Revolutionary Route

One hundred sixty-four years before American-led Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy to liberate France from the Germans, French troops landed in Newport, R.I., to help liberate the American colonies from the British.

With the powerful British Navy controlling the coast, the French Army, led by Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, count of Rochambeau, marched inland on its way to meet George Washington's army and fight the British in Yorktown, Va. They won -- securing American independence -- but 5,000 Frenchmen died in battle.

"There were more Frenchmen killed at Yorktown than American revolutionaries," said Serge Gabriel, a Greenwich resident and native of France who has devoted the past five years of his life to commemorating Connecticut's role in his countrymen's historic march. Although no battles took place in Connecticut, it was one of nine states that the army marched through.

The memorializing is part of a national celebration that began last summer and ends next summer, marking the 225th anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown. As part of the celebration, Connecticut is working with the National Park Service to name the 600-mile, nine-state road the French and American armies followed, called the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route, a national historic trail.

Gabriel, an American citizen who served in the French and American armies, serves as the Connecticut chairman of the project. In that volunteer role, he travels throughout the state, meeting with people in each of the 11 towns the French army passed through on its way south.

Collaborating with the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, he is working to erect outdoor historic panels in each town detailing their contributions to the war effort. Two panels have been erected, in Lebanon and East Hartford.

From a plaque at Conanicut Battery:

"In the early 1770's - even before the Declaration of Independence - Narragansett Bay was the scene of frequent confrontations between the British Navy and Rhode Islanders. The British aggressively enforced their increasively expensive custom duties and the Rhode Islanders aggresively resisted the British.

In 1772 a group of Providence rebels captured and burned the HMS Gaspee. In 1773 the HMS Rose and 14 other warships shelled Bristol, while British naval forces regulary raided the coast and local shipping for food and supplies. In August 1775 the Rhode Island General Assembly had most of Jamestown livestock removed to relative safety of South Kingston. Around this same time Jamestown resident John Eldred, it is said, placed a cannon between two boulders overlooking East Pasge and fired occasionally at British ships passing by. On December 10-11, 1775, British mariners raided the small village at Jamestown. They burned almost all the houses along Narragansett Avenue, made off with available livestock, and effectively drove much of the population away.

The calamitous December raid, and realization that control of Conanicut Island could mean control of the bay, caused the colony to begin fortifying the island.

In January 1776 the General Assembly ordered 300 militiamen to Jamestown and, in May, voted to "employ a sufficient number of men to erect a fort at Beaver Tail, upon Conanicut to contain six or eight heavy canons". Shortly thereafter, on this site on Prospect Hill, troops erected an earthen gun battery with a commanding view of West Passage. The battery, probably crescent-shaped, took advantage of both height and slope of the terrain."

I completely agree with you on that point. France didn't provide military support to the colonists in North America simply to engage in "nation-building." And you can be sure of something else, too . . . if anyone in France had stood up and suggested that "British tyranny is a religion of peace," he would have been strung up and shot in Paris.

Yes, well I think that falls under the enemy of my enemy is my friend. We fought France under the British flag during the French and Indian war and then we fought against the British in Revolutionary war and then when Major General Anthony Wayne defeated the Indians at Fallen Timbers in 1794,the British were backing and inciting the Indians to riot and to kill and take Americans as hostages. I had forgotten about the Quasi war...the undeclared war fought entirely at sea.

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