Washington [259]
AS THE END OF SUMMER APPROACHED, it seemed more than a little peculiar that Washington still hadn’t set eyes on the Count de Rochambeau and the Chevalier de Ternay. The simple truth was that he feared the American army might fall apart in his absence and was too embarrassed by its frightful shape to chance an encounter with the French. Aside from more men, he estimated that he needed five thousand muskets and two hundred tons of gunpowder to field a viable force. When Lafayette informed him of Rochambeau’s express wish to meet him, Washington owned up to the problem: “With respect to the Count’s desire of a personal interview with me, you are sensible, my dear Marquis, that there is nothing I should more ardently desire than to meet him. But you are also sensible that my presence here is essential to keep our preparations in activity, or even going on at all.”26 It was an extraordinary commentary on his army’s enfeebled state. In late August the bread shortage grew so alarming that he faced the severe dilemma of whether to dismiss the militia because he couldn’t feed them or accept new recruits and let them “come forward to starve.”27 In early September, in order to conserve food, he sent home four hundred militiamen.
In mid-September 1780, accompanied by Lafayette, Hamilton, Knox, and an entourage of twenty-two horsemen, Washington set out for his long overdue rendezvous with Rochambeau and Ternay. The spot chosen for the parley, Hartford, Connecticut, stood equidistant between the two armies. Washington dealt with the French from a weakened position: he had only ten thousand soldiers in his army, half the number he wanted, and the total would be halved on January 1 as enlistments expired. He thought it essential that Americans, not Frenchmen, should have credit for winning the American Revolution: “The generosity of our allies has a claim to all our confidence and all our gratitude, but it is neither for the honor of America, nor for the interest of the common cause, to leave the work entirely to them.”28 En route to Hartford, Washington and his retinue paused near West Point so that he could lunch with its commandant, Benedict Arnold. Pleased with Arnold but apprehensive about the state of West Point’s defenses, Washington promised to stop by on his return trip and tour the fortifications.
As Washington approached Hartford, then a humble village consisting of a single road along the Connecticut River, French cannon thundered thirteen times and local citizens broke forth in ecstatic cheers. With Lafayette acting as translator, Washington and Rochambeau had their first chance to size each other up. Rochambeau looked the part of a rough-hewn soldier who had put in thirty-seven years in the army. Short and thickset, he had a scar above one eye and shuffled about with a mild limp from an old war wound. Whatever his reservations about Washington’s military plans, he was tactful, even affable, at this first meeting, but too temperamental to keep his moods in check for long. Claude Blanchard, his chief quartermaster, claimed that Rochambeau distrusted everyone and saw himself “surrounded by rogues and idiots. This character, combined with manners far from courteous, makes him disagreeable to everybody.”29
Perhaps because they had to humor a crotchety boss, Rochambeau’s staff were instantly charmed by Washington. Blanchard professed to be “enchanted” with the American general, who exhibited “an easy and noble bearing, extensive and