From Charles-Armand Flöbergue de la Motte de la
Rocatelle
ALS: American Philosophical Society
<Toul, [August?, 1778], in French: On the 28th of last June I
addressed a memorandum to Congress and to M. Washington
and sent the packet to M. Williams to forward. He did not
reply, and I have heard nothing from America; the packet, I
fear, was lost. I send you enclosed the same memorandum, in
which I propose to head a school to teach young Americans
all that is requisite for engineers and artillerymen. I shall need
as assistants an expert mathematician and a cartographer-draftsman.
When I saw you in Paris about a year ago I showed you all
my papers. I speak German well, having as I told you been in
the service of the Emperor Charles VII. I was recalled to the
French service in 1745 and was in all the campaigns from 1741
to 1748, and again in 1760. In 1763 I became a chevalier de
Saint-Louis at the age of thirty-six, was promoted to major in
1774, and retired in 1777. If fortune had favored me I should
have gone to America last winter with the recommendations
that you offered me. I still have in me twenty years of useful
service, and promise to learn English within a year of emigrating;
my family will go with me, a wife, son, and three daughters.
M. Duportail is fourteen years my junior, M. de La Radière
fifteen, and Messrs. Laumoy and Gouvion nineteen; thus
I deserve a higher rank than M. Duportail. They are good
officers, but have not experienced war except in their American
campaign last year.>
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