By Joe Stewart

On August 9 at 1 p.m. at the King Philip Regional High School (KPRHS), the Wrentham Historical Commission will have a ceremony unveiling a monument to commemorate the French Army camping in Wrentham following its decisive victory over the British Army at Yorktown, Pennsylvania. The October 1781 battle was the culminating battle of our Revolutionary War.  The public is invited, and parking is available at the KPRHS.

Town Historian Greg Stahl, a lifelong resident of Wrentham and longtime member of the Historical Commission, worked with the Commission for years to secure funding for the monument and recognition of Wrentham’s place on the Washington-Rochambeau National Historic Trail. The trail encompasses over 680 miles of land and water trails through Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

According to the National Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route Association (W3R, https://w3r-us.org/), following the British defeat at Yorktown in October 1781, the French army under General Jean-Baptiste de Rochambeau did not immediately return to France. For the remainder of 1781 and much of 1782, the French army remained in the United States largely to serve as a deterrent - their continued presence in Virginia discouraged further British raids and maintained pressure on the remaining British-occupied cities such as New York, Charleston, and Savannah.  

By the spring of 1782, peace negotiations were underway in Paris and by July, Rochambeau began the march from Virginia to Boston, the deep-water port from which his army had deployed.  

On December 1, the French army left their encampment in North Providence and marched 16 miles to its next camp in Wrentham. Four French infantry regiments, the Bourbonnois, Soissonnois, Saintonge and Royal Deux-Ponts Regiments, and an artillery regiment, the Auxonne, camped on a site at the KPRHS, then known as Cobb’s Field.

On December 2, the French army left Wrentham and marched to Dedham where they camped until December 4 before marching onward to Boston.  By December 7 all but the officers were aboard French ships and on December 23 the ships left Boston, bound for the Caribbean in preparation for an attack on British-held Jamaica. The attack never took place as peace negotiations were successful and Rochambeau’s army returned to France by June 1784.

For more information about the Washington-Rochambeau National Historic Trail, visit nps.gov and search for Washington-Rochambeau.