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ROCHAMBEAU AND THE FRENCH IN AMERICA

FROM UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS

The American war had been for five years in progress; for two years a treaty of alliance, having as sole object "to maintain effectually the liberty, sovereignty, and independence, absolute and unlimited, of the United States," bound us French to the "insurgents"; successes and reverses followed each other in turn: Brooklyn, Trenton, Brandywine, Saratoga. Quite recently the news had come of the double victory at sea and on land of d'Estaing at Grenada, and Paris had been illuminated. The lights were scarcely out when news arrived of the disaster of the same d'Estaing at Savannah. All France felt anxious concerning the issue of a war which had lasted so long and whose end continued to be doubtful.

When, in the first months of 1780, the report went about that a great definitive effort was to be attempted, that it was not this time a question of sending ships to the Americans, but of sending an army, and that the termination of the great drama was near, the enthusiasm was unbounded. All wanted to take part. There was a prospect of crossing the seas, of succoring a people fighting for a sacred cause, a people of whom all our volunteers praised the virtues; the people led by Washington, and represented in Paris by Franklin. An ardor as of crusaders inflamed the hearts of French youths, and the intended expedition was, in fact, the most important that France had launched beyond the seas since the distant time of the crusades. The cause was a truly sacred one, the cause of liberty, a magical word which then stirred the hearts of the many. "Why is liberty so rare?" Voltaire had said—"Because the most valuable of possessions."

All those who were so lucky as to be allowed to take part in the expedition were convinced that they would witness memorable, perhaps unique, events, and it turned out, indeed, that they were to witness a campaign which, with the battle of Hastings, where the fate of England was decided in 1066, and that of Bouvines, which made of France in 1214 a great nation, was to be one of the three military actions with greatest consequences in which for the last thousand years the French had participated.

A striking result of this state of mind is that an extraordinary number of those who went noted down their impressions, kept journals, drew sketches. Never perhaps during a military campaign was so much writing done, nor were so many albums filled with drawings.

Notes, letters, journals, sketches have come down to us in large quantities, and from all manner of men, for the passion of observing and narrating was common to all kinds of people: journals and memoirs of army chiefs like Rochambeau, or chiefs of staff like Chastellux, a member of the French Academy, adapter of Shakespeare, and author of a Félicité Publique, which, Franklin said, showed him to be "a real friend of humanity"; narratives of a regimental chaplain, like Abbé Robin, of a sceptical rake like the Duke de Lauzun, the new Don Juan, whose battle stories alternate with his love reminiscences, handsome, impertinent, licentious, an excellent soldier withal, bold and tenacious, marked, like several of his companions, to mount the revolutionary scaffold; journals of officers of various ranks, like Count de Deux-Ponts, Prince de Broglie, he, too, marked for the scaffold; Count de Ségur, son of the marshal, himself afterward an Academician and an ambassador; Mathieu-Dumas, future minister of war of a future King of Naples, who bore the then unknown name of Joseph Bonaparte; the Swedish Count Axel de Fersen, one of Rochambeau's aides, who was to organize the French royal family's flight to Varennes, and to die massacred by the mob in his own country; notes, map, and sketches of Baron Cromot-Dubourg, another of Rochambeau's aides; journal, too, among many others, of a modest quartermaster like Blanchard, who gives a note quite apart, observes what others do not, and whose tone, as that of a subordinate, is in contrast with the superb ways of the "seigneurs" his companions.

From page to page, turning the leaves, one sees appear, without speaking of Lafayette, Kosciusko, and the first enthusiasts, many names just emerging from obscurity, never to sink into it again: Berthier, La Pérouse, La Touche-Tréville, the Lameth brothers, Bougainville, Custine, the Bouillé of the flight to Varennes, the La Clocheterie of the fight of La Belle Poule, the Duportail who was to be minister of war under the Constituent Assembly, young Talleyrand, brother of the future statesman, young Mirabeau, brother of the orator, himself usually known for his portly dimensions as Mirabeau-tonneau, ever ready with the cup or the sword, young Saint-Simon, not yet a pacifist, and not yet a Saint-Simonian,[1] Suffren, in whose squadron had embarked the future Director Barras, an officer then in the regiment of Pondichéry. All France was really represented, to some extent that of the past, to a larger one that of the future.

