Lafayette (22 page)

In the spring of 1779, Lafayette became “the key link” between the United States and France. “I enjoyed the confidence of both countries and both governments,” he explained. “I used the favor I had won at court and in French society to serve the American cause, to obtain every kind of help.”
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His proposal to raid the British and Irish coasts answered the needs of both France and the United States, and, at Franklin’s suggestion, he met with John Paul Jones, the notorious coastal raider, whose exploits against the British had earned him a captain’s commission in the Continental navy. In April, the French government provided five ships and pledged a force of 2,000 raiders. “As this is understood to be an American expedition under the Congress’ commission and colours,” Franklin wrote to Jones, “the Marquis, who is a major-general in that service, has of course the step in point of rank, and he must have the command of the land forces, which are committed by the king to his care.” Concerned that the Scottish-born Jones, a freebooting sea captain ten years older than Lafayette, might resent the young Frenchman, Franklin warned, “I am persuaded, that, whatever authority his rank in strictness give him, he will not have the least desire to interfere with you. There is honour enough to be got for both of you.” To prevent repetition of the Sullivan-d’Estaing conflict at Newport, the wise old doctor also warned Jones that “there is not only a junction of land and sea forces, but there is also a junction of Frenchmen and Americans, which increases the difficulty of maintaining a good understanding. A cool, prudent, conduct in the chiefs is, therefore, the more necessary.”
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To forestall any misunderstanding, Lafayette reached out to the proud Scotsman: “Be certain, my dear sir, that I shall be happy to divide with you whatever share of glory may await us.” Jones replied, “Where men of fine feeling are concerned there is seldom misunderstanding.” He pledged not to give Lafayette “a moment’s pain by any part of my conduct.”
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By mid-May, Jones and his fleet were ready to sail and awaited only the arrival of Lafayette’s troops at Lorient, a major port on the south coast of Brittany. An unusually long personal letter from George Washington buoyed Lafayette’s spirits. He described a British effort “to surprise the post at Elizabethtown [New Jersey]; but failing therein, and finding themselves closely pressed . . . they retreated precipitately through a marsh waist-deep in mud, after abandoning all their plunder.” Washington clearly missed the
companionship of his young friend. As long as the war continued, he wrote, “I shall not despair of sharing fresh toils and dangers with you in America; but if [peace] succeeds, I can entertain little hope, that the rural amusements of an infant world, or the contracted stage of an American theatre, can withdraw your attention and services from the gaieties of a court, and the active part you will more than probably be called to share in the administration of your government. The soldier will then be transformed into the statesman, and your employment in this new walk of life will afford you no time to revisit this continent, or think of the friends who lament your absence.

“The American troops are again in huts,” Washington continued, “but in a more agreeable and fertile country, than they were in last winter at Valley Forge; and they are better clad and more healthy, than they have ever been since the formation of the army. Mrs. Washington is now with me, and makes a cordial tender of her regards to you . . . we respectively wish to have them conveyed to your amiable lady.” Then, as if he had lifted a great weight from his shoulders, Washington ended his letter, “I have now complied with your request in writing a long letter, and I shall only add, that, with the purest sentiments of attachments, and the warmest friendship and regard, I am, my dear Marquis, your most affectionate and obliged, & c.

“P.S. All the other officers of my staff unite most cordially in offering you their sincere compliments.”

Before Washington could dispatch his letter, two of Lafayette’s letters arrived, and he added a second, uncharacteristically emotional postscript: “I must again thank you, my dear friend, for the numerous sentiments of affection which breath so conspicuously in your last farewell, and to assure you that I shall always retain a warm and grateful remembrance of it.”
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To Lafayette’s consternation, what he called “the economy and timidity of French ministers” suddenly annulled plans to raid the English coast. The government ordered him to take command of his regiment of King’s Dragoons, in Saintes—about as far from Jones’s fleet as he could go—in southwestern France, twenty miles inland from the Bay of Biscay. Lafayette was distraught. The transfer seemed to signal the end of French support for the American Revolution and his role as France’s link to America. He saw his new post as nothing less than exile from the seat of government—and from his wife, his family, and the public eye. His departure devastated Adrienne, who was pregnant again and, as before, faced the birth of her child far from her husband.

