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 Chevalier de Luzerne, and we arrived here on the 17th. We made a charming journey and the provision boxes he brought with him, well furnished with pâtés, hams, wine, and bread, prevented us from experiencing the misery that reigns in the inns, where there is no bread, and nothing is found beyond salt pork. In much of Virginia the people eat nothing but cakes made of Indian corn flour, which they bake by the fire; that hardens the outside a little, but the inside remains uncooked dough. They drink nothing but
rum
(a sugared brandy) mixed with water. They call it
grog
. 250 miles from here, in a part of Virginia that they call “the mountains,” it is quite different. The country is richer, and there they cultivate tobacco; the soil also produces wheat and all sorts of fruits. The principal product of Virginia is tobacco; this State, which is the largest of the thirteen, is capable of other cultivation, but the laziness of the inhabitants and their conceit are great obstacles to industry. It really seems as if the Virginians were another race of men; instead of occupying themselves with their farms and making them profitable, each landowner wants to be a lord. No white man ever works, as in the West Indian islands; all the work is done by Negro slaves, who are ordered by the whites, and by overseers under them.
In Virginia all persons engaged in trade are regarded as inferior to landowners, who say they are not gentlemen, and they do not choose to socialize with them. These Virginians have all the aristocratic instincts, and it is hard to understand how they came to…accept a government founded on conditions of perfect equality. But the same spirit that has led them to shake off the English yoke may lead them to other actions
of the same kind, and I would not be surprised to see Virginia detach herself, after the peace, from the other States.
While encamped in Virginia, Axel’s regiment was visited by a group of Iroquois, very devout Catholics who loved Mass, which seemed to serve them as a theater; they loved the shrimp the French troops offered them for dinner, but declared they preferred the taste of a British cook they’d recently consumed.
Back in Sweden, Stockholm’s artistic life was thriving, thanks to King Gustavus’s passionate interest in the arts. This very year he had founded Sweden’s first opera house, the most technically advanced one in Europe. It was also the first opera house outside of Italy in which performances were sung in the local language, and not in Italian: at the Stockholm opera, singers sang in Swedish. These cultural events helped to allay the sadness and concern caused by Axel’s absence from our midst.
Williamsburg, May 27, 1782
We are in great consternation because of a battle between the fleets in the West Indies. According to the first news we received we had won the advantage; but yesterday we heard more through…a New York gazette, which reports that our ship “Ville de Paris,” 110 guns, was captured, with six other vessels, and that we were totally defeated…. We do not bear this reversal well; I see that we are easily depressed…. This defeat…is considerable, and could invalidate our whole campaign; it gives the British the upper hand in the West Indies; they can do us great damage there, and if they get reinforcements from Europe we may well lose our conquests.
This last letter worried me because my brother had always been such an optimist (I suppose it fueled his courage). He seemed deeply discouraged every time the British scored a victory.
Philadelphia, August 8, 1782
My dear Father…I came here with M. de Rochambeau, who had a rendezvous with General Washington to confer on the campaign’s progress. The result of the conference was that I was sent on the 19th to Yorktown, Virginia, with a commission that was then secret; it was to ship as soon as possible our siege artillery, which we had left at West Point, and bring it up the Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore. This operation required great secrecy and much promptitude, for we had but one forty-gun ship to escort the convoy, and the English with two frigates could have kept us from leaving the York River, or else have captured some of the convoy. Our army is to leave Baltimore on the 15th to come to Philadelphia, and go hence to the Hudson River….
This particular missive displays the great confidence Axel’s superiors had in him. The most delicate, sensitive missions were always assigned to him because of his great capacity for tactfulness and discretion.
During the years Axel was in America my marriage was quickly deteriorating. My husband’s numerous affairs—with scheming courtesans as well as with noted society women—were deeply humiliating to me. And yet I preferred not to divorce Piper, in part for the sake of our children, in part because it would taint the family name.
And so I found my principal solace in the affection of Evert Taube. Axel’s correspondence also cheered me greatly when it intimated that the war might be drawing to an end, and he would soon come home to us.
