Part 7

So he stayed at Valley Forge, which was indeed a place of icy torment. The men suffered horribly for lack of coats and caps and shoes. Their feet froze until they were black. Sometimes they had to be [Pg 94]amputated. There was not enough food. Even colonels rarely had more than two meals a day, often only one, while the rank and file frequently went for several days without a distribution of rations. Enlistments ceased, and desertion was very easy with a wide-open country back of the camp and Howe's sleek, well-fed army only two marches away down the Lancaster Pike. It was small wonder that Washington's numbers dwindled until he could count only five or six thousand. Lafayette called the endurance of the wretched little army that held on "a miracle which every day served to renew." It was a miracle explained by the character of the Commander-in-chief, and of the remarkable group of officers he had gathered around him. As for Lafayette, he strove to live as frugally and be as self-denying as any of them. More than forty years later some of his American friends had proof of how well he succeeded; for an old soldier came up and reminded him how one snowy night at Valley Forge he had taken a gun from a shivering sentry and stood guard himself while he sent the man to his own quarters for a pair of stockings and his only blanket; and when these things were brought how he had cut the blanket in two and given him half. Though there was cruel suffering in that winter camp, there was much of such high-spirited gallantry to meet it; and there were also pleasant hours, for several of the officers had been joined by their wives, who did everything in their power to make the dull days brighter.

[Pg 95]Washington's enemies, not yet having exhausted their wiles, hit upon a clever plan to remove Lafayette from his side. They succeeded in getting Congress to appoint a new War Board with General Gates at its head. This body exercised authority, though Washington remained Commander-in-chief. Without consulting him, the board decided, or pretended to decide, to send a winter expedition into Canada, with Lafayette at its head and Conway second in command. Conway had offered his resignation at the time his letter was discovered, but it had not been accepted. To emphasize the slight put upon Washington, Lafayette's new commission was inclosed in a letter to the Commander-in-chief, with the request that he hand it to the younger man. This Washington did with admirable self-control, saying, as he gave Lafayette the paper, "I would rather they had selected you for this than any other man."

It is not often that such important duty falls to a soldier of twenty-one. Naturally enough, he was elated, and this duty was particularly tempting because it offered him, a Frenchman, the chance to go into a French province to reconquer a region which had been taken from his own people by Britain in the Seven Years' War. But he also was capable of exercising self-control, and he answered that he could accept it only on the understanding that he remained subordinate to Washington, as an officer of his army detailed for special duty, with the privilege of making reports directly to him and of sending duplicates to Congress. A committee of Congress happened to be visiting [Pg 96]Valley Forge that day, and he went impetuously before them and declared that he would rather serve as a mere aide under Washington than accept any separate command the War Board could give him. His conditions being agreed to, he departed happily enough for York, Pennsylvania, where Congress was still holding its sittings, in order to receive his instructions.

There, in General Gates's own house, at another dinner memorable in his personal history, he got his first intimation of the kind of campaign the War Board wished him to carry on. Toast after toast was drunk--to the success of the northern expedition--to Lafayette and his brilliant prospects--and on through a long list, to which he listened in growing amazement, for he missed the most important of them all. "Gentlemen!" he cried, finally, springing to his feet, "I propose the health of General Washington!" and the others drank it in silence.

He refused to have Conway for his second in command, and asked that De Kalb be detailed to accompany him instead. He proved so intractable, in short, that even before he set out for Albany, where he was to assume command, the conspirators saw it was useless to continue the farce; but they allowed him to depart on his cold journey as the easiest way of letting the matter end. The four hundred miles occupied two weeks by sleigh and horseback, a most discouraging sample of what he must expect farther north. "Lake Champlain is too cold for producing the least bit of laurel," he wrote Washington. "I go very slowly, sometimes drenched by rain, sometimes covered by snow, and not entertaining many [Pg 97]handsome thoughts about the projected incursion into Canada."

At Albany he found creature comforts, a bed, for one thing, with a supply of quilts and blankets that made it entirely possible to sleep without lying down in his clothes, which was a luxury he had scarcely enjoyed since leaving Bethlehem; but of preparations for invading Canada he found not one. The plans and orders that looked so well on paper, and which he had been assured were well under way, had not been heard of in Albany, or else had not been executed, for the best of reasons; because they could not be. General Conway was there ahead of him to represent the War Board, and told him curtly that the expedition was not to be thought of. Astounded, the young general refused to believe him until interviews with General Schuyler and others experienced in northern campaigning convinced him that this at least was not treachery, but cold, hard fact.

