Adopted Son

by David A Clary

  THIRTEEN

  Do Often Remember Your Adopted Son

  (JANUARY 1782–DECEMBER 1784)

  They did not…sunder themselves from a parent fallen into decrepitude; but with astonishing audacity they affronted the wrath of England in the hour of her triumph, forgot their jealousies and quarrels, joined hands in the common cause, fought, endured, and won. The disunited colonies became the United States.

  —FRANCIS PARKMAN

  News of Yorktown raced across the Atlantic. France was electrified, England stunned. The British prime minister, Lord North, cried, “Oh God! It is all over!” On March 4, 1782, Parliament voted to “consider as enemies to his majesty and the country all who should advise or by any means attempt to further prosecution of offensive war on the continent of North America.” Except for skirmishing in the South, the guns fired no more.1

  A pile of congratulations greeted Lafayette when he landed at Lorient in the middle of January. Vergennes told him, “The rejoicing is very lively here and throughout the nation, and you may be assured that your name is venerated here.” The new minister of war said, “You have made a most glorious campaign, Monsieur le Marquis. Our old warriors admire you; the young ones want to take you as a model.”

  The king had promoted Lafayette to maréchal de camp (field marshal, the nearest equivalent to his American rank of major general). It would take effect after he left American service when a peace was signed, but it dated from October 19, 1781. At the age of twenty-four he had jumped two ranks, over the heads of many older officers. His colonelcy in the King’s Dragoons went to Noailles, who paid him 60,000 livres. Since the post had cost him 80,000 livres, it was another loss.2

  A newspaper said, “The general who contributed most to the success of this great enterprise, is without contradiction the Marquis de la Fayette. It is he who followed Cornwallis step by step, who harassed him unceasingly, who drove him back into Yorktown, and who prepared his downfall.” He was the “Conqueror of Cornwallis” and the “Hero of Two Worlds.”3

  The title “Friend of Washington” pleased Lafayette the most. Their relationship had changed him. He had adopted an American directness and would not fawn on or defer to social superiors. Like Washington, he would treat everyone with respect and politeness, but only his adoptive father rated deference.

  IN EVERY THING I DO I FIRST CONSIDER WHAT YOUR OPINION WOULD BE

  However happy he was to be in France, the marquis told Washington, he looked forward to returning to America and to the general’s side. Washington, in “a remembrance from me, to you,” sent him a resolution from the Virginia House of Delegates, praising the marquis and ordering that a bust be made of him. He had “a peculiar pleasure,” he said, “in becoming the channel through which the just and grateful plaudits of my native state, are communicated to the man I love.”4

  Lafayette reached Paris on January 21 and found the streets mobbed. The king and queen were hosting a rally at the Hôtel de Ville (city hall) to celebrate the birth of the dauphin, the heir to the throne. Adrienne was there. News of his return spread through the crowd, so the queen put Adrienne into the royal coach and headed for the Noailles palace. Marie-Antoinette got out, paid her respects to Lafayette, then presented his wife to him. Adrienne fainted dead away, and he carried her inside. The crowd went wild.5

  The marquis was a greater celebrity than he had been the last time, and again he exploited it. He paid little attention to Adrienne, except that she was pregnant again by March. He was summoned to Versailles, and the court applauded as the king honored him. He danced with the queen, and although he was still awkward, everyone admired his grace.

  Lafayette told Washington that the welcome he had received would “I am sure be pleasing to you.” The king had praised the American general “in terms so high” that he could not “forbear mentionning it,” and at a banquet for all the maréchals of France, Washington’s “health was drank with great veneration.”6

  Lafayette planned to get more help for his adoptive father. He called on Franklin, who was delighted to see his “political aide-de-camp” again. The old printer had about given up asking for a new loan of 6 million livres. Lafayette, in his American uniform, hounded the ministers and raised the amount to 12 million. He met two responses: France could not afford it, and the Americans were not doing enough to help themselves. That did not faze him. The marquis, Franklin reported, had visited all the ministers, pushing them to grant more money for the United States, “and being better acquainted with facts he was able to speak with greater weight than I could possibly do.”7

