Page:National Geographic Magazine, vol 31 (1917).djvu/546

 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.

This was so peculiar that many had doubts; John Adams never lost his; even 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.” 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.

The ideal leader—Rochambeau
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 government considered it could do no better than to select Rochambeau. It could, indeed, do no better.

Rochambeau 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 fulfillment 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 battlefields 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.

A happy marriage with annals brief
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