Congress had decided on the expedition to Canada, though the conspirators now saw that their plot had failed, and so Lafayette set out for Albany in February, 1778, to take command of the army of invasion. But when he got there he found that nothing had been done by way of preparation, and that none of those in authority were able to help him. Twelve hundred ill-provided men were all he could raise, altogether too few and too poorly armed for such an ambitious enterprise. Very much disappointed, he had to give up the idea of leading such an army. More and more he grew convinced that all the hopes of America rested on Washington. That Washington might know his feelings, Lafayette wrote to him. “Take away for an instant,” he said, “that modest diffidence of yourself (which, pardon my freedom, my dear general, is sometimes too great, and I wish you could know, as well as myself, what difference there is between you and any other man), and you would see very plainly that, if you were lost for America, there is no one who could keep the army and the revolution for six months.... I am now fixed to your fate, and I shall follow it and sustain it as well by my sword as by all means in my power. You will pardon my importunity in favor of the sentiment which dictated it.” Washington was no less devoted to Lafayette. When the latter returned disappointed from Albany the commander said to him, “However sensibly your ardor for glory may make you feel this disappointment you may be assured that your character stands as fair as it ever did, and that no new enterprise is necessary to wipe off an imaginary stain.” And Washington’s view was now so strongly held by Congress that it immediately voted that it had “a high sense of the prudence, activity, and zeal of the Marquis de Lafayette,” and that it was “fully persuaded nothing has, or would have been, wanting on his part or on the part of the officers who accompanied him to give the expedition the utmost possible effect.” Lafayette went back to Valley Forge to cheer his soldiers, and there, early in May, 1778, news came that Benjamin Franklin had succeeded in his efforts in France and that the government of Louis XVI. had decided on “armed interference” in the affairs of America, and that a treaty of alliance had been signed between the United States and the French king. The army at Valley Forge was wild with delight at this news. How it must have cheered Lafayette to know that his own country now stood with the young republic of the west! Washington proclaimed a holiday and held a review of his troops. Then the commander planned a new and more vigorous campaign. The British, now foreseeing possible French as well as American attack, decided to give up Philadelphia and fall back on New York. Washington learned of this, and in order to keep a check on the movements of his opponents, he sent Lafayette with a strong force of two thousand picked men to keep as close to the British lines as possible.