Adopted Son Page 21

  The problem was solved quickly when Captain Benjamin Walker volunteered to translate on the drill field. Steuben’s gift for profanity remained. Walker recalled something that happened often: “When he had exhausted his artillery of foreign oaths, he called to his aides, ‘My dear Walker and my dear Duponceau, come and swear for me in English. These fellows won’t do what I bid them.’ A good-natured smile then went through the ranks and at last the maneuver or the movement was properly performed.”64

  The training extended across the army. Steuben galloped all over the camp, flying off in “whirlwinds of passion” whenever he did not like what he saw. His eruptions could be shocking at first. “You halloed and swore and looked so dreadfully at me once,” a captain told Steuben, “when my platoon was out of place, that I almost melted into water.” The Prussian blushed and said, “Oh fie, donc, fie, Capitaine!”65

  Civilians gathered to watch the spectacle. Germans were always objects of curiosity to Americans, and Steuben was especially so throughout the war. He recalled that so many people came to see him that he felt like “a rhinoceros on display.”66

  Supervising drill was just part of what Steuben accomplished. More important were the regulations that provided the basis for drill and everything else. His were a masterpiece of improvisation. With no printing presses at Valley Forge, Steuben and any available Francophone officers—Duponceau, Laurens, Hamilton, Lafayette, Greene, Walker, and others—drafted the instructions a chapter at a time. Brigade inspectors wrote out copies, which were entered into orderly books of brigades and regiments. From the orderly books copies were made for each company, from which each officer and drillmaster made his own copy. It took two to three days for each chapter to be fully distributed.67

  Steuben also overhauled the army’s organization. Few regiments were ever full enough to serve as training units, and turnover in the ranks made continuous training necessary. He divided the brigades into training battalions, subdivided into companies and platoons, and redistributed the officers. The regiments no longer matched the battalions, but the battalions became uniformly known quantities able to maneuver with calculable results. Steuben’s organization made it possible to muster effective units for battle no matter how depleted the army was.

  American troops had difficulty going from column of march into line of battle, because of their customary marching formation of a single column of files (“Indian file”), stringing the force out. That was why many units had arrived late at Brandywine and Germantown. Steuben cured that bad habit, training battalions to occupy no more road space than they would require room in battle. At his suggestion, on April 10 Washington outlawed the column of files. From then on, all units marched exactly as they were taught on the drill field. The result was an army that marched and deployed faster.68

  The army had to fight as well as march, and that required weapons instruction. Steuben taught a simplified manual of arms, with many fewer movements than those of European armies, and replaced difficult battalion volleys with platoon fire. He also emphasized use of the bayonet, the essential infantry assault weapon of his day, and turned his soldiers into fiercely confident bayonet fighters, as they later demonstrated.69

  Steuben transformed the army, and he did it in short order. He not only trained it but taught it how to train itself. His regulations showed the men everything from how to stand at attention to how to maintain camp sanitation. His inspection system stopped the loss of muskets and other supplies bleeding out of the army, causing Knox to say that Steuben was worth an arsenal all by himself. The financial accounts were cleaned up, and Washington could know in an instant how many men he had fit for duty. Most important, this Prussian whirling dervish had given the Continental Army a confidence it had never known before. Officers and men alike hungered, at the end of April, for a chance to show what they could do.

  Lafayette may have resented Steuben’s entrance onto the scene, but he could not help admiring what the man accomplished, making the Continental Army tactically equal to the army he had known in France. He sometimes joined the nightly gathering of young officers at the baron’s hut and regaled the others with colorful stories about his adventures in New York, “which his hearers found as good as a play,” according to Greene.70

  The marquis was more often at Greene’s house, where the general’s wife, Kitty (also called Katy or Caty), presided. Duponceau remembered her as a “handsome, elegant, and accomplished woman.” She attracted the foreign officers because she spoke French and was well versed in French literature. There was trouble in the Greene household that spring. Having abandoned her children to the care of friends six months earlier, she flirted with the French officers, especially Lafayette. She practically threw herself at Anthony Wayne, then in an unhappy marriage, and commissary general Jeremiah Wadsworth, a prosperous Philadelphia merchant. Both of them became her lovers after Nathanael died, but how far she went at Valley Forge remains a mystery.71

  Kitty Greene claimed, after her husband died, that she had had a passionate affair with Lafayette at Valley Forge. The marquis was silent about the matter. His appetites had not declined since he arrived in America, and during the Canadian campaign he had continued his long-distance flirtation with “Miss Ketty.” He later offered some wistful comments about the distaff side of America. “The women are devoted to their families,” he said, “and delight in making a comfortable home for them. One speaks of love to the girls, and their flirtatiousness is as amiable as it is modest.” This strange new world was very different from what he had known. “In the marriages of convenience that are made in Paris, a wife’s fidelity is often repugnant to nature, reason, and even the principles of justice. In America one marries one’s sweetheart; to break that valid agreement would be like having two lovers at the same time, because the two parties understand why and in what manner they are bound to each other.”72

  That may have been a lament about his limited romantic life in the New World. But if he had Kitty Greene in mind when he wrote it, the marquis was protesting too much.

