Born to an Anglican family in Ireland, Edward Hand trained in medicine and served in the British army in Pennsylvania between 1767 and 1774. In 1775, he joined the Continental Army in the rank of lieutenant colonel. Promoted to brigadier general, he fought the British and their Indian allies at Fort Pitt. He was appointed adjutant general in 1781, working with George Washington at Mount Vernon and Williamsburg planning for the Battle of Yorktown where the British army surrendered. He resigned from the army in 1783 with the rank of major general and returned to medical practice and civic life in Lancaster, where he died in 1802.
Comte de Rochambeau (1725-1807)
A nobleman and general in the French forces dispatched to North America to aid the Continental Army, Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, the Comte de Rochambeau, and his troops played a decisive role in the final stages of the Revolution. Rochambeau joined with George Washington in 1781 to fight against and defeat British forces at Yorktown. The French navy’s defeat of the British fleet off Virginia Capes was crucial to this victory. Rochambeau returned to France after the war, served as governor of Picardy and later commander the Army of the North. He survived the French revolutionary terror and died in 1807 in Thore, Western France.
Marquis de …show more content…
Exiled in Paris in 1776, he met Benjamin Franklin who recommended him to George Washington. Arriving in Philadelphia the following year, he eventually took command of Washington’s cavalry detachment, charging British lines at Warrants Tavern and Germantown. He commanded the Pulaski Legion, America’s first trained cavalry corps, in the rank of brigadier general. He was mortally wounded in 1779 at the Battle of