Lafayette wrote to Jones: “I am only to tell you, my good friend, how sorry I feel not to be a witness of your success, ability and glory . . . nothing could please me more than the pleasure of having again something of the kind to undertake with such an officer as Captain Jones.”
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Jones was as distraught
as Lafayette and demanded an explanation from Versailles. Instead, he received orders of his own to sail his little fleet southward into the Bay of Biscay and help chase the enemy’s vessels from the area.

What neither Jones nor Lafayette could know was that far from abandoning the Lafayette plan to raid the English coast, the French government was planning to expand it to a full-scale invasion. Lafayette’s cunning old friend the comte de Broglie and his brother the maréchal were already massing troops along the Normandy coast, but the French fleet was too small to clear the English Channel of British ships and permit the invasion force to cross unmolested. Vergennes convinced Spain to declare war on England and send an armada to complement the French fleet, and once the Spanish fleet arrived, the combined armada of more than one hundred ships would clear the channel.

When Lafayette learned that his “exile” was part of a broader plan, he whipped his regiment into shape and unsheathed his indefatigable pen to press for a key role in the landings. “Don’t forget,” he wrote to Vergennes, “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 and of winning great confidence. . . . After all that, Monsieur le Comte . . . judge whether I have the right to be the first to reach that shore and the first to plant the French flag in the heart of that insolent nation.”
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Lafayette grew restless waiting for a reply. He wrote two enormous letters—more tomes than letters: one to Congress, the other to George Washington. He missed America and disarmed members of Congress by writing of his “unabounded affection and gratitude which I shall ever feel for them. So deeply are those sentiments engravn on my heart, that I every day lament the distance which separates me from them, and that nothing was ever so warmly and passionately wished for, as to return again to that country of which I shall ever consider myself as a citizen; there is no pleasure to be enjoyed which could equal this, of finding myself among that free and liberal nation, by whose affection and confidence I am so highly honored; to fight again with those brother soldiers of mine.” He promised that “the affairs of America I shall ever look upon as my first business whilst I am in Europe. . . . If congress believe that my influence may serve them . . . I beg they will direct such orders to me.” He went on to describe the military and political situation in France, before changing the tone of his letter to that of someone writing a personal note to close friends or relatives. He recounted his reunion with his wife and family in France: “Happy, in the sight of my friends and family, after I was, by your attentive goodness, safely brought to my native shore, I met there with such an honourable reception, with such kind sentiments, as by far exceeded any wishes I durst have conceived . . . and to
the letter congress was pleased to write on my account, I owe the many favours the king has conferred on me . . . every thing I could have wished, I have received on account of your kind recommendations.”
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In an even longer letter to Washington, he touched on the increasing disputes between the American states. “For God’s sake,” he pleaded, “prevent their loudly disputing together. Nothing hurts so much the interest and reputation of America as to hear of their intestine quarrels.” Most of his tome was a deeply personal letter, however—from a son to his father:

I ardently wish I might be near you. . . . Be so kind, my dear general, as to present my best respects to your lady, and tell her how happy I should feel to present them myself to her at her own house. I have a wife, my dear general, who is in love with you, and her affection for you seems to me to be so well justified that I cannot oppose myself to that sentiment of hers. She begs you will receive her compliments and make them acceptable to Mrs. Washington. I hope, my dear general, you will come to see us in Europe. . . . All Europe wants to see you so much, my dear general, that you cannot refuse them that pleasure. . . . I beg you will present my best compliments to your family, and remind them of my tender affection for them all. Be so kind, also, to present my compliments to the general officers, to all the officers of the army, to every one, from the first major-general to the last soldier.

