George Washingon as the Europeans Saw Him
Gilbert Chinard (1946)

Washington’s military career, political leadership and, most of all, his willingness to retire to private life were topics of frequent analysis by European rulers, by intellectuals, and by the French and other European military leaders who served with him and under him. Gilbert Chinard, a Professor of French Literature at Princeton University, details the comparisons of Washington to Napoleon in the First, Second, and Third Republics, and offers a tantalizing view of a meeting to analyze Washington’s military tactics convened by Frederick the Great of Prussia, with Lafayette on one side of the map table and an uncomfortable Cornwallis on the other.

Among the great men of America, and even among the great men of the world, Washington stands alone, an enigmatic and majestic figure. Despite the thousands of speeches delivered every year in every part of the country for almost a century and a half, the many biographies, the countless books and articles discussing in the minutest detail the various episodes of his career, there remains something mysterious and distant in his character.

It cannot be said that historians have successfully met this challenge. Many would agree with Channing that, “As to the inner man we are strangely ignorant,” and the efforts of the most critical scholars, to “debunk” the so-called legend of Washington have proved futile. The first President of the United States remains surrounded with a sort of halo. He has become a national “myth”; but this is one of the many cases where we may well wonder whether the legend and the myth do not express a truth and a reality which apparently scientific methods have been powerless to reach.

In any case, the tradition that makes Washington an object of reverence and respect is not limited to America. Long before Washington had become a national hero, he was regarded abroad as the embodiment of the purest republican virtues, and this American who had never left his native country exerted during his lifetime an influence which, as I shall hope to show, has extended even to the present day.

First of all it was a personal influence. Distant and reserved as he is reputed to have been, he won the heart of the French officers who had enrolled as volunteers in the American army. The friendship and respect of the young Marquis de Lafayette for his “dear General” is too well known to need any elaboration here, and yet it is only a year ago that their complete correspondence including many hitherto unpublished letters has been made available to the public. I shall only quote a short passage from a letter written by Washington to his young friend when they parted for the last time, between Annapolis and Baltimore, in December 1784. It is one of the rare instances when Washington expressed without his usual reserve, deep personal feelings and thus enabled us to penetrate into the recesses of his consciousness:

I often asked myself, as our carriages descended, whether that was the last sight I ever should have of you? An tho’ I wished to say no, my fears answered yes. I called to mind the days of my youth, and found they had long since fled to return no more, that I was now descending the hill I had been 52 years climbing, and that tho’' blessed with a good constitution, I was of a short lived family and might soon expect to be entombed in the dreary mansions of my fathers. These things darkened the shades and gave a gloom to the picture, consequently to my prospects of seeing you again, but I will not repine, I have had my day.

The same deep sadness and calm resignation is expressed again in the letter he wrote to Lafayette when he refused his invitation to visit France:

At length, my dear Marquis, I am become a private citizen on the banks of the Potomac, and under the shadow of my own vine and my own fig-tree, free from the bustle of a camp and the busy scenes of public life, I am solacing myself with those tranquil enjoyments, of which the soldier who is ever in pursuit of fame, the statesman whose wakeful days and sleepless nights are spent in devising schemes to promote the welfare of his own, and perhaps the ruin of other countries, as if this globe were insufficient for us all, and the courtier who is always watching the countenance of his prince in hopes of catching a gracious smile, can have very little conception. I am not only retired from all public employments, but I am retiring myself, and shall be able to view the solitary walk, and tread the paths of private life with heartfelt satisfaction. Envious of none, I am determined to be pleased with all, and this my dear friend being the order of my march, I will move gently do wn the stream of life, until I sleep with my fathers.

There spoke a Washington known only to his intimate friends and practically, unknown to most of his biographers. He was too much of a gentleman of the old school and too little of a romanticist to take into his confidence casual visitors, but much to the credit of many of the French officers who had the honor to associate with him, most of them perceived that the greatness of Washington proceeded even more from the richness of his inner life and character than from his successes and achievements.

These French noblemen had apparently very slight reasons for admiring the Virginia gentleman under whose command they had been placed. Most of them were career officers; some of them had fought on the battlefields of Europe. They had graduated from military schools; they had studied the campaign of Frederick II whom they had been trained to consider as the greatest general of the century and a military genius of the highest rank. They had lived at the Court of the Kings of France and were familiar with the refinements artificial but exquisite of French society.

