Lafayette (34 page)

“In the moment the Major General leaves this place,” he called out to them through his tears, “he wishes once more to express his gratitude to the brave corps of light infantry who for nine months past have been companions of his fortunes. He will never forget that with them alone of regular troops, he had the good fortune to maneuver before an army which after its reduction is still six times superior to the regular forces he had at that time.”
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Although the rest of his address is missing, he wrote to his friend, the Reverend Samuel Cooper, in Boston that “never have my feelings been so delightfully gratified as they were . . . when the American light infantry . . . gallantly stormed a redoubt Sword in hand, and proved themselves equal in this business to the Grenadiers of the best troops in Europe.”
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On November 1, Lafayette left Yorktown with his brother-in-law, the vicomte de Noailles, and other French officers who were returning to France with him. Baltimore hailed their arrival five days later, and James Madison greeted them on behalf of Congress in Philadelphia. After granting him official leave, Congress appointed him its official advisor to American diplomats abroad—in effect, America’s first ambassador-at-large. Secretary of Foreign Affairs Robert Livingston instructed Franklin in Paris, Adams in The Hague, and John Jay in Madrid “to communicate and agree on everything with him.”
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Congress also assumed the 2,000-livre debt Lafayette had incurred with Baltimore merchants to clothe his Light Division—a generous gift from a bankrupt nation, but a mere pittance compared to the 165,952 livres—about $1.66 million in today’s currency—that Lafayette had spent on the Revolution.

In still another display of affection, Congress sent an official letter of commendation to King Louis XVI. Addressed to America’s “Great, Faithful and Beloved Friend and Ally,” the letter thanked the French monarch effusively for his “generous support,” and noted, “Major General the Marquis de la Fayette has in this campaign so greatly added to the reputation he had before acquired, that we are desirous to obtain for him, on our behalf, every notice in addition to that favourable Reception which his merits cannot fail to meet with from a generous and enlightened Sovereign; and in that view, we have directed our Minister Plenipotentiary to present the Marquis to Your Majesty.”
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Always teary-eyed and flustered at such moments, Lafayette lost all command of English grammar and metaphors, replying, “My attachment to America, the sense of my obligations, and the new favors conferred upon me are so many everlasting ties that devote me to her. At every time, in every part of the world my hearts will be panting for opportunities to be employed in her service.”
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On November 25, Livingston, Finance Secretary Robert Morris, and Washington met with Lafayette and instructed him to ask the French court for a new subsidy or loan of 10 million livres (about $100 million in today’s currency), along with additional naval and military aid.

Congress assigned the frigate
Alliance
to carry Lafayette back to France, and, ten days later, Lafayette arrived in Boston with his friends to sail home. The people of Boston would have none of it: the bells of every church tolled his arrival, and, by the time he and the other French officers reached the town hall near Hancock Wharf, the entire population blocked their route with whoops and cheers and songs. John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Reverend Samuel Cooper, the French consul, and others welcomed them with speeches, then guided the heroes from one festivity to the next—for days on end. They visited every historic site in Boston, Lexington, Concord, and, of course, Charlestown, where an explosion of cheers greeted them on Bunker Hill as Lafayette pledged 25 livres—about $250 in modern money—to rebuild the Charlestown meeting house, which had burned during the battle. The endless celebrations provoked Noailles to write in broken English to an American friend, “I think [it] indeed more easy to take a British army than to have a frigate out of Boston harbour. Since my arrival in this town I have been running, speaking, disputing, and I don’t believe we shall be able to go to sea.”
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A week passed before Boston finally let the
Alliance
sail.

