Victory at Yorktown (23 page)

Few of those men looked forward to the road that lay ahead, for these marches were exhausting, even under ideal circumstances. Private Joseph Plumb Martin wrote years after the war, “… I have felt more anxiety, undergone more fatigue and hardships, suffered more every way, in performing one of those tedious marches than ever I did in fighting the hottest battle I was ever engaged in.…”

For the young men and boys who had rarely, if ever, been away from home and were every day more distant from their loved ones, the longing for families could be painful, and Francis Barber meant to see that his wife wrote him regularly and kissed their children, George and Polly, over and over again for him. In mid-July he sent off a letter numbered 6 and said how anxious he was because only that day had he received a message she wrote on June 1. That said, he proceeded to lecture her sternly on how often he wished she would write, and at what length. He did not want apologies about how she was in a hurry or that it was too late at night to write fully. Think how you would feel, he said, if after four weeks of anxious waiting for a letter one was handed to you “written on the quarter of a sheet of paper; your last, my dear Nancy, comes under [that] description.”

He was enjoying “uninterrupted health,” he told her, despite the hardships of their march, which had “robbed me of all my fat” and made him “the colour of an Indian.” The letter was signed, “I have the happiness to be, dear Nancy, your most faithfull and affectionate husband, F. Barber.” Under the date on the letter someone has written in pencil,
“Killed at Yorktown.”

On the same day the Americans paraded through Philadelphia, General Sir Henry Clinton sent a message to Lord Cornwallis: “By intelligence which I have this day received, it would seem that Mr. Washington is moving with an army to the southward, with an appearance of haste; and gives out that he expects the cooperation of a considerable French armament. Your Lordship, however, may be assured that if this should be the case, I shall endeavour to reinforce your command by all means within the compass of my power.…” Whether Cornwallis realized it or not, this meant that he was going to be dependent on the navy to bring him reinforcements or, if necessary, remove his army from the peninsula he had chosen to occupy.

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ON SEPTEMBER 3
the real show began in Philadelphia with the appearance of the first French brigade. As Chastellux put it aptly, “The arrival of the French troops … was in the nature of a triumph.” The soldiers had halted about a mile outside the city, where they “spruced up,” powdering their hair and donning dress white uniforms so they were “dressed as elegantly as ever were the soldiers of a garrison on a day of royal review.” With flags unfurled and drums beating and a cannon at the head of each regiment, with slow match lighted, they followed Lauzun's chasseurs down Front Street and up Vine to the Commons at Centre Square with brass bands playing, the crowds wild with enthusiasm, as “the ladies appeared at the windows in their most splendid attire. All Philadelphia was astonished to see people who had endured the fatigues of a long journey so ruddy and so handsome.” Perhaps nothing emphasized the dramatic difference from their American allies so much as the runners who carried orders from one command to another wearing short, tight-bodied coats, rich waistcoats with a silver fringe, rose-colored shoes, cap adorned with a coat of arms, and a cane with an enormous head. Word went through the crowd that all these young fellows were princes (they looked it but were not).

At the last they passed in review in single file before assembled congressmen and the president of that body, who was “wearing a black velvet coat and dressed in a most singular fashion,” past the commanding generals and the French minister, and then went into camp on the large plain near the river. For the American onlookers, the spotless, colorful uniforms of the French were like nothing they had seen: all were white, but the different regiments could be identified by the different colors of their lapels, collars, and buttons. The Bourbonnais had crimson lapels, pink collars, and white buttons; the Soissonais, who put on a brilliant exhibition of the manual of arms a day or so later for some twenty thousand spectators, wore rose-colored lapels, light blue collars, and yellow buttons, plus white and rose-colored feathers in their grenadier caps. The climactic moment came when Lauzun's cavalry clattered into view—German, Irish, and Polish mercenaries, many of them—wearing sky-blue jackets with white braid, yellow trousers, sashes with scarlet and yellow stripes, black boots, and towering black fezzes. Even their horses had saddle blankets of white sheepskin trimmed in light blue. It was not lost on the Philadelphians that many of the young officers came from old titled French families, and to cap it all, the Duc de Lauzun, the only duke to fight in America, rode at the head of this extraordinary procession. It was an experience that was remembered for years in great detail by Philadelphians and passed along to succeeding generations as one of the most memorable moments in the city's history.

