PART TWO
CHAPTER 4
Captain Charles Biddle had no desire to meet a boatload of Frenchmen. A merchant mariner from Philadelphia who happened to be in Georgetown, South Carolina, on June 13, 1777, when the Victoire touched ground on nearby North Island, Biddle wrote in his autobiography that he “had heard so much of the French officers who came over to enter into the American service” that he had “conceived a very unfavorable opinion of them.” They were all mercenaries, as far as he could tell, and probably not even real military men at that. Biddle scoffed that the latest group most likely consisted of “only barbers or tailors” seeking an easy fortune. Yet Biddle could not deny his French fluency, and he grudgingly granted an associate’s request that he serve as an interpreter for the newcomers. He soon discovered that none of the forty-five Frenchmen who had descended on North Island would have been able to trim his beard or fit him for a suit of clothes.
The crossing had not been easy for Lafayette. In a plaintive letter to Adrienne written aboard ship on May 30, he confessed that he did not take naturally to the sea. Lafayette had been “quite ill during the first part of my voyage,” he wrote, adding with his usual dry humor that at least he could take comfort in the fact that his shipmates shared his suffering. The seasickness eventually subsided, but six weeks had already passed since the Victoire had left port, and Lafayette despaired that he would not reach land for another “eight or ten” days; in fact, he would be on board for another two weeks. Lafayette found the North Atlantic to be “the most tedious of regions.” “The sea is so sad,” he lamented, “and I believe we sadden each other, she and I.” Yet tedium was no match for Lafayette’s enthusiasm. Once he recovered from the nausea—which, he boasted, he did more quickly than his companions—he immersed himself so fully in English books that, although he had not studied the language before sailing, he arrived with passable skills and would be fluent in less than a year.
Many of Lafayette’s shipmates shared his excitement, but others were more jaded—none more so than the Vicomte de Mauroy. Mauroy, a native of Burgundy, had served as an infantry captain for fifteen years before being promoted to lieutenant colonel in the grenadiers but had since been decommissioned, thanks to Saint-Germain’s army reforms. Like Lafayette, Mauroy held a letter of appointment granting him the rank of major general, but unlike Lafayette, Mauroy had had money, not laurels, in his sights when he’d signed on with Silas Deane on November 20, 1776. Whereas Lafayette plainly stated that he would serve as a volunteer, Mauroy demanded “the same pay prerogatives and honours as the American officers of the same rank” and was promised “additional pay as a foreigner which he leaves to the discretion of the States” as well as a further “sum of twelve thousand livres … one half thereof as a bounty and the other half as an advance of his pay.”
The very model of a mercenary officer, Mauroy was as cynical as he was avaricious. He actively tried to poison Lafayette’s idealistic views during the long ocean crossing, later explaining that “I wanted by my objections to prepare him for the disappointments he might experience.” Determined to shake Lafayette’s belief that Americans “are unified by the love of virtue, of liberty … that they are simple, good, hospitable people who prefer beneficence to all our vain pleasures,” Mauroy argued that Americans were no different from their European brethren. Having come from Europe, they brought “the views and prejudices of their respective homelands” to the “unspoiled gound” they now inhabited. In fact, Mauroy believed that Americans might be even less admirable than the men and women they’d left behind because, to his mind, “fanaticism, the insatiable desire for wealth, and misery” were the three motivations that kept a “nearly uninterrupted stream of immigrants” flowing to the New World. Where Lafayette perceived only goodness, Mauroy saw greedy men who “sword in hand … cut down, under a sky that is new to them, forests as ancient as the world, water a still virgin land with the blood of its primitive inhabitants, and fertilize with thousands of scattered cadavers the fields they conquered through crime.” Still, Lafayette was unfazed. He landed on North Island as optimistic as the boy who’d once hoped to slay the Beast of the Gévaudan.
The Victoire dropped anchor under inauspicious circumstances. To begin with, the ship had strayed far off its intended course. The Frenchmen had been heading for Charleston when adverse winds combined with the crew’s scant knowledge of the region to leave them more than fifty miles northeast of their destination at ten o’clock at night. The landing party sent ashore at North Island encountered four dark-skinned men who were out fishing by moonlight, and soon the weary travelers were trudging behind the fishermen to an unknown house where they hoped to receive hospitality from strangers. Their guides, it turned out, were slaves who belonged to one Major Huger; Lafayette had been welcomed to the land of liberty by men who were not free.