Many of those journals have been published (Cromot-Dubourg's only in an English version printed in America[2]); others have been lost; others remain unpublished, so that after all that has been said, and well said, it still remains possible, with the help of new guides and new documents, to follow Washington and Rochambeau once more, and in a different company, during the momentous journey which led them from the Hudson to the York River. The Washington papers and the Rochambeau papers, used only in part, are preserved in the Library of Congress. A juvenile note, in contrast with the quiet dignity of the official reports by the heads of the army, is given by the unprinted journal, a copy of which is also preserved in the same library, kept by one more of Rochambeau's aides, Louis Baron de Closen, an excellent observer, gay, warm-hearted, who took seriously all that pertained to duty, and merrily all the rest, especially mishaps. Useful information is also given by some unprinted letters of George Washington, some with the superscription still preserved: "On public service—to his Excellency, Count de Rochambeau, Williamsburg, Virginia," the whole text often in the great chief's characteristic handwriting, clear and steady, neither slow nor hasty, with nothing blurred and nothing omitted, with no trepidation, no abbreviation, the writing of a man with a clear conscience and clear views, superior to fortune, and the convinced partisan, in every circumstance throughout life, of the straight line.

The British Government has, moreover, most liberally opened its archives, so that, both through the recriminatory pamphlets printed in London after the disaster and the despatches now accessible, one can know what was said day by day in New York and out of New York, in the redoubts at Yorktown, and in the French and American trenches around the place.

I

Lieutenant-General Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, aged then fifty-five, and Washington's senior by seven years, was in his house, still in existence, Rue du Cherche-Midi, Paris,[3] at the beginning of March, 1780; he was ill and about to leave for his castle of Rochambeau in Vendomois; post-horses were in readiness when, in the middle of the night, he received, he says in his memoirs,[4] a "courrier bringing him the order to go to Versailles and receive the instructions of his Majesty." For some time rumors had been afloat that the great attempt would soon be made. He was informed that the news was true, and that he would be placed at the head of the army sent to the assistance of the Americans.

The task was an extraordinary one. He would have to reach the New World with a body of troops packed on slow transports, to avoid the English fleets, to fight in a country practically unknown, by the side of men not less so, and whom we had been accustomed to fight rather than befriend, and for a cause which had never before elicited enthusiasm at Versailles, the cause of republican liberty.

This last point was the strangest of all, so strange that even Indians, friends of the French in former days, asked Rochambeau, when they saw him in America, how it was that his King could think fit to help other people against "their own father," their King. Rochambeau replied that the latter had been too hard on his subjects, that they were right, therefore, in shaking off the yoke, and we in helping them to secure "that natural liberty which God has conferred on man."

This answer to "Messieurs les Sauvages," is an enlightening one; it shows what was the latent force that surmounted all obstacles and caused the French nation to stand as a whole, from beginning to end, in favor of the Americans, to applaud a treaty of alliance which, while entailing the gravest risks, forbade us all conquest, and to rejoice enthusiastically at a peace which after a victorious war added nothing to our possessions. This force was the increasing passion among the French for precisely "that natural liberty which God has conferred on man."

Hatred of England, quickened though it had been by the harsh conditions of the treaty of Paris bereaving us of Canada, in 1763, had much less to do with it than is sometimes alleged. Such a feeling existed, it is true, in the hearts of some of the leaders, but not of all; it did in the minds also of some of the officers, but again not of all. What predominated in the mass of the nation, irrespective of any other consideration, was sympathy for men who wanted to fight injustice and to be free. The cause of the insurgents was popular because it was associated with the notion of liberty; people did not look beyond.[5]

