Lafayette (15 page)

Washington’s letter gave Lafayette a new understanding of the American Revolution. Far from the Arthurian confrontation he had envisioned between good and evil—between forces of liberty and tyranny—he now saw that the Revolution “bore the stamp of a civil war. . . . Partisan passions divided provinces, towns, and families; it was not uncommon to see brothers, each serving as officers in the opposing armies, meet in their father’s home and fall on their arms to fight each other.”
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Touched deeply by Washington’s letter, Lafayette protested to Henry Laurens, the president of Congress—as did Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens, the president’s son. With Lafayette and Alexander Hamilton, John Laurens was one of Washington’s little family of young aides de camp, whom he treated as sons and mentored in the arts of war, leadership, and diplomacy. Washington not only enjoyed the young, he inherently trusted them— and they adored him for it and gave him unqualified loyalty. The death of his own commander in the Ohio wilderness had forced him to assume command as a young man, and he eagerly surrounded himself with and trained a cadre of young officers to succeed him and other older leaders such as Nathanael Greene, should he or they fall. Although Laurens had a loving father of his own, the twenty-one-year-old Hamilton, like Lafayette, was a foreigner in a foreign land. Born in Nevis, in the Leeward Islands, he, too, had lost his father and mother at a young age and had found in Washington the caring father he had lacked as a child. Washington saw the boys as the sons he never had, who enthusiastically emulated their adoptive father and became ideal officers—brave, trustworthy, professional, with warm, fraternal ties to each other.

Together, they organized a letter-writing campaign to Congress by Valley Forge officers. Lafayette defended Washington’s refusal to engage the enemy in conventional warfare: “We have at our head a great judge, a man [in] whom America and principally the army is to have a confidence as extended as the love he derives from them, and when he will think proper to fight, then I shall believe always that we have good reason for it.”
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Greene, Knox, and Hamilton also wrote to Congress on behalf of their commander— as did the peasant major general, “Baron” de Kalb, of all people. Although he had come to America to undermine Washington, he now sent Laurens a passionate defense of his American commander: “I think him the only proper person by his natural and acquired capacity, his bravery, good sense, uprightness and honesty, to keep up the spirits of the army and people. . . . I look upon him as the sole defender of his country’s cause.”
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Although Lafayette had consoled Adrienne with hints of his possible return to France, his commander’s plight forced him to be more forthright— and blunt:

I have chosen to stay rather than enjoy the happiness of being with you. . . . All my feelings impelled me to go; but honor counseled me to stay here. . . . My presence is more necessary to the American cause at this moment than you may imagine; many foreigners who have failed to obtain commissions, or whose ambitious schemes after having obtained them could not be countenanced, have entered into powerful conspiracies. . . . General Washington would be really unhappy if I were to suggest my going away. . . . He knows he has in me a loyal friend to whom he may open his heart and who will always tell him the truth. Not a day passes that he does not hold a long conversation with me. . . . This is not the time for me to talk of going away.
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Adrienne accepted her husband’s decision with equanimity. The tales of his riding alongside Washington in Philadelphia, of his heroics at Brandywine and his wound, of his generalship at Gloucester—all had elevated him to legendary status in Europe, and Adrienne had resolved to accept her role as a general’s wife and patiently await her hero’s return from battle.

Fearing that the Valley Forge protests to Congress would undermine their new authority, Gates and Conway plotted to topple Lafayette from his pedestal by exploiting his lust for glory and his nation’s hatred for England: they asked Congress to sanction a midwinter invasion of Canada, led by Lafayette. Both knew the invasion was doomed from the start, but with France watching Lafayette’s every move, and with the honor of his nation at stake, he would have to accept the appointment. They assured Congress that the recapture of “New France” by the French hero would cement America’s alliance with France, yield massive French aid and, ultimately, ensure victory over Britain. Congress agreed.

In a direct insult to Washington, the Board of War appointed Lafayette commander in chief of the Northern Army of the United States—a rank equal to Washington’s and subject only to Congress and the Board of War for his orders. It named Conway his second in command and chief advisor and ordered Lafayette to report immediately to York.

