Thank you for joining us. And welcome to Anderson House here in washington, d. C. My name is Andrew Outten and im the historical programs manager for the American Revolution institute of the society of the cincinnati. The American Revolution institute promotes knowledge and appreciation for the achievement of american independence, fulfilling the aim of the Continental Army officers and their french counterparts who founded the society of the cincinnati in 1783. To perpetuate the memory of that vast event. In addition to tonights program, the American Revolution institute fulfills that aim by supporting advanced study, developing exhibitions and other historical programs and tours, advocating Historic Preservation and providing resources to classrooms nationwide by the benefit teachers, students and scholars alike. Since 1938, the society of the cincinnati has done all of this work from its headquarters right here at Anderson House, a national historically on mark that was completed in 1905 as the winner residents of lars and isabel anderson. Tonights lecture, a program that is made possible in part by a generous gift from the Massachusetts Society of the cincinnati features dr. Iris de rode discussing Francois Jean de chateauroux, a Major General in the french army, a member of the society of the cincinnati and a cousin of the marc wheat of lafayette who played a central role in the francoamerican alliance during the revolutionary war. Dr. Torode is a dutch historian who specializes in the french participation during the American Revolution. She earned her ph. D. In 2019 at paris eight university. Vincent s. A. For her dissertation. Francoise jean de chateauroux, a soldier philosopher in the Atlantic World at the time of the enlightenment. While working on her dissertation, she earned 14 fellowships, which included grants from the Richard Lounsbury foundation, George WashingtonsMount Vernon Thomas jeffersons monticello, the French Embassy in the netherlands, and the french government. Dr. Torode has presented her research at more than 75 International Conferences and has been teaching american translators antique and International History at the French University sciences po in paris, france. Since 2013. Her current work focuses on a documentary film and an audio guide app that retraced the steps of the french army on the washington, rochambeau revolutionary trail. A new book titled military enlightenment on the ground that examines the collaboration of french and American Military leaders that secured american independence and is expected to be published in 2024 by the university of virginia press. And thats all in addition to the development of a lecture and podcast series. And thats a partnership with the embassy of france. And here in washington, d. C. But more recently, dr. Torode was also the recipient of the 2023 ellen mcallister. Clark, Massachusetts Library fellowship from the Massachusetts Society of the cincinnati. To continue her research for her new book and our Research Library here at Anderson House, a place where she is certainly no stranger to. In fact, there has been an ongoing joke between us about whether i would refer to her as a squatter in our library tonight while introducing her, as there is rarely a time where i dont go down there and see her working on something. So yeah, i told you i was going to fit in there. So sorry about that. But before i turn things over to iris. Oh, dr. Torode, excuse me. I would be remiss if i didnt cover the normal housekeeping items for our virtual attendees joining us on zoom this evening, following tonights lecture, that will be a question and answer session. So please feel free to submit your questions for dr. Torode at any point during the Program Using the q a function that can be found at the bottom of your screen. We will do our best to incorporate them with our Live Audience questions following the talk, should you have any technical related questions or comments . Those can be submitted using the chat function, and one of our Staff Members will be monitoring that and well do their best to assist you. So without further delay, please join me in welcoming our friend dr. Iris de rode. So thank you very much andrew, for the fun introduction and of course me being a squatter here is very true. Im being quite often in the basement here, which is of course the Beautiful Library that holds a lot of sources, books and Historical Documents on my research on the french or the American Revolution. So im very happy to be able to go here very often. And of course see the Library Staff and everyone working here at the society is cincinnati and the American Revolution institute. Thank you also for giving me a fellowship very recently to continue my research here. So im going to present today about four square shoulder share to do. The man you can see on the slide of whom you might never have heard because hes quite an unknown french participant in the American Revolution. Chateauroux is known for one thing by some of you for his travel diary. He wrote a travel diary between 1780 and 83 while he was serving in america as the Major General, serving directly under, of course, campbell, ill tell you all about that diary. But so maybe you know him for that, but for the rest, hes quite forgotten. And i will make him come alive again, i hope tonight. So first of all, we can see him here on the painting that you all know. Of course, surrender of cornwallis and you can alssee how to pronounce his name because some people have told me itvery complicated to to