It is often forgotten that this time was not in France a period of Anglophobia, but of Anglomania. Necker, so influential, and who then held the purse-strings, was an Anglophile; so was Prince de Montbarey, minister of war; so was that Duke de Lauzun who put an end for a time to his love-affairs and came to America at the head of his famous legion. All that was English was admired and, when possible, imitated: manners, philosophy, sports, clothes, parliamentary institutions, Shakespeare, just translated by Le Tourneur, with the King and Queen as patrons of the undertaking; but, above all, wrote Count de Ségur, "we were all dreaming of the liberty, at once calm and lofty, enjoyed by the entire body of citizens of Great Britain."[6]

Such is the ever-recurring word. Liberty, philanthropy, natural rights, these were the magic syllables to conjure with. "All France," read we in Grimm and Diderot's correspondence, "was filled with an unbounded love for humanity," and felt a passion for "those exaggerated general maxims which raise the enthusiasm of young men and which would cause them to run to the world's end to help a Laplander or a Hottentot." The ideas of Montesquieu, whose Esprit des Lois had had twenty-two editions in one year, of Voltaire, of d'Alembert were in the ascendant, and liberal thinkers saw in the Americans propagandists for their doctrine. General Howe having occupied New York in 1776, Voltaire wrote to d'Alembert: "The troops of Doctor Franklin have been beaten by those of the King of England. Alas! philosophers are being beaten everywhere. Reason and liberty are unwelcome in this world."

Another of the master minds of the day, the economist, thinker, and reformer Turgot, the one whose advice, if followed, would have possibly secured for us a bloodless revolution, was of the same opinion. In the famous letter written by him on the 22d of March, 1778, to his English friend, Doctor Price, Turgot showed himself, just as the French nation was, ardently pro-American, but not anti-English. He deplored the impending war, which ought to have been avoided by England's acknowledging in time "the folly of its absurd project to subjugate the Americans. … It is a strange thing that it be not yet a commonplace truth to say that no nation can ever have the right to govern another nation; that such a government has no other foundation than force, which is also the foundation of brigandage and tyranny; that a people's tyranny is, of all tyrannies, the most cruel, the most intolerable, and the one which leaves the least resources to the oppressed … for a multitude does not calculate, does not feel remorse, and it bestows on itself glory when all that it deserves is shame."

The Americans, according to Turgot, must be free, not only for their own sake, but for the sake of humanity; an experiment of the utmost import is about to begin, and should succeed. He added this, the worthy forecast of a generous mind: "It is impossible not to form wishes for that people to reach the utmost prosperity it is capable of. That people is the hope of mankind. It must show to the world by its example, that men can be free and tranquil, and can do without the chains that tyrants and cheats of all garb have tried to lay on them under pretense of public good. It must give the example of political liberty, religious liberty, commercial and industrial liberty. The shelter which it is going to offer to the oppressed of all nations will console the earth. The ease with which men will be able to avail themselves of it and escape the effects of a bad government will oblige governments to open their eyes and to be just. The rest of the world will perceive by degrees the emptiness of the illusions on which politicians have festered." Toward England Turgot has a feeling of regret on account of its policies, but no trace of animosity; and, on the contrary, the belief that, in spite of what some people of note were alleging, the absolutely certain loss of her American colonies would not result in a diminution of her power. "This revolution will prove, maybe, as profitable to you as to America."[7]

Not less characteristic of the times and of the same thinker's turn of mind is a brief memorial written by him for the King shortly after, when Captain Cook was making his third voyage of discovery, the one from which he never returned. "Captain Cook," Turgot said, "is probably on his way back to Europe. His expedition having no other object than the progress of human knowledge, and interesting, therefore, all nations, it would be worthy of the King's magnanimity not to allow that the result be jeopardized by the chances of war." Orders should be given to all French naval officers "to abstain from any hostile act against him or his ship, and allow him to freely continue his navigation, and to treat him in every respect as the custom is to treat the officers and ships of neutral and friendly countries."[8] The King assented, and had our cruisers notified of the sort of sacred character which they would have to recognize in that ship of the enemy: a small fact in itself, but showing the difference between the wars in those days and in ours, when we have had to witness the wanton destruction of the Louvain library, the shelling of the Reims cathedral, and the Arras town hall.

