Parade, Old Fort Adams [top]
Present-Day Aspect of Fort Greene
GLIMPSES OF NEWPORT’S HISTORIC DEFENCES
The next visitors to Newport were the French. The French fleet, under the command of Admiral de Ternay, appeared in Newport Harbor August 10, 1780. General Rochambeau and his army shortly put ashore. General Heath, in command of the American forces in Rhode Island, was at the wharf to welcome Rochambeau. There were speeches and the American officers wore cockades of black and white as a courtesy to the allies, the cockade of the formal American uniform being black and that of the French, white. It was not long before the French had been made to feel at home and had settled down to a long stay.
General Rochambeau’s defences consisted of a line of earthworks completely enclosing Newport on the north, cutting off access to it by land from any other part of the island. Traces of this line can still be discerned by the inquiring visitor to Newport. Strong temporary fortifications were thrown up at Brenton’s Point on the future site of our Fort Adams, and on all of the islands of the harbor were placed guns. The northern water-front of the city was held by a strong redoubt, built by Rochambeau and known as Fort Greene. This was at the site of the present Fort Greene Park, at the head of Washington Street.
Rochambeau was the second visitor to these shores with a French army. The first allies had not made a pleasant impression with the Americans, it must be admitted, chiefly because of their leader’s, D’Estaing’s, apparent unwillingness to come to grips with the enemy except where such action might directly benefit his own country. Doubtless he acted on orders from Versailles! But General Rochambeau seemed to be under different instructions, for he immediately placed himself under the authority of the American leaders and ingratiated himself with the people. His stay at Newport is a brilliant chapter in the social history of that city.
One of the pleasantest episodes of the French occupation of Newport was the visit of Washington to his French associate in arms. Rochambeau had chosen as his residence and headquarters the comfortable and beautiful dwelling at the corner of Clarke and Mary Streets known as the Vernon House. In March, 1781, Washington, accompanied by his young aide-de-camp, Lafayette, came to Newport and was received here with much formality. The interest with which the French officers regarded their guest is evidenced in some of the journals which they published at the close of the war on their return to their own country. Amongst minor incidents, Washington led a dance with the beautiful Miss Champlin, and French officers, taking the instruments from the musicians’ hands, played a minuet, “A Successful Campaign.”
A merry time this French occupation of Newport brought about, and traditions of the gayeties and portentous politenesses of the period are still retailed in the little city. A finer body of men than the French army had probably never taken the field. Many had been through the Seven Years War. Officers of the most cultured circles of the Old World embraced a chance of campaigning in the New World with the pleasure of school-boys in a new experience.
One of the officers of the French force was the Viscount de Noailles, in whose regiment Napoleon was afterward a subaltern. Another was Biron, a figure in the French Revolution, and who in 1793, having unsuccessfully commanded the republican armies in La Vendee, was guillotined. There was the Marquis de Chastellux,—an elegant,—whose petits soupers became the talk of every one fortunate enough to be invited. Later Chastellux’s “Travels in America” were to become a treasured gallery of pictures of the nation when it was new. There were Talleyrand, Chabannes, Champcenetz, de Melfort, la Touche, de Barras, de Broglie, Vauban, and Berthier, the military confidant of Napoleon, and many others. With such an infusion of genius and culture it is not remarkable that the little city developed an exotic bloom and that the records of this period in Newport are among the gayest in American social history. Nor should one be surprised that the anxious mothers of young daughters of Newport in that time (as we learn now from the betraying evidences of long preserved letters) passed vigilant hours of watchfulness in the sudden maelstrom of French gallantry!
The Chevalier de Ternay, commander at sea of the French forces, died soon after the arrival at Newport and was buried in Trinity church-yard where a slab was erected to his memory.
In 1781 the French marched out of Newport, joined Washington in his campaign at Yorktown, and the result soon was the surrender of Cornwallis and the virtual end of the War of Independence.