Berthier, the military confidant of Napoleon, was of this army. He embarked for America, a captain of dragoons in the regiment of Lorraine, and here won the epaulets of a colonel. There were also two brothers serving under the name of Counts Deux-Ponts. One of them, Count Christian Deux-Ponts, was captured by Nelson, while on a boat excursion with several friends, off Porto Cavallo. Southey, in his "Life of Lord Nelson," says he was a prince of the German Empire, and brother to the heir of the Electorate of Bavaria. Nelson, then a young captain, after giving his prisoners a good dinner, released them.[289]
DE BARRAS.
It would require a broad muster-roll merely to enumerate the distinguished of Rochambeau's expeditionary army. I have not yet mentioned De Broglie, Vauban, Champcenetz, Chabannes, De Melfort, and Talleyrand; nor De Barras, La Touche, and La Clocheterie; nor Désoteux, leader of Chouans in the French Revolution. To have withstood the assaults of so much wit, gallantry, and condescension, Newport must have been a city of vestals; yet, according to the good Abbé Robin, his countrymen gave few examples of that gallantry for which their nation is famed. One remarkable instance of a wife reclaimed, when on the point of yielding to the seductions of an epauleted stranger, is related by him. The story has a fine moral for husbands as well as wives.
The expected arrival of this army spread terror in Newport. The French had been represented as man-eaters, whereas they were only frog-eaters. The country was deserted, and those whom curiosity had brought to Newport encountered nobody in the streets. Rochambeau landed in the evening. These fears were soon dissipated by the exact discipline enforced in the camps. They tell of pigs and fowls passing unmolested, and of fields of corn standing untouched in their midst.
Beautiful Miss Champlin, charming Redwood, the distingué Misses Hunter, and the Quaker vestal, Polly Lawton, are names escaped to us from the memoirs of Gallic admirers; yet there was only a single suicide in the French ranks justly chargeable to an American love account;[290] and this did not occur in Newport.
One of the French regiments at Yorktown was as famous in Old-World annals as any battalion that ever stood under arms. This was the regiment of Auvergne. Wherever men might march, Auvergne was seen or heard. Once, when in the advance of the army—it was always there—one of its captains, sent out to reconnoitre, was surrounded in the darkness by foes. A hundred bayonets were leveled at his breast. "Speak above a whisper and you die," said the German officer. Captain D'Assas saw himself in the midst of a multitude of enemies, who were stealthily approaching his weary and unsuspecting comrades. In an instant his resolution was taken. Raising himself to his full height, that he might give his voice greater effect, he cried out, "À moi, Auvergne! voilà les ennemis!"[291] and fell dead as the French drums beat "To arms!" The regiment was very proud of its motto, "Sans tache."
