Marie-Joseph De Lafayette

September 6, 1757 (age 76)

Chavaniac, France

His mother died April 3, 1770, and his grandfather several weeks later. Lafayette inherited the fortune of the latter and found himself, at the age of thirteen, possessed of an income of 120, 000 livres. He yearned for a military career, agreeable to the strong tradition in his family, and on April 9, 1771, he was entered in the second company of the King's Musketeers, from which he was transferred, April 7, 1773, to the regiment commanded by Noailles, where he became a second lieutenant. Later he was promoted to a captaincy and joined his regiment at Metz, returning in September to participate in the court life at Versailles. Here he suffered considerable mortification, since he drank poorly and danced so badly that he provoked Marie Antoinette to laughter. During the summer of 1775 he returned to barracks at Metz; on August 8 he attended a dinner given by the Comte de Broglie to the Duke of Gloucester. Here the Duke spoke freely and sympathetically of the American insurgents and Lafayette's enthusiasm and imagination were first stirred. During the weeks that followed, vague aspirations slowly crystallized. By aiding the insurgents he saw the possibility of crushing "perfidious Albion" and avenging the defeat of the Seven Years' War, in which his country had been humiliated and his father had lost his life. He partook of that current romantic enthusiasm for a regenerated world which had been engendered by the writings of Rousseau and Raynal, and saw himself in the garb of a modern Plutarch's hero, a role proper to satisfy his own love of la gloire. Thus motivated, he made the first and most important decision of his life, to aid the American colonists. Concealing his plans from his family, he confided in the Comte de Broglie, who tried to dissuade him, but who later introduced him to John Kalb. Lafayette withdrew from active service in the French army, June 11, 1776, and after the announcement of the Declaration of Independence he entered into relations with Silas Deane and Arthur Lee. Two agreements were signed, during December 1776 and February 1777, between them. Kalb and Lafayette were promised commissions, and the latter agreed to serve the colonies with the greatest zeal without compensation, reserving only the right to return to France, if called by his king or family. He sent Du Boismartin, a friend, to purchase and fit out a vessel for the passage to America. To allay all suspicions Lafayette spent several weeks in London with the French ambassador, the Marquis de Noailles, his uncle. Returning to Bordeaux he embarked with Kalb in La Victoire. The vessel put in at Los Pasajes, where Lafayette was ordered by Louis XVI to accompany the Duc d'Ayen on a tour in Italy. Lafayette hesitated and Kalb thought that the venture was given up. To satisfy the British ambassador a lettre de cachet had been launched against Lafayette. News of this determined him and, having rejoined Kalb at Los Pasajes, he sailed for the United States, April 20, 1777. The commotion created by his departure was excellent publicity for the cause of the Americans. On June 13 they disembarked near Georgetown, S. C. , where they were entertained by Major Benjamin Huger. Within a week Lafayette wrote his wife a letter of boyish enthusiasm relating many impressions that he had already formed of men and affairs in America. After six weeks of arduous travel he and his companions arrived in Philadelphia, where he presented his credentials to a committee of Congress. Congress was weary of foreign adventurers and his first reception was more like a dismissal than a welcome. Undaunted, he wrote a petition requesting two things: to serve at his own expense, and to begin as a volunteer. This modest and unusual proposal secured attention; his credentials were examined, and on July 31 Congress voted him the rank and commission of major-general, but gave him no active command. The situation was one that Lafayette never completely understood. On August 1 he met General Washington in Philadelphia. This was the beginning of a historic friendship. The young major-general, not yet twenty, was virtually adopted by Washington, whose staff he joined as a volunteer. He received his baptism of fire in the battle of the Brandywine, September 11, when he was slightly wounded in the leg. Kalb called this an excellent bit of good fortune, for it established Lafayette in the eyes of his American comrades. He recuperated at the Moravian settlement at Bethlehem, Pa. , and in October rejoined Washington in camp at Whitemarsh. At Gloucester he led a successful skirmishing party against the Hessians. Partly because of his personal qualities and partly from political considerations, Congress on December 1 voted him command of the division of Virginia light troops with full authority as major-general. During the winter he remained at Valley Forge, sharing hardships and privations and earning the title of "the soldier's friend. " He warned Washington of the Conway Cabal and urged him to protect himself. At the end of January 1778, the Board of War placed Lafayette in command of the proposed "irruption into Canada, " a fantastic scheme to capture Canada with a handful of men in the dead of winter. He immediately had visions of restoring the lost provinces of