Louis Lebègue Duportail (1743 – 1802) Louis Antoine Jean Le Bègue de Presle Duportail was a French military leader who served as a volunteer and the Chief Engineer of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Duportail was born in Pithiviers, France, on May 14, 1743. Duportail was a lieutenant colonel in the French Royal Corps of Engineers who was secretly sent to America in March 1777, to serve in Washington's Continental Army under an agreement between Benjamin Franklin and the government of King Louis XVI of France. He was appointed colonel and chief engineer of the Continental Army in July of 1777, and rose to the rank of major general by November of 1781. Duportail helped Washington evolve the primarily defensive military strategy that wore down the British Army, and participated in fortifications planning from Boston to Charleston, South Carolina, where he was captured following the surrender of the city in May 1780. Subsequently exchanged, he also directed the construction of siege works at the Battle of Yorktown, site of the decisive Franco-American victory of the Revolutionary War. Following his return to France post-American Revolutionary War, he eventually became France’s minister of war during the French Revolution and promoted military reforms. He later returned to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where he remained until his death in 1802. “Essayons” (let us try), the motto of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is a nod to the French engineers who aided the American Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, and specifically Duportail, who was the first Chief of Engineers. Lafayette once called him “one of the best and most honest officers upon this continent.”