Lafayette (20 page)

When Lafayette and Greene arrived in Boston, Hancock invited them to a sumptuous reception at Faneuil Hall for the admiral, his officers, and about five hundred of the leading citizens of Boston and surrounding communities. With Hancock presiding, thirteen-gun salutes accompanied successive toasts to the United States and the king of France. It was the finest affair ever held on American soil, according to Abigail Adams.

Lafayette spent the days that followed in pleasant, informal excursions with d’Estaing—a fellow Auvergnat and, it turned out, a distant cousin. (Because they married only members of their own class, most French aristocrats were cousins of one sort or another.) With Lafayette sermonizing about America’s greatness, they toured Boston and the surrounding countryside, including Harvard College and the camp where Burgoyne’s Saratoga army still languished, awaiting repatriation as hostages of Congress until the British recognized American independence.

With the annual winter hiatus in the war and no battles to fight, Lafayette’s restless imagination conjured up a variety of chimerical adventures to lead against Britain—in Canada, the British West Indies, and virtually every English possession in the world, including England herself. Lafayette and d’Estaing worked out specific plans for winter and spring campaigns. Lafayette would ask Congress for 2,000 American troops to sail with d’Estaing’s fleet to attack the British West Indies in January. In the spring, d’Estaing would return north, sail up the St. Lawrence to Quebec, where Lafayette would lead a combined Franco-American invasion force of 6,000 French marines and his 2,000 Continentals. Lafayette sent details to all his influential friends—Vergennes at Versailles, of course, and Washington, whom he also asked for a leave of absence to join the West Indies expedition.

Washington approved Lafayette’s taking leave, but urged his French general to do so at home in France with his wife and child and forget the Canadian and West Indies expeditions. “Friendship induces me to tell you that I do not conceive that the prospect of such an operation is so favourable at this time,” Washington wrote. He said the invasion of Canada would require an enormous French army that Americans would resent on their soil as much as they resented the British army. Washington thanked his disciple for his “endeavors to cherish harmony among the officers of the allied powers” and assured him that “the sentiments of affection and attachment, which breath so conspicuously in all your letters to me . . . afford me abundant cause to rejoice at the happiness of my acquaintance with you.
Your love of liberty, the just sense you entertain of this valuable blessing, and your noble and disinterested exertions in the cause of it, added to the innate goodness of your heart, conspire to render you dear to me; and I think myself happy in being linked with you in bonds of friendship.” In urging Lafayette to go home, he added an invitation to Lafayette and his “fair lady” to return to visit Mount Vernon, “when the war is ended, if she could be prevailed upon to quit for a few months, the gaieties and splendor of a court, for the rural amusements of an humble cottage.” He signed his letter with “sincerity and affection,”
⁴⁰
reminding him also to apply for official leave to Congress, which had issued his original commission.

Lafayette spent three weeks in Philadelphia, charming and winning the friendships of congressmen of every political persuasion—New York’s witty Gouverneur Morris, a staunch friend and supporter of Washington; Virginia’s Richard Henry Lee, who had been an equally staunch supporter of Gates; and even the irascible Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, who supported no one but himself. All were as eager to meet Lafayette as he was to meet them. Many were Freemasons who embraced him and called him brother. It was his signal personal gift to appear a disinterested friend of America and of liberty and, at each encounter, to win the awe and admiration of members of every political faction. He had been through much, had conducted himself heroically, had fought, bled, and risked death for
their
country, and asked nothing in return but their respect and friendship. His skill in winning both proved remarkable.

French ambassador Gérard wrote to French foreign minister Vergennes: “I cannot refrain from saying that the prudent, courageous and amiable conduct of the Marquis de Lafayette has made him the idol of the Congress, the army and the people of America. They all hold a high opinion of his military talents. You know how little inclined I am to adulation, but I would be less than just if I did not send you these universally acclaimed testimonials. . . . The Americans strongly want him to return with the troops which the king may send.”
⁴¹

Although Lafayette failed to win congressional support for his Caribbean venture, many congressmen lusted for Canada as a fourteenth member of the American confederation—especially the aggressive admirers of Gates. Lafayette convinced them that British retention of Canada would pose an ever-present military threat on the northern United States border. Unlike Washington, Congress agreed and approved his “Plan for Reducing the province of Canada” the following spring. It appointed him American liaison to the court at Versailles, ordered an American frigate, aptly named
Alliance
, to take him back to France, and it instructed Benjamin Franklin, the new minister plenipotentiary to France—the first American ambassador to any country—to “cause an elegant sword, with proper devices to be made,
and presented in the name of the United States to the Marquis de Lafayette.”
⁴²

On October 21, Congress resolved, “That the Marquis de Lafayette, major-general in the service of the United States have leave to go to France, and that he return at such time as shall be most convenient to him.” It offered its thanks “for your zeal . . . and for the disinterested services you have rendered to the United States of America” and sent a formal letter to the king of France:

To our great, faithful, and beloved friend and ally, Louis the Sixteenth, king of France and Navarre:—

The Marquis de Lafayette having obtained our leave to return to his native country, we could not suffer him to depart without testifying our deep sense of his zeal, courage, and attachment. We have advanced him to the rank of major-general in our armies, which, as well by his prudent conduct, he has manifestly merited. We recommend this young nobleman to your majesty’s notice, as one whom we know to be wise in council, gallant in the field, and patient under the hardships of war.
⁴³

Lafayette was deeply moved—not only by the genuine appreciation Congress had displayed but by their unsolicited effort to ensure his receiving an appropriate—and forgiving—welcome at Versailles.

