Journals of French officers under Rochambeau:
The fair sex here is really unusual in its modesty and sweetness of demeanor. Nature has endowed the women of Rhode Island with very fine features; their complexion is clear; their hands and feet generally small . . . One sees few malformed women . . . They all like dancing, and they engage in it unpretentiously, as is their manner in general.
—Baron Ludwig von Closen, Rochambeau aide-de-camp
We were frequently invited to private houses. There seemed to be a rivalry among the residents to see who would serve the richest fare and have the largest number of guests at dinner.
—Baron Gaspard de Gallatin
JOHN CARTER SLAMMED DOWN HIS GLASS OF Madeira, his wine sloshing onto the tablecloth. Peggy realized the man was drunk. But if her sister was embarrassed, it did not show. Angelica continued to smile regally, keeping her eyes glued to her husband, as if what he was saying was profoundly interesting.
Peggy sat across from her in a small clapboard house that Carter was renting in Newport, Rhode Island. They were not alone. Lafayette had arrived with messages for Rochambeau from Washington. But the French army had landed only a few days earlier and was frantically fortifying the harbor and town, having spotted the British fleet lurking off the coast. Lafayette’s meeting must wait. Most men would have been insulted by that dismissal by his own countryman, but the ebullient Lafayette instead happily accepted Angelica’s dinner invitation. He brought with him his own brother-in-law, Vicomte de Noailles, and Hamilton’s most dedicated jester, McHenry, who was now Lafayette’s aide-de-camp. Plus, his old friend the Marquis de Fleury, the Frenchman he planned to matchmake with Peggy. She had to give Lafayette credit. Fleury was—well, in a word, gorgeous. Disarmingly so.
“So I told them,” crowed Carter, “when they were dining at my house—captives, mind you—and they still dared to raise a glass to the king—I told them that for every village and farm that Burgoyne and his officers and German devil Hessians had pillaged and set fire to, that we should behead one of their officers. Then we’d put those heads in small barrels, salt them, and ship them all back to England at once. That certainly would send the king the message that his henchmen don’t belong in America any longer!” He pounded the table and guffawed. “Well, you should have seen Baroness von Reidesel’s pretty little face crumple. She looked at me as if I were some monster!”
A stunned silence fell around the table. Of course most everyone there felt the same outrage at British atrocities, but the gory suggestion of pickled heads was a bit barbaric. It was particularly cruel for Carter to needle the young baroness in such a way, since her Hessian husband was in Boston as a prisoner of war.
Peggy felt her stomach twist. Was he that uncouth and mean in the way he talked to Angelica in private? She could find no clue on her beautiful sister’s party-perfect expression.
And what was he trying to accomplish with these French noblemen with such bragging? Carter’s emotional ties to the nation’s cause seemed thin at best. Maybe if he had taken up arms for America—like the immigrants Hamilton or McHenry—rather than making a profit off supplying her army, Peggy might feel differently. But right now his posturing seemed . . . seemed . . . Queen Gertrude’s line in Shakespeare’s Hamlet was all that came to mind: The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
She glanced around the table. Lafayette and his French officer friends seemed frozen in time. This was awful. Why didn’t Angelica say something? She looked again at her beautiful, whip-smart older sister, those wide dark-mahogany eyes. They glistened. Angelica was fighting off tears.
All right, this was up to her. Peggy quick-searched her own mind, but it was actually the Frenchmen’s slightly baffled look that guided her. Carter’s little speech was so outrageous, she could tell they were questioning if they had really understood his English words!
She turned to Fleury and said, “What an excellent metaphor for the English losing their heads—being so confused by American bravery and tactics that their heads might as well have been in barrels.” She repeated herself in French so he understood her precisely, and then finished it with a light laugh.
The men laughed politely in return. Angelica’s eyes kissed her.
“Major.” Peggy hurried to change the subject before Carter could speak again. “I have been admiring that medal about your neck. May I?”
