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  Rochambeau vented his spleen to La Luzerne. Lafayette, he roared, “after having agreed with us here on all of our basic principles, wrote me on his return to his army a dispatch of twelve pages in which, surely at the instigation of some hotheaded persons, he proposes extravagant things to us, like taking Long Island and New York without a navy.” Lafayette had overstepped his bounds, giving Rochambeau “political inducements: the wishes of the Americans, the efforts they have made in this campaign,” and the obstacles they faced if they delayed a campaign. “Not a word, an order, or even an opinion from Mr. Washington.” He and Ternay were “entirely satisfied” with the general’s dispatches and “could not be more grateful for them.” They would henceforth ignore messages from “some young and ardent persons” whom he saw around the American commander, and he would always address himself directly to his commander to receive his orders. “Tell me if I have guessed correctly about this sort of cabal that I think is surrounding our general and to which his good sense keeps him from surrendering.” The “cabal” was Lafayette alone.39

  There was an international uproar brewing, and La Luzerne had to calm it down. He received unexpected help from Lafayette, who was stunned by Rochambeau’s icy response and apologized to the French leaders on August 18, 1780, saying, “Allow me to acknowledge here that I explained myself very awkwardly.” Among other things, he would “forgo in the future” bringing up political matters. He promised to do everything he could to urge Washington to meet them between the two camps, but that might not be possible soon. “Any time you have orders to give me, regard me as a man who (you can be sure of it) loves his country with a singular passion, and who joins to that interest, which is foremost in his heart, the respectful affection with which I have the honor to be your very humble and obedient servant.”40

  The marquis turned on his boyish charm in a private note to Rochambeau. “[P]ermit me to address myself to you with all the confidence of that tender friendship, that veneration I have felt for you and have tried to show you since my tenderest youth. Although the expressions in your letter show your usual kindness to me, I noticed some items there that, without being addressed to me personally, show me that my last epistle displeased you.” His heart could not “help but be affected at seeing you give my letter such an unfavorable interpretation…If I have offended you, I ask your pardon for two reasons: the first is that I love you; the second is that my intention is to do here all that may please you.” He ended with a postscript. “My error was in writing officially with passion what you would have excused to my youth had I written it as a friend to you alone. But I acted in such good faith that your letter surprised me as much as it grieved me, and that is saying a good deal.”41

  Lafayette asked La Luzerne to help mend fences. He hoped the ambassador did not disapprove of his letter to the French generals, he said. “The letters I enclose here will show you that people are unhappy with me…. You will see by my replies that, without being at fault, I ask for pardon; I would even go on my knees if they wish and I think I would let myself be beaten. I could not keep myself from letting it be known, however, that they were a bit mistaken.” He asked for the ambassador’s support in confidence. “As for me, I shall not meddle in politics anymore.”42

  Before he received that, on August 19 La Luzerne answered Lafayette’s missive of the eleventh, thanking him for “the confidence with which you opened your mind to me” and advising him not to get too worked up over public opinion. “Do you not think that if M. de Ternay judges that it is in fact impossible for him to force the harbor of New York,” he asked bluntly, “it is essential to inform your general of this without concealment?” Besides, it was “better in every way to defer than to run overly large risks.”

  Interrupted by other business, the ambassador resumed on the twenty-third after he had received the marquis’ latest. “Far from disapproving of your letter to our generals,” he assured him, “I rediscover in it your zeal and your patriotism, and even the impatience you display seems to me a laudable sentiment. But the confidence you show in me makes me hope you will be grateful to me for being equally frank.” He asserted that the experience of the French commanders made him side with their views. He especially thought Rochambeau’s desire to meet with Washington was “full of sense” and the best way to establish a plan of operations. In closing, he was very pleased with Lafayette’s “determination to end this little dispute by showing total deference to M. le Comte de Rochambeau.” He could not make “a wiser and more honorable decision.”43

  La Luzerne mollified Rochambeau, agreeing that he should correspond directly with Washington to avoid confusing his opinions with “those of the young people full of ardor and the desire to do well, who are impatient with a necessary delay.” Washington’s subordinates were “young people full of good intentions, but…if one imparts to them an impatience that they do not really have, I believe I can assure you that it would not pass on to their commander.” He was therefore inclined to believe that “what M. de Lafayette has written you is purely a result of his zeal and of a courage that experience will moderate.”44

  Rochambeau cooled off. He had boys of his own and told Lafayette, “Allow an old father, my dear marquis, to reply to you as a cherished son whom he loves and esteems immensely. You know me well enough to believe that I do not need to be roused to action; at my age, when we have made a decision based on military and political considerations…no possible instigation could make me change without a direct order from my general.” Moreover, Washington “tells me in his dispatches that my ideas accord substantially with his own.”

