Adopted Son Page 31

  Lafayette spent the last few days of February in Paris, giving some attention to his neglected wife and children. He was not sneaking out of town this time, so he took better care of his finances. He had a new manager of his affairs, Jacques-Philippe Grattepain-Morizot, to whom he granted power of attorney. He gave similar power to Adrienne. Morizot was authorized to borrow against his property with her consent, although she would prevail in any disagreements. He told Morizot to draw 120,000 livres from his account so he could equip an American division. The steward warned him that he was buying glory at the expense of his fortune. He answered that glory was beyond price, Adrienne agreed, and he got the money.55

  Dazzling in his American uniform, he took formal leave of the king and queen. He stopped in at Passy to see Franklin, who sent Washington a letter bubbling about Lafayette’s “modesty” and “zeal for the honour of our country, his activity in our affairs here, and his firm attachment to our cause and to you.” Without the marquis’ efforts he would never have gained the full measure of French aid needed to win the war.56

  Lafayette returned to Versailles for revisions of his instructions and those going to Rochambeau and to Charles-Henri d’Arsac, chevalier de Ternay, the commodore commanding the fleet. There were several bureaucratic issues he wanted made clear. He won on all points. New orders to Rochambeau told him to consider his command subordinate to Washington and his troops auxiliary to the American army. The American general would have the final say on all plans, although it was expected that he would consult with the French general, who should maintain good relations between the allies. Lafayette would go ahead of him to make arrangements, and a commissary, Dominique-Louis Ethis de Corny, would accompany him to handle finances.

  Lafayette also got his status, and that of other French officers in American service, made clear. They were not to be treated as subordinates to generals in Rochambeau’s force, but according to their American ranks, and their French commissions were suspended for the duration. He would be Washington’s man and nobody else’s. Most important, nobody but George Washington would command the war in America.57

  Lafayette had been fighting to protect his adoptive father from challenges since the Conway Cabal. Now America’s ally acknowledged that Washington was the supreme commander in the New World, even over French troops. Moreover, the commander in chief could dispose of Rochambeau’s army without asking Congress’ permission, as he still had to do with the Continental Army.

  Lafayette’s final instructions, issued March 5, 1780, began: “M. le Marquis de Lafayette, going to America, will hasten to join General Washington. He will inform him confidentially that the king…has resolved to send to their aid six ships of the line and 6,000 regular infantry troops at the onset of spring.” Ternay’s convoy would land at Rhode Island. It might go ashore elsewhere, however, so Lafayette should ask Washington to send French officers to other locations. They were to be given specified flag signals that the fleet would recognize, and even a password: St. Louis et Philadelphie (the patron saint of France and brotherly love, meaning both the American capital and the spirit of the alliance).

  He was to tell the American that the French corps would be purely auxiliary, “and in this capacity” it would act only under Washington’s orders. The French land general would take orders from the American commanding general “for everything that does not relate to the internal regulation of his corps.” The “naval general” was “enjoined to support with all his power all operations in which his cooperation is required.”

  The instructions granted the utmost discretion to the American ally. “Since operations must depend upon circumstances and local possibilities,” the French government did not propose any. It was up to Washington and the council of war to decide which operations would be most useful. All the king wished was that the troops he sent to the assistance of his allies, the United States, “cooperate effectually to deliver them once and for all from the yoke and tyranny of the English.” His Majesty expected that “the reciprocal attention that friends owe each other will ensure that General Washington and the American general officers see that the officers and the French troops enjoy all the amenities that are consistent with the good of the service.”

  There were practical details as well. Washington was asked to arrange for subsistence and for medical facilities for his French allies. This was the closest thing to a demand in the whole document, but it was one that Washington could live with.

  After Lafayette had agreed with General Washington on all the measures to take with respect to the arrival of the French troops and to the security of their disembarkation, he should go to Congress, “but first he will decide with the American general to what extent he is to reveal to Congress the secret of our arrangements.” Lafayette’s subordination to Washington was emphasized, in other words, but that was what he wanted anyway. Once he reached Philadelphia, he was to report to La Luzerne, hand him this order and his agreements with Washington, ensure the minister’s cooperation, and present himself to Congress. The last item granted the naval commander the freedom to cruise if his help was not needed by the land forces.58

  Lafayette kissed Adrienne goodbye on March 6, 1780, and she promptly collapsed in grief. She remained in bed for two weeks, scarcely able to read the short notes he sent her daily, mostly about how “painful” it was for him to be away from her again. He reached Rochefort on the ninth and wrote longer letters to others. He asked the prince de Poix to send him a silver tea service as a gift for Mrs. Washington. He gave the officer who would replace him in his regiment detailed instructions, saying, “I resign all my rights in your favor until I return to take up French service.”

  The frigate Hermione sailed on March 11, picked up passengers at La Rochelle on the thirteenth, and headed west. On the fifteenth a stout headwind broke the mainmast, and she headed back to port with three English cutters on her tail. On the eighteenth Lafayette wrote a last letter to Adrienne, saying, “Farewell, my dear, I embrace you, and tomorrow I shall give you my news at greater length.” He did not. Just before Hermione weighed anchor on the twentieth, he complained to Franklin that the clothing he had wanted to take along had not arrived.59

  The instructions Lafayette carried were his greatest gift to his adoptive father, elevating him above all other soldiers in America, and they were a gift to America, a positive message that the worst times were over. The Americans would have the muscle to contest Britain’s control of the seas off their coast, without which the future of America was always in doubt.

