With Americans of Past and Present Days Part 7

"'Retire!' exclaimed he. 'Ha! I was born in a camp, have pa.s.sed all my life in the service, and will die in a camp, or on the field.'

"This is," Trumbull concludes, "a faithful picture of the military enthusiasm of the time--1795."

[65] "... An inscription engraved on them, expressive of the occasion.

I find a difficulty in getting the engraving properly executed. When it will be finished, I shall with peculiar pleasure put the cannon into your possession." Was.h.i.+ngton to Rochambeau, February 2, 1782.

[66] De Gra.s.se died in January, 1788. "The Cincinnati in some of the States have gone into mourning for him." Was.h.i.+ngton to Rochambeau, April 28, 1788.

[67] Jefferson seems to have feared that the souvenir of Rochambeau might soon fade. He wrote to Madison, February 8, 1786: "Count Rochambeau, too, has deserved more attention than he has received. Why not set up his bust, that of Gates, Greene, Franklin in your new Capitol?" No bust was placed in the Capitol, but the raising of the statue in Lafayette Square, Was.h.i.+ngton, in 1902, has proved that, after so many years, Rochambeau was not forgotten in America.

[68] May 28, 1788.

[69] In a letter of July 31, 1789, Rochambeau informs Was.h.i.+ngton of Barlow's arrival, "and I made him all the good reception that he deserves by himself and by the honorable commendation that you give to him." In Rochambeau's English; Was.h.i.+ngton papers.

[70] Fr., "en pet.i.t comite"--a small party of friends.

[71] January 7, 1786. Was.h.i.+ngton papers.

[72] Paris, June, 1785 (_ibid._)

[73] "Rochambeau near Vendome, April 11, 1790."

[74] Here is this letter in full:

Paris the 18th November, 1790.

SIR:

I hope that your Excellency will give me the leave to beg a favor of your justice. I think it just to intercede for the Baron de Closen who was an aide-de-camp to Mr. Rochambeau during the American war. He longs with the desire to be a member of the a.s.sociation of the Cincinnati. The officers who were employed in the French army and younger than him in the military service have been decorated with this emblem of liberty, and such a reward given by your Excellency's hand shall increase its value.

I flatter myself that you will receive the a.s.surances of the respect and veneration I have for your talents and your virtue, well known in the whole world.

I have (etc.),

LA COMTESSE DE ROCHAMBEAU.

[75] June, 1785. Two of the Berthier brothers had taken part, as we saw, in the expedition. The one alluded to here is the younger, Cesar-Gabriel, not the older, Louis-Alexandre, who became Prince de Wagram. Both are described in their "etats de service," preserved among the Rochambeau papers, as expert draftsmen. The notice concerning the younger, who was a captain of dragoons, reads: "Il s'est fait remarquer ainsi que son frere par son talent a dessiner et lever des plans."

[76] Concerning this correspondence, as continued during the French Revolution, see below, pp. 245 ff.

[77] December 29, 1782.

[78] A lithographed portrait mentions the later-day t.i.tles and dignities of: "I.C. Louis, Baron de Closen, Marechal de Camp, chambellan et chevalier des ordres francais pour le Merite et de la Legion d'honneur, ainsi que de celui de Cincinnatus des Etats Unis de l'Amerique Septentrionale." Reproduced by C.W. Bowen, who first drew attention to this journal, _Century Magazine_, February, 1907. Closen died in 1830, aged seventy-five.

[79] Which was done in a letter giving as a reason "that, whenever the two crowns should come to treat, his Most Christian Majesty would show how much the engagements he might enter into were to be relied on, by his exact observance of those he had already had with his present allies." Quoted, as "a sentence which I much liked," by Franklin, writing to John Adams, April 13, 1782.

II

MAJOR L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY

MAJOR L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY

I

Little more than a century ago the hill on which rises the Capitol of the federal city and the ground around it were covered with woods and underbrush; a few scattered farms had been built here and there, with one or two exceptions mere wooden structures whose low roofs scarcely emerged from their leafy surroundings. Not very long before, Indians had used to gather on that eminence and hold their council-fires.

As far now as the eye can reach the picturesque outline of one of the finest cities that exist is discovered; steeples and pinnacles rise above the verdure of the trees lining the avenues within the unaltered frame supplied by the blue hills of Maryland and Virginia.

The will of Congress, the choice made by the great man whose name the city was to bear, the talents of a French officer, caused this change.

Debates and compet.i.tions had been very keen; more than one city of the North and of the South had put forth pleas to be the one selected and become the capital: Boston, where the first shot had been fired; Philadelphia, where independence had been proclaimed; Yorktown, where it had been won--Yorktown, modest as a city, but glorious by the events its name recalled, now an out-of-the-way borough, rarely visited, and where fifty white inhabitants are all that people the would-be capital of the new-born Union. New York also had been in the ranks, as well as Kingston, Newport, Wilmington, Trenton, Reading, Lancaster, Annapolis, Williamsburg, and several others. Pa.s.sions were stirred to such an extent that the worst was feared, and that, incredible as it may now seem, Jefferson could speak of the "necessity of a compromise to save the Union."

A compromise was, in fact, resorted to, which consisted in choosing no city already in existence, but building a new one on purpose. This solution had been early thought of, for Was.h.i.+ngton had written on October 12, 1783, to Chevalier de Chastellux: "They (Congress) have lately determined to make choice of some convenient spot near the Falls of the Delaware for the permanent residence of the sovereign power of these United States." But would-be capitals still persisted in hoping they might be selected.

