The Marquis

by Laura Auricchio

  Why the change of heart? Presumably, members of Congress had taken the time to read the papers Lafayette had furnished to them. Although Deane’s credibility had been tarnished by the du Coudray fiasco, he’d lavished such high praise on Lafayette that Congress took notice. As the resolution passed by Congress on July 31 put it, Lafayette’s “zeal, illustrious family and connexions,” combined with the financial resources that enabled him to cross the ocean “at his own expence” and “to offer his service to the United States without pension or particular allowance,” were sufficient to warrant a commission as major general. Writing in a private letter, Congressman Henry Laurens further explained that Lafayette was expected to “have a Short Campaign & then probably return to France & Secure to us the powerful Interest of his high & extensive connections.” Lafayette’s companions promised no such influence. Although the experienced de Kalb and his aide-de-camp Dubuysson did, eventually, join Lafayette in the Continental Army, most of the men who had sailed on the Victoire headed back to France before the year was out.

  Lafayette was elated, and his delight increased when he learned that he would soon meet his new commander. As chance would have it, General Washington happened to be leading some 11,000 troops from their camp in New Jersey to Chester, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia and, on the night of July 31, he was scheduled to attend a dinner in his honor at the City Tavern on Second Street—the unofficial clubhouse of the Continental Congress.

  Lafayette remembered being awed when he first caught sight of “that great man.” Washington was standing across a crowded room at the City Tavern “surrounded by officers and citizens,” yet despite the throng, “the majesty of his figure and of his size made it impossible” to mistake his identity. In some ways, the forty-five-year-old Washington represented all that Lafayette hoped to become—a figure universally respected for his dignity, honor, and restraint. There were even physical similarities. Like the young Frenchman, Washington was considerably larger than the average man of the era; standing six feet tall, he towered over even Lafayette. Yet, whereas Lafayette’s bulk made him something of an awkward presence in the refined salons of Paris and Versailles— a bull in a china shop, gingerly stepping around the delicate furnishings that represented the height of fashionable interior design in 1770s France—Washington bore his height regally, his great size seeming like a mark of great character. Even before the two men were formally introduced, Washington had achieved the status of an idol to the fatherless Lafayette, who, brimming with hope, yearned for glory in a strange land.

  Initially, this admiration was not altogether mutual. The circumspect Washington hid his doubts from Lafayette, but he was not well-disposed toward the French in general. Having fought against their troops in the French and Indian War, Washington spoke out against French meddling during the du Coudray imbroglio. Writing from Morristown, New Jersey, on July 27, he complained mightily about the unwelcome influx of French officers, who “embarrass me beyond measure.” Not only did the army have all the officers it needed, he insisted, but the difficulties in dealing with the Frenchmen were “increased by the immoderate expectations, which, almost every one of them, I have seen, entertains, and which make it impossible to satisfy them.” Suggesting an abiding distrust of the Gallic character, Washington continued, “I have found by experience that however modest, they may seem at first to be, by proposing to serve as volunteers, they very soon extend their views, and become importunate for offices they have no right to look for.” And had Washington surmised that one or more of Lafayette’s companions might have designs on his own position, he would not have been mistaken.

  It was just four days after writing these remarks that Washington first encountered Lafayette—yet another French volunteer claiming that he had come “to learn and not to teach.” The inexperienced youth waited not even a month before making it clear that he expected to be placed in command of a division, much to Washington’s exasperation. Writing to Congressman Benjamin Harrison on August 19, Washington explained that a difference of opinion had arisen concerning the nature of Lafayette’s appointment. Washington believed that Lafayette’s rank was purely honorary, but the Frenchman clearly had other ideas. “What the designs of Congress respecting this Gentn. were,” Washington wrote, “and what line of Conduct I am to pursue … I know no more than the Child unborn.” Harrison confirmed that Congress “never meant” for Lafayette to have a command, but it was Washington who had to devise increasingly inventive ways to put off the persistent young marquis.

