Johann de Kalb

Johann von Robais, Baron de Kalb (June 19, 1721 – August 19, 1780), born Johann Kalb, was a Franconian-born French military officer who served as a major general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He was mortally wounded while fighting against the British Army during the Battle of Camden.

Kalb was born in Hüttendorf, a German village near Erlangen, Principality of Bayreuth, the son of Johann Leonhard Kalb and Margarethe Seitz. He learned French, English, and the social skills to earn a substantial military commission in the Loewendal German Regiment of the French Army in 1743.

Kalb served with distinction in the War of the Austrian Succession in Flanders. During the Seven Years' War, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and made assistant quartermaster general in the Army of the Upper Rhine, a division created by the disbanding of the Loewendal Regiment. He was awarded the Order of Military Merit in 1763 and elevated to the nobility with the title of baron.

In 1764, Kalb resigned from the army and married Anna Elizabeth Emilie van Robais, the French heiress to a fortune from cloth manufacturing. He bought the Milon-la-Chapelle chateau near Versailles, where he took up a quiet life of farming. He had three children: Élie, Frederic, and Caroline; Eli later married Elise Signard d'Ouffières and have a daughter, Nicette de Kalb, who married Raymond de Vandière de Vitrac d'Abzac, and continued to live in Milon la Chapelle; Frederic would die during the French Revolution without children.

In 1768, Kalb traveled to North America on a covert mission from the Duc de Choiseul, the Foreign Minister of France, to determine the level of discontent among colonists towards Great Britain, a major French adversary. During his four-month trip, Kalb gained respect for the colonists and their "spirit of independence", producing detailed reports for the French government; upon his return to Europe, he expressed a strong desire to go back to colonial America and join their nascent fight against the British.

In July 1777, Kalb returned to North America with his protégé, the Marquis de Lafayette, and joined the Continental Army. He was disappointed and angry to learn that he would not be made a major general, but with Lafayette's influence was appointed to the rank on September 5, 1777, which he learned of as he was on the road to return to France.

Kalb was at Valley Forge for most of the winter between 1777 and 1778, commanding a division of Patterson's and Learned's Brigades. During this time, he wrote letters of introduction for John Adams to the French court, expressing a poor opinion of French forces:

On the whole, I have annoyances to bear, of which you can hardly form a conception. One of them is the mutual jealousy of almost all the French officers, particularly against those of higher rank than the rest. These people think of nothing but their incessant intrigues and backbitings. They hate each other like the bitterest enemies, and endeavor to injure each other wherever an opportunity offers. I have given up their society, and very seldom see them. La Fayette is the sole exception; I always meet him with the same cordiality and the same pleasure. He is an excellent young man, and we are good friends ... La Fayette is much liked, he is on the best of terms with Washington.