Lafayette went to Boston to coordinate the Canadian campaign with d’Estaing before returning home. Traveling on horseback through torrents of rain, he fell ill—as much from the torrents of wine and rum as from the rain. Every town along his route celebrated his arrival and departure, and he collapsed when he reached Fishkill, midway between New York and Albany, and about eight miles from Washington’s camp. As he had at Brandywine, Washington sent his own physician, Dr. John Cochran, to care for the young Frenchman. Lafayette was convinced he was dying: “[I was] Suffering from a raging fever and violent head-ache,” he recalled. “General Washington came every day to inquire . . . and showed the most tender and paternal anxiety.”
⁴⁴

Newspapers across the nation reported the impending death of “Our Marquis,” but, after three weeks, just as the nation prepared to mourn his passing, “nature added the alarming though salutary remedy of a [four-hour] hemorrhage . . . [and my] life was no longer in danger.”
⁴⁵
As he recovered, he and Washington once again discussed the Canadian expedition, with Washington pointing out that any shift of American forces to Canada would loosen the noose around British encampments in Rhode Island and New York and allow them to break out. Moreover, it would change the complexion of the war: instead of fighting for independence, Americans would be
aggressors, expanding beyond their borders and further alienating Tory loyalists at home. Although he did not want to hurt the young man’s sensitive feelings about France, Washington feared France as much as England.

“France,” he wrote to Congress, “[is] the most powerful monarchy in Europe by land, able now to dispute the empire of the sea with Great Britain, and, if joined by Spain, I may say, certainly superior, possessed by New Orleans on our right, Canada on our left, and seconded by the numerous tribes of Indians in our rear . . . so generally friendly to her. . . . It is much to be apprehended [that France would] have in her power to give laws to these states . . . it is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind,” he told Congress, “that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interests.”
⁴⁶

In Boston, d’Estaing underscored Washington’s fears by issuing a “Declaration in the king’s name to all former Frenchman of North America” that pledged French recovery of Canada from the English. “You were born French,” he said, “you have never ceased to be French.”
⁴⁷

On December 2, Lafayette left Fishkill, but not before he and Washington took “tender and painful leave of each other.”
⁴⁸
While Lafayette waited for his frigate in Boston, Washington went to Philadelphia and convinced Congress to abandon the Canadian project. In Versailles, French foreign minister Vergennes also vetoed the expedition. French expenditures in America had already exceeded expectations. In addition to the costs of d’Estaing’s foray, France had loaned the Continental Congress 42 million livres—equivalent to $420 million today—and Congress had no hard currency to repay it. Recapturing Canada would spread French military and naval resources so thin as to render her vulnerable to British attack in the West Indies.

With the Canadian project abandoned, d’Estaing left for the French West Indies and reopened American waters to British depredation. As if to underscore the folly of Sullivan’s alienation of the French, a British flotilla sent its marines storming ashore in Georgia and captured Savannah. Fearing a similar assault on Boston, Congress ordered the army to escort Burgoyne and his 4,000 English and Hessian troops on a seven-hundred-mile trek to internment near Charlottesville, Virginia, too far to rise up in support of a British invasion.

Early in January 1779, Lafayette prepared to sail for France. “Adieu, my dear Marquis,” Washington wrote. “My best wishes will ever attend you. . . . There is no need of fresh proofs to convince you of my affection for you personally, or of the high opinion I entertain of your military talents and merit. . . . May you have a safe and agreeable passage, and a happy meeting with your lady and friends!”
⁴⁹

Emotion got the better of Lafayette as he wrote his farewell to Washington:

To hear from you, my most respected friend, will be the greatest happiness I can feel. The longer the letters you write, the more blessed with satisfaction I shall think myself.

Be so kind, my dear general, as to present my best respects to your lady. . . . I hope you will quietly enjoy the pleasure of being with Mrs. Washington, without any disturbance from the enemy, till I join you again. . . . Farewell, my most beloved general; it is not without emotion that I bid you this last adieu, before so long a separation. Don’t forget an absent friend, and believe me for ever and ever, with the highest respect and tenderest affection.
⁵⁰

On January 11, 1779, the
Alliance
weighed anchor, and the teary-eyed twenty-one-year-old could not help scribbling another last note to his beloved adoptive father. “The sails are just going to be hoisted, my dear General, and I have but time to take my last leave of you. . . . Farewell, my dear general; I hope your French friend will ever be dear to you; I hope I shall soon see you again, and tell you myself with what emotion I now leave the coast you inhabit, and with what affection and respect I am for ever, my dear general, your respected and sincere friend.”
⁵¹

*Although universally known as Rhode Island, the state’s legal name remains Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations, and that is the name that appears on all official state documents, including state bonds.

The Earth itself seemed to collapse beneath Lafayette’s frigate as it struggled through the dangerous winter passage across the north Atlantic. A savage storm near Newfoundland ripped off its main topmast and, as the
Alliance
rolled and pitched out of control, huge waves sent their foamy tongues darting into the ship’s companionways.

“During the long dark night, the ship was in imminent danger of sinking,” Lafayette recalled, “but an even greater danger awaited only two hundred leagues [500 miles] from France. To encourage crew uprisings on American ships, His British Majesty had issued a proclamation promising them the value of every
rebel
ship they brought into English ports—an eventuality only possible by massacring officers and those who opposed the mutiny.”
¹