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  Earlier, at about noon, Washington had heard some cannon fire from the direction of the courthouse, but no musketry indicating a battle. Hamilton rode up with a report that Lee was about to engage. As the general continued advancing, Knox sent a message that Lee’s troops were in disorder and that Washington ought to take steps to prevent a reverse. Next he encountered a fugitive soldier, then elements of two retreating Continental battalions. They were exhausted, almost staggering, but in good order. Their commanders told Washington that they had retired on orders from Lee. This was probably the encounter that Martin witnessed.

  What happened next has become so entangled in legend as to be unknowable in fact. Washington galloped forward and found Lee about 400 yards east of a bridge across a ravine. According to Tench Tilghman, who was there, the commander in chief asked, “What was the meaning of this?” Lee answered that he had received conflicting intelligence, his orders were not being followed, the troops had fallen into confusion, and he was retreating to high ground to re-form. Besides, he said, he had been against the attack from the beginning. “General Washington answered,” said Tilghman, “whatever his opinion might have been, he expected his orders would have been obeyed, and then rode on to the rear of the retreating troops.” One of Lee’s officers remembered that he said, “Sir, these troops are not able to meet British grenadiers,” to which Washington replied, “Sir, they are able, and by God, they shall do it!”57

  Thanks to two officers who were not present, a yarn arose that Washington exploded in a violent outburst and ordered Lee from the field; both invented their stories decades later. One was Lafayette, who said that Washington called Lee a “damned poltroon” and sent him to the rear. Scott invented a more colorful tale, praising the commander in chief’s swearing, which was so thunderous that “the leaves shook on the trees.” Hamilton, who also was not present, said that Lee later thought that his sanity had been questioned, and asked him to record that he was in possession of his faculties. Exactly what passed between Washington and Lee will never be known. It is not likely that the commander had time for a temper tantrum, with disaster about to overtake his army.58

  His behavior the rest of the day was a model of determined self-possession. He sent back orders to bring up the main body, then galloped forward to take over Lee’s disintegrating advance. He filled the men who saw him with admiration. “I never saw the general to so much advantage,” Hamilton wrote a few days later. “His coolness and firmness were admirable. He instantly took measures for checking the enemy’s advance, and giving time to the army, which was very near, to form and make a proper disposition. He then rode back, and had the troops formed on a very advantageous piece of ground…. By his own good sense and fortitude, he turned the fate of the day. Other officers have great merit in performing their parts well, but he directed the whole with the skill of a master workman.”59

  Lafayette also was awed. “During this whole business,” he said, “which was so badly prepared but ended so well, General Washington seemed to arrest fate with a single glance. His nobility, grace, and presence of mind were never displayed to better advantage.”60

  Such battle as had opened before Washington galloped to the front had been like a barroom brawl, individual units slugging at individual units. Clinton had not wanted a general engagement, but when he saw Lee’s disorder, he deployed his troops in two lines and advanced against the rebels. He was stopped when Washington ended the retreat and formed a temporary line. Using a hedgerow to stabilize the line, and sending artillery to keep the enemy from crossing a bridge, he organized a stouter defense on higher ground to the rear. He sent Stirling to the left and put Lafayette behind him in charge of a second line. Lafayette was “sadly disappointed,” his future aide James McHenry reported. “He had flattered himself, from his advanced situation under General Lee, with the first laurels of the day.” Now Washington had sent him to form in the rear of the army, to provide support in case of a retreat. He did well there. When Clinton tried to turn the American left, Lafayette advanced against him, and the redcoats backed off without firing a shot.61

  Once Washington gave up the hedgerow, Clinton took it over and planted several batteries there. Greene had taken over the right, and with Wayne holding in front, Washington told the fighting Quaker to set up his guns to enfilade the British pieces along the hedgerow. The British pulled back, and Greene’s and Wayne’s infantry pushed them farther with two attacks. The day ended with a standstill, the two sides lobbing cannonballs at each other.

  The artillery was really the star of the day. Knox was all over the field, even more than Washington. He had already turned field artillery into a branch of infantry by imaginative placement of his guns, dispersing some among the battalions to “stiffen” the line. Where sloping terrain permitted, he put his cannons behind the infantry line, firing over the heads of the foot soldiers. Canister, grape, and solid shot blasted into the enemy lines, while other batteries targeted British guns. The noise was deafening, and thick smoke spread over the whole area.

  Washington, as always, lived a charmed life on the battlefield. His coat was holed, but he was unscratched. He had another big white horse die under him, but it fell to heatstroke rather than enemy fire. The weather was “almost too hot to live in,” Private Martin said. By the later stages of the fight, troops on both sides huddled in shade wherever they could find it.62

  Monmouth Court House was the longest battle of the war, almost sunrise to sundown. It turned out to be the last major engagement in the north, and the last time Washington would command troops in action until 1781. Tactically it was a draw, but it marked the arrival of the Continental Army as a force equal to its enemy. Each side matched the other in the stamina and courage that it took to fight so hard in the blistering heat.