France and wrote to his friends in Europe of his glorious anticipations. When, on February 19, he arrived at Albany and understood that nothing had been done he was humiliated and enraged. He wrote to Washington denouncing those who had led him astray, adding: "I well know that you, my dear general, will do everything possible to get me the one thing for which I thirst: glory" (Charavay, p. 29). Other letters to Washington and Laurens described his "painful and ridiculous situation" (Sedgwick, p. 61) in what Laurens called "that indigested romantic scheme" (E. C. Burnett, Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, III, 1926, p. 124). By April, Lafayette, chagrined and disappointed, was back at Valley Forge. Bitter memories were forgotten during the celebrations which followed the arrival, May 1, of the news of the French alliance; Lafayette was again a center of attention. On May 18 at Barren Hill, by skillful maneuvering, he escaped capture by a larger force commanded by Sir Henry Clinton. He participated in the battle of Monmouth, June 28, with distinction but without success. He was active in preparations for the combined land and sea attack against Newport, R. I, to be carried out with the aid of the French fleet under D'Estaing. He was valuable as a liaison officer between the two armies, and, following the wretched failure of the expedition early in August, he did much to calm the jealousies and recriminations of both French and Americans. In October 1778, Congress granted him a furlough that he might return to France, voted him an elegant sword, and wrote a letter to Louis XVI extolling his merits. He sailed January 11, 1779, in the Alliance, manned by British prisoners and deserters, whose mutiny he later subdued. In Paris and Versailles he was welcomed and acclaimed, received by the King and Queen, consulted by all the ministers, and kissed by all the ladies. He was discussed, toasted, entertained; meanwhile he proposed to Vergennes an invasion of Great Britain, a descent upon Ireland, a conquest of Canada, and other projects having a common end, for, he declared, "the thought of seeing England humiliated and crushed makes me tremble with joy" (Whitlock, I, 194). He advocated hiring part of the Swedish navy for service in America; tried to float an American loan in Holland; and urged a French army for expeditionary service in the United States, proposing himself as commander of it. He acquiesced in the appointment of the Comte de Rochambeau as commander and, early in March 1780, sailed on the Hermione to prepare for the arrival of the French army. Arriving at Boston, April 28, he was given a triumphal welcome at Governor Hancock's house. After considerable delay he found Washington at Morristown, in great need of troops and money. He visited Congress to discuss the necessary measures to be taken to cooperate with the French fleet, and was restored to his old command of the Virginia light troops. The French fleet arrived at Newport, R. I, during July and Lafayette met Rochambeau July 25 to advocate an offensive campaign, which was declined by Rochambeau. When, during September, Washington first conferred with Rochambeau, Lafayette was invaluable as an intermediary. He returned with Washington to West Point, where they learned of Arnold's treason. As a member of the court martial at Tappan he voted for the death penalty for Andre. Following this he went into winter headquarters at Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Washington planned a combined land and sea attack to capture Gen. Benedict Arnold who was at Hampton Roads. For this purpose he entrusted 1, 200 New England troops to Lafayette, who marched to Head of Elk, on Chesapeake Bay, where he arrived March 3, 1781. The French fleet did not arrive and the opportunity of capturing Arnold was lost. Early in April he received orders to join General Greene in the Carolinas. Rallying his men by a personal appeal, he marched southward, reaching Richmond on April 29, just in time to prevent its occupation and destruction by the British army under General Phillips. Lafayette now asked assistance from General Wayne and Pennsylvania troops. When Lord Cornwallis marched northward and was joined by the troops formerly under Phillips, Lafayette, with his thousand effective troops, slowly retreated before the advance of the superior forces of the British. "The boy can not escape me, " wrote Cornwallis (Whitlock, I, 236). Lafayette retired until he met Wayne at the Rapidan River, then returned to harass Cornwallis. The latter slowly retired to the sea, finally reaching Portsmouth, where he dispatched some of his troops to New York. Washington now told Lafayette of the proposed concerted action with De Grasse and the French fleet and ordered him to prevent the escape of Cornwallis to the southward. With the arrival of De Grasse, of Rochambeau's army, and Washington's Continental Army, Cornwallis was besieged at Yorktown, where he capitulated, Oct. 19. "The play is over, " Lafayette wrote the Comte de Maurepas, "the fifth act is just ended" (Ibid. , I, 260). Lafayette sailed for France in the Alliance in December. He was enthusiastically received by populace and court. Meanwhile, he aided the American agents in seeking supplies and a loan. He was at Cadiz, ready to sail with a new expedition, when news of