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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



ALL FRANCE HONORS ROCHAMBEAU ON 

 HIS RETURN 



In the autumn of 1782 a general part- 

 ing took place, Rochambeau returning to 

 France. 



The King, the ministers, the whole 

 country, gave Rochambeau the welcome 

 he deserved. At his first audience on his 

 return he had asked Louis XVI, as being 

 his chief request, permission to divide the 

 praise bestowed on him with the unfor- 

 tunate de Grasse, now a prisoner of the 

 English after the battle of the Saintes. 

 where, fighting 30 against 27, he had lost 

 seven ships, including the Ville de Paris 

 (which had 400 dead and 500 wounded), 

 all so damaged by the most furious re- 

 sistance that, owing to grounding, to 

 sinking, or to fire, not one reached the 

 English waters. Rochambeau received 

 the blue ribbon of the Holy Ghost, was 

 appointed governor of Picardy, and a 

 few years later became a marshal of 

 France. 



Rochambeau was keeping up with 

 Washington a most affectionate corre- 

 spondence, still partly unpublished, the 

 great American often reminding him of 

 his "friendship and love" for his "com- 

 panions in war." Dreaming of a hu- 

 manity less agitated than that he had 

 known, dreaming dreams which were not 

 to be soon realized, he was writing to 

 Rochambeau, from Mount Vernon, on 

 September 7, 1785: "Although it is 

 against the profession of arms, I wish to 

 see all the world at peace." 



The French Revolution found Rocham- 

 beau still an officer in the French army, 

 defending the frontier as a marshal of 

 France and commander-in-chief of the 

 northern troops. In 1792 he definitely 

 withdrew to his estate, barely escaping 

 with his life during the Terror. A strik- 

 ing and touching thing it is to note that 

 when a prisoner in that "horrible sepul- 

 chre," the Conciergerie, he appealed to 

 the "Citizen President of the Revolu- 

 tionary Tribunal" and invoked as a safe- 

 guard the great name of Washington, 

 "my colleague and my friend in the war 

 we made together for the liberty of 

 America." Luckier than many of his 

 companions in arms of the American 



war — than Lauzun, Custine, d'Estaing, 

 Broglie, Dillon, and others — Rochambeau 

 escaped the scaffold. 



THE EQUILIBRIUM OE THE WORLD HAS 

 BEEN ALTERED 



Visiting some years ago the place and 

 the tomb and standing beside the grave 

 of the marshal, it occurred to me that it 

 would be appropriate if some day trees 

 from Mount Vernon could spread their 

 shade over the remains of that friend of 

 Washington and the American cause. 

 With the assent of the family and of the 

 mayor of Thore, and thanks to the good 

 will of the ladies of the Mount Vernon 

 Association, this idea was realized, and 

 half a dozen seedlings from trees planted 

 by Washington were sent to be placed 

 around Rochambeau's monument — two 

 elms, two maples, two redbuds, and six 

 plants of ivy from Washington's tomb. 

 The last news received about them 

 showed that they had taken root and 

 were growing. 



In less than a century and a half New 

 York has passed from the ten thousand 

 inhabitants it possessed under Clinton to 

 the five million and more of today. Phila- 

 delphia, once the chief city, "an immense 

 town," Closen had called it, has now ten 

 times more houses than it had citizens. 



Partly owing again to France ceding, 

 unasked, the whole territory of Louisiana 

 in 1803, the frontier of this country, 

 which the upper Hudson formerly di- 

 vided in its center, has been pushed back 

 to the Pacific ; the three million Ameri- 

 cans of Washington and Rochambeau 

 have become the one hundred million of 

 today. From the time when the flags of 

 the two countries floated on the ruins of 

 Yorktown the equilibrium of the world 

 has been altered. 



There is, perhaps, no case in which, 

 with the unavoidable mixture of human 

 interests, a war has been more undoubt- 

 edly waged for an idea. The fact was 

 made obvious at the peace, when victori- 

 ous France, being offered Canada for a 

 separate settlement, refused, and kept 

 her word not to accept any material ad- 

 vantage, the whole nation being in ac- 

 cord and the people illuminating for joy. 