None of this seems to have affected Lafayette’s sunny attitude. Seeing the world through rose-colored glasses, Lafayette was consistently charmed by the places and people of South Carolina. When he met Charles Biddle, he apparently had no idea that the unwilling translator harbored any ill will toward the French. In fact, during his first few weeks in America, Lafayette seems to have remained blissfully ignorant of the hostility routinely directed toward French officers in general. Writing from North Island on his second day in America, Lafayette crafted a glowing letter to Adrienne in which he confirmed his highest hopes. “The manners of this world,” he observed, “are simple, polite, and worthy in every respect of the country where the good name of liberty resounds.” A few days later he elaborated on the theme in a letter from Charleston, praising “the simplicity of manners, the desire to oblige, the love of country and of liberty,” and the “sweet equality” that “reigns over all.” He lauded not only the town—“one of the most attractive, best built, and most pleasantly populated cities that I have ever seen”—but also, and perhaps unwisely in a letter to his wife, its “very pretty” female inhabitants. Sweeping aphorisms about equality and possibility pepper these early letters, which, making no mention of the institution of slavery, take a selective view of already limited experiences. “What enchants me,” Lafayette rhapsodized, “is that all citizens are brothers; in America, there are no poor, and none that one could even call peasants.” He later remembered being struck by the sight of “new products and methods of cultivation” during his first trip to the New World. Even the landscape captured his imagination: where Mauroy saw destruction wrought by European colonists, Lafayette described “vast forests, immense rivers” where “nature adorns everything … with an air of youth and majesty.”
Lafayette was only nineteen years old and innocent enough to trust his first impressions; he also had a tendency to express himself in rapturous tones no matter the occasion. Although he had come to fight the British, just a few months earlier he had been lavishing praise on the city and people of London. Writing to Adrienne from the English capital on February 28, he had reported feeling completely at home—something that he had never quite felt in Paris. “For once, my love, I am just like these gentlemen,” he wrote, explaining that “we dance all night and, perhaps because my dancing is more on a par with everyone else’s, I like the ball here.” He also liked Englishwomen. As he put it to Adrienne, “to us, all the women are pretty, and good company.” Strikingly, he referred to England—the nation with which he was about to go to war—as “my new country.” Then again, as he admitted, “it is true that I am inclined to see everything in the best light.”
In America, a unique set of circumstances boosted Lafayette’s natural optimism. Lafayette was the only marquis around—and although his rank counted for little in the drawing rooms of Paris and Versailles, it never failed to dazzle his American hosts. Many of Lafayette’s shipmates bore titles of nobility, but none so exalted as his. And while some could boast of accomplishments that dwarfed Lafayette’s, none of them enjoyed the benefits that were lavished upon the young marquis.
Lafayette’s less privileged companions had a very different experience of their arrival in the New World. The passengers from the Victoire set off for Charleston in two groups: one, including Mauroy, sailed with the ship to its destination, while the rest, including Lafayette and de Kalb, made the journey overland. De Kalb described the three-day march from North Island to Charleston as an exhausting ordeal made with great difficulty in unbearable heat. His letters report on the fevers and illnesses suffered by his companions, as well as the purges and rest cures they underwent. Perhaps a bit of boasting was involved—“I believe I’ll bury all our young men,” the fifty-six-year-old de Kalb wrote to his wife—but his story tallies with the recollections of his aide-de-camp, theChevalier Dubuysson. In a lengthy memoir sent back to France that autumn, Dubuysson elaborated on the journey to Charleston. Offering details overlooked by Lafayette and de Kalb, Dubuysson recalled that a shortage of horses had left the group to set out on foot. Armed to the hilt for fear of marauders, and too weighed down to carry any fresh clothing, they plodded slowly through the oppressive humidity. It did not take long for the men to realize that their heavy riding boots were adding to their misery, and with no other shoes at their disposal, they chose to walk barefoot through stretches of “burning sand” and dense woods. Three days later, Lafayette and his companions arrived in Charleston looking a great deal like “beggars and bandits,” as Dubuysson put it, and they “were received accordingly.”
Dubuysson encountered anti-French sentiment everywhere. He offered no excuses for the swarms of ill-mannered French soldiers of fortune he witnessed in Charleston, many of whom, he believed, were bad seeds who had been “ruined by debt” or “chased out of their corps.” But he was nonetheless critical of Americans who routinely heaped invective upon the foreign soldiers who had come to the colonies’ aid. With an unseemly harshness, he complained that “all the French here are paid very little for the sacrifices they make on behalf of a populace that offers them no gratitude, and that merits just as little.”