The discovery was a great blow to Lafayette's pride. Members of Congress had urged him to write about the expedition to his friends in France. He was frankly afraid that he would be laughed at "unless Congress offers the means of mending this ugly business by some glorious operation." But he was in no mood to ask favors of Congress. "For you, dear General," he wrote Washington, "I know very well that you will do everything to procure me the one thing I am ambitious of--glory. I think your Excellency will approve of my staying on here until further orders."

[Pg 98]March found him still at Albany, awaiting the orders which the War Board was in no haste to send, having already accomplished its purpose. He tried to retrieve something out of the hopeless situation, but with fewer men than he had been promised, and these clamoring for pay long overdue, he had little success. "Everybody is after me for monney," he wrote General Gates, "and monney will be spoken of by me till I will be enabled to pay our poor soldiers. Not only justice and humanity, but even prudence obliges us to satisfy them soon." As he had already done, and would do again, he drew upon his private credit to meet the most pressing public needs; but he could work against the enemy only in an indirect way by sending supplies to Fort Schuyler, where they were sorely needed.

One interesting experience, unusual for a French nobleman, came to him during this tedious waiting. The Indians on the frontier became restless, and General Schuyler called a council of many tribes to meet "at Johnson Town" in the Mohawk Valley. He invited Lafayette to attend, hoping by his presence to reawaken the Indians' old partiality for the French. Five hundred men, women, and children attended this council, and very picturesque they must have looked with their tents and their trappings against the snowy winter landscape. The warriors were as gorgeous as macaws in their feathered war-bonnets, nose-jewels, and brilliant paint, but Lafayette noted that they talked politics with the skill of veterans, as the pipe passed from hand to hand.

[Pg 99]He appears to have exercised his usual personal charm for Americans upon these original children of the soil as he had already exercised it upon the whites who came to supplant them. But he says of it only that they "showed an equal regard for his words and his necklaces." Before the council was over he was adopted into one of the tribes, and returned to Albany the richer by another name to add to his long collection--"Kayewla," which had belonged to a respected chief of a bygone day. The new Kayewla was so well liked that a band of Iroquois followed him south and became part of his military division.

On his return to Albany an unexpected duty awaited him. A new form of oath of office, forever forswearing allegiance to George III and acknowledging the sovereignty and independence of the United States, had come, with the order that all must subscribe to it. So, to use the picturesque phrase of the Middle Ages, it was "between" his French hands that the officers of the northern military department swore fealty to the new United States of America.

As spring advanced the influence of Gates and Conway waned and Washington regained his old place in public esteem. Conway himself left the country. Lafayette and De Kalb were ordered back to the main army; and in doing this Congress took pains to express by resolution its belief that the young general was in no way to blame for the failure of the winter expedition to Canada. When he reached Washington's headquarters in April he found Valley Forge much less melancholy than [Pg 100]when he left it; a change due not only to the more cheerful season of the year, but to wonders in the way of improved discipline that General von Steuben had brought about in a few short weeks. This officer of much experience had been trained under Frederick the Great, and, having served as his aide, was equipped in fullest measure with the knowledge and skill in military routine that Washington's volunteers so lacked. When he took up his duties he found a confusion almost unbelievable to one of his orderly military mind. Military terms meant nothing. A regiment might contain only thirty men, or it might be larger than another officer's brigade. It might be formed of three platoons or of twenty-one. There was one company that consisted of only a single corporal. Each colonel drilled his men after a system of his own; and the arms in the hands of these go-as-you-please soldiers "were in a horrible condition--covered with rust, half of them without bayonets," while there were many from which not a single shot could be fired. Yet this was the main army of the revolutionists who had set out to oppose England! Fortunately Baron von Steuben was no mere drillmaster. He had the invaluable gift of inspiring confidence and imparting knowledge. Between March, when he began his "intensive" training, and the opening of the summer campaign, he made of that band of lean and tattered patriots a real army, though it still lacked much of having a holiday appearance. The men's coats gave no indication of their rank, or indeed that they were in the army at all. They were of many colors, including red, and it was not impossible to see an [Pg 101]officer mounting guard at grand parade clad "in a sort of dressing-gown made of an old blanket or woolen bedcover." But the man inside the coat was competent for his job.

