Adopted Son Read online

  The political situation had changed. On April 12, France and Spain had ratified the Aranjuez Convention, bringing the Iberians into the war. The Spanish minister objected to the cost of the Lafayette-Jones project but suggested that the two countries might combine on a bigger expedition—an invasion of Great Britain. Without telling either of the officers why, on May 22, 1779, the government cancelled their raid and ordered Lafayette to rejoin his regiment at Saintes. Lafayette gave Jones the bad news, saying that “political and military reasons have occasion’d that alteration.” Jones demanded an explanation but instead he was told to chase the British navy out of the Bay of Biscay.22

  Lafayette left for Saintes, afraid that the end of his project meant the end of French support for the United States. He felt exiled from Versailles, from his adoring public, and from Adrienne, who was pregnant again. He was a regimental commander at twenty-one, more than most men could have wished for. But he had been a major general in Washington’s campaigns, as well as commander of an invasion of Canada and lately of the aborted raid against England. Now the boredom of garrison life loomed before him. When rumors circulated that a new army was being formed to go to America, he worried that it would leave without him.

  DON’T FORGET ME, MY DEAR GENERAL

  Lafayette’s regiment moved from Saintes to nearby St. Jean d’Angély before he reached it. The unit’s discipline and maneuvers were not good, so he stepped up its training. Mostly, he fretted. He had returned to France hoping that the odds of getting into battle were higher there than in America. He decided that he had made a mistake, and missed his adoptive father, because he had not heard from him. Washington had written him several times, but the British blockade intercepted most of his messages.23

  The marquis wrote Vergennes on June 1, 1779, saying that Congress had cancelled his Canada proposal, and on the tenth to complain about the way he had been treated. “I should be lacking in candor,” he fumed, “if I did not admit that my blood boils a little in my veins…. Don’t forget that I love the trade of war passionately, that I consider myself born especially to play that game, that I have been spoiled for two years by the habit of having been in command…. After all that, Monsieur le Comte (since I do not speak to you as the king’s minister), judge whether I have the right to be impatient.”24

  When Lafayette learned that Anne-César, chevalier de La Luzerne, had been appointed minister to the United States, replacing Gérard, he poured out letters to send across the ocean with him. They included two written on June 12, one to Congress and the other to Washington, so long that they threatened their carrier with a hernia. “I desire to return again to that country of which I shall ever consider myself as a citizen,” he told the president of Congress. He went on for page after page, saying how devoted he was to America, and how much he wanted to serve again in her army. Then he said something curious. “I shall frankly tell you, sir, that nothing may more effectually hurt theyr interests, consequence, and reputation in Europe, than to hear of some thing like dispute or division betwen whigs. Nothing could urge my touching this delicate matter, but the unhappy experience I every day make on that head, since I may hear myself what is said on this side of the Atlantic, and the arguments I am to fight against.”25

  Lafayette sent a copy of this letter with the one he wrote to Washington, who interpreted it as a complaint about noises in Congress. “The propriety of the hint you have given them must carry conviction,” he told him, “and I trust will have a salutary effect,” but he thought Congress had become far less quarrelsome in recent months than it had been before. That should make a good impression in Europe.26

  What really bothered the marquis was the war between the American commissioners in France. Arthur Lee and Franklin could not get along, and they dragged other Americans in Europe into their feud. Adams complained that “their violence had arisen to such rancour” that whenever he agreed with one side, the other blistered him. This constant catfighting upset Lafayette. Congress had already had a belly full of these quarrels and resolved on April 20, 1779, that the “suspicions and animosities” were “highly prejudicial to the honor and interest of these United States.” Lafayette’s fears had already been addressed, but the problem continued.27

  The marquis opened his letter to Washington with an outburst of adoration. “My dear general, here is at length a safe occasion of writing to you,” he began, “here I may tell you what sincere concern I feel for our separation. There was never a friend, my dear general, so much, so tenderly belov’d, as I do love and respect you. Happy in our union, in the pleasure of living with you, in that so charming satisfaction of partaking any sentiment of your heart, any event of your life, I had taken such an habit of being inseparable from you, that I can’t now get the use of absence and I am more and more afflicted of that distance which keeps me so far from my dearest friend.” He imagined that Washington’s army was on the march, which made not being by the general’s side all the more painful. He was also consumed by a growing fear that Washington could be disabled or killed, and “the american army, the american cause itself would perhaps be entirely ruin’d.”

