Lafayette (24 page)

Lafayette was to rejoin Washington, resume his command as an American major general, and serve as liaison between Washington and Rochambeau. Ironically, in adopting Lafayette’s recommendation that Rochambeau report to Washington, the French government gave Washington his first independent authority over a major fighting force. Henceforth, he would no longer have to obtain congressional approval to move his forces and choose his battleground. The independence of command that Lafayette obtained for him in France would prove a key to victory.

John Adams wrote ecstatically to Henry Laurens in Congress: “There is armament preparing with the greatest expedition . . . and to consist of eight or ten ships of the line and frigates . . . with several thousand men; all numbers are mentioned from six to ten thousand. . . . Thus, the French are likely to be drawn into the American seas in sufficient force, where they have great advantages in carrying out the war.”
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On February 29, Lafayette resumed his role as an American major general, and, dressed in his blue, white, and gold uniform, rode to Versailles to take formal leave of his monarch, King Louis XVI, and of Queen Marie-Antoinette. It was a far different departure from the furtive one three years earlier; he would now sail on the king’s frigate, with the monarch’s blessing and the queen’s confidence in his success.

His work done, Lafayette stopped in Passy to see Franklin before returning to Paris. In but a year, he had re-established his position at home as a
loyal subject and officer of the king; he had acquired a position at court as a skilled negotiator and diplomat; he had shaped government policy and military strategy; he had assumed command of the king’s dragoons; and he had paved the way for Franklin to obtain additional French loans to the bankrupt American government. Franklin sent a letter of warm recommendation to Washington, citing 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.”
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And to Congress, Franklin wrote, “The Marquis de La Fayette, who during his residence in France has been extremely zealous in supporting our cause on all occasions, returns again to fight for it. He is infinitely esteemed and beloved here, and I am persuaded will do everything in his power to merit a continuance of the same affection from America.”
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Franklin recognized that without Lafayette he would never have obtained the French financial and military aid to save the revolution.

Lafayette spent his last few days in France in the warm intimacy of his wife and babies. He drew closer to Adrienne than ever before, even giving her power of attorney—unusual for a woman—to direct his financial affairs and ordering the stewards of his huge estate to accept Adrienne’s decisions as his own. Lafayette dismayed the steward of his banking affairs by demanding 120,000 livres—about $1.2 million in today’s currency—to equip an entire American division. The steward warned the marquis he was purchasing glory at the expense of his fortune, but Lafayette replied that glory was beyond price, and Adrienne agreed.
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On Monday, March 6, Lafayette separated himself from Adrienne’s embrace and left Paris for the port of Rochefort, to sail to America. The separation devastated Adrienne, who took two weeks to recover. “The grief my mother experienced,” daughter Virginie wrote later, “was far worse than when he had left her the first time. The enchanting moments they had spent together, coupled with anxieties for his safety, intensified her sadness. She was nineteen by then, and her sensitivities had matured and deepened; she had developed a deeper, more serious trust, intimately tied to his beliefs and ambitions; her heart embraced his judgment.”
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As Adrienne’s love intensified, Lafayette’s heart beat reciprocally. All but devastated by her despondency at their separation, he wrote to her later that morning: “I have stopped here, sweetheart, to tell you how sad I am at leaving you, how much I love you, how much my happiness depends on you, and how moved I am by your anguish over my leaving. Oh, my dearest sweetheart, well though I thought I knew my feelings for you, I could never have imagined that leaving you would hurt me so or that our parting would prove so cruel! Love me, take care of yourself, and believe that I love you to distraction.”
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On April 27, the frigate
Hermione
reached Marblehead, Massachusetts, and an excited young major general jumped ashore to scribble a quick message and shout for a courier to carry it overland at a gallop: “Here I am, my dear general, and, in the midst of the joy I feel in finding myself again one of your loving soldiers, I take but the time to tell you that I came from France on board a frigate which the king gave me for my passage. I have affairs of the utmost importance which I should at first communicate to you alone. In case my letter finds you anywhere this side of Philadelphia, I beg you will wait for me, and do assure you a great public good may be derived from it. To-morrow we go up to the town, and the day after I shall set off in my usual way to join my beloved and respected friend and general.

“Adieu, my dear general; you will easily know the hand of your young soldier.”
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Martha and George Washington fluttered and flittered and fussed about the house like nervous schoolgirls awaiting their first suitor’s knock at the door. They had spent a miserable winter—the coldest in memory—in Morristown, New Jersey, but spring sunshine held their house there in its warm embrace when a courier galloped to the door with the joyful news that “our Marquis has returned” to America.

