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 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 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.
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.