  As Lafayette and Franklin labored to get more money for the American cause, it was not congressional debates that troubled him so much as what was going on in Paris. “For God’s sake,” he pleaded, “prevent theyr loudly disputing together. Nothing hurts so much the interests and reputation of America than to hear of theyr intestine quarrels. On the other hand there are two partys in France—MMs. Adams and Lee on one part, Doctor Franklin and his friends on the other. So great is the concern which these divisions give me, that I can’t wait on these gentlemen as much as I could wish, for fear of occasioning disputes, and bringing them to a greater light.”

  The fact that Lafayette had not heard from his adoptive father he blamed on “winds, accidents, and deficiency of occasions, for I dare flatter myself General Washington would not loose this [occasion] of making his friend happy. In the name of that very friendship, my dear general, never miss any opportunity of letting me know how you do.” He repeated his worries about Washington’s health and the dangers the general exposed himself to. “Those you possibly may laugh at and call woman-like considerations, but so, my dear friend, I feel, and any sentiment of my heart I never could, nay I never wanted to conceal.”

  The young man digressed to deliver personal and political news, to brag about his celebrity, and to criticize his government’s failure to act decisively. Always he returned to how much he wanted to rejoin Washington. He described himself as “I, an american citizen,” a marked change from the French boy who had blown up at Sullivan’s remarks a year before.

  Lafayette then said, oddly, “I have a wife, my dear general, who is in love with you, and any affection for you seems to me so well justified that I can’s oppose myself to that sentiment of her’s.” He also invited Washington to “come to see us in Europe, and most certainly I give you my word, that if I am not happy enough as to be sent to America before the peace, I shall by all means go there as soon as I may escape.” He renewed his invitation, not for the last time. “All Europe wants so much to see you, my dear general,” he pleaded, “that you ca’nt refuse them that pleasure.”

  Above all, Lafayette missed his adoptive father. “I most instantly entreat you, my dear general, to let me hear from you,” he begged. “Write me how you do, how things are going. The minutest detail will be infinetly interesting for me…. Adieu, my dear general, I can’t leave the pen, and I enjoy the greatest pleasure in scribling you this long letter. Don’t forget me, my dear general, be ever as affectionate for me as you have been—those sentiments I deserve by the ardent ones which fill my heart.” He added a postscript. “For God’s sake,” he cried, “write me frequent and long letters and speak most chiefly about yourself and your private circumstances.” His loyalties were no longer divided. He might be French by birth, but he loved Washington above all else.

  The next day Lafayette added yet another postsc
ript. He had just received an express message, with orders to report immediately to Versailles. There he was to meet “Mr. le comte de Vaux lieutenant general who is appointed to the command of the troops intended for an expedition.” Lafayette would serve as aide maréchal général des logis, “which is in our service a very important and agreable place.” He promised to keep his adoptive father informed of everything, and ended, “assuring your excellency again of my profond respect and tenderest friendship. Farewell my dear general and let our mutual affection last for ever and ever.”28

  The marquis had been sprung from his exile thanks to his old commander, General de Broglie. With Spain about to enter the war, de Broglie had drawn up plans to invade England with 30,000 soldiers carried in a combined French-Spanish fleet. By spring he had moved much of that army to Le Havre, where it would embark. He proposed his older brother, Victor-François, comte de Broglie, to command the invasion. Instead, command went to Noël de Jourda, comte de Vaux, the oldest soldier in the army, age seventy-four. Once that decision was made, on June 16, 1779, Spain presented its declaration of grievances to the British government and laid siege to Gibraltar.29