the signing of the preliminary articles of peace reached him. He now returned to his ancestral estates in Auvergne, where he won great popularity with the peasants by his distribution of grain. He then established himself at his h"tel in Paris, rue de Bourbon, where he held salon and discoursed on America and republican principles. He was made a member of the Society of the Cincinnati. He returned to America in August 1784, arriving at New York, where he received a tremendous ovation. During the following six months he visited his old colleagues in arms and was affectionately welcomed from Mount Vernon to Boston. On December 8 Congress gave him a distinguished reception at Trenton and on the 21st he sailed from New York on La Nymphe. Lafayette returned to France with a renewed enthusiasm and a new vision. He would give France her charter of liberties and would establish them. In his salon and his utterances his ardent republicanism asserted itself; he engaged in various philanthropic and humanitarian enterprises, for the manumission of Negro slaves and the abolition of slavery, and for the restoration of the civil rights of the French Protestants. With Jefferson, now minister to France, he labored for the readjustment of American frontiers with Spain. During 1785-89, his services to the United States, while not dramatic, were invaluable. He attacked the tobacco monopoly of the farmers-general in an effort to eliminate the middle profits of the British merchants; he sought to find a large French market for the New England fisheries, for the United States, a debtor nation, could pay the French debt only by building up credits from an excess of exports. Through the activity of Jefferson and Lafayette, the United States was gaining the position of the most favored nation in the French market. When Jefferson, in 1786, contemplated a combined blockade of the Barbary pirates Lafayette at once offered his services as chief of operations. He urged upon the French government the postponement of the first payments of the American debt that the United States might first care for its internal finances. Early in 1789, he was instrumental in securing the recall of De Moustier, who, although he had been sent to America as French minister at Jefferson's request, had made himself obnoxious to the American government. In 1787, Lafayette had been a member of the Assembly of Notables; his enthusiastic republicanism had alarmed Jefferson, who suggested the British constitution rather than the American as a model for the French. When Jefferson left France in October 1789, Lafayette was already well launched in that revolution in which he became a prominent figure. His activities, his successes, and his blunders in that movement belong to French rather than to American history. In 1790 he was the most popular figure in France; from 1792 to 1797 he was incarcerated in foreign prisons, from which Congress, Washington, and Gouverneur Morris vainly sought to effect his release. Liberated at length through French influence, he and his family remained in exile until late in 1799, when they returned and settled at La Grange, about forty miles from Paris. The Revolution had shattered his fortune. Congress had, in 1794, voted him $24, 424, his emoluments as a brigadier-general, which he had refused to accept during the American Revolution. It was estimated that he spent more than $200, 000 of his private funds in assisting the colonies; he never solicited repayment, but in 1803 Congress voted him a grant of 11, 520 acres. These lands were eventually located in Louisiana, but it was a dozen years before he realized any financial assistance from them. Lafayette remained aloof from politics, cultivating his lands at La Grange. He acknowledged Napoleon, though he later broke with him; he remained a liberal, upheld by faith in the ultimate triumph of representative government. He never ceased to hold up the United States as an example and promise to mankind; he was a good friend and counselor of the American legation in Paris. In 1824 President Monroe invited him to visit the United States; he arrived at Staten Island August 15 and began an epochal tour which Charles Sumner said "belongs to the poetry of history. " "The Marquis, " "the soldier's friend, " had returned, the venerable symbol of a past heroic age. For more than a year his triumphal tour of the United States provoked demonstrations of frenzied enthusiasm without precedent or parallel in American history. This was one of the happiest years of his life, for he had never lost his one great foible, as Jefferson had described it, "a canine appetite for popularity and fame" (The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 1903, VI, 70). On September 8, 1825, he sailed for France and on October 9 reached La Grange. He reentered politics and played a conspicuous part in the July Revolution of 1830 but by his indecision lost the opportunity of establishing the republic of which he had long dreamed. One of his last speeches in the Chamber was in 1833, favoring ratification of the Franco-American treaty signed July 4, 1831. His last speech was one attacking the reactionary policies of Louis-Philippe, whom he had assisted to power. He died May 20, 1834, and was buried in Picpus Cemetery in Paris. His grave was covered with earth from Bunker Hill.

