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8/20/2019 The Early Career of Lieutenant General Donatien Rochambeau and the French Campaigns in the Caribbean, 1792…
French Revolution. On 28 December 1791, Jean-Baptiste finally received the baton o f a
Marshal o f France from Louis XVI, making him and General Nicolas von Luckner the
last two officers to join the m arshalship under the ancien regime}
Jean Marie Joseph Donatien de Vimeur, vicomte de Rochambeau, was bo m in
Paris on 7 April 1755.2 The young vicomte remained in the capital city only long enough
to “prepare m yself to enter the service” receiving his early formal military education at
Brienne, where he won every prize for textbook proficiency in military studies.3 Leaving
1 La Commission d’Histoire de la Societe des Cincinnati de France, Rochambeau (1725-1807) [hereafter Societe des Cincinnati, Branche Fran9aise, Rochambeau (1725-
1807)], (Annonay, France, 1992), 1-28. Von Luckner, a battle-tried hussar of the Saxon
aristocracy, fought against France during the Seven Year’s War, but eventually offered
his regiment of mercenaries to the service o f the French king. A century later, his
thirteen-year-old descendant, Felix, w ould run away from the family estate near Dresden
to escape his predestined career as a cavalry officer. After signing on in Hamburg as a
ship’s hand under the assumed name “Phelax,” this youngest von Luckner later gained
international fame during the First World W ar as the “Sea Devil,” captain o f the German
Imperial Navy’s sailing ship (turned raider) the S.M.S. Seeadler.
2 Some discrepancy exists concerning Donatien Rocham beau’s actual date of birth. In Jean-Edmond Weelen’s translation o f the younger Rochambeau’s memoir of the
American Revolution, W eelen mistakenly describes the birth dates as both 7 August and
7 April 1755. Still others (to include the Paris Mint, which struck a rather curious
medallion in the late 1970s to commemorate the vicomte’s landing at le Cap, Saint-
Domingue in 1802 - he actually landed elsewhere) set the date in 1750. According to the
actual birth certificate from Paris’ Jean en Greve parish, and official French military
records, the correct date is 7 April 1755. It is likely that like his father in 1725, Donatien
Rochambeau received his baptism at the family’s traditional place o f worship, the Sainte-
Madeleine church in Venddme, where his great-uncle Louis Begon presided as cure.
3 Donatien Rochambeau, Journa l (The War in America) [hereafter Rochambeau, Journal], First Published in J.E. Weelen, Rochambeau Father and Son; A Life o f the
Marechal de Rochambeau an d the Journa l o f the Vicomte de Rochambeau [hitherto
unpublished] (New York, 1926), 193; Randolph Keim, Rochambeau, A Commemoration
by the Congress o f the United States o f Am erica o f the Services o f the French Auxiliary
Forces in the War o f Independence (Washington, D.C. 1907), 375.
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his studies in Paris, he traveled through Verberie to join the French army camp at
Compiegne, where his father, then a Marechal de Camp (equivalent to a Major General),
commanded the Auvergne regiment. Hence, apparently sometime in his thirteenth year,
Donatien Rocham beau began the career for which his family had intended him since
birth, commencing his pre-commissioning training as a comm on soldier in his father’s
unit.
The vicomte de Rochambeau was a member of a cadre o f officers whose families
had received court honors and whose rapid advancement through the ranks followed a de
facto promotion scheme that normally began at the age of fifteen years, six months. On
or close to this birthday, the French war minister could commission a young nobleman
into the officer ranks, with a latitude ranging between twelve and eighteen years o f age.
Following the established progression, the lieutenant could expect promotion to capitaine
at or near the age o f eighteen, and colonel around age twenty. Further, the officer could,
as vacancies and personal finances permitted, skip the intermediate ranks o f major and
lieutenant colonel, instead purchasing comm and o f units as large as a regiment.4
Army officers at Versailles generally respected the family’s positions in the
existing military hierarchy. Officers whose fathers held high rank in the services could
4 Gilbert Bodinier, Les Officiers de I Arm ee Royale; Combattants de la Guerre
d ’Independance des Etats-Unis de Yorktown a I An II [hereafter Bodinier, Officiers de
VArmee Royale], France, Archives de la guerre, Service historique de 1’Armee de Terre
[hereafter Service historique]: Chateau de Vincennes, (Paris, 1983), 54, 115. This particular arrangement lasted until 1776, when the minister o f war, Saint-Germain,
ordered that colonels have fourteen years o f service, o f which six would be spent in the
newly-created grade of colonel-en-second and five in the grade of capta ia This was quite
a departure from the previous requirement for the grade o f colonel which mandated that
an officer have only seven years o f service, o f which five were served as a captain.
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1779, received (with his father’s money and influence) the rank of colonel. Further, the
newly-promoted colonel received as his father’s gift the prestigious position of second in
command o f the Bourbonnois regiment under Colonel Anne Alexandre, marquis de
Montmorency-Laval.2 While preparations for the assault against England progressed, the
younger Rochambeau could not have gotten a better practical military re-schooling after
his two and one-ha lf year absence. He regularly observed his father, the master tactician,
as the latter relentlessly drilled his soldiers, preparing them for any potentiality that they
might encounter once they reached enemy shores. In speaking o f General Rochambeau at
this time, Colonel Armand-Louis de Gontaut, due de Lauzun, observed that contrary to
the other commanders o f the proposed expedition “M. de Rochambeau, Brigadier-
General commanding the vanguard, spoke o f nothing but deeds o f martial prowess,
maneuvered and took up military positions in the open, indoors, on the table, on your
2 Donatien Rochambeau, Journal, 193-194; Service historique, Carton Yb 381;
dossier lieutenant-general no. 1299, items 12, 14, 15; Arnold Whitridge, Rochambeau (New York, 1965), 57-58. Both his own and his father’s journals refer to Donatien
Rochambeau as his father’s aide. This official status was short-lived but requires
clarification. While the general’s command was preparing to sail against England in
1779, Donatien Rochambeau served as one of his father’s personal aides-de-camp, and
simultaneously, on 22 January 1779, received his command in the Bourbonnois. The
vicomte continued in this status until the spring of 1780 when his father gave him the
additional duty of assistant to the army’s quartermaster-general. Colonel Rochambeau
continued, however, as an “unofficial” aide to his father in America, accompanying the
general to important meetings with dignitaries (such as the Hartford, Connecticut
conference with General George Washington), representing his father’s army at
Versailles, and certainly receiving preferential consideration from his father in theassignment of most combat missions in America. At first glance, these points may seem
rather arbitrary. However, given Colonel Rocham beau’s position as second-in-command
of the senior regiment in the French expedition (the Bourbonnois) and the contemporary
modus operandi of the French army’s officer corps, such treatment was not extraordinary.
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snuffbox, i f you took it out o f your pocket; entirely absorbed in his profession, he has a
marvelous knowledge o f it.”3
The French invasion force, however, never set foot on British soil. A crucial
aspect of the operation had been for the combined Spanish/French fleet to secure, by June
1779, the English Channel before landing French troops on the Isle o f Wight and
Portsmouth. The Spanish flotilla arrived six weeks late to meet the French fleet which
waited of f the coast o f Corunna, Spain, yet the combined armada nevertheless sailed
northward for the Channel. Running critically short of water and almost wholly
overcome by smallpox, members of the d’Orvilliers’ fleet struggled to fulfill their
mission, but by mid-August the French foreign ministry aborted the operation, making the
decision official at a council of war held in September at Brest. General Rochambeau
was thoroughly disgusted. Completely consumed with training his soldiers, he had driven
them mercilessly and both he and his troops were exhausted. After determining to end
3 Armand Louis de Gontaut, due de Lauzun, Memoirs o f the Due de Lauzun
(London, 1928), 187. In a letter to his father, Axel Fersen would later describe the
commanding general in less glowing terms. “My stay in this country with M. de
Rochambeau has not been very pleasant, and I share this sentiment with all those who
serve under his orders. He is an excellent officer, but he is one o f the most disagreeable
people I know, brusque, of bad temper, excessively detail-oriented, distrustful, little o f the
grace of which he speaks, but does not show, discouraging to everyone. Finally, everyone
is unhappy, a fact which the general officers hide from him.” Comte Axel de Fersen,
Lettres D ’Axe l De Fersen A Son Pere Pendant La Guerre De L ’Independance
D ’Amerique (Paris, 1929), 122. Twenty years later in Saint-Domingue, General Charles
Emmanuel Leclerc would make many o f the same observations about Donatien
Rochambeau. Much of the criticism against the general, however, is undoubtedlycharacteristic of the jealousy that the higher-placed courtiers felt toward their
commanding general (and by extension, his son) especially during the expedition’s early
months. In Newport, Rhode Island during the tedious, inactive winter months o f 1780-
1781, travel restrictions upon and harsh disciplinary measures taken by the general
against a number of his officers only served to increase their ire.
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the war ministry code-named the Expedition Particuliere. Colonel Rochambeau now
received an even more responsible role. Apparently at his father’s behest, the ministry
assigned Donatien Rochambeau to the position o f the expedition’s Aide-M ajor General
de Logis, the principle staff officer to the Quartermaster General o f the French invasion
force. The vicomte initially balked at the appointment, understandably preferring to serve
solely in his more prestigious position in the Bourbonnois regiment, but was persuaded
by his father to take the logistics assignment “ so that he m ight be with h im always.”9
In the midst o f the preparations for the American campaign, yet another major
event occupied the Rochambeaus’ attention. On 18 March 1780, the vicomte de
Rochambeau married the youthful Franfoise d ’Harville, in a wedding which marked a
change in the family’s traditional marriage criteria. Donatien Rochambeau’s grandfather
had wed Marie-Claire Therese Begon, who came from a family of sailors, but whose
father had served as the tattle collector for Vendome.10 Donatien’s mother was Jeanne
9 Armand-Charles Augustin de la Croix de Castries, A Midd le Passage, The Journal o f Armand-Charles Augustin de la Croix de Castries, Due de Castries, Comte de
Charlus and Baron Castries; 6 April 1780 to 29 September 1780 (Boston, 1970), 18;
Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau, Memoirs o f the Marshal Count De Rochambeau, Relative To
The War O f Independence O f The United States [hereafter Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau,
Memoirs o f the Count de Rochambeau] (New York, 1971), 22. Until the army’s march to
New York in 1781, Colonel Donatien Rochambeau acted predominantly in his role of
Aide to the Quartermaster General (1 March 1780 until 21 July 1781). Brigadier Charles
de Beville served as the corps’ Quartermaster General and Chief of Staff, while Captain
Georges-Henri-Victor de Collot, the only o f General Rochambeau’s former aides, served
under Donatien Rochambeau as Second Assistant Quartermaster. In 1792 the Convention
would name General Collot Governor General of Guadeloupe, where he took orders fromthen Lieutenant-General Donatien Rochambeau, Governor General of the W indward
Isles.
10 Under the ancien regime, the tattle (or “cut”) was a much-despised royal
capitation tax, the payment o f which was borne almost entirely by France’s rural peasant
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to gain combat experience and receive favors at court vociferously appealed to
Rochambeau to take them along, but the general summarily denied them passage.20
One officer, however, who was not originally chosen by General Rochambeau,
managed to obtain a position on the commanding general’s staff. As a result of his
father’s influence at the court o f Versailles, Colonel Axel de Fersen received orders from
Vergennes to report to Rochambeau as aide-de-camp in the general’s personal entourage.
Quickly summing up his situation at the docks o f Brest, Fersen tried to sell his personal
mounts, but with no luck.21 Even for the commanding general’s son, the load o f personal
20 Alexandre Berthier, the future Prince of Wagram and Napoleon I’s chief of
staff, and his brother, were among the last to arrive at Brest after the departure o f the
fleet. Dressed in naval linen jackets and breeches the two young men hired boats to chase
down the expedition’s flagship, the Due de Bourgogne, and begged Temay to take them
on as common sailors. Owing to an absolute lack o f space aboard the ship, the admiral
had to refuse. Some weeks later the indefatigable Berthier brothers found passage to
America by way of traders to the French colonies. Once arrived in America, both
rendered distinguished service in Rochambeau’s army, especially Alexandre, whose
hand-rendered maps o f the French areas o f operation remain the best o f the period.
Alexandre Berthier, Journa l (Princeton, 1972), 223.
21 Fersen, Lettres, 53-55. Though Hans Axel von Fersen would eventually
become a M arshal o f Sweden under Gustavus IV, in 1780 the young courtier had to rely
upon the influence o f his diplomat father, Lieutenant General count Fredrik Axel von
Fersen, who arranged through Vergennes a place for his son on General Rochambeau’s
personal staff. General Rochambeau knew General von Fersen well. The elder von
Fersen served in the French Army until he retired in 1748 as a brigadier general, and later
(as a lieutenant general) comm anded Swedish troops throughout the entirety o f the Seven
Years War. After his first interview with General Rochambeau, Axel Fersen wrote to his
father saying “ [wjhen I spoke to M. de Rochambeau, he said all sorts of civil things to
me, and talked to me a long time o f you, father; he ended by saying he was charmed to
have me with him, and be able to show how much he esteemed you and how sincerely hewas attached to you.” Hans Axel von Fersen to Fredrik Axel von Fersen, 2 March 1780.
Axel Fersen, Diary and Correspondence o f Count Axel Fersen Grand-Marshal o f Sweden
Relating to the Court o f France [hereafter Fersen, Diary and Correspondence].
Translated by Katherine Prescott Wormeley (London, 1903). Fersen’s detailed journal of
the voyage was lost in a shipwreck when the ship carrying his mail to his father sank after
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Rochambeau ordered the fleet to set a course for Chesapeake Bay.28
The French had been fortunate to encounter only single ships to this point,
especially since Graves’ sole purpose was to find them. As deep as they were into
British-controlled waters however, chances favored that at any time they would run into a
much more formidable enemy. Rochambeau and Temay did not have to wait long. The
very next day, 20 June, the Frenchmen encountered a British naval squadron returning to
Europe from Bermuda. The action that followed constituted Donatien Rochambeau’s
first exposure to combat and caused a great debate among the members o f the expedition
and accounts o f the fight appear in nearly all o f the journals o f those present.29
At 1:30 p.m., the French convoy signaled the sighting o f several sail. Temay
immediately sent his two best-sailing warships, the Neptune (74) and the Eveille (64), to
reconnoiter. The unidentified ships continued to bear down upon the French, and
ordering the transport ships safely to leeward, Temay brought the French warships into
line of battle. At 1600 hours the Neptune signaled that the unidentified vessels were
indeed an English squadron composed of five warships: the Sultan (74), the Hector (74),
the Lion (64), the Bristol (50), and a frigate.30
28 Claude Blanchard, The Journal o f Claude Blanchard, Commissary o f the
French Auxiliary Army Sen t to the United States D uring the American Revolution. 1780-
1783. Translated from a French Manuscript by William Duane (Albany, New York,
1876), 16-20. Donatien Rochambeau, Journal, 198.
29 Donatien Rochambeau, whose presence aboard the flagship afforded him a better understanding of the sequence of events, left in his own jou rnal what remains by far
Immediately the ships’ drummers beat the call “to quarters,” ships’ chaplains
issued their benedictions, and all hands (soldiers and sailors) assumed their posts in
preparation for the imminent fight.31 The line took some time to form. The Provence
(64) was a slow sailing ship and was unable to assume its proper place in the French line
leaving a large break in the formation. As the result, Temay ordered the Neptune and the
Jason (64), who were in front of the convoy, to shorten sail so that they might fill in the
gap. One o f the smaller English ships, the Ruby (64), which had become separated from
the rest o f the English squadron, was thought by all aboard the French vessels to be cut
completely o ff from her comrades by the Neptune. As the French ships came about,
Temay signaled the Neptune “to haul close to the wind in order to separate the enemy
vessel from the rest o f her line which was impossible to do.”32 Combining audacity with
skillful maneuver, the English vessel escaped by tacking between her own squadron and
Cornwallis (Lord Charles Cornwallis’ brother). Some discrepancy exists as to which
British vessels actually took part in the cannonading. Blanchard copied his list (above)from the report that Commodore Cornwallis had reprinted in the 27 October 1780 issue
of the Gazette o f Utrecht and the 13 October 1780 issue of the Courier ofEuro pe. Based
on information that he received from an English officer at Newport, Closen lists the ships
as being the Ruby (74), the Sultan (74), the Lion (64), the Bristol (64), the Reasonable
(50), and the frigate Triton (28).
31 Similar in concept to the modem shipboard signal for “general quarters,”
Rochambeau’s aide, baron Cromot du Bourg, describes the drum roll order “to quarters”
in his diary as “to put aside every thing that can be in the way o f action, to prepare the
guns, each man going to his post. “To quarters” is always given the moment a vessel is
met, and often even at other times to accustom the crew to be prompt in case o f surprise.”Cromot du Bourg, “Diary o f a French Officer, 1781 (Presumed to Be That o f Baron
Cromot du Bourg, Aide to Rochambeau).” The Magazine o f Am erican H istory 4(1880-
1881): 208.
32 Donatien Rochambeau, Journal, 199.
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the generals’ staffs and certainly those aboard the Due de Bourgogne appear to have fared
better throughout the course o f the journey. “As for the general sta ff’ Closen (who was
aboard the flagship) reported, “it was very well nourished and had plenty to drink. Our
cows and chickens were continuously productive and in good condition, and our captain
was well supplied with rice and sugar, etc., etc.”39 Though having remained reasonably
comfortable during the seventy-day voyage, Colonels Rochambeau and Laval m ust have
been especially heartened by the p rospect of leaving Temay’s flagship as soon as they
possibly could. Probably due to some unpleasantry during the embarkation process, a sort
o f quiet feud had erupted between the admiral and the two commanders o f the
Bourbonnois regiment. As another passenger, the future due de Castries, who was also
aboard the Due de Bourgogne observed, “Monsieur de Rochambeau, the younger, and the
Marquis de Laval cannot hold out anymore, after all, Monsieur de Temay has not spoken
to either o f them since we left France.”40
Through a thick fog, the French fleet sighted land and anchored in Rhode Island
waters on the afternoon of 9 July 1780. Still unsure o f the presence of the enemy, Temay
had his vessels move cautiously toward land. After meeting with his second in command,
the comte de Viomenil, General Rochambeau decided that he, Viomenil, Donatien
Rochambeau and selected members o f the sta ff would go ashore once they sighted the
a bad taste.” Captains took regular precautions such as cleaning their ships everyday
(often swabbing the decks with perfume) and opening all hatches to let air circulate belowdecks. Nevertheless, sickness ravaged the crews. Castries, Journal, 8.
39 Closen, Journal, 26.
40 Castries, Journal, 65-66.
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maintain themselves in good discipline and that they would pay for what they used in cash.”4
Most French officers found the effect o f the general’s statements on the people o f Newport
to be what they considered typically American. “At this mention of hard money or cash their
countenances brightened and, if they had been serious and reserved up to that time, they
began to smile, seeing that the presence o f the French far from being harmful to them would
bring them positive advantages.”5
General Rochambeau’s promises produced the desired effect, though the situation in
those first days at Newport remained slightly unsettled. Fortunately, Lafayette had visited
Rhode Island some weeks before the Rochambeau contingent and had set about organizing
the local support required by the arriving army. The result of the marquis’ and state militia
commander General William Fleath’s efforts was that despite their apparent initial apathy,
the town leaders found suitable accommodations and facilities for the foreigners. After
having sat apprehensively for two days aboard their ships, on the evening o f 11 July French
troops finally felt the first positive effects o f being in America.
The troops aboard the vessels had for dinner many vegetables, fruits,
and other fresh provisions, which we devoured with a wonderful
appetite. There was continuous joyfu l cheering!!! both [sic] by those
4 Ibid., 205.
5 Ibid. The continued use of French gold and silver currency (most often Spanish
piasters) later came to be a serious problem for both General George Wash ing ton and the
Continental Congress as it steadily devalued not only the receipts from W ashington’s
army but also the paper currency being issued from Philadelphia and other northeasterncapitals. Local inhabitants throughout New England soon came to refuse to deal with the
Americans, preferring instead French bullion. When silver eventually began to become
scarce among the French, Rochambeau’s commissaries began to take out loans against
French credit with interest rates running as high as thirty-three per-cent, while American
money sold at 700 per-cent discount. Closen, Journal, 78; Blanchard, Journal, 106-107.
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who were arriving and by the inhabitants, who had been expecting us
for a long time. It will be easily understood that after such a long
voyage, during which one has been so uncomfortable, bored and
sometimes dirty in an unhealthy old tub, there is no joy to compare
with that o f setting foot on terra flrm a and changing one’s diet; for
the water and some of our provisions, with exception of the wine, had
spoiled. As the latter beverage overheats one, and as the water had been rationed half way across, I often saw the crew exchange a glass
of wine for a glass o f water.”6
After the maj ority o f New port’s cit izens cerem oniously welcomed the newcomers by
illuminating the tow n’s houses and setting off fireworks, the bulk o f the French expedition
debarked their ships between 12 and 15 July.7 Both the comte and the vicomte de
Rochambeau made their quarters in the home o f William Vernon, which stands today at the
corner o f Clarke and Mary Streets, while the army’s senior officers and principle staff found
billets in the numerous other houses in New port.8 The remainder o f the army, minus the
Lauzun Legion who made a separate camp in Connecticut, would camp in the open fields and
orchards just outside the city to the southeast, deliberately isolated from the city’s
6 Closen, Journal, 27.
7 According to the then-president of Yale University, Ezra Stiles, the citizens o f
Newport demonstrated the ir welcome of the new guests as follows: “[tjhe Whigs put
thirteen lanterns in their windows, the Tories, or those who were undecided, four o r six.
As to the Quakers, they preferred not to show the light o f their candles, and had their
windows smashed.” Merlant, Soldiers and Sailors o f France, 118.
8 In the garden to the north o f the Vernon house, the general later ordered the
construction of a large assembly building which closely resembled the main house.
Though this action was apparently undertaken without Vernon’s consent, “French Hall”
as it becam e known, stood until 1894. The building not only served as an officialmeeting place for the officers of Rochambeau’s corps, but also as their club. When the
French army left Newport in the summer of 1781, Vernon presented General
Rochambeau with a bill o f $450. This payment was not for rent, but for damages to the
property during the general’s stay. Document reprinted in The Magazine o f Am erican
History 3, No. 7 (July 1879): 426.
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inhabitants. By virtue of their seniority, the grenadiers and chasseurs o f the Bourbonnois
regiment (that body of troops who would later constitute Donatien Rochambeau’s primary
combat command) were the first to disembark.9
Debarkation from the crowded ships proved anything but easy. Knowing that the
British could profit immeasurably from an immediate attack at Newport, General
Rochambeau considered the timely placement o f his cannons to guard the harbor a matter o f
principal importance and demanded that they be brought to shore as quickly as possible. To
his frustration however, the heaviest (and most critical) artillery pieces had been loaded at
the bottom o f the ships to serve as ballast. A severe shortage of small transport boats only
exacerbated the problem. While both soldiers and sailors fought to hoist the guns from the
lowest holds, junio r officers forced a hodgepodge o f troops and supplies into the town aboard
what few rowboats the Americans and the French could make available. Further, one
transport, the Isle de France, had become separated from the rest o f the fleet in the midst of
the dense fog which for four days had preceded the fleet’s arrival. Temay sent the Hermione
(36) to find the lost ship, but to no avail. The possible loss of the Isle de France caused a
great deal of concern especially among the French officers as it carried not only 350 men o f
the Bourbonnois Infantry, but also much o f the general officers’ personal baggage. The
missing ship finally put into Boston on 20 July.10
9 It is probable that at least some of the grenadiers accompanied the advanced party into Newport to act as a bodyguard. The possibility o f Tories harassing or even
kidnaping the dignitaries seemed to be a major concern to Temay. Lee Kennett, The
French Forces in America, 1780-1783 (Westport, Connecticut, 1977), 48.
10 Blanchard, Journal, 42; Closen, Journal, 29.
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reserve in their behavior and took extraordinary measures to ensure the comfort and good
will o f their American associates.17
In the meantime however, more portentous events continued to develop. Since just
after the French fleet’s arrival at Newport, Lafayette, who initially enjoyed Washington’s
complete confidence in matters dealing with Rochambeau’s contingent, had acted as the
American com mander’s mouthpiece to the French army in America. Initially, General
Rochambeau patiently abided the m arquis’ youthful ebullience as he enumerated the myriad
reasons for an immediate attack on New York, but after some weeks he became more than
a little disturbed that Washington had not communicated with him personally. After all,
Rochambeau was the American commander’s highest-ranking subordinate and the French
corps his primary auxiliary force. Further, suspicion grew in the French camp tha t the
youthful, inexperienced marquis might be misrepresenting Washington’s intent in favor of
his own enthusiastic enterprises of capturing the city.18 Though various jun ior French
17 Ibid. To while away the idle months, many French officers hired local tutors inan effort to better acquaint themselves with the English language. As Hans Axel von
Fersen added early in August 1780, “We have not left our island; we occupy it peacefully,
and with the best order, in a very healthy camp, well placed and perfectly well trenched;
the works are not yet finished, but they are going on. The strictest discipline is
maintained; nothing is taken from the inhabitants except by their free will and for ready
money; we have not yet had a single complaint against the troops. Such discipline is
admirable and astonishes the inhabitants, who are accustomed to the pillage o f the
English and even of their own troops. The greatest confidence and the best harmony are
established between the two nations; if that could suffice for the success o f our expedition
we might feel sure o f it.” Hans Axel von Fersen to Fredrik Axel von Fersen, 8 September
1780. Fersen, Diary a nd Correspondence, 25.
18 In their diaries, nearly every contemporary French author in America
denounces the marquis de Lafayette, the second wealthiest and most influential man in
France next to the king, for having abandoned the traditions o f his noble background in
favor of the plebeian manners of his new American friends. Though tainted by an
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commanders to carry his and Washington’s requests to the king, the French commander
rankled them.29 The general’s overt display of nepotism was certainly unpopular, but for a
variety of reasons was probably the best choice that he could have made. Thus, on 28
October 1780, Colonel Rochambeau left Newport aboard the Am azone, commanded by the
masterful Captain Jean-Fran9ois de Galaup, comte de la Perouse and escorted by the
Surveillante (16) and Hermione (36). Aware that if he were overtaken by British forces he
would have to throw the crucial correspondence overboard, the younger Rochambeau
committed to memory the entirety o f the five packets o f dispatches in his charge.30
As i f by design, a severe windstorm temporarily scattered the English squadron laying
in wait of f of Newport and before they could regroup, allowing La Perouse and his escorts
29 Kennett, French Forces, 88. To his father, Hans Axel von Fersen wrote o f the
planned voyage that “This is the first safe opportunity I have had for a long time to write
to you my dear father. I am certain this letter will reach you, and without being read; it
goes by a frigate that M. de Rochambeau is sending to Europe.... An officer is to be sent
to France in this frigate to give an account o f the state and situation o f the army and o f
our dear allies, both of which are bad enough. We do not know who will be charged with
this commission; everyone names me; several of the o f the general officers, M. DeChastellux and the Baron de Viomesnil [sic] have spoken to me as one who could carry
out the intentions of the general in this respect. I do not know what will be the result; I
shall take no steps to obtain the appointment, neither should I refuse it if the general were
to offer it to me. Nevertheless, I would much rather not be selected for this service.
Something interesting might happen during my absence, and I should be in despair at
having missed it.” Hans Axel von Fersen to Fredrik Axel von Fersen, 16 October 1780.
Fersen, Diary and Correspondence, 28.
30 Donatien Rochambeau, Journal, 214; Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau, Memoirs o f
the Count de Rochambeau, 25; Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau, Memoires Militaires,
Historiques e t Politiques de Rochambeau, Ancien Marechal de France, et Grand-Officier de la Legio n-d ’Honneur [hereafter Jean-Baptiste Rochambau, Memoires Militaires]
(Paris, 1824), I, 256; Jean-Jacques Jusserand, With Americans o f Past and Present Days
(New York, 1917), 47; See appendix for copy of the actual memoir submitted by
Donatien Rochambeau to the king’s new war minister, Philippe-Henri, marquis de Segur.
Donatien Rochambeau, Journal, 214.
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la Croix, marquis de Castries, the vicomte and Captain La Perouse learned that the ministry
had tried to send the second division of the expedition to America, but had been frustrated
either by British blockaders o ff the port o f Brest or by obligations elsewhere. Further, the
king had reorganized nearly his entire council. Not only had he replaced his M inister of
Marine, but Pierre Maurice Henri, comte de Segur, had taken over the Ministry of War from
Montbarey.33 The new officials had just begun to review their plans for the conduct of the
American campaign when Rochambeau and La Perouse arrived. To complicate matters
more, 6 December 1780 brought news o f the death o f the queen’s mother Maria Theresa o f
Austria. Uncertain o f the intentions of her successor Joseph II, policy makers at V ersailles
were reluctant to deplete their military manpower a t home. Faced with this new misgiving
concerning Austria and their conviction that the main British war effort in the Americas
would take place in the Antilles, the king’s counselors relegated W ashington’s conflict to
Rocham beau’s appearance at Versailles must certainly have been somewhat of an
unwelcome surprise. Noialles, Lauzun, Viomenil, Chastellux, or even Fersen or Vauban
would certainly have been more acceptable choices at court, and each vied for the honorof leaving America. Considering the expected bitterness that arose from his selection,
General Rochambeau’s motives must certainly have been well-calculated. Even Donatien
Rochambeau himself reports that he left France “very tired and quite dissatisfied with the
small success o f my poor mission.... we reached Boston very displeased with the small
quantity o f flattering hopes which we were permitted to entertain.” Donatien
Rochambeau, Journal, 215-216.
33 Montbarey to General Rochambeau, 9 December 1780. Service historique,
Guerre d’Amerique, Lettres divers des Officiers Generates, Carton XLVIII, item 454/235.
Immediately following his replacement as Minister o f War, Montbarey took the time to
write to General Rochambeau assuring him that his son had arrived safely and that on 26 November the younger Rochambeau had m et with him to discuss his army’s needs.
Montbarey had then arranged for Donatien Rochambeau to meet with the king personally
to discuss his dispatches. His letter unofficially details in advance most of the
uninspiring news that General Rochambeau would later receive from the new Minister of
War.
