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

US Continental Congress, Papers, item 38, folios 355–66; US Continental Congress, Papers, item 78, 8:31–34, 8:43–46; US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 25:668–69, 25:695, 25:700.

20. US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 24:324.

21. Founders Online, “To George Washington from Anne-César, Chevalier de La Luzerne, 21 November 1783,” https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-12090.

22. Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, Papers without date, end of 1783, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress.

23. These two letters are in US Continental Congress, Papers, vol. 8, no. 152, folios 337–39.

24. Elizabeth S. Kite, Brigadier-General Louis Lebègue Duportail, Commandant of Engineers in the Continental Army, 1777–1783 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1933), 246–47.

25. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 247.

26. Jules Marsan, Beaumarchais et les Affaires d’Amérique: Lettres Inédites (Paris: É. Champion, 1919), 4.

27. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 248.

28. Major General Duportail handed this document to the Comte de Rocham-beau a few days before leaving for France to deliver to Luzerne. Rochambeau, Papers without date.

29. Rochambeau, Papers without date.

30. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 249–50.

31. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 251.

32. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 251.

33. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 251.

34. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 251.

35. Peter Charles L’Enfant, Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress.

36. John Schuyler, Institution of the Society of the Cincinnati: Formed by the Officers of the American Army of the Revolution, 1783, with Extracts, from Proceedings of Its General Meetings and From the Transactions of the New York State Society (New York: Douglas Taylor, 1886), 22–23.

37. J. J. Jusserand, introduction to L’Enfant and Washington, 1791–1792, by Elizabeth S. Kite (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1929).

38. See Jusserand, introduction.

39. US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 26:64.

40. Founders Online, “To George Washington from William Heath, 21 February 1782,” https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-07853.

41. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 241–42.

42. Washington, Writings, 24:42–43.

43. Washington, Writings, 24:308.

44. Washington, Writings, 25:74–75.

45. Jean B. Gouvion, April 16, 1783, Opinion on Post-War Army, George Washington Papers, Series 4: General Correspondence, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw4.091_0463_0468/?sp=1.

46. US Continental Congress, Papers, no. 38, folios 355–66; Walker, Engineers of Independence, 349–53.

CHAPTER 7

1. Elizabeth S. Kite, Brigadier-General Louis Lebègue Duportail, Commandant of Engineers in the Continental Army, 1777–1783 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1933), 183.

2. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 183.

3. Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères: Correspondance politique, États-Unis 13, folios 119s; Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 184; Elizabeth S. Kite, “General Washington and the French Engineers Duportail and Companions,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 43, no. 2 (June 1932): 121. This memoir is dated at the bottom, “New Windsor, April 30, 1781.” The memoir becomes all the more striking when we consider that General Washington and Congress were on the point of arriving at the same conclusions.

4. US Continental Congress et al., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1904), vol. 20, 774.

5. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 228–29.

6. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 229–30.

7. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 230. Very difficult handwriting to decipher.

8. George Washington, The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799: Prepared under the Direction of the United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission and Published by Authority of Congress, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1931), 22:73–74.

9. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 231.

10. US Continental Congress, Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (Washington, DC: National Archives, National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, 1985), vol. 2, no. 148, folio 289. The report adds, “On question to agree to order their exchange 5 ayes, 3 noes, lost.” The question is on folio 292: “Resolved, That the Commissary General of prisoners immediately cause Colonels and of the Corps of Engineers to be exchanged.” See US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 21:1008, Monday, September 24, 1781.

11. US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 21:1086.

12. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 232.

13. US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 21:1111.

14. US Continental Congress, Papers, vol. 2, no. 148, folio 465.

15. US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 21:1140–41.

16. US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 21:1086.

17. US Continental Congress, Papers, vol. 16, no. 78, folio 507.

18. Extract from a letter of Sir Guy Carleton to Comte de Rochambeau, sent by the latter to Washington.

19. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 235.

20. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 236.

21. Washington, Writings, 25:75.

22. US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 23:697.

23. US Continental Congress et al., Journals, 23:462.

24. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 238.

25. US Executive Treasury Department, “Statement of Claims of Foreign Officers on the United States Remaining Unsatisfied at the Close of 1794,” Miscellaneous Records, 1794–1817, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress. Kosciusko came to America in 1798 to secure his claim of $12,280.54. No other engineers are mentioned in the list. Three of Lafayette’s special friends who came over with him on the Victoire, de Gimat, Captain Capitaine, and the Chevalier de La Colombe, served all through the war but never called for the sums advertised as due them. The Chevalier de La Colombe was taken prisoner with Lafayette by the Austrians and remained with him in the prison of Olmütz. He was alive after the debts were advertised in Europe. Why the money was not called for remains a mystery.

CHAPTER 8

1. George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, ed. W. C. Ford (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1889), 9:103.

2. 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, 34:280.

3. George Washington to John Laurens, April 9, 1781, in George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, pt. 2, Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers (Charleston, SC: Nabu Press, 2012), 8:7.

4. Colonel John Laurens’s mission to France was to clarify America’s needs for King Louis XVI, who was already aware of them. The king planned to increase his aid by demanding 30 million livres from the French clergy when they met at their quinquennial assembly in Paris in June 1780. The funds would allow the colonies to prosecute the war more vigorously. As the king had requested and received seven million livres the previous year, his new demand was met with great astonishment.

The king’s commissioner who brought the demand before the assembly emphasized the king’s efforts to improve the administration of his kingdom and to make the people happier