George Washington gets the monuments, but the victory at Yorktown would not have been possible without Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, the Comte de Rochambeau. This episode traces the life of the overlooked French commander, from a younger son destined for the church to a battle-hardened veteran of the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War.

We explore how Rochambeau led 7,000 French troops to Newport, Rhode Island in 1780, waited out a British blockade for a year despite Washington’s impatience, then joined the combined march south that trapped Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. The story continues back in France, where he was named Marshal of France, imprisoned during the Reign of Terror, and spared from the guillotine by the fall of Robespierre before being honored by Napoleon.

• How the death of his older brother pulled Rochambeau from a Jesuit education into a cavalry regiment
• Why he refused to march inland without naval support during the year-long blockade at Newport
• The Washington-Rochambeau march to Virginia and the coordinated siege that forced Cornwallis to surrender
• His imprisonment in the Conciergerie and narrow escape through the Thermidorian Reaction
• His legacy, from the Lafayette Square statue to the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route and the question of charisma versus competence