XV

The Captains and the Kings Depart

THE French left Georgia in “chaos,” said Bougainville. Typical of the confusion was the case of twelve members of the Cambresis Regiment who showed up aboard his Guerrier. He sent them to the Robuste for orders. De Grasse directed them to the Languedoc. From the flagship they were sent back to the Robuste. They were thence redirected to the vessel from which they commenced these briny peregrinations. Where the wandering French grenadiers finally landed we are not told for the Guerrier changed its destination after starting out for the West Indies.

A severe gale which blew up on October 28th helped disperse the once great armada of Vice-Admiral d’Estaing. At four o’clock that afternoon a cable of the Languedoc snapped (one of the seventy lost by the French ships off Savannah). The other cable had to be cut and the big vessel was forced to set sail eastward. In the wake of the flagship M. de Bougainville hurled a parting insult at Count d’Estaing. In his choicest vein of sarcasm he noted in his Journal, “The general has decamped after showing the thoughtfulness of signalling to his squadron the order to remain in perdition on this fatal coast.” “When will he return and how will all this end up?” wondered Bougainville.

Contrary winds prevented the Languedoc from returning to the anchorage. Several of d’Estaing’s captains were left on the coast of Georgia without orders. The Vice-Admiral could blame it all on the American pilots. They had assured the French that a storm at this season of the year was “contre nature.”

De Grasse returned to the West Indies instead of sailing to the Chesapeake as the Vice-Admiral expected. Had he executed his orders as well as the Marquis de Vaudreuil, who took the Fendant to Maryland, Charlestown would not have been attacked by General Clinton, d’Estaing told Washington.¹ Fame and glory at Yorktown followed by oblivion and disgrace in France after his disastrous defeat in the West Indies on April 12, 1782, awaited Count de Grasse. Many of these naval officers were to be present that dolorous day. Among them was M. de Bernard de Marigny, who commanded the frigates which transported the troops to Grenada. He was to meet a fiery death in the Battle of the Saintes. Desperately wounded, the Count lay stretched on a bed in his cabin when some sailors burst in and announced that the César was about to blow up. “So much the better!” replied the dying de Marigny. “The English will not get her. Close the door, my friends, and try to save yourselves.”²

But to return to the Savannah expedition, one of the Vice-Admiral’s principal worries, judging by the length of his explanations on the subject to the Ministry, seems to have been the fate of Colonel de Noailles. Against his better judgment he had permitted the young nobleman to visit Savannah in company with the English prisoner, Thomas MacKenzie, who persuaded the French that he had business there of a pressing nature for a few hours.³ Assuring his superiors that M. de Noailles probably got away aboard the Chimère which he was certain had remained in the River for several days, d’Estaing sarcastically added that he had told him that the real reason he wanted to go to Savannah was not to see the place, as the Vicomte pretended, but rather to “scold” the enemy for “not having attempted all that he had predicted they could and should do and for not preventing, in accordance with his expectations, the retreat of the Americans and ourselves.”⁴ How wrong his two young Colonels had been! D’Estaing was not called “Monsieur la Ressource” for nothing. He was no fool. “The enemy,” the Count would boast to M. de Sartine, “were not able to have and did not have so much as a pistol to show for a trophy.”

Just as the French General suspected, Colonel de Noailles did plenty of talking while at Savannah. He was quoted by a British source as saying that “The Panic of the Troops last embarked was such that they would have laid down their Arms had we detached 500 of our Troops to pursue them.” He was also represented as declaring that “all the French Land and Sea Officers greatly exclaimed against Comte d’Estaing, and also at the rascally behaviour of the Rebels on the Day of Battle.”⁵

As the Robuste drew away from the Languedoc d’Estaing was honored with a parting “Vive le roi” But the sailors did not join in. Captain Séguier de Terson, who was aboard de Grasse’s ship, could not help but observe their “great pleasure at getting rid of the vice admiral.” On this ever-dominant note of discord and confusion the sojourn of Count d’Estaing’s squadron in American waters came to an end.