  TEN

  I Am Considered Too American

  (MARCH-DECEMBER 1780)

  Here, the monster Hunger, still attended us; he was not to be shaken off by any efforts we could use, for here was the old story of starving, as rife as ever…. For several days after we rejoined the army, we got a little musty bread, and a little beef, about every other day, but this lasted only a short time and then we got nothing at all. The men were now exasperated beyond endurance; they could not stand it any longer; they saw no other alternative but to starve to death, or break up the army, give all up and go home.

  —PRIVATE JOSEPH PLUMB MARTIN

  Adrienne was not the only love Lafayette left behind in France. After he landed in America he asked the prince de Poix to send him “in great detail news of Mme de V——. How is another young woman getting on? Tell that young woman that in order not to frighten her I have gone to America, but that on my return she will kindly not run away from me any more.” Mme de V——was probably Henriette-Françoise Puget de Barbantane, comtesse de Vauban, wife of one of Rochambeau’s officers. The other was her sister, Aglaé d’Hunolstein. France was a happy hunting ground for the lusty young marquis, but he had failed again to make Aglaé his mistress.1

  Lafayette told his brother-in-law Noailles that a mutual friend “had only some compliments for me from the charmer…. I often miss Paris and those ladies.” Whether the “charmer” was Aglaé or another of his dalliances is not appare
nt. “I hope, my dear vicomte, that our mistresses will never be so demanding as to prevent us from having supper with other girls, or we so stupid as to break up a party out of obedience. If I had a mistress,” he sighed, “my feelings would be partly based on the delicacy or pride she would display in not showing jealousy and on the freedom I would have to do anything I wanted, even to neglect her without ever finding her demanding.”2

  “I beg you to place my homages at the feet of the queen,” Lafayette told de Poix; “the fêtes at the Trianon and the trips to Maly seem to me now like those delightful dreams that leave a vivid impression and make one sorry to wake up. When I think about the time when I shall enjoy them again, I am like a saintly hermit meditating upon the bliss of the next world. If the divinity who dwells in yours (it is not because she is queen that I am so trite as to call her so, but because she is pretty and gracious) does not think now and then of my affection for her, I can only say that she is a poor judge of feeling.” Whether he was reflecting on some past adventures with Marie-Antoinette or just flirting, it is impossible to say.3

  The young general had other things to occupy him after he returned to Washington’s side. The grand alliance between the French and the Americans, however, was not the great adventure he had thought it would be.

  I EAT SEVERAL MEALS OF DOGG, AND IT RELLISH’D VERY WELL

  As Hermione pounded across the Atlantic, the survival of the Continental Army and the Revolution was in doubt. It was the hardest winter of the century, the paper money was worthless, Congress had become a quarrelsome mob, the states resisted the central government, and the troops were starving. The army was camped in Jockey Hollow, outside Morristown, New Jersey. The men had moved into their huts in December 1779 and had been on half rations since the middle of November. “Those who have only been in Valley Forge or Middlebrook during the last two winters,” de Kalb complained, “but have not tasted the cruelties of this one, know not what it is to suffer.”4

  The snow on the ground was about two feet deep and the weather extremely cold, reported the surgeon James Thacher early in the encampment. The soldiers lacked tents, blankets, shoes, and clothing. Tories refused to sell provisions, and patriots (as the American insurgents had begun to call themselves) demanded hard money. Rations shrank to one-eighth, then disappeared altogether in January. “Poor fellows!” Greene lamented. “A country overflowing with plenty are now suffering an army, employed for the defence of everything that is dear and valuable, to perish for want of food.” The only reason the whole force did not desert, he believed, was because the roads were buried in snow.5

  “We were absolutely, literally starved;—I do solemnly declare that I did not put a single morsel of victuals into my mouth for four days and as many nights,” Private Joseph Plumb Martin remembered. He saw several men roast their old shoes and eat them, and officers kill and eat “a favourite little dog.” That was not an exaggeration. “During our hungry time,” Steuben’s aide James Fairlie told a friend, “I eat several meals of dogg, and it rellish’d very well.”