  In any event, spring had cleared the roads. Good news was expected from France. The campaign season was about to open. Mars, not Venus, would rule the mind of the marquis de Lafayette, as it did that of General Washington.

  SEVEN

  They Will Not Be Fond of Fighting Us

  (APRIL–JULY 1778)

  Come out, ye Continentalers!

  We’re going for to go

  To fight the red-coat enemy,

  Who’re plaguy “cute,” you know…

  Charge bagnet!—that’s your sort, my boys;

  Now quick time!—march!—that’s right;

  Just so we poke the enemy

  If they were but in sight.

  —“THE SONG OF THE AWKWARD SQUAD”

  The richest orphan in France was broke. He had been spending money recklessly and had borrowed heavily from Henry Laurens and Robert Morris during the Canada expedition. Lafayette turned to Beaumarchais’ agent in America, Lazare-Jean Théveneau de Francy, asking him to arrange a loan for him at home, settle his debts to Morris and Laurens, and take over all his accounts. Since most of his outlays were for military expenses, he was entitled to compensation from Congress. Through Beaumarchais’ company, the French government could repay his costs when the American lawmakers were slow, charging them against loans and grants to the insurgent government.1

  The new arrangements helped some, but by war’s end he was in the hole for about a quarter million dollars. He was his own worst enemy. When Washington asked him to organize a network of spies in Philadelphia, he hired an agent named Allan McLane and sent him off with a bag of coins. As if that did not cost enough, he provided for the widows and children of officers, through intermediaries so the source would remain unknown.2

  SUFFER HIM TO RETURN TO HIS EMPLOYERS

  Washington was above challenge politically by the spring of 1778, and Congress acted toward the army only as he asked it to do. He extended his reach into pol
itical affairs and assigned new duties to trusted officers, making Lafayette his chief of “foreign affairs.” The marquis increased his correspondence to France, boosting the American cause. He said later that he did everything he could to draw the two peoples closer together.3

  Robert Morris, by C.W. Peale, 1782. The superintendent of finances for the revolution, as Franklin and Deane asked him to, tried to control Lafayette’s spendthrift ways, putting him on an allowance. It did not work. (INDEPENDENCE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK)

  His heaviest burden was petitions from officers wanting commissions in the Continental Army. He had brought that load on himself, because his adventures had inspired legions of soldiers to cross the Atlantic. The worst sort of pretenders had ceased to make the trip, but few of the newcomers spoke English. The French army had learned how to employ foreigners. With Washington’s backing, the marquis formed several “corps of strangers,” as he literally translated corps d’étrangers (bodies of foreigners). One of his fellow voyagers from Victoire commanded an all-French cavalry battalion, one of several such units. Thanks to Lafayette’s efforts, the Polish patriot Casimir Pulaski formed his “legion,” as a mixed force of infantry and cavalry was called.4

  Anthony Wayne, by James Sharples Senior, 1796. “Mad Anthony” and Lafayette became friends during the Monmouth Campaign and were partners through the Virginia Campaign. Wayne was the army’s most aggressive combat leader. (INDEPENDENCE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK)

  Also in the range of “foreign affairs” were the Iroquois Lafayette had courted in New York. In April, he sent a French officer to round up reliable warriors who had promised to join him at Valley Forge. About fifty of them showed up early in May and hung around camp, hoping to see action under Kayeheanla’s leadership.5

  Lafayette wanted to see his whole country enter the struggle against Britain, beyond sending supplies and volunteers. He had learned the hard way that he could be undiplomatic, so he asked Henry Laurens for advice. Since he was going to write to friends and relatives “who may have some influence in a certain court,” he told Laurens, he took the opportunity to ask “in which terms and stile” he should present his ideas.

  The Frenchman had some advice for the president. “I beg also leave to observe,” he piped up, that the American ambassadors in France had spoken “in too high terms of the strenghts [sic] of America.” He was afraid that exaggerating American power would undercut his own efforts to draw French military forces into the war.6

  Lafayette did not know that the crafty Franklin had been at work. Vergennes had been all for allying with America since Saratoga, but his king was reluctant, and other members of the ministry were opposed. After British peace emissaries had arrived in Paris in December 1777, Franklin played the two great powers against each other. If the British granted independence, the English-speaking countries might cooperate in seizing France’s colonies in the West Indies. On the other hand, if France joined the war, she might gain Britain’s share of the Indies. This was dead serious, because the sugar islands were the single greatest source of wealth on the planet.

