With Americans of Past and Present Days Part 5

Visiting some years ago the place and the tomb, and standing beside the grave of the marshal, it occurred to me that it would be appropriate if some day trees from Mount Vernon could spread their shade over the remains of that friend of Was.h.i.+ngton and the American cause. With the a.s.sent of the family and of the mayor of Th.o.r.e, and thanks to the good will of the ladies of the Mount Vernon a.s.sociation, this idea was realized, and half a dozen seedlings from trees planted by Was.h.i.+ngton were sent to be placed around Rochambeau's monument: two elms, two maples, two redbuds, and six plants of ivy from Was.h.i.+ngton's tomb. The last news received about them showed that they had taken root and were growing.

X

Some will, perhaps, desire to know what became of Closen. Sent to the Islands (the West Indies) with the rest of the army, he felt, like all his comrades, greatly disappointed, more even than the others, on account of his bride, whom American beauties had not caused him to forget. He had inserted in his journal a page of silhouettes representing a dozen of the latter, with the name inscribed on each; but he had taken care to write underneath: "Honni soit qui mal y pense."

When about to go on board he writes: "I scarcely dare say what I experienced and which was the dominating sentiment, whether my attachment to all that I love or ambition added to sensitiveness on the principles of honor. Reason, however, soon took the lead and decided in favor of the latter.... Let me be patient and do my duty."

To leave Rochambeau was for him one more cause of pain: "I shall never insist enough, nor sufficiently describe the sorrow I felt when separated from my worthy and respectable general; I lose more than any one else in the army.... Attentive as I was to all he had to say about battles, marches, the selection of positions, sieges, in a word, to all that pertains to the profession, I have always tried to profit by his so instructive talks.... I must be resigned."

Once again, therefore, life begins on those detested "sabots," a large-sized _sabot_, this time, namely the _Brave_, of seventy-four guns, "quite recently lined with copper," a sad place of abode, however, in bad weather, or even in any weather: "One can scarcely imagine the bigness of the sea, the noise, the height of the waves, such pitching and rolling that it was impossible to stand; the s.h.i.+ps disappearing at times as if they had been swallowed by the sea, to touch it the instant after only with a tiny bit of the keel. What a nasty element, and how sincerely we hate it, all of us of the land troops! The lugubrious noise of the masts, the _crics-cracs_ of the vessel, the terrible movements which on the sudden raise you, and to which we were not at all accustomed, the perpetual enc.u.mbrance that forty-five officers are for each other, forty having no other place of refuge than a single room for them all, the sad faces of those who are sick ... the dirt, the boredom, the feeling that one is shut up in a _sabot_ as in a state prison ...

all this is only part of what goes to make life unpleasant for a land officer on a vessel, even a naval one.... Let us take courage."[77]

Few diversions. They meet a slave-s.h.i.+p under the Austrian flag, an "abominable and cruel sight," with "that iron chain running from one end of the s.h.i.+p to the other, the negroes being tied there, two and two,"

stark naked and harshly beaten if they make any movement which displeases the captain. The latter, who is from Bordeaux, salutes his country's war flag with three "Vive le Roi!" They signal to him an answer which cannot be transcribed. No one knows where they go. "Sail on," philosophically writes Closen.

They touch at Porto Rico, at Curacao, where the fleet is saddened by the loss of the _Bourgogne_, at Porto Cabello (Venezuela), where they make some stay, and where Closen loses no time in resuming his observations on natives, men and beasts, tatous, monkeys, caimans, "enormous lizards quite different from ours," houses which consist in one ground floor divided into three rooms. The "company of the Caracque" (Caracas) keeps the people in a state of restraint and slavery. "Taxation is enormous."

Religious intolerance is very troublesome: "Though the Inquisition is not as rigorous in its searches as in Europe, for there is but one commissioner at Caracque, there is, however, too much fanaticism, too many absurd superst.i.tions, in a word, too much ignorance among the inhabitants, who can never say a word or walk a step without saying an _Ave_, crossing themselves twenty times, or kissing a chaplet which they ever have dangling from their neck with a somewhat considerable accompaniment of relics and crosses. One gentleman, in order to play a trick on me, in the private houses where I had gained access so as to satisfy my curiosity and desire of instruction, told a few people that I was a Protestant. What signs of the cross at the news! And they would ceaselessly repeat: _Malacco Christiano_--a bad Christian!"

On the 24th of March (1783) great news reached them: the French vessel _Andromaque_ arrived, "with the grand white flag on her foremast, as a signal of peace. The minute after all our men-of-war were decked with flags." There were a few more incidents, like the capture of some French officers, who were quietly rowing in open boats, by "the _Albemarle_, of twenty-four guns, commanded by Captain Nelson, of whom these gentlemen speak in the highest terms." As soon as the news of the peace was given him they were released by the future enemy of Napoleon.

