I’ve been rehearsing the history and battles of the war of independence, from the battle of Trenton (without which moral would have sunk to a deadly and possibly irrecoverable level for the continental army without so much as a single victory during the entire enlistment of the first round of soldiers), to the battles with Cornwallis in the South, to Yorktown.

One professor gives Lafayette a little too much credit by claiming that without Lafayette, victory in the war of independence would not have occurred.  I disagree.

Cornwallis suffered from an insurgency in South and North Carolina at the hands of men who knew the terrain, were accustomed to living there, and knew how to fight a superior force.  Fire and retreat, fire and maneuver, shoot from behind trees and disappear, shoot the British leading the patrols and bleed them of troops and morale, and so on.  If Cornwallis had stayed in the swamps and near the river valleys of South Carolina (e.g., the Pee Dee), Francis Marion’s insurgents would have eventually bled the army dry.  Then of course there was the American victory at Cowpens.  You can add to that the victory by American fighters aged 14-17 at King’s Mountain (the “Overmountain Men”), in which Cornwallis’ strategy of using loyalist troops to win was smashed to pieces.

Beyond that, Cornwallis suffered from mosquitos and the diseases they carry.  It has been estimated that at any time, one third of his troops were in the infirmary due to diseases or wounds suffered in battle with Marion’s forces in the bush of South Carolina.  His forces could never have won.  It would have taken a force size ten times what the British brought to have stabilized the states, and even that would have been only temporary.

Howe, in New York, was faced with having to retire to fortifications in the intemperate weather in the North, and while Washington’s army suffered in the weather, they managed to pull of a victory at Trenton.  They also managed to build an intelligence network second to none at the time, and after the battle of Trenton the continental congress sent fresh troops and logistics.

There was no hope of victory for the British.  A determined insurgency cannot be beaten.  They could only hope to prolong the war.

But then, that’s the issue isn’t it?  Lafayette was smart enough to listen to his men and he managed to learn the tactics of insurgency very quickly, employing those tactics with great success against the British.  While it may not be correct to say that the war of independence would not have been won without him, it is fair to say that it would have been prolonged and bloodier without him.

His commitment to America was laudable, and he’s even today more of an American than most Americans, and certainly more so than the vipers inside the beltway.