In July 1780, French General Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, and thousands of French ground and naval forces arrived in Newport to aid the Americans in the War for Independence. After wintering in Newport, Rochambeau sent Armand-Louis de Gontaut Biron, duc de Lauzun, into Lebanon, Connecticut, on November 20, 1780, with about 220 hussars and all of the French artillery horses because forage was costly in Rhode Island. Lauzun's Legion included about 300 hussars, another 300 infantry grenadiers and chasseurs, and a company of cannoniers, though some hussars and all of the infantry remained in Newport at first. The legionnaires were mainly subjects of King Louis XVI of France, with about one quarter recruited from Ireland, Russia, Denmark, Hungary, and states of the Holy Roman Empire. Lebanon, then a farming community of nearly 4,000 people and home to Governor Jonathan Trumbull and signer William Williams, became the French winter quarters. The encampment lasted nearly eight months, and relations between the hussars and local residents grew strained as some poorly paid troopers took food and firewood, resisted baking bread with scarce wheat replaced by cornmeal, and deserted into the forest; to make an example, Lauzun had one recaptured deserter executed by firing squad in December 1780. Both Rochambeau and George Washington visited the Legion there, with Washington reviewing the troops on the town green on March 4-5, 1781. In June 1781, the remaining legionnaires in Newport rejoined the unit in Lebanon, bringing its strength to just over 600. As Rochambeau and about 4,700 soldiers and support personnel marched across central Connecticut to join Washington's Continental Army near the New York border, Lauzun's Legion moved south of the main army as its left flank, with mounted detachments ranging widely against possible British or Tory attack from the coast. The combined American and French forces then moved down the eastern seaboard to confront Lieutenant General Earl Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, where after a prolonged siege he surrendered on October 19, 1781, virtually ending the war and securing American independence; during that campaign, Lauzun's Legion led the charge at Gloucester that routed the British hussars. The French route through Connecticut continued south from June 19 to July 2, 1781, and north again from October 23 to November 11, 1782.

Photo: Michael Herrick

Lebanon, Connecticut · USA