The hour for the return home had struck at last. It was delayed by brief stays in some parts of the French West Indies, notably Cap Francais, Santo Domingo (now Cap Hatien). "A few days before our arrival at the Cape Prince William, Duke of Lancaster, third son of the King of England, had come and spent there two days, while the English squadron was cruising in the roads. Great festivities had been arranged in his honor,"--for there was really no hatred against the enemy of the day before.

Some calms and some storms also delayed the return, with the usual "criiiiicks craaaaaks" of the masts, the journey being occupied in transcribing the "notes and journals on the two Americas," and enlivened by the saving of the parrakeet of a Spanish lady who had been admitted with her family on board the _Brave_. "Frightened by something, the little parrakeet flies off and falls into the sea. The lady's negro, luckily happening to be on the same side, jumps just as he is, with no time to think, dives, reappears, cries, 'Cato! Cato!' joins the parrakeet, puts her on his woolly head, and returns to the s.h.i.+p."

Delighted, the lady "allows this black saviour to kiss her hand, a unique distinction for a slave, and bestows on him a life pension of one hundred francs. Many sailors would have liked to do the same, had they known."

Land is now descried; they see again the sights noted when sailing for America: these "coasts thick-decked with live people, fruit-trees and other delightful objects." All is delightful; the joy is universal; they make arrangements to reach Paris, which Closen did in magnificent style. "And I," we read in his journal, "after having bought a fine coach where I could place, before, behind, on the top, my servants, consisting of a white man and of my faithful and superb black Peter, and with them three monkeys, four parrots, and six parrakeets, posted to Paris in this company, a noisy one and difficult to maintain clean and in good order.... The next day (June 22) I was at Saint-Pol-de-Leon, my last quarters before sailing for America, and saw again with hearty rejoicings the respectable Kersabiec family which had so well tended me throughout my convalescence after a deadly disease." He thought he could do no less than present them with one of his parrakeets as a token of "grat.i.tude and friends.h.i.+p."

At Guingamp he finds the Du Dresnays, other friends of his, and reaches Paris, he writes, on the 30th of June, with "all my live beings of all colors, myself looking an Indian so tanned and sun-burnt was my face, exception made for my forehead, which my hat had preserved quite white."

The Rochambeau family made him leave his inn and stay with them in their beautiful house of the Rue du Cherche-Midi. The general ("my kind and respectable military father," says Closen) presented him to the minister of war, Marshal de Segur, who granted the young officer a flattering welcome, and the journal closes as novels used to end in olden days, and as the first part of well-ordered, happy lives will ever continue to end. Leaving Paris with the promise of a colonelcy _en second_--"a very eventual ministerial bouquet"--he went home to Deux-Ponts: "There I found my beautiful fiancee, my dear, my divine Doris, who had had the constancy to keep for me her heart and her hand during the four years of my absence in America, in spite of several proposals received by her, even from men much better endowed with worldly goods, my share consisting only in the before mentioned ministerial promise and in the reputation of an honest man and a good soldier."

I shall only add that the ministerial promise was kept, and that it was as a colonel and a knight of Saint Louis that Closen found himself aide-de-camp again to his old chief, Rochambeau, charged with the defense of the northern frontier at the beginning of the Revolution.[78]

Faded inks, hushed voices. The remembrance of the work remains, however, and cannot fade; for its grandeur becomes, from year to year, more apparent. In less than a century and a half New York has pa.s.sed from the ten thousand inhabitants it possessed under Clinton to the five million and more of to-day. Philadelphia, once the chief city, "an immense town," Closen had called it, has now ten times more houses than it had citizens. Partly owing again to France, ceding, unasked, the whole territory of Louisiana in 1803, the frontier of this country, which the upper Hudson formerly divided in its centre, has been pushed back to the Pacific; the three million Americans of Was.h.i.+ngton and Rochambeau have become the one hundred million of to-day. From the time when the flags of the two countries floated on the ruins of Yorktown the equilibrium of the world has been altered.

There is, perhaps, no case in which, with the unavoidable mixture of human interests, a war has been more undoubtedly waged for an idea. The fact was made obvious at the peace, when victorious France, being offered Canada for a separate settlement, refused,[79] and kept her word not to accept any material advantage, the whole nation being in accord, and the people illuminating for joy.

