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

5. Otis Grant Hammond, ed., Letters and Papers of Major-General John Sullivan, Continental Army (Concord: New Hampshire Historical Society, 1930), 1:407; US Continental Congress et al., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1904), vol. 8, 528, 537.

6. US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 8:537.

7. US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 8:553.

8. US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 8:569.

9. Duportail has been universally ignored by American historians. This seems curious when one considers that the names of de Kalb, Pulaski, von Steuben, and Kosciuszko, not to mention Lafayette and Rochambeau, are known to everyone. Perhaps Duportail was somewhat to blame for this neglect. Cold and reserved toward the other officers, he was too highly trained and his judgment too much valued by Washington for him ever to be popular. Though he avoided disparaging remarks regarding his brother officers, one senses in his memorials that he was secretly amazed at their shortcomings. He must have spoken openly of these things in his letters to the minister of war, the Comte de Saint-Germain, but these letters have not been preserved.

In writing to his successor, the Prince de Montbarey, on August 10, 1778, Duportail says,

I have reason to fear that neither you, Monseigneur, nor your predecessor, M. de St. Germain, have seen the letters or memorials and plans of battles I have had the honor of addressing to both of you, conformably to the orders given me by M. de St. Germain to relate to him all that took place under my observation and add thereto my remarks. Probably the vessels which carried my despatches have been captured, or if not, as I always required the word of honor of those to whom I entrusted them to throw them into the sea in the event of an untoward encounter, perhaps as soon as they perceived a vessel, whether hostile or friendly, they may have begun by getting rid of my packet.

Copy in the hand of M. de La Radière, Archives des Affaires Étrangères, États-Unis 4, no. 37, folio 2r; Benjamin Franklin Stevens, B. F. Stevens’s Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives Relating to America, 1773–1783: With Descriptions, Editorial Notes, Collations, References and Translations (Wilmington, DE: Mellifont Press, 1970), vol. 22, no. 1936.

CHAPTER 1

1. Duportail is the form of the name Louis chose to sign his letters and documents. He was registered as “Le Bègue du Portail” when he entered engineering school at Mézières, but a registrar transformed it into “Le Bègue duPortail,” and school documents noted him simply as “Duportail.” Also, his title of chevalier does not appear on any of his civil or notarized documents. The title appears in his nomination papers for the school but was not used after the death of his father.

2. On Rue du Bouloy, now Rue de Sèvres.

3. Archives des Affaires Étrangères, États-Unis 4, no. 73, folio 211; Benjamin Franklin Stevens, B. F. Stevens’s Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives Relating to America, 1773–1783: With Descriptions, Editorial Notes, Collations, References and Translations (Wilmington, DE: Mellifont Press, 1970), vol. 22, no. 1936.

4. US Department of State, The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution: Being the Letters of Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, John Adams, John Jay, Arthur Lee, William Lee, Ralph Izard, Francis Dana, William Carmichael, Henry Laurens, John Laurens, M. Dumas, and Others, Concerning the Foreign Relations of the United States during the Whole Revolution: Together with the Letters in Reply from the Secret Committee of Congress, and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs: Also the Entire Correspondence of the French Ministers, Gérard and Luzerne, with Congress: Published under the Direction of the President of the United States, from the Original Manuscripts in the Department of State, Conformably to a Resolution of Congress, of March 27th, 1818, edited by Jared Sparks (Boston: N. Hale and Gray & Bowen, 1829), 1:265–66.

5. Agreement between the American Commissioners and Duportail, Laumoy, and Gouvion, copy: National Archives; draft: American Philosophical Society; transcript: National Archives. See Benjamin Franklin, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree and Whitfield J. Bell Jr. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959), http://franklinpapers.org, 23:315.

6. Archives des Affaires Étrangères, États-Unis 2, no. 66, folio 9r; Stevens, Facsimiles, 7:652. The engineers had hoped to sail on one of Beaumarchais’s ships, but four of the ships sailed before February 15, and none was ready after that date until the end of April. The Seine, the third of Beaumarchais’s ships to sail and the last to attempt to land its cargo on the shores of North America, was the only one lost, captured by the British and part of its cargo confiscated. Most of it had landed at Martinique.

7. Lovell to Washington, July 24, 1777, in US Continental Congress et al., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1904), 8:539, 558–59, 571, 760; George Washington, The Papers of George Washington, ed. Philander D. Chase, Revolutionary War Series (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985), 10:389.

8. George Washington to Major General Horatio Gates, Coryells Ferry, July 29, 1777.

9. Washington, Papers, 11:225, 11:251.

10. Washington, Papers, 10:650. George Washington wrote to John Hancock on August 17, 1777, to inform him that Colonel Duportail had made several requests for horses and servants to accomplish their tasks and that he had to loan some to them, as they expected to find these things available at the public expense. The Journals of Congress, in an entry for July 5, 1777, ordered

that another warrant be drawn by the president on the auditor general, in favour of Richard Ellis, for 700 dollars, being in full of a bill drawn by his Excellency Governor Casswell, of North Carolina in part of the expenses of horses, carriages and other necessaries furnished Colonel Derford and five other French gentlemen of his party on their journey from thence to Philadelphia, to be charged to the said Governor.

11. US Continental Congress, Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (Washington, DC: National Archives, National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, 1985), vol.