Yorktown Day 2004 in Virginia
speech delevered by the guest speaker from the Society in France of the Sons of the American Revolution on October 19, 2005 (at the Victory monument).

I am honoured and pleased to speak to you on behalf of the president of the Sons of the American Revolution Society in France, Hélie de Noailles, the duc d'Ayen, whose direct an-cestor, vicomte de Noailles was Lafayette's brother in law and, as a colonel in the French Royal Army took an active part in the battle here at Yorktown.

We are here to commemorate an exceptional event and to celebrate the people who carried them out.
But as I see many children among us today, perhaps we should answer some questions for them.

An exceptional event.

All has been said about the extraordinary conjunction of initiatives which made this victory possible. Naval and land forces, American end French armies ; the ability of their remarkable chiefs Washington, Rochambeau, de Grasse to combine their respective forces and personal capacities.

But you know how children are. They will ask :
"How is it possible that capturing a small army of 7000 men, half of them German mercenaries or starving slaves, with a general who had voted against a military intervention (as was the case of Lord Cornwallis before the war began)? How is it possible that this was sufficient to decide powerful Britain to accept Ameri-can independence ? We know how reactive is this wonderful people of the UK.

Had it happened one year or a few months earlier, the Yorktown victory would not have had the same impact. It would have been a disagreeable blow to British pride, but the troops (one fifth of the 35,000 soldiers presents on September 1781 in America ; 44,000 including Can-ada) would soon have been replaced by some of the 64,000 on foot in South-Britain.

But when the news of this defeat has been known in London, it was in the context of many other unfavourable events.
The world-wide challenge a small Britain of eleven million people had to sustain against powerful France of twenty eight million was having effects everywhere.

• Minorca had been conquered in the Mediterranean ;
• the so precious Gibraltar fortress was assaulted ;
• one by one, the rich and profitable sugar islands of the West Indies were invaded by the French forces, whose naval superiority was now prevailing ;
• British convoys were hailed in higher percentages ;
• the slave trade had been reduced by the capture of Senegal trading posts two years before ;
• naval squadrons had to be sent to India where the fleet and land-ing forces under bailli de Suffren were helping Hyder Ali's fight for independence against UK;
• massive forces were retained in the south of England and at sea to prevent any landing of the French regiments gathered on the other side of the Channel.

The war had become an unbearable financial burden. Britain had to yield and it was York-town that pushed her to enter into negotiations on the Colonies' independence.

La Fayette

We are here also to celebrate the people who carried out the victory and, especially this year, Général Marquis de Lafayette. This ceremony originally was organized by the Friends of La-fayette, shortly after this Frenchman was made one of the very few honorary citizens of the United States.

Here again, children will raise questions : why Lafayette ? And indeed why Lafayette ? Was he really in the chain of political and strategic decisions that led to the Alliance and therefore the Independence ? Is not it also considered by many that this idealist, who was not a politician, was disastrous for his own country at the time of the French Revolution, when he was no longer under the wing of his adoptive father, George Washington ?

The main chain of French decision-making that led to success included Beaumarchais, Vergennes, and Louis XVI.

• Beaumarchais, who, as a diplomat in London and after conversations with Arthur Lee, pointed out insistently to his Foreign Minister and even to the King himself that the time had come to take the initiative in America.
• Then the wise Vergennes, the French Foreign Minister, whose policy was not, as is of-ten written, a martial thirst for revenge, but the will to re-establish a normal balance of power in the world, as opposed to excessive British hegemony at sea. A Minister anxious to obtain soon on a new alliance with … Britain, to protect the Turks against Rus-sian ambitions. Vergennes managed to promote a league of neutrality in Europe, so depriving the UK, for the only time in four centuries, of the opportunity to organize a reverse alliance against her powerful rival.
• The ultimate decision-maker was King Louis XVI, a young man at the time, only three years older than Lafayette. He was the one who chose the moment and made the deci-sion to enter into an alliance with the thirteen colonies, when he had brought his naval forces at a proper level He was prepared to make the necessary concessions so that his Spanish cousin who would not acknowledge independence of rebellious colonies would enter into an alliance with France. Spain was to prove a precious ally. Such was the chain of decision-making.

Lafayette's merits lie elsewhere.

• Not only was he an intrepid combatant, becoming an efficient general in this difficult war of movement, especially in his Virginia campaign.
• Not only, here at Yorktown, was he commanding one third of the Continental army ; every three days he was in charge of the entire American army as part of a rotating command between himself, general Lincoln and another European officer, baron de Steuben, who had been dispatched to America by the French Government.
• He was also very active promoting French intervention in the War. Ø But above all, it is for his personal commitment that Lafayette deserves being hon-oured : his enthusiasm for the promotion of the human rights, his constant dedication to the values written on the front wall of all 35000 town-halls in even the smallest towns in France : Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
• America did not forget his constant love for the United States, which he showed throughout his life and so vividly expressed on the occasion of his triumphal journey here in 1824/25 .

Indeed, for all these reasons, for all these qualities, Lafayette deserves to be honoured. All the French are honoured by his American citizenship, given to this man who bore so many qualities we like to promote by this distinction. Lafayette shows us the way these two unique nations, France and the United States, with their universal vocation to promote and spread the values in which they believe, can follow his example while working together throughout the world for liberty, equality, and fraternity.

Long life to the eternal French and American friendship and cooperation !
God bless America, vive la France !

Jacques de Trentinian
Society in France of the SAR.