GENERAL ROCHAMBEAU.

A KIND of reputation acquired by the old Field-marshal Count de Rochambeau, during. the seven years war in Germany, and during his campaigns in America, as an ally of the revolted subjects of the King of Great Britain, procured from the bounty of Louis XVI. an early advancement for his son, the late Commander at St. Domingo, who, at the age of twenty-five, was promoted to the rank of a Colonel of the regi-ment called Royal D'Auvergne. Like all other French officers who had imbibed the rebellious and democratical principles of the Americans, Rochambeau joined, in 1789, the standard of revolt erected in his own country, and became a fashionable patriot, because he was formented by an unprincipled ambition to gain notoriety; but possessed neither capacity nor loyalty enough to distinguish himself in quiet times, or as a dutiful subject of the best of Sovereigns.

In 1791, the constitutional faction, then tyrannizing over their King and his councils, procured

cared Rochambeau the rank of a Marshal-decamp, and he served as such during the campaign of 1792, under General Duke de Biron, and was repulsed with him before Mons on the 29th of April. He was spoken well of in the dispatches of his commander, for the intelligence with which he performed the retreat on that day; but, during the remainder of the year no other notice was taken of him, except that, after the desertion of his friend La Fayette, he was rather suspected by the jacobins, until his oath of equality, in breaking his former oaths of allegiance, made him worthy to regain their confidence, and, fortunately for him, to be appointed Governor of Martinique. Had he remained in France during the reign of Robes pierre, there is little doubt but that he would have shared the fate of his accomplices, Biron, de Beauharnois, Custine, and others; and his revolutionary achievements must have terminated in the beginning of their career.

As Governor of Martinique, Rochambeau conducted himself in such a manner, that when the English, on the 14th of March, 1794, captured its principal town, St. Pierre, they were received by the inhabitants as deliverers, rather than as enemies. But on all occasions, while

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the attacks on the different forts continued, Rochambeau exhibited oftener the little mind of a vain man in a private station, than the necessary talents for a commander, or the liberal sentiments of a true patriot. Sir Charles Grey, on the 7th of March, by a well-conducted attack, during a sortie by the mulatto General Bellegarde, seized on the heights of Sourriere, a post under the command of the latter; who, perceiving his camp in possession of the English, endeavoured to enter Fort Bourbon, with a view of contributing to its defence; but, notwithstanding the small number of the garrison, he was repulsed by General Rochambeau, who was at enmity with him, and obliged to throw himself into the hands of the English, by whom he and his companions were immediately sent to America. To this impolitic, if not cruel transaction, many ascribe the necessity under which Rochambeau felt himself, in a fortnight afterwards, to capitulate and surrender the whole island to the enemy. This General was so well aware of what awaited him in France, that whilst all his countrymen were made prisoners of war, he stipulated for himself, by a secret article, permission to go to America, where he resided with Talleyrand, and other intriguers of the constitu

tional party, until the guillotine was no longer the order of the day in the French Republic.

In January 1796, he was, by the Directory, nominated Governor-General of St. Domingo, where he arrived on the 11th of May. He had under his command Generals Laveaux, Toussaint Louverture, and Rigaud. He was, besides, accompanied by the four National Commissaries, Santhonax, Le Blanc, Giraud, and Raimond, and a number of officers and gunners, destined to instruct and form regiments of mulattoes and negroes, to combat the English occupying the different points of that island. But, instead of acting against the common enemy, Rochambeau disagreed and quarrelled not only with all the other Generals, but even with the civil commissaries, who deprived him of his command, and sent him home as a prisoner to France; where, soon after his arrival, he was, by order of the Directory, put under arrest, and shut up among some terrorists in the castle of Ham. In a short time, however, he recovered his liberty, with orders to justify himself at Paris, which he did in a manner rather to obtain forgiveness than to deserve future employment. For the remaining part of the Directorial usurpation, he was con

demned

demned to obscurity: a severe punishment for an ambitious, revolutionary intriguer.

When Buonaparte, under the name of a First Consul, had proclaimed himself the king of a faction in France, and determined to employ and cajole every man of family or ability who had figured in the bloody annals of the French Revolution, Rochambeau was called forward, and, with General Suchet, sent to defend, with 20,000 men, the principalities of Oneilla, St. Remo, and the county of Nice; but these Generals, at the approach of the Austrians, instead of resisting, after placing garrisons in the forts, retreated beyond the Var, and employed themselves in preventing the enemy from entering Provence; which, not their vigorous measures, but the unexpected and undeserved victory at Marengo, alone effected.

After the preliminaries with England, when Buonaparte, to gain a commercial as well as a military renown, sent out his brother-in-law, the terrorist Le Clerc, as Captain-General of St. Domingo, Rochambeau, from his knowledge of the country, was chosen his second; and the son of a nobleman, who, in 1789, was a Colonel, accepted the command under

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