Donatien de Rochambeau

Divisional-General Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, vicomte de Rochambeau (7 April 1755 – 20 October 1813) was a French Army officer and colonial administrator who served in the American Revolutionary War and French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He was the son of Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau.

Donatien de Rochambeau
19th century portrait of Rochambeau
Governor of Saint-Domingue
In office 21 October 1792 – 2 January 1793
Preceded by	Jean-Jacques d'Esparbes
Succeeded by	Léger-Félicité Sonthonax (commissioner)
Personal details
Born	(1755-04-07)7 April 1755[1] Paris, France
Died	20 October 1813(1813-10-20) (aged 58) Leipzig, Saxony
Relations	Son of Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau
Awards	Name inscribed under the Arc de Triomphe
Military service
Allegiance	Kingdom of France French First Republic First French Empire
Branch/service	French Army
Years of service	1769–1813
Rank	Divisional-General
Battles/wars	American Revolutionary War French Revolutionary Wars Napoleonic Wars Haitian Revolution Battle of Leipzig  †

Biography

Rochambeau in Saint-Domingue

He served in the American Revolutionary War as an aide-de-camp to his father, spending the winter of 1781–1782 in quarters at Williamsburg, Virginia. In the 1790s, he participated in an unsuccessful campaign to re-establish French authority in Martinique and Saint-Domingue. Rochambeau was later assigned to the French Revolutionary Army in the Italian Peninsula, and was appointed to the military command of the Ligurian Republic.

In 1802, he was appointed to lead an expeditionary force against Saint-Domingue (Haiti) after General Charles Leclerc's death. His remit was to restore French control of their rebellious colony, by any means. Historians of the Haitian Revolution credit his brutal tactics for uniting black and gens de couleur soldiers against the French. After Rochambeau surrendered to the rebel general Jean-Jacques Dessalines in November 1803, the former French colony declared its independence as Haïti, the second independent state in the Americas. In the process, Dessalines became arguably the most successful military commander in the struggle against Napoleonic France.^[2]

During his time in Haiti, Rochambeau waged a war of extermination, massacring thousands of blacks of all ages and genders. In 1803, he developed the world's first gas chambers. He used a rudimentary method of filling ships' cargo holds with sulfur dioxide to suffocate black prisoners of war.^[3][4]

At the surrender of Cap Français, Rochambeau was captured aboard the frigate Surveillante by a British squadron under the command of Captain John Loring and returned to England as a prisoner on parole, where he remained interned for almost nine years.

He was exchanged in 1811, and returned to the family château, where he resumed the work of classifying the family's growing collection of maps, which his father had begun. He also enriched the collections with new acquisitions, in particular ones contributed by the military campaigns of his son, Auguste-Philippe Donatien de Vimeur, who served as the aide-de-camp for Joachim Murat and was with Murat's cavalry in the Russian campaign in 1812.

He was mortally wounded in the Battle of Nations, and died three days later at Leipzig, at the age of 58.

Motto and coat of arms

Coat of arms of Donatien de Rochambeau

Escutcheon Azure, a chevron Or between three rowels of the same Motto VIVRE EN PREUX, Y MOURIR[5] (To live and die valiantly)

Sources

• "Rochambeau, Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). 1911. p. 425.
• "American War of Independence" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). 1911. pp. 843–844.