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Beginning on the morning of 10 June 1781, the corps boarded small ferry boats and
began their move from the ir island at Newport to their mainland departure point at
Providence. The distance was short, but many of the boats ran aground in the receding tide,
forcing the soldiers to spend a night cramped aboard the vessels without food until the next
morning’s tide freed them. General Rochambeau held Barras’ squadron in reserve at
Newport and left the marquis de Choisy with 500 French and 1,000 American militia to
guard both the squadron and the siege guns which remained at Providence. To ease
congestion on the roads and overcrowding at the prearranged campsites, the general divided
his army into three divisions o f regiments with the order that regiments would move in one
day succession o f each other.
Once the bulk o f his army was ashore on the mainland, the comm anding general left
Newport with his staf f on 14 June to lead the first division in the march to New York.
Maintaining his semi-independent command, the due de Lauzun set out with his legion along
a different route to screen the corp’s left flank. Four days later, the Bourbonnois regiment,
with Colonel Donatien Rochambeau at its head, led the French army from Providence.45
44 Clermont-Crevecoeur, Journal, 27. Naturally the senior officers were allotted
more space. While General Rochambeau allowed fourteen wagons per regiment, each
general officer was allowed two. The general’s six aides de camp shared two wagons,
while Rochambeau kept only four for himself. Closen, Journal, 84.
45 Berthier, Journal, 246-247; Ordre de Marche de VArmee par tant de North-Castle, pou r se rendre aux White-Plains, 4 July 1781. Service historique, Guerre
d’Amerique, inclus la siege de York, Carton XLIX, item 14. In his capacity as assistant
quartermaster general, the vicomte de Rochambeau commanded a battalion of the
Bourbonnois grenadiers and chasseurs as an advanced scouting, quartering and foraging
party. This was standard procedure throughout the corps. The vanguard elements o f each
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Valentine Hill from which they could over watch the Americans’ movement.55 Alexandre
Berthier best described the scene: “This march over execrable roads, on which the column
was halted every few minutes by guns that had bogged down or overturned in the pitch
darkness, took all night.”56 Indeed, road conditions were so severe that the marquis de Laval
ultimately abandoned his colum n’s artillery to have it catch up later.57
The center column finally arrived at Valentine Hill at one o ’clock the nex t morning.
Following his father’s instructions, the younger Rochambeau ordered his grenadiers and
chasseurs to deploy in absolute silence, sending outposts forward. Behind him, the brigad e’s
two regiments settled into a T-formation on the high ground.58
55 Captain Berthier had reconnoitered the route earlier, apparently under more
favorable weather conditions. Captain Charles de Lameth guided the left column along
the Tuckahoe Road. Both columns, each of whose artillery support consisted of two
twelve-pound cannons and two howitzers, would rendezvous at Valentine Hill. Berthier,
Journal, 251; Frantjois Soules, Histoire des Troubles de VAmerique A nglaise (Paris,
1787), III, 378; Donatien Rochambeau, Journal, 222; George Washington diary entry, 21
July 1781. The Diaries o f George Washington (Charlottesville, 1978), III, 398.
56 Berthier, Journal, 251.
57 Though Berthier stridently warned the marquis not to leave the brigade’s
artillery troops without guides, the artillerymen did indeed get lost. Consequently,
Berthier spent the remainder o f the night trying to find them himself. Berthier, Journal,
252.
58 Berthier, Journal, 251; Donatien Rochambeau, Journal, 222. Fortunately for
Colonel Rochambeau, his battalion remained in stationary positions in the vicinity o f
King’s Bridge/Valentine Hill for forty-eight hours. They were not part of a subsequent
action, in which the due de Lauzun led his German legion augmented by a party ofAmerican and French grenadiers along the Hudson River to Morrisania and then to Frog’s
Neck, N ew York. After brisk fighting, members o f this reconnaissance element allegedly
took to pillaging the homes o f the local inhabitants, many of whom appeared to be British
sympathizers. The actions of the soldiers under Lauzun’s command caused nothing short
o f a scandal among the members o f Rocham beau’s army.
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against one o f the British garrisons in the South.62 The question only remained as to which
one....Charleston? Savannah? Perhaps am ove against Lord Charles Cornwallis in Virginia?
It was a vexing question for the American general, but Admiral de Grasse provided the
answer on 14 August. Somewhat surprisingly, the American headquarters received the news
a whole day before Rochambeau: the comte de Grasse was leaving Saint-Domingue with
3,200 land troops and was headed for Chesapeake Bay. Rochambeau decided that the time
had finally come to inform W ashington of his plans, and a bit o f skillful diplomacy averted
a potential crisis:
The moment had now come to enlighten General Washington and to
persuade him to operate in the South, in spite o f the advice o f his
aide-de-camp, Hamilton, in whom he had great confidence and who
obstinately wished to attack New York. My father sent for the
Brigadier General [Louis le Begue de Presle] Duportail, [and] told
him o f his ideas, which he completely approved, and asked him to use
all of his influence with the Am erican commander to make him adopt
them. He gave himse lf to this with zeal and enthusiasm; but, seeing
the latter’s indecision and the obstacles which he created, he guessed
that pride had much to do with his refusal. General Rochambeau,
sacrificing his to the good which should result from this maneuver,
proposed to the American General [sic] that he detach the Southern
[sic] corps from the Army o f the North [sic], to add to it a detachment
of light infantry from any part o f the French army and to come and
command the expedition himself. From then on the obstacles were
removed, the march south was resolved upon and definitely planned.
We wrote to Admiral Barras to give him a date for meeting us at
62 Washington had pinned m ost o f his hopes for success upon promises from the
various states for troops and supplies. By August 1781, the states had sent little if any
aid, causing Washington to lament that “....I could scarce see a ground upon which tocontinue my preparations against New York - especially as there was much reason to
believe that part (at least) of the Troops [sic] in Virginia were recalled to reinforce N ew
York and therefore I turned my views more seriously (than I had done before) to an
operation to the Southward [sic]....” George Washington diary entry, 1 August 1781,
Diaries, 405.
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After finalizing a strategy to trap Cornwallis in his fortifications in Yorktown, the two
generals set in motion what would become the decisive operation of the American
Revolution.
63 Donatien Rochambeau, Journal , 224. The next day, on 16 August, Washingtonlearned that Cornwallis, under pressure from Lafayette, had moved from Hampton Road
and was putting up defensive works along the York R iver at Yorktown and Gloucester.
George Washington diary entry, 16 August 1781, Diaries, 411. Barras left Newport on
23 August remaining virtually incommunicado until his rendezvous with de Grasse in
Virginia the next month.
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For the allied plan to realize any chance o f success, it was imperative that Sir
Henry Clinton not reinforce Cornwallis in Virginia. Consequently, Generals Washington
and Rochambeau employed every means at their disposal to deceive Clinton as to their
change of strategy. Displaying for the British comm ander’s benefit detailed preparations
for an assault onto Staten Island from New Jersey, the allied army marched back up the
Hudson River to the crossing at King’s Ferry where the Hudson Highlands would mask
their subsequent movement south.1
1 After detaching a sizeable force to observe New York, Washington ordered
thirty flat boats be placed on carriages and sent to the town of Chatham on the New
Jersey side o f the Raritan River facing Staten Island. Further, Rochambeau ordered the
French army’s commissary officer to establish elaborate bakeries at Chatham. The
commissary played the role so well that even the British batteries at the m outh o f the
Raritan river fired on his workers w hile they were trying to collect the necessary bricks in
the area. Donatien Rochambeau, Journal, 224-225; Closen, Journal, 104, 109.
Washington’s aide Jonathon Trumbull described the preparations: “French ovens are
building at Chatham in Jersey. Others were ordered to be prepared at a p lace near the
Hook [Paulus Hook - now Jersey City]. Contracts are made for forrage [sic] to bedelivered immediately to the French Army on their arrival at the last mentioned place.
Here it is supposed that Batteries [sic] are to be erected for the security and aid o f the
Fleet [sic; de Grasse], which is hourly expected. By these maneuvres [sic] and the
correspondent march o f the Troops [sic], our own army no less than the enemy are
completely deceived.” Jonathan Trumbull, The Trumbull Papers. Collections o f the
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Only luck and Clinton’s obsessive belief that the combined enemy armies would
attack him in Manhattan preserved allies’ elaborate deception plan. By mid-August, at
least one female spy (only known as “Miss Jenny”) had infiltrated the French camp, while
Hessian reconnaissance troops were able to report unmistakable preparations for a
massive Am erican move south through New Jersey.2 Had Clinton believed the
remarkably accurate intelligence that he received from his German Jagers, he might
easily have altered the course of the war. Indeed, one particular Frenchman’s indiscretion
should have conclusively alerted the British general that his attentions were focused in the
wrong direction. Hessian Sergeant Berthold Koch, of the Trumbach regiment noted the
following in his diary:
18 August - the enemy army is moving and crossing the North
River. Everyone believes that Washington plans to attack Staten
Island. At least General Clinton is of this opinion, although
Lieutenant Colonel von Wurmb, who has permission to engage
spies, gave the General a report that New York will not be
attacked, but tha t Washington is marching to Virginia. This is
based on two reasons: first because the commissary has ordered
forage and bread to be collected and ready as far as Trenton and
Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, Mass., 1902), I, 332. This, coupled with two
letters intercepted by Clinton from W ashington and Chastellux which still talked of
imminent operations against New York, only served to further Clinton’s suspicion.
2 “Miss Jenny” entered the French camp on 11 August ostensibly to find her
father. She was interrogated by none other than General Rochambeau who ordered her
detained for several days and her head shaved. Fortunately for the French and Americans
“Miss Jenny” wrongly reported to Clinton’s intelligence officers that even by 15 August
1781, Washington still planned to attack New York. Major Nicholas Dietrich, Baron vonOttendo rf to Henry Clinton, “Deposition of Miss Jenny after returning from the French
camp,” 15 August 1781, Collected Papers o f Sir Henry Clinton (Intelligence Reports),
facsimile on-line at http://www.sils.umich.edu/spies ; Diary of Baron Cromot du Bourg
[hereafter Cromot du Bourg, Diary], reprinted in The Magazine o f Am erican H istory 4
(1880): 304.
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along the Delaware River; second because an American woman,
mistress o f a distinguished French officer, was sent to Trenton,
where she is to await the arrival o f the army....3
Again, C linton’s erroneous preconceptions led him to ignore a potentially
devastating source o f intelligence, for the “distinguished French officer” was none other
than Donatien Rochambeau. Considering all the precautionary efforts made by the
French commander to deceive the enemy and conceal his own operations, it seems
inconceivable that his own son would be so self-indulgent that he put the entire operation
in jeopardy. In an 18 August letter, a British spy operating under the name M aquard
reported to Clinton that Rochambeau's son, “the Viscount [sic] de Rochambeau, has
dispatched his mistress to Trenton, New Jersey, to make a rendezvous with the Viscount,
since the General, his father, permits no kept mistresses."4 Despite all evidence to the
contrary however, the allies’ enemy on Manhattan Island determined to wait for the
impending attack against him. Meanwhile, the French and American troops progressed
steadily southward, the clement weather o f the late summer and early fall often gracing
the arduous march w ith favorable road conditions.5
3 Sergeant Berthold Koch quoted in Bruce E. Burgoyne, Enem y Views. The
Am erican Revolutionary War as Recorded by the Hessian Participants (Bowie, MD,
1996), 459.
4 Maquard to Clinton, 18 August 1781, Collected Papers of Sir Henry Clinton
(Intelligence Reports, 18 August 1781), University of Michigan Special Collections.
5 Owing partially to the extreme heat, Rochambeau’s officers paid close attentionto the welfare of the soldiers during their marches. The troops were regularly encouraged
to drink water, often mixed with a bit of rum to purify it. “M. le Comte Saint-Maime,
Colonel commandant o f the Soissonois, always at each halt, and each place o f
encamping, sent out, and purchased barrels o f cider, which he caused to be distributed
among his troops, at a very low rate. His example was afterwards followed by the other
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Whenever possible, Colonel Rochambeau and his father, accompanied by a few
select officers, took time along the way to study various sites of military interest. These
French students could not have asked fo r a better teacher, for General W ashington
himself normally accompanied the foreign delegation on their battlefield visits. On 22
August, while Rocham beau’s corps was crossing the North (Hudson) River at King’s
Ferry, New York, the generals and their entourage walked the battlements o f Stony Point,
where two years earlier General “Mad” A nthony Wayne and his troops waded across the
shallows o f the adjacent bay to launch a nighttime bayonet assault which took the British
defenders completely by surprise. Stony Point was particularly interesting to the French.
In the July 1779 battle one o f Rochambeau’s own majors in the Saintonge regiment,
Fran9ois-Louis Teissedre, vicomte de Fleury, distinguished him self by being the first into
the British positions, where he personally struck the British colors.6
corps, and produced the happiest effects.” Robin, New Travels, 33. This same officer
had purchased much lighter linen breeches for his regiment prior to their departure from
Newport. As the result, the Soissonois regim ent suffered the fewest heat casualties o f anyon the march.
6 “....[Fleury] happened to be commander o f one of the three columns which were
to storm it, and he had the good luck to lead his [men] so well that he reached the foot of
the parapet and jumped on top o f it all alone [sic], without the besieged seeing him, and
sword in hand, planted the American flag there. Some moments later, his troops also
climbed up. In this way, he took possession of the fort, whose comm ander surrendered
and gave him his sword.” Closen, Journal, 108. For being the first to plant the American
flag on Stony Point, the Continental Congress struck a silver commemorative medal
especially for Fleury (designed and executed by Benjamin Duvivier in France). The
vicomte wore the medal (depicting a general in Roman costume standing on ruins andholding a drawn sword and a flag, over the inscription “ pr imus super m orus” - the
attached ribbon was alleged to have been made from the British flag taken at Stony Point.
This remains known to be the only medal awarded by Congress to a foreign officer and
Fleury wore the decoration permanently with the special approval of Louis XVI. J. F.
Loubat, The Medallic History o f the United States o f Am erica (New York, 1878), I, 22-
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the men “cruelly tossed about all night....almost everyone was sick.”17 The nex t day the
weather improved and w hile the lead vessels came within sight of Annapolis, another
twenty boats had disappeared. The situation was made even more grave by the threat of
pirates that roamed the bay.18 This menace (exacerbated by de Grasse’s decision to leave
his anchorage at the mouth of the York River with his principle warships to fight the
combined English squadrons o f Admirals Graves and Hood), prompted General
Washington to order that the Elkton transports put in at Annapolis rather than continuing
on to Virginia.19 The infantry of the Lauzun Legion left the transports at Annapolis in
order to move on to Virginia to link up with its cavalry which had already arrived at
Gloucester. Others soon took their place, filling to capacity not only the Elkton boats, but
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid. Indeed some o f the French vessels were menaced by pirates, but the latter
abandoned their project when they realized the number o f men on board the apparently
defenseless vessels.
19 Admiral Samuel Hood, with twelve ships reconnoitered the Chesapeake on 25
August on his way to New York from the Caribbean. Finding the bay empty he continued
north to link up with General Clinton and Admiral Thomas Graves who, at the time,
commanded seven ships of the line. Forty-eight hours after Hood left Virginia, de Grasse
arrived in the Chesapeake Bay. Clinton was thrilled to see Hood at New York and
planned to use him and the infantry reinforcements that he carried against Barras and the
members o f Rochambeau’s corps that remained at Newport. Barras, however, sailed first
leaving Newport abandoned. Quickly overcoming his initial shock, Clinton sent the
combined squadron back to Virginia to relieve Cornwallis o f de G rasse’s blockade.
Leaving four ships to continue to bottle up Cornwallis’ ships in the York River, de Grasse
quickly sailed into the bay with twenty-four ships to confront the nineteen ships o f Gravesand Hood. In the bri ef Battle of the Virginia Capes on 5 September 1781, de Grasse’s
fleet overwhelmed the British who soon sailed once again for New York. When de
Grasse returned to the York River on 11 September, Barras, who carried the remainder of
the Newport garrison, Rochambeau’s siege pieces and a sizeable complement o f much-
needed supplies, was there to greet him.
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received word from General Clinton that reinforcements were en route to Yorktown)
ordered his men to evacuate their outermost redoubts near Pigeon Hill during the night o f
29 September and to retreat into the fortified tow n’s more secure first parallel.25
Surprised the next morning to find the British positions empty, General Rochambeau
wasted no time and ordered his son, and the remainder o f the grenadiers and chasseurs of
the Bourbonnois regiment, to occupy the abandoned outer works.26
By midnight on 6 October no relie f from Clinton had appeared. Thus, while
Donatien Rochambeau’s grenadiers and 2,800 o ther troops provided security, infantrymen
of the Bourbonnois and Soissonnois regiments began digging the allies’ first parallel no
more than 250 yards from Cornwallis’ first parallel. The next morning, the British “were
very astonished to see when day came the trench opened all around them.”27 French and
American artillery answered sporadic British cannon fire with terrible vengeance. Those
rounds, especially those o f the guns supporting the French effort in the center, which did
not land in the midst o f Cornwallis’ densely packed army, sailed over the fortifications to
25 Cornwallis’ men constructed two main defensive rings of walled
entrenchments, or “parallels” around Yorktown. Directly attacking an enemy entrenched
in this way usually was done at a high cost in lives as fortune usually favored the
defender. For the allied armies to reduce Cornwallis’ works, it was necessary for French
and American soldiers move forward in the night and then to dig their own trench line
parallel to the enemy works. Once completed, art illerymen could then move the ir own
mortars and heavy siege guns into the newly-dug forward positions. This process was
repeated as often as necessary until the defender surrendered.
26 Donatien Rochambeau, Journal, 230. For detailed account o f the process ofthe siege of Yorktown, see French eng ineer officer Gaspard de Gallatin, “The Narrative
of Baron Gaspard de Gallatin,” reprinted in Warrington Dawson, “With Rochambeau at
Newport,” The Franco-American Review, I, No. 4 (Spring, 1937)
27 Ibid., 231.
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day, but on the night o f 14-15 October, Viomenil and Lafayette personally led their troops
against the two remaining strongholds on Cornwallis’ right in what would later be
remembered in American Revolutionary history as the Battles of Redoubts Nine and
Ten.30 Tragically, French sappers and infantrymen discovered during the attack that the
redoubts and their abatis had not been sufficiently reduced by the artillery even after
several days’ bombardment. As the result, eighty Frenchmen died while the English lost
only eighteen - the highest single instance o f French casualties during the siege.31
Throughout the siege, Cornwallis, who remained critically short of ammunition
and personnel, made va in attempts to break through or to circumvent the allied lines; a
body o f 600 men even managed to spike the guns o f a French battery o f the Agenois
regiment with the points of their bayonets on the night of 15-16 October. The British
general’s pitiable attempts were, however, m ore a matter o f salvaging some ounce o f
national or personal pride than an attempt at meaningful combat. By 17 October, the
allied artillery had taken such a dreadful toll of the British land and naval forces in and
around Yorktown that at nine o’clock that morning Cornwallis sent an officer under a flag
of truce to discuss a twenty-four hour cease-fire. Washington flatly refused, referring to
30 After manually tearing out or simply climbing over the abatis and chevaux des
fr is es in front o f Cornwallis’ positions, Lafayette’s American soldiers took redoubt
Number ten within in a few minutes. Viomenil’s plan, which had been to infiltrate his
grenadiers and chasseurs [including Colonel Rochambeau] into redoubt Num ber nine,
was discovered and soon met by stout resistance. As the result, Viomenil stalled his
attack before the works at redoubt Number nine, opting to wait for his sappers to clear theobstacles. During the interval, the marquis de Lafayette rode over from his own position
to ask Viomenil if he needed help. The infuriated baron refused and the next morning,
scathingly rebuked Lafayette for w hat he perceived as the marquis’ impertinent insolence.
31 Gallatin, Journal, 12, 16.
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the reprehensible British conduct the previous year against the Am erican garrison at
Charleston, South Carolina, as a model o f how he w ould conduct any remaining action.
Hours after the allies recommenced their barrage, Cornwallis sent a second and final
messenger across the lines, this time to discuss terms of surrender.32
On 19 October 1781, the beaten and exhausted British at Yorktown signed the
formal instrument of surrender and began their march out o f the wrecked town. Lord
Cornwallis, who claimed illness, sent his sword by his second-in-command, Brigadier
General Charles O’Hara, to the official surrender ceremony. Whether by ceremonious
accident or by arrogant design, O’Hara first approached the comte de Rochambeau with
Cornw allis’ sword. The French general politely rebuffed the British commander,
ushering him instead with a simple, elegant hand gesture to his own superior officer,
General Washington. O’Hara made a visible grimace, but complied.33
In his journa l, the vicomte de Rochambeau totaled that between the garrisons at
Yorktown and Gloucester, the British surrendered 7,050 English and German troops,
32 Donatien Rochambeau, Journal, 233.
33 Lieutenant Colonel Henry Lee, Memoirs o f the War in the Southern
Department o f the United States (Philadelphia, 1812), 360-362. Thomas-Jacques de
Goislard, chevalier de Villebresme, Souvenirs du Chevalier de Villebresme,
Mousquetaire de la Garde duRoi , 1772-1816, Guerre d ’Amerique, Em igration (Paris,
1897), 91. By coincidence, fifteen years later, jus t days short o f the anniversary o f hissurrender at Yorktown, the British government exchanged Lieutenant General Donatien
Rochambeau, prisoner on parole in America, for Lieutenant General Charles O ’Hara.
Order of the Commissioners for taking care of Sick and Wounded Seamen and
Exchanging Prisoners o f War, 7 September, 1795. Service historique, Carton Yb 381;
dossier lieutenant-general no. 1299, item 66.
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to pay his troops - the French generals and colonels lent him this sum. When he arrived
in New York, the General [sic] returned the money together with 100 bottles o f porter and
a large quantity o f Chester cheese to express his appreciation to those w ho had rendered
him this service.” Clermont-Crevecceur, Journal, 64; Closen, Journal, 167. Certainly the
dinners with their captives proved to be good instruction for young Colonel Rochambeau,
who cannily summarized Cornwallis’ defeat at Yorktown as the result o f three major
mistakes. First, he said, the British general failed to attack Lafayette’s and Saint-Simon’s
troops before General Rochambeau’s army arrived. By not resolutely defending his outer
works, Cornwallis committed his second mistake, and thus lost any advantage that hemay have had by his potentially strong defense. Finally, the British general failed to
attempt any significant counterattacks. Donatien Rochambeau, Journal, 239.
38 Comte de Rochambeau to the comte de Segur, 5 December 1781, Service
participated in numerous fox hunting and sightseeing expeditions into the interior and the
mountains o f the state. When he was not in the company of his father, Donatien
Rochambeau passed the hours with at least one young lady in Williamsburg. As his
companion Lauberdiere wrote in his journa l, “ ....lodging with the Vicomte [sic] de
Rochambeau, m y cousin, we took great advantage of the resources of the country and of
the society of a widow nam ed Madame Ridte [Susanna Riddel] who had two friendly
nieces, Miss Rachel, and Camilla Warrington. As the song says ‘let us make love, let us
make w ar’ these two things were full of attractions. We had effectively found the one
allied with the other and our desires had been fulfilled.”43 Unfortunately for the two girls,
the Warrington sisters’ liaison with Rochambeau and Lauberdiere scandalized
Williamsburg, prompting one of the town’s ladies to remark that “[T]heir late conduct
has been So extraordinary that all eyes are fixed upon them.”44
Orphaned in 1770 upon the death o f their father, the Reverend Thomas
Warrington, the two girls lived in Williamsburg with their wealthy aunt Susannah Riddel.
As one contemporary Williamsburg native wrote, Camilla Warrington was “ ‘pretty
enough to have been a belle,’ sharp o f wit, and thoroughly indulged by her aunt and
uncle.”45 Rachel, the older o f the two, “had more bewitching talents for seducing a
43 Lauberdiere, Journal, 168-169; Robert A. Selig, “Lauberdiere’s Journal,”
Colonial Williamsburg, Autum n (1995), 36.
44 Mildred Smith to Betsey Ambler, 1780, Letter No. 1, Ambler Family Papers,cited in Catherine Kerrison, “By the Book, Eliza Ambler Brent Carrington and Conduct
Literature in Late Eighteenth-Century Virginia,” The Virginia Magazine o f History and
Biography 105, No. 1 (winter 1997): 36.
45 Betsey Ambler to Mildred Smith, 10 January 1786, Ibid.
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guileless heart than any human I have ever known.”46 Donatien Rochambeau and
Lauberdiere apparently visited the Riddel home often and by spring 1782, Rachel was
pregnant w ith Lauberdiere’s son, the future Commodore Lewis L. Warrington.47 As the
French army marched from their winter quarters on 1 July 1782, the comte de
Lauberdiere left behind forever the mother o f his only child, while the vicomte de
Rochambeau left the beautiful Camilla “mortifi[ed] beyond description,” apparently
afraid that her sister’s subsequent disgrace might undermine her own social standing.48
Upon returning to the W indward Islands in 1782, Admiral de Grasse’s fleet
suffered a sound defeat in the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April by British naval forces of f
o f Saint-Domingue and the admiral himself was taken prisoner. New s of this tragedy
coupled with the sicknesses incurred in the inhospitable coastal Virginia climate
prompted General Rochambeau by July 1782 to move h is army to rejoin Wash ing ton in
New York, in hopes o f possibly preventing Clinton from dispatching further
reinforcements south against the French colonies.
46 Mildred Smith to Betsey Ambler, 1780, Ibid.
47 Though Lauberdiere actually was the father of the future naval hero, fo r many
years after 1782, Virginians incorrectly attributed the paternity o f Commodore
Warrington to Donatien Rochambeau. This assumption was reinforced in 1850 in
Reverend John B. Dabney’s Sketches a nd Reminiscences o f the Dabney a nd Morris
families . In 1996 however, Doctor Robert Selig and Joanne Young of Norfolk, Virginia,
finally corrected the historical record. A contemporary letter from Rachel W arrington’s
confidante Lucy Randolph to her lover Colonel Christian Forbach, comte de Deux-Ponts,states explicitly that on 3 November 1782, Rachel W arrington gave birth to “a son, whom
she named Louis after his father Monsieur Lobidier [sic].” Robert A. Selig,
“Lauberdiere’s Journal,” Ibid., 36.
48 M ildred Sm ith to Betsey Ambler, 1782, Ibid., 39.
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Germaine, marquis de Rostaing, to Marechal de Camp, left the command o f the Royal
Auvergne Infantry (Jean-Baptiste Rocham beau’s former command) available, prompting
the younger Rochambeau to seek the vacancy. He unofficially took command o f the
regiment in early June and on 1 July 1783, the move became permanent.3 Rochambeau
took back the 15,000 livres that he had paid for the Saintonge and paid the requisite
10,000 livres for command o f the Royal Auvergne, while Claude Victor, vicomte de
Broglie, assumed command o f the Saintonge regiment which had established its new
garrison at Sarrelouis.4 Rochambeau would remain in command o f the Royal Auvergne
until his promotion to Marechal de Camp on 30 June 1791. In the interim, however, he
becam e involved in national politics along with his father beginning in 1787. In that year,
the elder Rochambeau became a deputy of the nobility of the Provincial Assembly o f
Orleans and joined the Monsieur’s Bureau of the Assembly of Notables.
Unfortunately, records from the period betw een 1784 and 1792, one o f the most
critical in French history, have left few c lues as to Donatien Rochambeau’s activities.
Because he remained close at his father’s side for most o f these years, integrating the few
available details concerning the vicomte into accounts o f his father’s activities have
proven useful. By early 1784, Lieutenant General Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau, with his
new headquarters in Calais, had risen to the position of Commander in Chief in France’s
3 Donatien Rochambeau was still technically in command o f the Saintonge
regiment, but on 13 June, sent a declaration to the war department confirming his receiptof the 4,000 livres pension and referring to him self as comm ander o f the Royal Auvergne
Infantry.
4 Regimental sale and transfer list, 13 June 1783. Service historique, Travail du
Roi, annee 1783, Juni-Juli, Carton YA514/380.
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Northern D istrict, an area which encompassed not only Picardy, but also Flanders and
Artois. Since he was not to assume his command at Calais until the following year,
immediately after his return to France, the general occupied his time at his city apartments
on Paris’ Rue du Cherche-Midi. During this interlude, the former commander o f French
troops in America, working c losely with his former ally George Washington, founded the
French Society of the Cincinnati.
Originally conceived in America as a charitable fraternity o f Washington’s
officers, the fundamental charge o f the society was the support of the widows and
children of their fallen brother officers. As later happened in America, the French society
soon adopted a more political bent. For Rochambeau’s former officers in the American
colonies, their participation in the colonies’ fight for independence was more than simply
a mark o f honor or a means toward promotion. In the increasingly turbulent years leading
to revolution in France, wearing the coveted Order o f the Cincinnati became a symbol o f
distinction as one who had fought for the ideals of liberty and republicanism.5 Though
the wearing o f foreign orders had long been illegal in France, Louis XVI granted an
enthusiastic exception for the officers of the Cincinnati. Somehow Donatien
Rocham beau’s name had not made W ashington’s original list, and after receiving the
5 See Samuel F. Scott, “The Army of the Comte de Rochambeau Between the
American and French Revolutions,” Proceedings o f the Annual Meeting o f the Western
Society fo r French History, XV (1988), 150-153; Gilbert Bodinier, “Les Officiers du
corps expeditionnaire de Rochambeau e t la Revolution fran9aise,” Revue historique des Armees, III, no. 4 (1976): 143. Despite their service in the American Revolution, the
majority of Rochambeau’s former officers in America either were not able, or chose not
to advertise their experience to further the cause of liberty in the early days of the French
Revolution. Eight of Rochambeau’s former officers did, however, serve in the National
Assembly.
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decorations from Philadelphia, his father quickly set about to correct the oversight. By
1792, however, French members no longer w ore the golden eagles o f the Cincinnati.
Robespierre and hosts o f other radicals saw the organization as a threatening body of
aristocrats and anyone known to possess the order was in danger. Many o f the French
society’s charter members, including its president, Admiral d ’Estaing, met their end on
the guillotine.6
At Calais, General Rochambeau spent the next four years dutifully training his
troops.7 The command, however, was not without some minor problems. Upon the
general’s arrival at Calais, the city’s mayor informed him that because o f a shortage of
funds, he was unable to properly furnish the general’s quarters. The two men discussed
the matter for a year, after which General Rochambeau, obviously tired o f quibbling with
the bureaucrat, took up residence with his son and daughter-in-law.8 The year 1784 also
witnessed the birth o f the first of Donatien Rochambeau’s children, Augustine E leonore ,
who was bom on 27 November. A second daughter, Constance-Therese, was bom the
6 Whitridge, Rochambeau, 258-260. The French Order of the Cincinnati was
officially reconstituted only in 1923.
