Lafayette (16 page)

Washington, however, had problems of his own. As vile as Valley Forge had been in early February when Lafayette had left, conditions were far worse a month later. Desertions, disease, exposure to subzero temperatures, starvation, and thirst—for there were no springs on the plateau above Valley Creek—had reduced Washington’s 11,000-man Continental army to about 5,000. Many froze to death, despite Washington’s pleas for supplies to the sinister Quartermaster General Mifflin, and those who survived were too weak to fight. “Two thousand eight hundred and ninety were unfit for duty, ‘being barefoot and otherwise naked,’” according to Washington.
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Although wary of Conway, Lafayette found the camp near Albany an ideal opportunity to perfect his mastery of the art of military training and organization. He devised a range of training procedures to restore order, discipline, and morale, dividing his army into twenty troops of sixty men each and placing each of his officers in command of one troop to train and drill. He ordered all troops on regular parade, and, perched majestically on his horse, he reviewed them and saluted each troop as its pennant passed before him. He studied and learned the basics of military procurement and quartermaster operations, although he had to use his own funds to buy clothing for the troops. In the end, he mastered all aspects of running a small army.

On March 11, Lafayette lost patience and fired off a second letter to the Board of War, challenging Gates: “I expect with the greater impatience letters from Congress and the Board of War where I’l be acquainted of what I am to do. I hope the good intentions of the honorable Board in my favor could be employed in a better occasion—indeed, Sir, there has been good deal of deception and neglect in that affair.”
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A few days later, General Philip Schuyler, one of the commissioners Congress had appointed to negotiate with local Indian tribes, asked Lafayette’s help in establishing an alliance with the Indians. Showered by British bribes for a decade, they had fought with Burgoyne’s army at Saratoga and proved relentless in their barbarities against American settlers. But they had once been French allies who had fought the British expansion westward into their territory, and most Indian leaders still held the French in high esteem. Schuyler hoped that Lafayette’s lofty position in the French court might help win the Indians to the colonist side. Together with Schuyler and the other Indian commissioners, Lafayette traveled by sleigh forty miles northwest
to Johnson’s Town (now Johnstown), New York, where the Six Nations— Senecas, Cayugas, Oneidas, Onondagas, Mohawks, and Tuscaroras—had gathered by the Mohawk River.

“Five hundred, men, women and children attended the convention,” Lafayette reported, “streaked with multi-colored paint and feathers, their ears cut open, jewels dangling from their noses, their half-naked bodies tattooed and painted with a variety of designs. The old men smoked and talked about politics intelligently. When the drunkenness of rum did not distract them . . . their goal was a balance of power.”
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Flattered by the presence of the world-renowned French nobleman, they were overwhelmed by the ease and evident joy with which the exquisitely dressed major general mingled with them, distributing little mirrors, rum, brandy, and handsome French gold coins—
louis d’or
. Unlike his American comrades, Lafayette embraced the European myth that Rousseau helped create of the noble savage and his simpler, utopian existence. Lafayette won the Indians over entirely and, at his urging, they agreed to make peace with the colonists. “Their kinship with the French,” Lafayette reported to President Laurens, “mixed with their kinship with French louis d’or induced the Indians to promise to follow my recommendations.”
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They ended the convention by signing a treaty with the colonists—and adopting Lafayette as Kayewla, the name of one of their ancient, legendary warriors.