The crossing proved a terrible one for the Languedoc. The first few days were marked by “frightful rolling” in “monstrous seas” which Admiral d’Estaing described as “higher than those I experienced off the Cape of Good Hope.” The ship was taking in ten inches of water an hour and the pumps were inadequate. A terrible epidemic of eye trouble developed among the crew. The flagship was without an anchor. To the “inexpressible joy” of everyone aboard her they met up with the Provence on the way home and signalled her down. Aboard her were espied two anchors. But the heavy seas did not permit the transfer. “It was the torture of Tantalus,” wrote the Count, “to look constantly upon this indispensable equipment and not possess it. Never has an anchor been so greedily eyed. Molière’s Miser did not find the eyes of his cash-box so beautiful.”

At Brest the Vice-Admiral was coldly received by the French naval authorities. He dispatched a long report to M. de Sartine, the last paragraph of which was written in a hand described by d’Estaing as “still feeble.” Apologizing for adding to his lengthy account, he said, “I should prefer, as I had the honor of remarking to you before leaving Martinique, to be thought condemnable rather than to find myself guilty in my own eyes as I would have been had I done anything less.”⁶ A story is told that d’Estaing asked M. de Sartine to request the King to give him leave to fall at his Majesty’s feet in thanks for the confidence that had been reposed in him. “At my feet!” exclaimed Louis XVI. “Oh, no! It is in my arms that I will receive him.”⁷

Versailles took its cue from the French people who remembered Grenada and forgot Savannah. A victory-hungry public gave d’Estaing a hero’s welcome. Flowers were strewn upon his carriage as it passed through the countryside. “Armed with his glorious crutches,” he appeared before the King, who expressed “extreme satisfaction” at his conduct. “An innumerable crowd,” it was said, “awaited him at Versailles, and followed him to the house of the Ministers. His procession had the air of a triumph.”⁸ “I met with a reception infinitely beyond my merits,” confessed the Vice-Admiral. Considering what he might have achieved during his fifteen months in American waters as compared to his actual accomplishments, one must concur.

A greater storm than that which scattered the fleet off Georgia would one day overtake these Frenchmen.

Like many of his companions-in-arms d’Estaing was to be caught in the maelstrom of the coming French Revolution. During that epoch he steered a devious course between the liberal principles with which he became imbued and his adherence to the monarchy. He wrote an eloquent letter to the Queen in 1789 warning of the dangers ahead for the royal family. From time to time he transmitted advice to Marie Antoinette which was neither solicited nor heeded. She never forgave or forgot his inexplicable conduct at the head of the National Guard on the terrible days of October 5–6th. He incurred her lasting displeasure. The “whiff of grapeshot” with which he might have ended the Revolution at its very inception was to be postponed for six terror-filled years until a young artillery officer named Bonaparte came upon the scene.

Ambition drew d’Estaing deeper and deeper into the swirling vortex of French politics. When Louis XVI put on the Revolutionary cockade at Paris, the Count exclaimed, “Sire, with that cockade and the Third Estate you will conquer Europe!” Michaud says that he made himself “patriot by calculation without ceasing to be courtier by habit.” But he could not forever run with hare and hunt with hound. Called by Fouquier-Tinville as a witness at the trial of Marie Antoinette, he would say nothing to inculpate the widow of Louis XVI, but his testimony proved not only unhelpful to that unfortunate lady but compromising to himself. His quarters were searched. No incriminating papers were found but the search turned up several miniatures of the King, the Queen, and Count d’Artois as well as some medallions of the Festivals of the Federation—counter-revolutionary propaganda! D’Estaing was brought to trial in 1794, accused of plotting the escape of Louis XVI and of having brought the Flanders Regiment to Paris in ’89. “When you cut off my head, send it to the English, they will pay you well for it!” he told his prosecutors at the end of a trial that was not without stains upon his memory. The ci-devant darling of the Bourbons was beheaded on April 28, 1794. A grovelling letter of appeal which d’Estaing wrote to the judge went undelivered. He was in his sixty-fourth year.

What of the fate of the other Frenchmen we have met in these pages? It may be interesting to see what became of some of Count d’Estaing’s associates of September-October, 1779. Careers that brought fame, turbulence, and tragedy awaited many of these men.