Lafayette was immune to such problems. Dubuysson found the honors abundantly bestowed upon his companion bewildering and altogether out of proportion to the middling rank of a marquis. But in America, the sudden appearance of a group of titled Frenchmen in South Carolina was so noteworthy that it made the papers as far north as Boston. The Independent Chronicle and the Universal Advertiser carried a dispatch from Charleston reporting that “a number of Volunteers and French Officers, who have three Years Leave to serve in America, are just arrived here.” The author seemed not to be entirely clear who the important personages were: “among them,” the article announced, “are the Marquis de Moncaim, and the Marquis de Fayette, the last said to be Son-in Law to the Duke d’Aguen.” The identities are garbled, but the errors didn’t make much difference in this context. The foreign names were all the same to an American audience seeing them for the first time, and the salient idea was conveyed quite clearly: highborn, influential French officers were joining the American army. To the reading public, the men’s arrival must have seemed a sign of hope.
On June 26, 1777, the group set off for Philadelphia, where they expected the Continental Congress to confirm their appointments, assign them commands, and send them off to fight in General Washington’s army. The 650-mile trip north began comfortably enough for the dozen or so officers and their servants, or at least for the lucky ones who started out in open carriages—the most luxurious means of transportation they could find, albeit a step down from the sleek cabriolets, ornamented with lacquer and gilt, that Lafayette and his friends had once raced through the narrow streets of Paris. As Dubuysson describes it, the European convoy must have made for an unlikely spectacle: homespun wagons, piled high with baggage and pulled by teams of wheezing horses, lurched violently as they crept along behind an incongruously majestic guide—one of Lafayette’s servants dressed for the occasion in the colorful costume of a hussar, which customarily featured horizontal gold braids running across the jacket, vertical gold braids coursing down the legs of the trousers, and a tall black hat surmounted by a prominent plume completing the opulent look.
The parade was nearly as brief as it was conspicuous. Four days of jostling over rocky paths proved too much for the rickety vehicles; somewhere in North Carolina the axles gave way and the coaches ground to a halt. Leaving behind a trail of baggage, the men continued on horseback through Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. Writing from Petersburg, Virginia, on July 17, Lafayette related the scene to Adrienne with a measure of self-deprecating humor: “I started out brilliantly by carriage,” he reported, but now “we are all on horseback, after having broken the carriage, in my usual laudable fashion, and I hope to write to you in a few days that we have arrived on foot.”
And so they would. Over the course of the next ten days, the horses proceeded to collapse of exhaustion, one by one, in the steamy heat of the mid-Atlantic summer. On the morning of Sunday, July 27, the Frenchmen reached Philadelphia, a bedraggled crew plagued by fever and dysentery. No military campaign in all of Europe, Dubuysson complained, could have been “harder than this voyage,” which offered no pleasures to mitigate the pain. But the men had been buoyed by the infectious “zeal of Lafayette” and now, with the thirty-two-day journey ended, a grateful Congress would soon welcome the travelers—or so the Frenchmen imagined.
The reception they received was in fact rather cold. John Hancock of Massachusetts was serving as president of the Second Continental Congress, and with Congress out of session for the day, his home was a natural destination for the French visitors. Pausing just long enough to wash up, the exhausted but still eager officers made their way to Hancock’s pleasantly situated house at the intersection of Arch and Fourth Streets. But Hancock was not interested in speaking with these disheveled foreigners who appeared unbidden on his doorstep. He suggested they call on Robert Morris, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant who represented Pennsylvania in Congress and was a member of the Committee of Congress for Secret Correspondence—the same body that had appointedSilas Deane to drum up French support for the revolution. As far as Hancock was concerned, if Deane had sent these men to America, Morris should be the one to deal with them. So off they went to find Morris, who at least had the courtesy to arrange an appointment for the following day before putting them back on the streets of Philadelphia.
