The Newport Historical Society is pleased to host Norman Desmarais for a free virtual lecture, Reevaluating Our French Allies, on Thursday December 2, 2021 at 5:30pm, on Zoom. Advance registration required: email esulock@newporthistory.org.

In this program, Desmarais will discuss recent discoveries about the Count de Rochambeau’s army that counter popular assumptions about the French participation in America’s War for Independence. This talk, based on research from his new book, The Road to Yorktown: The French Campaigns in the American Revolution, 180-1783, will focus primarily on the recently published diary of the Count de Lauberdiere which includes details that are not covered in any other French diaries. It will also elucidate aspects of the French occupation of Newport mentioned in the diary.

Norman Desmarais, professor emeritus at Providence College, is a member of Le Regiment Bourbonnais, the 2nd Rhode Island Regiment and the Brigade of the American Revolution. He is editor-in-chief of The Brigade Dispatch, the journal the Brigade of the American Revolution and the author of The Guide to the American Revolutionary War (6-volumes covering about 4500 actions), and The Guide to the American Revolutionary War at Sea and Overseas (7 volumes) which covers more than 10,500 engagements. He has also translated the Gazette Françoise and the diary of Count of Lauberdière published as The Road to Yorktown. Norman has also authored America’s First Ally: France in the Revolutionary War and Washington’s Engineer: Louis Duportail and the Creation of an Army Corps.