First Days in America
"HERE one day follows another, and what is worse, they are all alike. Nothing but sky and nothing but water; and to-morrow it will be just the same."
So wrote the restless Lafayette when he had been four weeks on the ship. The time had thus far been spent, after a sharp affliction of seasickness, in studying books on military science, and on the natural features of the country he was approaching.
In time land-birds were seen, and he sat down to write to Adrienne a fifteen-hundred-word letter which should be sent back by the first returning ship.
"It is from very far that I am writing to you, dear heart," he began, "and to this cruel separation is added the still more dreadful uncertainty of the time when I shall hear from you again. I hope, however, that it is not far distant, for, of all the many causes that make me long to get ashore again, there is nothing that increases my impatience like this."
The thought of his little daughter Henriette comes forward again and again. "Henriette is so delightful that she has made me in love with all little girls," he wrote.
Never did a more gallant company set sail than these young noblemen of France who were following a course across the sea only a little more northerly than that which Columbus first traced, and with something of the same high hazard that inspired the great discoverer. Their names should be remembered by a people that profited by their bravery. Besides the Baron de Kalb, with his fifty-five years, and the Viscount de Maury (who rode out of Bordeaux as a grand gentleman while the disguised Lafayette went before as courier), there was Major de Gimat, first aid-de-camp to Lafayette and always his special favorite, who gave up his horse to his young commander, thereby saving his life at the battle of Brandywine, and who was wounded in an attack on a redoubt at Yorktown. Then there was Captain de la Colombe who, after the close of the war in America, pursued closely the fortunes of Lafayette, following him even into prison. There was Colonel de Valfort who, in later years, became an Instructor of Napoleon; and Major de Buysson who was at the battle of Camden and brought word of the eleven wounds that were needed to cause the death of the intrepid Baron de Kalb. The list included still other names of members of noble families in France.
Something was indeed happening to the youth of France in 1750 and 1760. A restless ardor, a love of adventure, a love of glory, together with the bewitchment of that beautiful word "liberty," were among the motives that inspired their actions. They went into the military service at fourteen or even earlier, and were colonels of regiments at twenty-two or twenty-four. They were "sick for breathing and exploit."
An amusing story is told of one of these adventurous boys. He got into a quarrel with a school-mate about the real positions of the Athenians and Persians at the battle of Platæa. He even made a small wager on it and then set out to find whether he had been right or not. He actually went on foot to Marseilles and from there sailed as cabin-boy to Greece, Alexandria, and Constantinople. There a French ambassador caught the young investigator and sent him home! Before he was twenty-four, however, he was in America, cover ing himself with glory at Germantown and at Red Bank. This was the kind of youths they were; and many thrilling stories could be told about the lives of these gallant young Frenchmen.
And how young they were! More than a hundred of the French officers who came to America to serve in the Revolution were in the early twenties. There were a few seasoned old warriors, of course, but the majority of them were young. Such were the companions-in-arms of Lafayette, himself still in his teens.