Lafayette (30 page)

On May 20, Cornwallis linked his force to Arnold’s, but disdainfully ordered the traitor to leave. On June 1, Arnold returned to his patron, General Clinton, in New York, escaping capture by Lafayette and frustrating still another of the French knight’s quests.

As 1,800 more British troops arrived from New York to reinforce Cornwallis’s army, Lafayette at last heard from Wayne: he had not yet even left York, Pennsylvania. “I shall certainly take up my line of March the 23rd,” he pledged, but offered no reasons for his delay. “Would to God I was with you now as I fear a change of circumstance previous to our junction.”
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Wayne’s letter seemed to seal Lafayette’s doom, promising to turn what might have been victory into a senseless, bloody end to his American journey. Facing an overwhelmingly superior force of more than 7,000 troops, Lafayette pulled back to the heights of Richmond to defend the munitions depots—and fired a barrage of letters for help. Steuben replied that he had
“only 500 men altogether . . . I am of the opinion that my 500 men, and even if it were 1,000, together with those you have, would not prevent Cornwallis from advancing or going wherever he pleases.”
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Weedon replied that he had been unable to raise a militia in Fredericksburg. Governor Jefferson sent him a batch of useless warrants to impress horses. Alone, with fewer than 1,000 men, Lafayette knew he faced certain massacre—for he would never surrender. In a melancholy letter to Washington, he lamented, “I am not strong enough even to get beaten. Untill the Pennsylvanians arrive we are next to nothing in point of opposition to so large a force.”
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Faced with inevitable defeat and death, he wrote a last, darkly light-hearted letter to his friend Hamilton:

I have been long complaining that I had nothing to do; and want of employment was an objection I had to my going to the southward. But for the present, my dear friend, my complaint is quite of an opposite nature; and I have so many arrangements to make, so many difficulties to combat, so many enemies to deal with, that I am just that much of a general as will make me a historian of misfortunes and nail my name upon the ruins of what good folks are pleased to call the army of Virginia. We have nine hundred Continentals. Their infantry is near five to one; their cavalry ten to one. . . . Come here, my dear friend . . . I want your advice and exertions. If you grant my request, you will vastly oblige,

Your friend,

          Lafayette.
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Washington, of course, was distraught over Lafayette’s plight, but too far away to send aid, and, knowing that British spies would see everything he wrote, he could not even comfort Lafayette without revealing his own new master strategy and Lafayette’s key role in it. “As you have no cypher by which I can write you in safety,” he explained, “and my letter has been frequently intercepted of late I restrain myself from mentioning many matters I wish to communicate to you.” Fully aware of Lafayette’s dream—of his obsession—to fight in the final, decisive battle against Britain, Washington hoped Lafayette would understand his meaning when he wrote cryptically, “It would be unnecessary for you to be here at present, and I am sure you would not wish to leave your charge while you are so near an enemy.” For the benefit of the spies he knew would intercept his message, Washington went on to announce his plans for a decisive assault on New York.

“I have just returned from Weathersfield,” he continued, knowing that Lafayette—and the British spies—would realize that he had met with Rochambeau. “Upon a full consideration of our affairs in every point of view—an attempt upon New York with its present Garrison . . . was deemed preferable to a Southern operation as we had not the command of the water.
The reasons which induced this determination were the danger to be apprehended from the approaching [summer] Heats—the inevitable dissipation & loss of Men by so long a March—and the difficulty of transportation. . . . The French Troops are to March this way as soon as certain circumstances will admit.”
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Washington had indeed met with Rochambeau and discussed attacking New York, but the master strategy Washington had worked out in his own mind was exactly the opposite: he had no intention of attacking well-rested, well-fed British troops sitting behind impregnable fortress walls on New York Island. The armies of Cornwallis were far more vulnerable after months of endless marching and debilitating battles in the Carolina swamps and forests, without adequate food or rest. A key element of Washington’s Southern Strategy, however, was to exhaust Cornwallis by keeping him on the move, and he entreated Lafayette “not to hazard . . . a General Action unless you have grounds to do it on. No
rational person
will condemn you for
not fighting
with the odds against you and while so much is depending on it. But all will censure a rash step if it is not attended with success.”
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Another key element of Washington’s Southern Strategy was “command of the water,” however, and Washington asked the French commander to speed the arrival of the armada from the French West Indies, along with added troops and enough money for Congress to pay the American army and prevent desertions.

“I must not conceal from you, sir,” Rochambeau pleaded with Admiral de Grasse, “that these people are at the end of their means; that Washington will not have half the troops he counted upon . . . that M. de la Fayette has not one thousand regular soldiers with the militia to defend Virginia.”
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Coming from a friend and fellow commander, Rochambeau’s letter moved de Grasse to immediate action. “I have learned with great chagrin of the distressing situation upon the continent, and of the need for prompt assistance,” he replied, pledging that, once he succeeded in sweeping British ships from the waters off the French West Indies—perhaps by mid-August— he would send twenty-nine warships to America, with a force of 3,000 troops, including 100 artillerymen and 100 dragoons, ten cannon, and a supply of siege guns and mortars. He promised to bring 1.2 million livres (about $12 million) in cash for the American troops.

Puzzled but obsessively loyal to his “beloved general,” Lafayette obeyed Washington’s suggestions. In the days that followed, he and his men moved almost all the munitions from the Richmond depots to hiding places in the foothills west of the city. On May 26, Cornwallis and his force crossed the James River toward Richmond, with the terrifying Colonel Banastre Tarleton and a new 800-man cavalry leading the way. Lafayette had but forty horsemen to fend off Tarleton’s “birds of prey,”
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which flew across the countryside astride a thundering herd of colossal thoroughbreds—“the best horses in Virginia,” according to Lafayette. Almost all had been stolen by Negro slaves from their masters and delivered to the British in exchange for freedom.

