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BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
Names of French nobles present particular difficulties for American researchers. First, they tend to have multiple surnames and titles, making it difficult to select an access point. Consider, for example, the famous Marie Jean Paul Joseph du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, or Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, and our protagonist, Louis Le Bègue (Lebèque or Lebègue) de Presle Duportail. Second, while the American and French Revolutions fought to overthrow the nobility, France was more radical, ignoring all titles. So, in our example, one would search by name [du Motier, de Vimeur or Le Bègue (Lebèque or Lebègue)], sometimes with the article, sometimes without, in France but by title in America [Lafayette, Rochambeau, or Duportail]. Notice also that American practice includes the article as part of the name [Lafayette instead of la Fayette and Duportail instead of du Portail). In some cases, the individuals adopted American practices.
France has relatively few documents about Duportail, to her embarrassment. The Directory sequestered many of Duportail’s writings during the French Revolution. The existing documents are widely dispersed. They may be found in the diplomatic archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (archives diplomatiques du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères), the archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the French national archives, the municipal archives of Le Havre, the registre de catholicité du Diocese d’Orléans, and the archives départementales du Loiret.
Some of the cited memorials, letters, cards, drawings, and maps cannot be found. Some were seized by the British. Others were tossed in the ocean to prevent their capture by the British. Many of the surviving documents are located in the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Association of Military Engineers, the headquarters of the Army Corps of Engineers in Washington, the National Historic Park of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Valley Forge, Cornell University, Yale University, the US Military Academy at West Point, and the New York Historical Society.
Some biographical dictionaries include a biography of Duportail, such as the following:
Bodinier, Gilbert. Dictionnaire Des Officiers Généraux De L’armée Royale, 1763–1792. Paris: Archives & Culture, 2009.
Herringshaw, Thomas William. Herringshaw’s National Library of American Biography: Contains Thirty-Five Thousand Biographies of the Acknowledged Leaders of Life and Thought of the United States; Illustrated with Three Thousand Vignette Portraits. Chicago: American Publishers’ Association, 1909.
Lasseray, André. Les Français Sous Les Treize Étoiles, 1775–1783. Macon, France: Imprimerie Protat frères; se trouve à Paris chez D. Janvier, 1935.
Also see subject encyclopedias, like Harold E. Selesky, ed., Encyclopedia of the American Revolution: Library of Military History, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2006), initially compiled by Mark Mayo Boatner. These sources usually draw on the only monographic biography of Duportail.
Elizabeth S. Kite, of the Institut Français de Washington (DC) authored Brigadier-General Louis Lebègue Duportail, Commandant of Engineers in the Continental Army, 1777–1783 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1933). It is the seminal work quoted by biographical dictionaries and encyclopedia articles, but it has long since been out of print. The first four chapters of the book were also published about the same time in the Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 43, nos. 1–4, as “General Washington and the French Engineers Duportail and Companions.” Elizabeth S. Kite’s and Peter S. Duponceau’s “General Duportail at Valley Forge” was initially published in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 56, no. 4 (1932): 341–54. It became chapter 12, “Duportail, American Citizen and Farmer,” of Kite’s book.
Serge Le Pottier, a French engineer assigned to the US Army Corps of Engineers and the US Military Academy at West Point as liaison officer, was astounded to learn that the corps was founded by a Frenchman. He discovered the important role of the French engineers and Duportail’s crucial contributions to American independence. Le Pottier translated most of Kite’s work into French, with a view to make this man known in France [Serge Le Pottier, Duportail, Ou, Le Génie De Washington (Paris: Economica, 2011)].
Most of these books do not identify the sources of the documents they reproduce. When they do, the citations are often incomplete, citing the work but not the volume and page number. Paul K. Walker, Engineers of Independence: A Documentary History of the Army Engineers in the American Revolution, 1775–1783 (Washington, DC: Historical Division, Office of Administrative Services, Office of the Chief of Engineers, 1981), reprints a collection of documents by engineers and general officers during the American Revolution. They are arranged chronologically to chronicle the origins and development of the Army Corps of Engineers. Each document ends with a brief citation of source, such as “Washington Papers, roll 26 (microfilm),” or “Kite, Duportail, pp. 201–2.” This book is not a biography of any of the engineers, but it does contain several of Duportail’s memorials and letters.
Scholars researching Duportail undoubtedly encounter the name of Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvray (or Couvrai; 1760–1797). Born in Paris, the son of a stationer, he became a bookseller’s clerk