  Lafayette had claimed that French troops were “invincible.” Rochambeau let him in on “a great secret based on forty years’ experience. There are no troops easier to defeat when they have lost confidence in their commander, and they lose that confidence immediately when they have been put in danger because of private or personal ambition. If I have been fortunate enough to keep their confidence thus far, I owe it to the most scrupulous examination of my conscience, in that, of the nearly 15,000 men who have been killed or wounded under my command in the various ranks and in the most murderous actions, I need not reproach myself that a single one was killed for my own advantage.”

  After that stunning statement, the old soldier concluded, “Be well assured, therefore, of my warmest friendship and that, if I have pointed out to you very gently the things in your last letter that displeased me, I concluded immediately that the warmth of your feelings and your heart had somewhat overheated the calmness and prudence of your judgment. Preserve this last quality in the council, and keep all of the first for the moment of action. This is still the old father Rochambeau speaking to his dear son Lafayette, whom he loves and will continue to love and esteem to his last breath.” Lafayette had made a hash of his assignment but saved himself by winning the affection of even those he had offended.45

  The young officer learned from the experience, which reminded him that he was Washington’s agent and not an independent actor. If he had consulted his adoptive father before sending his memorandum, the whole thing could have been avoided. He talked with the general about it after he got Rochambeau’s first response. Washington did not straighten the mess out for him but advised him on how to do that on his own, and he came out of the episode well. The controversy blew over, and the alliance was probably strengthened. Lafayette and Rochambeau remained lifelong friends.

  Washington had learned that there were limits to the duties he could hand even to Lafayette. The war continued, and he would need him for things the young general did have the talent for.

  WHOM CAN WE TRUST NOW?

  The war in the South was a parade of disasters. Washington had sent de Kalb with a division of Continentals to relieve Charleston in April 1780. This was the first command worthy of his considerable abilities as a fighter, but he was not supported by the states he force-marched his 2,000 men through, and they were worn out and nearly starving in southern North Carol
ina when Charleston surrendered, on May 12. When General Benjamin Lincoln called for terms, Clinton humiliated the rebels, denying them the honors of war, meaning they surrendered with their colors cased. This gross insult was not forgotten on the American side.

  In July 1780, against Washington’s wishes, Congress sent Gates to take command of the Southern Army, which he restyled a “Grand Army” when he superseded de Kalb on July 25. The latter’s force had dwindled to about 1,200 men and was in no condition to march without resupply. Gates ordered an immediate advance into South Carolina anyway. Instead of swinging west through country where supplies and patriots were plentiful, he headed straight for Camden, through barren country inhabited by Tories.

  By the time he and his force of nearly 4,000—over half militia—approached Camden, his army was scattered and disorganized, and almost every man broke ranks often to answer the call of diarrhea, thanks to green rations. Cornwallis had concentrated on Camden to guard the stores and 800 sick he had at the place. The resulting battle on August 16, 1780, was the most complete defeat ever suffered by the Americans during the war. The militia stampeded at the first shot, and only de Kalb stood firm on the right. His horse shot from under him, bleeding from several wounds, the gallant Prussian refused to retreat and mounted a stunning counterattack. Without support, he was overwhelmed, and his body was later retrieved with eleven wounds in it. The Grand Army was annihilated.

  Gates rode sixty miles to the rear that day and kept going, abandoning southern North Carolina. “But was there ever an instance of a general running away,” snorted Hamilton, “as Gates has done, from his whole army? And was there ever so precipitate a flight? One hundred and eighty miles in three days and a half. It does admirable credit to the activity of a man at his time of life.” His friends in Congress defended him, but Gates was disgraced and out of the war. So were South Carolina, Georgia, and much of North Carolina.46

  Washington could do nothing about the South for the moment, because Congress had placed it outside his command. Instead, he was tied down around New York, where he and Clinton probed at each other without a major engagement.

  The force nearest the enemy was Lafayette’s Light Division, at outposts radiating from the “light camp.” He gave his officers uniforms, swords, cockades, and epaulets, which he had brought with him from France. He had no uniforms for the 2,000 enlisted men, however. Each light infantry battalion was distinguished by the black and red plumes. He told his brother-in-law Noailles that he would “prefer that it were distinguished by a uniform or a good pair of shoes, but our skin is exposed, and we are sometimes barefoot, not to mention that the inside is often no better provided for than the outside.” Lafayette bought a big white horse, like Washington’s, on which to lead his men. He enjoyed a close relationship with his soldiers, whose morale was the highest in the army, according to surgeon James Thacher. “They were the pride of his heart, and he was the idol of their regard.”47

  The chevalier de Chastellux, French tourist and sometime aide to Rochambeau, also was impressed. “We found all his troops in order of battle on the heights to the left, and himself at their head,” he reported, “expressing, by his air and countenance, that he was happier in receiving me there, than at his estate in Auvergne. The confidence and attachment of the troops, are for him invaluable possessions, well acquired riches, of which nobody can deprive him.” As for the marquis, what was “still more flattering for a young man of his age, is the influence, the consideration he has acquired amongst the political, as well as the military order.” That made him think about the future. “On seeing him,” he remarked, “one is at a loss which most to admire, that so young a man as he should have given such eminent proofs of talents, or that a man so tried, should give hopes for so long a career of glory.”48

