Lafayette_Courtier to Crown Fugitive 1757 to 1777 by S. P. Grogan

Author:S. P. Grogan [Grogan, S. P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Lafayette
Publisher: Addison & Highsmith Publishers
Published: 2018-07-13T18:30:00+00:00

Louis XVI

43.

CAREER DISASTER STRUCK for Gilbert on June 11, 1776 when War Minister St. Germain reached out with his new consolidated power and furloughed with half pay the medium grade officers who had achieved rank because of position and who held little or no field experience. Summer garrison partying in Metz did not count. A year later St. Germain would lose his post, to the French army’s point of view from trying to radically reform everything to do with the military to what was put on a soldier’s plate to a more lax form of corporal punishment for miscreants. But this was in the future and Gilbert moaned in depression, lost to what he could now do, and those choices seemed forlorn. He could not go to court seeking higher position for he had burned that bridge with the King’s brother, and besides he knew in his heart, he held no love for the backroom politics and intrigues of the court. He was not one of them.

One remaining choice was to return to Auvergne and take up the position of a country squire. That was now an anathema to him for his related families, had changed him so much into an educated and sophisticate he could not, though he loved the countryside, could not see himself as a gentleman farmer, tending sheep and planting crops—and being away from a lively city like Paris, away from such possibilities that might lead for action for a now unemployed captain of nothing.

He looked to friends Segur and Noailles who were totally sympathetic, agitated against St. Germain, but they remained in Royal service as officers and could offer no quick solution to his position. Adrienne gave him comfort as she could saying things would improve, telling him it was certain he was fated to do great things. That gave him slight mollification, but when he sought to act like a family man, sit with his wife and child, he reacted with nervousness. Doing nothing meant he was nothing.

He continued his close inspection by newspapers of the war in America but at this time there were no great events which gave insight on who was carrying the field. However, two small items in the local Parisian gazettes had caught his eye. First, an American merchant by the name of Silas Deane had arrived in Paris to purchase supplies for trade in the Colonies. To Gilbert, that seemed odd and mysterious, since the only materials needed in the Colonies were for the war—gunpowder and arms. To Gilbert’s interpretation this meant that this Mr. Deane had the confidence of Congress and therefore was an agent, if not an ambassador without portfolio. This man had power but Gilbert was at loss for what to do with it, except it began to give him an idea, laughed about only a few months later. Perhaps his officer talents were better used, if not by France, but by another government, or at least a government-in-formation.

The second bit of news that gave

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