WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH

I

Washington's acquaintance with things French began early and was of a mixed nature. As a pupil of the French Huguenot Maryes, who kept a school at Fredericksburg, and did not teach him French,[148] we find him carefully transcribing, in his elegant youthful hand, those famous "Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation," which have recently been proved to be French. Whether this French teaching given him by a Frenchman engraved itself in his mind or happened to match his natural disposition, or both, certain it is that he lived up to the best among those maxims, those, for example, and they are remarkably numerous, that deprecate jokes and railing at the expense of others, or those of a noble import advising the young man to be "no flatterer," to "show no sign of choler in reproving, but to do it with sweetness and mildness," those prescribing that his "recreations be manful, not sinful," and giving him this advice of supreme importance, which Washington observed throughout life: "Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."

Another chance that Washington had to become acquainted with things French was through his reading, and was less favorable to them. An early note in his hand informs us that, about the year 1748, he, being then sixteen, had, "in the Spectator, read to No. 143." All those numbers had been written by Steele and Addison at a period of French wars, at the moment when we were fighting "Monsieur Malbrouk." Not a portrait of the French in those numbers that is not a caricature; they are a "ludicrous nation"; their women are "fantastical," their men "vain and lively," their fashions ridiculous; not even their wines find grace in the eyes of Steele, who could plead, it is true, that he was not without experience on the subject, and who declares that this "plaguy French claret" is greatly inferior to "a bottle or two of good, solid, edifying port."

Washington was soon to learn more of French people, and was to find that they were something else than mere ludicrous and lively puppets.

A soldier born, with all that is necessary to prove a good one and to become an apt leader, having, as he himself wrote, "resolution to face what any man durst."[149] Washington rose rapidly in the ranks, becoming a colonel in 1754, at the age of twenty-two. He was three times sent, in his younger days, to observe, and check if he could, the progress of his future allies, in the Ohio and Monongahela Valleys. His journal and letters show him animated toward them with the spirit befitting a loyal subject of George II, none of his judgments on them being spoiled by any undue leniency.

On the first occasion he was simply ordered to hand to the commander of a French fort a letter from the governor of Virginia, and to ask him to withdraw as having "invaded the King of Great Britain's territory." To which the Frenchman, an old officer and Knight of Saint Louis, Mr. de Saint-Pierre, who shortly before had been leading an exploration in the extreme West, toward the Rockies,[150] politely but firmly declined to assent, writing back to the governor: "I am here by the orders of my general, and I entreat you, sir, not to doubt but that I shall try to conform myself to them with all the exactness and resolution which must be expected from a good officer." He has "much the air of a soldier," Washington wrote of him.

Mr. de Saint-Pierre added, on his part, a word on the bearer of Governor Dinwiddie's message, who was to be the bearer also of his answer, and in this we have the first French comment on Washington's personality: "I made it my particular care to receive Mr. Washington with a distinction suitable to your dignity as well as to his own personal merit.—From the Fort on the RiviÈre-aux-Boeufs, December 15, 1753." Having received plentiful supplies as a gift from the French, but entertaining the worst misgivings as to their "artifices," the young officer began his return journey, during which, in spite of all trouble, he managed to pay a visit to Queen Aliquippa: "I made her a present," he wrote, "of a match-coat and a bottle of rum, which latter was thought much the best present of the two." On the 16th of January, 1754, he was back at Williamsburg, handed to the governor Mr. de Saint-Pierre's negative answer, and printed an account of his journey.[151]

The second expedition, a military one, was marked next year by the sad and famous Jumonville incident and by the surrendering, to the brother of dead Jumonville, of Fort Necessity, where the subjects of King George and their youthful colonel, after a fight lasting from eleven in the morning till eight in the evening, had to capitulate, being permitted, however, by the French to withdraw with "full military honors, drum-beating, and taking with them one small piece of ordnance." (July 3, 1754.) The fort and the rest of the artillery remained in the hands of the captors, as well as part of that diary which, although with interruptions, Washington was fond of keeping, whenever he could, his last entry being dated Friday, December 13, 1799, the day before his death. The part found at Fort Necessity—March 31 to June 27, 1754—was sent to Paris, translated into French, printed in 1756 by the royal government,[152] and the text given in Washington's writings is only a retranslation from the French, the original English not having been preserved.

The third occasion was the terrible campaign of 1755, which ended in Braddock's death and the defeat of the English regulars on the Monongahela, not far from the newly built Fort Duquesne, later Pittsburgh (July 9). Contrary to expectation[153] (there being "about three hundred French and Indians," wrote Washington; "our numbers consisted of about thirteen hundred well-armed men, chiefly regulars"[154]), the French won the day, nearly doing to death their future commander-in-chief. A rumor was even spread that he had actually succumbed after composing a "dying speech," and Washington had to write to his brother John to assure him that he had had as yet no occasion for such a composition, though very near having had it: "By the all-powerful dispensation of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability and expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, although death was levelling my companions on every side of me. We have been most scandalously beaten."[155]By an irony of fate, in this expedition against the French, in which George Washington acted as aide-de-camp to the English general, the means of transportation had been supplied by Postmaster Benjamin Franklin.

The French were indubitably different from the airy fops of Addison's Spectator, but they were as far as ever from commanding young Washington's sympathy. It was part of his loyalism to hate them and to interpret for the worst anything they could do or say. The master of an ampler vocabulary than he is sometimes credited with, we find him writing to Richard Washington, in 1757, that the means by which the French maintain themselves in the Ohio Valley are—"hellish."[156]A few years later the tone is greatly altered, not yet toward the French, but toward the British Government and King. In sad, solemn words, full already of the spirit of the Washington of history, he warns his friend and neighbor George Mason, the one who was to draw the first Constitution of Virginia, of the great crisis now looming: "American freedom" is at stake; "it seems highly necessary that something should be done to avert the stroke and maintain the liberty which we have derived from our ancestors. But the manner of doing it, to answer the purpose effectually, is the point in question.

"That no man should scruple or hesitate a moment to use a-ms [sic] in defense of so valuable a blessing, on which all the good and evil of life depends, is clearly my opinion. Yet a-ms, I would beg leave to add, should be the last resource, the dernier resort."[157] Absolutely firm, absolutely moderate, such was Washington to continue to the end of the impending struggle, and, indeed, of his days. The life of the great Washington was now beginning.

II

Some more years elapse, and when the curtain rises again on scenes of war, momentous changes have occurred. To the last hour the former officer of the colonial wars, now a man of forty-two, was still expressing the wish "that the dispute had been left to posterity to determine: but the crisis has arrived when we must assert our rights or submit to every imposition that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use make us as tame and abject slaves as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway." It was hard for him to reconcile himself to the fact that the English were really to be the enemy; he long tried to believe that the quarrel was not with England and her King, but only with the ministry and their troops, which he calls the "ministerials." Writing on the 31st of May, 1775, from Philadelphia, where he was attending the second Continental Congress, to G.W. Fairfax in England, he gave him an account of the clash between the "provincials" of Massachusetts and "the ministerial troops: for we do not, nor can we yet prevail upon ourselves to call them the King's troops."[158]The war was to be, in his eyes, a fratricidal one: "Unhappy it is, though, to reflect that a brother's sword has been sheathed in a brother's breast, and that the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?"

Two weeks later the signer of this letter was appointed, on the proposition of John Adams, of Massachusetts, commander-in-chief of a new body of troops just entering history, and called the "Continental Army."[159] Braddock's former aide was to become the leader of a yet unborn nation, in an eight-year conflict with all-powerful Britain, mistress of the coasts, mistress of the seas.

