- Each year the Washington Library
brings in a cohort of
scholars that are researching
different aspects of
early American history.
This past year, one of those
scholars was Miss Iris De Rode
a graduate student at the
University of Paris Eight.
She's been researching
the relationship between
the Marquis de Chastellux
and George Washington.
While many Americans have probably heard
the more famous relationship
between Washington
and the Marquis de Lafayette,
Chastellux's relationship
with Washington was, in many
ways, even more important
that Lafayette's relationship.
- The Marquis Francois-Jean Chastellux
is a soldier-philosopher of
the end of the 18th century.
He was a philosopher of
the French Enlightenment
and he was also an officer
in the French army.
And during the American
war of Independence
he was the Major General under Rochambeau.
Not a lot of people know
Francois-Jean Chastellux today,
so he's mainly forgotten
for several reasons.
During the War of Independence
he made important decisions
but he was not Rochambeau,
and he was not Washington
and so he played a more
background role, let's say,
behind the curtains.
He organized lots of
things but he didn't make
the most important decisions.
Francois-Jean Chastellux was important
for the American War for
Independence for two reasons.
I would say the first is
because he was considering
and thinking about lots of strategies
on how to fight this war.
In the specific Battle of
Yorktown he played quite a big
role on the preparation of that battle
and especially on the
decision if they wanted to go
to New York or to Yorktown.
The other important is
maybe more in the spread
of the ideas of the American
War of Independence in France,
because when he came
back he started to write
a lot about America and he spread
a quite positive image of
this new nation in France.
Chastellux's relationship
with George Washington
was mainly based on
their military relations.
They met in September of
1780 and from that moment on,
they started, of course,
to discuss their strategies
but also more about the
future of America in general.
And so when Chastellux
left to France again,
they started to correspond
in quite a lot of letters
and their relationship began to evolve
into a very clear friendship
and they clearly liked each other a lot.
What their friendship
tells us about both men,
that they were from the same generation
and they clearly shared the same interests
because they were
interested in, of course,
the art of war and at
the same time especially
to have peace after the
war and how to create
a peaceful situation afterwards.
They were interested in the
progress of humanity in general,
so they had similar interests
in the enlightened ideas
that circulated at their time.
Chastellux's archives were
never available to scholars,
so there were not that many
sources available on him.
His wife, nor his son,
published his diaries or correspondences
so he just was forgotten by historians.
- I think one of the
things that's been great
about Miss de Rode's spending time with us
here in the Washington Library
and by the Washington
Library's acquisition
of some of the Chastellux
letters that are out there,
is our ability to
disseminate more information
and facilitate more research
about the Marquis de Chastellux
and George Washington and
the special relationship
that both men had.
And that really allows us to understand
a richer, fuller narrative
about the American Revolution
and the relationship between
France and the United States.
