"On the 12th, the troops had not yet landed; there had even been an express prohibition against their going ashore; and I had not permission to do so until four o'clock in the afternoon. I then landed at Newport. This town is small and pretty; the streets are straight, and the houses, though for the most part built of wood, make a good appearance. There was an illumination in the evening. A citizen invited me to his house and treated me well. I there took tea, which was served by the daughter of my host."
The daily business and special occupations of a commissary as well as the incidents of a campaign life, date from this day for M. Blanchard. In an army in active service, the position of a commissary affords him an opportunity, if he is so inclined, to carefully observe, if not military operations, at least the strange country to which the war has brought him. After his immediate duties, he should acquaint himself with its resources, and have relations with the population, be they friendly or otherwise, of every kind. Hence arises a great variety of impressions and remarks which we accordingly find in this journal.
A short time after landing, M. Blanchard was sent to the assembly in Boston, to ask the immediate assistance of the provincial troops in case of an attack upon Rhode Island by the English, which they anticipated. A German dragoon in the American service, with whom he was obliged to converse in Latin, acted as his guide. Boston, with its Presbyterian population descended from some of Cromwell's followers who had emigrated to America, was still the active head of the revolution. M. Blanchard met there some of the remarkable men connected with it: Dr. Cooper, John Adams, and Hancock. He describes the general appearance of the city which reminded him of Angers. He met among the inhabitants of Boston two who bore the same name as himself; they were the descendants of refugees driven from this country by the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and who in less than a century had become completely American.
The expedition to America lasted from July, 1780, to December, 1782, a period of two years and a half, and during that interval it seems to us that comparatively little was done. Certainly in those days they did not move so fast as now, and no one appeared to be in a hurry; it was reserved for our revolution to give a quickening impulse to the world.
The corps of five thousand men under General Rochambeau had, when they landed in America, no less than eight hundred on the sick-list; a frightful number, being nearly one fifth of the effective force. The length of the voyage, and the bad quality of the food on shipboard, were the causes of this. We learn, however, from another statement of a similar kind made by M. Blanchard, that such a proportion on the sick-list after a sea voyage was by no means unusual. The first thing to be done was to restore the health of the army, and for that purpose it remained a whole year inactive at Rhode Island, if we except the sailing of an expedition with a party on board intended for land-service, which was the occasion of a naval engagement in Chesapeake Bay. Finally the army moved from its quarters to effect a junction with Washington and La Fayette, and, supported by the flotilla of M. de Grasse, commander of the squadron, who landed an additional body of three thousand men, they proceeded in concert to invest Yorktown, where Cornwallis, the English commander, was besieged, and not long after was forced to capitulate.[297] The small French army passed its second winter in America, in the State of Virginia, in the vicinity of Yorktown. In 1782, it returned northward, threatened New York, the last place of which the English held possession, and reëmbarked at the close of 1782.
Such is the framework to the descriptive reminiscences of M. Blanchard. Those two long marches from north to south, and again from south to north, gave him particular facilities for observing the country. Sometimes with the army, oftener alone, and going in advance to make preparations for the sick and the commissariat of the army—a double duty with which he was charged—he visited the chief cities of the United States, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Hartford, Fredericksburg, Williamsburg, Wilmington, Alexandria, Providence, etc. Philadelphia, then the seat of Congress, counted at that time thirty-five thousand inhabitants; it has now seven hundred thousand. Every village, every station passed through, is recorded and described by M. Blanchard; frequently they are but the small beginnings of what are now great and flourishing cities. These pictures of other times extracted from the note-book of a French officer, the rude attempts at agriculture, improvements then in their infancy, the plantations, as they then existed, and roads and public works just laid out but incomplete, present the contrast of what existed then with what is to be seen to-day, and give us an idea of the immense progress that has been made in the interval. There is also for the American reader a particular interest attached to the names given of several families with whom he merely lodged, or whose hospitality was pressed upon him, and whose great-grandchildren perhaps still reside in the same places.[298] When our troops marched on Yorktown, they traversed that portion of Virginia so often the scene of conflict in the late civil war; and in this recital, which seems to treat of times and events long since gone by, we meet with many names of localities common to both wars. There were, even at this time, indications of different tendencies on the part of the populations of the North and South, and the following extract from the journal makes allusion to this in very striking terms:
"The inhabitants of these southern provinces are very different from those of the North, who, as I have already said, cultivate their own lands. In the South, they have negro slaves whom they compel to work, while they themselves lead an idle life, chiefly occupied with the pleasures of the table. In general, neither as to morality nor honesty can they compare with the Americans of the North, and in some sort the North and South represent two different races."
Expeditions sent out for provisions, wood, and forage; transports for the troops; difficulties arising from want of roads and bridges, and the depreciation of American paper money; remarks on the food, the furniture, the price of articles, the fuel, (they had great wood fires,) the quality of the soil and state of cultivation; frequent accidental meetings with refugees from the edict of Nantes, (not far from New York there was a village built entirely by refugees from Rochelle, called New Rochelle, which a number of our officers went to see;) such are the usual matters treated of in his journal, on which in a few words he frequently throws much light, and makes his journal interesting to those who take pleasure in such details. Agriculture and the aspects of nature are among the subjects that most occupied the attention of M. Blanchard: he does not omit to name the plants and shrubs, both such as reminded him of France, and such as were till then unknown to him. This life of movement and activity seemed to be his delight. On one occasion, he explored a large portion of the forest to find the most suitable place for cutting down winter fuel for the army, and superintended the work himself. "I love the woods," says he, "I was there in some sort alone, far from the world. I rode on horseback, and led the life of a man who dwelt upon his own estate." That expression of feeling recurs more than once in his journal, and mingles with some natural observations, like the following:
"To-day, after dinner, while walking as usual alone in the woods, (not far from Baltimore,) I saw a humming-bird. I knew such birds were to be found in North America, and some had already seen them; but this was the first I met with. I easily recognized it from the description given of it. Its small size, its swiftness on the wing, its beak, and the brilliancy of its colors are remarkable. It makes a humming noise with its wings while flying. At first one might imagine that he had met the insect called the demoiselle in some provinces of France. It is no larger; it has also a peculiarity of stopping suddenly without beating its wings. I saw it rest upon a shrub very close to me; after that, I had the pleasure of observing it for a long time."
All the documents in reference to the war in America agree in stating that the relations of our troops with the army and population of the United States were excellent, and that the discipline of the auxiliary corps was admirable; every one in fact seems to have carried away the most favorable impressions of the expedition. The universal enthusiasm which gave rise in France to this expedition still lasted; the Americans were everywhere popular, and the new ideas which prepared the way for our revolution led our countrymen to look with interest and partiality on institutions, manners, and characteristics so different from ours. We find this bias, so general at the time, in the journal of M. Blanchard, but still without leading him into exaggeration, and with some of those slight criticisms that a regard to truth made necessary.