pronounce for an american person because there is an s and an x ands. You dont know what to do with. But you say chateauneuf, try to write it phonetically, not sure if it works. But anyway, so now you know how to pronounce his name and especially not to pronounce the s or the x chatelet. And so he is on this painting, which might be surprising for some of you, as you have not heard of him, because hes quite prominent there of course, hes standing at the french side of the army. And so you can see, of course, that he is officially, lets say, remembered for his role in yorktown and in the American Revolution. So for reginald shatner, you can see here how he evolved over the years. Theres one painting thats a little bit known here in america because its, of course, Charles Vincent peale, one thats in philadelphia. But the rest are all kept still in the family property. So you can see some of the paintings that you might have never seen here. And so the i wrote a book, of course, about him, as you can see here, long french title, which is based on my ph. D. Ph. D. Dissertation that has been published last year. So you might wonder why ive been doing all that research because Franz Ferdinand theory is, of course, an unknown figure. And why would i devote my life about ten years to the study of this man . Well, it started in a garden, which you can see here, which is a garden of my parents holiday home in france. I myself from the netherlands. But so i grew up under this tree. And according to the legend of the village where we lived, called bakassi. People told me that the tree had been planted by lafayette himself. Lafayette, of course, being the marquis de lafayette. That has been an important part, of course, of the American Revolution. I was told to have planted this tree in the garden after his American Revolutionary experience, because he had brought a few of these trees back to france to spread this to his french friends. When i started to do some research on this, because i was very curious if this story could have been true, i found that it was not him. He had never set foot in our garden. He had no reason to be here in any possible way. But his sort of uncle, uncle by marriage actually had shetterly has been around in this region and so in the local archives of dijon de joan being known here, especially for mustard, but theres also an archive there in which i found some sources on this person share. To do though was, oh, here i am sorry. I see Something Else on my screen. So that was confusing. But anyway, here you can see that controversial of course planted that tree. So the reason is that he was in touch with the owner of her home. And so i could see in some of the letters that he had been indeed coming back from from france, from america. He has been in touch with the person living in our home. And so the tree probably actually is from america, from the period of the American Revolution. Its also, as you can see, quite also, it is 250 years old. We have an expert here who has confirmed this, steve norton. But so, yeah, the story led me to this finding of shetterly. I still had no clue. Shetterly was i just sold the reference of his name and i saw some some vague letters that i didnt really understand. But what i did know is that there was a Little Village close by that is gold. Shetterly and so in france, as you might know, the french aristocracy, of course, was named after the places they were from. And so probably he might have come from there. Here you can see how actually shetterly is related to lafayette, because of course, that makes him quite interesting and probably why the story has been mixed up over the years that people have thought he is that it was actually lafayette planted it so you can see they have a grand father in common with the wife of lafayette. I will not explain the whole story because thats very long. But doug saw his name is is the one that connects both people, lafayette and shetterly. We were very close, as we will see later to. And so shetterly, im just going to show you the map. So she, too, is on the red dots right there. And so whats interesting is that the village called shetterly has a huge gasols a shuttle to share tdo so. I thought, lets go tthe shuttle. And when i came there, it appeared that the owner that lives there today, philip, gave a tour of this castle. He explained that his family has lived there for a thousand years and that it started as a roman encampment and has evolved over the time into what you can see today. And so after visiting the castle, i asked him, do you know more about shetterly . And especially my whats going on here . So he told me, thats so interesting. We have the same tree in our garden, so you can sort of see it. Its in one of these where you can see it well, but its in the green zone on the right of the first picture. And so he explained to me indeed that he was related to false virgin and said to the person that has actually been in america. And he also told me about this travel diary that i just mentioned before, the travel diary that he wrote during the American Revolution. So he told me, just go and read it. If you want to find out more about shetterly. And when i read it, i got very intrigued. Is describing his tour through america during the revolution where hes explaining that hes of course going through the different 13 states. Hes describing the difference is between the constitutions of the different states hes describing those he meets with. Hes describing what he thinks of nature, all these Different Things. And i was