After losing the first few battles of the war, George Washington’s fortune changed. On Christmas night, 1776, he sneaked across the Delaware River and attacked the Hessian prisoners stationed outside Trenton. He took approximately 900 prisoners of war.

Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee were in Paris at that point, trying to gain support for the American cause. The news of the Trenton victory bolstered French excitement for the war, but the country would not yet openly join the war effort. However, many French officers asked Beaumarchais to help them go to America to fight. Beaumarchais had been recruiting more experienced fighters for France’s eventual entry into the war.

Johann de Kalb, a veteran of the Seven Years’ War, introduced Lafayette and Deane to each other. Lafayette’s friends, the Vicomte de Noailles and the Comte de Ségur, also wanted to go and asked their families’ permission. This is how the king, Vergennes, and Lafayette’s father-in-law found out about their plans. They were banned from going, and Louis XVI banned all French soldiers from volunteering in hopes that his actions would preserve peace between the French and the British.

Lafayette did not give up on his dream. He was as desperate to join the military as Theodore Roosevelt would be later: “The two shared a child’s ideal of manly military glory” (64).