They had the highly critical mind so often found among educated Frenchmen and were not to be taken easily by appearances. They might have resented serving under a man who has been represented by some of his biographers as a country squire, a gentleman farmer and at most a rich Virginia planter. And yet, all of them, practically without exception, acknowledged in Washington a rare military genius, a man of sterling character whose manners reflected these rare qualities which cannot be acquired through upbringing but are the expression of an inner life marked by dignity, sterling honesty and mastery of the will.

That impressive appearance “grave, yet not severe, affable without familiarity, this predominant expression of calm dignity” was perhaps “beyond the skill of the painter,” as remarked the French officer Du Ponceau. It seldom was rendered adequately by the artists who painted Washington's portraits, but once at least it was caught in this extraordinary bust which Houdon made and which is now preserved at Mount Vernon.

Much more elaborate was the pen portrait that Marquis de Chastellux tried to draw of the American general. A trained writer of real merit, a member of the French Academy, a philosopher as well as a soldier, this keen analyst had to admit in Washington something which could neither be defined nor described. Unsuccessful as his attempt was, it is perhaps the best and most penetrating analysis and appreciation left by any of Washington's contemporaries:

Here would be the proper place to give the portrait of General Washington; but what can my testimony add to the idea already formed of him? ... I know, that having had the opportunity of a near inspection, and of closely observing him, some more particular details may be expected from me; but the strongest characteristic of this respectable man is the perfect union which reigns between the moral and physical qualities which compose the individual, one alone will enable you to judge of him . . . It is not my intention to exaggerate.

I wish only to express the impression General Washington has left on my mind; the idea of a perfect whole, that cannot be the produce of enthusiasm, which rather would reject it, since the effect of proportion is to diminish the idea of greatness. Brave without temerity, laborious without ambition, generous without prodigality, noble without pride, virtuous without severity; he seems always to have confined himself within those limits, where the virtues, by clothing themselves in more lively colours, may be mistaken for faults.

This is the seventh year that he has commanded the army, and that he has obeyed the Congress; more need not be said, especially in America, where they know to appreciate all the merit contained in this simple fact. Let it be repeated that Conde was intrepid, Turenne prudent, Eugene adroit, Catinat disinterested. It is not thus that Washington will be characterized.

It will be said of him. AT THE END OF CIVIL WAR, HE HAD NOTHING WITH WHICH HE COULD REPROACH HIMSELF . . . In speaking of this perfect whole of which General Washington furnishes the idea, I have not excluded exterior form. His stature is noble and lofty, he is well made and exactly proportioned; his physiognomy mild and agreeable, but such as to render it impossible to speak particularly of any of his features, so that in quitting him, you have only the recollection of a fine face. He has neither a grave nor a familiar air, his brow is sometimes marked with thought, but never with inquietude; in inspiring respect, he inspires confidence.

The well-qualified admiration of the French officers for Washington as a military leader and strategist was no less striking. Young Captain Berthier, who was attached to the staff of Rochambeau and later was to become Napoleon's chief of staff, visited the battlefields on which Washington had fought. A surveyor's chain in hand, he measured the camps, located the stations of the opponent forces, studied the dispositions taken by the Commander in Chief, in a cold, dispassionate and almost scientific way, and he came to the conclusion, which again is well worth remembering by American historians, that even after studying the campaigns of Frederick II there was much to learn from this apparently untrained general.

Such was the opinion of Frederick himself who made it a point to invite to his maneuvers the French officers who had fought in America, among them Lafayette and Berthier. He plied them with questions, not even caring to spare the feelings of Lord Cornwallis who was included in the invitation and had to retrace on a map the Virginia campaign, with Lafayette on the other side of the table.

On the part of Frederick this was more than mere curiosity. Granting that the final victory at Yorktown had been won through the assistance of the French fleet of de Grasse and the French expeditionary corps under Rochambeau, the fact remained that for several years Washington had been able to withstand the attack of a professional army, led by professional soldiers and including highly trained mercenaries. For the first time within the memory of military historians, an army of farmers and undisciplined militia, led by officers they had chosen themselves from their own ranks, had succeeded in checking and defeating in the field an army of regulars.

To the French officers this was little short of miracle. It cannot be said that they fully realized at the time that the Virginia farmer who had kept together, organized and unified this motley crowd of farmers, shop keepers, hunters and fur traders had revolutionized the orthodox and traditional methods of warfare. Quite a few of them, some ten years later, remembered the lesson they could derive from their American experience, when France had to defend her frontiers with an army of volunteers, a truly popular army.

