That same month came news of the “shocking treason” of Benedict Arnold as part of a plan to deliver West Point to the enemy. Washington had written to Rochambeau about it on September 26, saying, “By a lucky accident a conspiracy of the most dangerous kind … has been defeated. General Arnold, who has sullied his former glory, by the blackest treason, has escaped to the enemy.” In an attempt to allay any fears the Frenchman might have, he noted philosophically, “in a revolution of the present nature it is more to be wondered at” that there had been so few traitors. Rochambeau responded in words calculated to console the American general, but which proved to foreshadow a host of events in the campaign on which they were to embark: “I know not whether I should pity you, or congratulate you upon the discovery of Arnold’s frightful plot; be this as it may, it proves to us that Providence is for us and for our cause, and of this I have had several examples since the beginning of this campaign.” Under present circumstances, it appeared that only the hand of Providence could save the rebel cause.
The tactful response was characteristic of Rochambeau, about whom Axel Fersen wrote, “Everyone was contented to be commanded by Rochambeau. He was the only man who was capable of commanding us here in America, and of maintaining that perfect harmony which existed between two nations so different in manners and language. His wise, prudent, and simple bearing did more to conciliate the Americans than four successful battles could have done.”
At the end of the month, after Vicomte Rochambeau, the general’s son, left for Versailles, preparations began for settling the French army in winter quarters. Winter came early and the brutal cold obliged the officers to make huge fires in open fireplaces in their rooms, but they soon discovered how expensive this was going to be. Unavailable locally, firewood had to be hauled great distances since the English—who had occupied the town from 1776 to 1779—had stripped the island of its luxuriant forests and its renowned orchards.
Some of the men, including the Chevalier de Chastellux, were eager to explore the interior of America and left town in early November,* while those who remained behind gradually learned something of the mores of their hosts. They were struck by how unlike their own customs were those of well-to-do Americans—very easy and free, so that what would be regarded as bad breeding in France was, in this country, regarded as suitable behavior and generally accepted. At the table Americans leaned on their dinner companions, rested on their elbows, and used no napkin (a diner wiped his or her mouth on the tablecloth). Breakfast, the visitors learned, generally included coffee, chocolate, and slices of buttered toast, and the amount of sugar used marked the difference between poverty and affluence. Dinner consisted of boiled or roast meat with vegetables cooked in water. “They make their own sauce on their plates, which they usually load with everything on the table, enough to frighten a man, and pour gravy over it.… After dinner those in comfortable circumstances have the tablecloth removed, whereupon the ladies retire. Madeira wine is brought, and the men drink and smoke for quite a while.”
At dinner parties given by the well-to-do, so many healths were drunk that “one rarely leaves the table without being a little tipsy.…” In the evening a rather light supper was eaten about ten o’clock, and in every household they visited they found that grog,* cider, or beer was served to the thirsty. No glasses were offered; the liquid was in a bowl. The master of the house drank to the guests’ health, took a drink himself, handed the bowl to the guest next to him, and it was then passed around the table.
Claude Blanchard, the commissary, dined frequently with Americans and was struck by their consumption of coffee and tea. In the case of country people, breakfast consisted of quantities of both coffee and tea, which they drank with roasted meats, butter, pies, and ham. Then they had supper, and in the afternoon, tea. It seemed to him that Americans were “almost always at the table” in the winter, and since they had little to occupy them besides spending days “along side of their fires and their wives, without reading and without doing anything, going so often to table” was “a relief and a preventive of ennui.”
Baron Closen was struck by the way an American’s outward appearance often suggested carelessness or even thoughtlessness, yet despite this apparent indifference to the opinion of others, “these same people fight with so much bravery, can support a war, and have such trained and disciplined troops. Who would believe that an American, who scarcely dares to go out of his house on a rainy day, the moment he has a musket on his shoulder, braves every danger and the most difficult weather?”
One of his colleagues, the Comte de Clermont-Crèvecoeur, described the Americans as tall and well built, but thin, which made “most of them look as though they had grown while convalescing from an illness.” They do not live long, he concluded: “one notices that they live to be sixty or seventy, and the latter are rare.” Even so, he had seen a few octogenarians and one ninety-year-old man who was still riding horseback with ease.
As for the Rhode Island women, Closen found them unusual in their modesty and sweetness of demeanor, noting that they had very fine features, white and clear complexions, small hands and feet, but “their teeth are not very wonderful”—a fault he attributed to drinking great quantities of tea. The clothes and coiffeurs of most women were in the English style, but he hoped that “the visit of the French army will increase their taste for dress.” Fortunately, “they all like dancing, and they engage in it unpretentiously, as is their manner in general.”
The women struck Clermont-Crèvecoeur as very beautiful but also quite pale and rather frail. A girl of twenty would pass for thirty in France, he said, and while they have very little color, “nothing can compare with the whiteness and texture of their skin. They have charming figures, and in general one can say they are all pretty, even beautiful, in the regularity of their features.…” By the time he had been in this country for six months or so, he had given a great deal more thought to American women and reached a rather startling conclusion, which he phrased as a question: “In a country so new where vice should not be deeply rooted, why should there be such a large number of prostitutes?”
