Rosengarten.] oO^ [Dec. 21, 



1809. Between the windows was a large portrait, one of Peale's original 

 portraits of Washington, which had been presented by Washington him- 

 self to Rochambeau — a large square or three-quarters portrait, in military 

 costume, with a cannon and other military emblems in the background — 

 in perfect preservation and worthy of being included among tlie most 

 notable of the numberless portraits of the Father of his Country. 



A recent visitor, giving an account of the Cbateau as he saw it in Sep- 

 tember last, in a letter printed in the Philadelphia Ledger of October 31, 

 1894, speaks of the fine suits of ancestral armor, worn by the Kochambeaus 

 of the sixteenth century, around which are draped the American flags, 

 presented by Gen. Hancock to the present owner, certainly an involun- 

 tary tribute by the preux chevalier of our own armj'^ to the prowess of 

 these knights of old. He also was among those who on behalf of the 

 Government of the United States welcomed the Marquis de Rochambeau 

 as the leader of the French visitors of 1881, descendants of the gallant 

 soldiers who had shared in the honors of the surrender at Yorktown. 

 Thus the connection between the Rochambeau of our own Revolutionary 

 War, and the Rochambeau of to-day, is one of the pleasant ties that keep 

 alive the friendship of the two countries and make the United States and 

 France sister republics. The Comte de Rochambeau left two volumes of 

 Memoirs, published in Paris in 1809, edited b^^ Leonce de Lmcival, which 

 tell the story of his life. Born at Vendome July 1, 1725, and dying at the 

 Cbateau de Rochambeau on May 1, 1807, his long life was full of inter- 

 esting experiences as a soldier, and the short episode of his services as 

 Commander-in-Chief of the French Army sent to help Washington, is of 

 itself enough to make him a man of note for all students of American his- 

 tory. He entered the French Army as Cornet in 1748, in Saint Simon's 

 Regiment of Cavalry, and served with distinction in campaigns in 

 Bohemia, Bavaria and on the Rhine ; he was made Colonel in 1767, as a 

 reward for his brilliant services at the siege of Naraur, and Brigadier for 

 his action at Minorca, and Major-General for his reorganization of the 

 French Army. He served under Marshals Saxe and Richelieu and 

 d'Estree and de Broglie, who afterwards sent De Kalb to this country 

 with an offer to become the General-in-Chief of the army in the impending 

 struggle, a curious episode admirably told by Dr. Siille, the President of 

 the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Rochambeauhimself tells us that 

 " after the peace," it must have been about 1769, when he was stationed 

 at Strasburg as Inspector of the French Infantry in Alsace, he advised the 

 Hereditary Prince of Brunswick to go to America, and there play the 

 part of William of Orange in England — make himself sovereign of a 

 superb empire — but the Prince had no idea that the colonies could be 

 united then, or for a long time to come. It was a curious coincidence 

 that he should have served under Marechal de Broglie, who seriously 

 lioped to play a leading part in America, and that Rochambeau himself 

 should have led the French Army which did such signal service in help- 

 ing America to achieve ils independence, while the same Brunswick 