Philadelphia, August 17, 1782
It appears as though peace were near. England appears to be much inclined if France is modest in her demands. The Americans desire
nothing else, now that the King of England has declared them independent….
The English…have sent all prisoners back from England, without demands for their exchange. General Carleton, who commands New York, has informed General Washington, in a very polite letter, that the King, his master, has granted the independence of America; that he has sent a man to Paris with full powers to negotiate; and he proposes to General Washington an exchange of prisoners. All this seems to indicate peace; we all think that if it is not already signed, it certainly will be in the winter, and that we shall embark in the spring. This causes universal joy; it gives me inexpressible pleasure; I have hopes of seeing you again soon, my dear father.
We all jumped for joy at the prospect of a peace being signed in the following year. Our Axel would finally be out of danger! His frugality, his indifference to physical comforts, continued to amaze me.
Camp at Crompond, October 3, 1782
Though we have not seen the enemy, our recent campaign has been a very rough one. We suffered much from heat, and now the cold weather is making itself keenly felt. I, for one, bear these changes well, and have never been in better health. This year I have a tent and a straw mattress. I’m not that well covered, but my cloak is a help.
My brother made many other interesting comments on American society that I did not have a chance to include in these excerpts, such as the following: the president of Congress offered him turtle soup for dinner. Axel was amazed to learn that Americans were allowed to do little on Sundays but read the Bible—a Frenchman trying to play his flute on the Sabbath almost caused a riot. He found America boring because of its lack of museums. He was puzzled to observe that every
one washed so often, used soap on their hair instead of powder, drank too much tea and thus lost their teeth early.
I was happy to hear that during the course of the conflict my brother changed his mind about General de Rochambeau. He ended up admiring him greatly.
Boston, November 30, 1782
We parted with M. de Rochambeau with sorrow; everyone liked to be commanded by him. M. de Rochambeau, with his precious sangfroid, was the only man capable of commanding us here, and of maintaining that perfect harmony which has reigned between two groups of citizens so different in manners, morals, and language, and who, at heart, do not like each other…. Our allies have not always behaved well to us, and our stay on their shores has not led us to like or to esteem them. M. de Rochambeau himself has not always been well treated; but in spite of this his conduct has been perfect…. The stern orders he gave our army…enforced that rare discipline which won the admiration of the Americans and English troops. The wise, prudent, and simple conduct of M. de Rochambeau has done more to conciliate the Americans than the winning of four battles ever could.
Boston, December 21, 1782
We are all going on board tonight; the ships are ready, and if the wind is fair we shall sail tomorrow morning. As soon as we reach the West India islands I will send you my news, dear Father, and shall have the pleasure of assuring you of my respectful attachment.
T
HAT WAS MY BROTHER’S
last letter. Upon leaving Williamsburg in the first months of 1783 his regiment was sent to Porto Caballo, Venezuela, to join Spanish troops in the invasion of some British Caribbean
islands. But the attack was canceled upon news of the peace treaty being signed by France and Great Britain. Axel suffered much from the tropical climate, contracting a microbe that led him to suffer recurrent fevers for the rest of his life, and permanently damaged his health.
“I want your news,” he wrote me. “It’s the only consolation we have in this vile country. We’re dying of boredom here; we’re becoming thin and dried up, growing old and yellow with heat and boredom…. Men are not made to live here, but rather tigers, bears, and caymans.”
Having no one but the queen in mind, Axel was eager to return to Paris, and had to placate our father because he had no intention of going back to Sweden that year. To appease
Père
he hinted that he might be ready to settle down. “Despite the little inclination I have for this sacrament,” he wrote him, “I’m at an age when marriage may become a necessary thing.” He wrote Miss Leyel to ask her if she had changed her mind about marrying him, but soon learned that while he was away she had married the Earl De La Warr. He considered another marital prospect, the immensely wealthy Germaine Necker. “This project depends entirely on your wishes,” he wrote our father; “I have no interest in it but yours…. I’ve only seen her once in passing…. I only recall that there was nothing disagreeable about her.” But this notion also came to naught, for he found out that Mademoiselle Necker had been proposed to by his compatriot and old friend Erik de Staël. And so to Axel’s great relief, all talk of marriage ceased for a while.
