The Comte de Rochambeau commanded French allied ground forces with George Washington at Yorktown, a campaign recalled during America250.
Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, led the French expeditionary army sent to support the American Revolutionary cause. His troops joined Washington’s Continental Army in the decisive 1781 campaign against the British position at Yorktown.
Rochambeau’s forces marched south from Newport, Rhode Island, while Washington’s army moved from the Hudson Valley. Their coordinated movement helped trap Cornwallis in Virginia. French naval forces under the Comte de Grasse also played a vital role by preventing British relief at sea.
Rochambeau is often confused with Lafayette, a French volunteer who served as a major general in the Continental Army, or with de Grasse, the French admiral at the Battle of the Chesapeake. Rochambeau was the senior commander of the French land forces in the Yorktown operation.