The next morning, Lafayette and twelve other French officers gathered in front of the Chestnut Street entrance to Independence Hall, ready for what they hoped would be a history-making conversation with Morris. After waiting quite some time, they saw Morris walking toward them in the company of yet another American representative, James Lovell of Massachusetts, who was hastily introduced as a gentleman who “speaks French very well and has been charged with dealing with all of your countrymen.” Having been passed around like so many hot potatoes the day before, Lafayette and his compatriots were disheartened when Morris departed just as brusquely as he had arrived. But as far as Lovell’s language skills were concerned, the visitors were indeed impressed. Dubuysson recalled that Lovell “received us in the street, which is where he left us after calling us, in very good French, adventurers.”
If nothing else, the abbreviated conversation with Lovell explained the hostility they had experienced since reaching Philadelphia. Lovell “ended his harangue,” as Dubuysson put it, by complaining about Silas Deane. It seems that Deane had been asked to send back four French engineers but had instead inflicted upon Congress a certain Monsieur du Coudray, who had made a very poor impression, along with “some so-called engineers … and some useless artillerymen.” Fortunately, Lovell continued, Benjamin Franklin had saved the day by locating four real engineers in Paris. Since those engineers had recently arrived, no further Frenchmen would be required. Lafayette and his companions, Lovell concluded, should feel free to head home.
Major General Philippe Charles Tronson du Coudray had all but ensured his countrymen’s icy reception when he’d arrived in the colonies bearing exorbitant demands, an imperious manner, and exaggerated claims to political influence. Lovell’s denunciation notwithstanding, du Coudray did possess some valuable qualities. He was an experienced army engineer selected by France’s minister of war to oversee the transfer of French guns to ships bound for America, but he had arrived in June bearing a letter from Silas Deane placing him in charge of all of America’s artillery and engineers and promising tremendous funds to match this high authority. Unfortunately, the position Deane so freely assigned to du Coudray was already occupied. The occupant—Brigadier GeneralHenry Knox, for whom Fort Knox is named—was only one of the many American generals who threatened to resign if Deane’s agreement with du Coudray was to be honored.
Du Coudray’s intimations of close ties to the French court had left Congress in a quandary. On June 19, John Adams was among those who had equivocated. Acknowledging that du Coudray’s “terms are very high,” Adams nonetheless concluded that “he has done us such essential service in France, and his interest is so great and so near the throne that it would be impolitic, not to avail ourselves of him.” Undaunted by the disputes raging around him, du Coudray persisted in inspecting the region’s fortifications, which he critiqued in contemptuous reports. And although his bleak assessments of Philadelphia’s defenses would unfortunately prove to be accurate, his high-handed denunciations of the Delaware River forts, designed and built by American hands, endeared him to no one. Writing of Fort Billingsport, du Coudray deemed its plan “very bad” and executed “without judgment.” Fort Mifflin he termed “badly situated,” its battery “improperly directed,” its embrasures “badly constructed”—in short, “it can answer no valuable purpose.” And the best he could say of Fort Bull was that its faults “do not render it as useless as the two former Forts.”
By the time Lafayette’s group arrived, the far more satisfactory Louis Lebègue Duportail, handpicked by Franklin, had appeared to save the day. He, too, was exasperated by the sad state of American military affairs, but being more discreet than du Coudray, he shared his caustic, condescending thoughts primarily with the French foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes. “There is a hundred times more enthusiasm for this revolution in a single café in Paris than in all the united colonies,” Duportail ludicrously lamented to Vergennes in a November letter. Nonetheless, he believed the revolution a fight worth having. Duportail was well aware that “shepherding the colonies to victory would cost France several millions,” but he deemed it an investment that would “be amply repaid by the destruction of the maritime power of England, which, having no more colonies, will soon have no marine.” Shortly after reaching America’s shores, Duportail was placed at the head of the army corps of engineers. With that, the American army had received all that it imagined it needed from France.
Convinced that their cause was hopeless, Lafayette and his companions were surprised the following morning when the man who had dismissed them so unceremoniously in front of Independence Hall appeared at Lafayette’s door. Mistakes had been made, explained the contrite Lovell, who was now accompanied by another French-speaking congressman, William Duer of New York. Congress wanted to make amends—but only to Lafayette, and only on America’s terms. If Lafayette would renegotiate some details, he would be granted “the rank and commission of major general in the army of the United States” that Deane had promised. First, in the interest of fairness to American officers who had been fighting for months before Lafayette’s arrival, Congress would rescind the misleading seniority Deane had awarded him: Deane had stipulated that Lafayette’s tenure begin on the date of their agreement, December 7, 1776, but Congress changed his official start date to July 31. Second, no salary would be attached to this commission—a condition already written into Lafayette’s appointment. Lafayette eagerly agreed, and on July 31, he was in possession of a major general’s sash and a letter from Congress confirming his rank.
