When he reached Boston the crew of the _Alliance_ had not been fully
made up. The authorities offered to impress enough men to complete
it, but Lafayette objected on principle to that way of obtaining
sailors. They were finally secured by enlistment, but many of them
were questionable characters, either English deserters or English
prisoners of war. With such a crew the _Alliance_ put to sea on the
11th of January, 1779, upon a voyage short for that time of year, but
as tumultuous as it was brief. Excitement and discomfort began with a
tempest off the Banks of Newfoundland which the frigate weathered with
difficulty. Lafayette, who was always a poor sailor, longed for calm,
even if it had to be found at the bottom of the sea; but that was only
the beginning, the real excitement occurring about two hundred leagues
off the French coast.
Lafayette's own account explains that "by a rather immoral proclamation
his Britannic Majesty encouraged revolt among crews," offering them the
money value of ships captured and brought into English ports as "rebel"
[Pg 123]vessels--"a result which could only be obtained by the massacre
of officers and those who objected." A plot of this nature was entered
into by the English deserters and prisoners among the sailors on the
_Alliance_. A cry of "A sail!" was to bring officers and passengers
hurrying upon deck and shots from four cannon, carefully trained and
loaded beforehand, were to blow them to bits. The time was fixed for
four o'clock in the morning, but, fortunately, it was postponed until
the same time in the afternoon, and in the interval the plot was
disclosed to an American sailor who was mistaken by the conspirators
for an Irishman on account of the fine brogue he had acquired through
much sailing "in those latitudes." They offered him command of the
frigate. He pretended to accept, but was able to warn the captain and
Lafayette only one short hour before the time fixed for the deed. That
was quite enough, however. The officers and passengers appeared upon
deck ahead of time, sword in hand, and gathering the loyal sailors
about them, called up the rest one by one. Thirty-three were put in
irons. Evidence pointed to an even greater number of guilty men, but
it was taken for granted that the rest might be relied upon, though
only the Americans and French were really trusted. A week later the
_Alliance_ sailed happily into Brest floating the new American flag.
The last word Lafayette had received from his family was already eight
months old. He hurried toward Paris, but the news of his arrival
traveled faster, and he found the city on tiptoe to see him. "On my
[Pg 124]arrival," says the _Memoirs_, "I had the honor to be consulted
by all the Ministers and, what was much better, embraced by all the
ladies. The embraces ceased next day, but I enjoyed for a longer
time the confidence of the Cabinet and favor at Versailles, and also
celebrity in Paris." His father-in-law, who had been so very bitter
at his departure, received him amiably, a friendliness which touched
Lafayette. "I was well spoken of in all circles, even after the favor
of the queen had secured for me command of the regiment of the King's
Dragoons." This was no other than the old De Noailles Cavalry in which
he had served as a boy.
Merely as a matter of form, however, he had to submit to a week's
imprisonment because he had left the country against the wishes of
the king. Instead of being shut in the Bastille, his prison was
the beautiful home of his father-in-law, where Adrienne and the
baby awaited him; and during that week its rooms were filled with
distinguished visitors, come ostensibly to see the Duc d'Ayen. But
even this delightful travesty of imprisonment did not begin until the
prodigal had gone to Versailles for his first interview with the king's
chief advisers. After a few days he wrote to Louis XVI, "acknowledging
my happy fault." The king summoned him to his presence to receive "a
gentle reprimand" which ended in smiles and compliments, and he was
restored to liberty with the hint that it would be well for a time to
avoid crowded places where the common people of Paris, who so dearly
loved a hero, "might consecrate his disobedience."
[Pg 125]For the next few months he led a busy life, a favorite in
society, an unofficial adviser of the government, called here and there
to give first-hand testimony about men and motives in far-off America,
making up lost months in as many short minutes with Adrienne, winning
the heart of his new little daughter, assuming command of his "crack"
regiment, so different in appearance from the ragged ranks he had
commanded under Washington; and last, but by no means least in his own
estimation, laying plans to accomplish by one bold stroke two military
purposes dear to his heart--discomfiting the English and securing money
for the American cause.
