In 1780 France
assembled an auxiliary army of 10,000 troops for
the purpose of providing much-needed assistance
to the Americans in their war for independence
against the British. Known as the Expeditionary
corps, the French auxiliary army was commanded
by Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, le Comte de
Rochambeau. The Expeditionary Corps left Brest
on May 2, 1780. On the ships were 5,000 troops
from the Bourbonnais, Royal Deux-Ports, Soissonais,
and Saintonge Regiments, 500 men in the Auxonne
Artillery Regiment, and 600 men of Lauzun’s
Legion of mounted Hussars. After a difficult crossing,
the French fleet anchored off Newport, Rhode Island,
on July 11, 1780. The 400 cavalrymen of Lauzun’s
Legion were sent to winter in Lebanon, Connecticut,
a rural area where horse forage was readily and
more economically available.
In May of
1781, General Washington and Rochambeau met at
Joseph Webb’s house in Wethersfield, and
Washington asked the French Army to join his forces
in New York, at which point a plan of attack upon
the British would be chosen and executed. The Expeditionary
Crops left Newport on June 10, proceeding west
through Connecticut to the Hudson River valley.
In New York, Washington decided to attack the British
in Yorktown, Virginia, and the combined French-American
army marched south from there.
The French
formed into four equal contingents, each comprised
of one regiment, with the field artillery and baggage
trains among them, and each with a field hospital.
The regiments marched separately, along the same
line of march, on successive days. A day’s
march averaged 15 miles and each night a division
would occupy the same campsite as the previous
division had left that morning. Lauzun’s
Legion traveled independently on the south as a
left flank to protect the army from British attack.
Rochambeau and his aides lodged in inns and private
homes, and divisional headquarters were also established
in houses. The troops camped in tents in fields.
In addition to the soldiers, the army included
numerous people who performed special services:
musicians to play marching songs; surgeons and
medical corpsmen; crafts men such as tailors, harness
makers and blacksmiths; axe-men to clear vegetation
from the roads; cooks, some of whom were American
women; and drivers who had charge of the hundreds
of supply wagons.
Following
the British capitulation on October 19, 1781, Rochambeau’s
army wintered in Virginia, and did not reach Connecticut
again until October of 1782.
Connecticut’s
role in supporting Rochambeau’s expedition
went well beyond simply allowing the column to
pass through the state. Connecticut patriots such
as Jonathan and Joseph Trumbull, Henry Champion,
and Jeremiah Wadsworth were instrumental in arranging
for the acquisition of draft animals, food, and
other supplies for both the American and French
armies, earning Connecticut the name "the
Provisions State." Both civil and military
officials participated in important strategic meetings,
and the hostility of shoreline communities helped
prevent the British from establishing a land presence
from Long Island Sound. Finally, local historical
traditions in a number of Connecticut towns assert
that some young men, impressed by the size and
scope of the French movement, enlisted as combatants
and traveled with the French to Yorktown.
In addition
to its military significance, the French march
through Connecticut engendered a host of cultural
and social encounters that left their mark on both
sides. Local citizens flocked to see the spectacle
of the French column, alive with martial music
and sometimes stretching from horizon to horizon.
People came by the hundreds to visit the camps,
both to hear musical programs put on by the French
musicians and to trade local produce for French
silver. Local notables entertained the officers
in their homes, while other officers visited local
taverns. Officers were lodged overnight in private
homes and inns as conditions allowed, furthering
the social interaction between the French and local
families. For their part, the journals kept by
the French show them to have been interested, and
often surprised, by their meetings with Americans.
Their position as European noblemen made them see
most Americans’ houses as rather poor habitations,
and they found many Americans unsuitably tight-fisted
in their dealings. Although to a man they deplored
the conditions of Connecticut roads, they regarded
the countryside as beautiful and intelligently
cultivated. Imbued perhaps with the ideals of the
Enlightenment, most were complimentary regarding
the middling economic level seemingly enjoyed by
most Americans, and they admired the plain and
forthright conversation of their Connecticut hosts.
Historians
agree that France’s generous assistance,
in the form of men, expertise, supplies, money
and tactical strategy, made victory possible. But
available sources deal more with big events and
global politics. Little is written on the French
influence and impact, on a more intimate level,
in America. There is barely any cohesive understanding
of the experience of the French soldiers and officers
here, and even less of a grasp of their interaction
with and effect on the American people whose homes
and fields they stayed in or near as they moved
on toward Yorktown. How did these Frenchmen, recent
enemies of Americans, view Americans? What was
life like on the march and in the camps? Historical
and archaeological research of the campsites, structures
and route remnants can help answer these and other
historically significant questions. Several officers
and one enlisted man left diaries, and from these
can be gleaned important information. Combined
with archaeological data, the historical record
helps shed light on patterns of camp placement,
camp formation, life on the march and in the camps,
and cultural differences between French and Americans.
—excerpted from the National Register
nomination, "Rochambeau’s Army in
Connecticut," by Bruce Clouette, historian,
and Mary Harper, archaeologist, of PAST, Inc.
The Connecticut
Historical Commission has undertaken a multi-year
campaign to identify, study and recognize the route
of the French army across the state. This project
has produced surveys, research reports, and several
educational or commemorative events. An important
product has been a series of National Register
nominations, grouped together as a Multiple Property
Submission, which provides common background information,
all prepared by the Public Archaeology Survey Team
(PAST), Inc., of Storrs.
The Multiple
Property Submission currently includes 19 sites
(see the box for the complete list), but more can
be added in the future. They fall into three categories:
buildings, campsites, and sections of road. Some
were already listed on the National Register, either
individually or as parts of National Register historic
districts, but this study has added another layer
of significance to their history. Some misunderstandings
have been corrected. And the public has been given
new sites to consider, recognize, and protect.
Among the
surprises presented by the nominations is the existence
of at least ten segments of roadway that are considered
still to bear some resemblance to their 18th-century
appearance. Changes in transportation over the
last 200 years have been wide ranging. And while
travelers’ complaints about the state of
Connecticut roads have remained a constant, those
roads have been so constantly and completely rebuilt,
shifted, widened, graded and paved, that it is
difficult to believe that they have not every one
been completely changed.
The campsites
too are fragile, as new development continues to
push its way into the countryside. Open fields
grow up into woods as agriculture becomes economically
untenable, and then the woods are cleared to houses,
and the sparse traces left by a few nights’ camping
are easily wiped out, the clues to the past that
they offered lost forever.
More than
200 years have passed since the French army marched
through Connecticut. In that time, much has changed.
The United States has become the most powerful
nation in the world. Inventions and manufactured
goods, many developed in Connecticut, have given
even our poorest citizens luxuries that Washington
and Rochambeau never dreamed of. These sites remind
us of a time when our country’s future was
not assured, and when we had to look to other nations
for assistance.
—Reprinted
from Connecticut Preservation News, January/February
2003