Marie-Joseph De Lafayette Edit Profile

also known as du Motier

Soldier statesman

Background

Marquis de Lafayette was born in the château de Chavaniac, between Brionde and Le Puy, in Auvergne (now Haute-Loire department), France, the son of Gilbert, Marquis de Lafayette, colonel in the French grenadiers, and Marie Louise Jolie de La Rivière, both of notable and ancient French families. His father was killed at the battle of Minden, August 1, 1759.

Education

The boy was brought to Paris in 1768 and entered the fourth form at the Collège du Plessis, where he remained four years.

Career

His mother died April 3, 1770, and his grandfather several weeks later. Lafayette inherited the fortune of the latter and found himself, at the age of thirteen, possessed of an income of 120, 000 livres. He yearned for a military career, agreeable to the strong tradition in his family, and on April 9, 1771, he was entered in the second company of the King's Musketeers, from which he was transferred, April 7, 1773, to the regiment commanded by Noailles, where he became a second lieutenant.

Later he was promoted to a captaincy and joined his regiment at Metz, returning in September to participate in the court life at Versailles. Here he suffered considerable mortification, since he drank poorly and danced so badly that he provoked Marie Antoinette to laughter. During the summer of 1775 he returned to barracks at Metz; on August 8 he attended a dinner given by the Comte de Broglie to the Duke of Gloucester. Here the Duke spoke freely and sympathetically of the American insurgents and Lafayette's enthusiasm and imagination were first stirred. During the weeks that followed, vague aspirations slowly crystallized. By aiding the insurgents he saw the possibility of crushing "perfidious Albion" and avenging the defeat of the Seven Years' War, in which his country had been humiliated and his father had lost his life.

He partook of that current romantic enthusiasm for a regenerated world which had been engendered by the writings of Rousseau and Raynal, and saw himself in the garb of a modern Plutarch's hero, a role proper to satisfy his own love of la gloire. Thus motivated, he made the first and most important decision of his life, to aid the American colonists. Concealing his plans from his family, he confided in the Comte de Broglie, who tried to dissuade him, but who later introduced him to John Kalb. Lafayette withdrew from active service in the French army, June 11, 1776, and after the announcement of the Declaration of Independence he entered into relations with Silas Deane and Arthur Lee. Two agreements were signed, during December 1776 and February 1777, between them. Kalb and Lafayette were promised commissions, and the latter agreed to serve the colonies with the greatest zeal without compensation, reserving only the right to return to France, if called by his king or family.

He sent Du Boismartin, a friend, to purchase and fit out a vessel for the passage to America. To allay all suspicions Lafayette spent several weeks in London with the French ambassador, the Marquis de Noailles, his uncle. Returning to Bordeaux he embarked with Kalb in La Victoire. The vessel put in at Los Pasajes, where Lafayette was ordered by Louis XVI to accompany the Duc d'Ayen on a tour in Italy. Lafayette hesitated and Kalb thought that the venture was given up. To satisfy the British ambassador a lettre de cachet had been launched against Lafayette. News of this determined him and, having rejoined Kalb at Los Pasajes, he sailed for the United States, April 20, 1777. The commotion created by his departure was excellent publicity for the cause of the Americans.