7 Ibid. Since Calais was a continental terminus for diplomats and foreign
dignitaries, General Rochambeau, no longer impaired by his governm ent’s lack of
financial support, paid special attention to organizing grand military reviews and fe tes
impressing all who visited with the excellent equipment, precision and professionaldiscipline o f his troops. Certainly, his son ’s Auvergne Infantry were featured
participants.
8 Ibid. At the time, Donatien Rochambeau’s Auvergne infantry regiment made up
a part o f the Calais garrison.
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following year, and Frant^oise gave birth to the couple ’s only son, Philippe, in 1788.9
Despite the rigors o f regimental comm and and h is considerable family responsibilities,
national crisis soon called Donatien Rochambeau and his father to an additional duty of
political service.
The note of Royal Council of 5 July 1788 invited all instructed persons to furnish
documents and to draft reports on the conditions o f the last convocation o f the Estates
General in 1614. Holding the principle seat on the Vendome bench as Grand Ba illi
d ’Epee (Grand Bailiff for the local nobility), Donatien Rochambeau returned to his
ancestral home to comply with the council’s directive. Based on what he considered
common sense and his experiences in America, his father, as a full member o f the second
Assembly o f Notables, warned against France making the same mistake as the English
had in America. The king, the elder Rochambeau admonished, had to recognize the right
of the people to decide how they should be taxed. Donatien Rochambeau may have
shared the same opinion, but no concrete evidence exists.
Rochambeau’s fellow officers, those who would oversee the writing o f the cahiers
(lists o f grievances and policy recommendations to be sent to the king) and who would
9 Like his predecessors, Auguste-Philippe-Donatien de Vimeur would later
become a soldier, ultimately rising to the grade of colonel o f the cavalry under Marshal
Joachim Murat. Both Augustine Eleonore and Constance-Therese have almost drifted
completely into obscurity. Obviously inheriting the Rochambeau line’s notable
longevity, Constance-Therese, bom 27 Novem ber 1785, lived to be eighty-two years old,
dying in Paris on 1 December 1866. She survived her husband, Lieutenant GeneralAlexandre-Louis Valon du Boucheron, comte d’Ambrugeac. Augustine Eleonore de
Rochambeau married Victor Emmanuel de Morde to become the marquise de la Gorce.
Her name finally surfaces in 1837, when she wrote to King Louis Philippe seeking to help
her sister and brother-in-law claim their father’s military pay which he had not received
while a prisoner in England from 1804 until 1811.
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ultimately select the representatives to the Estates General, totaled five. The Grand
Bail li ’s lieutenant for general civil and police law was Jacques-Franqois de Tremault, an
attorney and member of the Parlement de Paris. Four other officers, a lieutenant for
general criminal law, a special lieutenant for civil and criminal law, a King’s Prosecutor,
and a chief secretary comprised the remainder o f the bench.10 The preliminary meeting of
the assembly o f the bailliage took place on 9 M arch 1789 in the Sainte-Trinite church in
Vendome. The assembly noted the presence o f 196 deputies, representing ninety-one
towns, parishes or communities. Only two parishes failed to send a representative
resulting in their default from the congregation (they sent representatives instead to
Tours). As per regulation, the members swore an oath to the assembly and the first
meeting proceeded.
The first issue before the assembly concerned which bailliage would constitute
the secondaries. The group handled this first issue fairly easily; the officers working in
conjunction with the Keeper o f the Seals decided that the bailliage of Mondoubleau and
Saint-Calais would serve as secondary representatives.11 The next problem was not so
easy. Difficulties arose between the three lieutenants over who was morally eligible to
preside over the Third Estate. As members o f the bourgeoisie, the lieutenant for general
10 Armand Brette, Recueil de Documents Relatifs a la Convovation des Etats
Generaux de 1789 (Paris, 1895-1915), III, 458. These are respectively: Jean-Franqois
Leger de Chauvigny; Jacques Lemoine de la Godeliniere (another lawyer en parlement)-, Jacques-Joseph-Andre Godineau de l’Epau (King’s Prosecutor in Vendome); and
Leonard Breton.
11 Ibid.
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criminal law and the special lieutenant for civil and criminal law rivaled to replace
Tremault, saying that because the latter belonged to the nobility, he should be ineligible.
None o f the men present could come to a conclusion and the matter w as again referred to
the Keeper of the Seals. Another group, Les Peres de VOratoire, representing the royal
military school at Vendome felt that certain articles o f a 12 February Estates General
regulation from Versailles slighted them as an organization useful to all three state orders.
Throughout these deliberations, the threat of violence grew in the Vendome area. Fearing
a plot by disenfranchised citizens o f the bailliage, the King’s Prosecutor wrote to the
Keeper o f the Seals on 10 March that “popular em otion threatens to put fire to four
sections o f the city” and that he had made the city’s police ask the commander o f the
army regiment at Blois to send 150 soldiers to keep order in Vendome.12
On 16 March, Grand B ailli Rochambeau convened another meeting o f the three
orders, who again met at the Sainte-Trinite church. At two o’clock the clergy were
admitted, followed by the nobles and finally the representatives o f the Third Estate .13
12 Ibid., 460.
13 Ibid., 461. The representatives o f the clergy consisted of 106 cures, one abbe,
twenty-eight beneficiaries, fourteen monastic representatives and four sisters o f the local
convent. Sixteen cures, one Commander of the Knights o f Malta, twenty-two sermoners,
one nun and twenty-two beneficiaries defaulted by failing to appear. Members o f the
nobility consisted of the following: twenty-one nobles without fiefs, seventy-six with fiefs
(o f this last group, the due d ’Orleans, by prerogative o f his high station, allowed Donatien
Rochambeau to represent him), eleven noble ladies possessing fiefs (five daughters, three
widows and three wives), and two groups o f heirs. As women were not allowed asrepresentatives at the Estates General, these nuns and ladies o f Vendome could only
participate in the election of a male representative. Eleven nobles and three groups of
heirs defaulted. Not surprisingly, none o f the representatives of the Third Estate
defaulted and consisted of ten deputies of the cities of Vendome and Montoire, fifty more
deputies from Vendome’s outlying areas, and twelve deputies each from the secondary
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began to take an active role in radical revolutionary politics. By 3 February 1791, the
vicomte had made his first significant appearance in P aris’ political daily Le Moniteur
Universelle. According to the paper’s account, on 31 January a Monsieur Sainte-Luce
challenged the younger Rochambeau to a duel to be held the following day in Paris ’ Bois
de Boulogne. Upon the complaint of one of its members (perhaps the vicomte himself),
the general assembly o f Paris’ Croix-Rouge (later Bonnet-Rouge) section, moved quickly
to place the vicomte under special personal protection. Rochambeau’s bodyguard
consisted of no less than the commander o f the Paris National Guard’s Ba ttalion des
Enfans [sic] and several volunteers, who, obviously seeking to safeguard the life of a man
who they considered a powerful fellow radical, vowed to station themselves a t his side
until the matter came to resolution. The proposed encounter never took place. The
incident would certainly have passed unnoticed excep t that on 4 February the Croix-
Rouge assembly published an appeal against the disgrace o f public dueling. The letter
was distributed not only to the National Assembly, but also to forty-seven of the city’s
other sections, the mayor, the city’s municipal corps, the General Council of the
Commune o f Paris, the editors o f the public papers, and to “M. Rochambeau fi ls of the
Club des Am is de la Constitution.” 19 Donatien Rochambeau had joined the Left.
While his son involved himself with the activity o f the Jacobins, General
19 “Deliberations de 1’Assemblee generale de la Section de la Croix-Rouge, 4February 1791.” France, Archives de la Ville de Paris, Prefecture Du Departement de la
Seine, Ville de Paris (Inventaire Sommaire des Archives de la Seine), Partie Municipale
Periode Revolutionnaire 1789-AN VII, Fonds de l ’administration generale de la
Commune et de ses subdivisions territoriales (Serie D), Carton VD* 799; Le Moniteur
Universelle, no. 34 (3 February 1791): 1.
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Rochambeau, turning more to his military duties, continued to try to distance himse lf
from Paris politics. Sagely refusing the king’s offer o f Minister of War, the general
instead buried himself in the business of preparing his new army to defend France’s
northern frontier .20 Donatien Rochambeau received a promotion to Marechal de Camp
on 30 June 1791 and imm ediately moved to fill the position as second-in-command o f his
father’s army’s 1st D ivision at Maubeuge under General Armand-Louis Biron, the former
due de Lauzun. While the older Rochambeau sought desperately to maintain military
discipline (even if it meant running afoul o f the Jacobins), the younger struggled to prove
his loyalty to his new political brethren .21
By fall 1791, even the British government knew of the vicomte de Rocham beau’s
Jacobin activities, and in the view of James Gower, the British ambassador to France,
Donatien Rochambeau posed even more o f a threat to British interests than his father. As
early as November, the ambassador, “judging from the character and the sentiments of
Mr. de Rochambeau the younger, who is of the society of the Jacobins,” suggested the
possibil ity that Donatien Rochambeau might actually lead a diversionary invasion against
20 Whitridge, Rochambeau, 276-277.
21 Ibid., 278. General Rochambeau even went so far as to confine to barracks one
of the battalions o f the Beauce regiment in Arras for wearing cocardes tricolores (tricolor
cockades) on their uniforms - against the protests o f Maximilien Robespierre who wasthe deputy of that city. Robespierre appears to have never forgiven the slight. After
attaining ultimate pow er several years later, he o rdered the elderly general arrested under
the Law of Suspects, and arranged that he was sentenced to death. Rochambeau missed
the guillotine by one day, Robesp ierre’s own execution the previous morning effectively
ending the Terror.
I l l
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Revolution to a quick end - declare war. Narbonne’s plan was relatively simple. The
hotbed o f French emigres at Trier offered a ready pretext for an invasion into the
electorate and a quick, victorious military action would allow the army to impose its will
on the National Assembly. In case the war expanded to include Austria and Prussia,
Narbonne envisioned a truce which would result in a congress o f rulers to res tore Louis
XVI to his position o f authority. The British may not have been privy to the political
details, but they certainly could not miss the obvious preparations for war. On 16
December 1791, the British ambassador reported that Narbonne had undertaken to move
150,000 men to the frontiers in less than a month, explaining to his superiors that the
French had formed three major armies under the commands o f General Jean-Baptiste
Rochambeau ( Nord ), General Lafayette {Centre), and General Nicolas von Luckner
( Rhin).24
When news reached him o f the impending operation, Donatien Rochambeau set
about organizing a new club at Maubeuge, La Societe des Amis de la L iberte
Brabangonne. He further endeared himself to the Jacobins in Paris by arresting on New
Year’s Day 1792, Lieutenant-Colonel Quigny, a would-be emigre who was attempting to
leave France with a convoy containing 25,000 livres.25 The senior Rochambeau had also
24 Ibid., 16 December 1791. 142.
25 Ibid. 143; Donatien Rochambeau to Biron, undated. Service historique,
Correspondance: Armee duNord, Carton B1 1, folio 1 “pieces sans date”; “Seance duDimanche l er Janvier 1792,” Francois Aulard, La Societe des Jacobins; Recueil de
Documents Po ur I ’Histoire du Club des Jacobins de Paris (Paris, 1892), III, 305. In the
same report to the Paris Jacobin Club, the younger Rochambeau swore a renewed oath o f
attachment to the club and promised to remain true to the constitution, defending it in
“peril o f his life and fortune.”
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one-third o f the import/export economy o f pre-Revolutionary France, but as important as
the island colonies were, colonial leaders were stunned to discover that the king had
excepted them from the rolls o f those called to form this most important advisory body.
Their exclusion had not been intended maliciously. Louis XVI had determined not to
invite colonial delegates to the 1st Estates General, but to subsequent meetings once he
had resolved France’s more pressing internal issues. To colonial leaders, however, any
rationale on the king’s part was beside the point, and ad hoc committees in the islands
simply chose their own officials to represent their particular interests in Paris. Not
surprisingly, the majority of colonial legislators in 1788 and 1789 who organized
themselves as the Colonial Committee, usually spoke for white, monied plantation
owners.12
Though they would have a direct voice in France’s new National Assembly, the
ranks o f the grands blancs remained divided throughout the early years o f the Revolution.
In 1789, the majority of planters (believing tha t the recently unstable political conditions
in France should be dealt with cautiously) did not organize in enough time to properly
represent their interests in Paris. Instead, more indiscriminately elected delegates seated
in the National Assembly loudly proceeded to demand more home rule and economic
latitude .13 The aristocra ts’ renunciation of privileges on 4 August 1789 coupled with the
12 Sidney Daney de Marcillac [hereafter Daney], Histoire de la Martinique (Fort-
de-France, Martinique, 1978), 13. In the cases o f Saint-Domingue and Martinique, therepresentatives elected by the islanders arrived in Paris to find that grands blancs and
mulattoes residing in France had already elected representatives from among their own.
From these “representatives” were established the Colonial Committee.
13 Ott, The Haitian Revolution, 28.
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French abolitionist society Les Amis des Noirs, among whose mantras was the battle cry
“[Resistance is always justifiable where force is the substitute of right: nor is the
comm ission o f a civil crime possible in a state o f slavery!”14
While not a particularly new organization, Les Am is des Noirs had recently gained
prominence in the Assembly through the positions of some of its more renowned
members including the marquis de Lafayette, Honore Gabriel Mirabeau, Jacques-Pierre
Brissot de Warville, Abbe Henri Gregoire and Maxim ilien Robespierre. Indeed, it was
the de facto National Assembly leader Mirabeau who, at the formation o f the assembly,
had given the Colonial Committee a taste of the attitudes then prevalent in the metropole.
When the Colonial Comm ittee audaciously demanded that they be allowed twenty seats
in the Assembly (representative o f the entire island population and what they perceived to
be the co lonies’ supreme importance to France), Mirabeau quickly shut them down.
“You want representation in proportion to the to the number of
inhabitants? But have the blacks and free persons o f color
competed in the elections? The free blacks are property owners
and taxpayers. Yet they could not vote. And, as to the slaves,
either they are men or they are not; i f the colonists consider them to
be men, let them free and make them eligible for seats; if not, have
we, in proportioning the number o f deputies to the population of
France, taken into account the number o f our horses and mules?” 15
14 Societe des Amis des Noirs, Decree of 15 May 1792, quoted in Bryan Edwards,
“An Historical Survey o f the French Colony in the Island o f St. Domingo:
Comprehending an Account of the Revolt o f the Negroes In the Year 1791 and a Detail o f
the Military Transactions o f the British Army in that Island, In the Years 1793 & 1794,”from Edwards, A History, Civil and Commercial o f the B ritish Colonies in the West
Indies (Philadelphia, 1806), IV, 90.
15 Mirabeau to the Comite Coloniale, September 1790, translated by Fick, The
Making o f Haiti, 77.
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ba ttle w ith white “patriots” who jea lously guarded their own recently-gained political
authority.
The resulting “revolution” was short-lived however; while the two antagonists
focused their attention on crippling each other, the violence in Saint-Domingue took on
an entirely new dimension. On the night of 22 August 1791, tens of thousands o f the
island’s slaves revolted throughout Saint-Dom ingue’s Great Northern Plain. Inflamed by
revolutionary zeal, and fortified in their determination by their Vodun religion, runaway
slaves burned fields and plantations, and massacred nearly every white inhabitant
“regardless o f age or sex” that they could get their hands on. By early autumn, the
island’s commercial capital, le Cap Fran?ais (le Cap), had turned into a fortified camp
under siege.18
A British witness summed up the events appropriately by saying that “ [s]uch a
picture o f hum an misery - such a scene of woe, presents itself, as no other country, no
former age has exhibited. The rage of fire consumes what the sword is unable to destroy,
and, in a few dismal hours, the most fertile and beautiful plains in the world are converted
into one vast field o f carnage - a wilderness o f desolation.”19
18 Donatien Rochambeau, “Aper 9u sur les troubles des Antilles Franyaises de
1’Amerique (et Specia lement de Saint-Domingue) Precis de la Guerre dans cette Partie du
Monde,” 18 Novem bre 1802, [hereafter Rochambeau, “Troubles des Antilles Fran9aises
de 1’Amerique”], Service historique, MR 589, 10. As French Revolutionary historian H.
Morse Stevens noted in 1908, “[no] war is ever marked by such horrors as a slave war,
for the atrocious cruelties of savages, who have the wrongs o f years of servitude toavenge, are always met by the most terrible reprisals. The slave war in San Domingo
formed no exception.” H. Morse Stevens, A History o f the French Revolution (New
York, 1908), II, 471.
19 Edwards, A History o f the British Colonies in the West Indies, IV, 68-69.
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The devastation in the colony was appalling. According to Donatien
Rochambeau’s own estimate, in the island’s Northern Province alone, at least 2,000
whites and 10,000 slaves had perished. Further, the revolt had destroyed 180 sugar
plantat ions and over 900 coffee, indigo and cotton settlements , and had reduced more
than 1,200 formerly wealthy families to abject poverty. Whites and mulattoes in the
colony temporarily put aside their differences to deal with the emergency and temporarily
managed to check the insurrection. By late September however, thousands o f slaves
(including a then-unknown Toussaint Louverture) escaped to the safety of the rugged
mountains along the colony’s border with Spanish Santo Domingo where they organized
themselves into armed camps led by such powerful black chiefs as Boukman and Jeannot,
and their successors, Jean-Frantjois Papillon and Georges Biassou.22
The whites o f Saint-Domingue would certainly not have survived the insurrection
without the aid of the colony’s mulattoes. Accordingly, on 20 September 1791, the white
citizens o f Port-au-Prince officially withdrew the ir opposition to the Decree o f 15 May
22 D onatien Rochambeau, “Apercpu General sur les troubles des Colonies
Fran9aises de 1’Amerique. Suivi d’un precis de la Guerre dans cette partie du Monde,” 13
Juin 1811, [hereafter Rochambeau, “Troubles des Colonies”], Service historique, M R
593,11. Both Boukm an and Jeannot remain famous for their cruelty, but their terrible
reigns ended in November 1791. While Boukman met a dramatic death in battle,
Jeannot, whose inhum an torture of white prisoners threatened possible negotiations
between the whites and the revolting slaves, would be deposed and executed by Jean-
Fran9ois and Biassou. During this first revolt, Toussaint, who had not yet adopted the
moniker “Louverture” (initially spelled “l’Ouverture”), had remained on the Breda
plantation , and had personally assis ted the escape of his masters. Once they were safe,however, Toussaint, still wearing his coachm an’s livery, joined the rebels. Not only was
“Toussaint Breda” well-respected among the slaves as one of the island’s premier
herbalists, but he was one of, if not the only black among the rebel slaves who was
literate. At first becoming a trusted advisor to Jean-Fran9ois, he would later rise to lead
the entire movement.
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and determined that it was now safe to reintegrate gens de couleur into new companies of
armed militia. For the moment, the fighting in the colony had subsided, but news o f the
island’s reconciliation had not reached Paris.23
Just as the National Assembly in Paris was dissolving itself to form the new
Legislative Assembly, news of Saint-Domingue’s slave rebellion caused the retiring
jud icial body to repeal immediately the Decree of 15 May and to prom ulgate instead the
Decree of 28 September 1791, which gave to the colonies the power to determine the
status of the mulattoes. This about-face by the lame duck National Assembly confirmed
in all colonists’ eyes their suspicion that the home government in its current upheaval was
incapable o f judiciously managing colonial affairs. By this time however, the question o f
which decree had the worse effect on the colonies was moot. When word o f the decree’s
revocation reached Saint-Domingue, mulattoes and free blacks in the Western Province,
who believed that they had been betrayed by the k ing’s opponents in Paris, now embarked
upon a war o f extermination against the whites.24
The ferocity with which the opposing sides in the West executed their particular
brand of genocide equaled or exceeded the monstrosities that had become legendary in
the North. In one example, whites placed a mulatto prisoner “....on an elevated seat in a
cart , and secured him in it by driving large spiked nails through his feet into the boards.
23 Stevens, A History o f the French Revolution, II, 471. Mediated by a powerful planter in the area, M. de Jumecourt, the agreement between the whites and mulattoes of
Port-au-Prince came to be known as the “Concordat of Port-au-Prince.”
24 Rochambeau, “Troubles des Colonies,” Service historique, MR 593, 12;
Stevens, A History o f the French Revolution, II, 469.
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control o f all military forces which remained quartered there.34
On 1 March, a reformed, conservative, general assembly in Fort-Royal had voted
to grant speaking authority in the home government to Caribbean historian Mederic
Moreau de Saint-Mery and the comte de Dillon in Paris, both of whom had been original
delegates to the National Assembly from Paris’ resident, conservative “Colonial
Committee.” The response from both Saint-Pierre and the colony’s other cities to this
move by the conservatives was a clear, absolute “no.” Within two weeks, the assembly
had separated again, and conservative members began canvassing the countryside for
support in a military action against Saint-Pierre. Fortunately for all concerned, the attack
never m aterialized.35
By summer, the factionalism had not resolved itse lf and street battles again raged
in Saint-Pierre between planters and mulattoes on the one side, and revolutionist
members of the middle class on the other. The time had now come for the Governor
General and his conservative supporters to act decisively. On 4 June, Damas and his
loyal troops occupied Saint-Pierre and imprisoned the principle agitators, but
revolutionist troops o f the Saint-Pierre garrison took to the streets, freed Dam as’
34 Jean-Franfois Coquille Dugom mier was bom in Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe in
1736. An ardent Revolutionist, he had arrived in Martinique and had gained the support
o f much of the colony’s National Guard, but was soon deputed by the Republicans o f the
colony to return to France to seek aid. Instead of returning to the colonies, he gave his
services to France first at the siege o f Toulon in 1793, and then became commander o f the
Army o f the Pyrenees-Orientales. Under his command, this army captured from theSpanish Saint-Elme and Collioure. Dugom mier was killed on 17 November 1794 at
Sierra Negra. Henry Lemery, La Revolution Franqaise a la M artinique (Paris, 1936),
321.
35 Daney, Histoire de la Martinique, 42-43.
153
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Behague’s diatribe further announced that Rochambeau’s force’s appearance
before Fort-Royal was pro of enough of the bad intentions of the state, which had come to
take over the island’s troops and navy, as well as the island’s free blacks and slaves.
Reprinting a testimony o f loyalty from the sailors o f the frigate the Ferme, Behague went
on to bluster that “under such circumstances proper to legitimize the new fears o f a
colony constantly loyal to the nation, the law and the King, of a colony which has never
given any idea of wanting to reject the decrees o f the National Assembly, then it is right
not to allow into [the colony] anyone whom [the colony] has not received with respect
and self-sacrifice....”21 The Governor General should have known by this time that the
Colonial Assembly would not support him in a time o f crisis. In a letter read in Paris
before the Legislative Assem bly on 19 October, former members of Martinique’s
Intermediary Committee of the Colonial Assembly stated unequivocally that Behague had
posted the proclamation on the day before Rochambeau and the Civil Commissioners had
even arrived at Martinique .22
Within days, Behague’s actions against Rochambeau rose from being simply an
21 Ibid., 2.
22 M. Paige neg otiant a l’Assemblee Nationale, 19 October 1792. Service
historique, Indes Occidentales: Expedition des isles du Vent, Guadeloupe, Carton B 92,
item 1. While obviously self-serving, the former committee members’ accusation is not
unfounded. Though claiming to have issued the proclamation after Rochambeau’s
departure from the island, Behague carelessly neglected to modify the proclamation’sactual printing date - 14 October 1792. The committee members’ letter goes on to say
that the Governor General had pu t all o f island’s gun batteries and warships on standby a
full day prior to Rochambeau’s arrival. If this is true, it clearly calls into question the
documents cited by Lemery which describe Behague as nothing more than a victim of
President Dubuc’s treachery.
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naval forces sufficient to recapture the Windward Islands from Behague .24
Proving yet a further embarrassment to the French, newspapers in England now
jeered the unfortunate Rochambeau, saying that “ [djeputies from the islands of Martinico
[sic] and Guadeloupe have lately arrived in London, who solicit the protection o f our
government to these two islands from the plunderers whom the French Republic is
disposed to send there, in order to place the inhabitants on the same footing with Santo
Domingo. It is well known that Martinico and Guadeloupe have driven away the Jacobin
Rochambeau and his 3000 [sic] men, who were destined to reduce them to the same state
of anarchy with the rest o f the French settlements.”25 In the case of Saint-Domingue, the
British press’ choice of the word anarchy was entirely appropriate.
After learning in November 1791 o f Paris’ revocation of the Decree o f 15 May,
Saint-Domingue’s mulattoes initiated an horrific rampage against whites throughout the
colony’s various provinces. Despite the conciliatory efforts of the First Civil
Commission, including the promulgation o f a general amnesty which only lost for them
the respect of the whites, the situation in Saint-Domingue continued to deteriorate. In
24 Rochambeau to Monge, 3 October 1792. Service historique, Indes
Occidentales: Expedition des isles du Vent, Carton B91, folio 3, 6-7; Jean-Baptiste
Rochambeau, Memoires M ilitaires, I, 436; Docteur Magnac, La Perte de Saint-
Domingue, 1789-1809; La Revolution a Saint-Domingue et VExpedition du General
Leclerc (Paris, 1910), 46. Sainte-Lucie lay too close to Martinique for Rochambeau to
effect any decisive action - the convoy was still under “escort” by Behague’s frigates.
For reasons that are not clear, Rochambeau and de Bruix had to abandon the Bienvenue inthe British island o f Saint Christopher (now Saint Kitts). The British allowed the vessel
to sail to directly to France. Bailleul, Report, 3.
25 “Authentic Intelligence from various Parts of the Continent; West India
Intelligence.” The Gentlem an’s Magazine 63 (January 1793): 79.
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o f Saint-Domingue was a grave issue not only of national unity but also o f economics.
As one British observer wrote: “The Island of St. Domingo (I mean the French part o f it
which has been desolated by the black insurgents) produces more sugar than all o f the
British Colonies together; a plentiful crop o f our colonies is estimated at 160,000
hogsheads, a middling at 140,000 hogsheads, and a very short one at 120,000. Themedium of these crops is 140,000 hogsheads, and, as the whole importation of sugar into
Europe, from all the West India settlements belonging to the British and foreigners, does
not exceed 400,000 hogsheads, take the produce o f St. Domingo out o f the market, and
only 260,000, instead o f 400,000 hogsheads, will remain the consumption for all o f
Europe.” Anonymous letter to the editor describing the reasons for the increased price of
sugar in England, The Gentlem an’s Magazine 62 (February 1792): 112. Yet another
Englishman observed that “ [t]he loss of the produce o f this extensive and once valuable
island will be most severely felt throughout all o f Europe, particularly in the a rticles o f
coffee and sugar; of cotton too, the annual export was 10 millions of pounds, 50,000 bags
of 200 lbs each. “West India Intelligence; Kingston, Jan 19.” The Gentlem an’s Magazine
62 (April 1792): 375.
28 Stein, Sonthonax, 24; J. Ph. Garran de Coulon, Rapport sur les Troubles de
Saint-Domingue (Paris, 1799), III, 127. In Rochambeau’s estimation, the new Civil
Commissioners were simply the tool o f the mulattoes and the Am is des Noirs in Paris,
and had no real interest whatsoever in the colonies. Rochambeau, “Troubles des
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and the more highly placed Royalist officers arrested and sent to France for trial.33 Now
leaderless, loyal junior officers soon fled the island, severely weakening the possibilities
of an organized, military-supported Royalist threat in the North. Such was the situation
upon the arrival one w eek later o f Lieutenant General Rochambeau.
Rochambeau had written to the Minister o f War on 15 October 1792 that because
of the events that had taken place at Martinique, he would take his troops to Saint-
Domingue to put them immediately under the control of General Desparbes to assist in
the defeat of the colony’s rebellious slaves. To Rochambeau, this plan must have seemed
perfectly reasonable based on his communications the preceding m onth with Saint-
Domingue’s new Civil Commissioners. Unaware, however, of the events that had
transpired after his leaving Martinique, the general maintained a naive optimism. “One
must always hope,” he said, “that the old habits and the old customs that we know of the
colonists will easily recognize the constitutional character of the Civil Commissioners
and the governor who [now present] themselves....relieving [the colonists] o f their vain
fears....”34
Certainly Rochambeau was surprised to learn upon his arrival at le Cap that
Desparbes was incarcerated. Nevertheless, he did not resist when Sonthonax, with the
approval of the other two members o f the Commission, appointed Rochambeau Governor
33 Stein, Sonthonax, 40-52; Stoddard, The French Revolution in San Domingo, 191-192. Though accused o f treachery by the Convention, the Revolutionary Tribunal
acquitted Desparbes.
34 Rochambeau to Joseph Servan, 15 October 1792. Service historique, Indes
Occidentales: Expedition des isles du Vent, Carton B91, folio 3, 1- 2.
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General of Saint-Domingue three days later on 27 October 1792.35 Previously unaware
that the general was even coming to the colony, Sonthonax unofficially had designated
Louis-Maximilien-Fran9ois-Herman d ’Hinnisdal de Fumal, military commander in the
North and the most senior of the three provinc ial commanders in Saint-Domingue, to the
position first. The Legislative Assem bly in Paris, however, had selected Rochambeau as
military commander over all o f the French Windward Island colonies, affording him
superiority over any o f Saint-Domingue’s remaining officers. More important, as
Rochambeau was a well-known Jacobin, it appeared clear to Sonthonax not only that
supporting him as the Com mission’s choice for Governor General was in accordance with
the newly-established National Convention’s wishes, but also that this Governor General
might prove invaluable to his plans.36 Thus, in an ironic twist of fate, Donatien
Rochambeau came to accept the very position that he earlier so repugnantly had declined
before the Legislative Assem bly .37
35 Second Civil Commission of Saint-Domingue, Proclamation, 27 October 1792.AN, Correspondances des Commissaires Civils Polverel et Sonthonax; Rochambeau et
son successeur, Septembre 1792 a Janvier 1793, Carton Colonies CC9A8; Letter of the
Civil Commissioners to the Minister of Marine, 28 October 1792. Service historique,
37 Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau, Memoires M ilita ires, I, 437, II, 31. By November
1792, Marshal Rochambeau, ever the concerned father, made constant demands to the
Minister of Marine for news o f his son. By now considered persona non grata, the senior
Rochambeau was repeatedly ignored by the ministry and its Jacobin officials. Only the pleas o f Donatien Rochambeau’s wife, Madame d’Harville de Rochambeau brought news
to the family of the lieutenant general. See letters Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau to Monge,
31 October and 6 December 1792; Secretary of the Minister of Marine in re. numerous
requests by Franfoise Eleonore d ’Harville de Rochambeau concerning her husband, 4
November 1792. Service historique, Carton Yb 381; dossier lieutenant-general no. 1299,
183
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available for duty. It thus became necessary for Sonthonax to augment his troops with the
colony’s militia, and as the result, Sonthonax and the other Civil Commissioners wasted
no time establishing their influence with mulatto leaders throughout the colony .42
Gens de couleur, who Sonthonax referred to as the true “Citizens o f 4 April,”
were natural allies of the Commissioners, and to cement their support, Sonthonax’
Intermediary Committee took the politically important step on 30 October o f allowing
pensions and a medal for all gens de couleur who were wounded or killed in the defense
of the island.43 Soon, nearly 7,000 mulattoes had reported for duty, and with 14,000 to
15,000 Republicans now under arms throughout the colony, Rochambeau and the Second
Civil Commission next set out to destroy Jean-Frantpois and Biassou.