Arthur Dillon had revealed to Colonel Stedingk while in America a premonition that he would die a violent death. It came to him in the French Revolution. Accused of plotting the escape of Danton and Desmoulins, he was guillotined in 1794. The tragic Lucile Desmoulins died the same day. “I have been the cause of your death,” she apologized as they awaited the tumbrels that carried them to the scaffold. “You have been the pretext,” he corrected her with a smile. He died gallantly. When he reached the scaffold a lady about to be executed asked, “Oh! Monsieur Dillon, do you wish to go first?” Doffing his hat as he ascended the platform ahead of her, the General replied, “What would I not do for a lady!”⁹ “Vive le roi!” he shouted as he went to his death. One of the Count’s daughters was the charming diarist, the Marquise de la Tour du Pin. The other was tall, domineering Fanny Dillon, protégée of Josephine Beauharnais and a favorite of Napoleon, who played the match-maker in her marriage to the celebrated Count Bertrand. She accompanied her husband to St. Helena and remained at the side of the exiled Emperor to the end. General Théobald-Hyacinth Dillon was assassinated in 1792 by his own Jacobin-infected troops when he tried to prevent their panic-stricken flight from the Austrians. His mutilated remains were placed in the Panthéon. In the same year General Joseph O’Moran, who had carried in the summons to surrender at Savannah, went to the guillotine for “inefficiency.” Anne-Claude de Tarragon, who had served with his brother in the Armagnac Regiment in Georgia, survived Savannah, Saint Christopher, Tabago, Saint Lucie, and the Battle of the Saintes only to fall a victim to a washer-woman. Informed on by her for corresponding with Bouillé and Lafayette, he was guillotined in 1793.

Louis-Marie de Noailles became the leader of the liberal element among the French nobility, warmly espousing the cause of popular reform in the early stages of the Revolution. It is said that it was he who carried Marie Antoinette to safety when the canaille swarmed about the royal carriage on the return from Varennes though others assert that the Queen pointedly spurned his arm on that occasion for that of a member of the “right.” Eventually he had to emigrate. He settled in Philadelphia where he added to the fortune he brought with him to America. Within the space of a month in 1794 the guillotine snuffed out the lives of his wife and both of his aged parents.

Re-entering the French military service in 1803, Noailles bravely defended the Môle St. Nicolas for several months. “A French general cannot surrender without shame as long as he has supplies, ammunition and devoted soldiers,” he replied to the British demands. Escaping to sea from San Domingo, his ship was hailed down by a British corvette. In perfect English he replied that he too was looking for General de Noailles. That night the French vessel sailed alongside the unsuspecting English ship. At the head of twenty grenadiers he leaped aboard. There was a desperate battle in the dark in which he was wounded. The enemy vessel was captured but General de Noailles died a few days later in Cuba. Jean Gudin has immortalized this outstanding exploit of French naval annals in one of his best marine canvasses.

Though Louis-Antoine de Bougainville believed, as he told Gouverneur Morris, that Louis XVI was “betrayed by the Weakness if not by the Wickedness of his Councillors” he remained unfalteringly faithful to the Bourbons. During the French Revolution the famous explorer nearly realized the fulfillment of a strange prophecy made by him in his Journal years before. “I have read today in the Abbé Vély’s History of France,” the captain of the Guerrier had written, “that Hugues de Bouville, chamberlain of the King and Secretary, was killed in 1315 [1304] in the battle of Mons-en-Puelle while defending the person of King Philip, the Handsome.” “It is as the secretary of the cabinet,” Bougainville added in a curious strain of mysticism, “that I make a note of this item here.” Ready to die for the Bourbons, he stood at the side of Louis XVI when the rabble invaded the Tuileries on the tempestuous nights of June 20th and August 10th, 1792. His presence of mind saved the French monarch’s life on the first of those occasions, says Madame Campan in her Memoirs. “Put the King in the recess of the window, and place benches before him!” Bougainville shouted as the assassins approached. He escaped the guillotine almost by a miracle. Marked for death, orders were dispatched to bring him to Paris for trial. Robespierre’s sudden fall resulted in his release. The fascinated Napoleon, who teasingly called him “M. le Royaliste,” made Admiral de Bougainville a Count of the Empire.