Why the change of heart? Presumably, members of Congress had taken the time to read the papers Lafayette had furnished to them. Although Deane’s credibility had been tarnished by the du Coudray fiasco, he’d lavished such high praise on Lafayette that Congress took notice. As the resolution passed by Congress on July 31 put it, Lafayette’s “zeal, illustrious family and connexions,” combined with the financial resources that enabled him to cross the ocean “at his own expence” and “to offer his service to the United States without pension or particular allowance,” were sufficient to warrant a commission as major general. Writing in a private letter, Congressman Henry Laurens further explained that Lafayette was expected to “have a Short Campaign & then probably return to France & Secure to us the powerful Interest of his high & extensive connections.” Lafayette’s companions promised no such influence. Although the experienced de Kalb and his aide-de-camp Dubuysson did, eventually, join Lafayette in theContinental Army, most of the men who had sailed on the Victoire headed back to France before the year was out.
Lafayette was elated, and his delight increased when he learned that he would soon meet his new commander. As chance would have it, General Washington happened to be leading some 11,000 troops from their camp in New Jersey to Chester, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia and, on the night of July 31, he was scheduled to attend a dinner in his honor at the City Tavern on Second Street—the unofficial clubhouse of the Continental Congress.
Lafayette remembered being awed when he first caught sight of “that great man.” Washington was standing across a crowded room at the City Tavern “surrounded by officers and citizens,” yet despite the throng, “the majesty of his figure and of his size made it impossible” to mistake his identity. In some ways, the forty-five-year-old Washington represented all that Lafayette hoped to become—a figure universally respected for his dignity, honor, and restraint. There were even physical similarities. Like the young Frenchman, Washington was considerably larger than the average man of the era; standing six feet tall, he towered over even Lafayette. Yet, whereas Lafayette’s bulk made him something of an awkward presence in the refined salons of Paris and Versailles— a bull in a china shop, gingerly stepping around the delicate furnishings that represented the height of fashionable interior design in 1770s France—Washington bore his height regally, his great size seeming like a mark of great character. Even before the two men were formally introduced, Washington had achieved the status of an idol to the fatherless Lafayette, who, brimming with hope, yearned for glory in a strange land.
Initially, this admiration was not altogether mutual. The circumspect Washington hid his doubts from Lafayette, but he was not well-disposed toward the French in general. Having fought against their troops in the French and Indian War, Washington spoke out against French meddling during the du Coudray imbroglio. Writing from Morristown, New Jersey, on July 27, he complained mightily about the unwelcome influx of French officers, who “embarrass me beyond measure.” Not only did the army have all the officers it needed, he insisted, but the difficulties in dealing with the Frenchmen were “increased by the immoderate expectations, which, almost every one of them, I have seen, entertains, and which make it impossible to satisfy them.” Suggesting an abiding distrust of the Gallic character, Washington continued, “I have found by experience that however modest, they may seem at first to be, by proposing to serve as volunteers, they very soon extend their views, and become importunate for offices they have no right to look for.” And had Washington surmised that one or more of Lafayette’s companions might have designs on his own position, he would not have been mistaken.
It was just four days after writing these remarks that Washington first encountered Lafayette—yet another French volunteer claiming that he had come “to learn and not to teach.” The inexperienced youth waited not even a month before making it clear that he expected to be placed in command of a division, much to Washington’s exasperation. Writing to Congressman Benjamin Harrison on August 19, Washington explained that a difference of opinion had arisen concerning the nature of Lafayette’s appointment. Washington believed that Lafayette’s rank was purely honorary, but the Frenchman clearly had other ideas. “What the designs of Congress respecting this Gentn. were,” Washington wrote, “and what line of Conduct I am to pursue … I know no more than the Child unborn.” Harrison confirmed that Congress “never meant” for Lafayette to have a command, but it was Washington who had to devise increasingly inventive ways to put off the persistent young marquis.
To Washington’s credit, Lafayette seems not to have noticed the discomfort he was causing his newfound hero. In his memoirs Lafayette remembered only that Washington welcomed him with open arms at City Tavern, invited him to join in the following day’s inspection of the Delaware River forts, and asked him to share lodgings and meals for the duration of his stay in America. From that day on, Lafayette considered Washington’s home—wherever it might be—as his own. Leaving behind his companions in Philadelphia, he moved to Washington’s Bucks County encampment, reviewed American troops alongside the general, and began traveling with the army. In Lafayette’s nostalgic words, it was “with this ease and simplicity that two friends were united.”