The first days of November 1792 found Rochambeau making the final
preparations to equip his expeditionary force, but the general had other worries as well.
42 The total (on paper) o f troops available to Sonthonax upon his arrival in Saint-
Domingue was approximately: 6,000 brought with him from France; 700 troops o f the DuCap regiment; 1,000 of the Artois and Picardy regiments; 7,000 militia (gens de couleur )
and 1,200 irregular troops raised and paid for by the colony. Edwards, History o f the
British Colonies in the West Indies, IV, 145.
43 Extract from the register of the Colonial Assembly of the French Portion of
Saint-Domingue, 30 October 1792, 1 November 1792. AN, Correspondances des
Commissaires Civils Polverel et Sonthonax; Rochambeau et son successeur, Septembre
1792 a Janvier 1793, Carton Colonies CC9A8. Sonthonax further antagonized the pe tits
blancs by employing only mulattoes to fill vacant administrative posts. If taken alone,
this action would have caused only a minor stir, but Sonthonax waited until Rochambeau
was near death with the fever to order on 7 November that his Intermediary Committeeappoint (with no possibility of appeal) six mulattoes to supervise the collection o f forced
loans among the le Cap’s general citizenry. Naturally, pe tits and grand blancs were
equally outraged. For all practical purposes, Sonthonax had pronounced General
Rochambeau, their only hope for equity, dead. Garran de Coulon, Rapport sur les
Troubles de Saint-Domingue, III, 201-203.
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that he found, Laveaux’ orders then were to attack Ouanaminthe on the south side.
Rochambeau’s larger detachment would move directly toward the rebel stronghold and
attack the stronghold from the center and north .48
Laveaux’ troops began their movement early on the morning o f 6 November, but
were slowed down throughout the day by torrential rains that made moving critical
artillery pieces along the unpaved roads nearly impossible. Even Rochambeau’s own
column, which had begun its movement during the evening o f the 6th, had to wait until the
following morning to leave Fort-Dauphin. Following the main road to Ouanaminthe, the
Governor General’s route would take him past the plantations o f Beaujeau and Thilorier,
both o f which Rochambeau knew to be enemy strongho lds49
The advance progressed well, but at eleven o ’clock his column reached the
48 Ibid. Rochambeau does not mention the number of troops under his immediate
command, but their strength could not have been more than 700. Rochambeau to the
“President of the National Assembly,” 12 November 1792. Service historique, “Troubles
de Saint-Domingue,” Carton DXXV 55, item 4, 2. Though Georges Six spells thisofficer’s name Lavaux, all contemporary manuscripts (and subsequent histories) speak of
Colonel Etienne Laveaux. A competent and reliable soldier, he rose quickly to the rank
of General de division, and in October 1793 accepted the Convention’s appointment as
Governor General of Saint-Domingue. With nearly no support from France, Laveaux was
able to do little more than try to preside responsibly over a civil race war, while the threat
o f foreign invasion served as a constant backdrop. By March 1796, he had been captured
and imprisoned by the colony’s rebellious mulattoes, only to be freed from prison by
Toussaint Louverture and members o f his army o f former slaves. As the result, on 25
March 1795 Laveaux breveted Toussaint to the rank o f colonel in the French Army
(Toussaint was already a general o f the Spanish army of Santo Domingo), and four days
later, named him “Lieutenant to the Governor General.” By fall 1796, Laveaux finallyleft Saint-Domingue after being elected to the Council of Ancients in Paris.
49 Ibid., 3; Rochambeau to the “President of the National Assembly,” 12
November 1792. Service historique, “Troubles de Saint-Domingue,” Carton DXXV 55,
item 4, 3 .
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authorities tried a new approach. Sonthonax and Polverel’s policy of mandatory war
contributions, a burden which fell particularly hard on the island’s mulattoes, had filled
the colony’s coffers to the point that the Governor General was able to issue a
proclamation to all o f the island’s troops, offering any man four gourdes for every rebel
slave that was returned to his master .54 By 9 November, Rochambeau had even secured
the cooperation o f the Spanish governor (just across the border at Laxavon) for the
extradition o f all French slaves hiding in his city.55 The general’s military successes
against the rebel slaves, however, would prove to be short-lived. Almost immediately
after the fall of Ouanaminthe, Rochambeau him self fell victim to the deadly fiev re
ja une.56
Both before and throughout Rochambeau’s foray into the eastern provinces, social
stability in le Cap had degenerated steadily. In October, Sonthonax had pushed for the
implementation o f a new twenty-five-per-cent territorial tax, an issue over which he and
Commissioner Polverel were sharply divided. While the two men argued over this and
over what Polverel saw as Sonthonax’ unwarranted and wholesale deportations, more
radical “Jacobin” factions in the city stepped up their activity against their traditional
54 Gourdes - Saint-Domingue silver coin, approximately the equivalent of a
Spanish Piastre. Robert Lacombe, Histoire Monetaire de Saint-Domingue et de la
Republique d ’H ait ijusqu’en 1874 (Paris, 1958), 39-40.
55 Rochambeau, “Expedition,” 5-7. This was quite an accomplishment as
Governor Donatien Gaspard Cassasota may have sheltered up to 1,500 of Saint-Domingue’s rebel slaves. Rochambeau to the “President of the National Assembly,” 12
November 1792. Service historique, “Troubles de Saint-Domingue,” Carton DXXV 55,
item 4, 6-7.
56 Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau, Memoires M ilita ires , I, 437.
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prevent the bloodshed that was soon to follow. While Laveaux and the National Guard
commander, Colonel Lachaise, rode ahead o f the attackers to try to persuade the
mulattoes to disarm, Sonthonax appealed to the city’s municipal officers and the general
staff to stop the attack. To his shock, however, bo th groups sided with the Du Cap
regiment. Several white officers demanded that the Commissioner support them against
the mulattoes, but the distraught Commissioner’s only response was to have the men
immediately arrested. The attack continued, and by the evening of the 2nd, six men lay
dead and another twelve were seriously wounded.62
By the morning of 3 December, both Sonthonax and Laveaux had gone to
Rochambeau’s sick bed, perhaps to seek his advice on restoring order, but more probably
to persuade the general to make a public appearance to appeal for calm. What is known
is that at the very least, the Governor General issued orders, this time in his own hand,
that the mulattoes return their cannons to la Fossette, and that the white soldiers return
their weapons to their own armories. Furthermore, he ordered all of the city’s soldiers to
return to their barracks. Initially, not everyone responded to his directives. Colonel
Vemieul, who now led the white troops, answered tha t until the mulattoes put down their
weapons, the white troops would continue to march and would exterminate their colored
enemy once and for all. Fortunately, an unusually intense rainfall prevented a renewal of
62 Ibid., 231-234. Garran de Coulon, who by order o f the National Conventioncompiled sworn statements and nearly every relevant document from the period for his
official report on Saint-Domingue, cautioned that there are conflicting accounts regarding
the whereabouts of Laveaux and Sonthonax during the attack. Naturally, the two men
insisted that they were in the middle of the fray attempting to reconcile the two sides. A
number o f other sources, however, affirmed that both were hiding in Government House.
199
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General offered Sonthonax his resignation on 8 December. The Commissioner, however,
desperately needed the general, and with much flattery, attempted to persuade him to stay.
Without his help, Sonthonax implored, the blacks would easily overrun le Cap, thus
destroying the colony. Skillfully avoiding being trapped in Saint-Domingue by
Sonthonax’ prerogative, Rochambeau remonstrated that his mission was in Martinique,
and not having received any new directive to the contrary from the M inister of Marine, he
was obliged by law to follow his last orders. As the result, he would leave the colony at
the new year.65
Rochambeau would not leave Sonthonax empty-handed however. Discussions
had once again turned to a new campaign against the blacks, but though reinforcements
had come from France, fever had continued to claim thousands of French troops. Even
by the time of the capture of Ouanaminthe, for example, the Second Battalion, 16th Line,
had lost 317 o f its 595 men to sickness, and Rochambeau had been forced to return the
remainder of the decimated unit to France soon thereafter. By 16 December, personnel
shortages had become so acute that Sonthonax, at Rochambeau’s request, issued a
65 Sonthonax to Monge, 8 December 1792. Service historique, Carton Yb 381;
dossier lieutenant-general no. 1299, unnumbered item. In his letter, Sonthonax praised
Rochambeau highly and expressed deep regret at his leaving. It had been asserted that
Sonthonax had bought Rocham beau’s support with a gift of 66,000 livres, an indictment
that, for a time, raised a g reat deal of suspicion in Paris concerning the new Governor
General. In his contemporary chronicles of the events in Saint-Domingue, however, the
Secretary to the National Convention, Garran de Coulon, staunchly defended
Rochambeau and made clear in his report to the Convention that the author o f that particular accusation had been the former Governor General Desparbes. The secretary
then went on to point out that even i f the accusation was true, Desparbes could not
possibly have known about it. Desparbes had made the careless mistake of reporting
events that he had supposedly witnessed more than three weeks a fter his deportation.
Garran de Coulon, Rapport sur les Troubles de Saint-Domingue, III, 203.
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their operations and sentiments, but, he again reminded the Commissioner, he must obey
the orders that he had received. With a flattering touch o f sentimentality, the governor
general closed his letter saying “I hope that one day we will rejoin each other in this part
of the world.” Unfortunately for Rochambeau, this wish w ould come true.71
Despite Rocham beau’s parting plea and Sonthonax’ heavy-handed rule, the
fighting in Saint-Domingue continued. Notwithstanding the heroic efforts o f General
Laveaux, Rochambeau’s military successes on the island were quickly reversed, and by
January, bands o f rebel slaves once again occupied the Northern Plain. But though events
during the months after his departure would make Rochambeau’s efforts in Saint-
Domingue seem in vain, the general’s first tour on the island represented a series o f
crucial firsts both for him, and for the nation. He had, after all, been responsible for
integrating the first non-white troops into the French army, but it was here that the general
had his first contact with mulatres in their own environment. The gens de couleur
resident in Saint-Domingue were far different from the urbane sang-meles resident in
Paris, and w hile their motivations may have had common threads, Paris’ mulattoes
enjoyed the luxury o f loftiness o f purpose while the actual colonials that they supposedly
represented pursued more dangerous, practical, and immediate designs.
Just as important, Rochambeau had received his first taste of island warfare. In
71 Sonthonax to Rochambeau, 2 January 1793, Rochambeau to Sonthonax, 3
January 1793, and Sonthonax to Monge, 7 January 1793. AN, Correspondances desCommissaires Polverel et Sonthonax; Rochambeau et son successeur, Septembre 1792 a
Janvier 1793, Carton Colonies CC9A8, unnumbered items. After several provisioning
stops Rochambeau finally sailed from Saint-Domingue on 11 January 1793.
Rochambeau to Minister of Marine, 10 January 1793. Le Moniteur Universelle, no. 55
(24 February 1793), 1.
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accused by the Com missioners’ enemies o f being a willing accomplice in the works and
opinions of Sonthonax, and that similarly, those around Sonthonax and Polverel hadmaintained that he had done too little to defeat the rebellious slaves. Rochambeau
himself, he added, had countered that he was consistently hindered in these efforts by the
activities of the “aristocratic colonists” in le Cap. Curiously, throughout the general’s
career, at least two opposing viewpoints have always been left to posterity concerning the
actions o f this enigmatic marshal’s son.
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Domingue, installed General Collot at Guadeloupe, and then left the island with Captain
Lacrosse to reclaim M artinique for the Republic.11
While a large number o f Martinique’s civil functionaries had fled with the
Royalists, some members o f Martinique’s Colonial Assembly, now calling themselves the
“Intermediary Assembly,” had decided to remain. Afraid of what might befall them in
the capital city, the remaining legislators moved their sessions to the tow n o f le Lamentin,
some seven miles east o f Fort-Royal. Immediately, the body passed an order instituting
the Tricolor, and began to address the future of the island with the immediate aim of
preventing complete anarchy. Their deliberations would not continue for long. Before
the members o f the Intermediary Assembly were able to quell disorder on the island, o r to
even begin planning for its defense, the combined forces o f Rocham beau’s small army
and Captain Lacrosse’s squadron arrived at Saint-Pierre on 3 February 1793.
This time, the Governor General’s reception was quite different. Crowds o f
armed Republicans swarmed around their hero o f the day, proudly singing La
Marseilla ise amid a roaring backdrop of cannon fire.12 Following a short stay in Saint-
Pierre, Rochambeau proceeded to Fort-Royal to make his official powers known. Once at
the capital, he proclaimed the Colonial Assembly dissolved, declaring that the body had
been formed at a tim e of public upheaval, when treacherous leaders had held sway over
11 Martineau, Trois Siecles d ’Histoire Antillaise, 204. Rochambeau, “Troublesdes Colonies,” Service historique, MR 593, 16-17. On his way to Martinique,
Rochambeau and Lacrosse also stopped at Sainte-Lucie and finally placed General Ricard
in charge o f that island.
12 Daney, Histo ire de la Martinique, 184.
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the island’s affairs. Branding the assemblymen “rebels and traitors,” Rochambeau turned
his attention to the interim council formed after Behague’s flight. He dismissed them,
suspending their deliberations until new Civil Commissioners, who were expected at any
time, had arrived .13
In the place o f the Intermediary Assembly, Rochambeau recalled members o f the
Republican “Council o f Conciliation” of 1791 who, as the “Sovereign Council of
Republique-ville,” would officially register both his and the Republic’s orders. With this
submissive body in place, the governor proceeded to enact his own legislation.
Immediately, he renamed Fort-Royal “Republique-ville,” and the principal fortresses in
the city “Fort-de-la-Republique,” and “Fort-de-la-Convention,” titles which he believed
would clearly symbolize the new governmental au thority.14 The next order o f business
13 Rochambeau, Proclamation, 4 February 1793. AN, Lettres de General
Rochambeau, commandant des forces Fran9aises et d’Aigremont, Ordonnateur, 1793-
1799, Carton Colonies CC 8A101; Daney, Histoire de la Martinique, 184; Kleczewski,
Martinique and the British Occupation, 75.
14 Ibid.; Lemery, La Revolution Frangaise a la Martinique, 209. In this first in a
series o f name changes that would later be made throughout Martinique, the city of Fort-
Royal became “Republique-ville,” while the ancient lower bastion, Fort Louis, became
“Fort-de-la-Republique.” In deference to the new national government, Fort Bourbon, the
larger, relatively newer fortress above the city, received the title “Fort-de-la-Convention.”
Construction on Fort Bourbon had begun in 1763, when it was determined after the
British assault of 1762, that the harbor bastion of Fort Louis was not sufficient to defend
the city. After paying 50,000 livres to Richard Gamier de la Roche for the necessary plot
on Mome Gam ier, the work commenced under the direction of Henri de Rochemore.
This engineer died in 1768, and the project passed to Charles le Boeuf (chief engineer),
who completed the works with the assistance o f the later-celebrated mathematicianCharles-Augustin de Coulombe. Situated at the southern edge of Mom e Gamier, Fort
Bourbon stood over 450 feet above Fort-Royal and commanded the entirety of the bay.
When it was completed in 1771, the French government had paid a total o f 7,375,000
livres for its construction. Though it would sustain heavy damage from British naval
artillery in 1794, the works were repaired during the Napoleonic wars, when the bastion
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presided over the first m eeting o f Republique-vil le’s club, “La Societe des Am is de la
Convention N a tio n a le on 7 February 1793, where he promised to “fight to the death the
hated rebels o f the Mere-patrie , the enemies of liberty and Republican equality.” 18
Similarly, Captain Lacrosse opened Saint-Pierre’s club, “La Marseillaise ,” four days
later.19
Hundreds o f citizens in the principal cities o f Republique-ville and Saint-Pierre
rallied to the R epublican cause, but scores o f Royalist planters remained in control of
many areas o f the countryside. Only the districts of le Lamentin, le Fran?ois and
“Rochambeau” (formerly Gros-Mome), dared to imitate the example of Republique-ville
and Saint-Pierre by forming popular societies.20 Having recently suffered under a
governmental authority that had sought to suppress them, the Republicans o f Martinique
were overjoyed that the authorities would work to their benefit. The least that they could
do, the Republicans believed, was to assist the new authority in its endeavors, and just as
18 Rochambeau, quoted in Daney, Histoire de la Martinique, 186.
19 Martineau, Trois Siecles d ’Histoire Antillaise, 163-164; Bailleul, Report, 6.
When Rochambeau and Lacrosse organized the patriotic clubs in Republique-ville and
Saint-Pierre, they ensured that each club had its own Committee o f Public Safety, both of
which were soon subordinated to the Governor General’s Committee o f General Security
in Republique-ville. As Martinique’s Revolutionary government matured, the
Committees o f Public Safety o f Republique-ville and Saint-Pierre evolved from “club
police” into powerful executive arms o f their ci ties’ municipal governments.
20 Bailleul, Report, 6. Bailleul continues “....[in] substituting this name
[Rochambeau] for that o f Gros-Mome, the inhabitants of this district had two objects:first to forget a name considered “execrable” in their town since the establishment o f the
aristocratic camp in 1790, and in the second place, they believed that it would be good
policy to perpetuate the name in the colony o f the First Patriot General whom they
regarded as the protector of their country. The end proved that they acted too hastily.”
To avoid confusion, “Rochambeau” will continue to be referred to as Gros-Mome.
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Histoire de la Martinique, 185. Republique-ville’s Committee of Surveillance and Police
totaled seven members, Saint-Pierre eleven, la Trinite five, and the remaining parishes
three. As with the municipalities, it had been Rocham beau’s intent to hold elections for
positions on the Surveillance Committees, but such an action would beg the original
question of problems with voting for municipalities and a general assembly. As a
temporary measure, the government at Republique-ville selected members based upon perceived notions and citizens’ personal recommendations o f “civism.” Though the
patriotic societies and their associated Comm ittees o f Public Safety went a long way
toward offering suitable candidates, by spring 1793 the composition o f the Surveillance
Committees remained suspect. The government, it was assumed, would be reorganized
following the arrival of Civil Commissioners.
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two weeks an armed faction, led by five or six o f these same d isgruntled soldiers, began
to gather at a coffee plantation outside Republique-ville. Initially, few people noticed that
this band was gathering strength daily, and even fewer knew that they were receiving
weapons smuggled onto the island by the powerful and well-respected Royalist planter,
Henri de Percin.32
By the end o f February 1793, Rocham beau’s decrees had created a tense
environment on Martinique, a condition exacerbated by his publishing and promising to
enforce all current national law relative to the colonies. The situation soon become even
more dangerous as the result of the general’s personal indiscretions. His adversaries
believed that after assuring the initial success of both the clubs and the Surveillance
Committees, Rochambeau seemed to focus on a “fem me de mauvais vie,” Madame de
Tully. According to reports composed by members o f the Committee o f General
Security, even the genera l’s aides-de-camp joined in the courtship o f suspect aristocratic
women on the island. Not surprisingly, Martiniquais Republicans were incensed when
32 Bailleul, Report, 7. The faction grew even more quickly after the declaration of
war against England which Rochambeau made public on the island on 14 March 1793.
Henri de Percin had been a ch ief agitator against the Revolution until soon after
Rochambeau’s arrival. Eventually convinced that his resistance to the new authorities
was in vain, he quietly retired to his town home at Case-Pilote. Surprisingly, he soon was
offered a commission in the National Guard with command o f the Case-Pilote area. He
refused, so the command passed to a free black named Fran?ois Eusebe. Acting within
his new authority, Eusebe sent a mulatto dragoon to de Percin’s home with orders that the
aristocrat report for duty at Case-Pilote’s garrison. It was this single act that reignited the
civil war on Martinique. De Percin beat the messenger, renewed his vow to make waragainst the authorities, and moved to his coffee plantation “Le Maitre” (also referred to as
Lemetre). The topography of the “Le Maitre” plantation made it the perfect site for an
armed camp, and he was soon joined by scores of other vengeful colonists. Together the
group changed the name o f “Le Maitre” to “Camp-Decide,” a name which they used
interchangeably with “Camp de Percin” when referring to the group itself.
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reinforcem ents, counterrevolutionaries on Martinique decided to strike.37
Since leaving the colony in December, Behague had never completely
relinquished his hold over Martinique. The former Governor General maintained close
contact with Royalists still on the island who convinced him that Rochambeau’s hold
over the island was weak, and plotted his triumphal return to Republique-ville. At best,
Behague was simply delusional. A British contemporary, General Henry Bruce,
described him as “a man of great civility,” but “puffed up and overly concerned with his
position as Governor [even though at the tim e o f their meeting, Behague was in exile].
He imagined him self to be well loved and thought o f as the savior o f Martinique, while
most reports showed him to be disliked even among other Royalists.”38
In Behague’s mind, the Revolution had not brought about his overthrow. Instead,
his exile was the result o f the machinations o f a “Judas in London” (namely Dubuc)
whom, the former Governor General believed, intended to install him self as overlord of
37 Rochambeau to M. Maurice, 30 March 1793. AN DXXV/50/477, item 9, 3-4.
Still primarily involved with events closer to home, the National Convention finally
declared on 5 March 1793 that as on the Continent, a state of war existed in all o f the
French colonies. This second declaration of war would have arrived on Martinique at the
beginning of April. It instructed all Governor Generals and other m ilitary agents, as well
as officers of the civil administration, to act in concert with the Civil Commissioners and
obey all their requests. Further, the order gave license to all free men in the colonies to
unite as irregular “legions or companies” for the defense o f their particular colonies,
under the control of the Governor Generals and the Civil Commissioners. Governor
Generals and Civil Commissioners were authorized to make any changes that they judged
necessary to maintain the peace in their colonies. Convention Nationale, Collection Complette des Decrets de la Convention Nationale; Imprim es dans I ’Ordre de leur
Publication, dans le Department du Nord (Douai, 1792-1794.); Daney, Histoire de la
Martin ique, 187.
38 Kleczewski, Martinique and the British Occupation, 72.
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Fortunately for Mar tinique’s defenders, a period o f relative calm followed the
British squadron’s departure. With the Royalists in check, the island’s Republican
leadership now had the chance to address many issues that had remained since the
beginning of the crisis. While unity should have rem ained a paramount consideration
among the governor and his staff, Pelauque and Rochambeau began to argue. Having lain
dormant for several weeks, the question surfaced once again concerning the twelve livres
per day to mainta in the Royalist prisoner Jaham Derivaux. No communication had
reached Martinique from the government in Paris, and the governor could no longer
substantiate his earlier demand to keep D erivaux incarcerated until the new Civil
Comm issioners arrived. The men’s differences over the disposition of the prisoner were
short-lived. Rather than continue to spend such an apparently enormous sum to sustain
the prisoner, Rochambeau chose the more inexpensive option and ordered Derivaux
shot.36
Pelauque, however, was no t through, and an even more heated discussion erupted
over Rochambeau’s aristocratic mistress, Madame de Tully. From the time that this
“remarkably beautiful woman” first appeared at Government House, Republicans
suspected that de Tully, who came to hold great sway over the general, had influenced
35 Dubuc and Clairfontaine, “Recit des Operations Militaires,” AN, Colonies CC
8A102, folio 140, 26 June 1793, 4. Soon after the British attack, Rochambeau appointedMajor La Rochette deputy commander o f the 1st Chasseurs. Bellegarde never trusted his
executive officer, and believed that the general planted the major in his ranks to spy on
the Chasseurs.
36 Bailleul, Report, 21-22; Daney, Histoire de la M artinique, 199-200.
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either reestablish communication with Saint-Pierre, and in the process destroy Camp-
Decide in the north, or force h is way farther west and then move north toward la Trinite.
He decided on the second option. The Republicans in Saint-Pierre had held their own to
this point, and without the help o f the English, de Percin had little hope of making an
effective move against Republique-ville. On the other hand, if Rochambeau successfully
fought his way to la Trinite, the Republicans would have cut the island in half, and the
town would be available as a second, secure port for the expected French reinforcements.
Only two major obstacles were in the way, Gros-Mome and Mome Vert-Pre. The latter,
the Republicans knew, would be the mos t difficult to overcome.40
It was not by accident that the Royalists chose Mome Vert-Pre and its associated
village as their principle redoubt. From various points atop the mountain, they could
monitor activity for miles in every direction, and two of the colony’s main interior roads
intersected in the town. The rebels fully appreciated the strategic importance o f the area,
and had put great time and effort into improving the works begun by Pothuau Desgatiere
one month earlier. Republicans had labeled the extensive series of earthworks “the
rebels’ Gibraltar” and nothing short o f a potent offensive against this mountain
stronghold offered any chance o f success.41 Steeled by his most recent victory at Mont
40 Rochambeau, “Journal du Blocus et du Siege de la Martinique,” entry for 7
June 1793.
41 At nearly 1,000 feet above sea level, Mom e Vert-Pre is one o f the highest points in central Martinique. In 1793, on two of the mountain’s southern points, the
Royalists had constructed the posts Gravier and Legrand. The only access roads from the
north and south were covered by o ther cannon batteries, while on the northern plateau
was a semaphore device. Fifty years later, the works were still visible. Daney, Histoire
de la Martinique, 202. Even today, one can find Royalists’ cannons ornamenting the
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men slipped into the darkness leaving behind only two wounded m en .56
On their side, the Loyalists also had suffered remarkably few casualties, but de
Gimat lay dying with a broken skull and a bullet in his chest.57 Unable to rally their
comrades the next day, and seeing the impossibility of taking Saint-Pierre alone, General
Bruce held a brief council o f war, where he determined to evacuate the island. Between
19 and 21 June, the British re-boarded their ships, taking with them as many o f their
Royalist comrades as possible. The aftermath o f the aborted invasion proved worse than
the failed action itself. Captain Lacrosse brought the Felicite out o f hiding and terrorized
the evacuating parties from the sea, while Colonel Daucourt hunted fleeing rebels on the
land. At Camp-Decide, a demoralized Henri de Percin and a handful o f his remaining
adherents defiantly raised the British flag over the le Maitre plantation, and then
abandoned it. De Percin was not finished. Firing from the batteries both at Case-Pilote
and Case-Navire, he and his men fought frantically to cover the allied evacuation, but
eventually, they too joined the remainder o f the Royalist refugees aboard the English
vessels. Finally, Governor General Rochambeau and his troops marched triumphantly
56 Bailleul, Report, 27; Camille-Marie, chevalier de Valous, Avec le s“Rouges”
aux lies du Vent (Paris, 1930), 191. Rochambeau’s forces took eighty prisoners in the
action.
57 Owing to the almost complete absence o f light in the semi-jungle conditions of
the areas’ forests, the Republicans killed or wounded far fewer o f the enemy than wouldhave been the case in daylight. Accord ing to Bruce’s report to Secretary Dundas, the
British lost only one captain (to exhaustion), three rank and file wounded, and one rank
and file killed. Bruce to Dundas, “Return o f Killed and Wounded in a Skirmish with the
Enemy on the Island of Martinico on 17 June 1793,” 23 June 1793. PRO, CO, 318.12,
item 303.
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disposal to prevent the proper execution o f the new law, and denunciations quickly
becam e a useful tool for both sides. The resulting flood of accusations against both
Republicans and counterrevolutionaries caused such confusion that it became impossible
for either the Governor General or the Committee o f General Security to determine which
were scurrilous and which were not. To complicate matters, a disturbingly large number
of local Committees o f Surveillance and Police were apparently bribed or threatened by
the enemy. Police became increasingly reluctant either to arrest islanders who had been
denounced by fellow citizens, or to take effective action to seize Royalist property.
Others, however, pursued their task with such alacrity that even staunchly Republican
officials came to view the Governor G eneral’s confiscation and arrest policies as a
flagrant violation of citizens’ rights. Abuses were not limited to the Com mittees o f
Surveillance and Police. Though they had not been asked to participate in the collection
process, Bellegarde’s Chasseurs w ould quickly become some of the government’s worst
offenders .4
4 During the fighting of the previous May and June, Rochambeau had declared
that he would be unable to supply Bellegarde’s men, and had allowed them to prov ision
themselves by confiscating and selling emigre property. With Pelauque’s help,
Bellegarde had secretly worked around the governor’s port closure order and had turned
his wartime activity into a thriving business with the Americans. Bellegarde skillfully
avoided scrutiny from M artinique’s civil authorities by promising them that he was only
buying much-needed supplies for his troops. Increasingly, Rochambeau came to lose
trust in his Chasseur commander and even less in Pelauque, but without substantial proof
against them, he could do nothing to curtail their activities other than to accuse them of
pillaging. Bellegarde and Pelauque protested vehemently against such accusations.Maintaining that they had no other recourse, they countered repeatedly over the next few
months that Rochambeau and his commissariat chief, Charles-Antoine Daigremont, who
held the join t title o f Ordonnateur (the Revolutionary equivalent of the colonial
Intendant), were deliberately ignoring their needs. The accusations against Rochambeau
and Daigremont were unsubstantiated. Letters from American businessmen that later
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but members of the Committee of General Security were quick to remind the
commissaries that they served purely at the pleasure o f the Committee, and thus were
subject to their recall.9
At the outset, the new plan seemed adequate, but the proclamation’s Article XIII
presented an unexpected problem. As in France, Martinique’s creditors were required to
follow the procedures laid out in the National Convention’s 25 August 1792 decree which
unequivocally outlined procedures for creditors to reclaim debts against confiscated
estates. Though the national rules were clear, conditions in France varied tremendously
from those in Martinique. How, the colony’s creditors demanded, could they be expected
to make loans toward rebuilding plantations, when prior to their being destroyed, those
same plantations had already been serious debt? Most o f the island’s creditors believed
that they had already sustained a total loss on property damaged during the recent
fighting, but their refusal to make reparation loans threatened to stall Rochambeau’s plan
completely. As the result, he and Daigrem ont were compelled to revise the Regulation on
2 September, mandating that the island’s creditors would be reimbursed before treasury
received any money. Furthermore, available financing to rebuild ruined estates would
9 Ibid.; Bailleul, Report, 28-29. By 5 August Rochambeau had written to the
Minister o f Marine and the Colonies that “I have kept the peace but there are those w ith
ulterior motives all around. We have seized all of the emigre goods that weren’t
destroyed or stolen, and have been able to collect from their sale enough to make payment
to the American captains for 3,000 barrels of flour. I have named two trusted
businessmen, the first to investigate the rest o f the colony’s businessm en looking forhidden emigre goods that have not been reported, while the second (who serves in the
quality of Commissary of the Republic), will be based out o f Saint-Pierre and will handle
the sale of the goods and the transfer into the public treasury. We will send you the
details once all of this is done.” Rochambeau and Daigremont to Monge, 5 August 1793.
