Adopted Son Page 15
Washington spent the winter learning from the Roman general Fabius, of the third century BC. The Carthaginian Hannibal had invaded Italy and in three brutal battles wiped out 150,000 Roman soldiers. Fabius, who assumed command of the defense, knew that he could not challenge Hannibal directly without taking another bloody beating, and made Hannibal chase him all over southern Italy. Sneering Romans called him Fabius Cunctator (Fabius the Delayer). After thirteen years, Hannibal gave up and left the country. Fabius became Fabius Maximus (Fabius the Greatest).
Fabian tactics were never popular among armchair generals. When Washington declined to rush to upstate New York to meet Burgoyne, he heard carping from members of Congress. Hamilton explained that protecting any given place was less important than “preserving a good army” to “waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal.” In the long run, that would pay off. “Every new post they take, requires a new division of their forces, and enables us to strike with our united force against a part of theirs.” The British could not suffer another Trenton without losing the war.1
After Brandywine Washington retreated, and on September 26, 1777, the British marched into Philadelphia. Lafayette and the other wounded were shipped off to Bethlehem, in northeastern Pennsylvania. Congress decamped for Lancaster, then York, and criticisms of Washington increased.
The general still hoped to defeat the enemy in a stand-up battle, and gave in to temptation when Howe put 9,000 men in an unfortified position at Germantown, seven miles northeast of Philadelphia. Four columns, two militia and two Continentals, were supposed to converge after a night march that began the evening of October 3. Everything went wrong. The militia failed to show up. Sullivan’s unsupported division drove the British outposts back in confusion, but Greene’s division had gotten lost, arriving late. Part of Sullivan’s force had diverted to flush several redcoat companies out of a stone house and failed. Adam Stephen, who was drunk, attacked Anthony Wayne’s brigade. British reinforcements arrived, and a thick fog swallowed everything. Washington lost a thousand men that day, twice the enemy’s casualties. It looked like a disaster. Yet Washington realized that his army had made victory costly for the enemy.2
The following spring the commander in chief asked his generals what strategy to adopt in the fourth year of the war, and his chief engineer, Duportail, offered him a history lesson. Washington, he advised, should model himself on Fabius. What he said about that ancient conflict was familiar. “Fabius however commanded Romans,” he explained, “but these Romans had been thrice defeated; they were disheartened, dreaded the enemy, and were nearly reduced to the condition of new and unformed troops.” Fabius avoided general battles, despite bitter criticism in the capital. He knew that “the event would determine his reputation in the world,” so he stuck to his plan, “and by his firmness which was crowned with success, he merited the appellation of Savior of Rome.” His ego tickled, Washington became the American Fabius.3
ADVISE ME, DEAR GENERAL, FOR WHAT I AM TO DO
The night after Brandywine Washington sent a quick report to the president of Congress, commending Lafayette, whose actions probably saved Sullivan’s division. The boy general had become popular among the other officers, and a hero to the troops. The commander in chief ended optimistically. “Notwithstanding the misfortune of the day,” he said, “I am happy to find the troops in good spirits, and I hope another time we shall compensate for the losses now sustained.”4
Lafayette had turned twenty years old five days before the battle. His behavior reminded Washington of himself when he was twenty-three. At the Monongahela he also had acted on his own in a hail of lead. Both battles had been defeats, but youthful energy and quick thinking kept the losses from being worse than they were.