An immense aspiration was growing in France for more equality, fewer privileges, simpler lives among the great, less hard ones among the lowly, more accessible knowledge, the free discussion by all of the common interests of all. A fact of deepest import struck the least attentive: French masses were becoming more and more thinking masses. One should not forget that between the end of the American Revolution and the beginning of the French one only six years elapsed, between the American and the French Constitutions but four years. At the very time of the Yorktown campaign Necker was issuing his celebrated Compte Rendu, which he addressed, "pro forma" to the King, and in reality to the nation.[9] This famous account of the condition of France, the piece of printed matter which was most widely read in those days, began, "Sire," but ended: "In writing this I have proudly counted on that public opinion which evil-minded persons may try to crush or to distort, but which, in spite of their efforts, Truth and Justice carry along in their wake."

To which may be added as another token of the same state of mind that the then famous Count de Guibert had some time before printed his Essay on Tactics, so full of advanced ideas, notably on the necessary limitation of the power of kings, that it had been suppressed by the authorities; and he had dedicated it not to a prince nor to any man, but to his mother country: "A ma Patrie."[10]

Six years after the end of the American war, on January 24, 1789, the King of France ordered the drawing up of the famous Cahiers, desiring, he said, that "from the extremities of his kingdom and the most unknown habitations every one should be assured of a means of conveying to him his wishes and complaints." And the Cahiers, requesting liberties very similar to those of the Americans, came indeed from the remotest parts of France, the work of everybody, of quasi-peasants sometimes, who would offer excuses for their wild orthography and grammar. The notes and letters of the volunteers of our Revolution, sons of peasants or artisans, surprise us by the mass of general ideas and views which abound in them. It was not, therefore, a statement of small import that Franklin had conveyed to Congress when he wrote from France: "The united bent of the nation is manifestly in our favor." And he deplored elsewhere that some could think that an appeal to France's own interest was good policy: "Telling them their commerce will be advantaged by our success and that it is in their interest to help us, seems as much as to say: 'Help us and we shall not be obliged to you.' Such indiscreet and improper language has been sometimes held here by some of our people and produced no good effect." The truth is, he said also, that "this nation is fond of glory, particularly that of protecting the oppressed."[11]

The treaty of commerce, accompanying the treaty of alliance of 1778,[12] had been in itself a justification of this judgment. Help from abroad was so pressingly needed in America that almost any advantages requested by France as a condition would have been granted; but that strange sight was seen: advantages being offered, unasked, by one party, and declined by the other. France decided at once not to accept anything as a recompense, not even Canada, if that were wrested from the English, in spite of Canada's having been French from the first, and having but recently ceased to be such. The fight was not for recompense but for liberty, and Franklin could write to Congress that the treaty of commerce was one to which all the rest of the world, in accordance with France's own wishes, was free to accede, when it chose, on the same footing as herself, England included.[13]

This was so peculiar that many had doubts; John Adams never lost his; Washington himself had some, and when plans were submitted to him for an action in Canada he wondered, as he wrote, whether there was not in them "more than the disinterested zeal of allies."[14] What would take place at the peace, if the allies were victorious? Would not France require, in one form or another, some advantages for herself? But she did not; her peace was to be like her war, pro-American rather than anti-English.

Another striking trait in the numerous French accounts which have come down to us of this campaign against the English is the small space that the English, as a nation, occupy in them. The note that predominates is enthusiasm for the Americans, not hatred for their enemies. "In France," wrote Ségur in his memoirs, "in spite of the habit of a long obedience to arbitrary power, the cause of the American insurgents fixed the attention and excited the interest of all. From every side public opinion was pressing the royal government to declare itself in favor of republican liberty, and seemed to reproach it for its slowness and timidity." Of any revenge to be taken on the enemy, not a word. "No one among us," he said further, "thought of a revolution in France, but it was rapidly taking place in our minds. Montesquieu had brought to light again the long-buried title-deeds consecrating the rights of the people. Mature men were studying and envying the laws of England."

