Estaing
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
CHARLES HEC- TOR, COMTE D', a French army and navy officer; born in 1729. He entered the French army as colonel of infantry; was promoted Brigadier-General in 1757; accompanied the expedition of Comte de Lally to the East Indies, and was captured at the siege of Madras, 1759. He was released on parole, and without awaiting exchange took command of several men-of-war, and greatly harassed the English in various parts of the East. On his return to France in 1760, he accidentally fell into the hands of the English, and was imprisoned in Portsmouth. In 1763 he was appointed Lieutenant-General, and in 1777 vice-admiral in the French navy. In 1778, in accordance with the treaty between France and the United States, France fitted out a fleet of 12 ships of the line and 4 frigates to aid the latter in the struggle against Great Britain, and Estaing was placed in command. He sailed April 13, reached Delaware Bay in July, and then proceeded to New York, expecting to encounter the British fleet on the way. He captured some prizes off the coast of New Jersey, agreed to assist in a land and sea attack on Newport to expel the British from Rhode Island, but was unable to carry out his plans. s. Subsequently he captured St. Vincent and Grenada, West Indies, and in 1779 co-operated ineffectual with General Lincoln in an attempt to capture Savannah, Ga. He returned to France in 1780; commanded the allied fleets of France and Spain in 1783; was elected to the assembly of nobles in 1787; appointed to the command of the national guard in 1789; chosen admiral of the navy in 1792; testified in favor of Marie Antoinette at her trial as a royalin 1793; and was condemned ist and guillotined in 1794.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The facts Collier's set down in 1921 have stood: d'Estaing, born 1729, commanded the first French fleet sent to America in 1778, failed at Newport, took St Vincent and Grenada, failed again with Lincoln at Savannah in 1779, spoke for Marie Antoinette at her trial and went to the guillotine in April 1794. What has shifted is the judgement. Where nineteenth-century writers treated Newport and Savannah as simple bungling, historians now stress that the 1778 alliance was untested and that d'Estaing's arrival forced Britain to disperse its navy, setting up de Grasse's decisive blockade at Yorktown in 1781; the Savannah battlefield, where Casimir Pulaski was mortally wounded, has since been partly excavated and commemorated. The name also reappeared in modern French politics: the family of President Valery Giscard d'Estaing (in office 1974-81) took the suffix in the twentieth century on a claim of kinship with the admiral's line.
Written for this edition, 2026.