French Encampment in Windham, 5 – 7 November 1782
Historical Significance:
Camp 47 of the return march lay east of Windham rather than west as on the June 1781 march to White Plains and Yorktown. That day the two brigades joined “in frightful weather”, recorded Baron Closen. French troops camped here from 5-7 November 1782. The line-up shows all of Rochambeau’s infantry united there on 6 November, which was a day of rest.
Since each regimental camp was approx. 850 feet wide and this encampment consisted of four regiments plus their regimental artillery and wagons, it may well have stretched for close to one mile across the fields east of Windham.
The standard French infantry tent for nine men was about 10 pieds long and 6 pieds wide, i.e., 130 x 65 inches = 11×5.5 feet.
1 pied = 12.8 inches.
Rochambeau, Jean-Baptiste-Donatien De Vimeur, Comte De. Amérique Campagne. 1782. Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/00552208/. (Accessed March 02, 2018.)
Suggestions for further readings:
Kennett, Lee. The French Forces in America, 1780-1783 (Westport, 1977)
Rice, Howard C. Jr., and Anne S.K. Brown, eds., The American Campaigns of Rochambeau’s
Army 1780, 1781, 1782, 1783 2 vols., (Princeton and Providence, 1972)
Scott, Samuel F. From Yorktown to Valmy: The Transformation of the French Army in an
Age of Revolution (Niwot, CO, 1998)
Selig, Robert A. Rochambeau in Connecticut: Tracing his Journey. Historic and
Architectural Survey Connecticut Historical Commission (Hartford: Connecticut
Historical Commission, 1999) available at https://w3r-us.org/history-by-state/
Selig, Robert A., Mary M. Donohue, Bruce Clouette and Mary Harper, ‘En Avant’ With Our French Allies:
Sites, Markers, and Monuments in Connecticut Commemorating the Contributions of French Troops
under the comte de Rochambeau to the Achievement of American Independence, 1780 to 1782
(Hartford: Connecticut Historical Commission, 2004)
For an extensive bibliography of English-, French- and German-language titles about France and the American War of Independence click here: Bibliography