The Comte de Clermont-Crèvecoeur and several friends paid a call on two of the city's prominent scientists: Pierre Eugène du Simitière and Dr. Abraham Chovet. The former showed them his museum of natural history, as yet unfinished, and later they looked with wonder at Dr. Chovet's life-size wax figures of a man and a woman, with removable organs, which he used in teaching anatomy. It was impossible to behold these, the count wrote, “without shuddering.”

What struck the French visitors about Philadelphia was its cosmopolitan character. While the Quakers outnumbered other religions, the city “probably contains every religious sect in the world. Freedom of conscience is tolerated here,” one of them wrote, and “Little by little this superb city has been settled from every country in Europe and has become quite a commercial center. Since the war this seems to be the only city in America whose trade has not declined; in fact, the war seems to have made it even more prosperous”—a phenomenon that owed a lot to the extremely large Quaker population. He went on to say that the Philadelphians seemed to take little interest in who was winning the war. They were almost all merchants, and several told him that they didn't want peace—it would only hurt their trade.

Everywhere the French went, they discovered something about Americans that surprised or sometimes shocked them, and Philadelphia was no exception. In that city, they learned, young people received as fine an education as they could obtain in Europe, and their schools offered every type of instruction, which led Clermont-Crèvecoeur to speculate on the class system in Philadelphia. While neither rank nor distinction existed among ordinary citizens—all of whom believed themselves equal, enabling a cordwainer, a locksmith, or a merchant to become a member of Congress—“The rich alone take precedence over the common people.” One effect of this was to create a scramble for lucrative jobs, which were usually bestowed on the wealthy because they could make “their alleged talents shine in the light of their gold,” letting the right people know they had money. To put it another way, Americans considered themselves equals but showed a certain deference to those with money, “who associate only with one another.”

He saw poor families whose daughters “could not be better dressed. They would rather dress well and look rich than eat better food,” and while the wardrobes of these girls were not large, “One sees no girls here in town or country whose hair is not dressed in the French fashion. Those who cannot afford jewelry make up for it by substituting ordinary ribbons and feathers … and nature's richest ornaments—flowers.” On the other hand, Americans had an unrivaled casualness, and anyone who tried to instill in them a taste for the social life comparable to France's was wasting his time and trouble.

Once again Clermont-Crèvecoeur took a swipe at bundling—this time, at the habit of girls and young women who visit a female friend for five or six days at a time. What can one make of this? he asked. “Certainly nothing favorable to these belles. Do they not bundle with one another? This is what many people think. One dare not state it as a fact. But their attitude towards men, their conduct when in their company, the disappearance of the lilies and roses of their youth at the age of twenty to twenty-eight, and their distaste for bundling with men are all good reasons for believing that one is not mistaken.”

Officers in Rochambeau's army were astonished to find a low regard for the military profession in America. While high-ranking officers were held in esteem, lieutenants were “virtually scorned,” and an American general would never invite a lowly lieutenant to join him at a meal. The difference, of course, was that every commissioned officer in the French military had to produce proof of nobility, so that a lieutenant, for example, might enjoy the same social status as a general. But they gradually became adjusted to the American attitude. “Since the two armies are now joined, the same rules had to apply to both. For a long time we were unhappy about this situation, but after a while no longer thought about it.”

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ONE OF THE
many rivers that flows into Chesapeake Bay is the Elk, and Washington planned to load his troops for embarkation at what was called Head of Elk. On September 5 he said farewell to Rochambeau—who wanted to travel from Philadelphia to Chester by water—and rode southward while the count and his staff drifted down the Delaware in a small boat and had a memorable trip. “It would be difficult to have a more beautiful sight than that of Philadelphia as one leaves it by water,” one of them wrote, before they passed by some of the landmarks of the 1777 campaign: Mud Island, Red Bank, and Billingsport.

Downriver, approaching Chester, the French officers could see an American officer dancing up and down, waving his hat with one hand and a handkerchief with the other. At first they thought it might be Washington, but that was impossible; the behavior of His Excellency, the Comte de Deux-Ponts knew, was “of a natural coldness and a noble approach.” But Washington indeed it was, and Deux-Ponts said, “his features, his whole bearing and deportment were now changed in an instant.” Suddenly, he was “a citizen happy beyond measure at the good fortune of his country.” The Duc de Lauzun, who was also there, wrote, “I never saw a man so thoroughly and openly delighted.”

