780, with a supplement of 1,013 men.[83]
113 reinforcements selected from the German regiments of LaMarck and
Anhalt joined in June 1781, another 67 men were recruited in America
between August 1780 and November 1782, adding up to a total of 1,193
men who served with the Royal Deux-Ponts.[84]
If well over 90%
of all soldiers in the French regiments were native Frenchmen,[85]
the treaty of March 1776 between Duke Charles and Louis XVI had stipulated
that of the 150 recruits needed each year to maintain the strength
of the unit, 112 were to come from the Duchy of Deux-Ponts and surrounding
areas. The remainder was to be drafted from the German-speaking territories
of the King of France since the language of command in the regiment
would remain German. An analysis of the hometowns of the soldiers
of the regiment in America reflects that recruitment largely followed
these stipulations:
Zweibrücken:
330
27.7%
Remainder of the Empire:
343
28.8%
Alsace:
357
29.9%
Lorraine:
108
9.0%
France:
7
0.6%
Switzerland, Low Countries,
Savoy (3), Ireland (2), Sweden (1) 48
4.0%
-----------------------
1,193 100.0%
A look at the age
of the soldiers shows that 584 men or 48.9% of the rank and file had
been born between 1753 and 1759: almost half of the men were between
21 and 27 years old by the time the regiment left for the United States.
Some 736 soldiers or 61.7% of the rank and file had signed up between
1773 and 1779, i.e., had up to eight years of service. Enlisted men
could join at a very young age: the enfants de troupe, sons of soldiers
or officers, were usually admitted at half pay at the age of six and
served as drummers until the age of 16, when they could enlist as
regular soldiers. The youngest drummer-boy soldiers in the regiment
were but nine years old. Comparative data for the Bourbonnais confirm
these findings. Most of its men were in their early 20s, the average
age being 27. The youngest enfant de troupe in the Bourbonnais, however,
was but 4(!), the oldest 64.[86]
The biggest important
difference between the Royal Deux-Ponts and French units besides their
geographic origins in western Germany and the fact that their language
of command was German, not French, was in the religious affiliation
of the soldiers.[87] If the French
regiments were almost 100% Catholic, while the Royal Deux-Ponts was
almost 40% Protestant:
Catholic: 732
62.0%
Lutheran: 269
22.8%
Reformed: 180
15.2%
----------------------
100.0%
Their ethnic German
background and religious affiliation with various Protestant strands
of the Christian faith greatly influenced the experiences of the soldiers
in the regiment, especially in traditionally anti-French and anti-Catholic
New England.
There is a general
conception that the soldiers in the armies of the eighteenth century
were the dregs of society, released from prison if not from the gallows
in exchange for military service. In the case of the French army and
the troops of Rochambeau, research has shown that this is clearly
not the case. As a rule, these men did not come from well established,
"middle-class" families, but rather what we might call the
"working poor." The emphasis here should be on working:
of over 17,000 beggars registered in the city limits of Paris between
1764 and 1773, only 88 (!) entered the army! [88]
The most detailed report on any regiment, that on the Royal Deux-Ponts
compiled on October 1, 1788, a few years after its return from America,
shows, not surprisingly for a pre-industrial society, that 76.4%,
or 875 of its 1,146 men were peasants and "autres travailleurs
de la campagne." The next largest group, 59 men or 5% were tailors,
48 gave shoemaker as their profession, and 46 were masons. The rest
were carpenters (24), butchers (22), wheelwrights (21) and an assortment
of other trades.
