Lieutenant General Rochambeau to George Washington, 28 April 1781
From Lieutenant General Rochambeau
Newport, April 28th 1781.
Sir,
I have the honor to send to your Excellency a Letter which I write to the Ch. de La Luzerne concerning some propositions from Congress for the Supplying the French corps with provisions.1 This Letter will be followed by Mr De Menonville, first Deputy Adjutant General who shall receive your Excellency’s orders, as he passes Thro’ New Windsor, that none of these operations may cross those which are necessary for the Supplying your Excellency’s army.2 I am with respect and personal attachment Sir Your Excellency’s Most obedient & most humble Servant.
le Cte de Rochambeau
LS, DLC:GW; LB, in French, DLC: Rochambeau Papers, vol. 9. The letter-book version indicates that Rochambeau wrote Menonville a similar letter.
GW replied to Rochambeau from headquarters at New Windsor on 3 May: “I have had the honor of receiving Your Excellency’s Letter of the 28th of April, and of forwarding the Dispatches for the Chevalier de la Luzerne, which were transmitted to my care. I will expect the pleasure of Mr De Menonville’s Company in his route to Philadelphia.
“Nothing Material has occurred since my last Letter” (Df, in David Humphreys’s writing, DLC:GW; Varick transcript, DLC:GW). GW last wrote Rochambeau on 26 April.
1. For a letter-book version of Rochambeau’s letter to La Luzerne on this date, see DLC: Rochambeau Papers, vol. 9. French minister La Luzerne had written Rochambeau on 16 April and enclosed a congressional resolution adopted on 11 April (see CtY-BR:R; a letter-book version of the letter and enclosure is in FrVinSHD). The resolution reads: “That the United States in Congress assembled will take every measure in their power for furnishing the supplies to the amount of four hundred thousand dollars for which their minister has entered into engagements, and will give immediate orders for forming magazines of flour, biscuit, Indian corn, and flesh provisions to be in readiness for the officers of his Most Christian Majesty” (, 19:373).
2. Rochambeau again wrote GW from Newport on 30 April: “Mr De Menonville, first Deputy-Adjudant-General, whom I have announced in my Last to your Excellency, will have the honor of delivering you this Letter. he shall receive Your Excellency’s orders and instructions about the Letter of credit of Mr Franklin which We have upon Congress, and about the offers which we have had made to us by Congress for the Supplying with provisions the French corps” (LS, DLC:GW; see also Chastellux to GW, 29 April). GW replied to Rochambeau on 7 May (CtY-BR:R); see also GW to Menonville, 6, 7, and 8 May (DLC:GW).
François-Louis-Arthur Thibaut, comte de Ménonville (1740–1815) entered the French army as an engineer in 1760 and became a lieutenant colonel in 1772. In Rochambeau’s expeditionary army, Ménonville served as an assistant adjutant general (see Rochambeau to GW, 12 July 1780, n.17). Distinguishing himself at the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781, he received promotion to major general in November and became a lieutenant general in 1782.