Throughout August and early September, Washington and his army were readying for a long-anticipated attack on Philadelphia by British forces under General William Howe. Lafayette was spending as much time as possible at Washington’s side; fully expecting to be awarded a division at any moment, he was making arrangements for two aides-de-camp. Lafayette’s earnest enthusiasm was already beginning to grow on Washington when a batch of mail arrived from France furthering the young man’s cause. One letter, signed not only by Silas Deane but also by the more trusted Benjamin Franklin, urged Congress and the army to exhibit “a friendly Affection” toward Lafayette. This was not simply a matter of personal opinion, explained the Americans in Paris. Rather, a warm welcome would be a wise political gesture, “pleasing not only to [Lafayette’s] powerful relations and to the court but to the whole of the French nation.” Imagining that Lafayette was merely interested in achieving some small honor that he could boast about at home, the envoys asked Washington “not to permit [Lafayette’s] being hazarded much, but on some important occasion.”
Map of the Battle of Brandywine, September 11, 1777. (illustration credit 4.1)
Just such an occasion happened to be at hand. Howe and his men had spent much of the summer sailing from New York, which was now firmly under British control. Having arrived at Head of Elk, Maryland, in late July, Howe’s 17,000 British and Hessian troops spent the month of August making their way overland in a northeasterly direction, heading toward the seat of the Continental Congress at Philadelphia. Facing imminent battle with an experienced enemy, Washington could not place a division in the hands of Lafayette—a foreigner whose entire military experience consisted of two summers of training at Metz—but he did allow the eager youth to participate in the fight.
When they awoke on September 11, 1777, the 10,500 American troops positioned along the banks of the Brandywine River could barely see the tops of the surrounding hills through the thick blanket of fog. Early that morning, Washington received word that Howe’s soldiers had started their eastward march, and he surmised that they would attempt to cross the Brandywine at Chadds Ford—the most traversable route to Philadelphia. American troops were mustered along the river accordingly, with the strongest presence at the presumed target of attack. Lafayette was assigned to a division led by Major General John Sullivan of New Hampshire, who was positioned a mile or so north of Chadds Ford—a posting that may have been intended to keep the eager marquis out of harm’s way. By late morning, the battle had begun, and by midafternoon, an even exchange of cannon fire and musket shot was crossing Chadds Ford in the scorching heat of the bright, late-summer day.
What the Americans didn’t know was that they were engaged with just half of the British troops. While the Hessian general Wilhelm von Knyphausen was sustaining the attack at Chadds Ford, General Howe had spent the better part of the day leading a second column farther north. And, having crossed the river several miles above the Americans’ uppermost positions, Howe was now driving south, descending on Sullivan’s surprised troops. Lines of British and American muskets faced off across an open plain, with both sides suffering heavy casualties. Lafayette was in the thick of the action, trying to make himself as useful as possible. As he later described it, he was “rallying the troops” when a musket ball tore through his left calf. Eager to continue the fight but weak from the loss of blood, he was helped to his horse by an aide-de-camp and exited the field.
The day ended with the British encamped along the Brandywine and the Americans in retreat. Two hundred and fifty Americans and eighty-nine British soldiers were killed, with many more wounded. Four hundred Americans were taken prisoner. Besting the Americans in intermittent skirmishes over the course of the following days and weeks, the British continued their march east. On September 18, the Continental Congress held its final session in Philadelphia before relocating to York, Pennyslvania. And on September 26, the British took the City of Brotherly Love.
The Battle of Brandywine was a catastrophe for the American army but a crucial turning point for Lafayette, whose dramatic wound ended up doing him more good than harm. The shot that wounded him was almost providential. Passing through the fleshy part of his lower leg, it caused damage serious enough to merit the attention of Washington’s personal surgeon but minor enough to leave Lafayette in good spirits and with relatively little fear of grave consequences. After the battle, Lafayette was transported by boat to Philadelphia, where he found himself “surrounded by citizens intrigued by his youth and his situation.” And while the British were on their way to victory in Philadelphia, Lafayette was on the path to American fame. Washington, perhaps mindful of the letter from Franklin and Deane, inaugurated Lafayette’s celebrity with a widely published dispatch written on the night of September 11, 1777. In his account of the loss at Brandywine, which had left so many dead and wounded, Washington mentioned just two officers by name: “the Marquis La Fayette was wounded in the leg, and General Woodford in the hand.” Throughout the month of September, as Washington’s letter made its way into newspapers around the colonies, the American public was introduced to Lafayette as the French aristocrat who had risked life and limb on behalf of their freedom.