The answer, he decided, lay in the strange custom of bundling—an activity granted by parents that permitted a young man who declared himself to be in love with a girl to shut himself up in a room with her, lavishing tender caresses upon her in bed, but “stopping short of those reserved for marriage alone; otherwise he would transgress the established laws of bundling.” A truly virtuous girl would resist and conform to the letter of the law, while “those more amply endowed by nature in this respect succumb to this tender sport.” Bundling, he observed, was made for Americans; the “coldness and gravity of their faces proclaim that this sport suits them perfectly.” What’s more, a couple could play this game for five or six years or longer before deciding to marry, without committing finally to wedlock. If a girl was seduced and had a child, it was not she who was disgraced, but the man. Respectable houses were closed to him, and he could not marry into one of the better families.
A married woman, he continued, was very faithful to her husband, even though she might have led “a most licentious life” in the years before marriage. Men didn’t seem to mind this; they were not fussy and believed a girl should be free until she was married. If a married woman committed adultery, the husband announced his wife’s “delinquency” and published it in the papers, stating that he would neither pay her bills nor be liable for her debts. Yet even if the situation deteriorated to that stage, adultery was no excuse for dissolving a marriage—the laws did not permit it, and husbands were quite patient about waiting for their wives to repent.
* * *
ONE OF THE high points of autumn for the French visitors was a visit by “several savage tribes” of Indians of the Six Nations. General Philip Schuyler had arranged this with an eye to favorable propaganda. The English, it seemed, had been assiduously informing the Indians that the French were not allied with the Americans, and Schuyler believed it would
be very effective to have some of the natives see at first hand the French army and navy in Newport to give the lie to that talk. So he had directed James Dean, the agent for Indian affairs, to accompany them and introduce them to Rochambeau and others.*
By all accounts the visit was a huge success. Nineteen of the Indians were received by Rochambeau, who had some of his regiments parade for them, go through the manual of arms, and fire muskets and cannon—which “alarmed them no end.” The Duc de Lauzun’s hussars delighted them, as did a tour of the mighty ships in the harbor. Craftily, the Indians informed Rochambeau through an interpreter that they had chosen him to lead them in war. They regretted that some of their people had gone over to the English, they added, and gave the reason: “[The English] have such good tafia, such good rum! Besides, they give us gunpowder to go hunting [and] by all these things we are often seduced and brought over to their side.” Rochambeau got the point and told them at once that the king “thanked them and would not let them lack for spirits.” Then he presented them with a medal struck with the arms of France, swords, shirts, blankets, and other gifts, including rouge, which they immediately combed into their hair and daubed over their shirts, blankets, and the rest of their bodies.
If the Indians were fascinated by the French, the reverse was certainly true. Jean-Baptiste-Antoine de Verger described in detail how they oiled and then rouged their bodies, red being their favorite color. “They slit the lobes around the edges of their ears until they hang down to their chins, weighed down by various small ornaments.” They pierce the cartilage of the nose and attach more baubles, pull out the hair at the nape of the neck and attach small locks of it to the top of the head. When young, he discovered, they cut designs on their face.
He was particularly impressed with their dancing. After removing their outerwear of animal skins, revealing well-proportioned bodies oiled and rouged, some of them danced with swords in their hands while their comrades intoned a monotonous chant. They danced “with great strength and agility, assuming various postures symbolizing a man in combat and breaking out from time to time into war-cries or dirges so piercing and violent that they filled one with terror.” He had seen much and learned something very important: “They prefer rum above all things, and when drunk they are very dangerous.”
Quite another kind of discovery for these French Catholics was an introduction to Quakers, of whom many lived in and around Newport. The men, they found, were extremely grave in their dress and manner, very temperate, and inclined to talk little. Unlike a majority of Americans, they did not permit slavery in their society; they never took an oath (since they had no faith in the word of man), refused to pay tithes, and had neither priests nor ministers. The sexes were separated in their meetinghouse on Sundays, with men on one side, women on the other, and complete silence was observed. Only when one of them felt inspired did anyone speak, and the speech was often accompanied by convulsive movements, a twitching of limbs.
It was a rigid sect, to be sure. “Quakers allow themselves no pleasures beyond conversation and meditation; they are forbidden to sing and dance.” And the women, Clermont-Crèvecoeur observed, were not only very pretty but “more inclined to pleasure than other sects.… They detest their religion [and] If the Quaker men are even more solemn than those of other sects, one finds that Quaker girls balance the score by being much gayer and more playful. They love pleasure but are always held back by the fear of displeasing their parents.”
Having said that, he noted, “Their wedding feasts are terribly dreary, since nobody speaks. You may imagine how much fun that would be!”
