In a military sense as well as in a political, the affairs of America were drooping in sorrowful alternations. Sir Henry Clinton had known how to profit by the internal dissensions of the Union; he had rallied round him the royalists in Georgia and the Carolinas; the civil war reigned there in all its horrors, precursors and pledges of more cruel rancors yet which our days were to witness. General Lincoln had just been forced to capitulate at Charleston. Washington, all the time encamped before New York, beheld his army decimated by hunger and cold, without pay, without provisions, without shoes, obliged to live by despoiling the surrounding population. Discouragement was overtaking the firmest hearts, when, in the month of April, 1780, the Marquis de la Fayette landed anew in America. He brought the news that a French army corps was preparing to embark in order to sustain the failing strength of the Americans. By a prudent prevision of the disputes which might arise from questions of rank or nationality, the Count dc Rochambeau, who commanded the French, was to be placed under the orders of General Washington, and the auxiliary corps entirely put at his disposal. The enthusiasm of M. de la Fayette for the cause of American liberty had gained over the French court and people. He had borne upon the government of King Louis XVI., which was as yet uncertain and naturally preoccupied with the difficulties and growing expenses which the war was imposing on France. The national ardor and the rash generosity common to our character had prevailed. The campaign of 1780 was tardy and without great results, but the year 1781 was going to be decisive in the annals of the War of Independence. France was to take a glorious part in it. Washington had just suffered a serious vexation and a sad disappointment. In spite of the glaring vices of General Arnold, and of the faults which were repugnant to the austerity of character of the general-in-chief, his signal bravery and military talents had maintained him in the foremost rank among Washington's lieutenants. Accused of malversations, and lately condemned by a council of war to suffer a severe reprimand, Arnold was yet in command of the fort at West Point, the key to the upper part of the State of New York. He had taken possession of it in the month of August, 1780, under the pretext of the rest which his wounds entailed; but he had already made overtures to Sir Henry Clinton. "I am quite ready to yield myself," he had said, "in the way which can be most useful to the arms of his Majesty." The English general charged a young officer of staff to carry the acceptance of his final instructions to the perfidious general of the Union. Major André was arrested as a spy. Arnold learned of it and had time to escape, leaving behind him his young wife and his new-born infant. Washington was returning from an interview with Count de Rochambeau and had given a rendezvous to Arnold. The latter was not at the appointed place. He had been, it was said, called back to West Point. The general repaired thither. While he was crossing the river, contemplating the majesty of nature which surrounded him, he turned towards his officers. "At bottom," he said, "I am not vexed that Arnold should have preceded us; he will salute me, and the boom of the cannon will have a fine effect in the mountains." They landed, but the fort remained silent. Arnold had not appeared there for several days. Displeased but unsuspicious, Washington was beginning an inspection of the place when Colonel Hamilton brought him some important dispatches which had followed him. It was the news of the arrest of Major André and of the perfidy of Arnold. Always master of himself, the general did not betray his emotion by a change of countenance; only, turning to the Marquis de la Fayette, who was informed of the facts by Hamilton, "On whom can we depend now?" said he sadly.
The culprit was beyond reach; his ignorant and innocent wife had been seized by a despair which resembled madness. Major André was tried as a spy and condemned to suffer the fate of one. He was young, honest, and brave, brought up to another career, and driven into the army by a love disappointment. His tastes were elegant, his mind cultivated; he had not foreseen to what dangers his mission and the disguise that he had assumed, against the advice of Sir Henry Clinton, exposed him. "My mind is perfectly tranquil," he however wrote to his general when he was arrested, "and I am ready to suffer all that my faithful devotion to the king's cause can draw down on my head."
One thing alone troubled Major André's peace of mind. He dreaded the ignominy of the gibbet, and wished to die as a soldier. "Sir," wrote he to Washington, "sustained against the fear of death by the feeling that no unworthy action has sullied a life consecrated to honor, I am confident that in this supreme hour your Excellency will not refuse a prayer the granting of which can sweeten my last moments. In sympathy for a soldier, your Excellency will consent, I am sure, to adapt the form of my punishment to the feelings of a man of honor. Permit me to hope, that if my character has inspired you with some esteem, and if I am in your eyes the victim of policy and not of vengeance, I shall prove the empire of those feelings over your heart by learning that I am not to die on a gibbet."
With a harshness unexampled in his life, and of which he seemed always to preserve the silent and painful remembrance, Washington remained deaf to the noble appeal of his prisoner. He did not even do Major André the honor of answering him. "Am I then to die thus?" said the unfortunate man when he perceived the gibbet. Then immediately recovering himself, "I pray you to bear witness that I die as a man of honor," said he to the American officer charged with seeing to his punishment. Washington himself paid homage to him. "André has suffered his penalty with that strength of mind which might be expected from a man of that merit and from so brave an officer," wrote he. "As for Arnold, he lacks pluck. The world will be surprised if it do not yet see him hanged on a gibbet."
A monument was erected in Westminster Abbey to the memory of Major André, "the victim of his devotion to his king and country." His remains repose there since the year 1821. The vengeance and anger of the Americans vainly pursued General Arnold, who was henceforth occupied in the war at the head of the English troops, with all the passion of a restless hatred. Spite and wounded vanity, linked with the shameful necessities of an irregular life, had drawn him into treason. He lived twenty years after, enriched and despised by the enemies of his country. "What would you have done to me if you had succeeded in taking me?" he asked one day of an American prisoner. "We would have separated from your body that one of your limbs which had been wounded in the service of the country," answered the militia-man calmly, "and we would have hanged the rest on a gibbet."
Fresh perplexities were assailing General Washington, scarcely recovered from the sad surprise which Arnold's treason had caused him. He had pursued for almost a year the reorganization of his army, when the successive mutinies among the Pennsylvania troops threatened to reach those of New Jersey, and to extend by degrees into all the corps secretly tampered with by Sir Henry Clinton. Mr. Laurens, formerly president of Congress, and charged with negotiating a treaty of alliance and of loan with Holland, had been captured by an English ship. He was imprisoned in the Tower, when his son, an aide-de-camp of Washington, set out for France. "The country's own strength is exhausted," wrote the general-in-chief. "Alone we cannot raise the public credit and furnish the funds necessary to continue the war. The patience of the army is at an end. Without money we can make but a feeble effort, probably the last one."
As well as money, Colonel Laurens was charged to ask for a reinforcement of troops. France furnished all that her allies asked. M. Necker, clever and bold, was equal, by means of successive loans, to all the charges of the war. In a few months King Louis XVI. had lent or guaranteed more than sixteen million pounds for the United States. A French fleet, under the orders of the Count de Grasse, set out on the 21st of March, 1781. Arrived at Martinique on the 28th of April, the Count de Grasse, despite the efforts of Admiral Hood to block his passage, took the island of Tobago from the English. On the 3rd of September he brought Washington a reinforcement of three thousand five hundred men and twelve hundred thousand pounds in specie. The soldiers as well as the subsidies were intrusted to Washington personally. No dissension had ever arisen between the general and his foreign auxiliaries. By that natural authority which God had bestowed on him, Washington was always and naturally the superior and chief of all those who came near him.