  Lafayette spent the next ten days shuttling between Versailles and Paris, with side trips to consult Franklin. He would go ashore leading a regiment of grenadiers in the first wave, and when his dragoons landed, he would take command of them. Before that, he would be busy with logistical arrangements, his immediate superior told him. He also met with Vergennes and Maurepas, pressing them on a plan for the future—to send a French army to fight under Washington. This time, the foreign minister showed interest. At his request the marquis gave him maps of the British positions in America.30

  The marquis was at Le Havre by July 1, busy with his duties but not too busy to pester Vergennes. Early in the month he recommended an attack on Halifax, because it was an important British supply base. By the eighteenth he had expanded his proposal. He wanted to lead 4,300 men to recapture Rhode Island, New York, the Virginia coast, and other places, before moving on to Halifax to prepare a revolution in Canada. This time, he struck a chord. Vergennes and other ministers, seeing the invasion of England delayed endlessly, began to agree with Lafayette. France’s major efforts ought to be directed toward America, rather than England.31

  Along with the rest of de Vaux’s army, Lafayette kept looking seaward, hoping to spot the combined fleet under Lieutenant General (Rear Admiral) Louis Guillouet, comte d’Orvilliers, its sixty-nine-year-old commander. The fleet was delayed by bad weather and bureaucratic incompetence, and the admiral was demoralized by the recent suicide of his son. Smallpox and scurvy ravaged his men.

  Lafayette fretted, because he had only himself to blame for not returning to Washington’s army. He had repeatedly told the French government that he really wanted to fight in its army, but that was getting him nowhere. His project with Jones had been cancelled, and the present campaign was sitting on the beach, feeding sand fleas. On July 30, 1779, he pushed Vergennes again. Because his presence would be “less profitless” in America than in France, he volunteered to return to Washington’s army on his own authority. If sending a larger force had to be postponed, he wanted to lead 2,000 or 3,000 men to join Washington. That would prop up the failing United States currency, provide a source of information about the enemy in Canada, and energize the American army.32

  He was correct in believing that he would see no glory invading l’Angleterre. D’Orvilliers arrived on August 6, a month late. He had so many sick or dead from disease, and his supplies were so low, that he could do nothing, and not enough transports had been rounded up to take the army across the English Channel. The admiral advised cancelling the whole thing. Instead, he was ordered to blockade Plymouth. He stayed there for three days until a storm blew his fleet out of the channel. A small British flotilla challenged him, and he spent another three days chasing it, until it escaped into Plymouth. Since it was too close to the fall storm season to go ahead, the government postponed the invasion. The only good news for Lafayette was that he received a favorable reaction to his latest proposal from Vergennes, although an expedition could not be arranged until the following spring.33

  There was something else nice to hear about. Franklin announced that the sword that Congress had authorized for Lafayette had been completed, and sent his nineteen-year-old grandson William Temple Franklin to present it. Made by the Parisian cutler Liger at a cost of 4,800 livres, it was a wonder to behold. An ornately engraved and encrusted gold hilt displayed the marquis’ battles. One side of the blade showed the young warrior Lafayette slaying the British lion; the other depicted America released from chains and handing him an olive branch. This generated great publicity, and Lafayette appointed William as a volunteer aide-de-camp in the Continental Army. It carried no military rank, he said, and if Congress objected, he took full responsibility, avowing that Washington would not disapprove anything he had done, “because friendship betwen my respected, belov’d General and myself, gives me the right of taking his name whenever I please.”34

  WE WILL TALK OF THIS MATTER & FIX OUR PLANS

  Washington had been having a mixed year in Lafayette’s absence, watching Clinton in New York. The British commander surprised him in June 1779 by seizing Fort Lafayette and Stony Point, guarding the two ends of Kings Ferry on the lower Hudson. Expecting a move against West Point, twelve miles upstream, he shifted most of his army to New Windsor. Clinton did not advance, however, so in July Washington sent Wayne and his 1,200-man light infantry brigade to retake Stony Point. In a predawn bayonet charge, Wayne and his men stormed the place and captured its garrison. The victory was a tremendous morale booster, but it had no strategic significance because Washington failed to attack Fort Lafayette.

