THE GLORIOUS BAREFOOT SOLDIERS
IT WAS SNOWING IN VALLEY FORGE IN DECEMBER 1777. Rather than casting a romantic glow on the setting, the snow made it even gloomier. Valley Forge was a huge improvised military camp in the middle of the woods less than twenty miles from enemy lines, where Washington had assembled the nine thousand men he had been able to save, who had been joined by civilian refugees. There were no permanent buildings or traditional military barracks, but hundreds of small huts that had sprouted like mushrooms, built by the soldiers themselves with wood from the trees of the forest. These farmers and trappers who had often settled temporarily in precarious regions knew how to build, quickly and with the materials at hand, improvised cabins that would protect them from cold, rain, snow, wind, robbers, Indians, and wild animals, often for months and, with some improvements, sometimes for years. Lafayette was astonished by the speed with which they built this precarious town, the somber setting for the army’s winter quarters.
Valley Forge was a sad place for everyone there, although some were more comfortably settled than others. Almost everything was in short supply: uniforms in good condition, boots, shoes, blankets, furniture, kitchen utensils, and enough weapons to counter an unexpected major attack. Some officers were in rags, others had made boots out of thick woolen cloth. All day, when their fingers were not numb with the cold, soldiers cut, sewed, assembled, improvised, patched. They ate whatever they could. Fortunately the local farmers supplied enough gin and whiskey to hold out, especially when the snow was blowing and it was hard to stay close enough to the fire. In spite of the commanders’ efforts to maintain the morale and discipline of men living in forced idleness, desertions were numerous. They had better things to do in workshops, farms, plantations, or shops. The winter was very long and the soldiers had not been paid for months. And yet many of them held on. In their combination of extreme misery and heroism, the combatants of Valley Forge prefigured the soldiers of Year II of the French Revolution. They had not forgotten that they were rebels, and for many of them, especially the officers, a defeat would mean the scaffold or long years in prison—and the reputation of British prisons was dreadful. Their tenacity was all the more remarkable because they knew that merchants in Philadelphia and elsewhere were growing rich because of the war, indifferent to the suffering of soldiers and refugees and to the ruin threatening the country.
Major-General Lafayette was intent on sharing as much as possible in the harsh ordeals of his subordinates. His youthful escapades in the Auvergne mountains had prepared him for very rigorous conditions. His ascendancy over the men under his command arose not only from his courage and coolness under fire but also from his sobriety, his contempt for comfort, and his understanding of the revolutionary situation and the course of conduct that flowed from that for everyone involved.
This young general also exerted authority through his sense of equity, his ability to command without humiliating or brutalizing his subordinates. Yet the Virginians he had been ordered to lead to Valley Forge were hard to handle, the worst soldiers in the American army according to the colonels and generals who had commanded them: vulgar, brutal, drunken, thieving, brawling, stubborn, arrogant, lacking in any form of discipline, and unable to understand anything but harsh words and well-placed blows. This was the division he had finally been given to command by Congress on December 1, 1777, in reward for his conduct at Haddonfield, where, leading a small squadron on a reconnaissance mission, he had overwhelmed three hundred Hessian mercenaries serving under the British flag. His probationary apprenticeship had lasted only four months. He himself had asked for the Virginia regiment, to honor Washington, who was rather embarrassed by the gesture, for he wondered whether his terrible compatriots would obey such a young and inexperienced commander. But Lafayette insisted, and Washington finally agreed. Lafayette was seriously disappointed, however, when he discovered that the promised division contained just a little more than one thousand men, assembled by scraping the bottom of the barrel. He nonetheless displayed at Valley Forge, where inaction was undermining the morale of many, an optimism and fervor that Washington deeply appreciated.
Lafayette was at Valley Forge in early May 1778 when he received the great news by courier: France, which had recognized the independence of the United States after the victory of Saratoga, had finally signed a defensive and offensive alliance and a treaty of trade and friendship on February 6. On March 20, the American plenipotentiaries Benjamin Franklin, Arthur Lee, Ralph Izard, and Silas Deane, were received with great ceremony at Versailles. The die had been cast. Louis XVI had chosen the time well, neither too soon nor too late.
The news was celebrated at Valley Forge. They drank large quantities of everything they could find, out of chipped glasses, dirty cups, or straight from the bottle. Had the young general commanding the dreadful Virginians at Valley Forge helped, through his presence in America, and through the reports he had sent to Vergennes, to his influential father-in-law, and to his wife whom he encouraged to repeat his remarks, to foster the progress of the indispensable alliance? The leaders of the new nation were inclined to think so, and Lafayette himself had no doubt about it. Indeed, on March 20, 1778, before a great dinner given in their honor at Versailles, Franklin and his colleagues visited Adrienne at home to thank her for the help given by her husband.
Lafayette did not spend all of the winter and spring of 1777–78 at Valley Forge. He was offered another opportunity to win the glory he dreamed of in January. He was ordered to go to Albany to take command of forces in the north to prepare an invasion of Canada and drive out the British forces. He would have a corps of three thousand men (soldiers and militia), a large budget, abundant reserve supplies, horses, and sleds. His first task would be to burn the British fleet, which was blocked by ice on Lake Champlain. Then he would march on Montreal and Quebec City. The headquarters staff who had dreamed up this campaign still believed that the French Canadians were eager to join the rebels, despite the failure of Benjamin Franklin’s mission to Canada in early 1776. But nothing could be more enticing to the new general of the northern rebel forces than this plan: he imagined himself as the liberator of Canada. He, Gilbert de Lafayette, would erase with his sword the shame of the Treaty of Paris. What would the king, Maurepas, and the Duke d’Ayen say when he appeared at Versailles as a conquering general in his splendid blue American uniform?
When he reached Albany, he was again disappointed. Instead of the three thousand men promised, there were barely one thousand. As for the reserve supplies and matériel, they were very inadequate, to say the least. It would be preposterous to launch an invasion of Canada with such paltry resources. Lafayette had the good sense, courage, and character to immediately give up the campaign from which he had hoped to gain so much. He expressed undisguised bitterness to Washington, who, at bottom, had never favored the expedition. Washington found the words to go directly to the heart of the matter: “I am persuaded that everyone will applaud your prudence in renouncing a project, in pursuing which you would vainly have attempted physical impossibilities… . However sensibly your ardour for glory may make you feel this disappointment, you may be assured that your character stands as fair as ever it did.”
Appeased if not comforted, Lafayette managed to maintain discipline in his unit, covered his soldiers’ back pay out of his own pocket, reorganized the Albany military region, and restored abandon forts, before undertaking one of the most positive actions he was to accomplish in America: reconciliation with Indian tribes that had until then been manipulated by the enemy.