Lafayette responded angrily, saying he “would never accept any command independent of the general, and that the title of aide de camp to Washington was preferable to any other that might be offered to me.”
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Though wounded by the congressional assault on his command, Washington urged Lafayette to report to York, saying, “I prefer it being for you rather than any other person.”
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Lafayette obeyed, but, sensing sinister motives for the expedition, he used his prerogatives as a new “commander in chief” to list conditions for his service. On the advice of Washington, Lafayette asked the Board of War to provide specific, written details of the invasion plan, including the size of his
force. He insisted on appointing his own officers, and, in the most startling of his demands, he said he “would only accept the command on condition of remaining subordinate to General Washington . . . as an officer detached from him.” He demanded that Congress and the Board of War issue all orders to him through Washington and that he would respond in kind.

Despite the obvious slap at Gates and Conway, President Laurens and the Board of War had to accept Lafayette’s conditions or risk seeing the French hero return home in a huff and undermine French relations with America. He was, after all, a volunteer, who could leave whenever he wanted. Lafayette replaced Conway’s cabalists with twenty loyal French officers, including his aides-de-camp, Gimat and La Colombe, who now became American officers in their own right. Joining them was a young French engineer, Captain Pierre Charles L’Enfant, who would later plan the new nation’s capital city by the Potomac River.
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In a brilliant political move to undermine the cabal, Lafayette appointed the Washington loyalist Kalb as second in command over Conway to prevent Conway’s assuming command if he, Lafayette, should die in action. Gates pretended to ignore Lafayette’s insults and invited him to his home to toast the success of the expedition. When it was Lafayette’s turn to raise his glass, he stood and proposed the health of
“our
general George Washington.” They had little choice, Lafayette wrote, but to stand and raise their glasses, “reddening with shame.”
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As Lafayette had demanded, Gates and the Board of War sent written orders calling for an “irruption into Canada.” After reaching the Canadian border, Lafayette was to lead the force to St. Johns or Montreal and invite Canadians “to join the Army of the United States.” If, according to the orders, he found “a general disinclination . . . to join the American standard,” he was to destroy all British military installations and ships and “retire” to Saratoga.

“If, on the contrary, the Canadians are ardently desirous of assisting to establish the Freedom, and Independence of America, you will inform them . . . to send delegates, to represent their State in the Congress of the United States, and to conform, in all political respects, to the Union, and Confederation, established in them.” The “principal object of this expedition,” however, was to take possession of Montreal and “all the Arms, Ammunition, and Warlike Stores, together with all the linnens, woolens and Indian goods that may be found.”
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The Board promised 2,500 troops. Quartermaster General Thomas Mifflin—a Philadelphia merchant who was one of Washington’s most vitriolic critics—pledged “Ammunition, Provisions, Stores and as many carriages as may be requisite for the intended service. . . . The proper officers are now providing Forage, at the general and particular places of rendezvous [near Albany, New York].”
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Although Lafayette had misgivings about an expedition
to Canada in the dead of winter, Gates assured him that a winter attack would catch the British unprepared.

Still fearful that Gates had plotted his doom, Lafayette sent Gates another letter, with a copy to Laurens, placing full responsibility for the expedition on Gates’s shoulders: “I schould [
sic]
be in a terrible concern about my means of succeeding and the immensity of things which I must be provided for, had I not the greatest confidence in your friendship and your good care of my reputation as well as the public interest. This project is yours, Sir, therefore you must make it succeed. If I had not depended so much on you I would not have undertaken the operation.”
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Lafayette’s demand for detailed instructions from the Board of War proved prescient, although his sense of doom did not prevent his boasting to Adrienne and the duc d’Ayen of “the confidence with which I have been honoured by America. Canada is oppressed by the English; the whole of that immense country is in the power of the enemy. . . . I am to repair thither with the title of General of the Northern Army, at the head of three thousand men. . . . The idea of rendering the whole of New France free, and of delivering her from a heavy yoke, is too glorious for me to allow myself to dwell upon it.”
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Lafayette left York on February 3, 1778, in terrible winter weather that only grew worse as he headed north, sometimes on horseback, sometimes in a sleigh. “I go on very slowly,” he wrote to Washington, “sometimes drenched by rain, sometimes covered by snow, and not entertaining many handsome thoughts about the projected incursion into Canada.”
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After ten days, he reached Albany and discovered, “I have been deceived by the board of War.”
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There were no troops; no money to pay any troops; no arms, ammunition, or other supplies; neither the area commanders nor the commissary at Albany that was to supply the expedition knew that Gates had approved it. “General Schuyler, General Lincoln and General Arnold, had written, before my arrival, to General Conway, in the most expressive terms, that . . . there was no possibility to begin now, an enterprise into Canada,” Lafayette wrote to Washington. “I have consulted everybody, and everybody answers me that it would be madness to undertake this operation.”
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With the eyes of France upon him—for he knew his father-in-law would show his letter at court—the Gates deception was not only a deep humiliation, it was a deep personal wound that cut through the trust and affection that he felt for Americans and that he assumed they felt for him. He fired off an angry letter to Henry Laurens, describing the

hell of blunders, madness, and deception I am involved in. . . . What is your opinion, Sir, about my present situation? Do you think it is a very pleasant one? How schall I do to get of [off] from a precipice where I embarked
myself out of my love for your country, my desire of distinguishing myself in doing good to America, and that so false opinion that there was in all the board of war. . . . My situation is such that I am reduced to wish to have never put the foot in America or thought of an american war. All the continent knows where I am, what I am sent for. . . . The world has theyr eyes fixed upon me. . . . Men will have right to laugh at me, and I’l be almost ashamed to appear before some. . . . No, Sir, this expedition will certainly reflect a little upon my reputation, at least for having been too confident in men who did not deserve it, but it will reflect much more upon the authors of such blunders. I’l publish the whole history, I’l publish my instructions
with notes
[his italics] through the world, and I’l loose [lose] rather the honor of twenty Gates and twenty boards of war, than to let my own reputation be hurted in the least thing.
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After venting his anger to Laurens, Lafayette turned to the only father he had ever known. “Why am I so far from you,” he wrote Washington plaintively, “and what business had the board of War to hurry me through the ice and snow without knowing what I should do, neither what they were doing themselves?

“Your excellency may judge that I am very distressed by this disappointment. My being appointed to the command of the expedition is known through the continent, it will be soon known in Europe. . . . I am afraid it will reflect on my reputation, and I shall be laughed at.”
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Washington sent Lafayette a paternal letter of consolation:

I . . . hasten to dispel those fears respecting your reputation, which are excited only by an uncommon degree of sensibility. You seem to apprehend that censure, proportioned to the disappointed expectations of the world, will fall on you in consequence of the failure of the Canadian expedition. But, in the first place, it will be no disadvantage to you to have it known in Europe that you had received so manifest a proof of the good opinion and confidence of congress as an important detached command; and I am persuaded that every one will applaud your prudence in renouncing a project, in pursuing which you would vainly have attempted physical impossibilities. . . .

However sensibly your ardour for glory may make you feel this disappointment, you may be assured that your character stands as fair as ever it did.
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After demanding new instructions from the Board of War, Lafayette and his officers settled into a military camp outside Albany, where he found twelve hundred troops living in near anarchy, “naked even for a summer’s campaign,” their pay far in arrears, and the commissary all but bare. Lafayette acted quickly to prevent a coup by Conway by isolating him with
paperwork assignments. “I fancy (between us),” he wrote to Washington, “that the actual scheme is to have me out . . . and General Conway in chief, under the immediate direction of General Gates. How they will bring it [about] I do not know, but you may be sure something of that kind will appear. . . . I should be very happy if you were here to give me some advice, but I have nobody to consult with.”
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