First-Year Seminar Lecture Series 2009
Nicole Vaget
Reverend Joseph Paradis Professor of French
Connecting American, French, and Haitian Revolutions

people’s victory over British colonial rules
people’s victory over absolute monarchy
African 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 15766
Mélanges littéraires et historiques XVIIIème siècle
F.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)

Soissonnais regiment
Saintonge regimen t
Boubonnais regiment
Royal Deux-
Ponts regiment
Flags of 4 line regiments that landed with Rochambeau at Newport in 1780 and participated in the Yorktown campaign
Washington welcomes le comte de Rochambeau in 1780

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)

Virginia coast and Chesapeake bay
Chesapeak bay
Yorktown
James river
French
Fleet
British Fleet
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

Cornwallis’ camp
Rochambeau’s troups la Fayette’s troups
Overview of the battle of Yorktown by Siméon Fort

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

painting by Onfroy de Breville -circa 1900
2 French regiments stormed British Redoubt 9
Royal DeuxPonts and Gâtinais from a contemporary graphic novel by Gérald Forton
French regiments executing their night attack against British
Redoubt 9 on October 14, 1781
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

other French officers
Major General Ben Lincoln
Washington
Rochambeau
LaFayette
Cornwallis’ representative
De Grasse
Surrender of the British at Yorktown by John

The French part of Saint Domingue, later called Haïti

The mulatto girl (1764) by Agostino Brunias

City map of CapFrançais on the Island of Saint-Domingue, 1779
Slave trade in the 18th
Century

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

Soldier and runaway slave by 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’ouverture leader 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,
J ean-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.