  As Franklin’s agent, Lafayette again made himself the pest of Versailles, and once again it paid off. On February 25, 1782, Vergennes told him that a loan of 6 million livres had been approved.8

  The diplomatic waters were about to become more turbulent. Lafayette would have to “reconcile the French and American characters,” his friend Ségur warned him, “deal tactfully with opposing interests, and fill the measure of your glory to overflowing by adding the olive branch to the laurel leaves.” It would not be easy. He predicted that Lafayette would become “more revolted than ever at English arrogance, stupid Spanish vanity, French inconsistency, and despotic ignorance.”9

  Lord North resigned as prime minister on March 20, 1782. Parliament sent emissaries to Paris to get a separate peace with France, but Vergennes spurned them. Meanwhile, the Spanish would not recognize the United States and refused to receive the American minister, John Jay. The marquis fired his usual weapon—letters. He wrote Jay notes that he knew would be opened in transit, reminding the Spanish of their Bourbon heritage. Still, Spain saw the United States as a rival in the Mississippi Valley.10

  As much as he wanted to return to his adoptive father, Lafayette decided that he could better serve the cause by staying in France. “I hope, my dear general,” he begged, “you will approuve of my conduct.” He explained that he needed to be on hand as diplomatic and political affairs sorted themselves out.11

  Washington returned to his dwindling army in April 1782, and in the fall the Continental Army went into its last winter quarters, at New Windsor, where the soldiers erected over 700 timber huts and a large assembly building. Chastellux described the quarters as “spacious, healthy, and well built, and consist in a row of ‘log-houses’ containing two rooms, each inhabited by eight soldiers when full.” It was a far cry from the smoky hovels of Valley Forge. There the army sat while in South Carolina Greene traded jabs with the British in Charleston.12

  When French visitors gave Washington news of the marquis, they felt they were talking to a father about his absent son. The prince de Broglie visited headquarters that spring. When they drank a toast to the marquis, he said, Washington’s face softened and shone with a benevolent smile.13

  Lafayette conquered Aglaé d’Hunolstein at last, and she became his mistress, but he was so famous that they were denied the veneer of discretion that French nobles papered their frolics with. Their relationship became unusually scandalous. Her husband did not care, but her mother demanded that she break it off. It continued anyway, and soon the marquis paid court to Diane-Adélaïde de Damas d’Antigny, madame de Simiane, childless wife of the marquis de Miremont. Adélaïde was a beauty even more dazzling than Aglaé, and also Adrienne’s friend. As usual, his wife swallowed any resentment and subordinated herself to him in everything.14

  Lafayette got Henry Laurens released from British custody in April 1782. He had been let out of the Tower of London on bond in December, and the marquis demanded that he be allowed to go to France. While working up paroles for Cornwallis and his aides, he proposed exchanging Laurens for Cornwallis, whose many titles included Constable of the Tower, in principle making him Laurens’ jailer. The British allowed his friend to leave after Lafayette sent him a letter of credit to travel and live on. Ironically, Congress later disapproved his exchange, and he was traded for Burgoyne instead.15

  The marquis was less successful with Spain. “The Spaniards
don’t like America,” he warned Hamilton. He badgered the French ministers with his “outrage” and “disgust” over the Spaniards’ refusal to receive Jay. It was doubly annoying because at The Hague Adams was making headway. In April the last of the United Provinces of the Netherlands recognized American independence, and work began on commercial and loan treaties. Franklin advised Jay to leave Madrid. He went to Paris to deal with the Spanish minister to France, the conde de Aranda. They nearly came to blows in Vergennes’ antechamber, when the Spanish minister said that they could not exchange credentials because his government had not recognized American independence. Lafayette butted in, saying that it would not be “consistent with the dignity of France for her ally to treat otherwise than as independent.” According to Jay, this crack appeared “to pique the Count d’Aranda not a little.” Vergennes urged Jay to deal with the Spaniard anyway. The American refused. So long as the two countries disagreed on where the boundary between them should be—the Mississippi or the Appalachians—there was no getting them together.16

