Francois J. Chastellux (397)

François-Jean de Chastellux (1734–1788) was an army officer, writer, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1781. Born in France, Chastellux fought in the Seven Years War and became a colonel by the age of twenty-one. He worked as a writer and scholar as well: penning his famous essay On Public Happiness (1772), contributing to the Encyclopédie, and joining the French Academy (1775). After a meteoric career in both the French military and literary circuits, and having attained the rank of Major-General, he joined Rochambeau’s expeditionary force in the United States to aid in their War of Independence. Landing in Newport in 1780, Chastellux worked as a translator and liaison between Rochambeau and General George Washington, becoming a close friend to the latter. All the while, he recorded his travels in North America, which were published in 1786. After the war, he became as popular in America as he was in France: he received honorary degrees from the College of William and Mary and the College of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania), and both the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected him to their ranks. Sailing from Annapolis back to France in 1783, he became a marquis upon his brother’s death the following year, and a divisional inspector in Normandy in 1788 before dying suddenly of a fever.