The tragic life of one liberal French aristocrat illustrates the importance of the relationship between France and the early United States, reports Public Radio International's Christopher Woolf.
Louis-Marie, Vicomte de Noailles, had just turned 19 when the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord in 1775. And like his friend, and future brother-in-law, the Marquis de Lafayette, Noailles was electrified by the news from America. They both caught the revolutionary bug.
Noailles was a member of one of France’s noblest families. “The family had served the King of France for centuries,” says historian Francois Furstenberg. Furstenberg has a new book coming out profiling Noailles and four other key French personalities. It’s called "When the United States Spoke French: Five Refugees Who Shaped a Nation."
“The family had traditionally been soldiers and served in the army,” says Furstenberg. The young Noailles was no exception.
He tried to go to America as a volunteer, like Lafayette. But the French authorities stopped him. They wanted to preserve the impression of neutrality.
That neutrality was a lie, a diplomatic pretence. France began smuggling arms and money to the rebels as early as 1776. These supplies were critical to helping Washington’s army survive its early defeats and the grim winters at Morristown and Valley Forge.
Then after the British defeat at Saratoga, the French openly joined the war. Noailles was an officer in the French army and fought in numerous campaigns in America and the West Indies. He served in the disastrous siege of Savannah, and in the decisive siege of Yorktown in Virginia in 1781.
The victory at Yorktown would not have been possible without the French. French money and credit paid for the campaign. French troops made up half the army there. French military engineers largely directed the siege. And most importantly the French navy repelled the British navy’s attempt to rescue the besieged British army.
As an aristocrat, Noailles was promoted quickly. At Yorktown, despite being just 25-years-old, Noailles was entrusted with negotiating the surrender of the British, along with American, John Laurens.
Read more of this report from Public Radio International.