A number of the noblemen who served under d’Estaing at Savannah left France in the Revolution. The list of émigrés, in addition to Noailles, included the names of Prévalaye, d’Hervilly, Vaudreuil, Puysegur, Rouvray, Bruyères, Colbert, Béthisy, and Albert de Rions. The last commanded the naval base at Toulon during the violent days there in 1790. When the mob demanded that he deliver up an officer serving under him, he stepped forward and said, “If you want another victim here am I but if you want one of my officers you must first pass over me.” Clubbed, kicked and insulted, de Rions was dragged to prison through the streets amid cries of “Hang him! Cut off his head!” He later emigrated and served in the army of Condé.

Outstanding among the counter-revolutionists was Admiral Jean-Honoré, Comte de Trogoff. As a young lieutenant de vaisseau he had carried Captain Séguier de Terson’s men on a September evening in 1779 to the rendezvous near the Languedoc off Tybee. In the French Revolution Admiral de Trogoff delivered his squadron over to the British at Toulon and helped them capture that port from the Revolutionists.

Few strove harder to secure the safety of the Bourbons than Count d’Hervilly, who had taken over Fontanges’ duties when the latter became a casualty at Savannah. He was commended by d’Estaing for his services. During the French Revolution d’Hervilly suggested to the King that he be allowed to expel the Assembly forcibly, arguing that it would be “a mighty day for the royal cause.” When the mob stormed the Tuileries it was he who regretfully delivered the King’s order to the faithful Swiss Guard to hold their fire. In 1795 he led an unsuccessful émigré descent on the French coast. Mortally wounded, he died in London.

Despite his aristocratic background, Guy-Pierre, Comte de Kersaint, who commanded the Iphigénie at Savannah, entertained Republican sentiments. Author of a well-known pamphlet attacking feudal privileges, M. de Kersaint for a time possessed great influence in the Assembly. But as a Girondin he denounced the September massacres. “It is time that gibbets were erected for the murderers,” he declared, insisting amid the boos of the Jacobin galleries upon a fair trial for the deposed ruler. After the King’s execution he resigned, unable to undergo, Kersaint informed the Assembly, “the shame of sitting there among men of blood.” On trumped-up charges that he had insulted the Republic by resigning and conspired to restore the monarchy he was guillotined after a mock trial.

In the States-General, in which a number of the veterans of Savannah served, the Marquis de Vaudreuil proved a strong member of the “right.” On the night of October 5–6, 1789, the old naval hero forced his way with some other officers into the royal palace. Reaching the side of the King, they helped keep the mob at bay. De Vaudreuil later emigrated to England, returning to France, as did many of his former associates, after Bonaparte’s rise to power.

Many of the Frenchmen who were present at the Siege of Savannah survived the Reign of Terror and won prominence in the time of the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire.

Imprisoned for a spell during the Revolution, Laurent de Truguet attained a position of considerable influence in the Directory, holding the portfolio of Minister of Marine and later the post of ambassador to Spain. He lost favor with Bonaparte after facing him down before the Council of Five Hundred. “Of what pamphlets do you speak?” exclaimed the angry First Consul as he advanced on Truguet when the latter charged that pamphleteering was corrupting the public spirit. D’Estaing’s aide had not faltered twenty years before in the face of British cannon at the Spring Hill redoubt. He did not flinch now. “You know as well as I do,” he replied, standing his ground firmly.

Another former naval lieutenant of d’Estaing who became Minister of Marine of France was Georges-René Pléville Le Peley. He had been badly hurt in the anti-French riots at Boston while the squadron was there following the Newport affair. Yet it was Le Peley, we are told, who won the Count over to the idea of the expedition to Georgia. As a result of being wounded at sea, he had a wooden leg which itself had been shot off twice in subsequent naval engagements. “The bullet has fooled itself; it has only given work to a carpenter,” joked the salty veteran on one such occasion. Despite his disability he managed to distinguish himself on October 9th by re-forming a company in the swamp while under fire. Le Peley adopted the principles of the French Revolution and in 1798 became Minister of Marine.