  Lafayette fretted constantly that Washington would not approve his staying in France. He wrote him in April, again asking for his approval, and to say how much it hurt him to be on the wrong side of the Atlantic. He had not heard from him for so long that he was worried. At the same time, he feared that France would make a separate peace, and told Vergennes that it would not end the war. The only way to get Britain to recognize American independence was to beat her into it. He urged the minister to send a fleet and more troops to Washington, to capture New York, Charleston, and Canada.17

  He was wasting wind. The presence in Paris of peace emissaries from London meant that the war was over, except for the paperwork. Regarding the British envoys, Franklin reported that Lafayette had asked about his dealings with them. “Agreeable to the resolutions of Congress, directing me to confer with him and take his assistance in our affairs, I communicated with him what had past.” Lafayette offered to serve as an American ambassador to any peace settlement, and Franklin said he “lik’d the idea.”

  At Lafayette’s request, Franklin arranged a meeting with one of the Englishmen, and they “parted much pleas’d with each other.” However, it took the marquis months to realize that his divided loyalties meant that neither the French nor the American envoys would trust him with everything. As he confessed to Adams, he had “no public capacity to be led into political secrets.” He might as well have gone back to Washington.18

  “The Marquis de Lafayette is of great use in our affairs here,” Franklin reported in June, and since there was not likely to be military action in America, the Doctor wanted him to stay at least a few more weeks. John Jay echoed him. Lafayette told Washington about that and asked again for the general to approve his staying in Paris a little longer. He promised to sail for America in a month if he could.19

  The British refused to talk to the Americans, the French refused to negotiate without them, and the two British envoys squabbled constantly. On June 17, 1782, Parliament passed an “enabling act,” which the king signed on the nineteenth. It “enabled” the government to negotiate with the Americans. Then news arrived of the Battle of the Saints in the Caribbean, on April 12. De Grasse lost eight ships and was captured by British admiral George Rodney, whose government lost its enthusiasm for peace negotiations. “I am at a loss,” Lafayette complained to Washington about this latest setback.20

  Shrugging off that disappointment, the marquis reattached himself to the Freemasons, who received him enthusiastically. He was “seated in the east,” the place of highest honor, although he was “not of high masonic rank.” He let it be known publicly that he was a member of the order, which was still legally dangerous in France. It was his first open alignment with the egalitarian ideas of French liberals, many of them Masons.21

  Lafayette brought Washington up to date near the end of June. He felt sorry for himself and wanted the elder man to feel sorry for him also, because he suffered “an insupportable degree of uneasiness” at not being with him. However, staying in France to help the American agents, he said, was a necessary sacrifice for the common cause. He reported Adrienne’s pregnancy, hoping that Washington’s godson George would soon have a brother. He ended with, “Adieu, my dear general…in every thing I do I first consider what your opinion would be had I an opportunity to consult it. I anticipate the happiness to be again with you.”22

  Lafayette looked forward to turning twenty-five on September 6, 1782. That would make him legally an adult, in full charge of his own affairs. He had been fairly unrestricted as an orphan anyway, but now he could buy and sell real estate. In addition, his fortune had grown while he was in America, thanks to an inheritance from a great-grandfather. It was time to get out of his in-laws’ house.