What bound all the
men together no matter what their trade, language, or religion, was
a precarious financial situation. To say that the armies of the ancien
régime were paid poorly is an understatement, but the French
army ranked at the very bottom of the pay-scale. When the salaries
of French and Foreign infantry, i.e., the Royal Deux-Ponts, were equalized
at a higher level for the expédition particulière, it
meant that a fusilier would be paid 9 sous 6 deniers per day or 14
livres 5 sous per month in America. The better-paid grenadier made
11 sous for a total of 16 1/2 livres per month. Before departure,
the rank and file received one month pay plus 18 livres from the masse
to equip themselves; another 18 livres from the masse were distributed
upon arrival in Newport.[89] But
they had to pay stoppages from their pay as well. The ordonnance of
March 20, 1780, set food costs at 2 sous for bread, 1 sous 6 d for
beef per day. This meant a monthly food bill for every non-commissioned
officer and enlisted man of
3 livres
for bread
2 livres 2
sous for beef
1 sous
6 deniers for 1 pound of salt per month
---------------------
5 livres 3 sous 6 deniers
Also increased was
the stoppage for the masse, from 36 livres for the French infantry
and 72 livres for the Foreign infantry to 48 and 84 livres respectively
to pay for uniforms and equipment. If all contributions to the masse
came from the soldiers, who received a new uniform every thirty six
months, that would mean that a soldier in one of the French units
had an additional stoppage of 1 livre 6 sous 10 deniers, a soldier
in the Royal Deux-Ponts had 2 livres 6 sous 10 deniers taken out of
his monthly pay.[90] That left
a fusilier in the Bourbonnais with 7 livres 14 sous 14 deniers, a
fusilier in the Royal Deux-Ponts had even a livre less than that.
In order to put this into perspective it might be well to remember
that Fersen estimated that it cost him 20 livres a month to keep his
dog! Since he was paid in specie rather than in paper even 7 livres
was more than what a continental soldier received (if he was ever
paid) but a look across the battlefield shows that his British and
German enemies were considerable better paid. A soldier in the British
army received 8 pence a day or exactly £ 1 pound per month,
a common soldier in a Brunswick regiment in British service had 16
shillings 1 penny 1 farthing for 4 weeks of service. That left him
with 14 shillings after stoppages for food and clothing had been taken
out; a Gefreiter had 16 s 4 p.[91]
Those 16 s 1 d 1 f are just about 19 livres or 2 1/2 times the pay
of a fusilier in the Bourbonnais!
If officers in Rochambeau's
corps do not necessarily reflect upon the causes of the war and the
reason's for France's involvement, our knowledge on how enlisted men
felt is based on a single source. It was only a few years ago, that
two journals kept or written by enlisted men even came to light. One
is the Journal militaire of an unidentified grenadier of the Bourbonnais,
which unfortunately focuses almost exclusively on military events
and contains precious little for the purposes of this study.[92]
The other is a journal kept by a fusilier in the Royal Deux-Ponts
by the name of Georg Daniel Flohr.
The only child of
Johann Paul Flohr, a butcher and small farmer, and his second wife,
Susanne, Georg Daniel was born on August 27, 1756, and baptized on
August 31, 1756, in Sarnstall, a community of some twenty families,
and a suburb of Annweiler in the duchy of Pfalz-Zweibrücken.
Orphaned at the age of five by the death of his father, Georg Daniel
and the five children from his father's first marriage were raised
in the German Reformed Church by their mother. Nothing is known about
his schooling or the trade he learned, but he presumably attended
both the Calvinist school in Sarnstall and the German Reformed school
in Annweiler. On June 7, 1776, shortly before his twentieth birthday,
Flohr volunteered for an eight-year-term in the Company von Bode,
of the Royal Deux-Ponts. Regimental records describe him as 1.71 meter
(5 feet 8 inches) tall, with black hair, black eyes, a long face,
regularly shaped mouth, and a small nose.
What sets Flohr
apart is his keen mind and interest in the New World around him as
he describes it in his Account of the travels in America undertaken
by the praiseworthy regiment von Zweibrücken on water and on
land from the year 1780 until 1784.[93]
In a brief explanation following the title page, Flohr informs us
of his goal, which is to describe the "towns, villages, hamlets
and plantations," as well as the habits and customs of the inhabitants,
"in North- as well as in West-America" as he had "daily
and most meticulously" recorded them. He illustrated his narrative
with 30 colored drawings of communities he passed through on his way
to and from Yorktown and in the Caribbean.
Flohr's journal is
largely descriptive: he says very little about the American cause
or the reasons for his being in America. If he heard about the ideas
of Independence, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, he neither
mentions them nor does he apply them to himself, at least not during
this phase of his life. Flohr and the French troops had come to America
to put an end to the British "wreaking havoc on this beautiful
country."