Several of d’Estaing’s young soldiers later rose to be generals. Among them was Isidore de Lynch, who refused to follow his aristocratic friends into exile during the French Revolution. He signalized himself in the Battle of Valmy and filled posts of responsibility under Napoleon. Jean-Baptiste Jourdan quickly jumped to the rank of general in the French Revolution. He led the Republican troops to the great victory at Wattignies and went on to become a Marshal under the Emperor. Claude Dallemagne, who also served in the ranks in Georgia, became one of France’s bravest generals. He commanded Bonaparte’s best storm troops in Italy, was highly commended for his services at Lodi and Austerlitz, and was made a Baron of the Empire. In the casualty lists at Savannah one finds the name of Lieutenant Labarre of the Dragoons of Condé, who was wounded in the chest during the attack. In the French Revolution Labarre adopted the popular cause, became a general, and died a hero’s death in the defense of the Pyrenees against the Spanish. His name and deeds were inscribed on a column in the Panthéon. Gaultier de Kervéguen had ranked high on d’Estaing’s board of strategy at Savannah. Captain de Tarragon mentioned his name among d’Estaing’s staff officers who supposed that the mere noise of cannon was going to intimidate the British into surrender. Napoleon thought little of the military capabilities of Gaultier, whom he described as “good for office work.” But it was a talent that was put to excellent use in various military and civil posts during the days of the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire.

Many of the young officers in Count d’Estaing’s fleet at Savannah were also to be heard from in later years.

Maurice-Julien Émeriau, then a mere boy of eighteen, had been one of the first to reach the British entrenchments on October 9th. For his gallant services as chief of squadron in the Battle of the Nile he was promoted to rear admiral. That and a warm letter of sympathy from General Bonaparte was consolation for a shattered arm. Later Émeriau was given high naval commands by the Emperor. Édouard de Missiessy, an officer aboard the Vaillant at Savannah, fled France during the Terror. Missiessy became friendly with Bonaparte on his return and rose to great prominence in the navy under the Emperor, who made him a Count. Pierre-Raymond de Brisson, who served on the César, attained a degree of fame by a book describing his shipwreck on the African coast and his life as a Moorish slave.

Among the gardes du pavilion in d’Estaing’s fleet at Savannah was a sixteen-year-old nobleman, Pierre-Charles de Villeneuve. His was a name destined to become one of doleful memory for France. Sympathizing with the Revolutionary principles, Villeneuve rose rapidly in rank. It was he who led the French and Spanish fleets into the awful catastrophe of Trafalgar. Fearful of the Emperor’s wrath, the melancholic Admiral later took his own life, thankful, he wrote, that “I have no child to receive my horrible inheritance, and live under the weight of my name!”

Henri Gantheaume, who served in the fleet at Savannah, survived the terrible holocaust of Casablanca’s ship at Aboukir Bay. “If you have come out alive,” Bonaparte wrote at the time, “it is clear that you are destined by fate to avenge our navy and our friends.” It was Gantheaume’s frigate that carried the future emperor back to France. Gantheaume later held important naval commands under him. “You hold in your hands the destinies of the world,” Napoleon told him in 1804. But this veteran of Savannah was never destined to measure up to these hopes. In the retrospect of St. Helena the former Emperor would complain: “The instant I put forward any new idea, immediately Gantheaume and the whole of the naval section were on my back.—Sire, you can’t do that.—”

Perhaps in Aristide-Aubert du Petit-Thouars the Emperor might have found an answer to his prayer for a successful admiral. In the early stages of the French Revolution he headed an expedition that was sent to search for the missing La Pérouse who was accompanied on his ill-fated voyage to the Pacific by the Marquis de Pierrevert, another veteran of Savannah. The mission came to grief when du Petit-Thouars was arrested in Brazil as a result of developments in France. After a sojourn in America he returned to France at the end of the Reign of Terror to reclaim the rank of which he had been stripped because of his noble birth. As captain of the ancient Tonnant he was to know a night of greater conflagration than the one at Savannah when he steered a boat “under the walls of a city ablaze.” His death in the Battle of Aboukir was an epic of valor. Both of his legs were shot off. What was left of his body he ordered propped up in a barrel of bran on the quarter-deck. From that position he directed the firing as long as a gun was serviceable. Then an arm was carried away. “Never surrender!” du Petit-Thouars murmured as he died. “Crew of the Tonnant, n’amène jamais ton pavillon!” [“Never lower your flag!”] When the victors boarded the ship they found only corpses on the demasted deck. But the tricolor was still flying.