Free The Queen's Lover by Francine Du Plessix Gray Page B

have had too much inaction, mortifying inaction. It would have been more useful to America if we had sent her the money we arecosting the king here; the Americans would have employed it better. We ought to have had an army of 15,000 men on this continent; only 5,000 were sent, who have been in garrison in Newport for a year, and of no use whatsoever, except to eat up provisions and make them dearer. I hope we shall soon get out of this sloth and be active.
    I say nothing of my own affairs, dear Father…. I begin to be tired of being with M. de Rochambeau. He treats me with discrimination, and I’m grateful for it. But he has a distrustful, very disagreeable, and sometime insulting manner. He has more confidence in me than in any other of my comrades, but even that is paltry; his general officers are much displeased, as are his superior officers. They have the good sense, however, to conceal their discontent for the good of the cause.
    Like most of his Swedish compatriots, my brother was enamored of France, and so he was quite naturally anti-British, a predilection he expresses in the following letter.
    Newport, June 3, 1781
    Nothing has happened in these parts since my last letter. The English are making progress in the South; they burn or plunder everything; but they spend money to acquire new friends; before long they will have conquered the whole of that part of America; then the English will recognize the independence of the Northern states, or at least, will treat them as independent, and will keep the South for themselves. Imagine how glorious that will be for the arms of France!
    Axel was too modest to boast about his military valor, but in fact he did often engage in hazardous armed conflict, which led to great worry on our Part. Poor
Père
’s head trembled whenever he opened a letter from Axel.
    Yorktown, October 23, 1781
    …We are going into winter quarters in the neighborhood, at Williamsburg, a villainous little town that looks like a village.
    On the night of the 11th and 12th it was resolved that we would attack [the British]…. Four hundred grenadiers and infantrymen, supported by one thousand other soldiers, attacked their fortifications…. We captured only thirty-four prisoners and three officers. The Americans carried the other battlement; they worked all night to continue the trench, and by the morning of the 15th it was well covered.
    On the 17th, the enemy put up a truce flag, and Lord Cornwallis asked to capitulate. The generals were engaged the whole of the 18th in settling the articles; on the 19th the capitulation was signed and the troops laid down their arms. There is every indication that we shall next be laying siege on Charleston. The English will not fail to send troops from New York to that part of America, so I think we may have an active war…. M. de Rochambeau has asked for reinforcements and the taking of Savannah…and of Charleston may well be its result, and crown the work we have now so well begun.
    All our young colonels belonging to the French court are departing to spend their winter in Paris. Some will return; others will stay there and will be much surprised if they are not all made brigadier generals after fighting at the siege of Yorktown. I shall stay here, having no reason to go to Paris other than for my amusement and pleasure, and those I must sacrifice. My affairs can get on without me; I would spend a great deal of money, and I’d rather be careful with it. I prefer to engage in another campaign here, and to finish what I have begun.
    That last passage made me appreciate all the more a trait of my brother’s that I’d always admired since his early youth: his consistency,his lack of frivolity, his capacity for total dedication to a cause—qualities further enhanced by his participation in the Revolutionary War.
    Williamsburg, March 25th, 1782
    The last letter I had the honor of writing you, my dear father, was from Philadelphia. I left there on the 9th with the