Rochambeau's Army in Rhode Island

A turning point in the American Revolution came in February 1780, when the King of France approved a plan to send an army to help the Americans. A French fleet carrying thousands of soldiers arrived five months later in Newport, where they spent the winter. The next summer, four regiments under the command of Count Rochambeau, along with a legion of cavalry, traveled overland to join George Washington's forces in Philipsburg, New York. The French and American armies then moved to Virginia, where they won a decisive victory over the British at Yorktown in October 1781. When the French army landed in Newport, evidence was everywhere of the devastation caused by three years of enemy occupation. Once the second largest city in New England, Newport had lost more than half its population and many houses and farms had been damaged or destroyed. With the British still a constant threat, the soldiers immediately began work on trenches, redoubts, and batteries of cannon and mortars to fire on ships attempting to enter the harbor. Because so many families had fled Newport, Rochambeau quartered his soldiers in empty houses that were repaired at French expense, while Lauzun's Legion wintered in Lebanon, Connecticut, where hay and feed were more available. During the army's 11-month stay, French officers and Newport's high society joined in balls, dinners, tea parties, and fox hunts, while the troops practiced maneuvers, engineers made maps, quartermasters prepared logistics, and Rochambeau kept up correspondence with the French fleet in the Caribbean, officials in France, and the Americans, meeting Washington twice in Connecticut and once in Newport. On July 11, 1781, the French soldiers boarded small boats to go up Narragansett Bay to Providence, while Rochambeau and other officers rode there by way of Bristol Ferry and the army's equipment and supplies moved overland as well.

Newport, Rhode Island · United States