When Lafayette returned to Albany, he found letters from both Gates and Laurens. Gates enclosed a resolution of Congress suspending the expedition to Canada and thanking Lafayette for his “high sense of prudence, activity and zeal.”
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Laurens sent Lafayette a personal note assuring him that the praise in the Congressional resolution was “genuine, not merely complimentary.”
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Gates indicated that the Board of War would transfer Lafayette and Kalb back to Washington’s command at Valley Forge and leave Conway in charge of the Northern Army. Although Lafayette was elated that Congress had salvaged his reputation, the prospect of Conway’s promotion left him determined to crush the Gates-Conway cabal. He wrote a fierce letter to Congress warning that “if I am recalled to leave this command in the hands of a gentleman . . . who is not above me neither by birth neither by his relations or influence in the world, who has not had any more particular occasion of distinguishing himself than I have had . . . I will look upon myself as not only ill used but very near being affronted—and such will be the sentiment of all those of my nation and Europe whose opinion is dear to me. . . . How do you think it will look? How can I agree to it?”
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A week later, Lafayette issued another warning, implying that he had far more influence over French military and diplomatic affairs than he actually did, but his letter intimidated Laurens and Congress enough to overrule Gates and order
Conway transferred to an insignificant post at Peekskill, New York. They then asked Lafayette and Kalb to rejoin Washington and apologized to Lafayette with an expression of “esteem and regard.”
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Before Lafayette left Albany, the last vestiges of the Conway Cabal collapsed when Quartermaster General Mifflin resigned after accusations of embezzlement produced evidence that he had exacerbated the Valley Forge sufferings by diverting purchases for the troops to his own warehouses and selling them in local markets. Mifflin’s transfer and Conway’s exile to a Hudson River backwater humiliated Gates and the Board of War. Gates resigned and returned to the Northern Army in Albany, and Congress restored Washington to supreme command. He immediately appointed Nathanael Greene as quartermaster general. A trusted friend, Greene was a brilliant business manager; as a young man, he and his brothers had inherited their father’s prosperous farming enterprise, which included a flour mill, a sawmill, an ironworks, a wharf, and a warehouse. By the time he left to take command of the Rhode Island Militia at the beginning of the Revolution, they had expanded it into Rhode Island’s most prosperous merchant house. Greene recovered most of the supplies that Mifflin had bought but never delivered to Valley Forge. Helped by the arrival of spring, the famine and other discomforts at Valley Forge gradually abated.

On April 22, 1778, Conway offered—and this time Congress accepted— his resignation. When, on July 4, the embittered cabalist slandered Washington, General John Cadwalader, a fierce Washington loyalist, challenged the Irishman to a duel and wounded him badly. Thinking he was about to die, Conway sent Washington a letter of apology. Although he recovered from his wound, he left North America in disgrace.
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Lafayette rejoined Washington at Valley Forge and resumed command of the Virginia division. He found an utterly different camp from the one he had left two months earlier. Greene had the camp overflowing with supplies—cattle, vegetables, water, and rum—and enough uniforms and shoes to clothe twice the number of men encamped there. A new inspector general from Germany, “Baron” von Steuben, had the men marching in step and drilling like a crack European elite guard, their arms snapping confidently, their tough bronzed faces radiating invincibility. Steuben was another of the shadowy foreign soldiers who had added titles to their names and convinced Franklin and Deane they had the skills and pedigree to win the war for America. Although little else was known of him, Steuben had indeed been a Prussian army captain (though never a baron), who had acquired a thorough knowledge of legendary Prussian training and drilling methods. Until he and Greene took over their respective commands, Continental army troops had relied on courage alone to fight professional soldiers who were better fed, clothed, trained, and armed. To their courage, Greene now added
food, clothes, arms, and ammunition, while Steuben added training, discipline, and pride. The men improved their own living quarters, and, when Lafayette returned, they had converted their primitive huts into relatively comfortable living quarters. Indeed, many officers’ wives, including Martha Washington and French-speaking Caty Greene, had joined their husbands— although the presence of the women made Lafayette long for Adrienne: “I love you more than ever, my sweetheart”—
“mon cher coeur.”
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The collapse of the Conway Cabal emasculated the Board of War and left Washington the unquestioned commander in chief of the American military. At the same time, the Articles of Confederation combined with chronic absenteeism to render Congress so impotent that Washington had little choice but to expand his role into the political sphere. Surrounded by a cadre of loyal, experienced, and effective officers of every rank—some of them former merchants and bankers in civilian life—he appointed a provisional “cabinet,” which included, among others, Quartermaster General Nathanael Greene and General Henry Knox, who commanded the Continental Army artillery. The brilliant young Alexander Hamilton remained his personal secretary, but assumed functions as a presidential chief of staff, screening visitors and organizing the general’s day.

Washington gave Lafayette responsibility for “foreign affairs,” and Lafayette did not disappoint him. Lafayette sent a stream of letters to Versailles and Paris, urging everyone he knew of influence to support America. “In every word, I did everything to draw our two peoples closer together,” Lafayette recalled in his memoirs.
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A week later, as Tory handbills reported Lord North’s efforts to negotiate a reconciliation with Congress, Lafayette warned President Laurens of North’s “black schemes. He ca’nt [
sic] fight us out
but hopes to
negotiate us out
of our rights.” Echoing Washington’s words, Lafayette insisted, “If he [North] sincerely wishes peace . . . let him withdraw his troops and treat afterwards.” Congress agreed, unanimously resolving not to deal with North’s envoys until the British forces either withdrew their forces or acknowledged American independence.

Lafayette also relieved Washington of the task of examining petitions from the hordes of foreigners seeking commissions. Rather than trying to integrate non-English-speaking officers into American divisions, he organized them into several “corps of strangers”—his literal translation of the French
corps d’étrangers
.
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Many were outstanding cavalrymen who gave the Continental army several battalions of European professionals to counter Britain’s Hessians. Lafayette appointed the marquis de La Rouërie, a shipmate from the
Victoire
, to lead an all-French cavalry, and he coaxed Count Casimir Pulaski, the Polish Patriot who had fought at Brandywine and Germantown, to organize other foreign soldiers into a mixed corps of cavalry and light infantry.
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With the cavalry in sure hands, Lafayette turned to training his own division, spending his own money to clothe and arm them and using Steuben’s techniques to drill and train them for the summer campaign. What made his training remarkable—and bonded his troops to him—was his habit of questioning them respectfully about their previous campaigns and the tactics they had found most effective. For a major general—a European nobleman at that—to converse and consult with his men astonished them. He later claimed that American soldiers had been “my teachers”
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—that he learned more from them than they from him. His lessons would serve him well. As one of Washington’s most trusted aides and fourth-ranking general at Valley Forge—after Washington, Greene, and Lord Stirling—he commanded enormous influence. When others urged Washington to attack Philadelphia and liberate the nation’s capital, Lafayette opposed the move, warning it would leave the city “in ashes” and cost the army one-third of its men. His opinion meshed perfectly with Washington’s overall strategy of avoiding conventional battlefield confrontations with Howe’s larger, professional forces. Steuben agreed, and Washington decided to watch the enemy from the safety of Valley Forge and postpone action until time, place, and circumstance favored the American army.

On May 1, Simeon Deane, Silas Deane’s brother, rode into Washington’s headquarters with a letter from Franklin and Deane in Paris. Lafayette’s letters had helped win French recognition of American independence. “We have now the great satisfaction of acquainting you and the Congress,” Franklin and Deane exulted, “that the Treaties with France are at length completed and signed. The first is a treaty of amity and commerce . . . the other is a treaty of alliance, in which it is stipulated that in case England declares war against France . . . we should then make common cause of it and join our forces and councils, etc. The great aim of this treaty is declared to be ‘to establish the liberty, sovereignty, and independency, absolute and unlimited, of the United States, as well in matters of government as commerce;’ and this is guarantied to us by France. . . . The preparations for war are carried on with immense activity and it is soon expected.”
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After signing the treaty, Franklin, Deane, and Adams were officially presented to the king and the royal family and, according to Lafayette’s memoirs, “all but ran to the young Madame de Lafayette, who was at Versailles, to demonstrate publicly how indebted they felt to Lafayette for the wonderful turn of events their affairs had taken.”
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Tears streamed down Lafayette’s cheeks as he heard Washington read the Franklin-Deane letter to his officers. Overcome by emotion, he gripped the commander in chief and embraced him
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—perhaps a first for the usually austere Virginian, but certainly not the last. Lafayette sent Henry Laurens a letter of congratulations, but reminded the president that “I am myself fit to
receive as well as to offer congratulations in this happy circumstance. If you remember, Sir, in which moment, in which sentiment, I left my country, you will easily conceive how surprised, how pleased I must be to see our noble cause arise at such a period of glory and success.” He sent Laurens his wishes “for the happiness of mankind, the prosperity of freedom, and the glory of what they call in France, my
new country—America
.”
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