I earnestly entreat you, my dear general, to let me hear from you. Write me how you do, how things are going on. . . . Adieu, my dear general.
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The following morning he added a postscript: “I have just received, my dear general, an express from court, with orders to repair immediately to Versailles. There I am to meet M. le Comte de Vaux, Lieutenant-General, who is appointed to the command of troops intended for an expedition. . . . The necessity of setting off immediately prevents my writing to General Greene, to the gentlemen of your family, and other friends of mine in the army. . . . Farewell, my dear general, and let our mutual affection last forever.”
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The government appointed Lafayette to the command staff of a 30,000-man army that would invade Britain as soon as the Spanish armada arrived. He was to go ashore with the vanguard of grenadiers, await his regiment of dragoons, and lead them into battle.

He spent the next ten days riding back and forth along the twelve-mile route between Versailles and Paris—his daylight hours at the palace with ministers and generals, his evenings with his wife, his family, and often with Benjamin Franklin. Franklin invited Lafayette and his wife to be guests of honor at an Independence Day celebration at his embassy-home in Passy, where he planned to unveil a portrait of Washington. By July 4, however,
Lafayette had left for Le Havre, and Adrienne, still nineteen, emerged from the shadows of her family—and her own shyness—to assume the role of statesman’s wife. “Imagine Kindliness and Love and Virtue in one person met,” wrote a poet who attended the ceremony.
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At Le Havre, Lafayette and the French army scanned the horizon impatiently for the French-Spanish armada under French admiral comte d’Orvilliers. When no sails came into sight after a month, Lafayette grew skeptical about the enterprise. With his “blood in fermentation,” he wrote to Vergennes to state the obvious: “We hear nothing of M. d’Orvilliers.” Lafayette longed for action, and, in the double negatives that typified French diplomatic language, he told the foreign minister that “if my presence would be less useless [in America] than it is here, I would be willing to go over on an American frigate, which I will take on my own authority, with the justification of rejoining the army in which I served.” The impatient Lafayette then made a proposal—indeed,
the
proposal—that would determine the fate of the American Revolution. In one of the most important documents in the history of the American Revolution, he urged the French government to send a massive naval and military force to the United States for the campaign of 1780, to “restore vigor to the American army” and end the Revolutionary War decisively.
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The French-Spanish armada did not reach the entrance to the English Channel until mid-August, six weeks late, its crews decimated by smallpox. Wind, fog, and storms had combined with administrative incompetence to strip the expedition of any element of surprise. A few French ships tried blockading the British port of Plymouth, but a huge storm blew them out of the Channel, and when they returned, a small, swift British flotilla blocked their passage. When the French moved to engage the British, the fleet British boats all but flew away along a broad, endless, circular route that left them maddeningly out of reach of the big French guns. Days passed, with the French ships lumbering through the waves in vain pursuit of the speedy British boats, while Lafayette and the French army sat helplessly on the French coast awaiting a decisive naval victory that would permit them to cross the channel and invade.

While France and England waited, Benjamin Franklin’s grandson showed up at Lafayette’s headquarters with the magnificent sword Congress had asked Franklin to have made as a gift from the United States. Franklin had hired “the best artists in Paris,” and their work proved remarkable—extraordinary—with a gold handle and intricately carved mottoes, coats of arms, and engraved scenes from four of the battles in which Lafayette had participated in America. On one side of the blade, an engraving showed a young warrior, Lafayette, dealing a death blow to the British lion; on the other, America, released from her chains, hands the young warrior an olive branch.
Franklin was sick and could not present it to Lafayette himself, but sent this note with his grandson: “Sir,—The Congress, sensible of your merit towards the United States, but unable to reward it, determined to present you with a sword, as a small mark of their grateful acknowledgment . . . of your bravery and conduct . . . the sense we have of your worth, and our obligations to you.”
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