  To Washington’s credit, Lafayette seems not to have noticed the discomfort he was causing his newfound hero. In his memoirs Lafayette remembered only that Washington welcomed him with open arms at City Tavern, invited him to join in the following day’s inspection of the Delaware River forts, and asked him to share lodgings and meals for the duration of his stay in America. From that day on, Lafayette considered Washington’s home—wherever it might be—as his own. Leaving behind his companions in Philadelphia, he moved to Washington’s Bucks County encampment, reviewed American troops alongside the general, and began traveling with the army. In Lafayette’s nostalgic words, it was “with this ease and simplicity that two friends were united.”

  Throughout August and early September, Washington and his army were readying for a long-anticipated attack on Philadelphia by British forces under General William Howe. Lafayette was spending as much time as possible at Washington’s side; fully expecting to be awarded a division at any moment, he was making arrangements for two aides-de-camp. Lafayette’s earnest enthusiasm was already beginning to grow on Washington when a batch of mail arrived from France furthering the young man’s cause. One letter, signed not only by Silas Deane but also by the more trusted Benjamin Franklin, urged Congress and the army to exhibit “a friendly Affection” toward Lafayette. This was not simply a matter of personal opinion, explained the Americans in Paris. Rather, a warm welcome would be a wise political gesture, “pleasing not only to [Lafayette’s] powerful relations and to the court but to the whole of the French nation.” Imagining that Lafayette was merely interested in achieving some small honor that he could boast about at home, the envoys asked Washington “not to permit [Lafayette’s] being hazarded much, but on some important occasion.”

  Map of the Battle of Brandywine, September 11, 1777. (illustration credit 4.1)

  Just such an occasion happened to be at hand. Howe and his men had spent much of the summer sailing from New York, which was now firmly under British control. Having arrived at Head of Elk, Maryland, in late July, Howe’s 17,000 British and Hessian troops spent the month of August making their way overland in a northeasterly direction, heading toward the seat of the Continental Congress at Philadelphia. Facing imminent battle with an experienced enemy, Washington could not place a division in the hands of Lafayette—a foreigner whose entire military experience consisted of two summers of training at Metz—but he did allow the eager youth to participate in the fight.

  When they awoke on September 11, 1777, the 10,500 American troops positioned along the banks of the Brandywine River could barely see the tops of the surrounding hills through the thick blanket of fog. Early that morning, Washington received word that Howe’s soldiers had started their eastward march, and he surmised that they would attempt to cross the Brandywine at Chadds Ford—the most traversable route to Philadelphia. American troops were mustered along the river accordingly, with the strongest presence at the presumed target of attack. Lafayette was assigned to a division led by Major General John Sullivan of New Hampshire, who was positioned a mile or so north of Chadds Ford—a posting that may have been intended to keep the eager marquis out of harm’s way. By late morning, the battle had begun, and by midafternoon, an even exchange of cannon fire and musket shot was crossing Chadds Ford in the scorching heat of the bright, late-summer day.

  What the Americans didn’t know was that they were engaged with just half of the British troops. While the Hessian general Wilhelm von K
nyphausen was sustaining the attack at Chadds Ford, General Howe had spent the better part of the day leading a second column farther north. And, having crossed the river several miles above the Americans’ uppermost positions, Howe was now driving south, descending on Sullivan’s surprised troops. Lines of British and American muskets faced off across an open plain, with both sides suffering heavy casualties. Lafayette was in the thick of the action, trying to make himself as useful as possible. As he later described it, he was “rallying the troops” when a musket ball tore through his left calf. Eager to continue the fight but weak from the loss of blood, he was helped to his horse by an aide-de-camp and exited the field.