Adieu, my dear general, [Lafayette wrote to Washington]. I know your heart so well, that I am sure that no distance can alter your attachment to me. With the same candour, I assure you that my love, my respect, my gratitude for you, are above expression; that, at the moment of leaving you, I felt more than ever the strength of those friendly ties that for ever bind me to you, and that I anticipate the pleasure, the most wished for pleasure, to be again with you, and, by my zeal and services, to gratify the feelings of my respect and affection. Will you be pleased to present my compliments and respects to Mrs. Washington, and to remember me to General Knox and General Lincoln. Adieu, my dear general, your respectful and loving friend, &c.
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Ironically, Lafayette’s ship slipped out of Boston harbor just as another ship sliced through Atlantic waters out of New York bay—carrying Benedict Arnold to exile in disgrace in Britain. Before leaving, Arnold compounded his crimes against his former compatriots by ordering troops to burn New London and the homes of former neighbors in Connecticut, where he had once been a simple apothecary who tended their ills.
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After twenty-four uneventful days at sea, Lafayette landed in Lorient, on the southern coast of Brittany on January 17, 1782, and, three days later, he burst through the doors of the Noailles mansion in Paris and swept his
two children into his arms. When he finally set them down, he discovered they had “grown up so much and that I have grown a great deal older.”
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His wife was not home, but a crowd soon formed outside the mansion’s great facade, as a cortege of gilded carriages approached.

“Everyone who was there at the time still remembers the enthusiasm that the return of Lafayette engendered,” wrote Lafayette’s daughter.
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King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette had been at the Hôtel de Ville— the city hall—for a gala celebration of the birth of their first son and heir to the throne. Throwing protocol aside, the queen rushed Adrienne into the royal carriage and took her to the Noailles mansion, where the great knight awaited in his American major general’s uniform. “Marie-Antoinette congratulated him warmly on his victories and safe return,” according to one witness. Then “she delivered his wife to him down the carriage steps to the cheers and applause” of the surrounding crowd. “Trembling and faint with joy, Adrienne fell into her Gilbert’s arms, and he carried her into the house.”
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Adrienne “was overwhelmed by the joy of having him with her again, of his returning home safely from so many terrible dangers. For many months after his return,” according to her daughter, “she actually felt ill every time he left their room.” Adrienne later confessed to her husband that during those first few months after his return, she often grew faint when he left the room, fearing he might return to war and that she would never see him again. “I tried to find ways to control my feelings so you wouldn’t become annoyed with me,” she told him. “How happy I was!”
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The day after his return, Lafayette went to Versailles to pay homage to the king and confer with the king’s ministers. He found the entire court at his feet—as, indeed, he would find all France and all Europe. Crowds followed his carriage, cheering and applauding and crying out
“Vive Lafayette!”
Artists vied to paint his portrait; poets praised him in verse and song, comparing him to ancient Greek and Roman heroes; philosophers wrote pamphlets extolling him; performers in concert halls and at the opera acknowledged his presence; he and Adrienne were the center of attention and adulation at every court festivity and every salon in Paris.

“The reception I have met with from the nation at large, from the king and from my friends will I am sure be pleasing to you and has surpassed my utmost ambition,” he wrote to Washington. The king heaped compliments on his new brigadier general and spoke of Washington “in terms of so high a confidence, regard, admiration, and affection that I cannot forbear mentioning it. I have been the other day invited . . . with all the maréchals of France where your health was drank with great veneration, and I was requested to present you with the homages of that body. All the young men of this court are soliciting a permission to go to America.” As always, he ended
his letter on a personal note: “My Daughter and Your George are . . . in perfect health.”
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Despite the social demands on his time, Lafayette happily renewed his friendship with his Masonic brother Benjamin Franklin and set to work fulfilling his diplomatic mandate from Congress—much to the satisfaction of the seventy-one-year-old Philadelphian, whose crippling arthritis had transformed the otherwise beautiful, ten-mile carriage ride to Versailles into pure torture. The venerable doctor greeted Lafayette warmly, gazed with justifiable pride at the young man’s uniform and sash of an American major general—and the handsome ceremonial sword Franklin had so lovingly helped design as a gift from Congress two years earlier.