Summing up the motives of the new crusaders, who were "starting off to the war in the name of philanthropy," he found two: "One quite reasonable and conscientious, the desire to well serve King and country … another more unique, a veritable enthusiasm for the cause of American liberty." Ministers hesitated, on account of the greatness of the risk, "but they were, little by little, carried away by the torrent." During the sea voyage only the chiefs knew exactly whither they were going; some officers thought at one time they might have to fight elsewhere than in America. One of Rochambeau's officers, the aforementioned Mathieu-Dumas, confided his misgivings to his journal: "Above all," he wrote, "I had heartily espoused the cause of the independence of the Americans, and I should have felt extreme regret at losing the honor of combating for their liberty."[15] Of the English, again, not a word; what he longed for, like so many others, was less to fight against the English than for the Americans.

More striking, perhaps, than all the rest: shortly after we had decided to take part in the war, the question of our motives and of a possible annihilation of England as a great power was plainly put, in the course of a familiar conversation, by the president of Yale University to the future signer of the Louisiana Treaty, Barbé-Marbois, then secretary of our legation in the United States. "Mons. Marbois," Ezra Stiles confided to his diary, on the occasion of the French minister, La Luzerne, and his secretary's visit to Yale, "is a learned civilian, a councillor of the Parliament of Metz, æt. 35, as I judge; speaks English very tolerably, much better than his Excellency the minister. He was very inquisitive for books and American histories. … Among other things I asked Mons. Marbois whether the Powers of Europe would contentedly see Great Britain annihilated.

"He said, no; it would be for the interest of Europe that Britain should have weight in the balances of power. … France did not want to enlarge her dominions by conquest or otherwise."[16]

For the French diplomat, a man of great ability and well informed, addressing, as he was, one to whom a "yes" instead of a "no" would have caused no pain, far from it, the motive of our actions was neither a prospective loss by England of her rank nor the increase of our own possessions, but simply American independence.

II

Aware of the importance and difficulty of the move it had decided upon, the French Government had looked for a trained soldier, a man of decision and of sense, one who would understand Washington and be understood by him, would keep in hand the enthusiasts under his orders, and would avoid ill-prepared, risky ventures. The time of the d'Estaings was gone; definitive results were to be sought. The government considered it could do no better than to select Rochambeau. It could, indeed, do no better.

The future marshal of France had been first destined to priesthood for no other reason than that he was a second son, and he was about to receive the tonsure when his elder brother died, and Bishop de Crussol, who had been supervising Donatien's ecclesiastical studies, came one day to him and said: "You must forget all I have told you up to now; you have become the eldest of your family and you must now serve your country with as much zeal as you would have served God in the ecclesiastical state."

Rochambeau did so. He was appointed an officer and served on his first campaign in Germany at sixteen, fought under Marshal de Saxe, was a colonel at twenty-two (Washington was to become one also at twenty-two), received at Laufeldt his two first wounds, of which he nearly died. At the head of the famous Auvergne regiment, "Auvergne sans tache" (Auvergne the spotless), as it was called, he took part in the chief battles of the Seven Years' War, notably in the victory of Klostercamp, where spotless Auvergne had 58 officers and 800 soldiers killed or wounded, the battle made memorable by the episode of the Chevalier d'Assas, who went to his heroic death in the fulfilment of an order given by Rochambeau. The latter was again severely wounded, but, leaning on two soldiers, he could remain at his post till the day was won.

On the opposite side of the same battle-fields were fighting many destined, like Rochambeau himself, to take part in the American war; it was like a preliminary rehearsal of the drama that was to be. At the second battle of Minden, in 1759, where the father of Lafayette was killed, Rochambeau covered the retreat, while in the English ranks Lord Cornwallis was learning his trade, as was too, but less brilliantly, Lord George Germain, the future colonial secretary of the Yorktown period. At Johannisberg, in the same war, Clinton, future commander-in-chief at New York, was wounded, while here and there in the French army such officers distinguished themselves as Bougainville, back from Ticonderoga, and not yet a sailor, Chastellux, already a colonel, no longer a secretary of embassy, not yet an Academician, and my predecessor, La Luzerne, an officer of cavalry, not yet a diplomat, who was to be the second minister ever accredited to America, where his name is not forgotten.