Of considerably more importance for the Frenchmen’s mission here was the acquisition of knowledge about the two sides in America’s revolution. In a passage that could have been written by a rebel propagandist, Clermont-Crèvecoeur wrote in his diary, “This country is divided between two parties called Whigs and Tories,” adding that the former were the “good Americans,” fighting for the freedom of their country and against the unjust laws the English wanted imposed on them, while the others, known as “royalists,” remained attached to the king. He and his countrymen had been here long enough that they could “define and analyze the character of these Tories,” he said confidently. The majority of them were cowardly and cruel, while some, undecided about whether to take sides, appeared to be waiting for “some happy event to indicate in which direction their interest lay.” Still others pretended to be on the side of the Americans but were in fact spies paid by the English to betray their compatriots, and great numbers of them, lured by money and permission from the English, had pillaged and sacked the homes of their fellow citizens. From someone he had heard that three-quarters of the inhabitants were Tories, that you could not travel in safety “for fear of these brigands.” What seemed to make the strongest impression on him was that when the French first gave balls the Whigs refused to come to a house to which Tories had been invited. Later, since the latter were so numerous in Newport—especially their ladies—the French never lacked for dancing partners, and “all was smoothed over in the end; the women all danced regardless, and everything went beautifully.” In fact, when George Washington came to Newport in March and “[the French] generals gave fêtes and balls in his honor … he danced indiscriminately with everyone. He was honored and esteemed even by his enemies.”
Washington had other matters on his mind besides dancing. He was there to discuss plans for the coming campaign and spent eight days in talks with Rochambeau and his aides before returning to the Hudson Highlands.
* * *
IN DECEMBER NEWS reached the Americans that Sir Henry Clinton had dispatched Major General Alexander Leslie to the Chesapeake. He was to make a diversion in favor of Cornwallis, who was thought to be “acting in the back parts of North Carolina,” by proceeding up the James River as far as possible and seizing any magazines the rebels had in Petersburg and Richmond. The British had recently captured a quantity of mail from American officers which revealed that morale among those men had hit rock bottom, giving Clinton every reason to hope he might be able “to increase and accelerate the confusion which began everywhere to appear in the rebel counsels.”
Included in the American officers’ correspondence captured by the British was a letter signed by three generals (Greene, Knox, Glover) and others, who had written to their respective states saying that American officers could no longer continue under the present circumstances.
An army consisting of a few inadequate thousands, almost destitute of every public supply, its officers, whose tables once abounded with plenty and variety, subsisting month after month on one bare ration of dry bread and meat, and that frequently of the meanest quality, their families looking up to them for their usual support, their children for the education to which they once had a title—our enemies know human nature too well to apprehend they shall have to contend long with an army under such circumstances.
Another purloined letter, from Alexander Hamilton to the former Son of Liberty Isaac Sears, noted that Clinton was said to be detaching a substantial force to the South, prompting Hamilton to comment ruefully, “My fears are high, my hopes low.”
From yet another source came a particularly bad piece of news: Henry Laurens had been captured at sea by a British vessel. Laurens, who had been president of the Continental Congress in 1777 and 1778, was a prominent merchant and planter from Charleston and, acting for Congress, was on his way to Holland to negotiate a treaty of commerce and friendship, plus a loan of $10 million. The British not only sent Laurens to the Tower of London, where he was imprisoned until the end of 1781, but used certain of his papers as justification to declare war on Holland on December 20, 1780.
Rochambeau had departed from Newport on December 11, headed for Boston, and no sooner arrived there than he was called back because of the sudden death from asthma of the Chevalier de Ternay. On Christmas day a terrible storm with claps of thunder and violent flashes of lightning hit the city, which seemed all of a pie
ce with the terrible weather that had begun in August with hurricanes in the Caribbean and made its way north, overturning almost all the camp tents, sinking a British frigate with all hands in Hell Gate, near New York, and shrouding the Northeast in thick fog.
At about this time Washington set in motion a plan that was certain to raise the rebels’ morale if successful. He gave secret orders to Lieutenant Colonel David Humphreys to take a small group of men down the Hudson at night, rowing with muffled oars in the darkness, and, after landing on Manhattan behind the house occupied by General Clinton, to surprise and seize the sentries, break into the house, and capture Clinton and whatever papers they could find. Simultaneously, another party was to abduct General Wilhelm von Knyphausen, commander of the German troops. The kidnappers set out on Christmas night, shortly after Arnold had sailed for the Chesapeake, but unfortunately high winds drove the boats out into New York Bay, well beyond the city.
Nothing more is known of the plot, but it is clear that George Washington was hoping to pull off a coup that would offset any possible advantage the British had gained by the treason of Benedict Arnold.
* * *
IN THE AMERICAN army’s camps, sinking morale produced a crisis. From Morristown, Brigadier General Anthony Wayne sent a dire message dated January 2, 1781, to the commander in chief: “The most general and unhappy mutiny took place in the Pennsylvania line about 9 o’clock last night [and] a great proportion of the troops, with some artillery, are marching toward Philadelphia. The men seized several field pieces, resisted the officers who tried to restore order, killed one captain, and wounded several others.” Approximately half of the soldiers had defied their officers, he estimated, and “how long it will last, God knows.…” Fortunately, no officer had joined the mutiny.
Victory at Yorktown Page 9