  About 365 Americans were lost—72 killed, 161 wounded, and 132 missing. Many of the missing had collapsed from the heat and rejoined their units when they recovered. At least 37 men died from sunstroke. Clinton lost 358 killed and wounded, about 60 of the dead from sunstroke. His total losses were over 1,200, because over the next several days part of his army evaporated. Over 600 deserters, 440 of them Hessians, plodded into Philadelphia by July 6.63

  Lafayette gained a new friend during the Monmouth campaign. The hard-charging Brigadier General Anthony Wayne, thirty-three years old, was one of the most experienced fighters in the army, so aggressive that he was known as “Mad Anthony.” His strong chin, Roman nose, and thoughtful eyes hid his background as a successful Pennsylvania tanner, but his broad shoulders and powerful build did not. In war, he never passed up a fight. He had argued with Lee as the retreat began, and after Washington took over he moved ahead of the main line and held back British attacks on the center. He and the marquis had not had their last adventure together.64

  THE GENERAL AND HE SLEPT ON THE SAME CLOAK

  The bond between Washington and Lafayette strengthened further after the battle. It was increasingly apparent even to men in the ranks that the two were becoming ever closer in their affections; one private, in Lafayette’s detachment, told a friend that a few days afterward. He also called him a “French nobleman of extraordinary abilities [whose] conduct is highly approved by His Excellency.”65

  Expecting to resume battle the next day, the exhausted Washington spread his cloak on the ground, atop the ridge behind Lafayette’s lines. Lafayette lay down beside him. There Greene found them both asleep and spread himself out under a nearby tree. Writing about this in the first version of his memoirs, the marquis said, “The general and he slept on the same cloak and discussed Lee.” That seems unlikely, given their weariness, and Washington did not discuss the shortcomings of others behind their backs. At this point, he was disappointed in Lee’s behavior, not angry with him. Lafayette’s memory was colored by something that happened the next day.66

  Both armies were exhausted, and when Washington awoke on June 29 he found that Clinton’s whole army, less its casualties and deserters, had decampe
d during the night. The American commander saw nothing to be gained in pursuing his enemy in the brutal heat. Instead, the Continental Army escorted Clinton out of New Jersey, keeping in touch at a leisurely pace. That morning each man received a gill of rum, Private Martin remembered, but nothing to eat. They then joined their regiments in the line “and marched for Hudson’s river.” They advanced by what was called “easy marches,” striking their tents at three o’clock in the morning, marching ten miles, and then encamping at about one or two o’clock in the afternoon. They rested every third day. The army reached the river at King’s Ferry on July 15, the second line under Lafayette crossed on the nineteenth, and the army camped at White Plains to keep an eye on New York. Besides the heat, Lee’s court-martial had slowed the march.67

  The morning after the battle, Washington received a letter from Lee, complaining about the “very singular expressions” the commander in chief had directed to him. He accused Washington of “cruel injustice” based on misinformation “instigated by some of those dirty earwigs who will forever insinuate themselves near persons in high office.” He demanded “some reparation for the injury committed.” The commander promised Lee a hearing, but the latter did not have sense enough to let well enough alone. He sent two more letters, even more obnoxious than the first, the same day, sneering at Washington’s “tinsel dignity.” The commander in chief took Lee’s communications as deliberate insults, placed him under arrest, and ordered a court-martial. Lee’s conduct during the battle would scarcely have rated a court of inquiry, and Washington did not raise even that idea until Lee forced him to. Now the erratic general faced three formal charges. The first was disobedience of orders in not attacking the enemy on June 28, as instructed. The second was misbehavior before the enemy by making an “unnecessary, disorderly, and shameful retreat.” The third was disrespect to the commander in chief, in his letters.

  Lord Stirling was appointed president of the court on July 1, 1778, and he began hearings the next day. They dragged on until August 9, because almost every field and general officer who had been at or near Monmouth testified. Their accounts suggested that Lee did not follow orders to advance and make contact with the enemy. They also demonstrated that he lost control of the action as it developed. The case of disrespect was evident to everyone. On the other hand, everyone who had seen Lee during the battle testified that he had shown great personal courage. Lee conducted his own defense, but he was not good at it.

  The court found him guilty on all three counts on August 9 and suspended him from command for twelve months. Nobody believed that he was really guilty on the first two charges; if they had, the proper sentence would have been outright dismissal. Instead, the remarks that had earned him the third charge were so offensive that his insubordination after the battle backfired into a finding of guilt during it.