AN, Archives Fonds III 209/953, item 19.
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evidence against the governor was quite weak. With Lavau’s assent, Rochambeau had
established a general fund from the sale of captured sugar stocks from which he drew
thirty-three livres per day while conducting a subsequent inspection tour o f the island.
Considering the devaluation o f the currency, and the fact that the Governor General was
required to board and feed himself and his entourage, thirty-three livres was probably
reasonable. To the committee members, the amount seemed both exorbitant and
fraudulent. More than once, Rochambeau had preserved the Revolution in Martinique,
but the colony’s Republicans could never forgive the general’s aristocratic heritage.
Thirty-three livres per day, they complained, could only be used to maintain the governor
in the high style more befitting a general o f the ancien regime than a good Republican.
Their ire was further piqued when free blacks, slaves, and their representatives began to
make claims against the government for non-payment o f services rendered to the
Republic. To the Republicans, it seemed unconscionable that the colony’s leadership
would see to their own comfort without first offering some form of recompense to these
good patriots for their labor . '2
The lack o f support that Rochambeau received from his own authorities was
problematic enough, but almost immediately he had to turn his attention to those who
12 Black workers made the unsettling observation that it was their labor alone that
had brought any measure o f salvageable wealth back to the colony, and that as the result it
was they who could best administer its disbursement. The men may have had a legitimateargument, but the Committee o f General Security appears to have made no effort to
persuade anyone in the white community to rel inquish any o f the colony’s financial
administration. It was much more politically expedient for the Republicans to accuse
Rochambeau and his administrators o f mismanagement, while at the same time
demanding that he protect them. Bailleul, Report, 28-29.
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Regardless o f what Bellegarde thought, Rochambeau wanted a second, reliable
force on the mutinous eastern side of the island. He ordered Bellegarde’s battalion to
occupy positions at Gros-Mome and la Trinite, while he posted M eunier’s battalion
several kilometers to the north, in the seaside town of Sainte-Marie. Even after the
Royalist evacuations, the areas around la Trinite and Sainte-Marie had remained major
hubs o f counterrevolutionary activity, a problem which only became worse as refugees
returned under Rochambeau’s amnesty. Since it was impossible to judge how much
influence the Royalists had over the Committees of Surveillance and Police in the area, it
stood to reason that the Chasseur units could at least curtail any overtly treasonous acts.
O f the two towns, Sainte-Marie was considered the more dangerous, so Meunier and his
new recruits expressed their reservations to the general concerning their first assignment.
For whatever reason, Rochambeau minimized their concerns. He declared the absolute
civism o f the district by saying that Sainte-Marie’s Comm ittee o f Surveillance and Police
was the only one to communicate with him regularly during the war, and that the tow n’s
Republican officials had local affairs well under control. Either the general was correct,
or Meunier and his Chasseurs were lucky; despite their initial worries, the second
battalion occupied Sainte-Marie without incident. Bellegarde, on the other hand, would
Furthermore, suspicion was growing in government circles that Bellegarde (who was
coming increasingly under the influence o f Pelauque), coveted Rochambeau’s positionand sought eventual command o f the colony for himself. As Meunier had no previous
history with the general, the creation o f a loyal, second battalion could have been
designed with the object o f serving as a counterweight against Bellegarde and his men.
This may better explain why the two units would subsequently be stationed within five
kilometers o f each other.
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such a system’s key component - a functioning, loyal military. Despite their earlier valor,
the Chasseurs proved themselves a liability in peacetime. The Committees of
Surveillance and Police were equally troublesome, and the N ational Guard, as yet, were
unreliable.
Rochambeau certainly was well-schooled in all aspects of the military art, bu t his
years of training and experience left him grossly deficient in the skills required to
confront matters o f civil administration - the same was true o f the general officers that he
installed as governors in the other French Windward Island colonies. Regardless, the
Nation expected these soldiers to impose the new regime whatever the circumstances.
Thus, Rochambeau relished forming a conventional, centralized legislative and judicia l
body in Martinique. He was delighted to oversee the formation of Martinique’s nascent
assembly; soon he could expect the subsequent leisure o f executing the more traditional
prerogatives of the off ice o f the Governor General.
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put in place before the group could enact any meaningful statutes; the Governor General
would provide the guidance and supervision, but the Representative Assembly essentially
had to start from scratch.2
The Law o f 4 April 1792 had given all colonial assemblies the power to write a
constitution for their colony, subject to the approval o f the Governor General. Under the
circumstances, Martinique’s new Assembly found this especially difficult. Hundreds o f
questions of procedure remained to be answered and, given the unpredictable turnover o f
governments in Paris, it was nearly impossible to determine what was currently legal.
Thus, the Assembly was forced to set aside the drafting o f a constitution. As a result,
simple matters o f colonial administration proved to be that much more difficult to resolve
over the coming months. Despite the lack of a constitution, some issues could be
addressed immediately. The Assembly chose an easy first target. Knowing that the
action would be in keeping w ith the latest rulings o f the National Convention, the
Assembly voted to nationalize all church property on Martinique on 24 September .3
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., 42. The Assembly eventually did follow Rochambeau’s advice, and on 4
November provisionally installed pries ts in the pay of the state. The power of the
Catholic Church in Martinique, however, had been destroyed. In addition to taking the
church’s lands, the Assem bly’s 24 September law broke up the religious orders, and
suspended religious vows, replacing them with oaths to the state. This measure, like
subsequent acts concerning the sale of the clergy’s goods (18 November), the exemption
of the clergy from military service (29 November), and the status of monks and nuns (4
January 1794), followed similar procedures adopted in France under the 1790 CivilConstitution o f the Clergy. There was some room for modification however. Since the 2
November 1789 French seizure o f church property had not been effected on Martinique,
members of the Assembly argued successfully that the colony’s church was an
“independent entity.” As the result, the French national laws could be adapted to suit the
colony’s specific needs. Clergymen, with the permission of the local municipalities,
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suspend all government pensions, but Martinique still remained deeply in debt. By 18
November, the Assembly had no choice but to declare the colony officially bankrupt.
Although they had tried, Rochambeau and the delegates finally admitted that they could
no longer avoid imposing a mandatory tax on all of the colony’s citizens. After
announcing that the state o f the treasury jeopard ized public safety, the Assembly voted
that the colony’s sugar producers, manufacturers, and landlords would “donate” seven
and a half per-cent of their gross revenues to the government. All others would pay five
per-cent. The Assembly appointed a Finance Committee to manage the money, and the
Assemblymen asked Daigremont to assist the C omm ittee’s initial efforts by supplying a
full account of the state of the treasury since the beginning of his administration. The
request was not unreasonable. As early as 1 April 1793, Rochambeau had called upon the
island’s citizens to make a voluntary contribution {emprunt) to help bolster the colony’s
depleted treasury. These funds, combined with the ongoing seizure and sale o f emigre
goods, should have amounted to a considerable sum. To the Assembly’s dismay,
however, Daigremont stalled, claiming that he could not deliver his report until his own
Special Rece iver of the Republic, Volny-Aristide Foumiols, had completed his work .5
Daigremont’s weak response was disturbing to the Assembly, who expected that
he would have managed the colony’s treasury at least as well as Leborgne had managed
5 Bailleul, Report, 57; Assemblee Representative, Deliberations, Decrees o f 2 and
18 November 1793; Daney, Histoire de la Martinique, 225; Kleczewski, Martin ique an d the British Occupation, 106. Foumiols did not complete his report until over two months
later, jus t days before the British invaded the island. Foumiols would later be elected
from Martinique to the Council o f 500, and serve in the Thermidorean Committee of
Public Safety where he publicly defended Rochambeau’s actions during his tour as
Governor General o f the W indward Islands.
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Between November 1793 and January 1794, it seemed that no matter what actions
the Assembly or its Finance Committee took, they could not reduce the colony’s
staggering debt. The Committee itse lf had little power to enforce tax collection, and what
monies did come into the treasury could neither sustain Martinique’s civil administration
nor pay even one quarter of the debt left over from the latest conflict. Moreover, the
system was fraught with abuse. Suspect citizens were hounded mercilessly for
extraordinary donations, and those who neglected to make regular or “special”
contributions, or to send their share of slaves to do public works, could expect to have
their property confiscated. Despite such Draconian measures, the state of Martinique’s
finances remained a disaster .8
A second issue that immediately faced the Assembly was the question of creating
an official judicial body. Rochambeau had dealt handily with the prisoner o f war
question, but nearly 300 suspect citizens, many he ld on dubious charges, remained in the
colony’s jails awaiting the arrival of the Civil Commissioners. Even the most spiteful of
Mar tinique’s Republicans viewed such arbitrary detention as a cruel violation o f the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, but as the Assem bly’s functions were
purely legislative; it was outside of their purview to resolve the prisoner issue. Once
proclamation from the period his name was misspelled as d’Aigremont, and each tim e the
mistake had to be corrected by hand. His cavalier attitude concerning the colony’s
finances absolutely cemented any mistrust surrounding his activities. That he was
unfailingly protected by the Governor General did no t help his situation, and he wouldlater be accused o f only paying his and Rochambeau’s aristocratic friends for goods and
services purchased by the government.
8 Daney, Histoire de la M artinique, 224-225. In many cases, suspects were
required to pay “rent” on their own property.
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again, Rochambeau provided the solution. On the first day of their deliberations, the
Assembly approved the dissolution of the Governor General’s Committee o f General
Security and created its own Committee o f General Security to serve as an interim
judicial arm of the new government. As a result, Rochambeau departed slightly from his
earlier refusal to institute colony-wide Revolutionary Tribunals, and proposed to the
Assemblymen they follow the national example and form a single Revolutionary
Tribunal, answerable to the Committee o f General Security of the Representative
Assembly .9
To all but M artinique’s Republicans, the specter of any type o f Revolutionary
Tribunal was fraught with negative implications. Debate over the issue raged for two
days, with the greatest point of contention being whether or not the Assembly was within
its rights to even consider creating such a body without the assent o f the Paris
government. The issue came to a vote on 28 September, and passed the Assembly by
three ballots. The delegates recognized their authority to implement Rochambeau’s
suggestion, and charged the new Committee of General Security to organize and define
the powers o f the colony’s new Tribunal Revolutionnaire. 10
The text o f the 28 September decision left a thorough catalogue of the numerous
9 Bailleul, Report, 41; Assemblee Representative, Deliberations, Decree o f 28
September 1793; Daney, Histoire de la Martinique, 217-219; Kleczewski, Martinique
and the British Occupation, 89. Martinique’s new Committee of General Security was
composed o f twelve o f the Assembly’s own members. In addition to creating theRevolutionary Tribunals, the Committee o f General Security was charged with
disbanding the Committees o f Surveillance and Police. Assemblee Representative,
Deliberations, Decree of 24 September 1793.
10 Ibid.
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perceived threats to the island’s security. Undoubtedly, the number o f
counterrevolutionaries being held by the government would only grow as the corsairs
brought in more prisoners, and enemies o f the state, both internal and abroad, were doing
everything in their power to incite revolt among the island’s citizens.11 The very real
possibility existed that i f these agitators could somehow jo in forces with those who were
imprisoned, the island’s authorities would be faced with a riot that they would not be able
to control. Therefore, it became incumbent upon the Committee of General Security to
“overawe the counterrevolutionaries that are hidden and blended into the colony with the
example o f a terrible justice .” Exactly one month after the Assembly’s vote, the
Committee completed their proposals to the Revolutionary Tribunal, and their
recommendations passed the Assembly without issue .12
11 Overcrowding in the colony’s jails and forts had become so severe that in
Republique-ville, Rochambeau was forced to keep nearly 150 prisoners confined on a
barge anchored below Fort-de-la-Republique.
12 Assemblee Representative, Deliberations, Decrees o f 28 September and 28
October 1793; Daney, Histoire de la Martinique, 218-219, 222; Kleczewski, Martinique
and the British Occupation, 89. Undoubtedly fearful themselves of possibly facing the
National Convention’s “terrible justice,” the Assemblymen went to great lengths to
explain in the 28 October decree that because o f the war’s preventing communication
with France, they had been forced to act as sovereign for the protection of their citizens.
Martinique’s Tribunal Criminel Ex traordinaire was designed along similar lines as its
Continental counterpart, and was charged “to judge all counterrevolutionary enterprises,
all attempts against liberty, equality, unity, and the indivisibility of the Republic; the
internal security of the colony, all plots attempting to reestablish the royalty or to
establish any other authority that challenged the liberty, equality or sovereignty of the
people.” The principle difference between the colony’s court and tha t o f metropolitanFrance was that M artinique’s Revolutionary Tribunal had two, twelve-man juries, while
France’s Revolutionary Tribunal had only one in Paris, with sub-courts throughout
France. Because of the high number of prisoners awaiting trial, Martinique’s Assembly
arranged that one jury served in Saint-Pierre, while the other decided cases in
Republique-ville.
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the line, in the pay o f the French Republic, although the government, in fact, had no funds
to support it.22
Bellegarde’s battalion certainly rejoiced in their new-found recognition, but four
days later, Rochambeau and the Assembly announced a general military draft. O f the
island’s twenty-six parishes, the fourteen that were not considered Royalist strongholds
received orders that all men aged seventeen to fifty-five would enlist in militia units.
Upon mobilization, the new units were to report to the various forts and armed camps
throughout the colony, and await further orders from Rochambeau. Those men too old
for regular service were not exempt, but would report to the National Guard or the
municipal police in the capacity o f “veteran companies,” to be called upon as needed by
the local authorities. A separate draft was imposed for an elite force of 460 men, 200 o f
whom would come from Saint-Pierre; their sole responsibility was to garrison the forts in
Republique-ville. What stung Bellegarde and his men, however, was that the decree also
formally announced that Edouard M ember’s 2d Chasseur Battalion was to be on an equal
footing with the 1st Chasseur Battalion .23
22 Assemblee Representative, Deliberations , Decree of 25 September 1793.
23 Ibid., Decree o f 3 October 1793; Daney, Histoire de la Martinique, 220;
Kleczewski, Martinique an d the British Occupation, 88 , 105-106. Bailleul maintained
that many problems in the 1st Chasseur Battalion could have been avoided had they
undergone a proper organization, but that Rochambeau had basically ignored the unit ever
since the English had left the island. This newest announcement certainly was not the
type o f organization that they had in mind, and as the result, both Bellegarde andPelauque came to believe that the Governor General intended to disband them altogether.
Bailleul, Report, 42, 47. The 3 October decree also mandated that those o f military age
who were absent from the colony had to either pay a special replacement tax (enough to
maintain a soldier for one year) or find a replacement. The money would be paid into
their municipality’s general fund.
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Military Committees had conducted a complete review of the battalion’s organization.24
While the Finance Committee tallied the Chasseurs’ debt, the Assembly’s two-
man Military Committee discovered that Bellegarde had illegally allowed 180 fugitive
slaves to join his battalion in the weeks following the recent fighting. Rather than
returning these slaves to their masters, the Military Committee recommended putting all
180 of these men into the 2d Chasseur Battalion, thus making the two units approximately
equal in strength. The news came as a shock to the Governor General. Once he was
informed o f the surplus, he immediately issued a proclamation on 13 October which
directed that if slaves in Bellegarde’s ranks had n ot actually fought in the previous
conflict, then they must be sent back to their plantations by the time that he arrived for an
upcoming inspection. Immediately, Bellegarde took actions to stall the transfer.
Convinced that it was they who had informed the Assembly of the extra soldiers, he
began to treat as spies the other officers that Rochambeau had appointed to his battalion.25
When the municipality o f la Trinite com plained about sinister nightly meetings
Bellegarde was having with his trusted officers, the A ssembly knew that they had to act.
Through a series o f denunciations, the municipality assured the Assembly that Bellegarde
24 Bailleul, Report, 47.
25 Ibid., 49. Bellegarde actually began to harass the officers that Rochambeau
placed in the battalion as early as m id-September. In fact, a Chasseur “Council o f War”
threatened the life o f the battalion’s executive officer, Commandant La Rochette, andforced him to flee his post. When La Rochette reported the event to the Governor
General, an irate Rochambeau condemned the “disgusting” behavior o f the Chasseurs,
ordered La Rochette to return to his station, and vowed to courts-martial those who had
threatened him. Rochambeau to La Rochette, 16 September 1793. AN, Correspondance
a V’Arrivee Recue aux Colonies, D XXV/50/477, items 11 and 17.
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With no other dedicated labor available, the slaves of Martinique became heavily
involved in defense construction. Since mid-September, Rochambeau had undertaken an
ambitious road construction program connecting le Robert, la Trinite, and Saint-Pierre, in
case Republique-ville should ever again be blockaded. He ordered the Committee of
General Security to supervise the building of a highway running through the Champ-Flore
between their city and G ros-Mome, but when the Committee requisitioned slaves from as
far away as Basse-Pointe and le Marigot to work on the road, it became obvious that a
new system o f labor distribution would have to be devised. Ultimately, responsibility for
the maintenance o f the colony’s roads was divided equally among the island’s citizens by
toises (approximately six feet), with one toise being assigned to each inhabitant of an area
where the work was to take place. In most cases, it was Martinique’s slaves who
performed the actual labor. Except for coffee plan tation owners, whose property was
cultivated year-round, those citizens who owned slaves were also required to provide one
laborer for every six he owned to assist with other government projects. Those slaves
already owned by the government, usually those abandoned by emigres, were kep t in
Saint-Pierre and Republique-ville specifically to work on those city’s forts.38 '
37 Ibid., Decrees o f 8 and 9 November 1793.
38 Comite de Surveillance et de Police de Saint-Pierre, Decree of 14 September
1793. Library Company of Philadelphia, Rare#Am 1793 Mar Log 1837.F, Afro-Americana, 6412; Assemblee Representative, Deliberations, Decrees of 15 November, 3
December 1793; Daney, Histoire de la M artinique, 221. By mid-November, the Champ-
Flore road was still not complete. As a result, the Assembly decreed on 15 November
that Gros-Mome, la Trinite and le Robert provide between them an extra sixty slaves per
day to complete the work.
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November, the Chasseurs still had not been paid, and the Assembly’s Finance Committee
still claimed to have no money. That their fertile imaginations would have found cause to
criticize their government on defense issues is not surprising. At the end o f October
1793, a singular event diverted their attentions from questions o f public administration
and civil rights, to something that they knew even less about - wa r .43
Sometime in late October, a French trading vessel finally brought some recent
news o f events on the Continent to the isolated colony. The ship carried no official
dispatches for the Governor General, thus it may well have been from old copies o f Paris’
daily Moniteur Universelle that citizens of Martinique read with fascination stories of the
Revolution’s “marche terrible” of earlier months. To say the least, the news was
arresting. Details of Jean-Paul Marat’s murder by Charlotte Corday, the revolt in Toulon,
the surrender o f the city of Mayence to their own General de Beauhamais, and the transfer
o f the queen to the Conciergerie were all stunning bits of information.44
The papers also contained items of more immediate relevance to the colony,
including the news that the National Conven tion had installed Citoyen Jean Dalbarade, a
former corsaire o f the Basque coast, as the new Minister of Marine. This would
43 Rochambeau, “Journal du siege de la Martinique par les anglais, soutenu par le
General Rochambeau du 4 Fevrier 1794 [hereafter Rochambeau, Journa l du siege],”
entry for 11 February 1794. AN, Collection Moreau Saint-Mery, Microfilm F340, item 7;
Assemblee R epresentative, Deliberations, Decrees o f 27 October, 18 November, 3
December 1793. The Republicans failed to observe that Martinique’s regular troops,
from the lowest private to the Governor General, also had not been paid; the colony wastruly bankrupt. Though the confiscated hospital’s slaves were sent to work on the forts,
only lodging and food could be provided to the w ounded veterans housed in the hospital
itself. Daney, Histoire de la M artinique, 224-225.
44 Daney, Histoire de la M artinique, 225.
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contained all 122 articles o f the National Convention’s “Stillborn” Constitution o f 1793.
Though the war would prevent its implementation, the document, ratified on 4 August,
would become the guide from which M artinique would model its own constitution.
Nearly two months after they had first met, I ’Assemblee Representative de la Martinique
approved a final draft. France’s constitution, humbly delivered to Martinique in stacks of
newsprint, inaugurated a fountain o f legislation, most o f which copied political and
organizational decrees adopted in the pa trie. The patriotic clubs, which Rochambeau
maintained were the true vehicle o f the Revolution, became officially recognized and
protected in October. By January 1794, the clubs were required in every one o f the
colony’s villages. More significant, however, on 30 October Rochambeau signed into
law a monumental Assembly decree which elevated the colony of Martinique to
Department of France. Henceforth, the government of Martinique would be completely
independent o f the other French colonies, and a new “Provisional Administration” would
assume control o f the day to day affairs of the new departement .47
Members o f the Provisional Administration o f the colony would come to office
through an even m ore indirect electoral process than that o f the Representative Assembly.
To define the qualifications o f a voting “Citizen,” Martinique’s Assembly followed the
47 Ibid., Decrees of 26-28 and 30 October, 18 November, 8 December 1793;
Bailleul, Report, 42-43; Daney, Histoire de la M artinique, 227; Kleczewski, Martinique
and the British Occupation, 93-94. Mar tinique’s administration was to remain
provis ional until such time as its creation was ratified by the National Convention. Theisland was divided into four arrondissements, Republique-ville, Saint-Pierre, la Trinite,
and le Marin, which then were divided further into twenty-seven cantons. In December
1793, the island’s smaller villages were consolidated into the larger neighboring
municipalities. Martinique maintained basically the same organization until Saint-Pierre
was destroyed by the eruption of Mont Pelee on 8 May 1902.
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time to implement it. In little over a month, Martinique would once again be at war .49
Throughout late summer and fall 1793, affairs seemed to be going well for the
Governor General, but it was during this period that he lost one o f his most powerful
allies. Leborgne, the trusted “Marat of the Colonies,” had a serious falling out with
Rochambeau. While the details remain sketchy, the crux of the disagreement involved a
denunciation made by Leborgne against someone in the general’s suite. That person, in
turn, wrote Leborgne an insulting letter, but Rochambeau appears to have m ade no move
to censure the individual. As the result, Leborgne (like Pelauque) took the view that the
governor was siding with the Royalists. The break between the two men had probably
been only a matter o f time, but Leborgne, who also had sided with Pelauque during the
controversy surrounding Mme de Tully, now decided that he was useless on Martinique.
Consequently, he left the island with the excuse that he would travel to France to b rief the
National Convention on the state of the colony and to ask for reinforcements. Instead, he
sailed to Saint-Domingue where he once again offered his services to Sonthonax .50
The loss o f Leborgne was probably o f less consequence than the fact that by
November, both the Ministry of Marine and the National Convention remained ignorant
49 Ibid. The Provisional Administration simply codified an extant “Directory”
that Rochambeau had established during the early days of the first British invasion. At
that time, he had named Directors for each of Martinique’s four “districts,” who served
purely at his discretion. While it may have been a simple oversight, the new constitu tion
contained no provision to relieve these four individuals of their duties. Under the newsystem, in addition to the four elected Directors and the Procurateur-General-Syndic, the
Provisional Administration also counted a secretary-recorder, and a general treasurer who
managed receivers o f funds in each o f the arrondissements.
50 Bailleul, Report, 37; Daney, Histoire de la M artinique, 227.
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of recent events in their newest departement. It was for this reason that Rochambeau sent
his aide-de-camp, Colonel Lahoussaye de Cypre, to France with all of the most recent
news o f the colony. He would only find out years later that Lahoussaye had never
accomplished his mission. Arriving in Paris at the height of the Terror in December
1793, the aristocratic Lahoussaye was imprisoned, his dispatches casually examined, and
then forgotten.51
In late 1793 the metropolitan government in France was afforded a fleeting
opportunity to benefit from the work done by Rocham beau in the nation’s newest
departement of Martinique. Revolutionary order was imposed upon the fractious colony,
and, within the limits o f troops and materiel available, Republican forces were organized
to prepare to repel a foreign invasion. However, policy makers in France were
completely consumed by the war on the Continent; the government in Paris paid little
attention to the military opportunities offered in any o f the W indward Island colonies.
Events on Martinique left Rochambeau little time or military resources to deal
with the counterrevolutionaries in his other colonies. He was fortunate, however, to have
51 Foumiols to the Comite de Salut Public, 11 August 1795, reprinted in Daney,
Documents , 190. This source is particularly noteworthy. Before being elected to
Martinique’s Representative Assembly, Foumiols had been a successful businessman in
Saint-Pierre, and thus one o f the same group that would have held so much resentment
against Rochambeau for his trade policies. After the British occupied Martinique in late
March 1794, at least a part of the Assembly continued to function in absentia, and
Foumiols was elected as one of the departement 's deputies to the National
“Thermidorean” Convention. It was in this capacity that he and several of his colleaguesfrom Martinique were in positions to make recommendations to the new national
Committee o f Public Safety regarding Rochambeau’s performance as G overnor General
and his potential reinstatement to command. To a man, each o f the former businessmen
and planters, all considered good Republicans, praised the general’s performance from his
arrival in the colony until its eventual surrender.
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In late summer 1789, Dillon left Port-Louis to serve as deputy to the new National
Assembly in Paris. He appointed the commander o f the island’s battalion o f regular
troops, Lieutenant Colonel, sieur de Jobal, to serve as governor until his return. De
Jobal’s governorship might have passed without incident had Tobago remained isolated
from France, but in the m iddle of October 1789 news reached the colony describing the
tumultuous events that had occurred in Paris earlier that fall. As a result, on 18 October
pro-Revolution soldiers from de Jobal’s battalion joined with Tobagonese civilians to
raise new Tricolors over several buildings in Port-Louis; de Jobal intervened with his
remaining Loyalist troops to have the provocative flags taken down. Days later, the
island’s liberal Colonial Assembly attempted to remodel itself as a Patriotic Assembly.
When the Assembly tried to swear-in some o f the island’s Republican troops as members,
de Jobal again intervened and prohibited the assembly from meeting.2
For several months, de Jobal managed to keep tight control over the colony’s
affairs, but the dissatisfaction among his battalion’s enlisted soldiers eventually resulted
in his downfall. In February 1790, hundreds o f the garrison’s troops revolted when their
officers refused to ease strict regulations governing the soldiers’ use of their barracks
cantine. For two days, mutinous infantrymen controlled Port-Louis until Loyalist officers
ability and his non-invasive leadership style were reassuring to the Tobagonese. Dil lon’s
governorship appeared so successful that policy makers at Versailles concluded that the
majority of non-French Tobagonese fully supported the French administration. In fact,Tobago was so far removed from France that little taking place in the metropole had any
appreciable impact in the colony.
2 Saintoyant, La Colonisation Frangaise Pendant La Revolution, 227-228.
Tobago’s Assemblee Patriotique lasted only three days.
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On 29 December 1793 a courier ship, the Union, arrived from France. At last, it
appeared that the M inister of Marine and the Colonies had honored Rochambeau’s
requests. Without doubt, the news that Rochambeau and the citizens o f Martinique
received was nothing short of remarkable. According to Monge’s dispatches,
reinforcements were scheduled to arrive shortly, including at least six ships of the line, a
large number o f frigates and 13,000 men. In the jaundiced view of Bailleul, it appeared
that “at this moment, there was no t a single person who did not pretend to be the best
Republican in the colony.” Indeed, unreconstructed Royalists in the Windward Islands
certainly had reason to fear for their future. To their shock, they learned that the French
Army was enjoying spectacular successes against their enemies on the Continent - the
Levee en masse had saved France and the Convention troops had taken the offensive. If
the war on the Continent were brought to a close, the Royalists reasoned, it was only a
matter o f months before the C onvention would turn their attention, and undoubtedly their
military forces, against the Caribbean colonies.42
Not everyone on Martinique was so quick to believe the ministerial reports.
Pelauque and Bellegarde sent out Chasseurs from la Trinite to warn islanders that the
41 Rochambeau to Monge, 16 October 1793. AN, Archives Fonds AF III
209/953, item 18, 1-2.
42 Bailleul, Report, 73; Anonymous (aide-de-camp to Rochambeau), “Precis duSiege,” 2. Because the Union had made its first stop in Guadeloupe, conspiratorial
rumors emerged in Martinique that Rochambeau and his governors planned to arrest
radical Republicans and then use the Union to deport them to Royalist-controlled areas in
France. In fact, the Union remained in Martinique until the colony capitulated to the
British in March 1794.