The marquis awoke in Philadelphia on September 12, discouraged, in shock and pain, but he had heard from Adrienne at last. “I shall begin,” he told her, “by telling you that I am well, because I must end by telling you that we fought in earnest yesterday, and we were not the victors. Our Americans, after holding firm for a considerable time, were finally routed. While I was trying to rally them, the English honored me with a musket shot, which wounded me slightly in the leg.” The wound, he said, was “nothing,” and all he had to do for it to heal was to lie on his back for a while, which put him “in very bad humor.” He knew that whatever he wrote to her would be passed on to others, but he ended on a gloomy note. “This battle will, I fear, have unpleasant consequences for America; we must try to repair the damage, if we can.”5
Lafayette did not know that his own reputation was taking a beating in France. Gossip connecting him with Mme. d’Hunolstein swirled through Paris and Versailles, his financial affairs were a mess, and newspapers repeated stories in the British press that he had been killed months earlier. Adrienne’s mother had taken her to the country to keep the bad news from her. His letter would not reach her for two months.6
The marquis was soon moved to the hospital at “Bethlehem, a Moravian settlement, where the mild religion of that brotherly people and the community of goods, education, and interests among that large and simple family made a striking contrast to the scenes of carnage and the convulsions of civil war,” as he put it afterward. Continuing in the third person, he said, “The good Moravian brothers loved him, and lamented his warlike folly; while listening to their sermons he dreamed of setting both Europe and Asia ablaze.” He took the time to improve his English, and to read. He had never before read the philosophes, the Enlightenment French philosophers whose radical political ideas were on the march in America, and John Laurens’ father, Henry, had supplied him with their books. Bedridden and hurting, the boy also spent time feeling sorry for himself, and became a letter-writing addict.7
Henry Laurens in the Tower of London, 1781. John Laurens’ father became a lifelong friend to Lafayette, and another of his “uncles.” (U.S. SENATE COLLECTION)
Henry Laurens had escorted Lafayette to Bethlehem. He saw the political value of friendship with the father who had endowed John with his slender build, good looks, and thoughtful mind. On September 25, 1777, the marquis told him, “My leg is about in the same state and without your kindness would be in a very bad one.” His English was improving, but it was loaded with literal translations of French idioms. “Troublesome it will be to you,” he said, “for ever to have been so kind with me, because it seems me now that I became in right by my first obligations, of disturbing you for my businesses.” Two days later he congratulated Laurens, “and myself with you for the good niews which we heared about the colonel’s of the queen’s light dragoons rgt army. His royal Master will not be very much satisfied with the conduct of that noble instrument of his justice, and I hope that we schall make too a proclamation one day or another before the walls of Quebec.”8
Nearly all his letters to congressmen over the following years urged the commissioning or promotion of French soldiers in the army. Laurens answered indulgently but without promising anything. This letter also contained Lafayette’s first mention of his hope for an American and French conquest of Canada. Then there was his reference to the colonel of the Queen’s Light Dragoons, none other than Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne.
The long picnic Burgoyne, his officers, and their women had enjoyed ended dramatically on September 19, 1777, at Freeman’s Farm on the upper North (now Hudson) River. Killings of civilians by his Indian allies had brought out hordes of militia, and Washington had sent Daniel Morgan’s riflemen to lend Gates a hand. The frontier rifles and the aggressive tactics of Benedict Arnold finished the enemy off. There was another fight at Bemis Heights and then a ghastly siege. British and Hessian soldiers fell one after another amid the rotting corpses of their fellows. Burgoyne gave up on October 17. As buzzards circled overhead, an entire British army became prisoners of Horatio Gates, near the village of Saratoga.9
News of Freeman’s Farm was a tonic to Lafayette. Again he told Adrienne about his “very slight wound in the leg,” sounding very chipper about it. He di
d not know how he received it, he said; “in truth, I did not expose myself to enemy fire,” a white lie. “It was my first battle, so you see how rare battles are.” As for the wound itself, “[t]he surgeons are astonished by the rate at which it heals; they are in ecstasy every time they dress it, and maintain that it is the most beautiful thing in the world. I myself find it very foul, very tedious, and rather painful; there is no accounting for tastes.” Maturity and humor were surfacing in the young general. “But, finally, if a man wished to be wounded just for his own amusement, he should come and see my wound and have one just like it.”
