…l'Hermione.
"In 1775, Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette was an eighteen-year-old French soldier assigned to military maneuvers at Metz. At Metz, he attended an official dinner where the Duke of Gloucester, younger brother of England's King George III, was expounding upon the American Revolution. Amazed by what he heard, Lafayette later wrote, "My heart was enlisted, and I thought only of joining my colors to those of the revolutionaries"
When Louis XVI forbade this young French soldier to go to America, Lafayette deliberately disobeyed orders, leaving France with Baron DeKalb and a dozen friends and colleagues. They set sail from Spain in Lafayette's ship la Victoire on April 20, 1777, reportedly heading for Santa Domingo. Landing in South Carolina, they made their way 650 miles to Philadelphia, where, on July 31, Lafayette was commissioned "Major General without pay." Lafayette's first sight of the American troops came on August 8 when George Washington reviewed the Continental army.
A month later, at the Battle of Brandywine (September 11, 1777), a bullet filled Lafayette's boot with blood. Now twenty years old, he spent the winter with Washington's army at Valley Forge and in late May was the hero of an action in nearby Barren Hill, Pennsylvania. Other adventures followed at Monmouth and Rhode Island in 1778. With no new military orders, coupled with unhappy news from France about the death of his tiny daughter, and the inability to recoup his investments due to la Victoire foundering off the eastern seaboard in the summer of 1777, Lafayette became restless. He requested a leave of absence to briefly return to France…."
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