It was a compatriot of Lafayette's, the French Minister of War, St.-Germain, who had persuaded General Steuben to go to America; so to France is due part of our gratitude for the services of this efficient German. Perhaps, going back farther, the real person we should thank is General Burgoyne, since it was his surrender which undoubtedly quickened the interest of the French in the efficiency of our ragamuffin army. French official machinery, which had been strangely clogged before, began to revolve when news of Burgoyne's surrender reached Paris early in December, 1777. The king, who had not found it convenient to receive the American commissioners up to that time, sent them word that he had been friendly all along; and as soon as diplomatic formality permitted, a treaty of amity and commerce was signed between France and America. That meant that France was now formally an ally, and that the United States might count upon her influence and even upon her military help. It was a great point gained, but Franklin refused to allow his old eyes to be dazzled by mere glitter when he "and all the Americans in Paris" were received by the king and queen at Versailles in honor of the event. He was less impressed by the splendor of the palace than by the fact that it would be the better for a thorough cleaning. After the royal audience was [Pg 102]over he and the other commissioners hastened to pay a visit of ceremony to young Madame Lafayette in order to testify to the part her husband had played in bringing about this happy occurrence.

When news of the signing of this treaty reached America about the 1st of May, 1778, Lafayette embraced his grave general in the exuberance of his joy, and even kissed him in French fashion. There was an official celebration in camp on the 7th of May, with much burning of gunpowder, reviewing of troops, "suitable" discoursing by chaplains, and many hearty cheers. Washington's orders prescribed in great detail just when and how each part of the celebration was to be carried out, and this is probably the only time in history that an American army _en masse_ was ordered to cry, "Long live the king of France!"

Lafayette, with a white sash across his breast, commanded the left; but it was a heavy heart that he carried under his badge that gala-day. Letters which came to him immediately after news of the treaty had brought sad tidings. He learned of the death of a favorite nephew, loved by him like a son, and also that his oldest child, the little Henriette, to whom he had been sending messages in every letter, had died in the previous October. "My heart is full of my own grief, and of yours which I was not with you to share," he wrote Adrienne. "The distance from Europe to America never seemed so immense to me as it does now.... The news came to me immediately after that of the treaty, and while bowed down with grief I had to receive congratulations and [Pg 103]take part in the public rejoicing." Had the letters come through without delay they would have arrived at the beginning of winter, at the moment when General Conway was fanning the flame of his homesickness. The desire to comfort his wife might have turned the scale and sent Lafayette across the sea instead of to Albany. Now, though he longed to go to her, he felt bound to remain for the campaign which was about to open.

[Pg 104]XII

FARCE AND TREACHERY

Much as the French treaty had done for the Americans, it had by no means ended the war. There were as many British soldiers as ever on American soil, and General Howe at Philadelphia and General Clinton at New York could be trusted to make excellent use of them. Signs of British activity were already apparent. A large number of transports had sailed from Philadelphia, but whether they had gone to bring reinforcements or whether it meant that Philadelphia was being abandoned and that the Hudson was again to be the main point of attack Washington did not know. Lafayette was ordered to take some of the best troops at Valley Forge and find out.

He left camp on the 18th of May with about twenty-two hundred men, among them six hundred Pennsylvania militia and half a hundred Iroquois Indians. Crossing the Schuylkill, he established himself on high ground between that river and the Delaware, twelve miles from the city, at a hamlet called Barren Hill, whose chief ornament was a [Pg 105]church with a graveyard. It was an excellent spot for purposes of observation; for roads ran in various directions, while the abrupt fall of the land toward the Schuylkill protected his right, and there were substantial stone buildings in a wood in front which could be used as forts in case of need. He guarded against surprise on his left, the direction from which any considerable body of British was likely to approach, by placing there his large detachment of Pennsylvania militia. He planted his five cannon in good positions, sent out his Indian scouts, who wormed themselves several miles nearer the city, had interviews with promising individuals who were to act as spies, and was well pleased with himself.

The British were also exceedingly well pleased when their spies brought in full information of Lafayette's position and numbers. They saw that he had separated himself from the American army and virtually placed himself in their hands; and short of Washington himself there was no officer they would so enjoy capturing. His prominence at home and his popularity in America made him a shining mark; moreover, he had fooled them in London before coming to America. It would be a great satisfaction to take him prisoner gently, without hurting him, treat him with mock courtesy, and send him back to England, a laughing-stock.