Transferred from one safe haven to the next while Congress scrambled to evacuate Philadelphia, Lafayette enjoyed little rest during the first week after the battle. But on September 21, he finally arrived at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he was to spend four weeks of convalescence in the care of the Moravian fellowship—a missionary Protestant denomination that was exempt from military service and assisted the American army off the field of battle by storing baggage and munitions, housing prisoners of war, supplying blankets and clothing, and tending hundreds of sick and wounded soldiers. (According to a diary maintained by the community, some seven hundred men were lodged in just one of the Moravians’ makeshift hospitals on December 28, 1777.) At least sixteen members of Congress also took refuge in Bethlehem that September, including the Massachusetts representatives John Hancock, John Adams, and Samuel Adams, and Henry Laurens, a congressman from South Carolina who would begin serving as president of the Continental Congress on November 1. All were treated with kindness and respect, but Lafayette received particularly attentive care from his nurses, the wife and daughter of George Frederick Boeckel, the overseer of the congregation’s farm, who transferred him out of his tavern lodgings and welcomed him into their own home. In the months and years that followed, the connections Lafayette forged in Bethlehem would prove invaluable.
Lafayette described his forced “inaction” as more painful than his wound, but he approached the Moravians, whose ancestors had fled persecution in central Europe, with the same earnest curiosity that he brought to all of his interactions with Americans. When Lafayette took leave of Bethlehem on October 18, the congregation’s diarist remembered him as “a very intelligent and pleasant young man” who spent much of his time reading—in English—a history of the Moravian mission in Greenland, with which he declared himself to be “highly pleased.” For his part, Lafayette came away impressed by “the gentle religion” of his hosts—he referred to them as this “innocent family”—whose “community of goods, education and interests … contrasted with the scenes of carnage and civil war” that were devastating the surrounding land.
While confined to bed, Lafayette could do nothing but read and write. And write he did, drafting scores of letters to recipients on both sides of the Atlantic. Aflame with ideas for new ways to harm, or at least harass, the English, Lafayette proposed his ventures to anyone he could think of. Writing to the Marquis de Bouillé, a cousin then serving as governor of the French colony of Martinique, Lafayette suggested an assault on the islands of the British West Indies. To the Comte de Maurepas, Louis XVI’s aging but powerful minister of the marine, he proposed an attack on British interests in India. Both ideas were rebuffed, but Lafayette’s bold determination was starting to impress even Maurepas. As Lafayette later recalled, Maurepas took to jesting that the eager young soldier would probably succeed in selling “all the furniture of Versailles to support the American cause; because, once he gets something in his head, it’s impossible to resist him.”
Although these military schemes found no takers, the letter-writing campaign succeeded in at least one respect: Lafayette began to establish himself as the default intermediary between France and America. Writing to Laurens and Washington in America, and to Adrienne, the king’s ministers, and others in France, he made a point of praising each land to citizens of the other. Letters to Adrienne lauded Washington—an “intimate friend” and “excellent man” abounding with “talents and virtues”—while attempting to inoculate French society against any ill will that might be spread by his disgruntled companions from the Victoire who were then returning to France. These and other dissatisfied Europeans, Lafayette cautioned, “will naturally give an unjust account of America, because the disconcerted, anxious to revenge their fancied injuries, cannot be impartial.” At the same time, Lafayette took it upon himself to represent France to America by sending missives to Congress extolling the merits of newly arrived French officers. Lafayette did not know all of the men he recommended, but as he explained to Henry Laurens, “being honour’d with the name of French, I consider it my duty, to recommend you every honest countryman of mine.” Meanwhile, he continued to press his own cause: he desperately wanted to be granted a command.
By the time Lafayette rejoined Washington’s troops, on October 19, his displays of ardor and goodwill had made an impression, and Washington was prepared to reward him. On December 1, while Lafayette was marching toward Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Congress passed a resolution naming him commander of a division. Six months after arriving on foreign shores, Lafayette was on his way to achieving the military dream that had been thwarted in his native land.