Fleury leaned forward so that the medal and its chain fell toward her. He leaned a little closer than she had expected, smelling of leather and shaving soap. She tried not to be distracted by his typically French good looks—thick dark hair, a lean face with a strongly cut jawline, a long straight Roman-statue perfect nose, and a wide, full-lipped mouth. There were already laugh lines around his dark eyes, but his tanned skin was taut. Not a youth—a man in his prime.
Peggy concentrated on the medal, suddenly embarrassed and hesitant.
On the face of the medal, a soldier dressed like a Roman centurion stood amid ruins, holding an unsheathed sword in one hand and in the other a flag, pointed down so that his bare feet trampled it. At the base was Fleury’s name. Along the top, she read aloud, “Virtutis et Audacle Monum et Praemium.” She paused and then translated, “Commemoration and reward for courage and boldness.”
“Vous savez aussi le Latin?” Fleury complimented the fact she knew Latin as well as French.
“A little,” she answered shyly, not looking up.
“Mademoiselle Peggy, you know not this story?” Lafayette asked. “Mon Dieu! This man is one of the Revolution’s great heroes. Congress struck this medal in honor of Fleury’s courage at Stony Point. Only General Washington was before so honored. Turn it over!”
On the back, etched in the silver, was Stony Point: a clover-shaped fort atop a jutting cliff, surrounded by water. Again, Peggy translated the motto along the medal’s top rim: “Aggeres Paludes Hostes Victi. Victory over fortifications, marshes, enemies.”
Fleury nodded as she glanced up into his face. Words stuck in her throat at his penetrating look.
All Americans knew about the daring raid on New York’s Stony Point. Less than fifteen miles south of West Point, the craggy peninsula jutted into the Hudson River. Taken and heavily fortified by the British, who called it “Little Gibraltar,” Stony Point gave the Redcoats command of the river from there south to New York City. It also gave the British the perfect launch point to attack West Point—the American stronghold that protected the northern portion of the Hudson River stretching to Albany and beyond.
Exactly one year before, July 1779, at midnight, a group of handpicked Americans had managed to scramble up 150-foot cliffs and take the fort. Their surprise attack victory had been an enormous morale boost to all Patriots.
“Oh my” was all Peggy could demur in sincere admiration as she dropped the silver medal, which suddenly felt searing hot. “You led that bold venture?”
“Non. Pas moi. General Wayne.”
“Oh, my dear marquis,” interjected Lafayette. “You are too modest. I have learned an English proverb about hiding one’s light beneath a bushel.”
Fleury looked at him quizzically.
“Light is not to be hidden, but revealed! Like freedom! Lift the basket, mon ami!” Lafayette grinned. “Let me.” He turned to Peggy. “Perhaps the marvelous details have not been told yet entire to the nation. This was an attack extraordinaire. Such risks. In darkness. In silence. Absolument. Unloaded muskets. Fixed bayonets only. This was to be a deadly hand-to-hand duel.”
Peggy was transfixed—as if Lafayette was Homer recounting Odysseus’s legendary journey.
“The approach was hellish. Waist-high water in the marsh. Then rows and rows of spikes! The British had stripped the cliffs of all trees and turned them to spears, anchored in the hills. Twenty brave Patriots were assigned the ‘Forlorn Hope’—the task to cut gaps through those rows of spears so that the marquis and his men could slide through and—voilà!—climb the battlements.
“Need I tell you, Mademoiselle Peggy, that the odds of success were minuscule. Of death immense! Imaginez: The men of the Forlorn Hope chop with their axes. Their blows awake the Redcoats. The British fire down onto our courageous men. Many are killed. General Wayne is struck in his head and falls. But our marquis, our Fleury, rallies his men. He charges through the tiny gaps in the spikes cut at such a price of blood and death. Then he, our Fleury, is the very first to leap over the fortification! He fights his way to the British flagpole and tears down the hated Redcoat flag.”
Lafayette pointed to his friend’s chest. “And there it is, commemorated!”
Everyone at the table was riveted by the retelling. The enslaved servants had hung by the door, decanter and trays in hand, listening, too. Lafayette looked around at his audience with great satisfaction, his face pink from the excitement of the tale.
