French in Newport, 1780-1781

With the Naval War College on Aquidneck Island, we island residents have a familiarity with the idea of “wargaming” or rehearsing the decisions leaders would make during warfare involving joint …
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“The moment I heard of America, I lov’d her.” The Marquis de Lafayette wrote this in a letter from his camp near Warren, Rhode Island, on September 23, 1778. It …
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Mention Rhode Island during the American Revolution, and two things come to mind: the 1772 burning of the Gaspee, and the famous 1st Rhode Island Regiment initially composed largely of …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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[This article originally ran in the Journal of the American Revolution, at www.allthingsliberty.com]

In July 1780, after three and half months at sea, nearly 6,000 thousand men[1] and supplies crammed …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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