  Lafayette concluded that nothing was going to happen in the north until the French provided more help, so he looked south. Washington called for his generals’ views, and the marquis said that the Continental Army ought to try to recover the southern states if Ternay would supply transportation. He had given up for the moment on a direct assault on New York. “Indeed sir, our ressources of every kind are so precarious that unless we depend on a more firm bazis, it is impossible to fix on any operation.”49

  The state of the Revolution was so low that Congress considered giving Washington dictatorial powers. Lafayette confided in La Luzerne about this, though he had learned his lesson about interfering in politics. He did not know whether, as Washington’s friend, he ought to desire it for him, he said, but he understood “very certainly that I must neither speak of it nor ever appear to wish for this measure, which nevertheless seems immensely important to me.” If Washington was in charge of everything, the French government might be more forthcoming with material aid. But the cause his adoptive father fought for was altering his outlook. His “republican and even entirely democratic principles,” he said, should make him oppose such a measure. He also would not approve of it if he did not know the man and if he did not think the dictatorship “necessary to the public safety.” Congress rejected the proposal, but the choice between democracy and dictatorship would linger in the marquis’ mind for many years to come.50

  On September 8, 1780, deciding that nothing would happen in his absence, Washington asked Rochambeau and Ternay to meet him at Hartford, Connecticut. His party rode out on the seventeenth. Lafayette, Knox, and an engineer went along with him. Six aides and an escort of twenty-two dragoons completed the procession. They stopped for lunch at West Point on the eighteenth, hosted by the commander of the fortifications, Benedict Arnold, who ferried them over the river in the early afternoon. Hamilton remained behind to receive dispatches.51

  Major General Arnold was one of the most famous soldiers in the army, thirty-nine years old, formerly a druggist. He had a large head on a bull neck, with a high brow, fierce eyes, and a thrusting chin. He was a born fighter, wounded in the Quebec and Saratoga campaigns severely enough that he could not again command in the field. Arnold had become military governor of Philadelphia after Clinton abandoned the place, and Pennsylvania president Joseph Reed drew up a list of charges against him. His tenure had been dishonest, but the state’s case was faulty. Congress cleared him of most of the charges but ordered a court-martial on four. In January 1780 the court cleared him of all but one. His sentence was a reprimand from the commander in chief, which Washington wrote as almost a commendation, but Arnold seethed with resentment. He harbored old grudges on various accounts and was vain, resentful, greedy, and quarrelsome.

  In April 1779 Arnold had married Margaret Shippen, daughter of a prominent loyalist family. Peggy Shippen was nineteen years old, pretty, vivacious, rich, and well connected. With her help he began secret negotiations with the British. Pointing to his wounds, he talked Washington into assigning him to West Point, whose fortifications blocked the Hudson River, denying it to the British. He aimed to sell it to the enemy. Nobody in Washington’s party knew that, of course, and the lunch was delightful. The commander in chief enjoyed flirting with pretty young women, and Peggy was an expert in that department.52

  Washington and his group rode into Hartford on September 21. When they met their French opposite numbers, the tall, courtly Washington overwhelmed them. Chastellux called him “the greatest and the best of men. The goodness and benevolence which characterize him, are evident from every thing about him; but the confidence he gives birth to never occasions improper familiarity; for the sentiment he inspires…[is] a profound esteem for his virtues, and a high opinion of his talents.”

  Benedict Arnold, engraving after an earlier portrait. Arnold’s attempt to sell West Point to the enemy has made his name a synonym for traitor. (AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)

  Rochambeau’s aide Hans-Axel, comte de Fersen, was awestruck. “I had the opportunity of seeing this man, the most illustrious, not to say unique, in our century,” he said. “His face handsome and full of majesty, but at the same time kind and honest…he looks like a
hero; he seems to be very distant, speaks little but is polite and gentlemanly. His countenance is overcast with sadness, but this becomes him perfectly.”53

  Rochambeau, Ternay, and Washington spent September 22 together, with Lafayette as translator and secretary. They agreed on everything. New York was the “first and foremost object we can have on this continent,” but to take it they needed more troops, ships, and money from France. Lafayette wrote the ten points of agreement in parallel French and English versions, and together the allied commanders asked King Louis for more help. “They separated quite charmed with one another, at least they said so,” as one of Rochambeau’s aides put it. The French commander sent his son, the vicomte de Rochambeau, to France with the message.54

  The Americans headed back toward West Point, through hills ablaze with fall colors, to inspect the fortifications. Washington sent aides ahead to tell the post commander and his wife to expect them for dinner. While the aides enjoyed breakfast, Arnold received a message that visibly upset him. He rushed upstairs and said something to Peggy, who shrieked. Arnold then left the house. Sometime later, Hamilton received a package of dispatches, which he assumed were routine returns. He handed it to the commander in chief when he arrived in the afternoon.