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Lafayette had under his orders two general officers, who had been engaged in the service of France, namely, General Kalb, a German by birth, who came over in the same vessel with himself; and General Conway, an Irishman, who had been a major in a regiment of that nation, also in the service of France.
It was only through sundry military adventurers, some English such as Montgomery, Gates, Lee, Conway, others European such as De Kalb, Steuben, Pulaski that something of the military art could be acquired. Most serious of all, there were no troops in America who comprehended the nature of military discipline.
At his request he was to be considered as an officer detached from the army of Washington, to remain under his orders, and Major-General the Baron de Kalb was added to the expedition; after which Lafayette repaired in person to Albany to take charge of the troops who were to assemble at that place in order to cross the lakes on the ice and attack Montreal.
When he finally found, however, that the boy's determination was fixed, he entered into his plans with almost paternal tenderness. Though he would give him no aid, he introduced him to the Baron de Kalb who was also seeking an opportunity to go to America, and he thought his age and experience would be of value to the young adventurer.
How singular and picturesque an effect is produced, in the array of our Revolutionary army, by the intermingling of these titled personages from the Continent of Europe, with feudal associations clinging about them, Steuben, De Kalb, Pulaski, Lafayette! the German veteran, who had written from one famous battle-field to another for thirty years; and the young French noble, who had come hither, though yet unconscious of his high office, to light the torch that should set fire to the antiquated trumpery of his native institutions.
By this time military adventurers in large numbers began to flock to America to offer their swords to the rebellious Colonials. Among them were a few de Kalb, Pulaski, Steuben, and Kosciuszko who did good service for the struggling young rebels, but most of them were worthless adventurers and marplots.
PRESIDENT. Should be rewarded by me helping you to a wife? That too, Worm! Eternally your lordship's slave. As to what I have confided to you, Worm! If you dare but to whisper a syllable Then your excellency will no doubt expose my forgeries! PRESIDENT. Yes, yes, you are safe enough! I hold you in the fetters of your own knavery, like a trout on the hook! Enter SERVANT. SERVANT. Marshal Kalb
But all these palpitations were as water unto wine in comparison with his unwholesome passion for Charlotte von Kalb, whom he also met first in the spring of 1784. This lady, after a lonely and loveless girlhood, in which she had been tossed about as an unwelcome incumbrance from one relation to another, had lately married a Baron von Kalb.
In Charles Dickens' paper, "All the Year Round," October 5, 1861, there is a reference to a cricket match between a one-armed eleven and a one-legged eleven. There is a recent report from De Kalb, Illinois, of a boy of thirteen who had lost both legs and one arm, but who was nevertheless enabled to ride a bicycle specially constructed for him by a neighboring manufacturer.
After looking on it a while, with a countenance marked with thought, he breathed a deep sigh, and exclaimed "So, there lies the brave De Kalb; the generous stranger, who came from a distant land, to fight our battles, and to water, with his blood, the tree of our liberty. Would to God he had lived to share with us its fruits!" Congress ordered him a monument. But the friend of St.
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