When still very young Rochambeau had contracted one of those marriages so numerous in the eighteenth, as in every other century, of which nothing is said in the memoirs and letters of the period, because they were what they should be, happy ones. Every right-minded and right-hearted man will find less pleasure in the sauciest anecdote told by Lauzun than in the simple and brief lines written in his old age by Rochambeau: "My good star gave me such a wife as I could desire; she has been for me a cause of constant happiness throughout life, and I hope, on my side, to have made her happy by the tenderest amity, which has never varied an instant during nearly sixty years." The issue of that union, Viscount Rochambeau, from his youth the companion in arms of his father, an officer at fourteen, accompanied him to the States, and was, after a career of devotion to his country, to die a general at Leipzig, in the "Battle of Nations."

Informed at Versailles of the task he would have to perform, the exact nature of which was kept a secret from the troops themselves now gathered at Brest, Rochambeau hastened to forget his "rhumatisme inflammatoire" and set to work to get everything in readiness, collecting information, talking with those who knew America, and noting down in his green-garbed registers, which were to accompany him in his campaign, the chief data thus secured. He also addressed to himself, as a reminder, a number of useful recommendations such as these: "To take with us a quantity of flints, … much flour and biscuit; have bricks as ballast for the ships, to be used for ovens; to try to bring with us all we want and not to have to ask from the Americans who are themselves in want … to have a copy of the Atlas brought from Philadelphia by Mr. de Lafayette … to have a portable printing-press, like that of Mr. d'Estaing, handy for proclamations … siege artillery is indispensable." Some of the notes are of grave import and were not lost sight of throughout the campaign: "Nothing without naval supremacy."

To those intrusted with the care of loading the vessels he recommends that all articles of the same kind be not placed on the same ship, "so that in case of mishap to any ship the whole supply of any kind of provisions be not totally lost."

As to the pay for himself and his officers, he writes to the minister that he leaves that to him: "Neither I nor mine desire anything extravagant; we should like to be able to go to this war at our own expense." But the government did not want him to be hampered by any lack of funds, and allotted him the then considerable sum of twelve thousand francs a month, and four thousand a month the generals under him.

At Brest, where he now repaired, Rochambeau found that the ships were not so numerous as expected, so that only the first division of his army could embark under Admiral Chevalier de Ternay: a sad blow for the commander-in-chief. He prescribed that care be at least taken to select for the passage the most robust men, and, in order to save space, that all horses be left behind, himself giving the example. "I have," Rochambeau writes to Prince de Montbarey, the minister of war, "to part company with two battle-horses that I can never replace. I do so with the greatest sorrow, but I do not want to have to reproach myself with their having taken up the room of twenty men who could have embarked in their stead." Officers, soldiers, ammunition, artillery, spare clothing for the troops, and even the printing-press go on board at last. Men and things are close-packed, but end by shaking down into place; all will go well, Rochambeau writes to the minister, "without any overcrowding of the troops; the rule for long journeys having been observed, namely one soldier for every two tons burden."

When all were there, however, forming a total of 5,000 men, the maximum was so truly reached that a number of young men, some belonging to the best-known French families, who were arriving at Brest from day to day, in the hope of being added to the expedition, had to be sent back. The fleet was already on the high seas when a cutter brought the government's last instructions to Rochambeau. On the boat were two brothers called Berthier, who besought to be allowed to volunteer. "They have joined us yesterday," the general writes to the minister, "and have handed us your letters. … They were dressed in linen vests and breeches, asking to be admitted as mere sailors." But there was really no place to put them. "Those poor young men are interesting and in despair." They had, nevertheless, to be sent back, but managed to join the army later, and so it was that Alexander Berthier began in the Yorktown campaign a military career which he was to end as marshal of France, and Prince of Wagram and Neufchâtel.

