George Washington to Lieutenant General Rochambeau, 13 May 1781
To Lieutenant General Rochambeau
Head Quarters New Windsor 13th May 1781.
Sir
I have this morning received your Excellency’s favor of the 8th.1 Give me leave most sincerely to congratulate you on the safe return of the Viscount de Rochambeau, who I hope is the Bearer of agreeable intelligences. A Copy of your letter has been instantly transmitted to His Excellency the Minister at Philadelphia.2
I will meet your Excellency at Weathersfeild, at any time which you shall be pleased to appoint.3
I have no further accounts from New York since my letter of the 11th except what is brought by two Deserters, who speak confidently of a detachment from the Army having sailed last Week, but they know nothing respecting the Fleet.4 I have the honor to be with very great Regard Yr Excellency’s Most obt Servt
Go: Washington
LS, in Tench Tilghman’s writing, CtY-BR:R; Df, DLC:GW; Rochambeau’s French translation, CtY-BR:R; LB, in French, DLC: Rochambeau Papers, vol. 12; Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
1. See Rochambeau to GW, 8 May.
2. GW wrote French minister La Luzerne from New Windsor on this date: “I do myself the honor to inclose your Excellency the Copy of a letter this moment received from Count de Rochambeau. I have no particulars, but I flatter myself the intelligences brought by the Viscount will be agreeable” (LS, in Tench Tilghman’s writing, FrPMAE; Df, DLC:GW; Varick transcript, DLC:GW). The enclosed copy of GW’s letter to Rochambeau has not been found.
3. GW named 21 May (see his letter to Rochambeau, 14 May; see also The Wethersfield Conference and Aftermath, 14 May–16 June, editorial note).
4. See GW to Rochambeau, 11 May, and n.1 to that document. In his diary entry for 12 May, GW recorded that “sensible deserters,” who had left King’s Bridge, N.Y., at 2:00 A.M. on 11 May, reported specific units totaling “about 2,000 Men” (, 3:362). A British officer described the detachment bound for Virginia as having only about 1,600 men. The fleet sailed on 13 May (see the entries for 27 and 30 April, and 1 and 13 May, in , 2:514–16, 520; see also William Heath to GW, 1 May, n.1, and Elias Dayton to GW, 16 May).