I’
M PROUD TO LIST ALL
the honors my brother was awarded for his fine conduct in the War of Independence.
Louis XVI named him Chevalier of the Order of Military Merit and appointed him second colonel of the Regiment Deux-Ponts. At the request of King Gustavus, France granted Axel a pension of twenty
thousand francs a year; he was also made proprietary colonel of France’s Royal Swedish Regiment.
King Gustavus promoted him to the ranks of titular colonel in the Swedish army, and made him a Chevalier of the Order of the Sword. (“Young Count Fersen,” Ambassador Creutz had written the king, “was always present at the thickest of the battles, either at the spearhead of the attacking forces, or in the trenches, and displayed the most valiant courage.”)
Axel:
LOVING JOSEPHINE
C
OULD ANYONE IMAGINE
that I would not instantly rush to see the queen upon my return from America? Although she had been militantly opposed to the American Revolution, which in her eyes countered all principles of the Divine Right of Kings, she had resigned herself to the fact that I had joined the French Expeditionary Force because I admired the American cause. And we had corresponded during my absence, but each letter took months, months to arrive, and our separation had been made all the more painful by the long wait between missives.
My ship having arrived in Brest on July 17, 1783, I reached Paris on the twenty-third. I dropped off my satchels at my flat; and by the time it took me to ready my coach and have new horses harnessed—a matter of hours—I was off to Versailles. I’d had no time to warn the queen of my arrival. Her guards remembered me well. I ran up the stairs alone to her apartments and cracked the door to her salon, hoping to surprise her. She was alone, as I’d hoped she’d be, and she was playing the harp. Three years! We were now both twenty-eight years old. My domestics in Paris had told me that I’d aged a great deal during my time at war, and indeed I found her quite altered also. She had had two pregnancies since I’d last seen her, and had grown plumper; her arms were rounder, her breasts more prominent. I felt a pang of regret: I’d left a lovely girl,
and was now looking at a handsome, imposing woman. But as she sat there on her little gilt stool before her harp, plucking an air of Gluck’s, I was again carried away by the graceful carriage of her head, by the beauty of her abundant dark blond hair—she was in morning dress, attired in a vaporous white chiffon gown. I stood there for several moments, contemplating her, before speaking those words so unrelated to the tender intimacy of my emotions.
“Votre Majesté!”
I exclaimed. I’d indeed managed to surprise her. She stopped abruptly in the middle of a chord, sprang up, and rushed to me, grasping both my hands in hers.
“Vous, c’est vous,”
she whispered.
“Toi, c’est toi!”
I murmured inwardly, my heart aching from our formalities. We stood there, holding hands. She simply stared at me, her eyes, those uniquely deep blue eyes, looking at me with immense affection and excitement, and then started questioning me, in that same girlish, impulsive way she’d queried me when we had first met nine years earlier at the opera ball.
“Comment est-il, ce George Washington,”
she asked. “Is it true that his teeth are made of ivory tusks?” Had I met any
peaux-rouges
, red-skinned people? Is it true that they’re cannibals? She interrogated me thus for a few minutes, shaking my hands at each query. She had grown so womanly, so statuesque, and yet retained her girlish spontaneity. Her little white dogs suddenly invaded the room, barking at my heels, sniffing the traces of my own spaniel Odin. She drew me to a sofa, and we sat down to speak further, our hands still in each other’s. I asked her in turn about her family. Her older child, Marie-Thérèse, I learned, had recently been very ill, and she had been at her bedside all the while, allowing no one else to nurse her; the death of her mother, Empress Maria Theresa, had caused such deep depression that she had locked herself into her apartments in total seclusion for several weeks; this loss had left her more isolated and lonelier than ever; she now found her chief solace in her second child, the dauphin, who was now a year and a half, and in the bloom of health; as for the king,
“ce pauvre homme,”
doctors had counseled him to lose weight so as to avoid major cardiac problems, but alas (this with a resigned smile), he was as much of a glutton as ever….