He had seen such great results undertaken and accomplished in America
with the slenderest means that the recklessness with which Europeans
spent money for mere show seemed to him almost wicked. He used to
tell himself that the cost of a single fête would equip an army in
the United States. M. de Maurepas had once said that he was capable
of stripping Versailles for the sake of his beloved Americans. It was
much more in accordance with his will to seize the supplies for America
from England herself. He planned a descent upon the English coast by
two or three frigates under John Paul Jones and a land force of fifteen
hundred men commanded by himself, to sail under the American flag, fall
upon rich towns like Bristol and Liverpool, and levy tribute.
Lafayette's brain worked in two distinct ways. His tropic imagination
stopped at nothing, and completely ran away with his common sense when
[Pg 126]once it got going, as, for instance, while he lay recovering
from his wound at Bethlehem. Very different from this was the clever,
quick wit with which he could take advantage of momentary chances in
battle, as he had demonstrated when he and his little force dropped
between the jaws of the trap closing upon them at Barren Hill.
Fortunately in moments of danger it was usually his wit, not his
imagination, that acted, and he took excellent care of the men under
him; but when he had nothing in the way of hard facts to pin his mind
to earth, and gave free rein to his desires, he was not practical. In
this season of wild planning he not only invented the scheme for a
bucaneering expedition in company with John Paul Jones; he mapped out
an uprising in Ireland, but decided that the time was not yet ripe for
that.
While his plan for a descent upon the English coast came to nothing, it
may be said to have led to much, for it interested the Ministry, and
was abandoned only in favor of a more ambitious scheme of attacking
England with the help of Spain. That, too, passed after it was
found that England was on the alert; but it had given Lafayette his
opportunity to talk about America in and out of season, and to urge the
necessity for helping the United States win independence as a means of
crippling England, if not for her own sake. As the most popular social
lion of the moment his words carried far, and as the most earnest
advocate of America in France he was indeed what he called himself, the
link that bound the two countries together. The outcome was that after
[Pg 127]the collapse of the project for an expedition against England
nobody could see a better way of troubling his Britannic Majesty than
by following Lafayette's advice; whereupon he redoubled his efforts and
arguments.
Indeed, he exceeded the wishes of the Americans themselves. He wanted
to send ships and soldiers as well as money and supplies, but with the
fiasco of the attack upon Newport fresh in their minds Congress and our
country were chary of asking for more help of that kind. He assured M.
de Vergennes that it was characteristic of Americans to believe that in
three months they would no longer need help of any kind. He wrote to
Washington that he was insisting upon money with such stress that the
Director of Finances looked upon him as a fiend; but he argued also in
France that the Americans would be glad enough to see a French army by
the time it got there.
A plan drawn up by him at the request of M. de Vergennes has been
called the starting-point of the events that led to the surrender of
Cornwallis, because without French help that event could not have
occurred. In this view of the case, the work he did in Paris and at
Versailles was his greatest contribution to the cause of American
independence. Another general might easily have done all that he did in
the way of winning battles on American soil, but no other man in France
had his enthusiasm and his knowledge, or the persistence to fill men's
ears and minds and hearts with thoughts of America as he did.
[Pg 128]After it had been decided to send over another military force
it was natural for him to hope that he might be given command of it,
though nobody knew better than he that his rank did not entitle him
to the honor since he was only a colonel in France, even if he did
hold the commission of a major-general in the United States. Having
become by this time really intimate with M. de Vergennes, he gave
another proof of the sweet reasonableness of his disposition by frankly
presenting the whole matter in writing to him. He worked out in detail
two "suppositions," the first assuming that he was to be given command
of the expedition, the second that he was not, stating in each case
what he thought ought to be done. Quite frankly he announced his
preference for the first supposition, but quite simply and unmistakably
he made it plain that he would work just as earnestly for the success
of the undertaking in one case as in the other.
It was the second of these plans that the Ministry preferred and
adopted practically as he prepared it. After this had been decided he
found himself, early one spring day in 1780, standing before Louis
XVI, in his American uniform, taking his leave. He was to go ahead of
the expedition and announce its coming; to work up a welcome for it,
if he found lingering traces of distrust; and to resume command of his
American division and do all he could to secure effective co-operation;
in short, to take up his work of liaison officer again on a scale
greater than before.
[Pg 129]XV