When, in the early days of the French Revolution, it was decreed that “the country was in danger” and when it was felt that it could not be saved except by the “levee en masse” of the people, Brissot, in a fiery speech made on July 10, 1791, before the Assembly of the Friends of the Constitution, urged the French volunteers to emulate their American predecessors:

O men who doubt the prodigious and supernatural efforts that love of liberty can exact from men, consider what the Americans have done to conquer their independence. Look at Warren, a physician who had never handled a gun, defending the hillock of Bunkerhill, with a handful of Americans, badly equipped, badly trained, and before surrendering making more than twelve hundred English soldiers bite the dust of the battlefield. Follow the steps of General Washington, resisting with 3 or 4,000 farmers more than 30,000 English soldiers and making game of them. Observe him at the battle of Trenton. He used to tell me that his soldiers had no shoes; that the ice which cut their feet was stained with their blood. “Tomorrow we shall have shoes,” did they say, “we shall beat the English”... and beat them they did.

In view of these testimonies freely given by men who fought under Washington's high command or who had known him personally, have we not the right to wonder whether some of our modern historians have not been too critical in their appreciations of the military talents of the man who was the first to organize and lead to victory an army of patriots?

On August 28, 1792, Washington was made a French citizen by the National Assembly, in recognition of his services to the cause of liberty. But even more remarkable was the tribute paid to his memory shortly after his death by a Frenchman whose military talents cannot be questioned.

Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul of the Republic, announced the death of the American general in an order of the day written in his inimitable and lapidary style:

Washington is dead. This great man fought against tyranny; he founded the liberty of his country. His memory will always be dear to the French people, as well as to all free men in the two worlds, and especially to the French soldiers who, like him and the American soldiers, are fighting for equality and liberty.

Therefore, the First Consul orders that, during ten days, black crape shall be suspended from all flags and guidons throughout the territory of the Republic.

This rare tribute paid by the young French general to the old American warrior was not considered as sufficient. On February 2, 1800, a eulogy of Washington was delivered in the Temple of Mars bedecked with the flags captured during the recent campaigns, in the presence of the veterans of the wars of Egypt and Italy. The orator of the day was Fontanes who praised the man:

Who never yielded to the impulses of ambition and who devoted himself to the needs of his country; a man, through a destiny wholly uncommon in those who change the faces of empires, died quietly, a private citizen, in his native land where he had occupied the highest post, after freeing it with his own hands.

It is difficult not to see in these few sentences both a premonition and a warning when we remember that they were addressed to the man who a few years later was to become Emperor of the French and who died an exile and a prisoner after changing the face of Europe. Perhaps it was the occasion that came back to the mind of Napoleon when, according to his memorialist, he exclaimed at St. Helena: "They wanted me to be another Washington! But France was not America!"

In George Washington, however, popular imagination saw much more than a military leader. A definite pattern had been set in the early days of the Revolution. As early as December 30, 1778, Alexandre Gerard, the first French Minister to the United States, wrote to Vergennes: “Since this General has come here I have seen him every day; he seems to deserve as much praise as a man and a citizen as for his military talents.”

A year later, Gerard's successor, de la Luzerne accompanied by his young secretary Barbe-Marbois, met Washington at Fishkill and the young man drew an unforgettable pen portrait of the American general, writing in conclusion:

If you like historical parallels, I might compare him to Timoleon who freed the Sicilians from the tyranny of the Carthaginians, and who joined to his military qualities those which make up an excellent citizen, being a man who after rendering his country signal services lived as a private citizen, coveting neither power nor honors being satisfied to enjoy modestly the glory of having given liberty to a powerful nation.

This again, at that date was an extraordinary anticipation, unless, which is very likely, Washington had indicated in the conversation that he intended to retire to private life after doing the work assigned to him by Congress. Nor was this admiration limited to France. When the German poet Klopstock was made a citizen of the French Republic in 1792, at the same time as George Washington, he wrote to the French Assembly that the main cause for his deep satisfaction was that the decree had made him share this honor with his “fellow citizen Washington” (“zum Mitburger Washington”).

The name of Washington was constantly mentioned in the debates of the Great Diet of Poland in 1791. In the insurrection of 1794, Kosciuszko attempted to organize a peasant militia according to the principles adopted by his former commander. It will also be remembered that Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz who had come to America with Kosciuszko and remained after him, visited his former chief at Mount Vernon, celebrated him in prose and in verse, and showed him weeping over the fate of Poland.

As early as December 1781, young Vittorio Afieri dedicated to Washington one of his odes on L'AMERICA LIBERA and in December 1788 inscribed his tragedy Bruto Primo to Al chiarissimo e libero uomo il Generale Washington.