Fleury merely smiled. Then he shrugged. “All were brave. The glory belongs to all. When he thought he might die, dear General Wayne demanded to be carried into the fort. He said if his wound was to kill him, he wished to die at the head of the column.”
Lafayette interrupted, “Perhaps this is why his men call him ‘Mad’ Anthony.”
Fleury laughed. It was a nice, deep rumble. “Toutefois, he was our inspiration. The message General Wayne sent to His Excellency that night was brief. The best example. He said the fort was ours. Our officers and soldiers behaved like men determined to be free. C’est tout. That is all.”
Carter destroyed the spell. “I hear that Washington offered a bounty to the first man to enter the fortifications. Five hundred dollars if the rumor is correct.”
“Strong proof of the danger!” Lafayette exclaimed, trying to keep the atmosphere heroic.
“A small fortune,” said Carter. He leaned back in his chair and eyed Fleury. “I hope you spent it well, and gave yourself a just reward for the risks you took.” His tone was overly playful.
Fleury frowned slightly and looked to Lafayette.
With some embarrassment, Peggy clarified. “Mr. Carter wonders how you celebrated that victory, given General Washington’s reward.” She repeated herself in French.
“Oh, I did not keep the money,” said Fleury. “I divided it among my men. We shared the danger. We share the reward.”
Without realizing she was doing it, Peggy sighed deeply.
This time, Angelica kicked her under the table.
A few weeks later, Peggy sat in a carriage with Angelica and Carter, waiting for a large delegation of Oneida, Tuscarora, and Caughnawaga warriors to ride into Newport to meet Rochambeau. Their papa had sent them from Albany, to be reassured that the French forces had indeed joined the Patriots. The British were claiming the alliance between France and the United States was a lie.
Peggy had brought her sketchbook to record them. She was flipping through drawings she had made of Oneida sachems when Fleury trotted up on a tall bay horse. He was stunning in the uniform of the Saintonge Regiment: white linen breeches and canvas gaiters, a white coat and waistcoat piped and faced in dark green, with matching cuffs and vertical rows of gilt buttons.
“Bonjour,” he called, nodding at Angelica and Carter before riveting that intense gaze of his on her. The French troops had been so busy settling into quarters, constructing barracks, and building fortifications around the harbor she had talked with him only briefly a few times since the dinner party. Her face was carefully shaded beneath her wide straw bonnet, yet she felt her cheeks turn pink—much to her self-conscious annoyance.
“I did not know you are an artist aussi, mademoiselle.”
Peggy smiled nervously, forgetting to close up the sketchbook.
Noticing her younger sister’s uncharacteristic reserve, Angelica spoke for her. “She is actually quite good.” Her big sister scooped up the book and held it out for the marquis to peruse before Peggy could protest.
“C’est magnifique!” Fleury exclaimed as he pointed to one sketch of a chief with feathers festooning his head, a fur crossing his chest, and sandal leathers coiling up his calves.
“You do not wear your medal this afternoon, Marquis,” Carter commented.
“I wear it for special moments.” He smiled warmly at Peggy. “My dear friend Lafayette told me the night I meet the Schuyler sisters was such an occasion.”
“You are too kind, monsieur,” said Angelica, nudging Peggy to say something, anything.
Words stuck in her throat until Fleury said, “General Rochambeau has gold and silver medals to give the chiefs today. On them is King Louis on his coronation. I hope they will like?”
“Oh, they will see it as an honor and a sign of respect.” Peggy found her voice finally. “The Iroquois commemorate their peace treaties with gifts. They revere symbolism. Two different-colored rows in a wampum belt, for instance, means that the two tribes support each other but neither will interfere with or dominate the other. The belts are quite beautiful, made of tiny beads of whelk and quahog shells.”
“I didn’t know that you knew so much about the Iroquois, Peggy,” said Angelica.
“Well, we’ve grown up with them.” She wondered how Angelica couldn’t know them as well as she did, but then realized her big sister was trying to give Peggy the stage. That recognition pulled her up short. How many times had Angelica done that for her before and Peggy simply hadn’t seen it because of little-sister insecurity that she could never be as captivating or clever as Angelica?