What that conflict was, and what the results have been, all the world knows. There were sad days and bright days; there were Valley Forge and Saratoga. "No man, I believe," Washington wrote concerning his own fate, "had a greater choice of difficulties."[160]

The French had ceased by then to inspire Washington with disdain or animosity; he was beginning to render them better justice, but his heart was far as yet from being won. French volunteers had early begun to flock to the American army, some of them as much an encumbrance as a help. "They seem to be genteel, sensible men," wrote Washington to Congress, in October, 1776, "and I have no doubt of their making good officers as soon as they can learn so much of our language as to make themselves well understood." One of them, the commander-in-chief learned, was a young enthusiast who had left wife and child to serve the American cause as a volunteer, and without pay, like George Washington himself. He had crossed the ocean, escaping the British cruisers, on a boat called La Victoire, he being called Lafayette. One more encumbrance, audibly muttered the general, who wrote to Benjamin Harrison: "What the designs of Congress respecting this gentleman were, and what line of conduct I am to pursue to comply with their design and his expectation, I know no more than the child unborn, and beg to be instructed."[161]

"Give me a chance," pleaded Lafayette, still in Philadelphia; "I do not want to be an honorary soldier." He came to camp, and it was a case of friendship at first, or at least second, sight, which would need the pen of a Plutarch to be told. In August, Washington had been wondering what to do with the newcomer. On the 1st of November he wrote to Congress: "... Besides, he is sensible, discreet in his manner, has made great proficiency in our language, and from the disposition he discovered in the battle of Brandywine possesses a large share of bravery and military ardor."

Then it was that Washington had a chance to learn what those men really were who had lodged so many bullets in his coat on the occasion of Braddock's defeat; not at once, but by degrees he came to consider that one peculiar trait in those former enemies made them worthy of his friendship: their aptitude for disinterested enthusiasm for a cherished idea.

Not at once; early prejudices and associations had left on him too deep an imprint to be easily removed. He resisted longer than old Franklin, and with a stiffer pen than that of the Philadelphia sage he would note down his persisting suspicions and his reluctance to admit the possibility of generous motives inspiring the French nation's policy. "I have from the first," he wrote, in 1777, to his brother, John, "been among those few who never built much upon a French war. I never did and still do think they never meant more than to give us a kind of underhand assistance; that is, to supply us with arms, etc., for our money and trade. This may, indeed, if Great Britain has spirit and strength to resent it, bring on a war; but the declaration of it on either side must, I am convinced, come from the last-mentioned Power." It was not, however, to be so.

Even after France alone had recognized the new nation, and she had actually begun war on England, Washington remained unbending, his heart would not melt. "Hatred of England," he wrote, "may carry some into an excess of confidence in France.... I am heartily disposed to entertain the most favorable sentiments of our new ally, and to cherish them in others to a reasonable degree. But it is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest, and no prudent statesman or politician will venture to depart from it."[162]

After the Declaration of Independence, envoys had been sent to Europe intrusted with the mission of securing the alliance, not especially of France, but of all nations who might be touched by the fate of the struggling colonists and inclined to help them in their fight for liberty. Some of the envoys were not even admitted to the capitals of the countries assigned to their efforts; others received only good words.

Sent to Prussia, Arthur Lee, who had been previously refused admittance to Madrid, could reach the capital (June 4, 1777), but not the King. "There is no name," Lee wrote appealingly to the monarch, "so highly respected among us as that of your Majesty. Hence there is no King the declaration of whose friendship would inspire our own people with so much courage." But the King would not be persuaded; he refused all help in "artillery, arms, and money," though, Lee wrote to the committee of foreign affairs, "I was well informed he had a considerable sum in his treasury." Frederick would not relent, giving as a reason that, if he agreed, the result would be much "inconvenience" for himself. He even refused to receive Lee, whom he, however, allowed to see his army: a mechanism without peer, the American envoy wrote to Washington, but only a mechanism:

"The Prussian army, which amounts to 220,000 horse and foot, are disciplined by force of hourly exercise and caning to move with a rapidity and order so as to certainly exceed any troops in Europe." They practise each day: "Every man is filed off singly, and passes in review before different officers, who beat his limbs into the position they think proper, so that the man appears to be purely a machine in the hand of a workman."[163]

The furthest Frederick consented to go was to cause Lee to be assured, when he left Prussia the following month (July, 1777), that he would always receive with pleasure the news of any English reverse.

To the American appeal France alone answered, Adsum: for what motives, has been shown above,[164] love of liberty rather than hatred of England being the chief reason, and the rebellious colonies being popular in France not so much because they wanted to throw off an English yoke as because they wanted to throw off a yoke.

Up to the time when Rochambeau arrived Washington had seen during the war more or less numerous specimens of the French race, but only isolated specimens. He had heard of what they were doing as soldiers and sailors, without himself seeing them in action. As gentlemen and soldiers he held them, at that date, to be fit representatives of a nation "old in war, very strict in military etiquette, and apt to take fire where others scarcely seem warmed."[165] He noticed, however, after Savannah, that with all that warmth they could, when put to the test, prove steady, level-headed, and careful of their words: "While," he said to General Lincoln, "I regret the misfortune, I feel a very sensible pleasure in contemplating the gallant behavior of the officers and men of the French and American army; and it adds not a little to my consolation to learn that, instead of the mutual reproaches which often follow the failure of enterprises depending upon the co-operation of troops of different nations, their confidence in and esteem of each other is increased."[166]

Concerning the French as sailors Washington did not conceal, however, to his intimate friends his misgivings. He early felt that the issue of the whole war and the independence of his country might depend on an at least momentary domination of the sea, but felt great doubt as to the possibility of this goal being reached. "In all probability," he thought, "the advantage will be on the side of the English. And then what would become of America? We ought not to deceive ourselves.... It is an axiom that the nation which has the most extensive commerce will always have the most powerful marine.... It is true, France in a manner created a fleet in a very short space, and this may mislead us in the judgment we form of her naval abilities.... We should consider what was done by France as a violent and unnatural effort of the government, which for want of sufficient foundation cannot continue to operate proportionable effects." Moreover, though "the ability of her present financier (Necker) has done wonders," France is not a rich country.[167]

When Rochambeau came with his 5,000 troops, on Ternay's fleet, which carried numerous naval officers and sailors besides, Washington took, so to say, personal contact with France herself, and was no longer dependent upon his reading of hostile books, his souvenirs of the colonial wars, or his impression from acquaintanceship with separate individuals. The portraits in the Spectator could less and less be considered as portraits. Washington found himself among men of steady mind and courteous manners, noteworthy not only for their fighting qualities, but their sense of duty, their patience and endurance, their desire to do well. As for the troops, they observed, as is well known, so strict a discipline that the inhabitants, who expected nothing of the sort, rather the reverse, were astonished and delighted.

Little by little Washington's heart was won. We did not, in that war, conquer any land for ourselves, but we conquered Washington. For some time more he remained only officially ours; the praise bestowed by him on his allies and their country found place in his letters to themselves, or in his reports to Congress, which were, in fact, public documents. At last the day came when, writing only for himself, in a journal not meant to be seen by anybody, he inscribed those three words: "our generous allies." That day, May 1, 1781, Washington's heart was really won.

From that moment what Washington wrote concerning the French, were it addressed to themselves or to Congress, can be taken at its face value, and very pleasant reading it is to this day for the compatriots of those officers and soldiers who had the great man for their commander-in-chief—such statements as this one, for example, sent to Congress seven days before the Yorktown capitulation: "I cannot but acknowledge the infinite obligations I am under to his Excellency, the Count de Rochambeau, the Marquis de Saint-Simon, commanding the troops from the West Indies, the other general officers, and indeed the officers of every denomination in the French army, for the assistance which they afford me. The experience of many of those gentlemen in the business before us is of the utmost advantage in the present operation.... The greatest harmony prevails between the two armies. They seem actuated by one spirit, that of supporting the honor of the allied armies."[168] When, in the course of the following year, the two armies which have never met since, were about to part, their leader thus summed up his impressions: "It may, I believe, with much truth be said that a greater harmony between two armies never subsisted than that which has prevailed between the French and Americans since the first junction of them last year."[169]

By the beginning of 1783 peace and American independence had been practically secured. Washington is found duly solemnizing the anniversary of the French alliance which had rendered those events possible. "I intended," he says to General Greene, "to have wrote you a long letter on sundry matters, but Major Burnet popped in unexpectedly at a time when I was preparing for the celebration of the day, and was just going to a review of the troops, previous to the feu de joie." The orders issued by him on the occasion read thus: "The commander-in-chief, who wishes on the return of this auspicious day to diffuse the feelings of gratitude and pleasure as extensively as possible, is pleased to grant a full and free pardon to all military prisoners now in confinement."[170]

The orderly book used by Washington is still in existence, and from it we learn that the parole given for the day was "America and France," and the countersigns, "United," "Forever."

III

No less characteristic of Washington's sentiments thereafter is the correspondence continued by him with a number of French people when the war was a thing of the past and no further help could be needed. With Rochambeau, with d'Estaing, Chastellux, La Luzerne, then ambassador in London, whom he had seen with keen regret leave the United States,[171] and, of course, with Lafayette, he kept up a correspondence which affords most pleasant reading: a friend writes to his friends and tells them of his feelings and expectations. The attitude of France at the peace is the subject of a noble letter to La Luzerne: "The part your Excellency has acted in the cause of America and the great and benevolent share you have taken in the establishment of her independence are deeply impressed on my mind, and will not be effaced from my remembrance, or that of the citizens of America.... The articles of the general treaty do not appear so favorable to France, in point of territorial acquisitions, as they do to the other Powers.[172] But the magnanimous and disinterested scale of action which that great nation has exhibited to the world during this war, and at the conclusion of peace, will insure to the King and nation that reputation which will be of more consequence to them than every other consideration."[173]

Washington keeps his French friends aware of the progress of the country and of his hopes for its greatness; he wants to visit the United States to the limit of what was then the extreme West. "Prompted by these actual observations," he writes to Chastellux, "I could not help taking a more contemplative and extensive view of the vast inland navigation of these United States from maps and the information of others, and could not but be struck with the immense diffusion and importance of it, and with the goodness of that Providence which has dealt her favors to us with so profuse a hand. Would to God we may have wisdom enough to improve them. I shall not rest contented till I have explored the Western country and traversed those lines, or great part of them, which have given new bounds to a new empire."[174] To La Luzerne he wrote some years later: "The United States are making great progress toward national happiness, and if it is not attained here in as high a degree as human nature will admit of, I think we may then conclude that political happiness is unattainable."[175]

That rest for which Washington had been longing ("I pant for retirement," he had written to Cary in June, 1782) had been granted him by the end of 1783, when, the definitive treaty having been concluded, he had resigned his commission in the hands of Congress, at Annapolis on the 23d of December, "bidding an affectionate farewell," he said, "to this august body under whose orders I have so long acted." It was at first difficult for him to enjoy, in his dear Mount Vernon, that so-much-desired quiet life, and "to get the better," he wrote to General Knox, "of my custom of ruminating as soon as I waked in the morning on the business of the ensuing day, and of my surprise at finding, after revolving many things in my mind, that I was no longer a public man, nor had anything to do with public transactions." But he soon came to the thorough enjoyment of his peaceful surroundings and happy family life, writing about his new existence to Rochambeau and Lafayette, not without a tinge of melancholy, as from one whose life's work is a thing of the past. To the man of all men for whom his manly heart felt most tenderness, to Lafayette, it is that he wrote the beautiful letter of February 1, 1784, unaware that his rest was only temporary, and that he was to become the first President of the country he had given life to:

"At length, my dear marquis, I am become a private citizen on the banks of the Potomac, and under the shadow of my own vine and my own fig-tree, free from the bustle of a camp and the busy scenes of public life, I am solacing myself with those tranquil enjoyments of which the soldier who is ever in pursuit of fame, the statesman whose watchful days and sleepless nights are spent in devising schemes to promote the welfare of his own, perhaps the ruin of other countries, as if the globe was insufficient for us all ... can have very little conception. I have not only retired from all public employments, but I am retiring within myself, and shall be able to view the solitary walk of private life with heartfelt satisfaction. Envious of none, I am determined to be pleased with all; and this, my dear friend, being the order for my march, I will move gently down the stream of life until I sleep with my fathers."

With Lafayette the great man unbends, he becomes affectionate, poetical as in the passage just quoted, sometimes even jocose, which was so rare with him. He wants Madame de Lafayette to come to America and visit Mount Vernon, saying to her: "Your own doors do not open to you with more readiness than mine would."[176] She never came, but her husband returned for a few months, the same year, and this was the first of his two triumphant journeys to the freed United States; it was then that he parted at Annapolis from his chief, never to see him again; a very sad parting for both, Washington sending him from Mount Vernon, in time for it to reach him before he sailed, the most touching, perhaps, of all his letters:

"In the moment of our separation, upon the road as I travelled, and every hour since, I have felt all that love, respect, and attachment for you which length of years, close connection, and your merits have inspired me. I often asked myself, when our carriages separated, whether that was the last sight I should ever have of you. And though I wished to say, no, my fears answered, yes. I called to mind the days of my youth and found they had long since fled, to return no more; that I was now descending the hill I had been fifty-two years climbing, and that, though I was blessed with a good constitution, I was of a short-lived family and might soon expect to be entombed in the mansion of my fathers. These thoughts darkened the shades and gave a gloom to the picture, and consequently to my prospect of seeing you again. But I will not repine; I have had my day."[177]

A portrait of Lafayette, his wife, and children was received the following year by Washington, and caused him great pleasure; this, he said to the sender, "I consider as an invaluable present and shall give it the best place in my house."[178]

He continued to the end to be Lafayette's confidant and adviser. In one of his most notable letters, passing judgment on the great warrior Frederick II and on his brother, Prince Henry, whom Lafayette had recently visited, he clearly outlined what should be his correspondent's ideal as to the government of men. "To be received," he says, "by the King of Prussia and Prince Henry, his brother (who as soldiers and politicians yield the palm to none), with such marks of attention and distinction, was as indicative of their discernment as it is of your merit.... It is to be lamented, however, that great characters are seldom without a blot. That one man should tyrannize over millions will always be a shade in that of the former, while it is pleasing to hear that due regards to the rights of mankind is characteristic of the latter."

During those years of comparative rest—only comparative, for he had to receive innumerable visitors, to answer an unbelievable quantity of letters, because everybody wanted his counsels, to take part in the framing of the Constitution as a delegate of Virginia in 1787—his fame went on increasing in France from whence tokens of admiration came for him of every kind, some noble, some simple, some high-flown, like that letter from the Chevalier de Lormerie, who made bold to "present a Plan of Perpetual Peace to a general who is even more of a philosopher than a warrior."[179]

Besides letters, French visitors would now and then appear at the door of Mount Vernon. One did so by appointment, and even in virtue of a law, namely Jean Antoine Houdon, the famous sculptor, whose coming was the result of an act passed by the Assembly of Virginia, prescribing "that the executive be requested to take measures for procuring a statue of General Washington, to be of the finest marble and the best workmanship."

The sculptor might be of any nationality, provided he were the best alive. "The intention of the Assembly," the Governor informed Jefferson, then in Paris, "is that the statue should be the work of the most masterly hand. I shall therefore leave it to you to find out the best in any of the European states."[180] Once more it was France's good fortune to be able to answer, Adsum.

The "executive," Governor Harrison, not over-well versed in matters artistic, had thought that all a sculptor could need to perform his task was a painted portrait of the model, so he ordered one from Peale, which would, he thought, enable the artist "to finish his work in the most perfect manner."[181] Houdon decided that he would rather undertake the journey, insisting only that, as he was the support of his father, mother, and sisters, his life be insured, a condition which, owing to the risks, was not fulfilled without difficulty. It finally was, however, so that we know, to a cent, what the life of the great sculptor was worth: it was worth two thousand dollars.

Houdon came on the same ship which brought back Franklin after his long mission to France, and he reached Mount Vernon on October 2, 1785, having been preceded by a letter, in which Jefferson had thus described him to Washington: "I have spoken of him as an artist only, but I can assure you also that, as a man, he is disinterested, generous, candid, and panting for glory; in every circumstance meriting your good opinion."[182] He remained at Mount Vernon a fortnight, an interpreter having been provided from Alexandria for the occasion. The antique costume with which the artist and the model had been threatened at one time was discarded; Washington was represented, not as a Greek, which he was not, but as an American general, which he was, the size being "precisely that of life." Any one who wants to see with his eyes George Washington, to live in his atmosphere, to receive the moral benefit of a great man's presence, has only to go to Richmond. To those who know how to listen the statue will know how to speak. No work of art in the whole United States is of greater worth and interest than this one, and no copy gives an adequate idea of the original, copies being further from the statue than the statue was from the model. One must go to Richmond.

Unfortunately, no notes on his journey, and on his stay at Mount Vernon, were left by Houdon. As was usual with him, what he had to say he said in marble.

Other French visitors of more or less note called at Mount Vernon. Popular in France, even at the time of their worst troubles, when failure seemed threatening, the United States were much more so now, and men wanted to go and see with their own eyes what was the power of liberty, and whether it could, as reported, transform a country into an Eden, and cities into modern "Salentes." The year of the alliance, 1778, SÉbastien Mercier, in his De la LittÉrature, had drawn up a picture of the French people's expectation: "Perhaps it is in America that the human race will transform itself, adopt a new and sublime religion, improve sciences and arts, and become the representative of the nations of antiquity. A haven of liberty, Grecian souls, all strong and generous souls will develop or meet there, and this great example given to the universe will show what men can do when they are of one mind and combine their lights and their courage." Turgot, as mentioned before, had written in the same strain, the same year.[183]

The results of the war had increased those hopes; the success of the unprecedented crusade for liberty caused an enthusiasm which found its expression in verse and prose. The very year of the treaty securing independence an epic poem was published, written in French Alexandrine verse, divided into cantos, adorned with all the machinery of the Greek models, Jupiter and the gods playing their part:

—with invocations to abstract virtues:

Preceding by several years Joel Barlow's own, this epic, due to the pen of L. de Chavannes de La GrandiÈre, appeared with ample annotations by the author himself, and dedicated to John Adams, under the title of L'AmÉrique DÉlivrÉe.[184]

The new Tasso, who justly foresaw the immense influence that the change in America would have on Europe, addressed, in tones of the most ardent admiration, Washington and Congress:

Congress is a Greek Areopagus, whose members have Themis and Minerva for their advisers:

—you have cast on us "a torrent of light and shown us how to break the detestable bonds of tyrants." A prophetical foot-note, commenting on this passage, announces that "this will perhaps, be seen sooner than one thinks. Happy the sovereigns who will know how to be nothing but just, pacific, and benevolent." Six years later the French Revolution began.

Using humble prose, but reaching a much wider public, Lacretelle, of the same group of thinkers as d'Alembert, Condorcet, and Turgot, himself later a member of the French Academy, was also writing in a strain of exultant admiration: "Since Columbus's discovery, nothing more important has happened among mankind than American independence"; and addressing the new-born United States, he told them of the world's expectation and of their own responsibilities, so much depending on their success or failure: "New-born Republics of America, I salute you as the hope of mankind, to which you open a refuge, and promise great and happy examples. Grow in force and numbers, amid our benedictions....

"In adopting a democratic rÉgime, you pledge yourself to steadfast and pure morality.... But you do not give up those comforts in life, that splendor of society brought with them by riches, sciences, and arts.... The vicinity of corruption will not alter your morals; you will allow the vicinity, not the invasion. While permitting wealth to have its free play, you will see that exorbitant fortunes be dispersed, and you will correct the great inequality in enjoyments by the strictest equality in rights....

"Lawmaking peoples, never lose sight of the majesty of your function and of the importance of your task. Be nobly proud and holily enthusiastic at the prospect of your destinies' vast influence. By you the universe is held in expectation; fifty years from now it will have learned from you whether modern peoples can preserve republican constitutions, whether morals are compatible with the great progress of civilization, and whether America is meant to improve or to aggravate the fate of humanity."[185]This sense of the responsibility of the new republic toward mankind of the future, and of the importance for all nations of its success or failure caused French thinkers to concern themselves with the problem, to express faith and admiration, but to submit also such recommendations as their studies of humanity's past made them consider of use. The Observations on the Government and the Laws of the United States, of modest, liberal, and noble-minded AbbÉ de Mably, are, for example, the outcome of such reflections.[186]

The visitor most representative of the views thus prevalent in the French nation, knocked at the gate of Mount Vernon, provided with that infallible open sesame,[187] a letter of introduction from Lafayette. "This gentleman," the letter read, "intends to write a history of America, and you would, therefore, make him very happy if you allowed him to glance at your papers. He seems to deserve this favor, since he loves America very much, writes well, and will represent things under their true light."[188]

The bearer, a sincere admirer and friend of the new republic, and who had the advantage of speaking English fluently, was Brissot, so famous shortly after for the part he played in the French Revolution, then already penetrated with its principles, and having written, young as he was, on the reform of criminal laws, declared in favor of the emancipation of the Jews, founded a "Society of the Friends of the Blacks" and, what is more to the point, a SociÉtÉ Gallo-AmÉricaine, first of its kind, for the members thereof to "exchange views on the common interests of France and the United States." To become a member one had to prove "able and willing to bring to the notice of the others universal ideas on the happiness of man and societies, because, though its special and titular object be the interest of France and the United States, nevertheless, it fully embraces in its considerations the happiness of mankind."[189] In which appears the vastness of humanitarian plans so fondly cherished among us—six years before the Reign of Terror. The "particular object" of the association was, however, to "help the two countries to better know each other, which can only be realized by bringing nearer together the French individual and the American individual." Books were to be published by the society, the first one to be dedicated "to the Congress of the United States and the friends of America in the two worlds." Newspapers, books, the texts of laws, the journals of Congress were to be imported from "free America." The society would "welcome Americans whom their business should call to France, and whose knowledge would enable them to impart useful information there"; nothing more natural, since the aim of the society was "the welfare of the two nations." Lafayette and Jefferson had been asked to join. One of the founders was Saint-Jean de CrÈvecoeur, already known by his Letters from an American Farmer, who when he left France to return to the United States was intrusted with the care of "making the society known to the Americans, availing himself of newspapers, or of other means; his expenses, if any, to be repaid."[190] But the farmer-consul, very active in other matters, proved in this one very remiss.

Brissot reached Boston in July, 1788, and found that America was exactly what he had expected it to be: "Sanctuary of liberty," he wrote on landing, "I salute thee!... Would to heaven thou wert nearer Europe; fewer friends of liberty would vainly bewail its absence there." The inhabitants, he wrote, "have an air of simplicity and kindness, but they are full of human dignity, conscious of their liberty, and seeing in all men their brothers and equals.... I thought I was in that Salente, so attractively depicted by FÉnelon."

Equality is what strikes him most, as it does the mass of his compatriots; this was the particularly American trait which, as mentioned before, was imported from the United States into France on the eve of our Revolution.

Luxury, the visitor admits, is, of course, a danger; but they know it and arm against it: "The most respectable inhabitants of the State of Massachusetts have formed a society to prevent the increase of luxury"—an attempt which, however, never succeeded, but at Salente.

After having seen the chief cities and paid a visit to Franklin, found very ill but with his great mind unimpaired, Brissot reached Mount Vernon in November, and remained there three days. Different from Houdon, he luckily took notes on the place and on the inhabitants thereof: "The general arrived only in the evening; he returned very tired from a tour over part of his domains where he was having a road traced. You have often heard him compared to Cincinnatus; the comparison is a just one. This celebrated general is now but a good farmer, ever busy with his farm, as he calls it, improving cultivation and building barns. He showed me one of enormous dimensions, just being erected from a plan sent him by the famous English agriculturist Arthur Young, but greatly improved by him....

"All is simple in the house of the general. His table is good, without luxury; regularity is everywhere apparent in his domestic economy. Mrs. Washington has her eye on everything, and joins to the qualities of an excellent housekeeper the simple dignity which befits a woman whose husband has played a great rÔle. She adds to it that amenity, those attentions toward strangers which lend so much sweetness to hospitality. The same virtues shine in her niece, so interesting, but who, unluckily, seems to be in a very delicate state of health."

As for the general himself, "kindness appears in his looks. His eyes have no longer that lustre which his officers noticed when he was at the head of his army, but they get enlivened in conversation.... Good sense is the dominant trait in all his answers, great discretion and diffidence of himself goes with it, and at the same time a firm and unshakable disposition when he has once made up his mind."

His modesty is great: "He talks of the American war as if he had not been the leader thereof, and of his victories with an indifference which strangers could not equal.... The divisions in his country break his heart; he feels the necessity of calling together all the friends of liberty around one central point, the need of imparting energy to the government. He is still ready to give up that quiet which causes his happiness.... He spoke to me of Mr. de Lafayette with emotion; he considers him as his child."

Not only on agriculture and government, but also on manners the future President gave his visitor much information: "The general told me that a great reform was going on among his compatriots; people drank much less; they no longer forced their guests to drink; it had ceased to be good form to send them home inebriated; those noisy parties at taverns so frequent in former times were not to be the fashion any more; dress was becoming simpler."

On receiving news of the convocation of the French States General, Brissot, who felt that this was the beginning of immense changes, hastened back to France and published an account of his journey. He stated in his preface, written in 1790, why he had undertaken it, and what lessons we might learn from our neighbors of over the sea:

"The object of this journey has not been to study antique statues, or to find unknown plants, but to observe men who had just conquered their liberty: to Frenchmen free men can no longer be strangers.

"We, too, have conquered our liberty. We have not to learn from Americans how to conquer it, but how to preserve it. This secret consists especially in morality.... What is liberty? It is the most perfect state of society, a state in which man depends only upon the laws made by himself;[191] and to make good ones, he must improve his reason; and to apply them he must again have recourse to his reason.... Morals are but reason applied to all the acts of life.... They are among free men what irons, whipping-posts, and gibbets are among peoples in slavery.... This journey will show you the wondrous effects of liberty on morals, on industry, and on the amelioration of men.... My desire has been to depict to my compatriots a people with whom it behooves, from every point of view, that they become intimately united."[192]

IV

During the early stages of the French Revolution, Washington had followed with the keenest sympathy and anxiety the efforts of our ancestors, taking pride in the thought that the American example had something to do, as it undoubtedly had, with what was happening. "The young French nobility enrolled for the cause of [American] independence," wrote Talleyrand in his memoirs, "attached itself afterward to the principles it had gone to fight for." Pontgibaud, who remained a royalist, who hated the Revolution and became an ÉmigrÉ, observes the same fact, although deploring what occurred: "The officers of Count de Rochambeau had nothing better to do [after Yorktown], I believe, than to visit the country. When one thinks of the false ideas of government and philanthropy with the virus of which these youths were infected in America, and which they were to enthusiastically propagate in France, with such lamentable success—since that mania for imitation has powerfully helped toward the Revolution, without being its unique cause—people will agree that all those red-heeled young philosophers had much better, for their sake and ours, have stayed at court.... Each of them fancied he would be called upon to play the part of Washington." Asked to join Lafayette and "his former brothers-in-arms of beyond the sea," he refused: "It has been justly said that in a revolution the difficulty lies not in doing one's duty, but in knowing where it is. I did mine because I knew where it was," and he joined the princes and emigrated.[193]

Of this American influence Washington was aware, and spoke, as may be surmised, in terms nearer those of Talleyrand than those of Pontgibaud. "I am glad to hear," he wrote to Jefferson, "that the AssemblÉe des Notables has been productive of good in France.... Indeed the rights of mankind, the privileges of the people, and the true principles of liberty seem to have been more generally discussed and better understood throughout Europe since the American Revolution than they were at any former period."[194]

Few of Washington's observations are a greater credit to him, as a statesman, than those concerning this extraordinary upheaval. From the first he felt that the change would not prove a merely local one, but would have world-wide consequences; that, in fact, a new era was beginning for mankind. "A spirit for political improvements seems to be rapidly and extensively spreading through the European countries," he wrote to La Luzerne. "I shall rejoice in seeing the condition of the human race happier than ever it has been." But let the people at the helm be careful not to make "more haste than good speed in their innovations."[195]

No less clearly did he foresee, long before the event, and when all was hope and rejoicing, that it was almost impossible to count upon a peaceful, gradual, and bloodless development where so many long-established, hatred-sowing abuses had to be corrected. This, however, was what, as a friend of France, he would have liked to see, and even before the Revolution had really started he had expressed to Lafayette, in striking words, his wish that it might prove a "tacit" one: "If I were to advise, I should say that great moderation should be used on both sides.... Such a spirit seems to be awakened in the kingdom as, if managed with extreme prudence, may produce a gradual and tacit revolution, much in favor of the subjects."[196]

The movement is started, the Bastile falls, and Lafayette sends the key thereof to his former chief. "It is a tribute," he wrote, "which I owe as a son to my adopted father, as an aide-de-camp to my general, as a missionary of liberty to its patriarch." Washington placed the key at Mount Vernon, where it is still, and returned thanks for this "token of victory gained by liberty over despotism."[197]

The beginnings were promising. The great leader was full of admiration, of awe, of apprehension. To Gouverneur Morris, then American minister to France, President Washington, as he now was, wrote on the 13th of October, 1789, in these prophetic terms: "The Revolution which has been effected in France is of so wonderful a nature that the mind can hardly realize the fact. If it ends as our last accounts to the 1st of August predict, that nation will be the most powerful and happy in Europe; but I fear, though it has gone triumphantly through the first paroxysm, it is not the last it has to encounter before matters are finally settled. In a word, the Revolution is of too great a magnitude to be effected in so short a space, and with the loss of so little blood. The mortification of the King, the intrigues of the Queen, and the discontent of the princes and the noblesse will foment divisions, if possible, in the National Assembly." The "licentiousness of the people" is not less to be feared. "To forbear running from one extreme to the other is no easy matter; and should this be the case, rocks and shoals, not visible at present, may wreck the vessel."[198]

The grandeur and importance of the change fills him, in the meanwhile, with wonder. In his before-quoted letter of April 29, 1790, to La Luzerne he said: "Indeed, the whole business is so extraordinary in its commencement, so wonderful in its progress, and may be so stupendous in its consequences that I am almost lost in the contemplation. Of one thing, however, you may rest perfectly assured, that nobody is more anxious for the happy issue of that business than I am, as nobody can wish more sincerely for the prosperity of the French nation than I do." To another correspondent, Mrs. Graham, he described "the renovation of the French Constitution," as "one of the most wonderful events in the history of mankind." So late as the 20th of October, 1792, he was writing to Gouverneur Morris: "We can only repeat the sincere wish that much happiness may arise to the French nation and to mankind in general out of the severe evils which are inseparable from so important a revolution." Throughout the unparalleled crisis, the French friends of Washington kept him informed of events, of their hopes and fears. Lafayette's letters have been printed; those of Rochambeau, written in his own English, have not, and many of them are of great interest. The French general had early foreseen the necessity for profound changes, owing to abuses, to the excessive privileges of the few, the burdens of the many, the increasing maladministration, especially since Necker had been replaced by "a devil of a fool named Calonne."[199] Maybe the States General will provide an adequate remedy, by devising a constitution: "I hope very much of this General States to restore our finances and to consolidate a good constitution."[200] But he has doubts as to what "aristocratical men" will do.

Himself a member of the Assembly, Rochambeau considers that there are not, in reality, three orders—the nobles, the clergy, and the third estate—but two: "the privileged people and the unprivileged." The vote being, in accordance with law and custom, taken per estate or order, the two privileged ones always vote in the same way and can ever prevail. Rochambeau informs Washington that, as for himself, he "voted in favor of the equal representation of the third order; your pupil Lafayette has voted for the same opinion, as you may believe it; but we have here a great number of aristocratical men that are very interested to perpetuate the abuses."[201]

He agrees with Washington that, in order to reach safe results, developments should be slowly evolved; but the temper of the nation has been wrought up, and it is, moreover, a fiery temper. "Do you remember, my dear general," he writes, "of the first repast that we have made together at Rod-Island? I [made] you remark from the soup the difference of character of our two nations, the French in burning their throat and all the Americans waiting wisely [for] the time that it was cooled. I believe, my dear general, you have seen, since a year, that our nation has not change[d] of character. We go very fast—God will that we [reach] our aims."[202]

In his moments of deepest anxiety Rochambeau is pleased, however, to remember "a word of the late King of Prussia," Frederick II, who, considering what France was, what misfortunes and dangers she had encountered, and what concealed sources of strength were in her, once said to the French minister accredited to him: "I have been brought up in the middle of the unhappiness of France; my cradle was surrounded with refugee Protestants that, about the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the beginning of the regency of the Duc d'Orleans, told me that France was at the agony and could not exist three years. I [have] known in the course of my reign that France has such a temper that there [is] no bad minister nor bad generals [who] be able to kill it, and that constitution has made it rise again of all its crises, with strength and vigor. It wants no other remedy but time and keep a strict course of diet."[203]

Events followed their course, but, while everything else was changing in France, the feeling for Washington and the United States remained the same. The two countries felt nearer than before, and showed it in many ways. At the death of Franklin the National Assembly, on the proposal of Mirabeau, went into mourning for three days; our first Constitution, of 1791, was notified to the American Government: "President Washington," the French minister informed his chief, "received the King's letter with the tokens of the greatest satisfaction; and in accordance with your orders a copy of the Constitution and of the King's letter to the National Assembly was given to him as well as to Mr. Jefferson."[204] Tom Paine, though an American, or rather because an American, was elected by several departments a member of the Convention, took his seat, but, as he knew no French, had his speeches translated and read for him; he played an important part in the drafting of our second Constitution, the republican one of 1793. As a sacred emblem of liberty, the American flag was displayed in the hall where the Convention held its sittings. A quite extraordinary decree was rendered by this body in the second year of the Republic, "after having heard the petition of American citizens," deciding, and this at a time when everybody was liable to arrest, that "the wives of American citizens, whatever the place of their birth, should be exempted from the law on the arrestation of foreigners."

The 14th of July was, in the meantime, celebrated in America, just as in France, as marking a new progress in the development of mankind. Our minister, Ternant, gave Dumouriez a glowing account of such a celebration: "It affords me great satisfaction to inform you that, in spite of the news received the day before of the bad success of our first military operations, the Americans have given, on the occasion of this anniversary, touching signs of their attachment for France and proof of the interest they take in the success of our arms. You will see by the bulletins and newspapers accompanying this letter that the same sentiments have been manifested in almost all the cities which count in the Union, and that the 14th has been celebrated with the same ardor as the 4th, which is the anniversary of American independence."[205]

For the person of the President French tokens of veneration and friendship multiplied. In the same year—year 1 of the Republic—the Convention had conferred on him the title of French citizen, as being "one of the benefactors of mankind." French officers had united to offer Mrs. Washington a dinner service, each piece ornamented with a star and her initials in the centre, and the names of the States in medallions around the border, the whole surrounded by a serpent biting its tail, the emblem of perpetuity.

French dramatists could not wait until the great man should belong to the past to make of him the hero of a tragedy in Alexandrine verse: Vashington ou la LibertÉ du Nouveau Monde, par M. de Sauvigny, performed for the first time on the Theatre of the Nation (as the "ComÉdie FranÇaise" was then called), on the 13th of July, 1791, and in which a nameless predecessor of mine, "l'Ambassadeur de France," brought the play to a conclusion with praise of Washington, of Franklin, of Congress, and of the whole American people:

And in a kind of postscript, the author, commenting on the events related in his play, observed with truth: "The great American Revolution has been the first result of one greater still which had taken place in the empire of opinion." Of any animosity against the English, the same comment offers no trace.

Gloomy days succeeded radiant ones. Past abuses, danger from abroad, general suffering, passions let loose, were not conducive to that coolness and moderation which Washington had recommended from the first. Ternant had been succeeded as representative of France by that famous citizen Genet, who, in spite of his having some diplomatic experience gathered as ChargÉ d'Affaires in Russia, and being in a way a man of parts, an authority on Swedes and Finns, had his head turned the moment he landed, so completely, indeed, that it is impossible, in spite of the gravity of the consequences involved, not to smile when reading his high-flown, self-complacent, self-advertising, beaming despatches: "My journey (from Charleston to Philadelphia) has been an uninterrupted succession of civic festivities, and my entry in Philadelphia a triumph for liberty. True Americans are at the height of joy."[206]

In his next letters he insists and gloats over his own matchless deeds: "The whole of America has risen to acknowledge in me the minister of the French Republic.... I live in the midst of perpetual feasts; I receive addresses from all parts of the continent. I see with pleasure that my way of negotiating pleases our American brothers, and I am founded to believe, citizen minister, that my mission will be a fortunate one from every point of view. I include herewith American gazettes in which I have marked the articles concerning myself."

Encouraged by the Anti-Federalists, who thought they could use him for their own purposes, Genet shows scant respect for "old Washington, who greatly differs from him whose name has been engraved by history, and who does not pardon me my successes"; a mere "Fayettist," he disdainfully calls him elsewhere. But Genet will have the better of any such opposition: "I am in the meantime provisioning the West Indies, I excite Canadians to break the British yoke, I arm the Kentukois, and prepare a naval expedition which will facilitate their descent on New Orleans."[207]

He had, in fact, armed in American waters, quite a fleet of corsairs, revelling in the bestowal on them of such names as the Sans-Culotte, the Anti-George, the Patriote Genet, the Vainqueur de la Bastille, La Petite DÉmocrate.

His triumphs, his lustre, his listening to addresses in his own honor, and reading articles in his own praise, his being "clasped in the arms of a multitude which had rushed to meet him," his naval and military deeds were short-lived. Contrary to the current belief, the too well-founded indignation of "Fayettist" Washington had nothing to do with his catastrophe. On receipt of the very first letter of the citizen-diplomat, and by return of mail, the foreign minister of the French Republic took the initiative and wrote him:

"I see that you have been received by an hospitable and open-hearted people with all the manifestations of friendship of which your predecessors had also been the recipients.... You have fancied, thereupon, that it belonged to you to lead the political actions of this people and make them join our cause. Availing yourself of the flattering statements of the Charleston authorities, you have thought fit to arm corsairs, to organize recruiting, to have prizes condemned, before even having been recognized by the American Government, before having its assent, nay, with the certitude of its disapproval. You invoke your instructions from the 'Conseil exÉcutif' of the Republic; but your instructions enjoin upon you quite the reverse: they order you to treat with the government, not with a portion of the people; to be for Congress the spokesman of the French Republic, and not the leader of an American party." The diplomat's relations with Washington are the opposite of what France desires: "You say that Washington does not pardon you your successes, and that he hampers your moves in a thousand ways. You are ordered to treat with the American Government; there only can you attain real successes; all the others are illusory and contrary to the interests of your country. Dazzled by a false popularity, you have estranged the only man who should represent for you the American people, and if your action is hampered, you have only yourself to blame."[208]

While this letter was slowly crossing the ocean, others from Genet were on the way to France, written in the same beaming style. He continued to gloat over his successes and mercilessly to abuse all Federalists, those confessed partisans of "monocracy." People were not for half-measures at Paris, in those terrible days. Instead of prolonging a useless epistolary correspondence, the Committee of Public Safety rendered a decree providing that a commission would be sent to Philadelphia, with powers to disavow the "criminal conduct of Genet," to disarm his Sans-Culotte and other corsairs, to revoke all consuls who had taken part in such armaments, and, as for Genet himself, to have him arrested and sent back to France. What such an arrest meant was made evident by the signatures at the foot of the decree: "BarÈre, HÉrault, Robespierre, Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Saint-Just."[209]

Better than any one, Genet knew the meaning. But that same government which he had abused was generous and protected him. "We wanted his dismissal, not his punishment," said Secretary of State Randolph, who refused to have him arrested. Genet hastened to give up a country so hard to please, he thought, as that of his birth, became an American, and as, with all his faults, he was not without some merits, being welcomed in many families, and especially in the house of "General Clinton, Governor," he wrote, "of the State of New York, and chief of the Anti-Federalist party," he married his daughter, and died at Schodack, N.Y., a respected citizen and agriculturist, in 1834. His name has once more prominently appeared, and in the most honorable fashion, in those gazettes whose articles in his favor pleased him so much: a descendant of his has enlisted for the old country during the present war, and has cast lustre on the name by his bravery.

The last years of the former commander-in-chief of the American and French armies were saddened by difficulties, troubles, and quarrels with American political parties and with the French nation. The Jay treaty with England (November 19, 1794) had raised a storm: "At present the cry against the treaty is like that against a mad dog; and every one in a manner is running it down.... The string which is most played on, because it strikes with most force the popular ear, is the violation, as they term it, of our engagements with France."[210] Anti-Federalists were indignant; the French not at all pleased, and their "captures and seizures," coupled with a desire to be allowed (which they were not) to sell their prizes in American harbors, increased the discontent. The opposition press was unspeakably virulent, and the great man sadly confessed he would never have believed that, he said, "every act of his administration would be tortured, and the grossest and most insidious misrepresentations of them be made, by giving one side only of a subject, and that, too, in such exaggerated and indecent terms as could scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket."[211]

The time came at last for his definitive retreat to Mount Vernon. He reached it a saddened, grand old man, longing to be at last an American farmer and nothing more, and never to go "beyond twenty miles" from his home. "To make and sell a little flour annually, to repair houses going fast to ruin, to build one for the security of my papers of a public nature, and to amuse myself in agricultural and rural pursuits, will constitute employment for the few years I have to remain on this terrestrial globe."[212]

His desire was to continue to the end in the regular occupations he describes to McHenry, in a letter giving us the best picture we have of everyday life at Mount Vernon. Wondering what he might say that would interest a secretary of war, he writes: "I might tell him that I begin my diurnal course with the sun; that if my hirelings are not at their places at that time I send them messages expressive of my sorrow for their indisposition; that, having put these wheels in motion, I examine the state of things further, and the more they are probed, the deeper, I find, the wounds are which my buildings have sustained by an absence and neglect of eight years; by the time I have accomplished these matters, breakfast (a little after seven o'clock, about the time, I presume, you are taking leave of Mrs. McHenry) is ready; that, this being over, I mount my horse and ride round my farms, which employs me until it is time to dress for dinner, at which I rarely miss seeing strange faces, come, as they say, out of respect for me. Pray, would not the word curiosity answer as well? And how different this from having a few social friends at a cheerful board! The usual time of sitting at table, a walk, and tea brings me within the dawn of candle-light; previous to which, if not prevented by company, I resolve that as soon as the glimmering taper supplies the place of the great luminary, I will retire to my writing-table and acknowledge the letters I have received; but when the lights are brought I feel tired and disinclined to engage in this work, conceiving that the next night will do as well. The next comes and with it the same causes for postponement and effect, and so on....

"It may strike you that in this detail no mention is made of any portion of time allotted for reading. The remark would be just, for I have not looked into a book since I came home; nor shall I be able to do it until I have discharged my workmen, probably not before nights grow longer, when possibly I may be looking in Doomesday Book."[213]

But in this calm retreat, described with a truth and charm almost reminding one of William Cowper's familiar letters, and where he was to spend such a small number of years, trouble, as previously, soon knocked at the door. It seemed at one time as if the former commander-in-chief of Franco-American armies would have to lead the Americans against the French. In spite of the preparations which he had himself to superintend, he refused to believe that war would really occur: "My mind never has been alarmed by any fears of a war with France."[214] But in his judgments of the French, as governed by the Directoire, Washington was gradually receding toward the time when he knew them only through Steele and Addison, and had, "in the Spectator, read to No. 143."

He died without knowing that the threatening clouds would soon be dispelled; that the next important event which would count in the annals of the United States and make their greatness secure would come from those same French people: the cession by them, unexpected and unasked-for, not of New Orleans, but of the immense territory then called Louisiana; and that, while his feelings toward the French had undergone changes, those of the French toward him had remained unaltered.

When the news came that on Saturday, 14th of December, 1799, the great leader had passed away,[215] the French Republic went into mourning; for ten days officers wore crape, flags were flown at half-mast, and the head of the state, young Bonaparte, issued an order in which he said: "Washington is dead. This great man fought tyranny. He established on a safe basis the liberty of his country. His memory will ever be dear to the French people as well as to all the free men of the two worlds, and especially to French soldiers, who, like himself and the American soldiers, fight now for equality and liberty."

An impressive and unparalleled ceremony thereupon took place at the Invalides, the Temple of Mars, as it was then called. Detachments from the Paris garrison lined the aisles; all that counted in the Republic was present, Bonaparte included, and Fontanes, the most famous orator of the day, delivered the funeral eulogy on the departed leader: "Washington's work is scarcely perfected," he said, "and it is already surrounded by that veneration that is usually bestowed only on what has been consecrated by time. The American Revolution, of which we are contemporaries, seems now consolidated forever. Washington began it by his energy, and achieved it by his moderation. In rendering a public homage to Washington, France pays a debt due to him by the two worlds."

In one of the first sentences of the oration, England (with whom we were at war) was courteously associated to the homage rendered by us to the great man: "The very nation," said Fontanes, "that recently called Washington a rebel, now looks upon the emancipation of America as one of those events consecrated by the verdict of centuries and of history. Such is the privilege of great characters."[216]

In the centre of the nave stood the bust of Washington, wreathed in flags and laurels. Years before, in Independence Hall at Philadelphia, on a spot now marked by an inscription, the flags taken at Yorktown had been laid at the feet of the President of Congress and of the minister from France, GÉrard de Rayneval. Now General Lannes, the future marshal, came forth and with appropriate words laid before the image of the former commander ninety-six flags taken from the enemy by the troops of republican France.

A plan was formed thereupon, the realization of which troublous days did not allow, to erect a statue of Washington in Paris (he now has two there and one in Versailles, gratefully accepted gifts from America), and a decree was prepared by Talleyrand recalling, as a motive, the similitude of feelings between France and that "nation which is sure to be one day a great nation, and is even now the wisest and happiest in the world, and which mourns for the death of the man who did more than any, by his courage and genius, to break her shackles and raise her to the rank of independent peoples.... One of the noblest lives which have honored mankind has just passed into the domain of history.... Washington's fame is now imperishable; Fortune had consecrated his titles to it; and the posterity of a people which will rise later to the highest destinies continuously confirms and strengthens those titles by its very progress."

ChÂteaubriand, Lamartine, Guizot, Cornelis de Witt, Laboulaye, Joseph Fabre, many other French thinkers and writers, vied with each other in their praise and admiration throughout the century. ChÂteaubriand, who had seen the great man at Philadelphia in 1791, inserted in his Voyage en AmÉrique his famous parallel between Bonaparte and Washington: "The republic of Washington subsists; the empire of Bonaparte is no more; it came and went between the first and second journey of a Frenchman[217] who has found a grateful nation where he had fought for some oppressed colonists.... The name of Washington will spread, with liberty, from age to age; it will mark the beginning of a new era for mankind.... His fame rises like one of those sanctuaries wherein flows a spring inexhaustible for the people.... What would be the rank of Bonaparte in the universe if he had added magnanimity to what there was heroical in him, and if, being at the same time Washington and Bonaparte, he had appointed Liberty for the heiress of his glory?"

Lamartine, receiving an Italian delegation in 1848, asked them to hate the memory of Machiavelli and bless that of Washington: "His name is the symbol of modern liberty. The name of a politician, the name of a conqueror is no longer what is wanted by the world, but the name of the most disinterested of men, and the most devoted to the people." Guizot published his noteworthy study on the first President of the United States, and the American colony in Paris, to commemorate the event, had the portrait of the French statesman painted by Healy in 1841, and presented it to the city of Washington, where it is preserved in the National Museum.

Publishing, during the early years of the Second Empire, the series of lectures he had delivered at the CollÈge de France during our Second Republic, the great Liberal, Laboulaye, who did so much to make America and the Americans popular in France, wrote in his preface: "Washington has established a wise and well-ordered republic, and he has left to after-times, not the fatal example of crime triumphant, but a wholesome example of patriotism and virtue. In less than fifty years,[218] owing to the powerful sap of liberty, we have seen an empire arise, having for its base, not conquest, but peace and industry, an empire which before the end of the century will be the greatest state in the civilized world, and which, if it remains faithful to the thought of its founders, if ambition does not arrest the course of its fortune, will offer to the world the prodigious sight of a republic of one hundred million inhabitants, richer, happier, more brilliant than the monarchies of the old world. All this is Washington's work."[219]

Nearer our time, Joseph Fabre, the well-known historian of Joan of Arc, wrote: "This sage was a wonder of reasoned enthusiasm, of thoughtful intrepidity, of methodical tenacity, of circumspect boldness, facing from abroad oppression, at home anarchy, both vanquished by his calm genius."[220]

V

Once more now a republic has been established in France, which, having, we hope, something of the qualities of "coolness and moderation" that Washington wanted us to possess, will, we trust, prove perpetual. It has already lasted nearly half a century: an unexampled phenomenon in the history of Europe, no other republic of such magnitude having thus survived in the old world since the fall of the Roman one, twenty centuries ago.

If the great man were to come again, we entertain a fond hope that he would deem us not undeserving now of the sympathies he bestowed on our ancestors at the period when he was living side by side with them. Most of the leading ideas followed by him throughout life are those which we try to put in practise. We have our faults, to be sure; we know them, others know them, too; it is not our custom to conceal them, far from it; may this serve as an excuse for reviewing here by preference something else than what might occasion blame.