This provided an excuse to brag about being close to Washington: “All the physicians in America” were looking after Lafayette, because his friend had told them to. That friend was Washington. “This estimable man,” he continued, “whom I at first admired for his talents and qualities and whom I have come to venerate as I know him better, has become my intimate friend. His affectionate interest in me soon won my heart.” The two of them lived together “like two brothers in mutual intimacy and confidence,” and their close friendship made him as happy as he “could possibly be in this country. When he sent his chief surgeon to care for me, he told him to care for me as though I were his son, for he loved me in the same way.”10
The wound was slow to heal, and Lafayette was eager to talk to Washington. A letter would have to do, but it would be difficult to write, and he put it off until October 14. “My dear general,” he began, “I do not do myself the honor of wraïting to you as many times as I would chuse, because I fear to disturbe your important occupations.” He beat around the bush for a while, until he got to what was really on his mind. “Give me leave, dear general,” he begged, “to speack to you about my own business with all the confidence of a son, of a friend, as you favoured me with those two so precious titles. My respect, my affection for you, answer to my own heart that I deserve them on that side as well as possible.” Since their “last great conversation,” the marquis had not asked again about taking command of a division. Washington had been too busy, and so had Congress, so he had contented himself with fighting. “Now that the horable. Congress is settled quiete,” he went on, “and making promotions, that some changements are ready to happen in the divisions, and that I endeavoured myself the 11 september to be acquainted with a part of the army and known by them, advise me, dear general, for what I am to do.”
Instead of petitioning Congress for a command, “dear general I’l conduct myself by your advices.” He asked Washington to consider that Europe and particularly France were watching him. He wanted “to do some thing by myself, and justify that love of glory which I left be known to the world in making those sacrifices which have appeared so surprising, some say so foolish. Do not you think that this want is right?” It might have been best that he had not received a division earlier because he did not know the army, but that had changed on September 11, at Brandywine. In any case, he would do whatever Washington “will think proper.”
“You know I hope, with what pleasure and satisfaction I live in your family,” Lafayette continued. “Be certain that I schall be very happy if you judge that I can stay in America without any particular employement.” But if he stayed without a chance to distinguish himself, he would earn jeers from his friends and family—his reputation worried him more than anything else. “I do not tell all that to my general, but to my father and friend,” he said. “I schall conduct myself entirely by your advices, and if you say that some thing is proper I’l do it directly—I desire only to know your opinion.”
There was more in that line until he wound it up. He hoped to be in camp in three or four days, he said, where he would “speack to your excellency about all my busineses. I beg your pardon for being so tedious—it is for you a disagreable and troublesome proof of my confidence—but that confidence is equal to the affection and respect which I have the honor to be with your excellency’s the most obedient servant The Mquis. de Lafayette.”11
The marquis’ nervousness showed in his writing. His English had improved, and letters he wrote to others around the same time compared well with those of native speakers. But he was putting his adoptive father on the spot at the same time as he begged his approval. Washington had told him he would never get a line command and should stop asking for it, so it is not surprising that his hand and his language were both shaky. He fretted for four days. Fearing that he may have offended Washington, he wanted to see him in person. On October 18, although his wound was still open, he told Laurens that he had decided to go home to the army. He recommended promotion of a French friend to brigadier, “the rank to be in my family when I’l get a division of the army.”12
Lafayette rode to Washington’s camp northeast of Philadelphia. Because of his wound, he would not be able to pull on a boot for several weeks, but he was as game as ever. He was also popular. His fans included those who liked him, such as Greene (who called him “one of the sweetest-tempered young gentlemen”) and even those who did not. Not only was he adorable, but he had bled for the American cause. Several people pointed that out to Washington.13
Among them was Sullivan, who asked for the young Frenchman’s help. Thirty-six years old, he was a rawhide frontier lawyer and politician from New Hampshire. A burly, energetic man, his graceful manners hid a prickly ego, and he owned the proverbial Irish temper to go with his parentage. He said things in the heat of the moment that he later regretted and apologized for. He was a scrapper but not a natural general. Having grown up on a frontier ravaged by Indian raids, he had no love for either Indians or their former sponsors, the French, excepting Lafayette. He came into his own later in the war when he led campaigns against Indians.14