She smiled gratefully to her big sister before continuing. “I hope you have the chance to really talk with them, Monsieur Fleury. They are so brave, but also so loyal to family and to those they believe in. They keep to their promises. And they are kind.” She turned to Angelica. “Remember Polly Cooper?”
Angelica nodded. “Tell the marquis,” she prodded.
Peggy glanced up at Fleury, gauging his interest. She had yet to learn if he valued human stories as much as military ones.
“S’il vous plaît, mademoiselle.”
“Well,” she began, “the winter before last, when our troops were starving at Valley Forge, the Oneida gathered six hundred baskets of their own corn and carried them all the way from New York. A clan mother, Polly Cooper, came along to show the troops how to grind the kernels and boil the meal into a soup mixed with fruits and nuts. Their white corn must be prepared a certain way or it makes people dreadfully sick. The Oneida probably saved hundreds of lives with that generosity. It meant their own people ate less that winter. Mrs. Washington gave Polly a beautiful black shawl as thanks.”
“Incroyable! That and courage. Both! Lafayette told me that his army would have been devastated, he a British prisoner at Barren Hill, had it not been for the Oneida.”
Peggy nodded. She knew this story, too. Washington had sent Lafayette to monitor British movements, but local Tories alerted the Redcoats. The Brits sent out eight thousand men to capture Lafayette—nabbing him would be a tremendous propaganda coup. They outnumbered the Patriots four to one. It would have been a catastrophe had not a forward scouting party of Oneidas and Patriot riflemen heard the Redcoats’ horses coming along the road and opened fire on the British line from the woods. With that screen, Lafayette was able to rush his troops across the Schuylkill River—holding hands so the current wouldn’t drag them downstream. Lafayette’s second in command only survived because two Oneida managed to grab and carry the injured French aristocrat to the river just as two British cavalrymen were descending on him.
“Here they are now,” Carter said, and pointed.
Nineteen sinewy men rode into camp, near naked given the late summer heat. They rode erect and tall and essentially bareback—only blankets for saddles and ropes for bridles. One foot was bare in deference to the French general. Their simplicity contrasted starkly with Rochambeau’s entourage, at attention, in their high boots and spotless, buttoned-up, gold-braided uniforms, broiling in the American sunshine. Suddenly the regally clad Europeans looked a bit ridiculous to Peggy.
She spotted the Oneida sachem who had led the delegation to Albany and with whom she had shared family memories. She could tell Rochambeau was speaking, greeting them, but she couldn’t hear. “Oh, I wish I were closer,” she murmured.
Without missing a beat, Fleury leaned over and extended his arm toward her, saying, “Permettez-moi.”
Peggy stared at him. Allow him what? To swing her up onto the horse with him? Riding on a horse with a man was . . . was . . . so familiar. Her parents would be scandalized.
“Go on,” whispered Angelica.
Yes! Why not? Damn propriety. This was the Revolution. Peggy stood, held up her arms, accepted the Frenchman’s embrace, and jumped, letting the marquis swing her up onto his saddle. The seat was padded with royal blue wool. With its cushioning and her massive apricot-colored skirts, Peggy settled easily, her legs dangling to one side, the marquis’s arm about her waist to steady her. She faced forward as primly as possible, trembling with a sense of adventure. She felt more than heard the marquis’s rumble of laughter as he rearranged his battle sword to swing farther back on his hip, away from her.
As he clicked his tongue to move his horse forward, Peggy heard her brother-in-law warn: “Careful, Marquis, that one carries a sword as well—of wit. Beware! You won’t see it until she nicks you with it.”
“Un homme bon à être pourfendu,” Fleury murmured into her ear.
A good man to skewer, Peggy translated for herself. Ha! She laughed—a triumphant, defiant little peal. Fleury admired her keen tongue? Suddenly anything felt possible.