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more serious problems. Even with four government representatives in la Trinite calling
upon Bellegarde and Pelauque to obey the law, the situation was never resolved - the
English w ould arrive first.54
In fact, the Dautreman affair was only one incident in a much larger British effort
to smuggle Royalists and other agents onto Martinique. Despite the government’s best
efforts, in January 1794 counterrevolutionary guerrillas once again began to conduct
sporadic nightly raids against remote, w eakly-held Republican positions. Throughout the
month, the Royalists’ numbers and activities steadily increased, but they were never able
to muster enough strength to overpower Rocham beau’s forces. Their only hope for
success lay with an invasion by the British. Contrary to what they were being told by the
government, intelligence arriving in the colony’s ports in January 1794 began to convince
Martiniquais citizens that another British attack was imminent; as their fear grew,
Republicans again attacked Rochambeau. Since his arrival, they maintained, he had done
little to try to save the colony or to prepare the troops for the island’s defense. Instead,
54 Ibid. No official explanation exists for Bellegarde’s protection of Dautreman,
but his motives may have been either racially or politically based. On 30 N ovember
1793, the Assembly passed a law that i f a slave was convicted by the Revolutionary
Tribunal, that conviction would be permanent and without appeal. However, death
penalties were to be com muted to life sentences for slave leaders, while those who were
forced by their masters to engage in counterrevolutionary activity would only receive five
years labor in the fields. While the new laws appeared lenient to the colony’s whiteleaders, such measures remained intolerable to the blacks in Bellegarde’s battalion. For
this reason, the Chasseurs de la Martinique may have sought to protect the presumably
innocent Dautreman from receiving a requisite life sentence. On the other hand,
Bellegarde and Pelauque may have protected Dautreman because he truly was a British
agent.
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In his initial estimates for the expedition against the French Windward Islands,
Dundas placed fourteen infantry regiments, or about 11,000 troops, under Grey’s
command. However, in late September 1793, Dundas diverted eight of Grey’s regiments
to bolster allied operations in Flanders. Consequently, Dundas was compelled to revise
his campaign strategy for the Windward Islands by attacking the islands o f Sainte-Lucie
and Guadeloupe before attempting to invade the more formidable defenses o f
Martinique.2
Despite the reductions, Grey maintained 6,085 infantrymen under his command,
including a de tachment o f black soldiers known as the “Carolina Dragoons,” while
Jervis’ fleet included four First Rate ships, nine frigates, and scores of corvettes, bomb
ketches, and transports. The expeditionary force left Portsmouth on 26 November 1793.
Upon its arrival in Carlisle Bay, Barbados on 6 January 1794, the squadron was joined by
the Asia (64) and another three frigates. Although the last instructions that Dundas gave
twenty-seven ship Spanish squadron off Cape Saint Vincent. For this action, Jervis
received a peerage, and became Earl o f Saint Vincent. While serving as First Lord o f the
Admiralty (1801-1806), Jervis concentrated on restoring discipline in the ranks o f the
Royal Navy primarily attending to matters o f shipboard health and sanitation. For a short
time in 1806, Jervis returned to sea as Comm ander in Chief, Mediterranean until his
health began to fail later that year. In 1821, he became the second officer in the modem
Royal Navy (after William Henry Hanover, Duke o f Clarence in 1811) to hold the rank o f
Admiral of the Fleet. He died in 1823.
2 David Geggus, “The British government and the Saint Domingue slave revolt,
1791-1793,” English Historical Review, XCVI: 379 (1981): 300-301. One month later,five of these eight regiments were again reassigned, this time to support French Royalists
in Brittany. When Royalists opened Toulon to a British naval squadron at the end of
August, Dundas was offered another tempting opportunity to strike at the French on the
Continent. Dundas ordered that more o f Grey’s allotted troops (those stationed at
Gibralter) go to Toulon.
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to Grey were to take the smaller islands first, detailed reports from French emigres in
Barbados convinced Grey that an initial attack against Martinique would succeed.3
Whether by D undas’ design, or as the result of his ignorance o f military affairs, it
helped the British effort because General Grey was given the latitude to modify his orders
as best suited the situation. Dundas’ primary goal was for Grey to capture all of the
French Windward Islands, but regardless of the order, Martinique remained the key. Grey
knew that once he controlled this strongest of the French possessions, he could easily
force the surrender of Sainte-Lucie and Guadeloupe, but not vice-versa. Indeed, the
amount o f troops required to conquer and occupy the other islands would dangerously
deplete the forces that he needed for a successful campaign against the principle French
force under Rochambeau. Worse still, if he did not capture Martinique in the 1794
campaign season, the anticipated arrival of French reinforcements would make his
mission considerably more difficult, i f not impossible.4
3 Rev. Cooper Willyams, Expedition A gainst The French West India Is lands.
(London, 1796) 15-16; Daney, Histoire de la Martinique, 228; Kleczewski, Martinique
and the British Occupation, 130-135. Grey’s reported personnel totals did not include
224 men who remained sick aboard the ships, or 977 sick men who were left at Barbados.
Nevertheless, Rochambeau, who based his information on the latest reports that he
received from France, still believed that Grey had anywhere from 12,000 to 16,000 elite
troops at his disposal, with even more arriving from Canada under the command o f his
Royal Highness, Prince Edward. Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entry for 4 February
1794.
4 Grey to Dundas, 16 March 1794. PRO, CO, 318.14, 21; Kleczewski, Martinique an d the British Occupation, 132-133. Dundas put very few stipulations in his
“secret instructions” to Grey, demanding primarily that the general acquire the islands “in
the most expeditious manner, and with the least loss or hazard to our troops.” Dundas to
Grey “Orders and Secret Instructions,” 11 November 1793. PRO, CO, 318.13, 452-453,
455.
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A critical contribution to the general’s planning was well-informed reports from
many o f Martinique's key Royalist leaders concerning the dispositions of the Republican
troops and the state of the fortifications on the island. Henri de Percin offered his
services as one of the most useful informers.7 Thus armed with solid and current
intelligence, the British expeditionary force remained in Barbados’ Carlisle Bay for just
over a month, making extensive preparations for w hat all expected would be a heavily-
resisted invasion. Grey and his subordinate army commanders drilled their infantry and
artillerymen on shore, while Admiral Jervis personally supervised details shipboard,
including training his sailors as pike bearing foot soldiers, and assembling prefabricated
gun boats that the fleet had brought from England.8
6 Royalist informers on Martinique also informed Grey and Jervis that Bellegarde
defended la Trinite, and that he and Rochambeau were at odds. Willyams, Expedition,
10; Grey to Dundas, 16 March 1794. PRO, CO, 318.14, 33; Daney, Histoire de la
Martinique, 229. Gordon temporarily commanded the third brigade in the place of
H.R.H. Edward Augustus Hanover, Duke o f Kent, who was expected to arrive fromCanada with reinforcements.
7 De Perc in’s associates included Fort-de-la-Convention’s former ch ief engineer
M. de Guignod, Pothau Desgatiere, and scores of others. Years earlier, de Guignod had
assisted the noted French fortifications engineer, Claude Fr an c is , marquis de Bouille, in
the construction o f Fort-de-la-Convention. Once the British began their campaign on
Martinique, these emigres immediately returned to their plantations and put their
demoralized slaves, who had heard rumors concerning the Civil Com mission’s
emancipation of Saint-Domingue’s slaves, back to work. Rochambeau, “Journal du
siege,” entry for 9 February 1794. Unfortunately for the island’s slaves, the National
Convention’s 4 February 1794 emancipation decree arrived on Martinique just days afterthe British forced Rochambeau to surrender the colony. The liberation of Martinique’s
slaves did not actually occur until many years later.
8 These lateen-rigged gun boats were well-suited amphibious attacks, especially
for close-in work against seaside towns and fortifications. Small and extremely difficult
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down the cure 's guns without hesitation. After the priest and his compatriots hit the
Boyne with a heated ball from one of the village’s two 24-pounders, crewmen aboard the
Veteran opened fire with their lower deck cannon and blasted the Frenchmen out o f their
works.12 Next, several other ships turned their guns against the battery at Sainte-Anne;
after a quick series o f broadsides, the Republicans vacated these works as well. A
detachment of Royal Marines landed there to spike the guns, and destroy their carriages.
With Sainte-Anne secure, Grey landed a detachment o f infantrymen in the village with
orders to move south to take the battery at Pointe Dunkerque from the rear. By early
evening, the soldiers had accomplished their mission; Sainte-Luce Channel and the
entrance to the Cul de Sac du Marin were open for the main British landing.13
On the other side of the island, the citizens of le Robert and la Trinite also
discovered that the twenty ships sailing toward them were enemy. When the British
squadron appeared in the Baie du Galion late on the afternoon of 5 February, Bellegarde
sent a rider to Republique-ville to alert Rochambeau to prepare reinforcements. This
second British attack proved to be a complete surprise to the staff at army headquarters at
Fort-de-la-Republique. In fact, Rochambeau was in Saint-Pierre reviewing troops that,
12 Both Rochambeau and Bailleul mention the heroic actions o f Sainte-Luce’s
cure. However, the official history of the village (one copy remains in the Sainte-Luce
library) maintains that during the period, Sainte-Luce had no cure. While certain details
o f the encounter may be legend, Reverend Cooper Willyams, who witnessed the
engagement from aboard the Veteran, was quite specific in his description of the event.To this day, a weathered 24-pounder cannon rests in a concrete carriage on a blu ff above
Fort-de-la-Convention as the final rallying point for forces defending the island, and
prepared a small group of his most experienced soldiers to march to Republique-ville to
occupy the fortress .15
Before leaving Saint-Pierre, Rochambeau delivered a letter to the Representative
Assembly, apprizing them o f the situation on the island. That evening, the Assembly
officially declared Martinique in a state o f siege, and selected twelve volunteer members
to serve as a general Committee o f Public Safety for Martinique. After awarding the new
committee full legislative powers to defend the colony by whatever means necessary, the
Assemblymen issued a final proclamation calling upon Republicans to “remember their
strength and their earlier victories, and to fight to the death rather than surrender the
island.” With these parting words, the Representative Assembly dissolved itself, and its
members quickly returned to their own parishes. Rochambeau, on the other hand, set out
to find the enemy. When he stopped at Republique-ville to change horses, he confirmed
to the anxious city authorities that the British had invaded several points on the island,
15 Ibid., 91; Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entry for 5 February 1794; Daney,
Histoire de la Martinique, 229. Rochambeau further advised Bellegarde to fall back to
Gros-Mome i f he were unable to hold la Trinite, but he kept two o f Bellegarde’s
companies in reserve, one under Captain Octavius in le Robert, the other in Republique-ville. Further, though Major Edouard Meunier was instructed to eventually move to
Saint-Pierre, Rochambeau gave him contradictory orders to put him self and his men
under Bellegarde’s command if the situation warranted it. Meunier ignored this second
order - a decision that would have grave consequences when the British attacked
Bellegarde at la Trinite.
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and that he was on his way to Pointe Borgnesse to reconnoiter the main British attack
himself. Rochambeau then disappeared into the twilight.16
On the morning of 6 February, Major General Dundas’ brigade encountered fierce
resistance in his landing in the Baie du Gabon. Elements of 1st Chasseur Battalion
augmented by National Guard from la Trinite delayed the British landing for several
hours by ambushing Dundas’ troops from sugarcane fields, several yards from the beach.
They withdrew toward their entrenchments only after being driven out o f their positions
by British bayonets.17 Despite the delay, by mid-morning Dundas disembarked 800
infantrymen and two field pieces. He made his first encampment at a nearby plantation
whose Royalist overseer, M. Charton, offered to guide the enemy to Mome Vert-Pre,
where Dundas and his troops could easily overwhelm Edouard Meunier’s recently-arrived
Chasseur battalion. This diversion was not in his instructions, but to Dundas, protecting
his southern flank by clearing the Republicans from the former “Royalists’ Gibralter”
seemed to be sound military reasoning. When the British reached Mom e Vert-Pre that
afternoon, however, they were surprised to discover that Meunier and his battalion were
16 Ibid., 89, 94; Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entry for 5 February 1794.
While the new Committee o f Public Safety in Saint-Pierre organized itself, three former
members of the Assembly’s Committee o f General Security in Republique-ville held all
government power throughout the night o f 5-6 February. At around midnight, this
intermediary body learned from another Chasseur messenger that not only had la Trinite
fallen to the British, but that Rochambeau had been beaten on the field. Further, theChasseur announced, the British mandated that all committees and assemblies on the
island were to cease their functions immediately. Fortunately for the French, the
committee members took no action - the message was a complete fabrication.
Dundas’ Landing and Attacks Near Morne Vert-Pre6 February 1794 - Major Gene ral Thomas Dundas landed his troops at Galion. Elements
of Bellegard e’s 1st Chasseur Battalion and National Guard from la Trinity offered stiff
resistance at the beach and then retreated. Dundas made two attempts to take the Republican stronghold at Morne Vert-Pre, but was stopped by Lieutenant Colonel
Edouard M eunier and companies of the 1st and 2d Chasseur Battalions (augmented by
National Guard from le Robert and Gros-Morne).
9
Enlarged
Area
Figure 36. Dundas’ Landing and Attacks Near Morne Vert-Pre402
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Pointe Borgnesse. The blacks scattered when they saw the English boat coming toward
them, and when the officers came ashore, they discovered that the men were assisting a
white man whose leg had been shattered by a cannon ball. Rather than offering to assist
the wounded Republican themselves, the lieutenants simply left him with a copy o f the
surrender proclamation and returned to their ship.30
Another message was sent the next day, but Rochambeau had received the British
terms, apparently sent by the wounded man, while inspecting le Marin the previous day,
and was singularly unimpressed. Grey had hundreds o f placards distributed warning
Martiniquais against futile resistance, and asking the troops to lay down their arms and
pu t themselves under the protec tion o f King George III. Rochambeau had seen the
hackneyed verbiage before. “This placard,” he remarked in his diary, “was copied from
the same proc lamation that Lord Hood addressed to the city o f Toulon, the only
difference being that this time, the British generals were taking possession o f the colony
for George III, and not some imaginary young king.” Refusing to honor the summons
with a reply, Rochambeau instead sent a company of National Guard to le Marin with
strict orders to hold the city at all costs.31
By the afternoon o f 6 February, the British plan was becoming obvious to the
30 Willyams, Expedition, 20-24. Republicans in le Marin later answered the
accusation of firing on a flag o f truce by saying that because the messenger boat was
flying a white flag, they assumed that it was the detested pav ilion blanc o f the Royalists.To the British, this reply was pure nonsense. Following the incident, however, Jervis
made arrangements with Rochambeau that in the future, any truce ship would fly the
French Tricolor from the fore, and the British national colors aft.
31 Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entry for 6 February 1794.
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Commandant Naverres entered Saint-Pierre ahead o f his commander, and attempted to pave the way for Bellegarde’s arrival. During a loud argument with some of the city’s
National Guard, Major Naverres faithfully proclaimed Bellegarde’s loyalty, bravery and
military prowess.
42 Ibid.
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prevent the British from landing at Case-Navire was so resolute that Rochambeau, who
arrived shortly after Gordon began his attack, wrote in his diary that he was truly amazed
to see such a small group of men holding off a large English force. After nearly an hour,
a frustrated Colonel Gordon decided to launch his attack elsewhere.3
Gordon chose Case-Pilote, only a few m iles north of Case-Navire, as his new
landing point. For ten hours, Captain Josias Rogers’ frigate, the Quebec (32), and a
second man-o-war, pounded the village battery, but with only thirty cannon rounds
available, the artillerymen in Case-Pilote could do little in retaliation. Meanwhile, other
English ships discovered a nearby landing spot that was not effectively covered by the
French battery at nearby Fond Capot. While enemy naval artillery bombarded this
position, Gordon landed his troops. Again Captain R ene’s Chasseurs resisted the landing
from positions on the beach and the surrounding bluffs. Faced with being overrun by the
hundreds o f men that Gordon landed, however, Rene eventually ordered his Chasseurs to
retreat to redoubts in the hills above the village.4
By nightfall, Gordon’s entire brigade occupied Case-Pilote. The naval squadron
continued to pummel the surrounding French batteries, negating an infantry attack against
them. Meanwhile, Gordon realized the dangerous possibility that he and his men might
become caught between French reinforcements moving south from Saint-Pierre and north
3 Willyams, Expedition , 30; Bailleul, Report (Seconde Partie), 104; Rochambeau,“Journal du siege,” entry for 8 February 1794; Grey to Dundas, 16 March 1794. PRO,
CO, 318.14, 33; Daney, Histoire de la Martinique, 229. Case-Navire was the site of a
successful British invasion in 1762.
4 Ibid.
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Gordon Attacks at Case Navire8-9 February 1794 - A British squadron first attacked at Case-Navire, but was repulsed by
Republican regular artillerymen and Captain Ren e’s Chasseur company. The squadron
then succeeded in landing Colonel Charles Gordon’s brigade at Case-Pilote. Gordon immediately moved his men deep inland, surprising and capturing scores of National Guard
in hilltop redoubts. In Saint-Pierre , National Guard repositioned to defend the city.
Enlarged Are i
Figure 41. Gordon Attacks at Case Navire
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entry for 8 February 1794; Anonymous (aide-de-camp to Rochambeau), “Precis du
Siege,” 3; Grey to Dundas, 16 March 1794. PRO, CO, 318.14, 33; Daney, Histoire de la
Martinique , 229. The presence of the British squadron off of Case-Pilote already prevented any communication by sea between Saint-Pierre and Republique-ville. With
the capture of the fortified positions above the village, Gordon effectively blocked any
communication by land. More important, Gordon’s brigade established such a strong
foothold inland that Grey could move against Republique-ville from the south (Prescott),
from the east (Dundas) and from the northwest (Gordon).
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9 February 1794 - After leaving Saint-Pierre with his recruits, Bellegarde arrived at Republique-ville. Rochamb eau ordered the Chasseurs to occupy the Surirey Heights to
block Dunda s’ advance on the capitol.
Enlarged Are
Figure 44. Bel legarde’s March on Republique-ville
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British blockade and send reinforcements. Unfortunately for the French, salvation
appeared increasingly unlikely. Isaac and Lamaury dutifully reported Rochambeau’s
comments to the Committee of Public Safety in Republique-ville; despite their
indignation, the committee members were realistic about the situation. Barring one or
two notable exceptions, recent events called into question the reliability of the Chasseurs
and the National Guard. Thus, the committee members agreed that Rochambeau had not
spoken treasonously, but they were alarmed by his defeatist tone. At what point, they
wondered, would he mention surrender?25
When Rochambeau appeared at the Hotel de Ville the next morning, the
Committee received their answer - Rochambeau would not give up. If French
reinforcements truly were en route, he explained, the British might be beaten. The key,
he said, was to hold Republique-ville for as long as possible. The shortage o f available
forces made it impossible to mount any large-scale counterattack, but he certainly could
delay the British by establishing a tight defensive perimeter around the capital city. He
reminded the Committee that remnants o f his battalions still held heavily-defended
outposts around Republique-ville. If these units conducted slow, fighting withdrawals
25 Unlike some members of the Committee o f Public Safety in Republique-ville,
Revolutionary dogma did not cloud Rochambeau’s military judgement - he held no
delusions concerning the condition o f the island’s defenders. “The enemy’s initial
success had taken a severe toll on the spirits o f the troops,” he wrote in his journal, “now
they were coming to realize their weakness.” The Committee of Public Safety in the
capital, was not prepared to admit the possibility of defeat. As a result of Rocham beau’ssober appraisals, they took steps to gain control of military affairs themselves. Perhaps
believing that they could control the general by controlling the army’s dwindling supplies,
the body ruled that the Orderer of military stores in the capital would release nothing
unless the requisition was approved by a member the Committee. Rochambeau, “Journal
du siege,” entry for 11 February 1794; Bailleul, Report (Seconde Partie), 114, 118.
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Ironically, the disaster at ilet a Ramiers simplified Rochambeau’s defense plans.
He had lost control o f the southern ha lf o f the Baie du Republique-ville, but the combined
firepower from Fort-de-la-Republique and Fort-de-la-Convention remained adequate to
defend the immediate area around the capital city. Without creating a new defensive
perimeter, Rochambeau issued the necessary orders to tighten the line.
Although Grey had phased his attacks with methodical precision, the time
advantage that Rochambeau gained by Grey’s deliberation was outweighed by the vast
numerical superiority o f the British troops. Grey understood well that time was on his
side; he spent the remainder of 11 February resting his forces for the main attack against
Republique-ville. After the capture o f Ilet a Ramiers, Generals Prescott and Whyte
reorganized their units and marched from Grande Anse Peninsula to link up with Grey at
Riviere-Salee. To the northwest of the capital, Gordon remained in his strongholds
overlooking Case-Navire, w hile east o f Republique-ville, Dundas rested his troops in
their camps at Poste Calon and Mom e le Brun.
After he issued his orders, Rochambeau left Republique-ville at noon on 11
February to inspect his remaining western outposts; his first stop was Camp-Decide.
Since de Percin’s previous stronghold sat astride the principle road that ran through the
and M. Percin-Comette, entered the fort ahead o f their British allies, where they found
Leonard at the head o f his wounded defenders, welcoming the English with open arms.
Immediately recognizing Captain Leonard as a fellow aristocrat, La Grange and Percin-
Comette were said to have then laughed contemptuously at the remaining defenders whohad been so easily duped by their commander. Once these men were rounded up,
Leonard was told to go home to get his Cross o f Saint-Louis so that he might wear it on
his uniform when he dined with his emigre friends that evening - the remaining defenders
of Ilet a Ramiers were taken in shackles to a British prisoner ship. Bailleul, Report
(Seconde Partie), 118.
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probably, most believed, never to be heard from again. To everyone’s surprise they
reappeared a short time later and offered to provide 170,000 livres at no interest, asking
only that Rochambeau and the Committee write letters of guarantee that the Government
of France would reimburse them for their potential losses. There was one problem; the
merchants asked for reimbursement not in paper currency, but instead in gold Tournois,
which, at the time, held an exchange value of 1 = 1V 2 to the French livre. Naturally, the
committee members revolted at the idea o f a not-so-well-hidden fifty per-cent interest
rate, but despite their pleas to the lenders to support the patrie in good faith, the
merchants persisted in their demand. When Rochambeau assured everyone concerned
that the interest would pose no problems, the commissaires reluctantly acquiesced to the
terms. The treasury was empty, the committee members believed, and they did not want
to be held responsible for the capture of the colony by not approving the loan.4
As soon as Rocham beau and the Committee signed the agreement with the
lenders, a new battle between the military and civil authorities ensued over the
distribution of the funds. When Commissary of War Daigremont reported a short time
later that the supposedly depleted treasury still contained 56,000 livres, the shocked
committee members expressed outrage that they were not told that such a considerable
sum remained available. This knowledge could have improved the Committee’s
4 Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entry for 14 February 1794; Bailleul, Report (Seconde Partie), 124-125. The Tournois d ’or had been minted in various iterations
since the 9th Century, first by the Abbey o f Saint Martin in Tours and later by the city’s
municipal government. Until 1783, the Tournois d ’or, known also as the “Tournois
Pound” was equal in value to one livre, but as the paper currency depreciated, the
Tournois d ’or maintained its value on the international market.
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bargaining position with the city’s businessmen considerably, and immediately, the
members accused the military of duplicity. They were soon made more suspicious when
Daigremont adjusted his initial report, announcing another 3,300 livres that he had
forgotten to include.5
Daigremont’s negligent accounting was more than the Committee of Public Safety
of Republique-ville was willing to tolerate. They immediately put the remaining funds
under their personal protection, demanded that Daigremont be relieved, and called upon
Rochambeau to justify why he had so vigorously promoted the idea that the colony was in
a fiscal crisis. The colony was indeed in financial straits, Rochambeau explained. Most
of the 56,000 livres had been committed already, and it was he, not Daigremont, who had
approved the expenditures. From memory, he enumerated several recent purchases,
including 14,000 livres to the head surgeon in charge o f the city hospital, and another
12,000 to be divided between the 32nd and 37th Lines in partial payment o f the regular
soldiers’ in arrears.6
That Rochambeau had obligated funds to pay his professional soldiers infuriated
the civilian committee members. Why should the French regular troops be paid, they
asserted, when good Republicans on the island were willing to fight for free? “Lest the
5 Bailleul , Report (Seconde Partie), 126.
6 Ibid. The situation worsened when the Committee discovered that the majorityof these commitments were made jus t before Daigremont was to make his report. Again,
committee members accused Daigremont o f Royalist sympathies, and included this
allegation in their justification to sequester the treasury. The Commissary o f War did his
best to dispel the supposition, but the former aristocrat found little sympathy among the
Republicans.
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volunteers could no t hold their positions in the face of the British professionals, and
within minutes, the Boscq’s troops abandoned the fight either to surrender to the English
or to flee to their homes to hide. Lacorbiere was left with no choice other than to retreat
with the remainder of his National Guard to the military camp in Saint-Pierre.26
Throughout the afternoon and evening, Republican detachments around Saint-
Pierre half-heartedly reinforced positions along the eastern approaches to the city, but
there was little willingness to continue fighting. Contradictory orders to reposition their
units further demoralized the National Guard, who soon suspected that their constant
movement was a plot to exhaust them before they faced the enemy. Instead, many
dispirited Republicans chose to either desert or surrender to the English rather than fight.
As the result, the number o f available troops in Saint-Pierre dwindled hourly. Despite the
repeated reassurances by committee members, the politicians were unable to stem the
wave o f pessimism that overcame the troops.27
With so many Republicans surrendering or fleeing the field, Dundas pushed his
men throughout the night of 15-16 February to capture as many enemy positions above
Saint-Pierre as possible. In fact, Dundas could easily have captured Saint-Pierre that
night had he simply pursued the retreating Republican forces; fortunately for the citizens
26 Ibid., 138. In an effort to gain intelligence on the battles taking place northeast
of the city, the Committee o f Public Safety in Saint-Pierre sent the commander o f the city
garrison, Commandant Mollerat, to inspect the posts along the le Mom e Rouge-Saint-
Pierre road. When Mollerat arrived at Terrien, he noticed that the English were movingto cut of f a the Republicans’ retreat. Lest they be captured, Mollerat ordered the troops to
fall back to the Valminiere plantation. This order, however, was never followed;
Republicans that were not killed or captured, escaped into Saint-Pierre.
27 Ibid.
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15 - 17 February 1794 - Dundas and Campbell attacked Republican redoubts northeast of Saint-Pierre. Follow ing an initial skirmish at the Rosiers habitation, Meunier and his
Chasseurs withdrew to le Morne Rou ge. Dundas subsequently pushed the Republicans
through redoubts at Lavernade and Terrien, and finally into Saint-Pierre. Jervis sent a
squadron and infantry to assault Saint-Pierre by sea. Dundas remained in positions above
Saint-Pierre throughout the 16th and 17th -- the British captured the city from the sea.
Enlarged Art a
Figure 53. The Battle for Saint-Pierre
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When news reached the capital that the British controlled Saint-Pierre, members
of the Committee o f Public Safety of Republique-ville turned their bile against
Rochambeau, accusing him o f negligence for having left the road open between Saint-
Pierre and la Trinite. The general did not bother to rebut these new charges. For days,
the British had effectively contained Rochambeau’s forces in Republique-ville. The
British constructed new artillery positions around the capital, while enemy transports
landed more troops in the Cohe du Lamentin. In every quarter of Martinique, save the
capital city, the island’s defenses had collapsed. Ironically, it was now Bellegarde and his
Chasseurs at Surirey who constituted Rochambeau’s forward line o f defense.34
Just as Rocham beau was consolidating his defenses around Republique-ville,
Bellegarde and the remnants of the 1st Chasseur Battalion demanded the opportunity to
attack Prescott’s troops. Rochambeau ordered the battalion to fortify the Surirey
published specific orders banning looting under penalty of death. As a result, at least one
British soldier (a drummer) was hanged from the gates o f Saint-Pierre’s Jesuit College forthat crime. On the other hand, Rochambeau claimed in his diary that the English troops
forced wounded and sick Frenchmen out o f the c ity’s hospital and into the streets to make
room for their own soldiers. While not going into such detail, Rev. Willyams’ account
did confirm that British soldiers “found infinite use for our sick and wounded....in the
large and commodious hospital.” Willyams, Expedition, 42, 45; Rochambeau, “Journal
du siege,” entry for 16 February 1794.
34 Bailleul, Report (Seconde Partie), 138. Though he continued to rely on the
Chasseurs to hold Republique-ville’s eastern flank, Rochambeau was exasperated with
Bellegarde and his men. On the morning o f the 17th, a group of Chasseurs brought to his
headquarters a black man, who they said was a sorcerer in the service of the enemy.According to the Chasseurs, the man carried a charm in his pocket - a lemon - which
would guarantee that the British would capture the forts. Rochambeau dismissed this
ridiculous “ poltronerie ,” but to divest him o f his magical powers, the Chasseurs
nevertheless publicly shaved the prisoner from head to toe and threw him in the for t’s jail.
Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entry for 17 February 1794.
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encampment, but Bellegarde claimed the eastern defenses of Republique-ville were
secure, and asked Rochambeau for permission to attack the British troops landing in the
Cohe du Lamentin. Surprisingly, the general acquiesced, telling the Chasseur commander
to “do whatever he wanted.” Instead of attacking south, however, Bellegarde changed his
plan and prepared to attack the Maltide camp at M om e le Brun. When Rochambeau
learned o f Bellegarde’s intentions, on the morning o f the 18th, he immediately sent Jean
Isaac to their camp to warn Bellegarde that all military forces were to remain in their
current positions and not undertake any offensive action. Isaac arrived at the Surirey
camp that afternoon, but he was too late; Bellegarde and his men were already on their
way to Mome le Brun.35
Meanwhile, Rochambeau convened the Committee o f Public Safety for what he
described as an important announcement, and then read aloud the letter from Soudon-
Longbois to Colonel Rivecourt. When he finished, Grandmaison demanded to know why
they had not been apprized o f the letter earlier; Rochambeau jokingly replied that he had
kept the letter a secret, lest any of the committee members go over to the enemy. His
comments were not well-received.36
Grandmaison, who had a separate copy of the o f letter, noted the obvious
35 Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entry for 18 February 1794; Bailleul, Report
(Seconde Partie), 143-144, 148. Rochambeau later accused Isaac, who along with the
rest of the committee members was “ignorant of the art o f war,” o f allowing Bellegarde to
convince him to proceed with the attack. As a member of the Committee of Public Safetyin Republique-ville, it was certainly within Isaac’s power to prevent the attack from
taking place.
36 Bailleul, Report (Seconde Partie), 144-145; Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,”
entry for 19 Februaiy 1794.