  The war was moving to the South, where the commander in chief had no real military authority. The British took Savannah in December 1778, moved on to the Georgia state capital at Augusta, then headed for Charleston, South Carolina. Major General Benjamin Lincoln, a waddling, ineffective, but popular leader, moved out to meet the enemy. They did an end run around him, but he made it back to Charleston in time. Citizens sent a frantic appeal to d’Estaing in the West Indies, and he joined the fight in September 1779. After a bungled French-American attack on Savannah in October, the enemy held their ground. D’Estaing, wounded and fearing the hurricane season, headed back to France. The British prepared an all-out move against Charleston for early 1780 and abandoned Rhode Island.35

  Washington’s real troubles were not on any battlefield. He was in an endless struggle to try to keep his army together, fed, and supplied. The states were not doing their part, and neither was Congress. Money, as always, was short, American credit had disappeared, and help from France had slowed to a trickle. He looked to Franklin, Adams, and Lafayette to turn the logistical faucet on again.

  Washington missed Lafayette, and the younger man’s absence caused him visible pain. He had expected, or at least hoped, that the marquis would return in the spring. That had not happened, nor had he heard from him. Then the new minister, La Luzerne, arrived in his camp early in September, accompanied by his secretary François, marquis de Barbé-Marbois, who brought the letter written by Lafayette in June. The general said that he was “drinking the health of the marquis de Lafayette,” Barbé-Marbois told a friend, “and asked me if I had seen him before my departure. I answered that I had, and added that he spoke of him with the tenderest veneration. I said that the conduct of M. de Lafayette in America had made him generally esteemed, and had caused him to deserve the distinctions and favor granted him by the king. Washington blushed like a fond father whose child is being praised. Tears fell from his eyes, he clasped my hand, and could hardly utter the words: ‘I do not know a nobler, finer soul, and I love him as my own son.’”36

  Washington answered Lafayette with one of the longest letters he ever wrote. The young man’s words, he said, filled him “with equal pleasure and surprize. The latter at hearing that you had not receive
d one of the many letters I had written to you, since you left the American shore.” He poured out his blessing in an enormous paragraph. “It gave me infinite pleasure to hear from yourself of the favourable reception you met with from your Sovereign, & of the joy which your safe arrival in France had diffused among your friends,” he began. “I had no doubt that this wou’d be the case. To hear it from yourself adds pleasure to the acct.” He congratulated him on his new position in de Vaux’s army, “which I shall accompy. with an assurance that none do it with more warmth of affection, or sincere joy than myself. Your forward zeal in the cause of liberty—your singular attachment to this infant world—your ardent & persevering efforts not only in America but since your return to France to serve the United States—your polite attention to Americans—and your strict & uniform friendship for me, has ripened the first impressions of esteem & attachment which I imbibed for you into perfect love & gratitude that neither time nor absence can impair.”

  Washington hoped to see Lafayette again soon, as a general leading either French or American troops. But if circumstances postponed their reunion until after the war, he would welcome him “in all the warmth of friendship to Columbia’s shore; & in the latter case, to my rural cottage, where homely fare & a cordial reception shall be substituted for delicacies & costly living.” He extended the invitation to include “the Marchioness” (Adrienne). “My inclination & endeavours to do this cannot be doubted when I assure you that I love every body that is dear to you—consequently participate in the pleasure you feel in the prospt. of again becoming a parent & do most sincerely congratulate you and your lady on this fresh pledge she is about to give you of her love.” And that was just the first paragraph!