Lafayette (19 page)

Because of his fleet’s weakened condition, d’Estaing dared not reenter the narrow channels around Rhode Island. “The same operation which came near being disastrous to us when we had our full strength,” d’Estaing explained, “would have been all the more imprudent to undertake now.”
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Sullivan was outraged. He sent Lafayette and Greene to d’Estaing’s flagship to urge a new joint attack on Newport. “If we fail in our negotiation,” quipped the Francophile Greene, “at least we shall get a good dinner.”
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As it turned out, they failed on both counts: Greene got so seasick he could not eat, and Lafayette was unable to budge the admiral from his position, despite arguments that nearby Providence was as equipped as Boston to refit and reprovision the fleet. D’Estaing offered to evacuate American troops before sailing to Boston, and, when Sullivan rejected the offer, the French fleet sailed away, with its admiral planning to urge his friend the king to end military aid to the uncooperative, unappreciative Americans.

“At the departure of the vessels,” Lafayette wrote, “anger spread among the militiamen: their hopes had been shattered, their time wasted and they were now in a difficult position strategically. Their discontent became contagious. The people of Boston spoke of closing the port to the French fleet; the generals drew up a protest, which [I] refused to sign. Carried away by passion, Sullivan charged the French admiral with responsibility for the ‘ruinous consequences which would result to this army [by] abandoning the harbor at Newport.’ He called d’Estaing’s departure ‘derogatory to the honor of France, contrary to the intention of His Most Christian Majesty and the interest of his nation, and destructive in the highest degree to the welfare of the United States of America, and highly injurious to the alliance formed between the two nations.’ ”
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To compound the diplomatic damage, Sullivan issued a general order to the army disavowing the alliance with France and saying that the French departure “will prove America able to procure with her own arms that which her allies refused to assist her in obtaining.”
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Sullivan’s outbursts were not only undiplomatic, they were blatantly untrue, indeed absurd. If nothing else, the disaster at Newport proved that America’s ill-equipped amateur soldiers were incapable of evicting the British army from the United States by themselves. Without massive French military and naval intervention—and financial help—the American Revolution was doomed.

Seeing that the alliance he had worked so hard to create was about to collapse, Lafayette lashed out at Sullivan, accusing him of undermining the revolution by insulting d’Estaing, the French navy, and France herself.
The two almost drew swords before their aides separated them. Desperate to save the alliance, Lafayette sent a courier with an angry dispatch to Washington describing the efforts of the French fleet and condemning Sullivan’s “ungenerous sentiments.” Sullivan, he said, dealt with d’Estaing as “one would be ashamed to treat the most inveterate enemies. . . . I wish, my dear general, you could know as well as myself, how desirous the Count d’Estaing is to . . . help your success, and to serve the cause of America.

“I earnestly beg you will recommend to the several chief persons of Boston to do everything they can to put the French fleet in a situation for sailing soon. . . . I am afraid the Count d’Estaing will have felt to the quick the behaviour of the people on this occasion. You cannot conceive how distressed he was.”
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After receiving a similar report from Nathanael Greene, Washington acted immediately to repair the diplomatic havoc Sullivan had wreaked—first, with a letter of consolation to Lafayette and a plea for his understanding and help:

I feel for you and for our good and great allies the French. I feel myself hurt, also, at every illiberal and unthinking reflection which may have been cast upon the Count d’Estaing, or the fleet under his command; and, lastly, I feel for my country. Let me entreat you, therefore, my dear marquis, to take no exception at unmeaning expressions, uttered, perhaps, without consideration . . . but, in a free and republican government, you cannot restrain the voice of the multitude; every man will speak as he thinks, or, more properly, without thinking. . . . Let me beseech you . . . to afford a healing hand to the wound that, unintentionally has been made. . . . I, your friend, have no doubt but you will use your utmost endeavours to restore harmony, that the honour, the glory, and mutual interest of the two countries may be promoted and cemented in the firmest manner.
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Aware that the war was lost without the French, Washington apologized to d’Estaing:

The adverse element, which robbed you of your prize, can never deprive you of the glory due to you. Though your success has not been equal to your expectations, yet you have the satisfaction of reflecting, that you have rendered essential services to the common cause.

I exceedingly lament, that, in addition to our misfortunes, there has been the least suspension of harmony and good understanding between the generals of allied nations.
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Congress supported Washington with a resolution declaring that d’Estaing “hath behaved as a brave and wise officer, and that his excellency and the officers and men under his command have rendered every benefit
to these states . . . and are fully entitled to the regards of the friends of America.”
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Washington dispatched an urgent plea to John Hancock in Boston to ensure a warm welcome to the French fleet and its speedy refitting. He sent a stern reprimand—and a lesson in good manners—to Sullivan:

The disagreement between the army under your command and the fleet has given me very singular uneasiness: the continent at large is concerned in our cordiality, and it should be kept up. . . . In our conduct towards them we should remember that they are people old in war, very strict in military etiquette. . . . Permit me to recommend, in the most particular manner, the cultivation of harmony and good agreement, and your endeavours to destroy that ill-humour which may have got into the officers. It is of the greatest importance, also, that the soldiers and the people should know nothing of the misunderstanding. . . . I have no doubt but you will do all in your power to forward the repair of the count’s fleet, and render it fit for service.
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Washington also turned to the coolheaded Rhode Island veteran Nathanael Greene: “I depend much on your aid and influence to conciliate that animosity which I plainly perceive, by a letter from the marquis, subsists between the American officers and the French in our service. . . . The marquis speaks kindly of a letter from you to him on the subject; he will therefore take any advice coming from you in a friendly light.”
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Greene replied that Lafayette had done “everything to prevail upon the Admiral to cooperate with us that man could do. . . . General Sullivan very imprudently issued something like a censure in general orders. Indeed it was a general censure. It opened the mouths of the army in very clamourous strains.”
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Greene responded with a gracious letter of apology to d’Estaing:

I could not have been more shocked by the style and contents of the letter General Sullivan wrote to you; the more I think about it, the more surprised I become. I am convinced his heart did not dictate it. I have often heard him speak of Your Excellency in the most respectful terms—not just of your skills, but your conduct and your scrupulous attention to your duties. The words in his letter are so different from his normal words that I do not know what to attribute it to except the excitement of the moment. . . . I beg your excellency not to judge other American generals by the tone of his letter. I can assure you with the greatest sincerity of the respect and veneration that your reputation has inspired in them; permit me to add that no one feels this more deeply than I.
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At Washington’s goading, other American military leaders, including Gates, the hero at Saratoga, wrote to d’Estaing complimenting his heroism
and making it clear they all disagreed with Sullivan. Sullivan, in turn, responded to Washington’s reprimand with an apology to both Washington and Lafayette for his “struggles of passion,” and, after effecting a reconciliation, he asked Lafayette to ride to Boston to salve d’Estaing’s wounds with a letter of apology and to meet with Massachusetts governor John Hancock and other Boston officials to ensure quick refitting of the French fleet.

Elated by the prospects of a rapprochement, Lafayette rode all night, covering the seventy miles to Boston in seven hours. The storm-damaged French fleet had limped into port the previous evening, before Hancock had received Washington’s appeal. Memories of the French and Indian War remained fresh in the minds of most men of Massachusetts, and Sullivan’s accusations against the French admiral turned Boston’s hatred of the French into outright rage. When d’Estaing’s fleet put into port, shipfitters—even the unemployed—claimed they had too much work to repair French ships, and that refitting would take months or years. They reinforced their assertions by assaulting French sailors—and killing one officer—who dared step ashore.

When Lafayette arrived in Boston, he met with Hancock and obtained his promise to refit the French fleet and restore relations with French leaders. Hancock lived up to his word. An extremely popular leader and first governor of Massachusetts, Hancock had been Boston’s leading merchant and shipbuilder before the war, and he interceded with the city’s shipfitters to repair the French fleet. Then, in a symbolic gesture that all Boston witnessed, Hancock rode to harborside in his resplendent coach to invite d’Estaing and Lafayette to a formal dinner at Hancock House, his magnificent mansion atop Beacon Hill. Dressed in purple velvet as brilliant as that of any European aristocrat, he came aboard to deliver the invitations personally. Lafayette introduced him to the admiral, then offered his own hand in a warm Masonic handshake with the former president of Congress, who had signed his major general’s commission in Philadelphia only a year earlier.

Later that day, Hancock sent his magnificent coach to bring his renowned French guests to Beacon Hill to dine with Boston’s leading citizens in the glittering banquet hall at Hancock House. A servant stood behind each chair to serve guests individually. The settings displayed the finest china, crystal, and silver, and Hancock’s cellar provided French wines as fine as any the count had ever savored. Hancock climaxed the evening by presenting d’Estaing with a magnificent portrait of Washington. “I never saw a man so glad at possessing his sweetheart’s picture,” Lafayette wrote Washington, “as the admiral was to receive yours.” D’Estaing ordered his guns to fire a royal salute as the portrait was hoisted aboard his flagship. He hung it above the mantel in his cabin, framed with laurel wreaths.
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The following day, Lafayette rode back to rejoin Sullivan’s depleted force, which had retreated to the northern part of Rhode Island and, as darkness fell, began floating quietly across to the mainland by flatboat. By eleven, when the breathless Lafayette arrived, all but a rearguard of less than 1,000 men had slipped across. “He was sensibly mortified that he was out of action,”
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Sullivan reported. Despite his fatigue, Lafayette insisted on crossing to take command of the rear guard and was on the last boat to leave the island, three hours later, at 2:00
A.M.
“He returned in time enough to bring off the pickets . . . not a man was left behind, nor the smallest article lost.”
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It would be daybreak before the British discovered the retreat and claimed victory, but it was a hollow victory that left the Americans with far more political and military advantages.

The Battle of Newport cost each side about 250 lives and left the British in firm control of the islands of Narragansett Bay. But the arrival of the French fleet in America had forced the British to evacuate Philadelphia and concentrate much of their northern army in New York, effectively abandoning the middle colonies and opening Delaware and Chesapeake Bays to American navigation. The Americans also controlled most parts of New England, except for the isolated island outpost at Newport. The Battle of Newport also substantiated Washington’s conviction that America’s citizen soldiers were no match for the British army in conventional warfare.

With the 1778 campaign at an end, Lafayette watched his men leave for home, and he longed to do the same. To his delight, a letter from his father-in-law—the first since he had left France a year earlier—arrived to break the lonely boredom of his tent. It was a letter of forgiveness and encouragement, and it assured Lafayette that he was welcome to return. Filled with thoughts of home, Lafayette wrote to his wife: “If anything could lessen my pleasure in writing to you, my sweetheart, it would be the cruel thought that I must write you from a corner of America where everyone I love is two thousand leagues from me. But I have reason to hope that this will not be for long and that the moment of our reunion is not far off. . . . Oh, my sweetheart, when shall I be near you; when shall I be able to hold you in my arms and kiss you a hundred, a thousand times? . . . Cover [Anastasie] with kisses; teach her to love me. . . . Adieu, adieu; we shall not be apart very long.”
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Late in September, Lafayette and Greene returned to Boston, where Hancock was still soothing d’Estaing’s injured feelings and courting him to the American cause. Indeed, he and d’Estaing had become fast friends; night after night, the Harvard-educated Hancock and his wife, Dolly, held lavish dinner parties for the admiral and his officers, with virtually every officer in the fleet getting his turn to breakfast, dine, or sup at Hancock House. One morning, Hancock, who spoke French well, invited thirty officers for
breakfast, “but the Count brought up almost all the officers of his fleet, midshipmen included,” Dolly Hancock later recalled. Count d’Estaing sheepishly told her he would make it up to her, and, according to her biographer, asked her to visit the fleet, “and bring all her friends with her; and true enough she did . . . for she went down and carried a party of five hundred.”
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