Lafayette (11 page)

For Lafayette, the six-foot, four-inch-tall Washington was the embodiment of the ethereal warrior father who had haunted his imagination since infancy—statuesque, with the powerful build of a great cavalier, magnificently uniformed—more royal than any European monarch in his fine powdered wig. “Although he was surrounded by officers and private citizens,” wrote the reverent Lafayette, “it was impossible not to recognize the majesty of his face and his countenance. The affable and noble manners and the dignity with which he addressed those about him were equally distinguished.”
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Washington believed that Freemasonry provided him with “true brothers in all parts of the world,”
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and, at evening’s end, he drew “brother Lafayette” aside to express his good will towards the boy. Lafayette looked so young, so vulnerable. Washington complimented him for his “zeal and sacrifices in coming to America . . . in the most friendly manner, he invited me to reside in his house. I would have the happiness of living in the general quarters of the commander-in-chief as a member of his military family,
which offer I accepted with the same sincerity with which it was made.” With an uncharacteristic smile, Washington warned that “he could not promise the luxuries of a king’s court, but now that Lafayette had become an American soldier, he would undoubtedly adapt with good grace to the hardships of life in a republican army.”
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Lafayette spent the next few days equipping himself and his aides for camp. He bought a carriage, a team of horses, and all the necessary arms, equipment, and clothing he would need. He emerged as the most magnificent-looking knight in the American army—indeed, the only one. He lacked only a suit of shining armor. Before going off to war, the elated nineteen-year-old sent a touching, almost childlike, letter of thanks in broken English to “The honorable Mr. Hancock president of Congress” for making a reality of his lifelong dream of emulating his warrior ancestors:

the 13 august 1777

Sir

I beg you will receive yourself and present to Congress my thanks for the Commission of Major General in the Army of the United States of America which I have been honor’d with in their name the feelings of my heart, long before it became my duty, engaged me in the love of the America cause. I now only consider’d it as the cause of Honor; Virtue, and universal Happiness, but felt myself empressed with the warmest affection for a Nation who exhibited by their resistance so fine an example of Justice and Courage to the Universe.

I schall [sic] neglect nothing on my part to justify the confidence which the Congress of the United States has been pleased to repose in me as my highest ambition has ever been to do every thing only for the best of the cause in which I am engaged. I wish to serve near the person of General Washington till such time as he may think proper to entrust me with a division of the Army.

Remembering the plight of his companions on the
Victoire
and convinced he now had at least some influence as a major general, Lafayette added another paragraph:

it is now as an american that I’ll mention every day to congress the officers who came over with me, whose interests are for me as my own, and the consideration which they deserve by their merits their ranks, their state and reputation in France.

I am sir with the sentiments which every good american owe to you.

Your most obedient
servant the mqis de lafayette.
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Congress ignored his appeal for his companions, and Lafayette reached into his own pocket to help them pay for their passage home. Just as he had unwittingly furthered de Broglie’s plot by paying their way to America, Lafayette now just as unwittingly ended the plot by trying to pay their way back. Two days later, he rode off to war, accompanied by his handsomely uniformed squires, but leaving Kalb and the other de Broglie plotters fuming in Philadelphia over their humiliating rejection.

When Lafayette reached the American camp north of Philadelphia, the realities of George Washington’s army seemed incongruous with the young knight’s vision of King Arthur’s knights in armor. “About eleven thousand men, ill armed, and still worse clothed, presented a strange spectacle,” wrote the chastened young major general. “Their clothes were motley looking, discolored, and many were almost naked. The best dressed wore
hunting shirts
, large gray linen shirts used in the Carolinas.”
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Washington responded to Lafayette’s evident disappointment. “I suppose we ought to be embarrassed,” said the commander in chief, “to show ourselves to an officer who has just left the French forces.”

“I have come here to learn,
mon général,”
said the young man, snapping to attention smartly, “not to teach.” It was a humble answer that contrasted with the arrogance of other French officers Washington had encountered and one that the commander in chief obviously appreciated. “Those simple words,” Lafayette recalled, “established the first bonds of mutual confidence and devotion that united two friends.”
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Despite misgivings about the overdressed Frenchman and his aides, Washington graciously invited Lafayette to attend a council of war the next morning, August 21, 1777—an invitation that saved the young man the embarrassment of appearing to hold a sinecure. The army was encamped about five miles northwest of Philadelphia, between Germantown and the Schuylkill River, awaiting word of the destination of the British fleet. Initial fears that it would turn into Delaware Bay and attack Philadelphia had proved unfounded after it continued sailing southward, and Washington’s council of war agreed the British fleet was on its way to attack Charleston. Although his poor English prevented Lafayette from participating in the discussion, he signed the minutes below Washington’s name, alongside the names of the other majors general—Nathanael Greene and William Alexander Lord Stirling
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—but above brigadiers general Henry Knox, Anthony Wayne, John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, and Thomas Conway, as well as Washington’s twenty-two-year-old secretary, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton.

The following morning, near pandemonium engulfed the encampment after a courier galloped in with an urgent dispatch from President Hancock: instead of continuing to Charleston, Admiral Howe’s fleet had turned into Chesapeake Bay and was sailing northward. He had bypassed Delaware Bay
to avoid Patriot fortifications along the narrow Delaware River and chosen the longer route along the unfortified shores of Chesapeake Bay. He would land at Head of Elk (now Elkton, Maryland) at the head of the bay, about sixty miles south of Philadelphia, and march northward to attack the capital. Washington ordered his army to prepare to march, and, on Sunday, August 24, he led his troops to Philadelphia, to display their colors to Congress and raise the city’s morale. “The army is to march in one column through the city,” read his general order. “The drums and fifes of each brigade are to be collected in the centre of it, and a tune for the quick-step played, but with such moderation that the men may step to it with ease.”
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The tall, handsome Washington “shone” at the head of the parade, according to Lafayette, who rode alongside in his sparkling new uniform, his sword slapping smartly at his boot. Behind them, “with green sprigs in their hats, stepping to the lively music of the fife and drum before all the citizens of the city, the continentals made quite a show of it, despite their shabby clothes.”
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Kalb and de Broglie’s other officers watched Lafayette ride off to war without them and despaired bitterly of ever participating in the Revolution, let alone commanding the American army. In his outrage against de Broglie and Deane, one of the French officers went to Congress and exposed de Broglie’s plot to become generalissimo.
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Equally infuriated, “Baron” de Kalb sent Congress an angry letter threatening to expose Deane’s recruitment activities in France if Congress did not confirm his commission or compensate him for the “very considerable expense I have been put to after arriving here. I do not think that either my name, my services, or my person are proper objects to be trifled with or laughed at. I cannot tell you, sir, how deeply I feel the injury done to me. . . . I should be sorry to be compelled to carry my case against Mr. Deane or his successors for damages. And such an action would injure his credit and negotiations, and those of the state at court.”
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Kalb argued that he alone in the Lafayette group was fluent in English, had negotiated his contract in English, and could not possibly have misunderstood Deane’s intentions.

Kalb’s threat of a public lawsuit was not an idle one. He was furious at the prospects of humiliation he faced in France for having failed his patron, the comte de Broglie. Indeed, a return to France would end his military career. He was, after all, a peasant’s son. Soldiering was all he knew, and congressional confirmation of his commission in the American army was his only chance to continue that trade.

Kalb’s letter had the desired effect. Congress feared that if Kalb exposed French complicity in the American Revolution, France would end her support rather than risk war with Britain. Congress resolved that “thanks be given to the baron de Kalb . . . and the officers . . . for their zeal in passing over to America to offer their services to these United States, and that their
expences to this Continent and their return to France be paid.”
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The resolution assailed Silas Deane, saying he had “no authority” to commission the officers. A few days later, the French officers took their money and the funds Lafayette had given them and left for various ports to book passage back to France or the French West Indies. Kalb had no sooner left with his money than he received word that Congress had relented and issued him the major general’s commission that Deane had promised him. Congress did not want to risk his returning to France and damaging American interests there. With the other French officers gone, however, it was too late for him to revive the de Broglie plot, and he wrote to his former commander:

“I beg you, Monsieur le Comte, to be persuaded of the respect and deference that at all times and in all places I have for your orders and for your wishes; that I have done all that lay in my power; that if I have not done better it is not my fault.” He declared it “impossible to succeed in the grand project . . . it would be regarded as a crying injustice against Washington and an outrage on the country.”
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Washington, Lafayette, and the Continental army halted for the night at Chester, about twenty miles south of Philadelphia. The following day as they pushed southward, the British army at Head of Elk marched north to Brandywine Creek, the last natural barrier to the American capital. Washington’s forces stretched out along the opposite bank on the Philadelphia side. On September 11, the two sides opened fire at Chadd’s Ford. Throughout the day, the battle raged with ever greater intensity. Washington badly miscalculated the strength and intentions of his enemy and concentrated his firepower at the center of the lines. Meanwhile, British general Lord Cornwallis quietly slipped away to the northwest with a second force of 8,000 British and Hessians. He crossed the Brandywine at its narrowest point, far from the battle at Chadd’s Ford, looped around and behind the Patriot army’s right flank, under Major General John Sullivan, and threatened to encircle Washington’s entire army. Paralyzing British fire swept across Sullivan’s troops from three sides—south, west, and north. As he had on Long Island, Sullivan faced the humiliation of surrender. Like most Patriot generals, he had no formal military training. He was a New Hampshire lawyer whose social rank had given him a seat in Congress and, in turn, an appointment as a general.

When word of the Cornwallis attack arrived, Lafayette was standing idly at Washington’s side and begged permission to help Sullivan defend the right flank. In no mood to argue, Washington agreed, and Lafayette leaped onto his horse and, with his two “squires,” Gimat and La Colombe, following gallantly, charged into his—and their—first battle.

“By the time [we] arrived, the enemy had crossed the ford,” Lafayette recalled. “Sullivan’s troops had barely enough time to form a line in front of a thin wood. The Hessians advanced, rested their rifles on a fence, aimed and sent off a cloud of fire to cover the advancing British troops. Lord Cornwallis’s troops advanced in perfect order across the field, his first line firing cannons and muskets; the Americans fired a murderous barrage of musket-fire, but the entire right and left side buckled; the generals and officers fell towards the center of the line, where Lafayette and Lord Stirling were [fighting] alongside 800 men, brilliantly commanded by [General] Conway. By sheering off the two wings, the British troops could concentrate all their fire on the center of our line, although their advance across an open field cost them many men.”
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