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three infantry battalions to storm the southern part o f the Surirey Heights. The result of
this successful maneuver was the capture o f the National Guard company at the Chasseur
camp, and the last two field pieces that Rochambeau had available.40
Once Bellegarde realized that the counterattack by Prescott was a feint to mask
Grey’s move against the Chasseur camp at Surirey, he broke o ff his own attack against
Mome le Brun. Certainly, Bellegarde was more interested in saving his supplies than in
rescuing the National Guard company who defended his post, but he arrived too late. The
National Guard were then prisoners and the materiel in the Chasseur camp was now
British property. With no other option, Bellegarde ordered his men to seek refuge in a
nearby redoubt. When Rochambeau arrived on the scene some minutes later, he ordered
Bellegarde to retire. This time, the Chasseurs obeyed Rochambeau’s order and withdrew
to Republique-ville, where to the horror o f the inhabitants, they rioted for pay and began
looting the city. Rochambeau was so irate that he ordered his regular troops to force the
Chasseurs at gunpoint to a encamp outside the walls o f Fort-de-la-Convention’s
northernmost fortification, lunette Bouille.41 Here they remained for several days during
40 Grey to Dundas, 16 March 1794. PRO, CO, 318.14, 33; Grey had already
issued orders for a bayonet assault against the Surirey camp to take place at 1:00 a.m. on
the 19th. Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entry for 18 February 1794. These were
presumably the same two cannons that Rochambeau brought w ith him from Case-Navire.
41 Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entry for 18 February 1794; Anonymous
(aide-de-camp to Rochambeau), “Precis du Siege,” 9. Captain Magloire Pelage and his
Chasseur company held lunette Bouille (which directly faced the British artillery positions on Mome le Brun and the Surirey Heights) until the end o f the siege. With no
other mobile force between him and the enemy, Rochambeau could argue that his
decision to send additional Chasseurs to reinforce Pelage was based upo n operational
necessity. Indeed, forcing Bellegarde and his new “Chasseurs” to encamp so far from the
capital was not necessarily a punitive measure, and may have been simply protective.
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severely wounded (the servant mortally), with both o f their horses each carrying four or
five musket ball wounds. The British had refused to deal with them.45
The following morning, Rochambeau again sent a message to Grey, but this time
he sent Bellegarde’s former adjutant, Commandant Naverres, to deliver the message by
boat to Admiral Jervis. When Naverres reached the Boyne, Jervis opened the dispatch to
read two separate replies, one straightforward, and the other intended to irk General Grey.
The first message was a terse response by Rochambeau, “I have communicated with the
troops of the Republic: they are resolved to defend themselves.” In the second message,
however, Rochambeau offered to surrender the island on the condition that Martinique
would be restored to Louis XVII if he should come to the throne. However, he added, i f
the French Republic won the war, then the colony would be returned to France. Of
course, such an arrangement was impossible.46
Within the hour, Naverres was escorted to Surirey and given an audience w ith the
English commander. After reading the message, a somewhat surprised General Grey
penned his own responses to Rochambeau, the first one official, and the second a
response to Rochambeau’s other offer. In his first letter, Grey offered Rochambeau
45 Bailleul, Report (Seconde Partie), 150-151; Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,”
entry for 19 February 1794; Anonymous (aide-de-camp to Rochambeau), “Precis du
Siege,” 8. Already incensed that Rochambeau did not consult them prior to sending his
response, the committee members felt further insulted that he selected another o f his
aristocratic aides to deliver the message rather than choosing a “loyal Republican.”
Rochambeau had little else to discuss with the Committee, who, as far as he wasconcerned, had abrogated their authority by asserting that they could not, by law, consider
surrender. The fate o f the colony thus became a matter for the military authorities alone.
46 Rochambeau to Grey, 19 February 1794, reprinted in Daney, Documents , 176;
Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entry for 20 February 1794; Willyams, Expedition, 51.
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twenty-four hours to reconsider, and warned “I will not listen to any more proposals, and
will treat with the greatest severity those which may be contrary to my generous offers.”
In his second, he replied simply that “I came expressly to take the island for his Britannic
Majesty; and I hope to take all o f the French islands in this quarter on the same
account.”47
When Naverres returned to British headquarters the following morning, the
response that he brought from Rochambeau was clear. In fact, Rochambeau had asked
his men a second time i f they would consider surrender. “No,” they replied, “we will
defend ourselves and will fight.”48 In the preceeding week, the French had lost the
majority of Martinique. Saint-Pierre was occupied by the British, and Gordon, Jervis and
Grey surrounded Republique-ville. The cease-fire afforded some time for the French to
reorganize, but the result of Grey’s campaign was decided. Nevertheless, Rochambeau
and the loyal soldiers occupying the forts would make a final, desperate effort to defend
the honor of the Republic.
47 Rochambeau to Grey, 20 February 1794, and Grey to Rochambeau, 20
February, 1794, reprinted in Daney, Documents, 176-177; Rochambeau, “Journal du
siege”, entries for 20 and 21 February 1794. Naverres spent most of the 20th in the British
headquarters, and upon his return to Republique-ville was summoned to testify before the
Committee o f Public Safety. Wanting to confirm their suspicions that the English force
was much smaller than Grey had previously represented, the members became indignant
when Naverres imperiously parroted the British claim that they not only had 15,000 men
on the ground, but also forty mortars pointed at the capital city, ready for action. The
commissaires booed the aide out o f their chambers, saying that he “sounded more like afarmhand than a general’s aide.” Bailleul, Report {Seconde Partie), 152; Anonymous
(aide-de-camp to Rochambeau), “Precis du Siege”, 8.
48 Rochambeau to Grey, 21 February 1794, reprinted in Daney, Documents, 178;
Rochambeau, “Journal du siege”, entry for 21 February 1794; Willyams, Expedition, 51.
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The com bined land/sea attack against Republique-ville had already forced
Rochambeau to split his few artillerymen between Fort-de-la-Republique and Fort-de-la-
Convention. Now Grey and Jervis forced the Frenchmen in the two forts to fight in
nearly every direction. While gunners at Fort-de-la-Convention directed their fire west
and north toward positions held by Gordon and Grey, the men in Fort-de-la-Republique
focused their efforts on the gun boats that Jervis had sent to attack them from the bay.
That evening, Rochambeau described the deteriorating situation in his diary: “....we are
going to sustain a siege without having a single engineer to manage the defenses, without
artillerymen to serve the batteries, without troops to defend the fortresses, without sappers
to charge counter-mines, without palisades covering the streets, without staff officers,
without administrators, and without any money.”2
It was true that there was little hope of finding more money in the capital. The
Committee o f Public Safety scrupulously managed every livre that they received from the
city businessmen, but a rapid succession o f expenses threatened to empty the treasury
those properties are Poste Calon and Plateau Tiberge respectively. Grey’s men quickly
moved several kilometers farther south to the site o f Bellegarde’s former encampment at
the Tully estate (vicinity o f Floreal), and began the first of their siege trenches.
2 Rochambeau, “Journal du siege”, entry for 21 February 1794. In this same diary
entry, Rochambeau cursed Lacrosse for leaving Martinique with his only available heavy
naval asset, and lamented that “ [i]f only Lacrosse had no t deserted, certainly I would be
rid of these boats!” Such an observation seems unlikely until one considers how little the
artillerymen in Fort-de-la-Republique could depress their cannons. The British gun boats
were specifically designed to take advantage o f that limitation by being able to m ovemuch closer to an enemy fortification than any ships o f the fleet. Willyams, Expedition,
48. Even with the Felicite trapped in the anchorage next to Fort-de-la-Republique, the
height o f Lacrosse’s guns in relation to the water line would have allowed the gunners
aboard the Felicite to directly engage the British gun boats no matter how close they came
to the fort.
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a letter instructing Rochambeau to shelter women, children, old and sick in the casemates
of Fort-de-la-Republique, they were horrified when he refused.6
The difficult situation facing civilians in the capital was made worse by a citywide
food shortage. Since mid-February, National Guard troops had flocked to the city with
their families seeking refuge. In too many cases, while husbands organized to defend the
capital, their wives and children begged in the streets for bread. A few savvy locals
managed to slip out of the city to the Dillon and Valminiere plantations where slaves
traded them wheat and bananas for tafia rum, but the majority were not so well
connected. As food became more scarce, some wom en chose to seek the mercy of the
enemy rather than watch their children starve. Most remained in Republique-ville finding
food and shelter only through the kindness of a besieged citizenry. Again, the Committee
of Public Safety wrote to Rochambeau instructing him to feed any citizen and their family
who occupied a post in the city. The general agreed to this, but with only 4,800 barrels o f
6 Ibid.; Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entry for 22 February 1794. Bailleul
included Rochambeau’s response in his report to the Committee o f Public Safety in Paris,
but the attachment has since been lost. It is likely, however, that his refusal was based on
the fact that Fort-de-la-Republique was filled with its own military sick and wounded,
and that most o f the British naval artillery was being directed on that very site. Indeed,
the works in and around the fort had, by that time, suffered a great amount o f damage. A
typically curt response from Rochambeau to the city’s magistrates however, probably
would no t have explained this clearly, if at all.
At the same time, Rochambeau honored his grievously wounded best friend,
Colonel Rivecourt, by sending him home to Lamentin with the best military surgeon then
available. The Committee o f Public Safety had always distrusted Rivecourt, and wasangered by such a display of favoritism; their disapproval did not m atter to the general.
In a rare display o f personal sentiment, Rochambeau admitted a deep sadness at the loss
of his friend, and wondered privately if he would ever see him again. “It is a loss I shall
never forget,” he wrote, “I made a happy habit of his company.” Rochambeau, “Journal
du siege,” entry for 25 February 1794; Bailleul, Report (Seconde Partie), 161.
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have to presen t the note to Rochambeau for payment.10
Bellegarde was convinced he could not persuade the general to honor the note, so
he asked Pelauque to negotiate the payment. At the time, the request did not seem
altogether absurd. Pelauque had recently visited the general’s wounded friend, Colonel
Rivecourt, prior to his being transferred from the m ilitary hospital to his home in le
Lamentin. During their conversation, Rivecourt gave Pelauque the impression that a
reconciliation was possible between the two enemies. In fact, Rivecourt confided to
Pelauque, Rochambeau was even considering using him as an emissary to the British.
Unlikely as that was, and despite being warned by another o f the genera l’s confidantes
that Rochambeau still considered him his sworn enemy, Pelauque rode to Fort-de-la-
Republique to demand payment o f the Committee no te.11
The interview never occurred. Rochambeau remained ill-disposed to deal with
any Chasseurs, and was dumbfounded that o f all people, his own traitorous secretary
would come begging for money. Pelauque was ordered out of the fort before he could
even dismount his horse .12
10 Ibid., 154-155. On 22 February, Bellegarde sought and received permission
from Rochambeau to attempt to divert the enemy’s attention by attacking into the
countryside. Curiously, the “attack” only progressed as far as the Dillon plantation,
approximately one mile from the city. Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entry for 22
February 1794.
11 Ibid. Sadly, Rivecourt’s earlier failed miss ion to Grey’s camp resulted in the
amputation o f one o f his arms, and it was probably laudanum-induced de lirium thatcaused Rivecourt to confide in Pelauque that Rochambeau had changed his mind
regarding his former secretary.
12 Ibid.; Willyams, Expedit ion, 60. Pelauque rode directly to the Committee of
Public Safety to tell them o f his request and Rochambeau’s conduct. The committee
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Having failed with Pelauque, Bellegarde next sent Captain Octavius to see
Rochambeau, who admired him, but it was obvious that Bellegarde was using the captain
as an unwitting stooge. Nevertheless, when Octavius reported to the Committee that he
too was refused by Rochambeau, the news caused such an uproar that commissaires
Bailleul, Lamaury and Grandmaison went to Fort-de-la-Republique to advise
Rochambeau of the threat to the city by angering so many Republicans. Rochambeau
refused to discuss any Chasseur issues. The three commissaires were baffled. Still
unaware o f the Chasseurs’ proven incompetence and treachery, they could not
comprehend why the general would slight Bellegarde and his men. The only twisted
rationale that made sense to the committee members was that Rochambeau was trying to
destroy the 1st Chasseur B attalion because they were hampering his negotiations with the
British .13
In fact, the only Republicans negotiating with the enemy in the last week of
February were Bellegarde and Pelauque; in an effort to conceal his ow n guilt, Bellegarde
members simply shook their heads at the absurdity o f the adventure. In their opinion,
Pelauque should have know n better, but once again, the conspiratorial answer made
Pelauque’s actions seem plausible - he had become Rochambeau’s agent to the enemy.
13 Ibid., 156. Rocham beau apparently was so astounded at the committee
mem bers’ accusation that when they asked that he reconsider the recent summons to
surrender, he resorted to a contemporary profanity to indicate his loss of confidence in
them. “All of you,” he said, “have become ‘ Jean Foutraille ’,” a challenge that in the
minds o f the commissaires effectively stripped them of their remaining power. “I know
that the enemy have 15,000 men on the island,” Rochambeau told them, “and that another6,000 are expected.” When the members questioned the numbers, Rochambeau’s retort
was simply that “a general would never lie.” Thus, in accordance with the Law of 25 July
1792, the Committee had no reason to deliberate the issue further. As the highest civilian
authority, they had given their perm ission to surrender; the final decision lay with
Rochambeau.
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for 26 and 28 February 1794; Grey to Dundas, 16 March 1794. PRO, CO, 318.14, 33.
By 2 March, the Committee o f Public Safety received clearer details regarding the
defection of the Chasseurs. According to reliable reports, Bellegarde and Pelauque had
met Soudon-Longbois some days earlier at the Dillon plantation. When Bellegarde
queried Soudon about the British allowing those o f his men who wanted to defect to cross
unmolested into enemy lines, Soudon promised that he had spoken with Rocham beau
about opening up free passage into the countryside, but that Rochambeau kept all o f the
roads well guarded. Even so, Soudon told Bellegarde, the British knew everything that
went on in the forts and in the city. Thus, he knew that Rocham beau planned to arrest the
Chasseurs to satisfy his vengeance, and that they would all be safe if they came over tothe enemy. Bailleul , Report {Seconde Partie), 167-168. Several months later, Bellegarde
was recognized in Boston, Massachusetts by the crew o f a French ship that happened to
be in port. When the crewmen threatened, literally, to tear him to pieces, Bellegarde was
saved only by being placed under the protective custody of the French Consul. Daney,
Histoire de la M artinique, 232.
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reinforced Fort-de-la-Republique, while the fourth company, under Captain Pelage,
remained in lunette Bouille, where they had been posted since the Chasseur defeat at
Mome le Brun. The nature of Pelage’s mission speaks volumes for the confidence that
Rochambeau placed in him. He commanded a lunette that protected Fort-de-la-
Convention from the north, and blocked the road leading into Republique-ville from
Mom e le Brun and Surirey. Like Leonidas at Thermopylae, Pelage and his men were all
that stood between the invaders and the capital. If he failed, the battle for Martinique was
lost.19
Because approximately ha lf of his former command remained loyal, Bellegarde’s
sensational defection had less impact on Republican military manpow er than it did on the
defenders’ morale, which was weakening steadily as the result of British propaganda and
the Royalists’collaboration with them ,20 British and emigre propaganda was fairly
19 Every French account, military and civilian, praises Captain Pelage and his
actions during the defense of Republique-ville. Rochambeau often cites his bravery in his journa l o f the siege, while Committee o f Public Safety member Bailleul says that the
Chasseur captain “defended his post against repeated British onslaughts with the skill o f a
thirty-year veteran - a skill which the proud Britons never suspected.” Indeed, Pelage’s
reputation was so exemplary that even Royalists eulogized him forty years later, saying
that because o f his noteworthy conduct he was deservedly promoted to high rank by the
Republic. After Captain Lacrosse was expelled from Guadeloupe in 1801, Colonel
Magloire Pelage headed the island’s interim government until 1802, when he assisted
General Antoine Richepanse reassert metropolitan control over the colony. Pelage retired
from military service until 1808, when he was ordered to service in Spain. He died in
Spain on 7 April 1810. Bailleul, Report (Seconde Partie), 169; Daney, Histoire de la
Martinique, 235.
20 It appears tha t a large number o f the troops that Bellegarde surrendered to the
British included the newer, less-experienced recruits. Other former Chasseurs appear to
have avoided capture by fleeing into the countryside to become renegade outlaws.
Willyams, Expedit ion, 61-62.
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Another problem faced by Rochambeau was dissension being sown within his
organization. He deftly obstructed a surrender petition from his National Guard by
announcing that only the “Conseil Superieur” was allowed to determine when the
Republicans were beaten. The unwillingness of the National Guard to fight was among
the least o f his worries, but racial divisiveness was overtaking the defenders of
Republique-ville. On 4 March, Rochambeau arrested Jean-Louis Gentil, the mulatto
escapee from Sainte-Lucie who had been sent to work among the slave labor parties, for
attempting to have Rochambeau arrested, ostensibly by order o f General Ricard.24
What a sad situation it is to be abandoned by France and to be left
with insufficient means to fight exterior enemies and agitators
within. I want to warn the Executive Council of the Republic that
greater dangers exist in this colony than the expulsion o f the
British from this island. The men o f color have abused their rights
and have displayed exaggerated pretensions. They have been
abusive when they should have used sobriety, and the whites hate
them mortally. Once these two classes are victorious over the
British they will tear each other apart unless the forces promised by
the metropole are sent to establish a counterweight sufficient to
main tain public order.25
24 Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entries for 25 February and 1 March 1794;
Bailleul, Report (Seconde Partie), 170. Gentil had agitated among mulattoes and slaves
in Republique-ville for several days. To the mulattoes, he argued that if they killed the
whites and then pillaged and burned the capital, the British would look upon them more
favorably when the surrender finally came; Gentil promised slaves that if they joined the
rebellion, they would be emancipated by the British victors. In fact, Bellegarde and
Pelauque orchestrated Gentil’s activities. It was when his call to rebel did not succeed
that Gentil publicly branded Rochambeau a traitor and ordered his arrest. Though
Rochambeau was empowered to have Gentil immediately executed as a traitor, he instead
had the fugitive put in irons in Fort-de-la-Republique until he could be extradited toSainte-Lucie. General Ricard and the Colonial Assembly of Sainte-Lucie, Rochambeau
claimed were the only proper authorities to judge Gentil for the crimes that he had
committed in Sainte-Lucie and Martinique. Gentil’s ultimate fate remains unknown.
25 Ibid., entry for 4 March 1794.
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and began to direct fire against Fort-de-la-Convention from one of the batteries at the
Lacoste camp. Apparently, the bombardment did not have enough effect to please His
Royal Highness, so he decided to set Republique-ville ablaze that evening. Prince
Edward had already ordered his artillerymen to prepare the incendiary rounds when an
emigre in his camp persuaded him to stop, suggesting that his fellow Royalists in the
colony could more quickly establish a pro-British government on the island if he allowed
Republique-ville to stand.30
On 7 March 1794, Grey launched his main assault. The hidden batteries on
Mome Tartanson were engaged at dawn, and British artillery opened fire on both forts
from nearly every direction. The torrent of projectiles against Fort-de-la-Convention fell
so intensely that by mid-morning an interior wall in the fort completely broke apart,
killing or wounding nearly fifty men. Even Rochambeau, who was helping direct the
guns at Fort-de-la-Republique, sustained wounds from mortar round fragments. When
the fire slackened during the night, he set out on horseback to inspect the city defenses
and to reinforce units that had taken the highest losses. His inspection revealed extensive
damage to both forts, but Rochambeau directed his companies to repair the damages as
30 Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entries for 4 and 6 March 1794; Bailleul,
Report (Seconde Partie), 171; Grey to Dundas, 16 March 1794. PRO, CO, 318.14, 33.;
Daney, Histoire de la Martinique, 234. Lieutenant Colonel Saint-Fremont, the artillerycommander at Fort-de-la-Republique, and Lieutenant Lepelletier, who commanded the
Bienvenue (28), combined their efforts on the night o f the 6th to destroy the gun boats that
surrounded the fort. Despite concentrating their fire for several hours against the enemy
vessels, the attempt failed. Jervis’ gun boats were simply too difficult to hit, especially at
night.
511
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himself reported 201 m en wounded, and another 100 men hospitalized with dysentery.
38 Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entry for 14 March 1794; Bailleul, Report
(Seconde Partie), 179-180. Bailleul, who had harshly criticized Le Mestre earlier, wrote
that the loss of “Mestre-Causant” was a dear one, and m erited a public eulogy from
Rochambeau. “He was known as one o f the colony’s best patriots,” Bailleul now said,
“who had served unusually bravely while long surviving grievous fire upon Fort-de-la-
Convention.” The text of Rochambeau’s eulogy for Le Mestre has not survived. In his
diary, however, he wrote that “ [tjhis officer was one o f the greatest merit and his loss is
irreparable. Day and night he was on the ramparts. His work was of the greatest use to
me during the siege, where he simultaneously worked as director of the artillery, captain
of the works, spotter, and bombardier. He leaves a wife and two children. The Republicshould take care o f them and provide them a pension as this officer’s only fortune was his
talent, his courage, and his virtue.” That same day, Rochambeau relinquished command
of Fort-de-la-Republique to Lieutenant Colonel Saint-Fremont, and gave overall
command o f both forts to Colonel Daucourt. As the result, he was free to supervise the
overall defense of Republique-ville.
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Tartanson and at the d ’Estreuse plantation continued to reduce the earthen redoubt
protecting the gates o f Fort-de-la-Republique. With most o f the regular art illerymen in
the fort either killed or wounded, the Republicans inside could do little in response.46
Exploding shells from the enemy howitzers were already ravaging Republique-
ville, but Prince Edward eventually prevailed upon the British command to replace this
conventional ammunition with incendiary rounds. Once fired, many o f the fire bombs hit
the ground and extinguished themselves, but just as many others ignited scores o f houses
in the city, causing absolute pandemonium among the civilian populace. When
Rochambeau took the majority o f the men in Fort-de-la-Republique into town to fight the
fires, Jervis seized the opportunity to attempt a naval assault against the fort.47
Thus far, British naval forces had not yet attacked the few remaining French
vessels in the cove. This changed when rumors spread that the French had British
46 Willyams, Expedition, 64; Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entry for 19 March
1794. Encouraged by the weak response from both Fort-de-la-Republique and Fort-de-la-Convention, the British moved two field pieces and a howitzer onto the Case-Navire
road. Within minutes, English artillerymen were firing at the hospital, mercilessly killing
wounded troops inside and giving new wounds to others. Clearly, the English officer
who commanded the guns knew Rochambeau by sight. The general regularly crossed a
nearby bridge over the Riviere Ribodeau to dine with his friend M. Steinbrenner; every
time he appeared, the enemy cannoneers doubled their fire; they missed every time.
Bailleul, Report (Seconde Partie), 182-183.
47 Bailleul, Report (Seconde Partie), 184. When the British began their attack
against Fort-de-la-Republique with field artillery, it was inevitable that rounds would pass
over the fort and then fall in the city. At approximately 7:00 p.m. on the 16th, anexploding shell landed inside the city jail, where Rochambeau kept nearly 300 Royalists
that he had transferred from the Bienvenue (until the invasion, the ship served as a prison
barge). The explosion was so strong that it created a large crack in the wall of the jail,
and caused part of the floor to collapse. Miraculously, no one inside was hurt. Bailleul,
Report (Seconde Partie), 181.
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prisoners aboard the Bienvenue, thus exposing them to fire from the British batteries. As
the result, Lieutenant Bowen, a jun ior officer aboard the Boyne, received permission from
Admiral Jervis to try to set them free. At ten o ’clock in the morning on the 17th, Bowen
left Pointe des Carrieres with fifteen armed rowboats, moving toward Fort-de-la-
Republique. Halfway across the cove, however, ten o f the boats deceptively changed
course, and the sailors rowed furiously toward the Bienvenue. The surprised French
aboard the ship managed to fire several cannon at the rapidly approaching British, but
they were overwhelmed by the fire from the longboats. Within minutes, scores of British
sailors boarded the Bienvenue and captured the ship’s wounded commander, L ieutenant
Pelletier; most o f the sailors on deck escaped capture by jumping overboard.48
The attack by Lieutenant Bowen a ttack did not proceed unnoticed by the
defenders o f Fort-de-la-Republique. “Aux armes” sounded throughout the fort soon after
the British longboats rounded Pointe des Carrieres, and the handful o f National Guard
and Chasseurs (Octavius), not fighting fires, lined the walls o f the fort and fired a steady
fusillade o f musket and grape shot at the enemy longboats. Nevertheless, Bow en seized
the Bienvenue, B ritish artillerymen opened fire against the fort with the guns aboard the
48 Ibid., 184; Willyams, Expedition , 65. According to Republican sources, the
one sentry left to watch the cove from Fort-de-la-Republique was derelict in his duties
and provided no warning to anyone in the fort or aboard the ships.
After Captain Lacrosse’s “criminal desertion” of Martinique, Rochambeau named
Lieutenant Lepelletier commander o f French naval forces in the W indward Islands.Lepelletier was gravely wounded during the attack, but unlike his crew, he remained at
his post throughout the fight. Rochambeau was so impressed by the lieutenan t’s bravery,
that he later recomm ended that the National Convention promote him to the grade o f
Captain. Lepelletier’s ultimate fate remains unknown. Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,”
entry for 17 March 1794.
522
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men concluded that the time had come to de liver the coup de grace to Republique-ville.7
Grey could easily have overwhelmed Rochambeau by combining supporting
attacks from the west o f the city with simultaneous assaults against Fort-de-la-
Convention. With Martinique being the first objective o f a potentially long British
campaign in the W est Indies, however, it was imperative that the British Commander-in-
Chief conserve his limited manpower. Unlike Rochambeau, Grey maintained a full range
of options at his disposal, and instead of giving the Republicans the final battle that they
expected, he and Jervis arranged that beginning on 20 March, the main efforts o f their
combined forces would attack from south and the west. While British artillerymen
continued their deadly work throughout the night o f 19-20 March, British infantrymen,
marines and sailors repositioned themselves for the “grand a ttack.”8
For more than a week, several hundred sailors and Royal Marines had been
encamped at Pointe des Negres. At the appointed time, these men were to march to the
Republique-ville/Case-Navire road, and then rendezvous with detachments o f Prince
Edward’s brigade arriving from Case-Navire and the Lacoste plantation. This combined
force would storm the capital city from the west.
In the north, Prescott’s troops were to open fire from the parallel in front of
7 Willyams, Expedition, 63; Rochambeau, “Journal du siege,” entries for 15 and
17 March 1794. Without engineers, Rochambeau and a civilian engineer from Sainte-
Lucie, M. Peyre, planned and executed a limited mine and countermine operation around
the capital city. As the result, Fort-de-la-Convention and the eastern approaches toRepublique-ville were fairly well covered. Rochambeau was also aware that the British
threatened the western entrance to the city as well; but the area was no t covered by mines,
probably the result of the shortage o f time, materiel and laborers.
8 Ibid., 66.
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Dundas, 25 March 1794. Reprinted in “Intelligence from the London Gazettes.” The
Gentleman’s M agazine 64 (April 1794): 375. When Faulknor and his men raised the
British flag over Fort-de-la-Republique, the crewmen aboard Jervis’ raised three cheersthat could be heard all the way to the Surirey Heights. The British captured sixty-eight
cannon and fifty-five mortars and howitzers in the attack, and Fort-de-la-Republique was
immediately renam ed Fort Edward. Jervis to the Admiralty Office (Mr. Stephens), 25
March 1794. Reprinted in “Intelligence from the London Gazettes.” The Gentlema n’s
Magazine 64 (April 1794): 375.
533
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colony’s Royalists to power, it was obvious that they planned to purge Martinique o f their
Republican enemies in a reign of terror. As a former member o f the Representative
Assembly o f Martinique and the Committee of Public Safety of Republique-ville,
Grandmaison was well-known as an ardent Republican - certainly the Royalists would
execute him at the first opportunity. Despite their earlier disagreements, Rochambeau
saved Grandmaison by breveting him a general officer o f the artillery, allowing him to
travel to A merica on parole as a military prisoner o f war.22
With Martinique, the keystone of the French Windward Island defense now
controlled by the British, Grey consolidated his hold on the island, leaving a garrison of
nearly 4,000 men under Lieutenant General Robert Prescott as Governor. In turn,
Prescott deputed Martinique’s pre-eminent Royalist, Louis-Franfjois, chevalier Dubuc, as
his Intendant. As expected, former Republicans on the island were hounded and their
properties were repossessed, but, by far, the greatest tragedy of the English occupation
befell the blacks o f the colony. In what ranks among their most notable achievem ents,
the National Convention declared the general emancipation of all French slaves on 4
February 1794, but inherently slow communications coupled with the British blockade
ensured that the national emancipation policy never reached Martinique and the other
22 Bailleul, Report (Seconde Partie), 200; Daney, Histoire de la M artinique, 236.
When writing his multi-volume Histoire de la Martinique, Sidney Daney de Marcillac
relied heavily on actual witnesses to the events that transpired during Rocham beau’s
tenure as Governor General. Though he probably never read the report by the Committeeof Public Safety o f Republique-ville, Daney points out that Republicans frequently
accused Rochambeau o f having Royalist sympathies. To the Royalists who were actually
involved in the events, such accusations made no sense. After all that he had done in
Martinique, Daney asserts, Rochambeau would certainly have been killed by the
Royalists had he been taken into custody.
541
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Rochambeau may all have been Americans.28 Soon afterward, he and his entourage
established residence in Newport, Rhode Island.29
Throughout his sojourn in America, Rochambeau made no secret of his ambition
to continue the fight in the Caribbean. In the dispatches that Naverres carried to the
28 Marshal Rochambeau penned his autobiography during the height o f the First
Empire, when many o f France’s former emigres were reestablished in positions o f
prominence.
29 According to the reports o f the Thermidorean Committee of Public Safety,
Rochambeau was b rought aboard the Vengeance on 18 March and then was taken aboard
the Britannia to America, where he arrived in Newport, Rhode Island on 15 April 1794.
Though the 18 March date is clearly incorrect, the date o f his arrival in Newport and the
names o f the ships may be accurate. M. de Fermont, “Rapport au Comite de Salut
Publique, Fructidor,” reprinted in Daney, Documents, 196-197. Among the entourage
that Rochambeau brought to America, those persons that actually comprised his suite, as
well as their subsequent activities, remain largely unknown. Undoubtedly, many
eventually returned to France or the Caribbean, while others dispersed throughout the
eastern United States to begin new lives as American citizens. For instance, Bernard
Charles Despalieres, a former deputy to the Colonial Assembly at le Cap, who became an
aide-de-camp to Rochambeau, gained recognition in New York teaching French and
music. Gabriel Debien, Refugies de Saint-Domingue aux Etats-Unis (Port-au-Prince,
Haiti, 1950), 15-16.
