Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau (1 July 1725 – 10 May 1807) was a French Royal Army officer and nobleman who played a critical role in the Franco-American victory at siege of Yorktown in 1781 during the American Revolutionary War. He was commander-in-chief of the Expédition Particulière, the French expeditionary force sent to help the Americans fight against British forces.
Military life
Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur was born in Vendôme, in the province of Orléanais, and he was educated at the Jesuit college in Blois. After the death of his elder brother, he entered a cavalry regiment and served in Bohemia, Bavaria, and on the Rhine during the War of the Austrian Succession. By 1747, he had attained the rank of colonel. He took part in the Siege of Maastricht and became governor of Vendôme in 1749. He distinguished himself in the Battle of Minorca on the outbreak of the Seven Years' War and was promoted to brigadier general of infantry. In 1758, he fought in Germany, notably in the Battle of Krefeld and the Battle of Clostercamp, receiving several wounds at Clostercamp.[1]
Landing of a French auxiliary army in Newport, Rhode Island on 11 July 1780 under the command of the comte de Rochambeau. This image is one of 12 scenes from the American Revolution printed in Allgemeines historisches Taschenbuch by Daniel Nickolaus Chodowiecki, a well-known Polish engraver.NPS map of the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route
In 1780, Rochambeau was appointed commander of land forces as part of the project code-named Expédition Particulière.[2] He was given the rank of lieutenant general in command of 7,000 French troops and sent to join the Continental Army under George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. Axel von Fersen the Younger served as his aide-de-camp and interpreter. The small size of the force at his disposal made him initially reluctant to lead the expedition.[3]
After his imprisonment and subsequent release, Rochambeau was pensioned after meeting Napoleon in 1801 and later received the Légion d'honneur in 1804 after Napoleon's ascension to emperor. Rochambeau died in 1807 at Thoré-la-Rochette during the First French Empire.[1][6]
President Theodore Roosevelt unveiled a statue of Rochambeau by Ferdinand Hamar as a gift from France to the United States on 24 May 1902, standing in Lafayette Square, Washington, D.C. The ceremony was made the occasion of a great demonstration of friendship between the two nations. France was represented by ambassador Jules Cambon, Admiral Fournier, General Henri Brugère, and a detachment of sailors and marines from the battleship Gaulois. Representatives of the Lafayette and Rochambeau families also attended. A Rochambeau fête was held simultaneously in Paris.[1] In 1934, A. Kingsley Macomber donated a statue of General Rochambeau to Newport, Rhode Island. The sculpture is a replica of a statue in Paris.[7]
The French Navy gave his name to the ironclad frigate Rochambeau. USS Rochambeau was a transport ship that saw service in the United States Navy during World War II. President Obama signed the Omnibus Public Land Management Act on 30 March 2009 with a provision to designate the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route as a National Historic Trail. A bridge was named for Rochambeau in the complex of bridges known as the 14th Street Bridge (Potomac River) connecting Washington, D.C., with Virginia. A mansion on the campus of Brown University is named Rochambeau House and houses the French Department.
Memoirs
Jeanne Therese Tilles D'Acosta, Madame la Marquise de Rochambeau
Rochambeau's Mémoires militaires, historiques et politiques, de Rochambeau was published by Jean-Charles-Julien Luce de Lancival in 1809. Part of the first volume was translated into English and published in 1838 under the title Memoirs of the Marshal Count de R. relative to the War of Independence in the United States.[8] His correspondence during the American campaign was published in 1892 in H. Doniol's History of French Participation in the Establishment of the United States.[9][1]
There is a Rochambeau monument at French Hill in Marion, Connecticut, close to the Asa Barnes Tavern, the eighth campsite of his troops through Connecticut in 1781.
Motto and coat of arms
Coat of arms
Motto
VIVRE EN PREUX, Y MOURIR[10] (To live and die valiantly)
^de Rochambeau, Count, and M. W. E. Wright (1917). "What France Did for America: Memoirs of Rochambeau". The North American Review. 205 (738): 788–802. JSTOR25151043?seq=1.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Doniol, H. Histoire de la participation de la France en l'établissement des Etats Unis d'Amérique, Vol. V. [publisher unknown] Paris: 1892
^Johannes Baptist Rietstap, Armorial général : contenant la description des armoiries des familles nobles et patriciennes de l'Europe : précédé d'un dictionnaire des termes du blason, G.B. van Goor, 1861, 1171 p
References
"Jean Baptiste Donatien De Vimeur Rochambeau." in Dictionary of American Biography (1936). online
Kennett, Lee. The French Forces in America, 1780–1783 (Greenwood, 1977),
Nager, Cody E. "The Fading Mirage Of Revolution: The French Expeditionary Force's Disillusionment With America, 1780–1782." The Historian 81#3 (2019), pp. 426+. online
Whitridge, Arnold. "Rochambeau And The American Revolution" History Today (May 1962), Vol. 12 Iss. 5, pp. 312–320.
Tugdual de Langlais, L'armateur préféré de Beaumarchais Jean Peltier Dudoyer, de Nantes à l'Isle de France, Éd. Coiffard, 2015, 340 p. (ISBN9782919339280).
Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, Memoirs of the Marshal Count de Rochambeau, Relative to the War of Independence of the United States, ed. and trans, by M.W.E. Wright (New York: The New York Times and Arno Press, 1971),
Arnaud Blondet, Préface Iris de Rode Jeux de guerre, l'histoire de l'armée de Rochambeau au secours des États-Unis 1780–1781 Tome I, Éditions Jean-Jacques Wuillaume – Trace ta vie, collection Histoire et Patrimoine, 2024, 384 pages. ISBN9791095373513
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