“We are on the most friendly and confidential footing with each other,” Franklin assured Foreign Affairs Secretary Livingston, “and he is really very serviceable to me in my applications for additional assistance. . . . The Marquis de la Fayette was, at his return hither received by all ranks with all possible distinction. He daily gains in the general esteem and affection and promises to be a great man here.”
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Washington renewed his request for Franklin and Lafayette to obtain “further pecuniary aid” from France, along with “a decisive naval force upon this Coast in the latter end of May or beginning of June [1782]—unlimited in its stay and operations . . . to finish the War in the course of the next campaign [summer, 1782] with the ruin of that People [the English].”
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Franklin had been trying to fulfill Washington’s request for weeks and had all but given up hope when Lafayette arrived and assured the venerable doctor that “the footing I am upon at this court enables me some times to go greater lengths than could be done by a foreigner.”
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With Franklin’s blessing, he eagerly assumed the role of American statesman in King Louis’s court, always wearing his American major general’s uniform and sash to display his fealty, and, with each visit, accumulating ever more skills in the art of diplomacy and negotiation.

Franklin had sought a loan of only 6 million livres ($60 million in today’s currency); Lafayette asked for 12 million—and easily got the 6 million Franklin wanted. He asked for massive naval and military aid, pointing out to Vergennes that while Yorktown had been an important victory, it had not ended the war. Without a decisive new thrust by France, he told the minister, “I think that the evacuation of New York and Charleston are as remote a part of their future plans as the evacuation of London. To get them out, they will have to be forced out. . . . Otherwise, you can be sure that England is determined to play a waiting game, spreading despair, and they will attempt at least one more military campaign.”
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After Franklin thanked him for his efforts, Lafayette replied joyfully, “Mr. Franklin cannot render his friend more happy than in employing of
him for the service of America, and he feels a particular pleasure in avoiding for the doctor the trouble of journeys to Versailles where his peculiar situation calls him two or three times a week.”
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Late in February, the British House of Commons censured Prime Minister Lord North’s American policies and voted against continuing the war. Subsequent instructions to begin peace negotiations obviated the need for France to invest in new military adventures in America. On March 20, North resigned after a dozen years in office, and, early in April, the British named Richard Oswald to begin preliminary peace talks with Vergennes and Franklin, although he quickly recognized he would have to deal with Lafayette as well. Lafayette insisted that before talks could begin, the British release former president of Congress Henry Laurens from the Tower of London, and they agreed, although he had to remain in London on parole. Learning that Laurens was penniless, Lafayette sent him a letter of credit for £500 and negotiated an exchange of Laurens for Lord Cornwallis, who was on parole in America.

Oswald accompanied Laurens across the channel to France, and preliminary peace talks appeared ready to proceed. At every meeting, however, Oswald did his best to undermine negotiations. “You will see,” the comte de Ségur warned Lafayette, “that there are as many absurdities in [diplomatic] negotiations as in [military] campaigns. You are going to be more than ever revolted by English pride, absurd Spanish vanity, French inconsistency, and despotic ignorance. But the more obstacles you cross, the greater merit you will deserve.”
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From the first, Oswald tried to divide the allied camp by meeting with Franklin, Lafayette, and Vergennes separately—warning Franklin not to trust the French and Vergennes not to trust the Americans. He sent an aide to The Hague with a separate proposal for John Adams, who already mistrusted the French. Lafayette reported the “insidious proposals” to Secretary Livingston, saying Vergennes had rebuffed Oswald with a curt comment that “France would never treat without her allies.” Adams did the same, saying “nothing could be done but in concert with France.”
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Franklin refused to negotiate until England recognized American independence, but negotiations dragged on, with each new British proposal invariably falling short of full recognition.

“I see that the expectation of peace is a joke,” Lafayette exploded at Oswald’s aide one day, “and that you only amuse us without any real intention of treating.”
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Lafayette dutifully reported his pessimism to Secretary of State Livingston: “A good army in America will do more to bring peace than one can imagine. . . . The king of England is more irritated than humiliated, it is thus necessary to convince him firmly of the impossibility of conquering us. If this campaign is vigorous, it will certainly be the last.”
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