Michel Capitaine du Chesnoy, the marquis de Lafayette's cartographer

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 1998 by Paul E. Cohen

I would like to thank Douglas W. Marshall, the co-author (with Howard H. Peckham) of Campaigns of the American Revolution for his careful editing of this article, and Brian Quintenz for his many valuable suggestions.

1 Peter J. Guthorn located six examples of three distinct Capitaine manuscript maps in American libraries. These are three of his maps of Barren Hill, two of Virginia, and one of the retreat from Rhode Island. Two of these are at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and there is one each at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, the Colonial williamsburg Foundation in williamsburg, Virginia, and at the Preservation Society of Newport County, in Newport, Rhode Island. See Peter J. Guthorn, American Maps and Map Makers of the Revolution (Philip Freneau, Monmouth Beach, New Jersey, 1966).

2 It has been suggested that the newly discovered maps are Lafayette's own. This is doubtful since Lafayette's map of the Battle of Yorktown is known to have been drafted on blue watered paper (see n. 27). The Yorktown map in the private collection is on uncolored paper backed with linen.

3 Quoted Olivier Bernier, Lafayette: of Two Worlds (Dutton, New York, 1983), p. 47.

4 Lafayette Joins the American Army (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1937), pp. 38-39.

5 Dictionary of American Biography, ed. Dumas Malone (Scribner's, New York, 1946), s. v. "Lafayette."

6 Cited in Dictionary of American History, ed. James Truslow Adams (Scribner's, New York, 1942), vol. 5, p. 268.

7 Quoted in Herbert Baxter Adams, The Life and Writings of Jared Sparks (Boston, 1893), vol. 2, p. 117.

8 Quoted ibid.

9 American Maps and Map Makers oft he Revolution, pp. 9-12.

10 Quoted in Bernier, Lafayette, pp. 55-56.

11 Quoted ibid.

12 Quoted ibid.

13 Quoted ibid.

14 Quoted ibid.

15 Quoted in Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution, ed. Stanley J. Idzerda (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1979), vol. 2, p. 34.

16 Vol. 5, p. 33.

17 Quoted in Bernier, Lafayette, p. 73.

18 A map from the British side was executed by Lieutenant John Hills. It is in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

19 Kenneth Nebenzahl, Atlas of the American Revolution (Rand McNally, Chicago, 1974), p. 127, suspected that the published map was based on Capitaine's, but he was unable to establish this with certainty for the Capitaine map had not surfaced.

20 Quoted in Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution, vol. 2, pp. 283-284.

21 Quoted ibid, vol. 2, pp. 112-113.

22 Ibid., vol. 3, p. xxi.

23 Quoted ibid., vol. 4, p. 10.

24 The only example of Capitaine's Annapolis map was at the Service Historique de l'Armee de Terre, Vincennes, recently enough to have been photographed, but it is now missing.

25 Quoted in Bernier, Lafayette, p. 131.

26 Quoted in Adams, Jared Sparks, vol. 2, p. 117.

27 Andre Girodie, Exposition du centenaire de la Fayette (Paris, 1934), pp. 67-68.

28 Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution, vol. 4, p. xxiii.