Fleury discreetly kept them to the back of the gathered crowd as he moved his horse close enough for Peggy to hear. Her Oneida friend was speaking and her papa’s translator was explaining the sachem’s English words in French to Rochambeau: “We are astonished that the king of France sends his troops to protect the Americans in an insurrection against the king of England, their father.”
In French, Rochambeau answered: “The king of France protects the natural liberty that God has given to man. The Americans have been overloaded with burdens, which they were no longer able to bear. King Louis has found their complaints just.”
Her papa’s linguist explained Rochambeau’s statement in English and then, in turn, Peggy’s sachem translated to his companions. How she itched to help with this back-and-forth in three languages.
Rochambeau continued: “Several of your neighbors, deceived by the English king, have made war upon the Americans. He has said the Americans are our enemy. That is false. The Americans are our friends. We come to defend them. It will please King Louis very much if you will join us in making war against the English.”
The sachem nodded solemnly. “We lament the choices of our brother Iroquois. But the Oneidas and Tuscarora, at every hazard, will hold fast the covenant chain with the United States. We promise this. We will keep the hatchet in our hands for our brethren the Americans. With them we will be buried in the same grave or enjoy the fruits of victory and peace.”
“Si poétique,” Fleury murmured.
Peggy could feel his breath and lips move against her hair. Her heart skipped over itself.
Rochambeau then tried to present the sachem a beautiful gold medallion. He explained that it was etched with the image of King Louis the Sixteenth, on the day of his majesty’s coronation.
But the sachem did not take it. “I thank you, but I wish not to arouse the jealousy of my brothers or to have them think I am grasping or asking for this distinction.”
A gasp of surprise rippled through the crowd.
“Extraordinaire!” Fleury breathed.
Yes, very, thought Peggy. As extraordinary as you not taking that Stony Point reward money for yourself. But aloud, she said, “That is their nature.”
The sachem was pleased, however, when presented a pipe-tomahawk—a blade on one side, a pipe bowl on the other—made by French silversmiths. Inlaid with silver and engraved, the beautiful creation symbolized both war and its ultimate goal, peace.
In return, the Oneida and Tuscarora gave Rochambeau wampum strings, explaining that in their tribe, the decorative cords represented a warrior’s privilege and duty to speak on behalf of their people. Their clan mothers had woven them for the French officers.
“Clan mothers also wear them,” Peggy explained, “to show their position of honor and responsibility.”
Again, that ripple of laughter. “Peut-être que vous voulez vraiment être une Oneida.”
Perhaps what she really wanted was to be Oneida? Peggy turned around and looked at the marquis, thinking he was criticizing or even ridiculing her. But his eyes told her his comment was half-teasing, yes, but also a serious question, laden with respect and curiosity about a culture foreign to him.
“No,” she said, drawing out the word. Peggy was not so naive as to not recognize how hard the Oneida’s life was. “But if I were an Oneida woman, I would not have to be a bystander to this ceremonial conference. It is a matriarchal society and invites women to join council circles.” Peggy might even have been asked to be its honored translator.
“Extraordinaire!” Fleury murmured again.
Peggy couldn’t tell if he was talking about the Oneida or her. It was a glorious riddle.
The Indians remained in Newport for three days. Rochambeau ordered a formal military parade and review in the delegation’s honor, complete with the cavalry galloping past and a firing of field artillery. The warriors were treated to a tour of a warship and a banquet on board.
The final night, in tribute to the French and in thanks for such hospitality, the Oneida, Tuscarora, and Caughnawaga would perform a ceremonial dance of alliance. All of Newport gathered to watch. Fleury asked to escort Peggy, that she might explain the traditions to him. Flattered and increasingly smitten, Peggy had dared slip her arm through his to pull the Frenchman with her when she spotted the Oneida sachem again. “Come! Let me introduce you!
“Good sir!” Peggy sang out as she neared the chief.
“It is our sister, the trumpeter swam.” The chief smiled and bowed.
Peggy curtsied. She thought of their last conversation, laughing over Tilghman’s obvious infatuation with Eliza. She wondered if the Oneida elder would be able to read Fleury’s thoughts as well as he had Tilghman’s. She’d be grateful if he could. Fleury was a mystery. Were his compliments just old-world gallantries, amusing banter a nobleman might toss easily about at the king’s court? Or were they sincere?
