Then followed four years of active service under General Washington, broken only by a temporary return to France in 1779 on a diplomatic mission. Gentle and courteous, yet apparently insensible to fear, his spirit was an inspiration. At the Battle of Monmouth the enemy, during a lull, observed a general officer in the service of the Americans advancing into the danger zone, with some other officers and men, to reconnoitre the enemy's position. An aide-de-camp fell, struck by a ball, and all but the general fled precipitately. They saw the latter, although under the fire of a battery, lean to assist the stricken aide, and finding that all was ended turn and slowly rejoin the others. The British commander, General Clinton, ordered his men not to fire; and the chivalry of this Englishman probably saved the American officer's life. It was Lafayette. In 1780 he asked leave to take a position in the Southern Department where the situation of the American army is described in a letter to Lafayette by General Greene, then commanding the division. "It is now within a few days of the time when you shall be with me. Were you to arrive you would find a few ragged, half-starved troops in the wilderness, destitute of everything necessary for either the comfort or convenience of soldiers.... The country is almost laid waste and the inhabitants plunder one another with little less than savage fury. We live from hand to mouth, and have nothing to subsist on but what we collect with armed parties.... I fear this department is to be the great Serbonian bog to the American armies and particularly to the general officers." The vision of a Serbonian bog acted only as a magnet, and Lafayette started to join Greene. On his way, however, he was recalled by the commander-in-chief, General Washington, to take command of an expedition against Benedict Arnold, the traitor, now a brigadier-general in the enemy's army, who was marching into Virginia and with revengeful fury carrying fire and sword wherever he went. Lafayette was dispatched against him with specific orders that if Arnold surrendered there should be no stipulation made for his safety, and at the same time forbidding the slightest injury to his person;--it being the purpose of Washington, never however fulfilled, to bring Arnold to public punishment according to the rules and regulations of the army.