Rochambeau, Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, count de

Rochambeau, Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, count de

(born July 1, 1725, Vendôme, France—died May 10, 1807, Thoré) French army officer. He served in the War of the Austrian Succession and became a brigadier general in 1761. He was put in command of a French army of 6,000 sent to join the Continental Army in the American Revolution (1780). After waiting in vain for French naval support, he joined forces with George Washington at White Plains, N.Y., in 1781. They marched to Yorktown, where they besieged British troops and forced their surrender. He returned to France (1783), where he commanded the Army of the North in the French Revolution and was made a marshal of France.