So Lafayette passed the time until the campaign of 1781 opened. He wrote often to his wife, and sent her a long letter by his friend Colonel Laurens, when the latter went on a mission to the court of France. Another child had been born to the Marquis and Adrienne, a son, who was given the name of George Washington. “Embrace our children,” wrote Lafayette, “thousands of times for me. Although a vagabond, their father is none the less tender, less constantly thoughtful of them, less happy to hear from them. My heart perceives, as in a delicious perspective, the moment when my dear children will be presented to me by you, and when we can kiss and caress them together. Do you think that Anastasie will recognize me?” And, as he could never write without thinking of the brave army he commanded, he added, “Only _citizens_ could support the nakedness, the hunger, the labors, and the absolute lack of pay which constitute the conditions of our soldiers, the most enduring and the most patient, I believe, of any in the world.” In January, 1781, word came to Washington’s headquarters that General Benedict Arnold had landed in Virginia with a good-sized army, was laying waste the country, and had already destroyed the valuable stores collected at Richmond. If Arnold’s campaign should succeed the result would be to place all the Southern States in the hands of the enemy. Let him defeat the few American troops in Virginia and he could march to join the English General Cornwallis, who was pressing General Greene very hard in the Carolinas. Indeed Cornwallis already appeared to hold the south in his grasp. He had beaten the small contingents of American troops in that country, and at the battle of Camden, in South Carolina, Lafayette’s old companion, the Baron de Kalb, had fallen in battle. It was of the utmost importance, therefore, to defeat or capture Arnold, who had been rewarded for his treason by being made a general in the British army, and Washington at once planned to send a detachment from his main army against Arnold by land, and a naval force to Chesapeake Bay to cut off his escape by sea. The French admiral ordered a ship-of-the-line and two frigates to the Chesapeake, and Washington placed twelve hundred light infantry under Lafayette with instructions to aid the fleet. This command, of the greatest importance, showed the confidence and trust that the commander-in-chief felt in the military ability of the Frenchman.