As we progress in the nineteenth century, the comparison between Washington and Napoleon becomes inescapable. Apparently little was known of the part played by Washington in the writing and adoption of a federal constitution. The striking fact was that the victorious general who could have become a Cromwell or a Napoleon had resigned his commission and retired to private life. Writing in 1808, the Italian Botta could not elaborate much on this dangerous subject, but he managed to make his views clear by ending his History of the War of Independence with an impressive scene showing Washington resigning his command of the army, thus leaving to his country and the world an unprecedented example of modesty and moderation.

Much more dramatic was Byron's Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte written on April 10, 1814, after Napoleon's first abdication:

Where may the wearied repose
When gazing upon the Great;
Where neither guilty glory grows,
Nor despicable state?
                 * * *
Yes-one-the first-the last-the best-
The Cincinnatus of the West,
Whom envy dared not hate
Bequeathed the name of Washington,
To make man blush there was but one.

Almost ten years later, when France too willingly received from the Powers of the Holy Alliance the mission to put down a rebellion in Spain and to restore a Bourbon king, the poet turned again to the American precedent, in order to contrast the pigmies of the so called “Congress” of Verona with the giants of the Continental Congress:

But lo! a Congress! What, that hallow'd name
Which freed the Atlantic? May we hope the same
For outworn Europe? With the sound arise,
Like Samuel's shade to Saul's monarchic eyes,
The prophets of young Freedom, summon'd far
From climes of Washington and Bolivar;
Henry, the forest-born Demosthenes,
Whose thunder shook the Philip of the seas;
And stoic Franklin's energetic shade,
Robed in the lightnings which his hand allay'd;
And Washington, the tyrant-tamer, wake,
To bid us blush for these old chains, or break.

Washington and Bolivar, in the association of these two names the South Americans who were fighting to conquer their independence saw a hope and a promise. Henry Marie Brackenridge who visited South America as a member of a government mission in 1817 found everywhere translations of many of “our best revolutionary writings” among which were “the Declaration of Independence, several of our constitutions and General Washington's Farewell address.” They created what Brackenridge called “a most extravagant admiration of the United States, at the same time accompanied with something like despair,” for even the most enthusiastic patriots realized that their countries were not ready to receive their full measure of freedom.

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Only a few years later, Chateaubriand who had been received by Washington in 1792 revised the account of his visit, first published in 1797, and wrote in his Memoirs, what is perhaps the most eloquent tribute ever paid to the American hero. Contrasting as Byron had done the destinies of Washington and Napoleon, the conquerer and the republican leader, the French prose writer was no less unreserved in his praise than the great British poet:

The deeds of Washington are wrapped in silence; he was slow to act; it might be said that he felt himself entrusted with the liberty of the future and was afraid of placing it in jeopardy. This hero of unprecedented kind did not carry the burden of his own destiny, but the destiny of his country; he could not risk that which did not belong to him; but from that deep humility what a light was to burst forth! Search the forest through which flashed the sword of Washington: what will be found? Tombs ? No, a world. As a monument on the field of battle, Washington has erected the United States.

Then the fervent royalist who had refused to serve Napoleon and, despite his monarchical faith, had remained a liberal at heart, hailed in Washington the herald of a new era, and in his memory an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the lovers of liberty throughout the world:

The republic of Washington survives; the empire of Bonaparte has been destroyed. Washington and Bonaparte are the products of democracy; both were the sons of liberty; the first remained faithful to her; the second betrayed her.

Washington represented the needs, the ideas, the lights and the opinions of his time; he helped and never hindered the growth of man's understanding; he willed what it was his duty to will, the very thing for which he had received the call. Hence the coherence and perpetuity of his work. Such a man appeals little to the imagination because he was so well balanced and because he fused his life with the life of his country. His glory is the heritage of civilization; his fame rises as one of these public shrines from which flows a spring bountiful and inexhaustible.

No picture is complete without some shadows. When the French Republic and the United States became estranged, the French envoys, and particularly citizens Genet and Adet thought it their duty to attack Washington's reputation and to join in the opposition to the President. Their opinion of Washington was clearly dictated by a partisan spirit which was in no way encouraged by their government.

Less inspired by a partisan spirit although almost as narrow was the opinion of Matthew Arnold, who spoke of George Washington as if he were an Englishman who happened accidentally to be born in America. To understand Washington, Americans should consequently learn to think of him as a model of the English country squire, somewhat above the average of course, but a type very common and not in the least dazzling to the properly informed Englishman. I regret to say that at least one French historian took his cue from the English critic and tried to prove the same point in a lengthy biography published at the time of the bicentennial. The least that can be said about this attitude is that it denotes the pettiness and lack of comprehension of the writer and that it fails to account for the leadership of George Washington and the permanency of his work.