The cause was a just one; even the adversary, many among whom had been from the first of that opinion, was not long to acknowledge it. Little by little, and in spite of some fitful re-awakening of former animosities, as was seen in the second War of Independence, hostile dispositions vanished. The three nations who had met in arms in Yorktown, the three whose ancestors had known a Hundred Years' War, have now known a hundred years' peace. "I wish to see all the world at peace," Was.h.i.+ngton had written to Rochambeau. For over a century now the three nations which fought at Yorktown have become friends, and in this measure at least the wish of the great American has been fulfilled.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Concerning his American campaign, in which he greatly distinguished himself, he wrote later: "In itself, war did not interest me, but its object interested me keenly, and I willingly took part in its labors. I said to myself: 'I want the end; I must adopt the means.'" _uvres_, 1865, I, 11. He was wounded and promoted.

[2] _Magazine of American History_, March, 1880, ff.

[3] A quite handsome house, now the offices of the Ministry of Labor.

The gardens no longer exist.

[4] _Memoires militaires, historiques et politiques de Rochambeau, ancien marechal de France et grand officier de la Legion d'honneur_, Paris, 1809, 2 vols., I, 235.

[5] "On a soutenu," said Pontgibaud, later Comte de More, one of Lafayette's aides, in a conversation with Alexander Hamilton, "que l'interet bien entendu de la France etait de rester neutre et de profiter de l'embarras de l'Angleterre pour se faire rest.i.tuer le Canada." But this would have been going against the general trend of public opinion, and a contrary course was followed. _Memoires du Comte de More_, Paris, 1898, p. 169.

[6] _Memoires, souvenirs et anecdotes_, Paris, 1824, 3 vols., I, 140.

English translation, London, 1825.

[7] _uvres_, vol. IX, Paris, 1810, pp. 377 ff.

[8] _uvres_, IX, 417.

[9] January, 1781.

[10] He ends his dedication stating that he may fail and may have dreamed a mere dream, but he should not be blamed: "Le delire d'un citoyen qui reve au bonheur de sa patrie a quelque chose de respectable." _Essai General de Tactique precede d'un Discours sur l'etat actuel de la politique et de la science militaire en Europe_, London, 1772; Liege, 1775.

[11] _Writings_, Smythe, VIII, 390, 391.

[12] Both signed at Paris on the same day, February 6, 1778.

[13] Vergennes had written in the same way to the Marquis de Noailles, French amba.s.sador in London: "Our engagements are simple; they are aggressive toward n.o.body; we have desired to secure for ourselves no advantage of which other nations might be jealous, and which the Americans themselves might regret, in the course of time, to have granted us." Doniol, _Partic.i.p.ation de la France a l'etabliss.e.m.e.nt des Etats Unis_, II, 822.

[14] 1 November 11, 1778.

[15] _Souvenirs du Lieutenant General Comte Mathieu-Dumas, de 1770 a 1836_, Paris, 3 vols., I, 36.

[16] _Literary Diary_, September 11, 1779; New York, 1901, 3 vols.

[17] Wooden shoes, a nickname for a s.h.i.+p of mean estate.

[18] So called after its owner, Samuel Fraunces (Francis or Francois) from the French West Indies, nicknamed "Black Sam" for the color of his skin.

[19] _Nouveau Voyage dans l'Amerique Septentrionale en l'annee 1781 et campagne de l'armee de M. le comte de Rochambeau_, Philadelphia, 1782.

[20] _Literary Diary_, New York, 1901, II, 454.

[21] To Rochambeau; n.d., but 1780. (Rochambeau papers.)

[22] Writing to the president of Yale, July 29, 1778, Silas Deane, just about to return to France, recommended the creation of a chair of French: "This language is not only spoke in all the courts, but daily becomes more and more universal among people of business as well as men of letters, in all the princ.i.p.al towns and cities of Europe." Ezra Stiles consulted a number of friends; the majority were against or in doubt, "Mr. C---- violently against, because of popery." _Literary Diary_, August 24, 1778, New York, 1901, II, 297. See also, concerning the prevalent impressions about the French the _Memoires du Comte de More_, 1898, p. 69.

[23] August 8, 1780. (Rochambeau papers.)

[24] August 3, 1780. (_Ibid._)

[25] Stiles's _Literary Diary_, II, 458.

[26] Rodney "has left here two months ago without our being able to guess whither he was going.... Maybe you know better than I do where he may presently be....

"We have just suffered from a terrible tornado, which has been felt in all the Windward Islands; it has caused cruel havoc. A convoy of fifty-two sails, arrived the day before in the roadstead of Saint-Pierre, Martinique, has been driven out to sea, and has disappeared for now a fortnight; five s.h.i.+ps only returned here, the others may have reached San Domingo or must have perished. An English s.h.i.+p of the line of 44 guns, the _Endymion_, and two frigates, the _Laurel_ and the _Andromeda_, of the same nationality, have perished on our coasts; we have saved some of their sailors." Marquis de Bouille to Rochambeau, Fort Royal (Fort de France), October 27, 1780. (Rochambeau papers.)