They had force enough to make his capture practically certain, and set out in great glee, so sure of the result that before leaving town Generals Howe and Clinton, both of whom were in Philadelphia, sent out invitations to a reception for the following day "to meet the Marquis [Pg 106]de Lafayette." Although it was looked upon as something of a lark, the expedition was deemed sufficiently important for General Clinton to lead it in person, while General Howe accompanied him, and the admiral, General Howe's sailor brother, went along as a volunteer. Taking four men to Lafayette's one, and marching by night, they approached Barren Hill in a way to cut off the fords across the Schuylkill and also to intercept any assistance which might be sent from Valley Forge.

Unconscious that he was in danger, Lafayette was talking, early on the morning of May 20th, with a young woman who was going into the city as a spy, when word was brought him that dragoons in red coats had been seen on the Whitemarsh road. This did not disturb him, for he knew that among the coats of many colors worn by his Pennsylvania militia some were red; but he sent out to verify the information, merely as a matter of routine. Soon the truth was learned--and exaggerated--and his men set up a cry that they were surrounded by the British.

Fortunately Lafayette had a head which grew steadier in a crisis. Sending his aides flying in all directions, he found that while the way to Valley Forge was indeed cut off, one ford still remained open, though the British were rapidly advancing upon it. He quickly placed a small number of his men near the church, where the stone wall of the graveyard would serve as breastworks, stationed a few more near the woods as if they were heads of columns just appearing, and ordered [Pg 107]all the rest to drop quietly down the steep side of the hill until they were out of sight, and then hurry to the ford. The attention of the enemy was held long enough by the decoy troops to enable the others to reach the ford or swim across, their heads dotting the water "like the corks of a floating seine," and Lafayette, who had stayed behind, brought the last of his men to safety just as two columns of the British, marching up two sides of Barren Hill, met each other, face to face, at the top. Lafayette, on the opposite bank of the river, prepared for defense, but the British were too disgusted to follow.

The real encounter of the serio-comic affair took place between the most gaudily dressed bands of fighters in the whole Revolution, Lafayette's Iroquois in their war regalia and Clinton's advance-guard of Hessian cavalry. As the latter advanced, the Indians rose from their hiding-places uttering their piercing war-whoops. The horses of the troopers were terrified by the brilliant, shrieking creatures, and bolted. But terror was not all upon one side. The Indians had never seen men like these Hessians, with their huge bearskin shakos and fierce dyed mustaches. They in their turn were seized with panic and rushed away, fleeing incontinently from "bad medicine."

Absurd as the affair proved, with little harm done to anything except the feelings of the British, its consequences might easily have been serious, both to the Revolution and to Lafayette. The loss of two thousand of his best men would have dangerously crippled Washington's [Pg 108]little army; while the capture of Lafayette, on the very first occasion he was intrusted with a command of any size, must almost of necessity have ended his military usefulness forever. As it was, Barren Hill demonstrated that he was quick and resourceful in time of danger; and these were very valuable qualities in a war like the American Revolution, which was won largely through the skill of its generals in losing battles. To realize the truth of this and how well it was carried out, we have only to recall Washington's masterly work in the winter campaign in New Jersey, when he maneuvered and marched and gave way until the right moment came to stand; how General Schuyler lured Burgoyne to disaster; and how, in a later campaign in the South, General Greene was said to have "reduced the art of losing battles to a science." Years afterward, in talking with Napoleon, Lafayette called our Revolution "the grandest of contests, won by the skirmishes of sentinels and outposts." About a month after this affair at Barren Hill the English evacuated Philadelphia and moved slowly northward with a force of seventeen thousand men and a baggage-train nearly twelve miles long. The length of this train indicated that it was moving-day for the British army, which wanted to be nearer the Hudson, but certain other indications pointed to the opening of an active campaign in New Jersey. A majority of the American officers, including Gen. Charles Lee, who was second in command, argued against an attack because both in numbers and organization the British force was superior to their own. General [Pg 109]Lee went so far as to say that, instead of trying to interfere with General Clinton's retreat, it ought to be aided in every possible way, "even with a bridge of gold." Subsequent developments proved that it was not fear of a British victory, but sympathy with British plans, which prompted this view. Several other officers, however, Washington himself, Gen. Anthony Wayne, who was always ready to fight, General Greene, General Cadwallader, and Lafayette, were in favor of following and attacking at the earliest opportunity. It was this course that Washington chose, in spite of the majority of votes against it. It seemed to him that the difficulty Clinton must experience in maneuvering his army over the roads of that region, and the fact that almost half of his force would need to be employed in guarding the unwieldy baggage-train, justified the expectation of success. His plan was to throw out a strong detachment ahead of the main army to harass the British flanks and rear and to follow this up so closely that the main army would be ready to go to its support in case Clinton turned to fight.