Although claiming him for England as Matthew Arnold did, Thackeray evidenced a far deeper understanding of the greatness of General Washington. In The Virginians, Washington appears only as an episodic character, first as young colonel Washington, a stag hunting gentleman farmer but already standing out among his neighbors and, although a “colonial,” as a man whose reserve and gentle manners contrast with the blustering Braddock. When Washington reappears again almost at the close of the story, it is an occasion for Thackeray to retell the episode of the general's life which much more than any of his battles had won the attention and admiration of the Europeans, for the English writer undertook to show how: “his battles over, his country freed, his great work of liberation complete, the general had laid down his victorious sword and met his comrades in the army in a last adieu.”

“ To endure is greater than to dare,” wrote Thackeray in conclusion, “to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigues spotless; and to forego even ambition when the end is gained-who can say this is not greatness, or show the other Englishman who has achieved so much?”

One might take exception to the listing of the first President of the United States as an “Englishman,” particularly under the pen of a writer whose purpose was to show the growing disaffection between the colonies and the mother land. What remains however is the unstinted praise of Washington's character.

But for historical and obvious reasons, the tributes paid to the great citizen soldier were probably more frequent and persistent in France than in any other European country. It was not solely because of the participation of France in the Revolutionary War, but rather because, from the very beginning to use the title of an article published by Fontanes on August 22, 1797, Washington was “proposed as an example to the leaders of another republic.” France, at that time, was yearning for a leader devoid of personal ambition, for a great ruler placing the interests of the country before his own fame, for a great statesman able to establish and make secure this rare combination of order and liberty without which democracies cannot survive.

During the First Empire and throughout the nineteenth century admiration for Washington remained a form of opposition to dictatorship and arbitrary power. To Guizot, the great French historian, Washington was “the most fortunate of all great men since he had lived to achieve the high objective he had aimed at, to make the people of the United States the arbiters of their own fortunes.”

Through the Second Empire again, Washington was represented as a model of the republican hero. Praising his virtues became an indirect and yet transparent method of expressing opposition to the regime, as may be seen in the books published and the lectures delivered in the College de France by Edouard de Laboulaye, the most active of Tocqueville's disciples.

Closer to us, Washington was given a short but very important part in the five-act drama Le Nouvean Monte written by Villiers de l'Isle Adams on the occasion of the centenary of the proclamation of the Independence of the United States. The jury which awarded the prize to Villiers included Victor Hugo, Emile Augier, Octave Feuillet, Ernest Legouve and Greenville Murray, director of the New York Herald office in Paris. In his introduction, the author expressed the regret that the subject had been limited to developments taking place before July 4, 1776, thus excluding the possibility of dealing with “crossing of the Delaware, the battle of Monmouth, White Plains and Yorktown.” He managed, however to end the play, with an apotheosis of Washington who appeared standing on a platform, surrounded by colonial troops and proclaiming in a strong and solemn voice “the Liberty of the New World.”

If we remember how uncertain and shaky was at that time the future of the newly accepted Third Republic, it will be easily seen that Villier's drama was in fact a political manifestation and a bold declaration of principles which must have antagonized the still numerous advocates of a royalist regime and comforted the republicans. So burning were the issues raised that the play was never performed and was only printed in 1880.

Two years later, however, in 1882, another Frenchman, Joseph Fabre, impelled by the same motives, wrote a biography of Washington entitled, Washington the Liberator of America. To make his aim clear from the very beginning and to make even plainer his repudiation of Cesarism, he inscribed his book, “To the memory of Lazare Hoche, the soldier who would have been our Washington if he had lived.”

Even more recently, in 1931, at a time when many French republicans were beginning to be seriously alarmed by the growing popularity of Mussolini which preceded the rise of Hitler and to foresee that the whole future of democracy was at stake, another French writer, Louis Ferrier wrote an eloquent play on Washington in order to revive the old patriotic fervor and in the name of the great American to preach the democratic gospel.

Thus from 1776 to our day, the chain is unbroken and the tradition is uninterrupted. Great as may have been the achievements of the soldier, the qualities of the statesman and his contribution to the adoption of the Constitution, in the eyes of the Europeans, even to this day, Washington remains the great citizen who set an example of republican virtue unparalleled in modern history. In that sense the great American hero belongs to the world.