There were attempts to scapegoat him for losses in New York and at Brandywine. Congress had ordered a court of inquiry, the general solicited testimonials, and Lafayette offered his support. Although he thought Sullivan’s character was beyond question, it was “with the greatest pleasure” that the marquis declared “how sensible” he had been “of his bravery at the affair of Brandiwine the 11 7bre [September]. I can assure him that such courage as he shewed that day will alwaïs deserve the praises of every one.” Sullivan was cleared by the court.15
Daniel Morgan, by C.W. Peale, 1794. The “Old Wagoner” fascinated Lafayette as an American sauvage, and Morgan’s rifle tactics were important to the light-troop strategies that the marquis carried back to Europe. (INDEPENDENCE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK)
Another new friend was Colonel Daniel Morgan. Lafayette had been fascinated with the idea of American savages before he left France. Here was a sauvage in the flesh, and the two of them became lifelong friends. At forty-one, Morgan was as tough as any officer. Over six feet tall, over 200 pounds in bulk, he was known as the “Old Wagoner” because of his experience as a teamster during the French and Indian War. In that conflict he survived 500 lashes for punching a British officer, and the loss of all the teeth on one side when an Indian musket ball hit him in the face. Since then he had become a prosperous frontier farmer. He had raised the first of the Virginia rifle companies to reach Boston, was a hero at Quebec, a prisoner of the British for a year, and a hero again at Saratoga. He was a born soldier, and Lafayette held him in awe.16
As the marquis continued to pester Washington for a line command, in late October he decided to cover his bases. If he could not lead American troops, maybe he could command French forces. Hoping to rehabilitate his standing in his own country, he sent de Broglie’s secretary an ambitious plan for a campaign against the British West Indies, along with suggested actions in Asia and Canada. He explained why he had rank but no command in the American service, and so would be available to lead other campaigns. “The opportunities for doing something outstanding…are rare for a foreigner,” he said. “This situation always causes jealousy or stifles the good that one can do in any country in the world; at least, that is what the French who are employed here are saying, and they are shrieking like devils,” complai
ning about the conduct of the war. “As for the rest, among all the accusations and injustices, I hope that we always except General Washington, my friend, my intimate friend, and since I like to choose my friends, I dare say that to give him that title is to praise him.”17
Lafayette sent an even more elaborate proposal to the French prime minister, the comte de Maurepas. He wanted to lead an expedition, to be authorized by Congress under Maurepas’ influence. He proposed going to the West Indies to recruit pirates, with whom he would raid English shipping in the China and India trades. He repeatedly mentioned his youth and inexperience, as if this juvenile scheme needed any such explanation. He showed a boyish fascination with secret messages. Assuming his offer was accepted, “[i]n such a case, an order from the king, deigning to recall me for a while to my family and friends without forbidding me to return, would signal me to arm myself with American Continental commissions.”
Lafayette wanted to be an American hero, and also a French one who urged his native country to enter the war against the Anglais. “Without giving myself the airs of a prophet in current affairs,” he told the prime minister that “to inflict harm on England is to serve (do I dare say revenge?)” France. His proposal would do both, he suggested. As for his own situation, he had come to America without permission; he served “without any approbation” from the French government “but that of silence”; and he could allow himself “another little voyage without authorization.” However his proposal worked out, “the flames of the smallest English settlement” would satisfy his heart.18
This was the voice of the vainglorious boy who had led his little army of peasant youths in campaigns around Chavaniac. If Washington had known about the letter, he might have hesitated to do what he did next. He was overwhelmed with problems, not knowing what Howe would do, his supply system collapsing. Moreover, he had set the legal wheels turning to cashier the drunkard Stephen and was drawing up lists of other officers who should be sacked. He needed division commanders with energy and ability. Greene had been urging him to give Lafayette a chance. He hesitated, because he feared that his affection for the marquis clouded his judgment. Lafayette’s letter from Bethlehem prodded him, however.