Revolution 250 Podcast

Major General Chastellux & Revolutionary America with Iris De Rode

March 10, 2023 Iris De Rode Season 4 Episode 10
Revolution 250 Podcast
Major General Chastellux & Revolutionary America with Iris De Rode
Show Notes

Though he didn't arrive in America until 1780, Major General Francois-Jean de Chastellux had a profound impact on the war's outcome and on the French-American relationship.  He also enjoyed a close personal friendship with George Washington, and as a French philosophe  was elected a member of both the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Iris De Rode has discovered the Chastellux family archives (dating back to the 1300s) near her childhood home in France, and using this trove of documents has written a biography of the Marquis de Chastellux,   and is currently writing Military Enlightenment on the Ground (UVA Press, 2024) about France's intellectual generals in the age of enlightenment.