First-Year Seminar Lecture Series 2009

Nicole VagetReverend Joseph Paradis Professor of French

Connecting American, French, and Haitian Revolutions

1776: American Revolutionpeople’s victory over British colonial rules

1789: French Revolutionpeople’s victory over absolute monarchy

1804: Haitian RevolutionAfrican slaves’victory over French colonial rules

Lettres de Tourville (1777 - 1783)officier au régiment du Gatinais au Cap à son père, lieutenant-colonel d’infanterie

Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris FR Nouvelles Acquisitions 15766Mélanges littéraires et historiques XVIIIème siècleF.68-143

Charles Bertin Gaston Chapuis de Tourville (1740-1809) was made colonel of his regiment Royal-Auvergne in 1791, and became divisional general during the French revolution

Detail of the Siege of Yorktown by Louis-Nicholas van Blarenberghe

Franklin reception at the court of France, 1778

Marquis De Lafayette with his commander in chief,General George Washington, at Valley Forge (1777-78)

Washington welcomes le comte de Rochambeau in 1780

Soissonnais

regiment

Boubonnais regiment

Saintonge regiment

Royal Deux-Ponts regiment

Flags of 4 line regiments that landed with Rochambeau at Newport in 1780 and participated in the Yorktown campaign

French battleships at the battle of the Virginia Capes, September 1781 La ville de Paris, flagship of De Grasse

L’Auguste, flagship of De Bougainville

François Joseph Paul De Grasse (1722-1788)

Yorktown

Chesapeak bay

James riverFrench Fleet

British Fleet

Virginia coast and Chesapeake bay

 General Washington hears that admiral De Grasse's fleet has just arrived in the Chesapeake Bay.

French fleet of admiral De Grasse off the coast of Virginia

Overview of the battle of Yorktown by Siméon Fort

la Fayette’s troups

Rochambeau’s troups

Cornwallis’ camp

Soldier in Tourville’s regiment du Gâtinais

from left to right- well organized French regiments- French artillery- American artillery- American regiments- American infantry and militia with la Fayette

French regiments executing their night attack against British Redoubt 9 on October 14, 1781

2 French regiments stormed British Redoubt 9

Royal Deux-Ponts and Gâtinais

painting by Onfroy de Breville -circa 1900

from a contemporary graphic novel by Gérald Forton

For its show of skill and heroism, fleurs de lys, insignia of the French king, were added to the flag of the Gatinais regiment and renamed Royal Auvergne

Washington

Cornwallis’ representative

LaFayetteRochambeau

Surrender of the British at Yorktown by John Trumbull

De Grasse

other French officers

Major General Ben Lincoln

The French part of Saint Domingue, later called Haïti

The mulatto girl (1764)by Agostino Brunias

City map of Cap-Français on the Island of Saint-Domingue, 1779

Slave trade in the 18th Century

Marie-Josephe Rose Tascher De La Pagerie aristocrat and creole from Martiniquemarried to Napoleon Bonaparte

Soldier and runaway slaveby John Gabriel Stedman

An indigo plantation in Saint-Domingue in the 18th Century from L’Encyclopédie by Diderot and D’Alembert

French troups storming the hideout of runaway slaves

Toussaint L’ouvertureleader of the Haitian revolution

“the slave who defeated Napoléon”

Cap Français burning on June 21, 1793

1794 the 1st French republic abolishes slavery

In 1793, Jean-Baptiste Belley, a former slave, is the first black deputy to take a seat in the National Convention in Paris

The national coat of arms of Haiti is composed of two cannons,a palm tree with the French Revolution liberty cap on top,and the watch word Union makes might.