Indications are that the general’s mistress, M me de Tully, did accompany him to
Philadelphia. When Rochambeau returned to Saint-Domingue in 1796 with the colony’s
Third Civil Commission, he eventually was denounced, relieved o f his position and
returned to France. In an official letter to the Directory, Comm issioner Georges Pierre
LeBlanc included among his accusations against the general a condemnation o f
Rochambeau’s behavior during the defense o f Martinique. According to LeBlanc, “Mme
de Tully arrived in America with plenty of furniture, mirrors, furnishings, etc.” This,
LeBlanc offered, “was p roof of Rocham beau’s mistress’ good conduct in the eyes o f the
British for remaining loyal to him.” In fact, LeBlanc’s “information” against
Rochambeau was nothing more than simple parroting o f the same accusations made by
Bailleul two years before. The Directory had already exonerated Rochambeau o f these
accusations. Le Blanc’s observation regarding Mme de Tully, however, was not in theofficial report to the Committee of Public Safety in Paris, and at best, is second-hand
information. Georges Pierre LeBlanc, “Rapport fait par Georges Pierre LeBlanc a la
Commission Deleguee par la Gouvemment Franqais aux Isles sous le Vent,” no date,
had served under both father and son in the Army o f the North), and one o f General
Ricard’s aides-de-camp, Captain Moreau, would visit Marshal Rochambeau soon afterthey reported to the Committee o f Public Safety, to give him a complete account o f what
had taken place in the French Caribbean colonies. As the result of their arrest, Marshal
Rochambeau did not receive any direct word from his son until he returned from America
the following year. Donatien Rochambeau to Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau, 19 May 1794,
AN DXXV/50/477, item 19; Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau, Memoires Militaires, II, 62-63.
548
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against the enemy’s Caribbean possessions was long past, it did not make sense that the
new government would not recall Rochambeau to account for his actions. Whatever the
situation in Paris, Donatien Rochambeau would not allow himself to be forgotten. In late
March 1794, he sent Lieutenant Colonel Panisse, another of his aides-de-camp, to France.
Unlike his predecessors, Naverres and Penaut, Panisse was allowed to go directly to the
Committee o f Public Safety with the general’s letters, and then to M arshal Rochambeau.
After three years, the distressed father finally received word o f his son.32
In fact, the confusion that reigned during the “White Terror” of 1794 ensured that
had he returned to France, Donatien Rochambeau would have found few friends in Paris.
By fall 1794, many of his enemies, both Royalist and Republican, had made their way
back to the capital; both groups had their reasons to destroy the reputation of
Martinique’s former Governor General. Rumors spread in the highest circles that he had
sold the colony to the British, although official reports of Grey and Jervis to Whitehall
and the Admiralty reaffirmed the defiant va lor o f the Republicans on Martinique.33
For Donatien Rochambeau to be repatriated to France, he needed an influential
patron. As it happened, his most energetic support came from the one man who held him
in the highest esteem - his father. Then entering his seventies, Jean-Baptiste
Rochambeau had suffered tremendously in the final months of the Terror. His homes
32 M. de Fermont, “Rapport au Comite de Salut Publique, Fructidor,” reprinted in
Daney, Documents , 197. Soon afterward, Donatien Rochambeau likewise received hisfirst news in three years from his father in a letter detailing the latter’s stay in prison and
near-execution.
33 In fact, these reports were reprinted months before in such widely-circulated
journa ls as The Gentlem en’s Magazine.
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recalling Rochambeau to France to delive r his own testimony soon followed.36
On 7 September 1795, agents o f Britain’s Comm ission for Taking Care of Sick
and Wounded Seamen and Exchanging Prisoners o f War issued a brief that, pursuant to
the orders of the Lords Commissioners o f the Admiralty, Lieutenant General
Rochambeau was to be exchanged for an English officer o f the same grade. It was pure
irony, or as Marshal Rochambeau wrote ula roue de fortu ne ,” that the English officer
exchanged was a man with whom both Rochambeau’s had become well-acquainted at
Yorktown, Lord Cornw allis’ second-in-command, Lieutenant General Charles O ’Hara.37
In early December 1795, Donatien Rochambeau finally arrived at le Havre aboard
a neutral American ship, having spent eighteen months paroled in the United States. He
did not present his testimony before those who had ordered his return, because the
Directory Government had come to power.38 The Directors reviewed with “great
reflection” Rochambeau’s journals and the testimony of the colonists and members of his
administration, as well as the remaining docum ents that the National Convention had
36 Foumiols to the Comite de Salut Public, 11 August 1795, and M. de Fermont,
“Rapport au Comite de Salut Publique, Fructidor,” reprinted in Daney, Documents, 193-
197; “Extrait du Registre des Arretes du Comite de Salut-Public de la Convention
Nationale, 26 August 1795,” Service historique, Carton Yb381; dossier lieutenant-general
no. 1299, item 61. At the time, de Fermont signed his name “Defermon.”
37 O’Hara was captured by the French at the siege of Toulon. During the
processing o f the transfer, the English committee order was sen t to America by the
secretary of Bureau des Colonies Occidentales of the Ministry of the Marine and the
Colonies, M. Safir, who subsequently requested that the French Minister Plenipotentiaryto the United States personally guarantee Rochambeau’s safe conduct France. The actual
exchange was handled by these two offices as well. Service historique, Carton Yb 381;
Commissioners. Instead of dealing with the affairs of the Spanish side of the island,
however, Rochambeau toured French Saint Domingue, and sent his own appraisals o f the
state o f the colony to the Minister o f Marine and the Colonies, General Laurent Truguet.
His candid reports to Truguet, coupled with public pronouncements against Sonthonax’
leadership so strained his relations with the Third Civil Commission that within a month
the Commissioners had him arrested and returned to France.1
Rochambeau languished for more than three years in Paris, pleading his case for
reinstitution in the army. It was not until January 1800 that his requests for reinstatement
came before a new French government. In his capacity as First Consul, Napoleon
Bonaparte personally reviewed both the Rocham beau’s and the Commissioners’
testimony and found the accusations of the government officials insufficient for his
continued censure. Immediately, Bonaparte restored the general into service in his former
grade. His rank and privileges thus restored on 1 February 1800, Rochambeau received
orders nine days later to assume command o f a unit in General Louis-Gabriel Suchet’s
division o f Andre Massena’s Army o f Italy.2
1 Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau, Memoires M ilitaires, II, 75-76; Rochambeau to
Truguet, 18 May 1796. Service historique, Carton Yb 381; dossier lieutenant general no.
1299, unnumbered folio, 1. Rochambeau appears not to have realized that the new
Minister of the Navy and Colonies, Laurent Truguet, had a previous association with
Sonthonax. During an attempted overthrow of Sonthonax’ government by Governor
General Fran9ois-Thomas Galbaud-Dufort in June 1793, Captain Truguet o f the Fine was
the only of the ship’s captains then at le Cap to remain loyal to Sonthonax. By November
1795, he had risen to the office o f Minister o f Navy and Colonies, and was personallyresponsible for naming Sonthonax to head the Third Civil Commission. Stein,
Sonthonax, 129-30.
2 Service orders relative to Donatien Rochambeau, Service historique, Carton Yb
With Britain’s declaration of war against France in May 1803, yet another
complication wad added to Rochambeau’s plight. Aware that he and his men could never
escape the enemy, Rochambeau concluded a second agreement with Captain John Bligh,
the senior British officer then on station at le Cap. Unfortunately for Rochambeau and
his men, Bligh’s immediate superior, Commodore John Loring, refused to honor their
agreement. Loring took Rochambeau and his men first to Jamaica, and then to England
as prisoners o f war. Rochambeau was taken to the British prison camp at Norm an Cross,
Cambridgeshire, where he remained until March 1806 when he was paroled to the nearby
village of Wincanton. Here Rochambeau remained until he was exchanged on 6
December 1811, but it was not until 7 January 1813 that he was recalled to active duty,
ju st in time to help bolster the rem nants o f Napoleon’s army following their retreat from
Russia.11
In early 1813, the Ministry of War raised new units composed o f partially-trained
conscripts, National Guard, and draft dodgers. Owing to France’s tremendous shortage of
senior officers, on 18 January, Rochambeau was named commander o f the 4th Division o f
the Corps of Observation of the Elbe under General Jacques-Alexandre-Bemard
History o f the Island o fSt. Domingo, 157.
11 Ibid., 108-109; Rochambeau to Deeres, 6 and 21 December 1803, Carton
Colonies CC9A35; Evacuation du Cap; Lettres du Rochambeau au M inistre, texte de la
capitulation, note sur la violation des accords, rapport sur la prise d ’un navire anglais pardes prisonniers fran9ais; Ships Log o f the Bellerophon 1 July 1801-15 April 1805,
Wednesday 30 Novem ber 1803. PRO, CO 53/189; Register o f Norman Cross Prisoners
1803-1806. PRO, CO 103/258, 109; Letters to Agents for Prisoners on Parole, 14 March
1806, PRO, CO 98/194, item 40, 136; French Parole Prisoners at Wincanton. PRO, CO
103/610, 15.
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Napoleon concluded an arm istice with the allies on 2 June, bu t on 14 August
hostilities recommenced. Following an inconclusive engagement at Siebenecken on 19
August, Lauriston received orders on 21 and 22 A ugust to cross the Bober River to
pursue General Gebhard von Blucher’s Prussians eastward. As the result o f this order,
Rochambeau displayed particular heroism on the 23rd while leading his division in
repeated attacks against the Prussians as they attempted to make a stand near the village
of G oldberg.16
In early October, Napoleon chose to draw the allied armies into a decisive battle at
Leipzig. By the 14th, Lauriston’s corps, supported by 8,000 of Mura t’s cavalry under
General Edouard-Jean-Baptiste Milhaud, held one o f the main southern approaches to
Leipzig at the village o f Liebertwolkwitz, and formed the center o f the Grande Arm ee’s
primary southeastern defensive ring. Rochambeau’s 19th division, which straddled the
Leipzig-Liebertwolkwitz road, comprised the heart o f Lauriston’s defensive line. On 16
October, General Johann Klenau’s 4th Austr ian Corps and General Prince Andreas
Gorchakov’s 8th Russian Division attacked at Liebertwolkwitz. Throughout the battle,
Lauriston’s infantry and artillery held o ff repeated attacks by Russian and A ustrian
15 Meerheimb, Die Schlachten bei Bautzen am 20 und 21 May 1813, 40-41; Petre,
Napo leon’s Las t Campaign in Germany, 132; Order naming Rochambeau Chevalier de
la Legion d’honneur, Ministere de la G uerre, Extrait des Minutes de la Secretaire d ’etat, 4June 1813. Service historique, Carton Yb 381; dossier lieutenant general no. 1299, item
139.
16 Alexandre Berthier, Registre d ’Ordres du M arechal Berthier Pendant la
Campagne de 1813 (Paris, 1909), II, pp. 69, 71.
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divisions; when Milhaud attacked with the cavalry, the allies withdrew, allowing
Rochambeau and Maison to pursue the withdrawing allied divisions as far as the village
of Gulden-Gossa, five kilometers south.17
Lauriston blocked the attempted penetration o f Napoleon’s forward lines on 16
October, but the allies soon reorganized for another concerted effort. Accordingly,
Napoleon tightened his defensive lines around Leipzig, with the result tha t on the 17th,
Lauriston moved his corps four kilometers north along the same Leipzig-Liebertwolkwitz
road to close ranks with Marshal Claude Perrin V ictor’s 2nd Corps around the village o f
Probstheida. After augmenting his division’s complement o f artillery and cavalry,
Lauriston placed Rochambeau in forward positions to the southeast o f Probstheida, and
then took his two remaining divisions into reserve, two kilometers northward, around the
village of Stotteritz. Rochambeau’s service to France was soon to come to an end .18
On the morning o f 18 October, Victor’s and Lauriston’s defenses around
Probstheida were attacked by the 2nd Prussian Corps under General Friedrich von Kleist,
the 2nd Russian Infantry Corps under Prince Eugen of Wurttemberg, and Barclay’s cavalry
commanded by General Count Peter Pahlen. Prussians regiments charged various points
of the walled village throughout the morning, but each time they were repulsed. After
discovering a gap in the wall, however, the Prussians concentrated their efforts against the
17 Friedrich R udolf von Rothenburg, Die Schlacht bei Leipzig im Jahre 1813, (Leipzig, 1842), 18-19, and map insert; George Nafzinger, Napoleon at Leipzig,
(Chicago, 1996), pp. 102-105, 127.
18 Ibid.; Petre, Napoleon’s Last Campaign in Germany, 363-364; Aloys Schulte,
Die Schlacht bei Leipzig, (Bonn, 1913), map insert.
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forces stationed there - Rochambeau’s 19th Division. While the King o f Prussia and the
Czar o f Russia watched, a series o f Prussian and Russian infantry divisions failed in
successive attempts to break Rochambeau’s defensive line, and by mid-afternoon, the
carnage had become so terrible that the two monarchs cancelled any further infantry or
cavalry assaults against the French positions at Probstheida. The battle was to become an
artillery due l.19
O f the fifty pieces of heavy artillery which surrounded Probstheida, Rochambeau
commanded fifteen. In fact, counter-battery fire between the French, the Prussians and
the Russians became so furious that Napoleon, who was observing the battle from a
hilltop several kilometers to the northwest, rode to Probstheida to direct the artillery
himself. Unfortunately, the Em peror was unable to save the lives of his division
commander Rochambeau and the majority o f his staff. That evening, Donatien
Rochambeau was mortally wounded by enemy artillery fire while inspecting his own
artillery positions; he died the following day in a military hospital in the city of Leipzig.
Just as at Martinique, it is a testament to Rochambeau’s tenacity that when von Kleist’s
troops occupied Probstheida the following morning, they found thirty o f the fifty guns
that had defended the town either destroyed or d isabled.20
19 Ibid.; Petre, Napoleon’s Las t Campaign in Germany, 363-364; Nafzinger,
Napoleon a t Leipzig, 204.
20 Petre, Napoleon’s Last Campaign in Germany, 363-364; Six, Dictionnaire Biographique, 378. Similar to the date of his birth, confusion exists over the date of
Rochambeau’s death. In 1843, his son, Philippe, wrote to the War Ministry for a copy of
his father’s death notice from 19 October, 1813. The ministry replied that the certificate
in their possession stated that the general died on 20 October. In fact, Philippe remains
the best source. On 18 October 1813, Colonel Philippe de Rochambeau commanded a
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At the time of his death at age fifty-eight, Donatien Rochambeau had given forty-
four years of service to his country. Yet, during the twenty-two years that he spent as a
general officer, glory had eluded the marshal’s son. Timing and circumstance never
favored Rochambeau until 1813, when his military fortunes improved under the close
watch of his emperor. Napoleon immediately recognized and honored Rochambeau’s
battle field talents. According to the commander of a cavalry regim ent that fought with
Rochambeau at Liebertwolkwitz, jus t days before the great battle at Leipzig, Napoleon
bestowed upon Rochambeau the na tion’s highest honor, naming him Marshal o f France.
In October 1813, Rocham beau appeared to be destined for greatness, but once again,
timing and circumstance conspired to ensure that glory would not be his; he died before
Napoleon’s nomination ever reached Paris .21
Whether in revolutionary America or revolutionary France, the mainland or the
islands, in every combat action in which he participated, Donatien Rochambeau
demonstrated a strength o f will and a tenacity in battle that ranked among the finest
displayed by the military leadership o f Revolutionary France. Indeed, it is no small
measure o f his military worth that his gallant defense o f Martinique, conducted under the
most unenviable cond itions, earned him the highest praise of his British enemy.
Unfortunately for the nation, Rochambeau’s service as Governor General o f the French
regiment o f Murat’s cavalry at Leipzig, and undoubtedly attended to his father as he lay
dying in Leipzig. Philippe de Rochambeau to Ministry of War, 18 May 1843 andMinistry of War to Philippe de Rochambeau 24 May 1843. Service historique, Carton Yb
381; dossier lieutenant general no. 1299, item 158.
21 Jean-Baptiste Marbot, Memoires du General Baron de Marbot (Paris, 1891),
318.
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Item 1. Secret Dispatch Memorized by Colonel Donatien Rochambeau and
Delivered to the Court at Versailles.
Reprinted from Donatien Rochambeau, Journal (The War in America), First Published in
Jean-Edmond Wheelen, Rochambeau Father and Son; A Life o f Marechal de
Rochambeau and the Journal o f the Vicomte de Rochambeau [hitherto unpublished],
(New York, 1926), pp. 214-216.
On the Necessity fo r an Increase in Sea and Land Forces in the
United States
The attack upon Rhode Island has two objectives:
1. To destroy the warships and to bum the convoy ships.
2. To defeat or capture the body of troops who are garrisoned there.
The naval men consider the first impossible since they regard as unattackable [sic] ships
anchored broadside in such a channel as that at Rhode Island with its sides so well
protected. As for the convoy ships, they can always be placed in a safe posit ion by taking
them up to Providence.
The second seems to offer some possibility to the enemy. But it seems to me impossible
under the present circumstances. The way in which I believe the English would
undertake this would be to bring their transport ships loaded with landing forces into the
mainland and Conan icut Island. They would go around the position held by the French
vessels and proceed to make a landing at Studerhouse, which could still be protected by afew ships o f the line. They would be obliged in addition to lay siege to the entrenched
camp at Newport which would be occupied by the army. This would require great efforts
and a quantity of troops very much larger than those on which we can count for the
defense of the island, which w ould always be as many as seven or eight thousand men,
for the State militia being called could come in five days to reenforce [sic] the French
troops. This has already happened when, shortly after our arrival, Admiral Arbuthnot
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The American militia puts up quite a good defense when it fights behind trenches and
before the ir ow n doorways; but they must not be taken too far away n or counted upon too
much in a close fighting. The unfortunate campaign of General Gates in Carolina proves
this. The Northern militia is incomparably better than that of the South.
I am thoroughly convinced that General Clinton will never attempt this attack except with
forces greatly superior to ours. It seems probable that he will abandon the plan for this
year for fear that a disgarrisoning [sic] of New York would leave it open to an attack by
Washington —whose army numbered from ten to twelve thousand men at the time o f my
departure —as soon as he him self was occupied in besieging us.
There are two other landing points, at Brenton's Point and Black Point in the Seakonnet
channel. But I do not believe that they would ever attempt to descend on these points,
one place being very narrow and the navigation o f the second one be ing difficult and also
near the fort at Howland's Ferry, which keeps open our contact with the mainland.
All that part o f Rhode Island which faces Narragansett Bay bristles with rocks and
breakwaters in such a m anner that it is impossible to land there -- at least according to the
affirmations of Captain Gardiner who has done the fleet and the army great service and
who merits the notice o f the government.
The plan o f campaign wh ich the English have adopted seems quite dangerous for the
American cause. They no longer make any efforts to bring the Northern colonies into
obedience. It is against those o f the South that all o f their attention is turned, and it is
believed tha t they plan to take the North River as their limit. The taking o f Charleston,
the way in which Lord Cornwallis moved into the interior of the country, the detachment
which has just been sent from New Y ork and which is believed to have left for Virginia,
as well as the fort at W est Point which Arnold was obliged to surrender, all support this
opinion quite well.
I imagine that they have determined upon this because the colonies of the South are more
fertile, richer, and as a result more valuable to England's trade. They are made up o f great
land holdings which have a great number o f black slaves to cultivate the plantations, who
—drawn by a hope of freedom would rise against their masters or become part o f the
English army as it advanced into the interior. The Northern colonies on the contrary are
full of small proprietors who are not very rich and o f whom the greater part has seen armyservice during the course of the war. Besides these colonies are nearer to Boston, the
chief point o f enthusiasm which so easily communicated itse lf to men who were made
discontented through long injustice and recent cruelty.
The ways o f preventing these misfortunes are described in my father's dispatches which I
have turned over to the government and which can no t too soon be carried into execution.
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Item 2. Route of march of the French army from Providence, Rhode Island to New
York.
Reprinted from Donatien Rochambeau, Journal (The War in America), First Published in
J.E., Wheelen, Rochambeau Father and Son; A Life o f Marechal de Rochambeau and the
Journal o f the Vicomte de Rochambeau [hitherto unpublished], (New York, 1926), 220.
[From Providence].... they set out on their march by regiments, at an interval o f a
day....and they were at W aterman's Tavern on the eighteenth of June after having done
.................................................................................. 15 miles
June 19th to Plainfield ......................................................................... 15 “
June 20th to W indham ........................................................................ 15 “
June 21 st to Bolton ............................................................................. 16 “
June 22nd to Hartford (a stop)............................................................ 12.5 “
June 25th to Farmington .......................................................... 12.5 “
June 26th to Baron's Tavern ............................................................... 13 “
June 27th to Breakn eck ....................................................................... 13 “June28th to New T ow n ......................................................................... 15 “
The army [then] marched by brigades
July 1st to Ridgebury.............................................................................. 15 “
July 2nd to B ed fo rd ............................................................................... 19 “
Total 161miles
Lauzun's legion separated from the first brigade in order to move against Morrisania to try
to surprise the Brigadier de Lancey's corps, while General Lincoln at the head o f 1,200
Americans was to try to surprise King's Bridge. These two plans failed.
On the previous m arc h ........................................................................ 161 miles
July 3rd to North C as tle ..................
The army [then] marched as a unit.
July 6th to Ph ilipsburg.....................
Total ........................ 183 miles
17 “
5 “
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Troops7,000 troops chosen to come from Europe aboard suitable transports; flank companiesand a detachment from the garrisons of the O ccidental Indes; three to four thousandarmed sailors in regiments; and a regular corps o f armed blacks.
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Reprinted from Rev. Cooper Willyams, Expedition Against The French West India
Islands. (London, 1796), 70-74.
On the 21st of March, 1794, by order o f their Excellencies Sir Charles Grey, K.B. Generaland Com mander in Ch ief of his Britannic Majesty’s forces in the West Indies, etc., etc.,etc. and Vice Admiral Sir John Jervis, K.B. com manding his Majesty’s fleet, etc., etc.Commodore C. Thompson, Colonel R. Symes, and Captain J. Conyngham, met atDillon’s house to receive proposals o f capitulation for Fort Bourbon, from Coloneld”Aucourt, Captain Dupriret, and Gaschet Dumanie, jun. nominated Commissioners forthat purpose by General Rochambeau.
The follow ing ARTICLES were proposed^ discussed, and modified, at a second conference held at Fort Royal on the 22n o f March, 1794.
Article I. The garrison, composed o f troops o f the line, artillery, gunners of the marine,and national guard, shall march out with colours flying, thirty rounds a man. - A n s w e r . The colony o f Martinique, already reduced by the arms of his Britannic Majesty, and theforts and towns of St. Pierre and Fort Royal taken with sword in hand, GeneralRochambeau can only capitulate for Fort Bourbon, and what it contains. - Granted. Butthey are to lay down their arms a t a place appointed, and not to serve against his BritannicMajesty, or his allies, during the presen t war.
II. Three months pay to be allowed to the troops of the line. - An swer . No pay will begiven. All their effects will be allowed them; and they will be provided with whatevermay be necessary for their voyage to France.
III. The thirty-seventh regiment, formerly Marshal Turenne’s, shall keep their colours
and arms. - An swer . Refused, being contrary to all customs o f war. The officers maykeep their swords.
IV. They shall be furnished with ships to carry them to France. - An swer . Granted.
V. The emigrants, who have returned to Martinique, shall not be present where thegarrison lay down their arms or embark. - An swer . Granted.
VI. Such persons of the national guard, who can give proofs of their property, shall be permitted to remain in the island, giving that property as security for the ir conduct. -An swer . Those o f the national guard in Fort Bourbon who have affairs to settle, andwhose sojourn may no t be deemed dangerous to the colony, may remain according to thedeclaration of the General, dated January 1,1794 . Such as wish to go to France shall beallowed, leaving their agents here.
VII. Persons not included in the above article, who are compelled to return to France, shall be allowed a certain time to settle their affairs. - A n sw er . A proper time shall be allowed: fifteen days at least.
VIII. Persons belonging to the garrison of Fort Convention, possessing no landed property, but who exercised some profession or trade previous to the present capitulation,shall be allowed to continue their trade or calling; nor sent to France, provided their
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future conduct should not make such a measure necessary. - A n sw er . They are regarded in the sam e predicament with those in Article VI.
IX. The legal regulations o f the constituted authorities shall be confirmed. - A n sw er . Refused.
X. The code o f civil judicature in force through the island shall be continued for thespace of two years. - An swer . Granted, till his Britannic Majesty’s pleasure be known.
XI. The property of owners and captains of ships shall be secured to them on board andon shore. - An swer . Granted, as to the ir property in Fort Bourbon.
XII. The inhabitants of St. Pierre, embarked on English ships, shall be set at liberty, andtheir property, under seal, secured to them. - An swer . This article cannot come withinthe present capitulation. The claimants may apply to the commanders o f the fleet andarmy.
XIII. The ordonateur and officers of administration shall have permission and time toregulate their accounts, and to take with them the papers relative to that end. - A n s w e r . Granted.
XIV. There shall be an entire and absolute oblivion o f the past, and an end to allanimosities. - An swer . Granted, according to the proclamations.
XV. The rights of free citizens inrolled [sic] in the national guard shall be preserved. -An swer . Refused.
XVI. The liberty of individuals composing the companies of l’Enclume, d ’Octavius, dela Croire, and de Pontouur, shall be confirmed. - An swer . Refused. The slaves must berestored to their owners.
XVII. A period shall be fixed for the taking possession of the fort, and the necessary timeallowed for the garrison to take out their effects. - An swer . The two gates o f FortBourbon to be delivered up to the troops o f his Britannic Majesty immediately after theexchange o f the present articles. The garrison will march out at the great gate, and beconducted to the place appointed for each corps, by the commissioners who havemanaged the present capitulation, and w ill lay down their arms at the place of theirembarkation. Three days will be allowed for the evacuation of the fort, and thecommissaries o f artillery and stores will remain in the forts to take inventories of all themagazines.
XVIII. The greatest attention shall be paid to the sick and wounded; and they shall befurnished with ships to carry them to France as they recover. - An swer . Granted, but atthe expence [sic] o f the French government, and to be attended by their own surgeons; ifnot sufficient for the purpose, surgeons shall be furnished.
XIX. General Rochambeau, imm ediately upon the surrender of the fort, shall be at liberty
to take his measures for his return to France. A frigate to be furnished him, his aides decamp, secretaries and suite. - An swer . A commodious vessel shall be allowed toGeneral Rochambeau, with necessary passports for his safe return to France.
XX. The effects, trunks, chests, private papers, and all that General Rochambeau shalldeclare to belong to him self and his suite, shall be put under the protection o f an Englishguard, when the troops o f that nation shall have taken possession of Fort Convention, andshall be embarked with him. - An swer . Granted.
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XXI. The civil ordonateur, or intendant of the colony, shall have liberty also, with theofficers o f administration, comptroller and treasurer, with those employed in the publicoffices at St. Pierre and Fort Royal, to return to France. - An swer . Granted.
XXII. The same demands made by General Rochambeau in Art. XX. Shall be granted tothe intendant and those under him. - ANSWER. Granted.
XXIII. All papers o f accounts in the forts or town shall be carefully collected by the principals o f each departm ent to which they belong, and embarked in the same ship w iththe ordonateur. - An swer . All papers, not essential to be left in the colony, shall begiven, and free access to take authentic copies o f such as it might be thought necessary toretain.
XXIV. Captains and officers of merchant ships, who have not settled their affairs, shall be allowed time to do so. The former the space o f four months, the later o f two months,under the protection o f the comm ander o f his Britannic Majesty’s forces, that they mayrecover their debts; after which they will procure the readiest passage to whatever placemay be expedient for their affairs, with passports from the English commanders. -An swer . Granted.
Additional Article. Fort Bourbon to be delivered up to his Britannic Majesty in its presentstate, with no deterioration of its batteries, mines, magazines o f artillery or provisions,and every thing it contains which is not the private property o f the garrison.
Fort Royal, March 22, 1794.
Signed.
D ’Aucourt . Gaschet , F il s. Dupriret.
C. Thompson. R ic h . Syme s .
Joh n Conyngham .
Approved by me,DTE. Rochambeau, Commander in ChiefOf the French W est India Islands
Approved by us,C h a r l e s G r e y. John Jervis.
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Lee, Lieutenant Colonel Henry. Memoires o f the War in the Southern Department o f the
United States. Philadelphia: Henry Lee, 1812.
Le Moniteur Universelle, 1791, no. 34. Paris: Plon, 1858-63.
Le Moniteur Universelle, 1793, no. 55. Paris: Plon, 1858-63.Lemonnier-Delafosse, Jean-Baptiste. Seconde Campagne de Saint Domingue du l er
Decembre 1803 au 15 Juillet 1809. Havre, France: Brindeau, 1846.
Marbot, Jean-Baptiste. Memoires du General Baron de Marbot. 3 vols. Paris: Plon,
1891.
Moreau de Saint-Mery, Mederic-Louis-Elie. A Civilization that Perished: The Las t Years
o f White Colonial Rule in Haiti. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America,
1985.
Monge, Gaspard. Compte Rendu a la Convention Nationale, par le Ministre de la Marine, de I ’Etat de Situation de la Marine de la Republique, le 23 Septembre de
I ’an premier; Imprime, et envoye aux 83 departemens et a I ’Armee, par ordre de
la Convention Nationale. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale executive du Louvre, 1792.
Robin, Abbe Claude. New Travels Through North America. New York: New York
Times, 1969.
Rochambeau, D onatien. Expedition sur les quartiers de Maribaroux et Ouanaminthe,
enlevees aux Brigands pa r le General Rochambeau, le sept Novembre 1792. Le
Cap Franfais, Saint-Domingue: Donatien Rochambeau, 1792.
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the Marechal de Rochambeau and the Journal o f the Vicomte de Rochambeau
[hitherto unpublished]. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1926.
Rochambeau, Jean-Baptiste. Memoirs o f the Marshal Count De Rochambeau, RelativeTo
The War O f Independence O f The United States. Extracted and Translated from
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Rochambeau, Jean-Baptiste. Memoirs o f the Marshal Count de Rochambeau, Relative To
The War O f Independence O f The United States. Paris: Pillet, 1838.
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