  Vergennes brought the king and cabinet around. The Americans had asked for a “treaty of amity and commerce,” calling for a free flow of goods and money to support the war. They were not enthusiastic about inviting a French army across the Atlantic, but Vergennes was as slick as Franklin, and a better poker player. He insisted on adding a “conditional and defensive alliance” to the pact, authorizing French military action. The United States guaranteed that the French would keep their islands in the West Indies, while France guaranteed American independence. Each side would retain its territorial gains during the war, except that France disavowed any interest in Canada. There would be no separate peace—both sides would keep fighting until independence had been won. After some delays to gain Spanish agreement (required under the “Family Compact” between the two Bourbon kingdoms), on February 6, 1778, the treaties were signed in Versailles. The Americans were presented to King Louis, who was in his bed praying. Then they enjoyed the “privilege” of standing all evening while they watched Marie-Antoinette play cards.7

  On May 1, 1778, Simeon Deane—brother to and messenger for Congress’ agent in Paris, Silas Deane—galloped into Valley Forge. Washington summoned his officers and read the words of Franklin and Deane. “The great aim of this treaty,” they told Congress, “is declared to be ‘to establish the liberty, sovereignty, and independency, absolute and unlimited, of the United States, as well in matters of government as commerce’; and this is guaranteed to us by France.” Tears in his eyes, aflame with Gallic ardor, Lafayette threw his arms around Washington and kissed him on both cheeks. That shocked everyone, because no one ever touched His Excellency. It would happen again, however, and the general would learn to return his adopted son’s hugs.8

  Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, engraving by Holloway after a painting by Collet, 1786. Longtime foreign minister of France, Gravier capitalized on Lafayette’s adventures to take his country into the war against Britain. He also was an “uncle” when the marquis was away from Washington. (SKILLMAN LIBRARY, LAFAYETTE COLLEGE)

  Washington told Congress that he had “mentioned the matter to such officers as I have seen, and I believe no event was ever received with more heart felt joy.” The camp went wild, officers and men expecting money, clothing, and supplies to pour in from abroad. Lafayette was ecstatic, believing that the treaty was his doing, sure that Washington agreed with him. He returned to his quarters and began writing letters.9

  “Be so good as to present to the Congress of the United States,” the marquis told the president formally, “my very sincere felicitations for the great intelligences lately arrived from France. I am myself fit to receive as well as to offer congratulations in this happy circumstances.” Privately, he told Laurens, “Houza, my good friend, now the affair is over, and a very good treaty will assure our noble independence.”10

  Lafayette later wanted the world to believe that at this point he was fighting for liberty. Actually, he remained a patriotic Frenchman consumed with hatred for the Anglais, and independence for the United States would humiliate Britain. His letters home to France spoke of the glory and honor of his homeland, while those to Americans used the same terms about the United States. News of the treaty tore him between two loyalties. On one hand, he talked about rejoining the French army. “If my com-patriots are making war in any corner of the world, I shall fly to their colors,” he told de Francy. On the other, he was devoted to Washington. In the end, he decided to stay with his adoptive father, but only after an internal struggle.11

  Benjamin Franklin, by an unidentified French artist, after Joseph Siffred Duplessis, late nineteenth century. Lafayette was the most effective aide Franklin ever had, and in return he became a surrogate grandfather to the youngster, who had never really known his own. (INDEPENDENCE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK)

  As a patriotic Frenchman, Lafayette feared that the Americans would make a separate peace. He told de Francy that it was up to the Frenchmen at the capital to prove to the Americans that their salvation lay in France’s protection. He loved their cause, he said, but he “would be quite annoyed and dismayed should it succeed in a way that were disadvantageous to my own much beloved, much adored country.” The French agent should press Congress to stay in the war and “dismiss any idea of listening to England.”12

  Lafayette put on a white scarf, symbol of Bourbon France, and led a group of French officers through the celebrating Americans. Deane had also brought him letters from home, telling him that his daughter Henriette had died the previous fall, yet he waited a month and a half to write to his wife. “How dreadful our separation is!” he cried. “Never have I so cruelly felt how horrible this situation is. My heart is tormented with my own grief and with yours, which I was not able to share.” In case word of his joining the festivities had reached her, he explained that the sad news had reached him immediately after that of the treaty, and while his heart “was consume
d with sorrow,” he had to “receive and take part in public celebrations.”13

  Congress ratified the treaty on May 4, 1778, and Washington ordered a grand review to honor the king of France. With Greene absent, honors for leadership went in order of seniority. The brigades, the commander in chief ordered, were to march to their places in the line of battle as indicated by Steuben’s aides. The right wing of the first line would be commanded by Stirling and the left wing by Lafayette. De Kalb commanded the second line. To get the troops into the right mood, “[e]ach man is to have a jill of rum.”14

  On the evening of May 6, before a large crowd of civilians, Steuben paraded the army while Washington and his family stood in review. The disciplined force greatly impressed the crowd. The high point came with the feu de joie (fire of joy). Three times, after Knox’s cannons fired a thirteen-gun salute, running musket fire started from one end of a long line and ran to the other, after which the troops shouted, “Long live the king of France!” It was an impressive display, showing the kind of discipline the army had been lacking. Robert Morris told Washington, “Our independence is undoubtedly secured; our country must be free.”15

  A newspaperman overheard a report that there was a British spy among the spectators. An officer said, “Suffer him to return to his employers, as they must feel more pain from his account of the army, than grief on hearing of his detection and death.” Washington was overjoyed, issuing an order to the army expressing his “highest satisfaction.”16