On June 13 they disembarked near Georgetown, S. C. , where they were entertained by Major Benjamin Huger. Within a week Lafayette wrote his wife a letter of boyish enthusiasm relating many impressions that he had already formed of men and affairs in America. After six weeks of arduous travel he and his companions arrived in Philadelphia, where he presented his credentials to a committee of Congress. Congress was weary of foreign adventurers and his first reception was more like a dismissal than a welcome. Undaunted, he wrote a petition requesting two things: to serve at his own expense, and to begin as a volunteer. This modest and unusual proposal secured attention; his credentials were examined, and on July 31 Congress voted him the rank and commission of major-general, but gave him no active command. The situation was one that Lafayette never completely understood.

On August 1 he met General Washington in Philadelphia. This was the beginning of a historic friendship. The young major-general, not yet twenty, was virtually adopted by Washington, whose staff he joined as a volunteer. He received his baptism of fire in the battle of the Brandywine, September 11, when he was slightly wounded in the leg. Kalb called this an excellent bit of good fortune, for it established Lafayette in the eyes of his American comrades. He recuperated at the Moravian settlement at Bethlehem, Pa. , and in October rejoined Washington in camp at Whitemarsh. At Gloucester he led a successful skirmishing party against the Hessians. Partly because of his personal qualities and partly from political considerations, Congress on December 1 voted him command of the division of Virginia light troops with full authority as major-general.

During the winter he remained at Valley Forge, sharing hardships and privations and earning the title of "the soldier's friend. " He warned Washington of the Conway Cabal and urged him to protect himself. At the end of January 1778, the Board of War placed Lafayette in command of the proposed "irruption into Canada, " a fantastic scheme to capture Canada with a handful of men in the dead of winter. He immediately had visions of restoring the lost provinces of France and wrote to his friends in Europe of his glorious anticipations. When, on February 19, he arrived at Albany and understood that nothing had been done he was humiliated and enraged. He wrote to Washington denouncing those who had led him astray, adding: "I well know that you, my dear general, will do everything possible to get me the one thing for which I thirst: glory" (Charavay, p. 29). Other letters to Washington and Laurens described his "painful and ridiculous situation" (Sedgwick, p. 61) in what Laurens called "that indigested romantic scheme" (E. C. Burnett, Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, III, 1926, p. 124).

By April, Lafayette, chagrined and disappointed, was back at Valley Forge. Bitter memories were forgotten during the celebrations which followed the arrival, May 1, of the news of the French alliance; Lafayette was again a center of attention. On May 18 at Barren Hill, by skillful maneuvering, he escaped capture by a larger force commanded by Sir Henry Clinton. He participated in the battle of Monmouth, June 28, with distinction but without success. He was active in preparations for the combined land and sea attack against Newport, R. I, to be carried out with the aid of the French fleet under D'Estaing. He was valuable as a liaison officer between the two armies, and, following the wretched failure of the expedition early in August, he did much to calm the jealousies and recriminations of both French and Americans.

In October 1778, Congress granted him a furlough that he might return to France, voted him an elegant sword, and wrote a letter to Louis XVI extolling his merits. He sailed January 11, 1779, in the Alliance, manned by British prisoners and deserters, whose mutiny he later subdued. In Paris and Versailles he was welcomed and acclaimed, received by the King and Queen, consulted by all the ministers, and kissed by all the ladies. He was discussed, toasted, entertained; meanwhile he proposed to Vergennes an invasion of Great Britain, a descent upon Ireland, a conquest of Canada, and other projects having a common end, for, he declared, "the thought of seeing England humiliated and crushed makes me tremble with joy" (Whitlock, I, 194). He advocated hiring part of the Swedish navy for service in America; tried to float an American loan in Holland; and urged a French army for expeditionary service in the United States, proposing himself as commander of it.

He acquiesced in the appointment of the Comte de Rochambeau as commander and, early in March 1780, sailed on the Hermione to prepare for the arrival of the French army. Arriving at Boston, April 28, he was given a triumphal welcome at Governor Hancock's house. After considerable delay he found Washington at Morristown, in great need of troops and money. He visited Congress to discuss the necessary measures to be taken to cooperate with the French fleet, and was restored to his old command of the Virginia light troops. The French fleet arrived at Newport, R. I, during July and Lafayette met Rochambeau July 25 to advocate an offensive campaign, which was declined by Rochambeau. When, during September, Washington first conferred with Rochambeau, Lafayette was invaluable as an intermediary. He returned with Washington to West Point, where they learned of Arnold's treason.