  The day ended with the British encamped along the Brandywine and the Americans in retreat. Two hundred and fifty Americans and eighty-nine British soldiers were killed, with many more wounded. Four hundred Americans were taken prisoner. Besting the Americans in intermittent skirmishes over the course of the following days and weeks, the British continued their march east. On September 18, the Continental Congress held its final session in Philadelphia before relocating to York, Pennyslvania. And on September 26, the British took the City of Brotherly Love.

  The Battle of Brandywine was a catastrophe for the American army but a crucial turning point for Lafayette, whose dramatic wound ended up doing him more good than harm. The shot that wounded him was almost providential. Passing through the fleshy part of his lower leg, it caused damage serious enough to merit the attention of Washington’s personal surgeon but minor enough to leave Lafayette in good spirits and with relatively little fear of grave consequences. After the battle, Lafayette was transported by boat to Philadelphia, where he found himself “surrounded by citizens intrigued by his youth and his situation.” And while the British were on their way to victory in Philadelphia, Lafayette was on the path to American fame. Washington, perhaps mindful of the letter from Franklin and Deane, inaugurated Lafayette’s celebrity with a widely published dispatch written on the night of September 11, 1777. In his account of the loss at Brandywine, which had left so many dead and wounded, Washington mentioned just two officers by name: “the Marquis La Fayette was wounded in the leg, and General Woodford in the hand.” Throughout the month of September, as Washington’s letter made its way into newspapers around the colonies, the American public was introduced to Lafayette as the French aristocrat who had risked life and limb on behalf of their freedom.

  Transferred from one safe haven to the next while Congress scrambled to evacuate Philadelphia, Lafayette enjoyed little rest during the first week after the battle. But on September 21, he finally arrived at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he was to spend four weeks of convalescence in the care of the Moravian fellowship—a missionary Protestant denomination that was exempt from military service and assisted the American army off the field of battle by storing baggage and munitions, housing prisoners of war, supplying blankets and clothing, and tending hundreds of sick and wounded soldiers. (According to a diary maintained by the community, some seven hundred men were lodged in just one of the Moravians’ makeshift hospitals on December 28, 1777.) At least sixteen members of Congress also took refuge in Bethlehem that September, including the Massachusetts representatives John Hancock, John Adams, and Samuel Adams, and Henry Laurens, a congressman from South Carolina who would begin serving as president of the Continental Congress on November 1. All were treated with kindness and respect, but Lafayette received particularly attentive care from his nurses, the wife and daughter of George Frederick Boeckel, the overseer of the congregation’s farm, who transferred him out of his tavern lodgings and welcomed him into their own home. In the months and years that followed, the connections Lafayette forged in Bethlehem would prove invaluable.

  Lafayette described his forced “inaction” as more painful than his wound, but he approached the Moravians, whose ancestors had fled persecution in central Europe, with the same earnest curiosity that he brought to all of his interactions with Americans. When Lafayette took leave of Bethlehem on October 18, the congregation’s diarist remembered him as “a very intelligent and pleasant young man” who spent much of his time reading—in English—a history of the Moravian mission in Greenland, with which he declared himself to be “highly pleased.” For his part, Lafayette came away impressed by “the gentle religion” of his hosts—he referred to them as this “innocent family”—whose “community of goods, education and interests … contrasted with the scenes of carnage and civil war” that were devastating the surrounding land.

  While confined to bed, Lafayette could do nothing but read and write. And write he did, drafting scores of letters to recipients on both sides of the Atlantic. Aflame with ideas for new ways to harm, or at least harass, the English, Lafayette proposed his ventures to anyone he could think of. Writing to the Marquis de Bouillé, a cousin then serving as governor of the French colony of Martinique, Lafayette suggested an assault on the islands of the British West Indies. To the Comte de Maurepas, Louis XVI’s aging but powerful minister of the marine, he proposed an attack on British interests in India. Both ideas were rebuffed, but Lafayette’s bold determination was starting to impress even Maurepas. As Lafayette later recalled, Maurepas took to jesting that the eager young soldier would probably succeed in selling “all the furniture of Versailles to support the American cause; because, once he gets something in his head, it’s impossible to resist him.”