“I shall now proceed to dislodge La Fayette from Richmond,” Cornwallis wrote to General Sir Henry Clinton in New York, “and with my light troops destroy any magazines or stores in the neighbourhood, which may have been collected for his use or for General Greene’s army.”
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Like Howe at Barren Hill, Cornwallis was intent on capturing Lafayette, to carry him back to England in chains—a symbol of France, whose humiliation would crush French enthusiasm for the American Revolution. All but drooling contemptuously, Cornwallis crossed the James River proclaiming, “The boy cannot escape me.”
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Lafayette anticipated Cornwallis’s attack, however, and prepared evasive action to prevent capture of his little force by the swifter, more powerful
English army: “Public stores and private property being removed from Richmond,” he wrote to Washington, “this place is a less important object. I don’t believe it would be prudent to expose the troops for the sake of a few houses, which are empty; but I am wavering between two inconveniences. Were I to fight a battle, I should be cut to pieces, the militia dispersed, and the arms lost. Were I to decline fighting, the country would think itself given up. I am therefore determined to skirmish, but not to engage too far, and particularly to take care against their immense and excellent body of horse, whom the militia fear as they would so many wild beasts.”
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After saving the last of the munitions, Lafayette ordered the evacuation of Richmond. On May 15, Governor Jefferson and the General Assembly fled westward to Charlottesville, and ten days later, Lafayette led his men out of the city on the beginning of a long and circuitous route northward, hoping for linkage with Wayne and his Pennsylvanians.

In Europe, the fall of Richmond produced jubilation in London and consternation at Versailles—as well as at the Noailles mansion in Paris. “During the Virginia campaign,” his wife recalled, “the only news we received came from the newspapers. Monsieur de Lafayette had no time or means to write, and the newspapers painted a picture of desperation . . . in alarming circumstances.” At the time, young George-Washington Lafayette “nearly died teething” and left Adrienne “weakened by anxieties.”
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Lafayette’s strategy of evasive action took his men along the high ground, in thick brush and heavily forested slopes, felling trees behind them to slow Cornwallis’s pursuit and destroying bridges after crossing each of the myriad creeks and streams that wove through the Virginia hills and valleys. A handful of snipers covered the retreat, emerging suddenly from treetops and bushes to surprise the British vanguard with a spray of fire that stalled the enemy column just long enough for Lafayette’s band to distance itself tantalizingly out of reach of its pursuers. With every advance, sniper fire cost Cornwallis a few more Redcoats—two here, three there, four . . . gradually but painfully eroding and demoralizing the British troops. As Lafayette explained, “The Americans retreated in such a manner that the front guard of the enemy arrived on the spot just as they quitted it, and, without running any risk themselves, they retarded as much as possible the enemy progress.”
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Tarleton’s thoroughbreds, however, were swift and powerful and often outflanked Lafayette’s men. “Hasten to our aid,” Lafayette wrote desperately to Wayne, warning that “should we be overtaken before you arrive we will soon vanish. . . . The other day . . . Tarleton surprised a party of militia and took about 30 or 40, some of whom were cut very barbarously.”
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Tarleton’s cavalry streaked across the landscape in ghostly fashion, appearing on the right flank one day, on the left the next, charging from the
rear, then the front. Lafayette had no choice but to change course toward the forested western foothills, where Tarleton’s cavalry would be less effective. He pleaded with Wayne to “leave your Baggage behind and come by forced marches.”
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Lafayette received encouragement from Greene, along with descriptions of Marion’s and Morgan’s successful guerrilla tactics in South Carolina.
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Indeed, Greene had recaptured Camden and the central part of South Carolina and pushed British forces toward the coast. Lafayette used some of Greene’s tactics to refine his own to a fine art. He detached small groups of riflemen to pounce on enemy flanks, bobbing and weaving in the trees and shrubbery, out of reach of Tarleton’s mounted swordsmen, raining shots from every direction before melting into the surrounding landscape and returning to their main body. They were few in number, but their speed and rapid fire gave the impression of being a much larger force. They won no battles, but, as Greene had done, they exhausted the Redcoats, who marched in full uniform through the stifling, soggy southern heat. Upright in traditional battle stance, the British were unprepared for multidirectional fire from unseen enemies behind bushes and trees.

Tarleton’s cavalry was equally ineffective in the thick shrubs and forests, although they succeeded in terrorizing the civilian population on the flat-lands, laying waste plantations, sacking and burning like Vandals of old. Far from helping the British cause, Tarleton’s depredations harried Loyalists and Patriots alike, and many of both fled to Lafayette’s camp, bent on retaliating against Tarleton by joining the Patriot cause.

Lafayette’s little army moved swiftly, day and night, fearing armed loyalists and renegade slaves as much as the pursuing Redcoats. By June 5, Lafayette and his men had widened the distance between themselves and the British to about thirty-five miles and were in sight of the Rappahannock River when the British vanguard came to an abrupt halt: Wayne’s force had arrived and encamped on the other bank.

As Lafayette’s exhausted little army stood in tatters cheering and crying, Wayne’s Pennsylvanians transported boatloads of supplies across the river, and within a few days, they had replenished, reclothed, and rearmed the entire force. Wayne brought oral instructions from Washington to Lafayette explaining the Southern Strategy for the first time.