As a member of the court martial at Tappan he voted for the death penalty for Andre. Following this he went into winter headquarters at Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Washington planned a combined land and sea attack to capture Gen. Benedict Arnold who was at Hampton Roads. For this purpose he entrusted 1, 200 New England troops to Lafayette, who marched to Head of Elk, on Chesapeake Bay, where he arrived March 3, 1781. The French fleet did not arrive and the opportunity of capturing Arnold was lost. Early in April he received orders to join General Greene in the Carolinas. Rallying his men by a personal appeal, he marched southward, reaching Richmond on April 29, just in time to prevent its occupation and destruction by the British army under General Phillips. Lafayette now asked assistance from General Wayne and Pennsylvania troops. When Lord Cornwallis marched northward and was joined by the troops formerly under Phillips, Lafayette, with his thousand effective troops, slowly retreated before the advance of the superior forces of the British. "The boy can not escape me, " wrote Cornwallis (Whitlock, I, 236).

Lafayette retired until he met Wayne at the Rapidan River, then returned to harass Cornwallis. The latter slowly retired to the sea, finally reaching Portsmouth, where he dispatched some of his troops to New York.

Washington now told Lafayette of the proposed concerted action with De Grasse and the French fleet and ordered him to prevent the escape of Cornwallis to the southward. With the arrival of De Grasse, of Rochambeau's army, and Washington's Continental Army, Cornwallis was besieged at Yorktown, where he capitulated, Oct. 19. "The play is over, " Lafayette wrote the Comte de Maurepas, "the fifth act is just ended" (Ibid. , I, 260). Lafayette sailed for France in the Alliance in December. He was enthusiastically received by populace and court. Meanwhile, he aided the American agents in seeking supplies and a loan. He was at Cadiz, ready to sail with a new expedition, when news of the signing of the preliminary articles of peace reached him.

He now returned to his ancestral estates in Auvergne, where he won great popularity with the peasants by his distribution of grain. He then established himself at his h"tel in Paris, rue de Bourbon, where he held salon and discoursed on America and republican principles. He was made a member of the Society of the Cincinnati.

He returned to America in August 1784, arriving at New York, where he received a tremendous ovation. During the following six months he visited his old colleagues in arms and was affectionately welcomed from Mount Vernon to Boston. On December 8 Congress gave him a distinguished reception at Trenton and on the 21st he sailed from New York on La Nymphe.

Lafayette returned to France with a renewed enthusiasm and a new vision. He would give France her charter of liberties and would establish them. In his salon and his utterances his ardent republicanism asserted itself; he engaged in various philanthropic and humanitarian enterprises, for the manumission of Negro slaves and the abolition of slavery, and for the restoration of the civil rights of the French Protestants. With Jefferson, now minister to France, he labored for the readjustment of American frontiers with Spain.

During 1785-89, his services to the United States, while not dramatic, were invaluable. He attacked the tobacco monopoly of the farmers-general in an effort to eliminate the middle profits of the British merchants; he sought to find a large French market for the New England fisheries, for the United States, a debtor nation, could pay the French debt only by building up credits from an excess of exports. Through the activity of Jefferson and Lafayette, the United States was gaining the position of the most favored nation in the French market. When Jefferson, in 1786, contemplated a combined blockade of the Barbary pirates Lafayette at once offered his services as chief of operations. He urged upon the French government the postponement of the first payments of the American debt that the United States might first care for its internal finances. Early in 1789, he was instrumental in securing the recall of De Moustier, who, although he had been sent to America as French minister at Jefferson's request, had made himself obnoxious to the American government. In 1787, Lafayette had been a member of the Assembly of Notables; his enthusiastic republicanism had alarmed Jefferson, who suggested the British constitution rather than the American as a model for the French.