The departure, which it was necessary to hasten while the English were not yet ready, was beset with difficulties. Tempests, contrary winds and other mishaps had caused vexatious delay; the Comtesse de Noailles and the Conquérant had come into collision and had had to be repaired. "Luckily," wrote Rochambeau to Montbarey, with his usual good humor, "it rains also on Portsmouth." At last, on the 2d of May, 1780, the fleet of seven ships of the line and two frigates conveying thirty-six transports, weighed anchor for good. "We shall have the start of Graves," the general wrote again, "for he will have to use the same wind to leave Portsmouth," and he added, with a touch of emotion at this solemn moment: "I recommend this expedition to the friendship of my dear old comrade, and to his zeal for the good of the state."

At sea now for a long voyage, two or three months, perhaps, with the prospect of calms, of storms, of untoward encounters, of scurvy for the troops. On board the big Duc de Bourgogne, of eighty guns, with Admiral de Ternay, Rochambeau adds now and then paragraphs to a long report which is a kind of journal, assuring the minister, after the first fortnight, that all is well on board: "We have no men sick other than those which the sea makes so, among whom the Marquis de Laval and my son play the most conspicuous part." He prepares his general instructions to the troops.

On board the smaller craft life was harder and numerous unflattering descriptions have come down to us in the journals kept by so many officers of the army, especially in that of the aforementioned young captain, Louis Baron de Closen, later one of the aides of Rochambeau.

He confesses, but with no undue sentimentalism, that he was saddened at first to some extent at the prospect of an absence that might be a long one, particularly when thinking "of a charming young fiancée, full of wit and grace. … My profession, however, does not allow me to yield too much to sensibility; so I am now perfectly resigned." He was assigned to the Comtesse de Noailles, of three hundred tons (the Ecureuil, that kept her company, was of only one hundred and eighty). Each officer had received fifty francs for extra purchases; they found it was little, but when they had made their purchases they found that it had been much, so great was the difficulty in stowing their possessions on the ship. At last, "after much trouble and many words—a few crowns here and there—each of us succeeded in squeezing himself and his belongings in those so-detested sabots."[17] Closen, for his part, had provisioned himself with "sugar, lemons, and syrups in quantity."

The crew consisted of forty-five men, "half of them Bretons, half Provençals," speaking their own dialect, "and who, little accustomed to the language used by their naval officers when giving their orders," were apt to misunderstand them, hence the bad manœuvring which sent the Comtesse de Noailles right across the Conquérant. A sad case; would they be left behind, and miss taking part in the expedition? By great luck "there were but the bowsprit, the spritsails, and the figure of the charming countess which were broken to pieces." Repairs are begun with all speed. Mr. de Deux-Ponts promises fifteen louis to the workmen if the ship is ready the next day at noon. "One more reassuring circumstance was that Mr. de Kersabiec, a very expert naval officer, was intrusted with the care of looking after the workmen." He never left them, and "encouraged them by extra distributions. I was intimate with all the family, having spent the winter at Saint-Pol-de-Léon; the souvenir of which still gives me pleasure." The next day all was right once more: "After eleven, the amiable countess was taken again—with no head, it is true, like so many other countesses—beyond the harbor chain." It was possible to start with the rest of the fleet: the high fortifications overlooking the harbor, the villages along the coast, so many sails curved by a wind "joli-frais," the clear sky, "all united to form the most beautiful picture at the time of our start. … So many vessels under way offered a truly imposing sight."

Every-day life now begins on the small craft; it is hard at first to get accustomed, so tight-packed is the ship, but one gets inured to it, in spite of the "buzzing of so numerous a company," of the lack of breathing-space, and of what people breathe being made unpleasant by all sorts of "exhalations" from the ship, the masses of humanity on board, "and a few dogs." Closen has the good luck not to be inconvenienced by the sea, settles in his corner, and from that moment till the end takes pleasure in watching life around him. He learns how to make nautical observations, describes his companions in his journal, and especially the captain, a typical old tar who has an equal faith in the efficacy of hymns and of oaths. "Prayer is said twice a day on the deck, which does not prevent there being much irreligion among seamen. I have often heard our captain swear and curse and freely use the worst sailors' language, while he was praying and chanting: