French Troops at Jamestown

V-61

On 2 Sept. 1781, about 3,000 French troops of the Gatinois, Agenois, and Touraine Regiments arrived at Jamestown from the West Indies. Commanded by the Marquis de Saint-Simon, they camped near here before participating in the siege of Yorktown. On 14 Oct., Gatinois soldiers and the Royal Deux-Ponts Regiment, under the Comte de Rochambeau, captured the strategically important Redoubt Number 9 at Yorktown. Following the British surrender, Rochambeau's troops established winter camps between the James and York Rivers. Three companies of the Royal Deux-Ponts Regiment occupied quarters near here. In July 1782, the French army departed for New England.

Department of Historic Resources, 2014

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Carte de la Campagne de la Division aux Ordres du M. de St Simon en Virginie (copy at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation). Jerome A. Greene, The Guns of Independence: The Siege of Yorktown, 1781, (New York: Savas Beatie, 2005), 15-22, 85-86, 243, 247-253. March to Victory: Washington, Rochambeau, and the Yorktown Campaign of 1781 (U.S. Army publication): http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/rochambeau/CMH_70-104-1.pdf Brendan Morrissey, Yorktown 1781: The World Turned Upside Down (Oxford, U.K., Osprey Publishing Co., 2003), 23, 35, 49, 53, 68-71. My Campaigns in America: A Journal Kept by Count William de Deux-Ponts, 1780-81. Trans. Samuel Abbott Green, J.K. Willing, and William Parsons Lunt (Boston, 1868), 142-149. Henry P. Johnston, The Yorktown Campaign and the Surrender of Cornwallis, 1781 (Washington, D.C., Harper and Brothers, 1881; reprint 1997 by Eastern National), 98-100, 142-143. Harold A. Larrabee, “A Neglected French Collaborator in the Victory of Yorktown,” Journal de la Societe des Americanistes de Paris (vol. XXIV, 1932), 245-257. Howard C. Rice, Jr., and Anne S. K. Brown, trans. and ed., The American Campaigns of R’s Army, 1780, 1781, 1782, 1783, Vol. 2 (Princeton University Press and Brown University Press, 1972). Robert A. Selig, Georg Daniel Flohr’s Journal: A New Perspective. Http://americanrevolution.org/flohr1.html