But her questions evaporated as she and the Oneida straightened up. He looked so haggard. Shocked, without thinking, Peggy violated all protocol of respect and restraint. She took his hand. “Oh, sir, what is wrong? Are you unwell?”
The sachem shook his head. But he did not draw back. That alone told Peggy how much grief racked the old warrior. “My people are attacked, by the Mohawk and their Tory brothers. They burned our village and castle. Took our cattle, trampled our corn. My people have fled. For safety, your father moves them to Schenectady. But my children . . .” He shook his head. “The enemy have taken my children hostage.”
Peggy was horrified. She knew such disaster had befallen his people because of the Oneida’s alliance with the Patriots, and in retribution for the Continental Army’s attack on Mohawk villages the year before. General Washington and her own father had ordered the scorched-earth assault through the Mohawk Valley to subdue the British-allied Iroquois, who had joined Tories in devastating and brutal raids on Patriot farms. But the Patriots’ campaign had only fueled Mohawk anger and resentment with Americans who had continually encroached on their territory. It was a heartbreaking and harsh truth—because of their American Revolution, the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, who had lived together in peace for decades, and practiced their own form of democracy, were now dissolved into a bitter civil war. “I . . . I . . . I am so sorry, sir.”
“I leave tomorrow to offer myself to my enemy in my children’s place.” He squeezed Peggy’s hand before releasing it. “But tonight I dance to honor His Excellency, the great General Washington, and our father, King Louis.”
Peggy shook her head and felt tears stinging her eyes now. She knew that being a hostage could bring him death.
“Do not fear for me,” the sachem reassured her. “This is what we do for love of family. This life is brief, daughter of Schuyler. We must live it with honor and duty. Or die in shame.”
Then he walked away to pray with his fellow Oneida over their fire.
Peggy had witnessed ceremonial dances many times. But never before had she really felt their overlay of potential tragedy and sorrow within their evocation of bravery for battle, the foreboding urgency of their gestures and cries. This was life, stripped of pretense, devoid of polite facades, platitudes, and lukewarm attachments.
The Indians lit an enormous bonfire in the middle of Newport’s main street parallel to the harbor waters. As the blaze caught, crackling, engulfing the wood, throwing explosions of sparks and smoke billowing upward, the nineteen warriors entered the fire’s ring of light. Peggy’s sachem spoke in his native tongue. His voice was rich, resonant, and grave. She knew he was describing his people’s history, their victories and pride, and the individual triumphs of the great men of his tribe.
He raised his hands and called out for blessing. Peggy felt her breath quicken, empathizing with the sachem’s invocation, his faith in his people and their gods, but also—she could see it on his face in the flickering light—his despair for them.
Peggy looked at the Patriots and Europeans surrounding her. Did they see what she did? Did they understand what they were asking of these men and their tribes? The risks? What they sacrificed for this alliance?
She glanced up at Fleury. She would finally know what to think of him given his expression. If he watched with a tourist’s detachment or a European’s smugness, he was not for her.
The drums and the dance began.
In the dark night, lit only by the flickering light of the bonfire, the moon and its reflection in the harbor waters, Fleury’s face burned with a corresponding lionhearted zeal. Revealed was the man who could rush up a hill filled with spears under a barrage of musket fire to charge to a flagpole and tear down his enemy’s emblem. But there was also a grim, knowing respect on that handsome, valiant face. A clear understanding of the harrowing, even cataclysmic costs of bravery.
At that moment, Peggy knew. She was falling in love. She didn’t stop to caution herself, or to analyze. She acted on what her heart told her. Peggy clutched the lapels of Fleury’s uniform, stood on tiptoe, and pressed her lips against his—that gorgeous mouth she’d watched twitch with amusement, that spoke poetry, and that now she believed echoed the language of her soul.
Then—slightly shocked by her own impulsiveness and panicked about what his reaction might be—Peggy gathered her skirts and ran for the safety of her big sister’s house.