  The unstable Lee had brought it all down on himself with his undisciplined pen. He used the same weapon, along with his tongue, to bring about his final ruin. Washington sent the verdict to Congress on August 16, but the lawmakers did not begin discussing whether to approve it until October 23. Lee spent three months in Philadelphia writing and talking too much, abusing Washington to anyone who would listen. By the time he was done, Congress could not bail him out without it looking like a vote of no confidence in the commander in chief. The lawmakers upheld the verdict on December 5, 1778.68

  While Lee let his mouth run loose, Steuben threatened to challenge him to a duel, but cooler heads intervened. John Laurens and Anthony Wayne did throw down the gauntlet. On December 3, Lee was slightly wounded in a pistol duel with Laurens. He was ready to trade shots again, but Hamilton and other seconds called it off. The wound was bad enough that he could not accept Wayne’s challenge. He and his dogs went back to the Shenandoah Valley until the end of his suspension. When he heard that Congress planned to dismiss him altogether, he wrote the lawmakers a letter so obnoxious that they made his dismissal unanimous. He returned to Philadelphia to lobby for reinstatement. There the strangest general of them all, talented, unstable, and maligned, died in 1782. He had loved, and been loved by, only his dogs. Only they mourned him.69

  Lafayette, obsessed with the notion that there were conspiracies afoot against Washington, thought Lee was a traitor. He told Henry Laurens, “You have heard [a] good deal, I dare say, of the court against Gal. Lee,” he said. “I am very unwillingly an evidence in it but am happy enough as to have nothing material to say. This Gal. Lee is very much prejudic’d in favor of his english nation. If he is condemn’d, certainly he must be guilty of some thing very ugly.”70

  Wherever Lee’s prejudices lay, Lafayette’s own loyalties, to his adoptive father and to his homeland, were about to be tested. A French fleet was approaching the American coast.

  EIGHT

  I Hope Your French Friend Will Ever Be Dear to You

  (JULY 1778–JANUARY 1779)

  This story shall the good man teach his son…

  But we in it shall be remembered,—

  We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

  For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

  Shall be my brother…

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  Charles-Henri-Théodat, comte d’Estaing, was a tall man. His sailors said he was six foot two in peace and six foot four in battle. He was aggressive in a fight, but he often showed up late to start one. Like Lafayette, he was born in Auvergne, twenty-eight years before the marquis. They were cousins, and it showed. D’Estaing was very slender, all arms and legs, with a teardrop face, broad forehead, receding hairline, pointed chin, long nose, and wide eyes under arched brows.

  Most of his career had been in the army, where he became a brigadier at twenty-seven. He was captured by the British during the Seven Years’ War, then paroled, and he fought in naval actions before his exchange. Captured again, he was abused by his keepers. In April 1778 Louis XVI appointed him to command all French forces in America, with a dual rank of lieutenant general in the army and lieutenant-général des armées navales (rear admiral) in the navy. Career naval officers did not approve.

  “Brave as his sword,” said a French naval historian, “d’Estaing was always the idol of the soldier, the idol of the seaman; but moral authority over his officers failed him on several occasions, notwithstanding the marked protection extended to him by the king.” He was no sailor. “Had the admiral’s seamanship equaled his courage,” snorted one of his captains after a bungled action, “we would not have suffered four dismasted vessels to escape.” Louis could not have picked a worse choice for the first commander to serve beside his American allies.1

  AT LEAST WE SHALL GET A GOOD DINNER

  D’Estaing sailed from Toulon on April 13, 1778, with twelve ships of the line, five frigates, and 4,000 marines, taking along Silas Deane, recalled by Congress, and Conrad-Alexandre Gérard, the first minister of a foreign country to be accredited to the United States. His orders were to head straight to Delaware Bay to bottle up Admiral Howe. He took eighty-seven days to cross the Atlantic, stopping to chase English privateers, and missed Howe, who had sailed to New York. When d’Estaing was spotted off Maryland on May 5, Washington asked him to sail up the New Jersey coast to Sandy Hook to trap the British fleet in New York Harbor.

  After replenishing his food and water and treating scurvy among his men, the comte arrived off New York on July 11. His ships of the line were too big to clear the bar at the harbor mouth, because they drew more water than the enemy ships sitting safe inside. “It is terrible to be within sight of your object, and yet to be unable to attain it,” d’Estaing said.2

  Anticipating an attack on New York, Lafayette hired Elias Boudinot to recruit spies in the city. He promised a hundred guineas to any spy who returned important intelligence. “I beg you would send a legion of spies among theyr troops and theyr fleet, no sum of monney will be thaught too much by me if such intelligences are got that we might depend upon them.” A few days later he said, “Any sums of monne
y they may cost I schall very willingly pay.” He still had more funds than sense.3

  The marquis believed that he was still out of favor with the court of France. The last news he had had from anybody in an official position was the order for his arrest when he left the country. Now, as self-appointed liaison to the French fleet, he wanted to restore his standing back home. His cousin the general-admiral might offer him a way to do that.4

  Lafayette was not Washington’s first emissary to d’Estaing. John Laurens was. The commander in chief sent him to the French commander with a welcome, an analysis of the military situation, and a letter of introduction from Lafayette, laced with bluster, much of it in the vein of “May you, Monsieur le Comte, defeat [the British], sink them to the bottom, lay them as low as they have been insolent; may you begin the great work of their destruction by which we shall trample upon their nation; may you prove to them at their expense what a Frenchman, and a Frenchman from Auvergne, can do; and may you do them as much harm as they wish to do us.”