Washington's Engineer by Norman Desmarais (speed reading book TXT) 📕

Department, you will be pleased to order to West Point, to assist Major Villefranche in superintending and carrying into execution the works now erecting at that Garrison and its dependencies.20

Lieutenant Colonel Cambray had not the good fortune to be included in the exchange. He wrote to General Washington on August 12, asking whether, because it was out of his power to be serviceable to the army, he could not employ the time in being serviceable to himself. He included in his letter some testimonials in his possession and asked for one from Washington, who replied,

Head Quarters [Newburg] 21st Augt. 1782

Sir,

I have received your favor of the twelfth instant. Were it reduced to a certainty that your exchange would not be effected for a considerable time to come, I should have no objection to recommending your request for liberty to visit France, to Congress—But as the offer which I have just made to Sir Guy Carleton of appointing another meeting of Commissioners may possibly be productive of an exchange of a number of officers, I think your application had better stand suspended till we see the issue of the proposed meeting. I return your Certificates for the present, without adding my name to them, not because I have any doubt of your abilities and merit, but because I would wish to do more than barely signify that due credit ought to be given to the honorable testimonials already in your possession, which is all I could do having never had the pleasure of commanding you personally—I hope before you return to France to be able to speak from my own knowledge.21

ENDLESS NEGOTIATIONS

Negotiations seemed to drag endlessly. Cambray renewed his discreet appeals in October to have his present distressing situation mended. Congress responded with assurances that they entertained a “high sense of his merit and military talents and of his zeal and activity in the cause of the United States.”22 He was granted a leave of absence for twelve months but received no money. Alexander Hamilton chaired the committee to consider the financial settlement. The committee reported on December 4, 1782, that it renewed their sense of the peculiarly distressing situation of foreigners, “remote from any resources they may have in their own (country) and destitute of any competent provision here.”23 Nevertheless, the embarrassment of the present financial situation made it impossible for them to advise any measure of relief. They were obliged, therefore, to turn the matter over to the superintendent of finance, whose discretion would enable him to decide what was proper to be done.

Cambray undoubtedly owed his exchange to the efforts of Rocham-beau and the French minister, but the date or nature of the transactions remain unknown. His letter asking for a brevet commission as colonel was read in Congress in April 1783. His request was granted on May 2, along with a raise in rank for Major Villefranche and Captain L’Enfant.

Cambray returned to France soon after this date, as is evident by a letter from him to Franklin, asking that letters he was sending be forwarded to friends in America and that mail for him be readdressed to “No. 1 rue St. Pierre, qr. Montmartre.” He wrote again in August, asking Franklin’s aid in securing an interview with the Comte de Vergennes as part of a plan of advancement in the French army, which had the support of the Marquis de Ségur, the minister of war, and other prominent men. In this letter he speaks of the testimonials from Washington, Lincoln, and Congress, which he brought with him from America, as well as those from the states of North and South Carolina, and of the medal given him from the latter state in reward for very exceptional services rendered at the siege of Charleston.

The Rochambeau Papers in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress include a testimonial from General Duportail regarding several members of the Corps of Engineers and requesting places for them in the French service. Regarding Colonel Cambray, Duportail says,

M. du Cambray entered the French Artillery in 1770. Passing to the service of America in 1778 he had the happiness to obtain without effort the rank of Lt. Colonel in the corps of engineers. Since that time he has justified the favor so prematurely accorded him by Congress, through the distinguished manner in which he served in the South where he merited the most flattering testimonials from the Generals who commanded him. He asks to be made Major in the Royal Grenadiers or in a provincial regiment.24

Colonel Cambray’s efforts and those of his friends do not seem to have secured the desired results. A letter from his sister to Franklin, supposed date 1784, speaks of her brother being in a destitute condition and asks for an advance on the debt still owed him from the United States. Franklin must have written home, as a letter from the comptroller’s office in New York reached him in 1785. It stated the sum due Cambray with interest prior to 1784.

After the passage of Alexander Hamilton’s Assumption Bill, Congress caused a list of claims with amount and interest still due French volunteers in the American service to be advertised in Europe in 1794. The sum due Colonel Cambray was stated as $6,977.72 (the interest on these debts stopped by 1792). The list continued to be advertised in Europe for the next nine years and was definitely closed in 1803. Cambray’s name, with the unclaimed sum due him, was still there, along with those of Lieutenant Colonel Villefranche and Colonel Gouvion and an unclaimed sum of $637.76 (interest on principal of $2,657.33, paid to the heirs in 1796) belonging to the estate of Colonel Radière. Colonel Gouvion died in 1792 but apparently had no heirs.25

8

THE CAMPAIGN OF 1781 Yorktown

Congress appointed Colonel John Laurens its minister extraordinary to the Court of France in December 1780. He stopped at headquarters on the Hudson, where Washington and the army were spending the winter, and spent