really getting into this story because hes traveling through the world of the revolution and through his eyes. And its if you have ever read it, its just quite an intriguing book for that reason. So phillip, here we can see your photo of every shuttle. You still lives in the castle. And so when he gave me the book, he also explained to me that thats said news glider forgotten figure, especially because the archives were stored lost that he had. Well, his papers had been lost. And so no one really knew. But so when i started to dig more to find out if i could find something about shed to do in paris or in other archives, i actually didnt find much because there was not much, but there were a lot of references in sources from the founding fathers, such as washington and jefferson, who had written to him and he had replied to them. So you can see that there are correspondences, but there were hard to identify. And so i went back to phillipe to ask him, dont you know if you have anything in your archive . And then he said, well, we have archive, but its a, its a tower full of archives which you can see in the middle. It starts in 1328 and is up until today. So 700 years of files of archives. So he got a little sword. He was overwhelmed himself by the quantity of his material. But he did say, lets go and have a look. Lets see if i have anything on france for joan. And actually, he had he had a huge collection of joans papers, and were about 5000 pages in about 13 different boxes. That has been indexed and collected by one of his family members in the 19th century. But since then, they just closed it again and no one really looked at it. So the family knew that they had it very vaguely. But philip was just not aware of the treasures that he actually had in his store. The most important ones that i opened almost at the beginning was together with philip. We opened a map and we sold a name, washington. So we opened the little map, which is a paper map, and we find eight letters of George Washington original handwriting never really seen the light of day. So we go on and look for more so we saw jeffersons letters, franklins letters, adams letters, Gouverneur Morris, Robert Morris and so on and so on. Many different letters all from all these that sold in revolutionary heroes. Then theres also the french of voltaire and theodore and albert had written to him because besides from being a military man, she had to do was also a philosopher of the enlightenment. And he befriended people such as voltaire and wrote to them frequently. He also wrote to the ministers of louis the 16th. So you can see names, your version might be one that you do know because hes the minister of Foreign Affairs during the American Revolution, he, of course, wrote to a horse on herschel lafayette and the loser. And so these are the people he was with, mainly in the American Revolution. So all these sources combined really show both signs of shetterly, but especially his Extensive Network of correspondents, his european sort of other correspondents, also includes hume or bentham. So, of course, the famous philosophers as well, but also frederick the great, the king of prussia. And it just continues. And so this network shows, of course, that shetterly was a central figure in the world of the enlightenment, but also in the military time of his military circles, of his age. There were a lot of different maps as well, such as the one you can see on the left, which is a map of new york of 1781. And theres also on the right, you can see that one, which is, of course, young boys papers that he had done over Campaign Just before leaving to america to prepare his army for the campaign. And so whats interesting for us here, of course, today is that that paper on the right is here in the library. The reason is that the family decided to sell a few of the most important, and especially most valuable papers and so some of them are now in mount vernon, some others are here. And of course, thats very important because they can now be researched by historians. Were also working on making them available in a digital form. So that actually everything can be researched by more people than just me. But now theyre still closed because im finishing my book first. So going back to shed to do and who he was. And then im going to tell you more about his american campaign. Of course, he its hard to identify why someone based on 5000 pages, but unfortunately fortunately for me, he wrote a letter to Jeremy Bentham in which he describes himself. He describes himself as being a soldier in the republic of letters. So hes a part of the republic of letters, which is that enlighten world. And what he says about himself is his real fortune is that he has friends. And this quote really perfectly summarize is to men, because as i already mentioned, he was this soldier he had been fighting in the seven years war as he started as a lieutenant and rose up until a colonel of his own regiment. The regime aldershot to do but of course he lost the war badly. The french lost the seven years war. As we all know, leading to one of the motivations to of course, support the american rebels after. But so his role and his role in the seven years war was an interesting one because he started to think on how to reform the french army in order to prevent such big losses to happen again in the future. So in the republic of letters, he was writing since his 19 birthday or his age, he was writing about lots of different topics. One of the most sort of exciting one at the beginning of his life was