Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau
Maréchal de France
"Discipline, patience, alliance."
Six thousand professional French regulars and the joint march from Rhode Island to Yorktown.
Rochambeau's coordination with Washington, his deference at councils of war, and the disciplined arrival of the French line at Yorktown converted Lafayette's diplomacy into a battlefield surrender.
Content forthcoming.
Born at Vendôme into the noblesse d'épée
Lieutenant general, commander of the French expeditionary army (Expédition Particulière)
Content forthcoming.
Loyalist of the Bourbon crown and of professional service. Less an ideologue than a believer in alliance warfare, military honor, and the dignity of the line officer.
How one life was remembered on three continents.
Honored along the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route (W3R), a 680-mile National Historic Trail tracing the 1781 march. Quieter than Lafayette in the schoolbooks; indispensable in the staff rides.
Content forthcoming.
In France he is the ancien régime officer reconciled to the Empire: a Marshal under Napoleon, narrowly escaping the guillotine. His memoirs remain a primary source for alliance warfare.
Content forthcoming.
For French military officers emigrating to the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Rochambeau modeled professional service without ideological conversion — the soldier abroad, not the prophet.
Content forthcoming.
Trained in the Bohemian, Italian, and German campaigns of Louis XV, Rochambeau came to America with forty years of European war already on his record.
[Citation: Kennett, The French Forces in America, 1977]
Portraits, monuments, maps, and manuscripts. Captions, dates, and credits below each plate.