  Although these military schemes found no takers, the letter-writing campaign succeeded in at least one respect: Lafayette began to establish himself as the default intermediary between France and America. Writing to Laurens and Washington in America, and to Adrienne, the king’s ministers, and others in France, he made a point of praising each land to citizens of the other. Letters to Adrienne lauded Washington—an “intimate friend” and “excellent man” abounding with “talents and virtues”—while attempting to inoculate French society against any ill will that might be spread by his disgruntled companions from the Victoire who were then returning to France. These and other dissatisfied Europeans, Lafayette cautioned, “will naturally give an unjust account of America, because the disconcerted, anxious to revenge their fancied injuries, cannot be impartial.” At the same time, Lafayette took it upon himself to represent France to America by sending missives to Congress extolling the merits of newly arrived French officers. Lafayette did not know all of the men he recommended, but as he explained to Henry Laurens, “being honour’d with the name of French, I consider it my duty, to recommend you every honest countryman of mine.” Meanwhile, he continued to press his own cause: he desperately wanted to be granted a command.

  By the time Lafayette rejoined Washington’s troops, on October 19, his displays of ardor and goodwill had made an impression, and Washington was prepared to reward him. On December 1, while Lafayette was marching toward Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Congress passed a resolution naming him commander of a division. Six months after arriving on foreign shores, Lafayette was on his way to achieving the military dream that had been thwarted in his native land.

  CHAPTER 5

  DISENCHANTMENT

  What a date, my dearest love, and from what a region I am now writing, in the month of January!” Lafayette wrote to Adrienne from frigid Valley Forge on January 6, 1778. Pondering the vagaries of fate, he marveled to find himself in such harsh conditions, confined “in a camp … in the middle of the woods … 1500 leagues from you … in the middle of the winter.” Yet there he was, a major general responsible for three brigades—some three thousand men—who were destined to spend the coldest months of the year “in little huts that are about as pleasant as dungeon cells.”

  Lafayette described to Adrienne the “dreariness” of his lodgings, but he knew all too well that the army had much larger concerns. Lacking sufficient food and clothing to hold out against the bitter chill, Washington’s 12,000 soldiers were succumbing to illness at an alarming rate. Despite a steady stream of letters from Washington, Lafayette, and others to Henry L
aurens, now presiding over Congress, no provisions appeared to be forthcoming. Lafayette had received word that clothing shipped from France had arrived in America but, maddeningly, it had been detained in Yorktown and was not making its way north. In a brave attempt to jest in a new language, Lafayette asked Laurens to “consider, if you please,” that the parcels of clothing “are innocent strangers, travelling [through] this state, and very desirous of meeting the Virginian regiments they belong to.” Continuing the conceit, he added, “if they are detained only for exerting the most respectable rights of hospitality receive here my thanks.… But if it is possible, I do not want they should be entertained longer.”

  Lafayette’s English was far from perfect, but it was improving. And as it did, so did Lafayette’s grasp of the difficulties that Washington and the American army faced. Little by little, Lafayette began to understand that politics were roiling the colonies he so admired. In a letter of December 30, 1777, he told Washington that the scales had fallen from his eyes. “When I was in Europe,” Lafayette acknowledged, “I thought that Here almost every man was a lover of liberty and would Rather die free than live slave. You Can Conceive my astonishment when I saw that Toryism was as openly professed as Whigism.” More gravely, Lafayette was coming to understand that neither the war effort nor Washington’s place at its helm was immune to partisan attack. In what Lafayette perceived to be a dangerous move, Congress had just established the five-member Board of War. Now that Washington had to report to a civilian body, he would be at the mercy of political wrangling. “There are open dissensions in Congress,” Lafayette wrote to Washington, who surely did not need to be told that America’s representatives had dissolved into “parties who Hate one another as much as the Common Enemy.”