  When the British besieged Charleston in February 1780, Congress ordered Washington to send troops there. He answered that only half his remaining 6,000 men were fit for duty, and they were too weak to travel. “The patience of the soldiery, who have endured every degree of conceivable hardship,” he complained, “is on the point of being exhausted.”6

  Greene built sleds and hauled food to Jockey Hollow in mid-January 1780. The worst starvation was over, but the winter was not. The men were restless, and small mutinies broke out. Washington sent Steuben to lobby Congress to do something about supplies, but all he got was a promise to send a committee to see him. The inspector general was discouraged. Congress would not or could not finance the army; Major General Lincoln was playing “a hardy game” against the British at Charleston, about to put his head into a noose; Pennsylvania and Virginia were threatening to go to war over “their pretended rights” to western lands; there were feuds among the army’s officers; and the staff departments were a mess.7

  Hermione put into Marblehead on April 27, 1780, to pick up a pilot for Boston Harbor. “Here I am, my dear general,” Lafayette declared, “and in the mist of the joy I feel in finding myself again one of your loving soldiers,” he had affairs “of the utmost importance” that he should communicate to Washington alone. He did not know where Washington was, but “I beg you will wait for me [until I] join my belov’d and respected friend and general.”8

  Hermione fired a thirteen-gun salute as she hove into Boston, a fort returned the favor, and state and local officials met Lafayette on the waterfront. They treated him to banquets, fireworks, parades, and flattering speeches. He told Vergennes that “the reception that they have given me here and the inexpressible signs of goodwill that the American people have deigned to heap upon me have helped to increase my enthusiasm.” It all reflected, he thought, public opinion in favor of France.9

  The marquis made slow progress because of bad roads, receptions in every town, and enemy cavalry prowling for him. Washington received his note on May 7 at his headquarters in Morristown, the Ford House, a large, elegant pile of timber lent to him by a wealthy patriot. He read it “with all the joy that the sincerest friendship could dictate—and with that impatience which an ardent desire to see you could not fail to inspire.” He sent out a troop of cavalry to escort his young friend to Morristown. He promised to “embrace you with all the warmth of an affectionate friend when you come to head qrs.—where a bed is prepared for you.”10

  Lafayette rode into Morristown on the tenth. Washington went out to meet him and, Hamilton remembered, his “eyes filled with tears of joy…a certain proof of a truly paternal love.” The young man threw his arms around his adoptive father and kissed him on both cheeks. “After the first pleasure of meeting was over,” Lafayette recalled, he and Washington went into a private room to talk over the state of affairs. “It was then that I told the commander-in-chief what had been arranged and the help he could now expect.”11

  They spent the next three days plotting actions with the army’s top leaders. Lafayette and Hamilton worked out a protocol for greeting the French fleet. Not knowing where it would land, they sent French officers to places all along the coast. Lafayette consulted with Greene and the surgeons to coordinate supplies and medical care with Corny and La Luzerne’s agents, and hired spies behind enemy lines.12

  Washington and Lafayette discussed the marquis’ dream of invading Canada. The young man did not object when his adoptive father said it would not happen, because the first target, when Rochambeau and Ternay arrived, would be New York. The British already knew that the French were sending an expedition to America, but not where it was headed. Washington suggested that Lafayette issue a proclamation to the Canadians saying that liberation was on the way, to fool the enemy in New York. It should be in his own name and “have as much as possible an air of probability.” He also thought “that something might be addressed to the savages.”

  America’s First Ally, by Percy Moran. This is a dramatic representation of Lafayette’s arrival at Washington’s home and headquarters in Morristown in 1780. Notice Washington extending his arms to embrace his adopted son. (LILLY LIBRARY, INDIANA UNIVERSITY)

  Lafayette prepared a windy bombast telling the peoples of the north that the French were coming to help them throw off the English yoke. He reassured La Luzerne “that in order to mislead the enemy,” it was all a sham. The document would be allowed to fall into enemy hands in New York, and other copies would be “thrown in the fire on the arrival of the French troops; thus I can say all that I please in a work destined never to appear.”13

  Washington advised La Luzerne that Congress had promised to raise an army of 25,000 men, and asked the ambassador to light a fire under the legislature. Then he sent Lafayette to Philadelphia on May 14, 1780, with a letter of introduction. He was “perswaded Congress will participate in the joy I feel at the return of a gentleman who has distinguished him
self in the service of this country so signally,” he said. “The warm friendship I have for him conspires with considerations of public utility to afford me a double satisfaction in his return.” He also declared, “The court of France has done so much for us, that we must make a decisive effort on our part.”14

  Anne-César, chevalier de La Luzerne, by C.W. Peale, 1781–82. La Luzerne was France’s second ambassador to the United States and another “uncle” to the volatile Lafayette. (INDEPENDENCE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK)

  Lafayette reached the capital the next day and presented his orders to La Luzerne, after which he announced himself to Congress. “If from an early epoch in our noble contest, I gloried in the name of an American soldier, and heartily enjoyed the honor I have of serving the United States,” he proclaimed, “my satisfaction is at this long wish’d for moment entirely compleat.” The lawmakers could not match his grandiloquence, but they tried, resolving “[t]hat Congress consider the return of the Marquis de la Fayette to America to resume his command in the army, as fresh proof of the disinterested zeal and persevering attachment which have justly recommended him to the public confidence and applause.”15

  Washington and Lafayette started an interesting shuffle in their relationship. The marquis planted himself close to La Luzerne, advising him on how to manipulate congressmen to raise men and supplies. He became the commander in chief’s point man in all dealings with French officials. He also urged leaders in several states to contribute to the cause. Washington approved of these side-channel communications, exploiting the young general’s popularity as a way to raise people and goods for his army, and it worked. La Luzerne wheedled lawmakers, Lafayette leaned on politicians, Washington put in his own digs, and Congress appointed a committee to raise provisions.16