About Norman Desmarais

Comte Jean Baptiste Charles Henri Hector d’Estaing (1729–1794) held positions as admiral in the French navy and major general in the French army. Five weeks after King Louis XVI signed …
Read More

Lieutenant General Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur Comte de Rochambeau (1725–1807) did not simply wake up on the morning of June 18, 1781 and order his army of more than …
Read More

There were five or six duels fought in General Rochambeau’s army, three of them in Newport, Rhode Island in 1780 and 1781. Frenchmen can be irascible and easily offended, so …
Read More

When General Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur Comte de Rochambeau arrived in Newport, Rhode Island, on July 10, 1780 with over 5,800 troops, most of the officers and men could …
Read More

One would expect that a country that had been at war for five years would welcome its first ally with open arms. We might have mental images of civic officials …
Read More

The sixteenth, seventeenth and the first part of the eighteenth centuries were times of great turmoil in Europe. They were characterized by a number of wars, such as the Thirty …
Read More

Most of the diaries (see bibliography) that record the arrival and landing of the French troops at Newport, Rhode Island, describe the mechanics of the landing. None of them indicate …
Read More

Rhode Island’s fortifications were in a state of disrepair by the end of the Revolutionary War. The Rhode Island Assembly ordered, in October 1784, that the works on Goat Island …
Read More

Admiral Charles Louis d’Arsac Chevalier de Ternay (1722–1780) is the most renowned Frenchman of the Expédition Particulière to be buried in Newport. His funeral had more pomp and ceremony than …
Read More

A large granite monument (see fig. 1) in the North Burial Ground in Providence, Rhode Island (at the intersection of North Main Street (Route 1) and Branch Avenue) commemorates the …
Read More