“I caught sight of General Washington,” Rochambeau recalled, “waving his hat at me with demonstrative gestures of the greatest joy. When I rode up to him, he explained that he had just received a dispatch … informing him that de Grasse had arrived.” Then, as Baron Closen wrote, “MM. De Rochambeau and Washington embraced
warmly
on the shore” (surprising Closen, who had been troubled earlier by the obvious coolness between the two over the question of attacking New York). Rochambeau must have felt enormous satisfaction that his plans were coming to fruition, the baron observed, noting that “The soldiers from then on spoke of Cornwallis as if they had already captured him; but one must not count his chickens before they are hatched. It is true that he will be taken soon.”

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AS EAGERLY AS
Washington and others looked forward to the arrival of de Grasse's fleet, the brief history of relations between America's army and France's navy hardly inspired confidence or enthusiasm. Colonial suspicion of the French was an old one, of course, dating back to the numerous French and Indian wars, when their neighbors in Canada succeeded in setting the frontiers aflame, with murderous attacks, kidnappings, and the pillage of villages and isolated farms. These savage conflicts were largely quiescent after the peace of 1763, but that was less than a generation ago, and in New England, particularly, dislike of French Catholicism and Bourbon despotism remained a tenet of Puritanism.

So in the best of circumstances a Frenchman arriving in America was greeted with a certain wariness, to say the least. Nevertheless, the alliance with France that came after the rebels' astonishing victory over Burgoyne's army in 1777 not only was welcomed by many Americans but was seen as the avenue to victory and real independence, a view that engendered a great deal of overconfidence. Unhappily, the coalition got off to a very rocky start.

In the spring of 1778, not long after the treaty of alliance took effect, a large fleet under the command of the Comte d' Estaing sailed from Toulon and made an incredibly slow crossing of three months, missing a rare opportunity to catch a British fleet in Chesapeake Bay that was ferrying Clinton's army to New York after the enemy evacuated Philadelphia. By the time d'Estaing arrived at the Delaware capes, he was low on water and provisions and had sick men on board every ship. He sailed north, only to be told by local pilots that the depth of the water at Sandy Hook, at the entrance to New York's harbor, was no more than twenty-one feet at low tide, and his ships drew twenty-seven feet. The pilots added that they could take him into New York Bay only when a northeast wind coincided with a strong spring tide—which meant that he would have to wait until the following year to make the attempt.

On July 20 he sailed for Newport in response to a recommendation by Congress, expecting to cooperate with Major General John Sullivan's force there to capture the three-thousand-man British garrison. At one point the Americans had an army of ten thousand—most of them militia—greatly outnumbering the British, but through a series of mishaps and misunderstandings the effort turned into a giant fiasco, with a breakdown of communications and Sullivan peremptorily ordering d'Estaing to do this and do that. One of the French officers left a vivid description of the American militia: “I have never seen a more laughable spectacle. All the tailors and apothecaries in the country must have been called out.… One could recognize them by their round wigs. They were mounted on bad nags and looked like a flock of ducks in cross-belts.… I guessed that these warriors were more anxious to eat up our supplies than to make a close acquaintance with the enemy, and I was not mistaken; they soon disappeared”—five thousand of them in a few days' time. Admiral d'Estaing was gentlemanly enough to ignore Sullivan's criticism, but it was plain to see that the American had created a real rift with the new allies, especially when he implied that they had run from a fight. Then, when d'Estaing's fleet—badly damaged by a storm—sailed off for Boston, leaving Sullivan to fight the British garrison alone, the reputation of the French plummeted. The situation was made even worse when Sullivan and his generals signed a letter saying the French departure was “derogatory to the honor of France, contrary to the intentions of his Most Christian Majesty and the interest of this nation, and destructive in the highest degree to the welfare of the United States of America, and highly injurious to the alliance formed between the two nations.” In the aftermath, attempting to ameliorate the effects on the alliance, Washington urged Lafayette “to afford a healing hand to the wound that unintentionally has been made,” at the same time appealing to d'Estaing to forgive and forget. Both sides put the ugly incident behind them, but the damage had been done.