156 Life of Count Rumford. 



and covered a hundred and fifty-two pages. The jour- 

 nal and three letters following it related to a military 

 campaign in America. On returning to Boston, Dr. 

 Green translated and carefully annotated this manu- 

 script, and published it with an Introduction, in 1868, 

 under the title of " My Campaigns in America. A 

 Journal kept by Count William de Deux Fonts, 

 1780-81. Translated from the French Manuscript."* 

 This journal, the careful editor thinks, was written by 

 one of two brothers Christian the Colonel, and 

 William the Lieutenant-Colonel, of the Royal Regi- 

 ment Deux-Ponts who were among our French allies 

 in the siege of York. He regards them as illegitimate 

 sons by a French mother, once a danseuse, afterwards 

 Baroness von Forbach of Christian, Count Palatine, 

 and Duke of Deux-Ponts-Birkenfield. * At his death 

 his dukedom passed successively to his two nephews, 

 Charles Augustus and Maximilian, the latter of 

 whom became in 1799 Elector, and in 1805 King, 

 of Bavaria. It was this Maximilian whose interest 

 was attracted to Colonel Thompson as a British officer 

 at Strasburg, and who was the medium of introducing 

 the latter to his uncle, then Elector. He had not 

 been in the American campaigns, and therefore was not 

 the writer of the journal. He was, however, the prince 

 referred to by Pictet who made known to the French 

 officers, among whom probably was the diarist, an 

 officer who had served in the British army in our war. 

 They might well have with them, if Thompson had 

 not, the field-plans and maps of several sites and ac- 



* Dr. Green, having been for more than three years the surgeon of the Twenty- 

 Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers in the war of the Rebellion, was able 

 most felicitously to inscribe his publication to the officers and men who were in 

 service in some of the places mentioned in its pages. 