  The marquis spent 200,000 livres on a palatial mansion on the Left Bank, another 100,000 livres to remodel the place, and 50,000 more to decorate and furnish it in a mixture of Louis XV and rustic American. Characteristically, he dumped the whole responsibility for supervising the work on Adrienne. Perhaps because of the extra strain, she gave birth two months prematurely. Lafayette named the girl Marie-Antoinette-Virginie. He wanted “to present her as an offering to my western country,” he told Franklin. “And as there is a good Sainte by the name of Virginie, I was thinking if it was not presuming too much to let her bear a name similar to that of one of the United States.” Franklin observed, “And as we cannot have too many of so good a race, I hope you & Mde. de la Fayette will go thro’ the Thirteen.”23

  Lafayette told Washington that, with little for him to do in the peace negotiations, “God grant, my dear general, I may be with you before you get this letter!” Nothing meant more to him than rejoining his adoptive father.24

  But Franklin still needed him. The marquis shuttled between the Doctor and Vergennes, trying to iron out the “scruples” that were holding up peace negotiations. Vergennes urged that the British commissioners be empowered to negotiate a treaty with the Americans. The first article would renounce any British claims over the United States. That broke the logjam. In September 1782 British envoy Richard Oswald received a new commission authorizing him to treat with “the thirteen United States of America.” That satisfied Franklin and the other American diplomats. However, Lafayette had conspired with Vergennes to send a French commissioner to London, arousing Jay’s suspicions. He accused Lafayette of serving his own ambitions by posing as either American or French when it suited him. The marquis was stung.25

  Negotiations bogged down again when the British defeated the Spanish at Gibraltar. With time on his hands, Lafayette wrote his adoptive father on October 14. He needed another dose of approval.26

  Washington always knew the right thing to say. “I approve, very highly,” he assured him, “the motives which induced you to remain at your court, and I am convinced Congress will do the same.” The allied armies had nothing to do but watch the British. “I had prepared a beautiful corps for you to command,” he said. “It consisted of all the light infantry.” That was just what his young friend wanted to hear.

  There was also sad news to report. “Poor Laurens is no more. He fell in a trifling skirmish in South Carolina, attempting to prevent the enemy from plundering the country of rice. Genl. [Charles] Lee is also dead…. Your aid G.W. [George Augustine Washington, the general’s nephew and Lafayette’s aide in Virginia] has had an intermittant fever ever since April & by last acts. of him from Mount Vernon where he is, he was very low and weak.” Washington ended with, “Adieu my dear marqs. Believe me to be, what I really am your sincere friend.”27

  Lafayette badgered Vergennes for a chance to drive the enemy off Washington’s back. He wanted to assemble a big fleet and army, take Gibraltar, sail west to conquer Jamaica, then go north against wherever the British remained in North America. Vergennes could no longer deny the marquis anything, but that was too much for France to handle alone. He talked Spain into going along, with Gibraltar and Jamaica as reward. Together the two
governments assembled an armada of sixty-six ships of the line and transports for 25,000 troops at Cádiz. D’Estaing was commander in chief, with Lafayette his second, commanding the land forces. He told Washington that although he would carry his field marshal’s rank in the French army, he would wear his American uniform, as “an officer borrowed from the United States.” Once he had Jamaica in hand, he would lead his army to Washington’s side.28

  Alarmed by news of the expedition, the British came around. On November 30, 1782, the British and American commissioners signed preliminary articles of peace, the first of which declared that the United States were “free, sovereign and independent states.” King George relinquished “all claims to the government, property, and territorial rights of the same, and every part thereof.” Three months later, Britain, France, and Spain signed their own preliminaries.29

  Lafayette learned about the agreement after he sailed into Cádiz on December 23, but he had other things on his mind. He sent Adrienne a typical letter saying how much he missed her. He wrote Aglaé about how devoted he was to her. He sent the prince de Poix a letter raving about Adélaïde, “so pretty, charming, engaging, noble, and sincere.” He also mentioned a “dear princess,” probably the princesse d’Hénin, another of his interests, to whose heart his reached out “with the most tender devotion.” His appetites knew no bounds.30

  The marquis’ career as an American officer, however, had ended with the signing of the preliminary peace. His career as a field marshal also was cut short, because the expedition was canceled on February 1, 1783. Still, it was worth it, because his adoptive father had just won his war. Lafayette wanted to be the first to tell Washington the good news, and asked d’Estaing to give him a fast ship. He sent an aide instead, however, when he learned about another threat to Washington’s country.