final report, in which he gives his own account of the catastrophe and which he caused to be printed when he reached England, he said:
“The kindness and attention that has been shown us by the French officers, . . . their delicate sensibility of our situation, their generous and pressing offers of money, both public and private, to any amount, has really gone beyond what I can possibly describe and will, I hope, make an impression on the breast of every British officer whenever the fortunes of war should put any of them in our power.”
The French attitude in the New World was in perfect accord with the French sentiments in the Old. On receiving from Lauzun and Count de Deux-Ponts, who for fear of capture had sailed in two different frigates, the news of the taking of Cornwallis, of his 8,000 men (of whom 2,000 were in hospitals), 800 sailors, 214 guns, and 22 flags, the King wrote to Rochambeau: “Monsieur le Comte de Rochambeau, the success of my arms flatters me only as being conducive to peace.”
The beginning of a new political era
One of the most authoritative publicists of the day, Lacretelle, in 1785, considering, in the Mercure de France, the future of the new-born United States, praised the favorable influence exercised on them by the so much admired British Constitution—“the most wonderful government in Europe. For it will be England's glory to have created peoples worthy of throwing off her yoke, even though she must endure the reproach of having forced them to independence by forgetfulness of her own maxims.”
As to the members of the French army who had started for the new crusade two years before, they had at once the conviction that, in accordance with their anticipation, they had witnessed something great which would leave a profound trace in the history of the world. They brought home the seed of liberty and equality, the “virus,” as it was called by Pontgibaud, who, friend as he was of Lafayette, resisted the current to the last and remained a royalist.
Youthful Saint-Simon, the future Saint-Simonian, thus summed up his impressions of the campaign: “I felt that the American Revolution marked the beginning of a new political era; that this revolution would necessarily set moving an important progress in general civilization, and that it would before long occasion great changes in the social order then existing in Europe.”
Rochambeau visits Jefferson
For one year more Rochambeau remained in America. Peace was a possibility, not a certainty.
Rochambeau had established himself at Williamsburg, the quiet and dignified capital of the then immense State of Virginia, noted for its “Bruton Church,” its old College of William and Mary, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and the birthplace of the far-famed Phi Beta Kappa fraternity; its statue of the former English governor, Lord Botetourt, in conspicuous marble wig and court mantle. “America, behold your friend,” the inscription on the pedestal reads.
That other friend of America, Rochambeau, took up his quarters in the college, one of the buildings of which, used as a hospital for our troops, accidentally took fire, but was at once paid for by the French commander.
Rochambeau, his son, and two aides, one of whom was Closen, journey to visit at Monticello the already famous Jefferson. They take with them 14 horses, sleep in the houses where they chance to be at nightfall—a surprise party which may, at times, have caused embarrassment; but this accorded with the customs of the day.
The hospitality is, according to occasions, brilliant or wretched, “with a bed for the general as ornamented as the canopy for a procession,” and elsewhere “with rats which come and tickle our ears.” They reach the handsome house of the “Philosopher,” adorned with a colonnade, “the platform of which is very prettily fitted with all sorts of mythological scenes.”
The lord of the place dazzles his visitors by his encyclopædic knowledge. Closen describes him as “very learned in