When Jefferson left France in October 1789, Lafayette was already well launched in that revolution in which he became a prominent figure. His activities, his successes, and his blunders in that movement belong to French rather than to American history. In 1790 he was the most popular figure in France; from 1792 to 1797 he was incarcerated in foreign prisons, from which Congress, Washington, and Gouverneur Morris vainly sought to effect his release. Liberated at length through French influence, he and his family remained in exile until late in 1799, when they returned and settled at La Grange, about forty miles from Paris.

The Revolution had shattered his fortune. Congress had, in 1794, voted him $24, 424, his emoluments as a brigadier-general, which he had refused to accept during the American Revolution. It was estimated that he spent more than $200, 000 of his private funds in assisting the colonies; he never solicited repayment, but in 1803 Congress voted him a grant of 11, 520 acres. These lands were eventually located in Louisiana, but it was a dozen years before he realized any financial assistance from them. Lafayette remained aloof from politics, cultivating his lands at La Grange. He acknowledged Napoleon, though he later broke with him; he remained a liberal, upheld by faith in the ultimate triumph of representative government. He never ceased to hold up the United States as an example and promise to mankind; he was a good friend and counselor of the American legation in Paris.

In 1824 President Monroe invited him to visit the United States; he arrived at Staten Island August 15 and began an epochal tour which Charles Sumner said "belongs to the poetry of history. " "The Marquis, " "the soldier's friend, " had returned, the venerable symbol of a past heroic age. For more than a year his triumphal tour of the United States provoked demonstrations of frenzied enthusiasm without precedent or parallel in American history. This was one of the happiest years of his life, for he had never lost his one great foible, as Jefferson had described it, "a canine appetite for popularity and fame" (The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 1903, VI, 70).

On September 8, 1825, he sailed for France and on October 9 reached La Grange. He reentered politics and played a conspicuous part in the July Revolution of 1830 but by his indecision lost the opportunity of establishing the republic of which he had long dreamed. One of his last speeches in the Chamber was in 1833, favoring ratification of the Franco-American treaty signed July 4, 1831. His last speech was one attacking the reactionary policies of Louis-Philippe, whom he had assisted to power. He died May 20, 1834, and was buried in Picpus Cemetery in Paris. His grave was covered with earth from Bunker Hill.

Achievements

Lafayette was prominent for his participation in the American Revolutionary War with the American colonists against the British and as close friend of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson. He was a key figure in the French Revolution of 1789 and the July Revolution of 1830. He served with distinction in the Battle of Rhode Island and Battle of Brandywine. During all the Virginia campaign, Lafayette had demonstrated tact, caution, and a superior knowledge of military tactics. He helped to write the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, with Thomas Jefferson's assistance and advocated for the end of slavery. He also became a leading advocate for constitutional monarchy and one of the most-powerful men in France.

Works

The Letters Of Lafayette And Jefferson The Letters Of Lafayette And Jefferson

Memoirs of General Lafayette : with an Account of His Visit to America and His Reception By the People of the United State Memoirs of General Lafayette : with an Account of His Visit to America and His Reception By the People of the United State

Correspondance Inedite De La Fayette, 1793-1801; Lettres De Prison--Lettres DExil; Precedee DUne Etude Psychologique Par Jules Thomas Correspondance Inedite De La Fayette, 1793-1801; Lettres De Prison--Lettres DExil; Precedee DUne Etude Psychologique Par Jules Thomas

LaFayette in the Age of the American Revolution, Selected Letters and Papers, 1776-1790: Volume III, April 27, 1780-March 29, 1781 LaFayette in the Age of the American Revolution, Selected Letters and Papers, 1776-1790: Volume III, April 27, 1780-March 29, 1781

book

Membership

Member of the Society of the Cincinnati

Connections

Lafayette married Marie Adrienne Françoise de Noailles on April 11, 1774. They were happy together from the time of their marriage until her death in 1807.

Father:: Gilbert, Marquis de Lafayette
Mother:: Marie Louise Jolie de La Rivière
Spouse:: Marie Adrienne Françoise de Noailles
Uncle:: Marquis de Noailles
Friend:: Thomas Jefferson
Friend:: George Washington
Friend:: Alexander Hamilton

Main Photo