From the vineyards of France to the battlefield of Yorktown, one young French artilleryman unknowingly shaped an American family for generations to come.
Vineyards to Victory tells the true story of Siméon Gaugien, a farmer's son from rural Haute-Saône who joined Rochambeau's expeditionary force and sailed to America in 1780 to fight for a nation not his own. Trained as a French artilleryman, he endured a seventy-day Atlantic crossing, a winter encampment in Newport, and the decisive Siege of Yorktown, where French cannon helped force Lord Cornwallis's surrender and secure American independence.
But victory was only the beginning.
Siméon returned to a France poisoned by volcanic winter, upended by revolution, and scarred by war. Through upheaval and grief, he and his family endured, measuring time not by decree but by soil and season. Generations later, his descendants crossed the Atlantic again, this time as immigrants, founding a French settlement in northern New York that carried the name of the village they left behind.
Lafayette's story has been told. This is the story of the men beside him.
Grounded in four years of archival research across French and American archives, this meticulously documented narrative gives voice to the 30,000 French soldiers and sailors whose sacrifice helped make American independence possible. Every soldier named in these pages is a documented historical individual. Every major event is drawn from primary sources.
It is the story of deep roots, cultivated in the vineyards of France, that weathered the storms of revolution and found new life in America.
Published in commemoration of America's 250th Anniversary of Independence.
