CHAPTER 5
What a date, my dearest love, and from what a region I am now writing, in the month of January!” Lafayette wrote to Adrienne from frigid Valley Forge on January 6, 1778. Pondering the vagaries of fate, he marveled to find himself in such harsh conditions, confined “in a camp … in the middle of the woods … 1500 leagues from you … in the middle of the winter.” Yet there he was, a major general responsible for three brigades—some three thousand men—who were destined to spend the coldest months of the year “in little huts that are about as pleasant as dungeon cells.”
Lafayette described to Adrienne the “dreariness” of his lodgings, but he knew all too well that the army had much larger concerns. Lacking sufficient food and clothing to hold out against the bitter chill, Washington’s 12,000 soldiers were succumbing to illness at an alarming rate. Despite a steady stream of letters from Washington, Lafayette, and others to Henry Laurens, now presiding over Congress, no provisions appeared to be forthcoming. Lafayette had received word that clothing shipped from France had arrived in America but, maddeningly, it had been detained in Yorktown and was not making its way north. In a brave attempt to jest in a new language, Lafayette asked Laurens to “consider, if you please,” that the parcels of clothing “are innocent strangers, travelling [through] this state, and very desirous of meeting the Virginian regiments they belong to.” Continuing the conceit, he added, “if they are detained only for exerting the most respectable rights of hospitality receive here my thanks.… But if it is possible, I do not want they should be entertained longer.”
Lafayette’s English was far from perfect, but it was improving. And as it did, so did Lafayette’s grasp of the difficulties that Washington and the American army faced. Little by little, Lafayette began to understand that politics were roiling the colonies he so admired. In a letter of December 30, 1777, he told Washington that the scales had fallen from his eyes. “When I was in Europe,” Lafayette acknowledged, “I thought that Here almost every man was a lover of liberty and would Rather die free than live slave. You Can Conceive my astonishment when I saw that Toryism was as openly professed as Whigism.” More gravely, Lafayette was coming to understand that neither the war effort nor Washington’s place at its helm was immune to partisan attack. In what Lafayette perceived to be a dangerous move, Congress had just established the five-member Board of War. Now that Washington had to report to a civilian body, he would be at the mercy of political wrangling. “There are open dissensions in Congress,” Lafayette wrote to Washington, who surely did not need to be told that America’s representatives had dissolved into “parties who Hate one another as much as the Common Enemy.”
Not only was Lafayette concerned that internal bickering would hurt America’s prospects for freedom, but he was also dismayed at the effect it was having on Washington’s reputation. Expressing himself frankly, Lafayette raged to Washington against the “stupid men who without knowing a single word about war undertake to judge you, to make Ridiculous Comparisons.” The comparisons Lafayette found so insulting were being made by a handful of congressmen and officers who considered Washington less capable than General Horatio Gates, who had earned praise for his engagement with British forces in the vicinity of Saratoga, New York, which had ended in victory on October 17, 1777, about a month after Washington’s defeat at Brandywine. But Gates had faced forces considerably smaller than his own, while Washington had been outnumbered by troops fighting under no less a figure than the commander in chief of the British Army in America. Gates was a key player in the so-called Conway Cabal—a loose conspiracy, named after General Thomas Conway, that aimed to topple Washington. Both Lafayette and Washington believed that the English-born Gates was maneuvering himself into the position of heir apparent. What Lafayette didn’t know was that Gates and his allies perceived Lafayette himself to be the weakest link in Washington’s chain of command. Young, credulous, and eager to please, he was an easy mark for men with years of experience in military politics and intrigue. It didn’t take long for these men to lure Lafayette with custom-made bait, embroiling him in machinations that would vex, if not offend, his esteemed commander.
The first hint of trouble came in a letter from Lafayette to Washington dated January 20, 1778. Lafayette reported hearing from Conway’s aide-de-camp that Conway would soon lead an invasion of France’s former Canadian colonies, but as Lafayette saw it, the selection of Conway over himself was not merely a personal slight but also a mistake that would jeopardize the success of the mission and besmirch the honor of France. He insisted to Washington that “they will laugh in France when they’l hear that [Conway] is choosen upon such a commission out of the same army where I am.” The principal problem was that although Conway had served in the French military, he was “an irishman … when the project should be to show to the frenchmen of that country a man of their nation, who by his rank in France could inspire with them some confidence.” Not wishing to seem too forward, Lafayette added a disclaimer, noting that “I mention that only as a remark (of their folly, Sir).” As he avowed, he had no “idea of leaving your army neither my Virginian division.” He merely wanted Washington to know about the plan lest it prove to be part of “some much worse scheme against yourself or your army.”
A scheme is, indeed, what it turned out to be. On January 24, Horatio Gates wrote a letter on behalf of the Board of War notifying Lafayette of an unexpected appointment: having observed “your Ardent Desire to signalize yourself in the Service of these States,” Congress has decided “to appoint you to the Command of an Expedition meditated against Montreal.” Lafayette was to “lose no Time in repairing to the Northward.” Albany was to be his destination. Conway, who apparently was to be his second-in-command, would meet him there with further instructions. Presumably, by spending some time with the impressionable young man, Conway hoped to coax Lafayette over to his way of thinking and persuade him to abandon his allegiance to Washington. The wealthy Frenchman with the ear of Louis XVI’s court could surely be a valuable ally.
