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As yet few knew the destination of the army but now Luzerne read momentous tidings and the secret was out: twenty-eight French ships of the line had arrived in Chesapeake Bay; an army of three thousand men had already disembarked and was in touch with the army of La Fayette; Washington and Rochambeau were bound for Yorktown to attack Cornwallis.
The memory of De Grasse will always be associated with great services done to America. His name, rather than that of Rochambeau, represents the material succor which France gave to the struggling life of the young Republic, as Lafayette's recalls the moral sympathy so opportunely extended.
The time when General Washington met the Count de Rochambeau at Hartford was selected for the final adjustment of the plan; and, as a personal interview was deemed necessary, Major André came up the river, and went on board the Vulture. The house of a Mr.
Deeply moved by this tender solicitude of his wife, Alexandre promised to hold her requests as sacred. Once more they embraced each other before they both quitted Paris on diverging roads. Alexandre de Beauharnais went to Valenciennes, where commanded Marshal Rochambeau, to whom he had been commissioned adjutant.
Through him I got a letter before the Congress. "Then Sally went to see Betty Williams. Betty's Frenchman, it seems, is an attaché to the French Minister. This gave us access to both the Minister and Count de Rochambeau. Meantime, Captain Drayton's work began to take effect, and letters poured in upon the Congress urging clemency.
More was in reality unnecessary, for the collapse of the British military policy was manifest, and the surrender of Cornwallis was a sufficiently striking event to bring the war to a close. Washington had not won the last fight with his own Continentals. The co-operation not only of the French fleet but of the French troops under Rochambeau had played the decisive part.
The purport of the flag of truce was that General Rochambeau, finding it useless holding out any longer, wished to treat on terms, and requested a cessation of hostilities for twenty-four hours. The following morning the capitulation was arranged.
We must remember, however, that the French were serving in the country of their friends, with every restraint of good feeling which this involved. Rochambeau told his men that they must not be the theft of a bit of wood, or of any vegetables, or of even a sheaf of straw. He threatened the vice which he called "sonorous drunkenness," and even lack of cleanliness, with sharp punishment.
The signal victory won by the continental army over Burgoyne at Saratoga in the autumn of the following year led to an alliance with France, without whose effective aid the eventual success of the revolutionists would have been very doubtful The revolutionists won their final triumph at Yorktown in the autumn of 1781, when a small army of regulars and Loyalists, led by Cornwallis, was obliged to surrender to the superior American and French forces, commanded by Washington and Rochambeau, and supported by a French fleet which effectively controlled the approaches to Chesapeake Bay.
"Do not hurry yourself, dear madam," said Afra. "We will take care that everything is done. With Madame Dessalines to direct us, we shall be quite prepared. Do not hurry yourself so, I dare say Rochambeau is not at hand at this moment." At the very next moment, however, Euphrosyne's countenance showed that she was by no means certain of this.
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