“My Dear Marquis,” Washington wrote excitedly. “Your welcome favour of the 27th came to my hands yesterday. I received it with all the joy that sincerest friendship would dictate, and with that impatience which an ardent desire to see you could not fail to inspire. I am sorry I do not know your route through the State of New York, that I might with certainty send a small party of horse, all I have at this place, to meet and escort you safely through the Tory settlements. At all events, Major Gibbs will go as far as Compton, where the roads unite, to meet you. . . . I most sincerely congratulate you on your safe arrival in America, and shall embrace you with all the warmth of an affectionate friend, when you come to head-quarters, where a bed is prepared for you. Adieu till we meet.”
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Lafayette’s return was the first good news the Washingtons—and other Patriot leaders—had received in months. The winter of 1780 had crushed the resolve of the American army and its hopes for success in the Revolution. Howling blizzards had whipped the winter quarters at Morristown, ripping tents from their stakes and all but smothering the soldiers beneath blankets of snow. “The snow on the ground is about two feet deep and the weather extremely cold,” lamented Dr. James Thacher, a Massachusetts surgeon who had served with the Continental army since Bunker Hill. “The
soldiers are destitute of both tents and blankets and some of them are actually barefoot and almost naked.”
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Making matters worse was the refusal of pro-British loyalists to proffer food and other provisions to the army. Even Patriot farmers rejected the worthless paper currency—the “Continentals”— that Congress printed. After shortages shrank troop rations to one-eighth their daily needs, Quartermaster General Nathanael Greene bemoaned, “Poor fellows! They exhibit a picture truly distressing—more than half-naked and two-thirds starved. 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.” At Greene’s request, Washington pleaded for food and clothing from New Jersey authorities, writing that his soldiers were “without bread or meat . . . almost perishing for want . . . eating every kind of horse food but hay.”
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Many turned to plunder to survive; others simply deserted.

On February 1, 1780, the British fleet had laid siege to Charleston, South Carolina, while a 14,000-man British army surrounded the city by land. Washington was helpless to respond. Desertions had reduced his army in New Jersey to 6,000 troops, of whom little more than half were fit for duty, and even they were too ill-clothed and weakened by hunger and cold to go to Charleston. “The patience of the soldiery, who have endured every degree of conceivable hardship,” Washington explained to Congress, “is on the point of being exhausted. . . . Drained and weakened as we already are . . . it will be impossible if not impracticable to recover; the country [is] exhausted, the people dispirited.”
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But there was little Congress could do to relieve the army’s plight. Congress was bankrupt, it had no power to tax, and the paper money it printed was worthless. Only the states could ease the nation’s plight by mutual cooperation, but they were virtually independent nations, often as hostile to each other as they were to Britain.

Lafayette’s arrival, therefore, brought the first ray of hope to the gloom that had enveloped America for months. No one knew his mission, but to every American, soldier and civilian alike, as well as to the Washingtons, he was a knight in shining armor from the chivalric past, come to save the nation. He glowed with enthusiasm, courage, and love of country; his was a unifying presence whose aura enveloped and bound them in common cause.

The
Hermione
fired the customary thirteen-gun salute to the United States as it sailed into Boston Harbor, and the harbor fort boomed its thirteen-gun response, arousing the entire city. Before boarding the ship at Marblehead, the pilot had sent advance notice of Lafayette’s coming, and, when the guns announced his arrival, church bells pealed their welcome across the city. As the
Hermione
crossed the harbor and eased along the slip
at Hancock Wharf, Governor John Hancock and Congressman Samuel Adams stood with the city’s most prominent citizens and highest-ranking army officers to greet him, along with a huge crowd and several bands.

“I am embarrassed to describe the details of my arrival in Boston,” Lafayette wrote to Adrienne, “because relating the acts of recognition they gave me may seem pompous. They welcomed me with cannon shots and a cheering crowd surrounded me as I stepped ashore. They escorted me in triumph to [Governor Hancock’s] house. . . . A deputation asked that I appear at the State House, and I tried to remember my English during the hour I was there.”
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That evening, a huge, happy crowd gathered at Hancock House on the crest of Beacon Hill, where Lafayette spent his first night. On the Common below, joyous celebrants set off fireworks, lit a huge bonfire, and exploded in cheers that drew him onto the balcony to address them. The celebration lasted until midnight, only to begin again the following day, the first of four consecutive days of celebration and banqueting.

On May 2, when he prepared to leave, “All the people gathered in front of the house to await my departure,” he wrote to Adrienne, “and there was no expression of love and affection that the crowd did not give me as they escorted me out of the city. Everywhere I’ve been, cannons have greeted my arrival and my departure; the principal citizens ride alongside on horseback to escort me; in short, sweetheart, my reception here is greater than anything I can describe.”
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On May 10, he reached Morristown with an escorting cavalcade of cheering officers and soldiers, among them his beaming friend, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton. Washington’s “eyes filled with tears of joy . . . a certain proof of a truly paternal love.”
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“After the first pleasure of meeting was over, General Washington and I retired into a private room to talk over the state of affairs. The condition of the army was very bad; there was no money, it had become impossible to recruit troops; in short, some special news was needed to re-energize the different States and the army. It was then that I told the commander-in-chief what had been arranged [in Versailles] and the help he could now expect.”
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After an afternoon and evening in private together, the two spent the next three days plotting strategy with Washington’s top commanders, all of them visibly elated at the prospects of a huge French force joining their withered army. At Washington’s suggestion, Lafayette and his friend Hamilton spent a half day planning details for receiving the French—French flags on shore to signal it was safe to land; medical teams to treat troops beset by scurvy, dysentery, and other diseases after the long sea voyage; and a chain of express riders to relay messages from Washington’s headquarters to the French camp. They also used some of Lafayette’s cash to establish a network of spies behind British lines.

Washington recognized that the French force by itself would not ensure the revolution’s success if the states did not provide troops, arms, and other supplies to rebuild the Continental army. Although Congress could not raise an army or levy taxes, its members were influential state leaders who, if Lafayette could convince them, might persuade their state governors and legislatures to act. Without such action, Washington wrote to Congress, “it will be impossible for us to undertake the intended cooperation [with the French army] with any reasonable prospect of success . . . the succor designed for our benefit will prove a serious misfortune. . . . The court of France has done so much for us, that we must make a decisive effort on our part.”
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