That equality of chances for all, which caused the admiration of the early French visitors to this country, which was one of the chief things for which Washington had fought, and continues to be to-day one of the chief attractions offered to the immigrant by these States, has been secured in the French Republic, too, where no privileges of any sort remain, the right to vote is refused to none, taxation is the same for all, and military service is expected from everybody. No principle had more importance in the eyes of Washington than that of "equal liberty." "What triumph for our enemies to verify their predictions!" Washington had written to John Jay, in a moment of depression, when he feared that what Genet was to call "monocracy" was in the ascendant; "what triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are unable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and fallacious."[221]

In France, as in the United States, the unique source of power is the will of the people. In our search for the solution of the great problem which now confronts the world, that of the relations of capital and labor, we endeavor to practise the admirable maxim of one of our statesmen of to-day: "Capital must work, labor must possess." And though we are still remote from this goal, yet we have travelled so far toward it that, at the present day, one out of every two electors in France is the possessor of his own house.[222]

The development of instruction was one of the most cherished ideas of Washington, as it is now of his descendants. "You will agree with me in opinion," he said in a speech to both houses of Congress in 1790, "that there is nothing that can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of happiness." Instruction has become, under the Republic, obligatory for all in France, and is given free of cost to all. Not a village, not a hamlet, lost in the recesses of valleys or mountains, that is without its school. The state expenditure for primary instruction during the Second Empire amounted only to twelve million francs; the mere salary of school-teachers alone is now twenty times greater. We try to live up to the old principle: three things should be given free to all—air, water, knowledge: and so it is that at the Sorbonne, the CollÈge de France, in the provincial universities, all one has to do in order to follow the best courses of lectures is to push open the door. The man in the street may come in if he chooses, just to warm himself in winter or to avoid a shower in summer. Let him; perhaps he will listen too. Very wisely, being, in many ways, very modern, Washington attached great importance to inventions. In a speech to Congress on January 9, 1790, he said: "I cannot forbear intimating to you the expediency of giving effectual encouragement as well to the introduction of new and useful inventions from abroad as to the exertions of skill and genius in producing them at home, and of facilitating the intercourse between the distant parts of our country by a due attention to the post-office and the post-roads."

Distances having immensely increased in America (as well as means to cover them), these latter remarks are certainly still of value. With a much less difficult problem to solve, we believe that, in the matter of post-roads, and with a system of rural delivery coextensive with the national territory, we would pass muster in the presence of the great man. As for inventions, we hope that even the compatriots of Franklin, Fulton, Whitney, Horace Wells, W.T.G. Morton, Morse, Bell, Edison, the Wright brothers, and many more, would consider that our show is a creditable one, with Jacquard's loom, the laws of AmpÈre on electricity, SÉguin's tubular boilers, Sauvage's screw, Niepce and Daguerre's photography, Renard and Kreb's first dirigible, LumiÈre's cinematograph, Curie's radium, with the automobile, which is transforming our way of life (decentralizing overcentralized countries) as much as the railroads did in the last century; and, more than all, because so beneficent to all, with the discoveries of Chevreul, Flourens, Claude Bernard, Laveran, Berthelot, and especially Pasteur.

On the question of the preservation of natural resources, to which, and not too soon, so much attention has been paid of late, Washington had settled ideas; so have we, ours being somewhat radical, and embodying, for mines especially, the French principle that "what belongs to nobody belongs to everybody," and by everybody must be understood the nation. Concerning this problem and the best way to solve it, Washington sent once a powerful appeal to the President of Congress, saying: "Would there be any impropriety, do you think, sir, in reserving for special sale all mines, minerals, and salt springs, in the general grants of land belonging to the United States? The public, instead of the few knowing ones, might in this case receive the benefits which would result from the sale of them, without infringing any rule of justice that is known to me."[223]One of the most memorable and striking things done by the French Republic is the building of a vast colonial empire, giving access to undeveloped, sometimes, as in Dahomey, barbaric and sanguinary races, still indulging in human sacrifices. Washington has laid down the rule of what should be done with respect to primitive races. "The basis of our proceedings with the Indian natives," he wrote to Lafayette, "has been and shall be justice, during the period in which I have anything to do with the administration of this government. Our negotiations and transactions, though many of them are on a small scale as to the objects, ought to be governed by the immutable principles of equality." And addressing the Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore, John Carroll, he again said: "The most effectual means of securing the permanent attachment of our savage neighbors is to convince them that we are just."

There is nothing we are ourselves more sincerely convinced of than that such principles are the right ones and should prevail. That we did not lose sight of them in the building of our colonial empire its very vastness testifies; using opposite means, with so many other tasks to attend to, we should have failed. The number of people living under the French flag is about one hundred million now. Judging from the testimony of independent witnesses,[224] it seems that, on this, too, we have acted in accordance with the views of the former commander-in-chief, who had written to Lafayette on August 15, 1786: "Let me ask you, my dear marquis, in such an enlightened, in such a liberal age, how is it possible that the great maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay an annual tribute to the little piratical states of Barbary? Would to Heaven we had a navy able to reform those enemies to mankind or crush them into non-existence." The "reform" was begun by Decatur in 1815, and perfected by Bourmont in 1830.

On one point Washington was very positive; this leader of men, this warrior, this winner of battles, loathed war. He wanted, of course, his nation, as we want ours, never to be without a military academy (our West Point is called Saint-Cyr), and never to be without a solid, permanent army, for, as he said, in a speech to Congress in 1796: "However pacific the general policy of a nation may be, it ought never to be without an adequate stock of military knowledge for emergencies ... war might often depend not upon its own choice." Of this we are only too well aware.

There is scarcely, however, a question that oftener recurs under his pen in his letters to his French friends than the care with which wars should be avoided, and no hopes were more fondly cherished by him than that, some day, human quarrels might be settled otherwise than by bloodshed. To Rochambeau, who had informed him that war-clouds which had recently appeared in Europe were dissipated (soon, it is true, to return more threatening), he expressed, in 1786, his joy at what he considered a proof that mankind was becoming "more enlightened and more humanized." To his friend David Humphreys he had written from Mount Vernon, July 25, 1785: "My first wish is to see this plague to mankind (war) banished from off the earth, and the sons and daughters of this world employed in more pleasing and innocent amusements than in preparing implements and exercising them for the destruction of mankind. Rather than quarrel about territory, let the poor, the needy, the oppressed of the earth, and those who want land, resort to the fertile plains of our Western country, the second land of promise, and there dwell in peace, fulfilling the first and great commandment." His dream was of mankind one day "connected like one great family in fraternal ties."[225]

On this matter, of such paramount importance to all the world, and in spite of so much, so very much remaining to be done, we may, I hope, consider in France that our Republic would deserve the approval of the departed leader. We have indeed vied with the United States (and praise be rendered to empires and kingdoms who have played also the part of realms of good-will), in an effort to find better means than wars for the settlement of human quarrels. Success could not be expected at once, but it is something to have honestly, earnestly tried. The great man would have judged failures with indulgence, for he well knew how others' dispositions are to be taken into account. "In vain," he had said, "is it to expect that our aim is to be accomplished by fond wishes for peace."[226]

And at the present hour, when it seems to the author of these lines that, as he writes, his ears are filled with the sound of guns, wafted by the wind over the submarine-haunted ocean, what would be the feeling of our former commander if he saw what is taking place, and the stand made by the descendants of those soldiers intrusted years ago to his leadership? Perhaps he would think, as he did, when told by Lafayette of a recent visit to the battle-fields of Frederick II of Prussia: "To view the several fields of battle over which you passed could not, among other sensations, have failed to excite this thought: 'Here have fallen thousands of gallant spirits to satisfy the ambitions of their sovereign, or to support them perhaps in acts of oppression and injustice. Melancholy reflection! For what wise purpose does Providence permit this?'"

Perhaps—who knows?—considering the silent resolution, abnegation, and unanimity with which the whole people, from the day when war was declared on them by a relentless enemy, tried to uphold the cause of independence and liberalism in a world-wide conflict, the leader might be tempted to write once more in the pages of his private journal the three words he had written on May 1, 1781. Who knows? Of one thing we are sure, no approval could please us more than that of the commander-in-chief of former days.

[148] He kept all his life a feeling that his early education had been incomplete. Strongly advised by David Humphreys to write an account of the great events in which he had taken part, he answered that he would not, on account of a lack of leisure, and a "consciousness of a defective education." July 25, 1785. When Lafayette was beseeching him to visit France some day, he answered: "Remember, my good friend, that I am unacquainted with your language, that I am too far advanced in years to acquire a knowledge of it." September 30, 1779. Franklin added later his entreaties to those of Lafayette; see Washington's answer, October 11, 1780.