We suppose an intrenched camp drawn across the island from the sea to the harbor, having town, fleet, and transports under its wing, and batteries on all the points and islands. Twelve days sufficed to secure the position to the satisfaction of Rochambeau, who shrugged his shoulders, saying, as another and greater said after him, "I have them now, these English." Yet Washington, remembering Long Island and Fort Washington, wrote in July to General Heath, "I wish the Count de Rochambeau had taken a position on the main."[287]
LOUIS XVI.
Under British rule, Newport wore a muzzle; under French, a collar bristling with steel. The white standard was unfolded to the breeze in all the camps and from the masts of shipping. Tents and marquees were pitched along the line and dotted the green of Canonicut, Rose Island, Coaster's and Goat islands. Bayonets brightly and cannon duskily flashed in the sun everywhere. Sentinels in white uniforms, black gaiters, and woolen epaulets tramped in little paths of their own making. Officers in white, splendidly gold-embroidered, with rich and elegant side-arms, put to the blush such of our poor fellows as chanced in their camps. In every shady spot groups of soldiers, gay and jovial, reclined on the grass, chattering all together, or laughing at the witticism of the company gaillard. The drum—the type military, which has scarcely changed its form in three hundred years—was improvised into the card-table. "Ma fois," "paroles d'honneur," "sacrés" and "milles tonnerres," flew thickly as bullets at Fontenoy.
MILITARY MAP OF RHODE ISLAND, 1778.
A finer body of men had probably never taken the field. Many were seasoned in the Seven Years' War. Perfectly disciplined, commanded by generals of experience, they only asked to be led against the hereditary enemy of France. Officers who had mounted guard at the Tuileries, and had been intimate with crowned heads, embraced the campaign with the careless vivacity of school-boys.
In the present region of old houses is a mansion having a high air of respectability; it is situated at the corner of Clarke and Mary streets, and known as the Vernon House. This was the Quartier Général of the Count Rochambeau, one of the four supreme generals of France in those days. The count was a brave old soldier, rather short in stature, rather inclined to fat, with a humane soul and noble heart. He was hampered by his instructions, and his army lost time here, to the vexation of Washington, and chagrin, it is believed, of himself. Hear what he says when teased by a younger soldier to begin the fighting: