Lafayette (17 page)

As the army at Valley Forge burst into spontaneous celebration, Lafayette’s own joy abruptly turned into grief when he opened a second letter that Deane had brought from Paris: Lafayette’s daughter Henriette had died. The cheering troops about him knew nothing of his loss, and he refused to say or do anything to diminish their joy. They built a huge bonfire, and, after putting on a white scarf, the symbol of Bourbon France, he disguised his grief and led a march of French officers before the cheering American soldiers.

“How horrible is our separation!” Lafayette wrote to his wife late that night. “I never before felt the cruelty of separation so deeply. My heart suffers doubly, from my own sorrow and from my inability to share yours. The time it took before I learned of it has also increased my misery. . . . The loss of our poor child is almost always on my mind. The news came right after the news of the treaty, and, with my heart torn by pain, I had to participate in the public joy.”
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On May 6, Washington issued a general order: “It having pleased the Almighty Ruler of the Universe to defend the cause of the United American States, and finally to raise us up a powerful friend among the princes of the earth, to establish our liberty and independency upon a lasting foundation; it becomes us to set apart a day for gratefully acknowledging the divine goodness and celebrating the important event, which we owe to his divine interposition.” He proclaimed an official day of “public celebration,” beginning with morning religious services and followed by “military parades, marchings, the firings of cannon and musketry.” According to those present, “The appearance was brilliant and the effect imposing. The ceremony . . . was closed with an entertainment, Patriotic toasts, music, and other demonstrations of joy.”
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Lafayette commanded the left division in the parade, Stirling the right, and Kalb the second line; “several times,” wrote one officer, “the cannons discharged thirteen rounds.” Steuben’s training produced a snap and precision in the entire army—and precision to the traditional
feu de joie
, or “fire of joy,” in which each member of a long line of musketeers fires a single shot, in rapid succession, to produce a long, continuous, and thunderous sound. Washington responded accordingly: “The Commander-in-Chief takes great pleasure in acquainting the army that its conduct yesterday afforded him the highest satisfaction. The exactness and order with which all its
movements were formed, is a pleasing evidence of the progress it has made in military improvement, and of the perfection to which it may arrive by a continuance of that laudable zeal which now so happily prevails.”
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Philadelphia’s Robert Morris expressed the feelings of Congress by congratulating Washington and asserting, “Our independence is undoubtedly secured; our country must be free.”
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A few days after King Louis XVI signed the treaty with the Americans, the French court notified the English government that it had recognized American independence and “the right of the American people to govern themselves.” When Lafayette read the message, he noted wryly, “That is a noble concept that we will have to remind them about someday.”
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“During the winter of 1778,” Adrienne de Lafayette recalled, “my mother grew obsessed with news about Lafayette. The alliance of France with the United States had filled her with joy, and, although she had been totally unaccustomed to following political events, she now studied them intensely.”
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The treaty filled Americans with joy as well. Coupled with fine spring weather, the enthusiasm provoked a stream of new volunteers to Valley Forge. A band of fifty Iroquois startled the camp one day: they had come as volunteers to serve the warrior Kayewla. As Washington’s “foreign affairs minister,” Lafayette had not forgotten to inform his Indian friends in upper New York of the alliance with France, in the hope that they would help the Americans and end their depredations against settlers.

By mid-May, Washington’s little army had swelled to more than 13,000. With only 10,000 British troops in Philadelphia, Congress pressed Washington to attack, and he called a council of war. To heal the wounds of the Conway Cabal, he graciously invited the humbled cabalist generals Gates, Mifflin, and Major General Charles Lee to join Greene, Lafayette, Kalb, Stirling, Steuben, and Knox, who were all staunchly loyal to Washington. Lee was the second-highest-ranking general in the Continental army after Washington. English-born and unrelated to the Lees of Virginia, he had enlisted in the British army at twenty and spent nearly three decades as a career soldier before joining the Patriots. He was outspoken in his dislike of Washington, who reciprocated the feeling with equal passion. The British had captured Lee the previous December, but released him in a prisoner
exchange, and by right of rank, if not trust, he returned to the army and took his seat at the council of war.

“After a full and unreserved discussion,” Washington wrote, “it was the unanimous opinion of the council, that the line of conduct . . . best suited to promote the interests and safety of the United States, was to remain on the defensive and wait events, and not attempt any offensive operation against the enemy. . . . [it] was agreed that to take Philadelphia by storm was impracticable, and that thirty thousand men would be requisite for a blockade.”
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The prospects of French intervention, however, forced the British from an offensive to a defensive strategy that would concentrate their land and naval forces in New York. In mid-May, they prepared to evacuate Philadelphia before the French fleet could block Delaware Bay and the sea lanes to New York. Washington sent Lafayette with an elite corps of light infantry and cavalry to watch British movements, determine their plan of evacuation, “and fall upon the rear of the enemy in the act of withdrawing. This will be a matter of no small difficulty,” he warned Lafayette, “and will require the greatest caution and prudence in the execution. . . . Remember, that your detachment is a very valuable one, and that any accident happening to it would be a very severe blow to this army. . . . No attempt should be made, nor anything risked, without the greatest prospect of success, and with every reasonable advantage. . . . In general, I would observe that a stationary post is inadvisable, as it gives the enemy an opportunity of knowing your situation, and concerting plans successfully against you.”
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Lafayette left Valley Forge on May 18, 1778, with the largest force he had ever commanded—some 2,200 men and five cannons, and his invaluable little company of reverent Iroquois warriors as scouts. After marching a dozen miles along the north bank of the Schuylkill, Lafayette reached Barren Hill, about midway between Valley Forge and Philadelphia—and immediately ignored the advice of his mentor by setting up a stationary post at the summit. To Lafayette’s eye, Barren Hill seemed an all but impregnable crest with a commanding view of Germantown and the approaches to Philadelphia. A sheer rock cliff to the river protected his right, and he lined his five cannons in front to repel any attack from Philadelphia. Behind him lay a clear avenue of retreat, down a gentle slope back toward Valley Forge. Only his left flank was vulnerable, with but a few stone houses and a small wood to shield him, and he ordered a 600-man militia to patrol the area. He sent his cavalry and Indian scouts two miles forward to guard the approaches from Philadelphia and a band of spies into the city to reconnoiter British troop movements. One of the spies was a turncoat who delivered word of Lafayette’s position to the British—just as General William Howe was packing
to return to England after retiring as commander of English forces in America. He gleefully postponed his departure for the chance to ambush and capture the arrogant young marquis and take him back to Britain as a prize. Howe predicted that after English laughter at Lafayette’s humiliation subsided, the marquis would disappear from the pages of history.

Howe left nothing to chance. He gathered more than three-fourths of his army—8,000 British and Hessians, equipped with fifteen pieces of artillery—and marched to Barren Hill during the night. “The English generals were so confident of success that they sent invitations to the ladies of Philadelphia to dine with Lafayette the following night,” Lafayette recalled in his memoirs, “and his brother the admiral outfitted a special frigate” to carry Howe and Lafayette back to England together. Admiral Howe rode in an elegant carriage in the rear to watch his brother’s entertainment at Barren Hill.
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By dawn on May 20, a sea of redcoats all but surrounded the Patriot camp, engulfing every road and even the sloping escape route back to Valley Forge. Lafayette’s “very valuable” detachment seemed to have little choice but surrender or face massacre. Recalling Indian tactics his soldiers had described, Lafayette sent small flying squads scurrying to different parts of the surrounding woods to dart through the trees in one direction, fire a few rounds at the British, and then withdraw quickly and shift to another position to issue another round—appearing, disappearing, and reappearing— and giving the impression that a larger force was attacking. Shots came from everywhere. “In every direction the British looked,” Lafayette recounted, “they saw nothing but the heads of false columns popping out among the trees and screens of shrubbery, then disappearing. At one point, fifty savages, our [Iroquois] friends in war paint, suddenly came face to face with fifty English cavalrymen; the war cries of each side so caught the other by surprise that they both fled with equal speed in opposite directions.”
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While British officers lost time chasing imaginary columns, Lafayette regained the advantage, ordering his main force to file quietly down a steep narrow road along the side of the cliff to a ford on the Schuylkill River below. When he saw that they had crossed safely, he called in his snipers, one squad at a time, and, taking up the rear with the last of his men, he marched them down to the river and crossed without losing a single man. Lafayette regrouped his men to withstand a British assault, but the British generals in the woods above “fell to quarreling,” as their troops kept running into each other in the frantic, undisciplined hunt for Lafayette’s “false heads. . . . When the two British lines met,” according to Lafayette, “they were on the point of attacking each other, for there was no longer anyone between them.”
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“Howe was astonished,” Lafayette laughed. “The whole British army, of which half had marched forty miles, retreated without a single captive. . . . The English returned to Philadelphia much fatigued and ashamed, and were laughed at for their ill success.”
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The expedition humiliated Howe and the other British generals; one general narrowly escaped court-martial. Lafayette and his force climbed back up Barren Hill to continue their reconnaissance for another three days before returning to Valley Forge, where news awaited that a large French fleet, with 4,000 troops, would reach Delaware Bay by early July.

On May 8, Sir Henry Clinton, with whom Lafayette had chatted amiably at the king’s reception at St. James Palace in London, replaced Howe as British commander in chief. On June 18, he began evacuating Philadelphia, sending 3,000 men to New York by ship, while the rest began trekking overland through New Jersey. With their artillery, military equipment, and baggage train of 1,500 carriages stretching twelve miles, the slow-moving columns provided just the sort of inviting target Washington had sought to prove the efficacy of the unconventional warfare of harassment instead of direct confrontation. He called another council of war. Charles Lee, the former English army officer, proclaimed himself “passionately opposed” to such tactics. His experience with the British army swayed all but four of Washington’s most loyal generals: Greene, Lafayette, “Mad” Anthony Wayne, and John Cadwalader, all of them veterans of Brandywine. Washington compromised by postponing any decision for forty-eight hours and simply following the slow-moving British into central New Jersey to see if conditions and terrain offered opportunities to attack.

A week of heavy rains, searing summer heat, and suffocating humidity slowed the huge British convoy to a mere six miles a day, and, on June 26, the exhausted Redcoats encamped at Monmouth Courthouse (now Freehold, New Jersey), with the Patriots less than twenty miles behind, in Cranbury. Again, Washington called his generals together. Lafayette recalled the meeting: “Lee very eloquently argued that we should provide a
pont d’or
[a “golden bridge,” or face-saving way out] for the enemy to reach New York; that British negotiators were discussing possible reconciliation with Congressional leaders; that the British army had never been as disciplined and as strong.”
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Again, all but Lafayette, Greene, Wayne, and Cadwalader agreed with Lee. Lafayette argued that “it would be disgraceful for the army command and humiliating for our troops to permit [the British] to travel the length of New Jersey with impunity; that we could attack their rear guard without risk.”
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When asked his opinion, the impetuous Anthony Wayne replied: “Fight, sir,” and Lafayette, Greene, and Cadwalader, who had dispatched the plotter Conway in a duel, all echoed his cry: “Fight, sir.”
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