Nearly everything about Gates’s letter to Lafayette posed a direct challenge to Washington’s authority. Not only had the Board of War neglected to consult the commander in chief for advice on the Canadian expedition, but they had not so much as notified him before ordering Lafayette—an officer under Washington’s command—to leave Valley Forge. Even the method of the letter’s delivery was a slap in the face to Washington. It turned up in a batch of Washington’s mail. Although he knew nothing of its contents, Washington would be the one to deliver it to Lafayette. On January 27, Washington sent a reply to the Board of War that couched his displeasure in the cool and measured tones that characterized his masterful leadership in both war and peacetime. “As I neither know the extent of the Objects in view, nor the means to be employed to effect them, it is not in my power to pass any judgment upon the subject,” he wrote. But a sharp warning followed: “I can only sincerely wish, that success may attend it,” not only in the interest of the public good but also “on account of the personal Honor of the Marquis de la Fayette, for whom I have a very particular esteem and regard.”
For his part, Lafayette was delighted but wary. Writing to Laurens in terms overflowing with gratitude, he expressed deep appreciation for the faith Congress placed in him and promised that “every thing nature could have granted to me, all my exertions, and the last drop of my blood, schall be employed in showing my acknowledgment for such a favor and how I wish to deserve it.” But out of “love and friendship” for Washington—and perhaps coached by Washington himself—Lafayette refused to accept Conway as his second-in-command. “How can I support the society of a man who has spoken of my friend in the most insolent and abusive terms, who has done, and does every day all his power to ruin him … ?” He would not accept the commission if it meant taking Conway. If Conway was not removed, Lafayette threatened, he would return to France and, he added in a letter of January 31, he would take all of the other French officers with him. Clearly, Lafayette was not quite so easily manipulated as Gates and Conway might have hoped.
On February 2, a resolution of Congress removed Conway from the project and assented to most of Lafayette’s other requests. On February 3, Lafayette put pen to paper to share his news with Adrienne. Exuding enthusiasm, he explained that he had been ordered to “see if some harm can be done to the English” fleet and forts north of the border. But he added that “the idea of liberating all of New France and delivering it from a heavy yoke is too brilliant to stop there.” Lafayette seemed to believe that his dreams were coming true—he had “a large number of French officers” under his command, and he found it “very glorious being their head.”
At the same time, Lafayette admitted to feelings of self-doubt. Most of Lafayette’s letters to Adrienne had been filled with platitudes about America and praise for its people. On the rare occasions when he described his disappointments, he generally wrapped them in self-deprecating humor, lessening any sense of fear or regret. But in this letter, Lafayette let down his guard. “I am undertaking a terrifying task,” he confessed. “At twenty, one is not prepared to be at the head of an army, responsible for all the numberless details that devolve upon a general, and having under my direct orders a great expanse of country.” Beneath the veil of self-assurance that he had donned in America, Lafayette remained a largely untested youth straining to make his mark and frightened that he might fail.
When Lafayette arrived in Albany on February 17, he found a disastrous state of affairs. Instead of the 2,500 troops he had been promised, only 1,200 were on hand. Albany was even colder than Valley Forge, and its soldiers were clothed just as poorly as those in Pennsylvania. Food, arms, ammunition—everything was lacking. Lafayette saw no option but to spend his own funds to acquire necessities. He wrote to Washington that he didn’t know whether “blunders of madness or treachery” were responsible for this sorry situation—although, in all fairness, more prosaic problems, including logistical snags and overextended resources, were mostly to blame. Whatever the root of these problems, a winter incursion into Canada was clearly impossible under the circumstances, and so, with a heavy heart, Lafayette soon resolved to abandon the plan.
In an anguished letter to Henry Laurens on February 19, Lafayette confessed that, after crossing an ocean in search of honor, he now felt personally humiliated. How could he possibly descend “from a precipice where I embarked myself out of my love for your country, my desire of distinguishing myself in doing good to America?” he asked in his earnest but still choppy English. “My situation,” he wrote, “is such that I am reduced to wish to have never put the foot in America.” Having already shared news of his impending expedition with the French court, he now realized that “men will have [a] right to laugh at me, and I’ll be almost ashamed to appear before some.” His letter to Washington was more personal. “Why am I so far from you,” he lamented, “and what business had that board of war to hurry me through the ice and snow without knowing what I should do, neither what they were doing themselves?” Perhaps, Lafayette mused, he should seek a new campaign to cover the smirch of a failure.
Washington replied with the reassuring words of an older and more experienced friend who understood a young man’s pain and doubts. “However sensibly your ardour for Glory may make you feel this disappointment,” he wrote, “you may be assured that your Character stands as fair as it ever did, and that no new Enterprise is necessary to wipe off this imaginary stain.” In offering this advice, Washington was abiding by one of the 110 items listed in “The Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation,” which he had copied into his schoolbook as a youth: “When a man does all he can though it Succeeds not well blame not him that did it.” Lafayette had indeed done all he could. And when he began the long trek back to Valley Forge on March 31, 1778, he was marching back to Washington’s side. Never again would he be lured away by empty promises.
Like most people, Lafayette learned by trial and error. But he did not have the luxury of erring in private, even at this early point in his career. Few of the men involved with the military struggle for America’s independence were granted so much autonomous responsibility with so little life experience. Hailing from a sheltered background with little more than idealism to guide him, Lafayette was a stranger in a strange land. Although he adapted with remarkable speed, his inevitable missteps came with the whole world watching. A less determined man might have been discouraged, but Lafayette was nothing if not determined.