Congress made up its mind for good on the 16th of July, 1790, and decided that the President should be intrusted with the care of choosing "on the river Potomac" a territory, ten miles square, which should become the "Federal territory" and the permanent seat of the Government of the United States.

Was.h.i.+ngton thereupon quickly reached a decision; a great rider all his life, the hills and vales of the region were familiar to him; it soon became certain that the federal city would rise one day where it now stands. The spot seemed to him a particularly appropriate one for a reason which has long ceased to be so very telling, and which he constantly mentions in his letters as the place's "centrality."

But what sort of a city should it be? A residential one for statesmen, legislators, and judges, or a commercial one with the possibilities, considered then of the first order, afforded by the river, or a mixture of both? Should it be planned in view of the present or of the future, and of what sort of future?

With the mind of an artist and in some sense of a prophet, perceiving future time as clearly as if it were the present, a man foresaw, over a century ago, what we now see with our eyes. He was a French officer who had fought for the cause of independence, and had remained in America after the war, Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant.

Some researches in French and American archives have allowed me to trace his ancestry, and to add a few particulars to what was already known of him.

Born at Paris, on August 2, 1754, he was the son of Pierre L'Enfant, "Painter in ordinary to the King in his Manufacture of the Gobelins."

The painter, whose wife was Marie Charlotte Leullier, had for his specialty landscapes and battle-scenes. Born at Anet, in 1704, on a farm which he bequeathed to his children, he was a pupil of Parrocel and had been elected an Academician in 1745. Some of his pictures are at Tours; six are at Versailles, representing as many French victories: the taking of Menin, 1744; of Fribourg, 1744; of Tournay, 1745; the battle of Fontenoy, 1745 (a favorite subject, several times painted by him); the battle of Laufeldt, 1747, where that young officer, destined to be Was.h.i.+ngton's partner in the Yorktown campaign, Count Rochambeau, received, as we have seen before, his first wounds. The painter died a very old man, in the Royal Manufacture, 1787.

Young L'Enfant grew up among artistic surroundings, and, as subsequent events showed, received instruction as an architect and engineer. The cause of the United States had in him one of its earliest enthusiasts.

In 1777, being then twenty-three, possessed of a commission of lieutenant in the French colonial troops, he sailed for America on one of those s.h.i.+ps belonging to Beaumarchais's mythical firm of "Hortalez and Co.," a firm whose cargoes consisted in soldiers and ammunition for the insurgents, and which was as much a product of the dramatist's brain as Figaro himself. Figaro, it is averred, has had a great influence in this world; Hortalez and Co. had not a small one, either. The s.h.i.+p had been named after the secretary of state, who was to sign, the following year, the United States' only alliance, _Le Comte de Vergennes_, a name, wrote Beaumarchais, "fit to bring luck to the cargo, which is superb."

The superb cargo consisted, as usual, in guns and war supplies, also in men who might be of no less use for the particular sort of trade Hortalez and Co. were conducting. "Some good engineers and some cavalry officers will soon arrive," Silas Deane was then writing to Congress.

One of the engineers was Pierre Charles L'Enfant. His coming had preceded by one month the sailing of another s.h.i.+p with another appropriate name, the s.h.i.+p _La Victoire_, which brought Lafayette.

L'Enfant served first as a volunteer and at his own expense. "In February, 1778," we read in an unpublished letter of his to Was.h.i.+ngton, "I was honored with a commission of captain of engineers, and by leave of Congress attached to the Inspector-general.... Seeing [after the winter of 1778-9] no appearance of an active campaign to the northward, my whole ambition was to attend the Southern army, where it was likely the seat of war would be transferred." He was, accordingly, sent to Charleston, and obtained "leave to join the light infantry, under Lieutenant-Colonel Laurens; his friends.h.i.+p furnished me," he relates, "with many opportunities of seeing the enemy to advantage."[80]

Not "to advantage," however, did he fight at Savannah, when the French and Americans, under d'Estaing and Lincoln, were repulsed with terrible loss. The young captain was leading one of the vanguard columns in the American contingent and, like d'Estaing himself, was grievously wounded.

He managed to escape to Charleston. "I was," he said, "in my bed till January, 1780. My weak state of health did not permit me to work at the fortifications of Charleston, and when the enemy debarked, I was still obliged to use a crutch."[81] He took part, however, in the fight, replacing a wounded major, and was made a prisoner at the capitulation.

Rochambeau negotiated his exchange in January, 1782, for Captain von Heyden, a Hessian officer.

"Your zeal and active services," Was.h.i.+ngton wrote back to L'Enfant, "are such as reflect the highest honor on yourself and are extremely pleasing to me, and I have no doubt they will have their due weight with Congress in any future promotion in your corps."[82] They had, in fact, in the following year, when, by a vote of the a.s.sembly, L'Enfant was promoted a major of engineers, 1783.

His knowledge of the art of fortification, his merit as a disciplinarian, the part he had taken, as he recalls in a letter to Count de La Luzerne,[83] in devising the earliest "system of discipline and exercises which was finally adopted in the American army" (all that was done in that line was not by Steuben alone), rendered his services quite useful. His gifts as an artist, his cleverness at catching likenesses made him welcome among his brother officers. He would in the dreary days of Valley Forge draw pencil portraits of them, one, we know, of Was.h.i.+ngton, at the request of Lafayette, who wanted also to have a painted portrait. "I misunderstood you," the general wrote him from Fredericksburg, on September 25, 1778; "else I would have had the picture made by Peale when he was at Valley Forge. When you requested me to sit to Monsieur Lanfang"--thus spelled, showing how p.r.o.nounced by Was.h.i.+ngton--"I thought it was only to obtain the outlines and a few shades of my features, to have some prints struck from."