Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette

Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert Du Motier, marquis de La Fayette (or Lafayette) (September 6, 1757 – May 20, 1834), was a French aristocrat . La Fayette is considered a national hero in both France and the United States for his participation in the French and American revolutions for which he became an Honorary Citizen of the United States. His full name is seldom used in the United States, where he is usually known simply as "Lafayette" or "the Marquis de Lafayette". (Note that La Fayette may be written as one word or as two; one word is more typical in U.S. usage, while two words is the form preferred in contemporary French.) Many places in the United States are named for him.

He was the father of Georges Washington Motier de La Fayette (1779–1849) and Oscar Thomas Gilbert Motier de La Fayette (1815–1881).

Early life

La Fayette was born at the Château de Chavaniac, Haute-Loire, in the Auvergne region of France. The family of La Fayette, to the cadet branch of which he belonged, received its title ("La Fayette") from an estate in Aix that belonged to the Motier family in the thirteenth century. His father was killed at the Battle of Minden in 1759, and his mother and grandfather died in 1770, and thus at the age of 13 he was left an orphan with a princely fortune. He married at 16 to Marie-Adrienne-Françoise de Noailles, daughter of Jean-Paul-François, 5e duc de Noailles, from one of the most influential families in the kingdom. La Fayette chose to follow the career of his father, and entered the Guards. La Fayette was educated at the prestigious Lycee Louis-le-Grand.

Army life

La Fayette entered the French Army at the age of 14. At 19 he was captain of dragoons when the British colonies in America proclaimed their independence. He later wrote in his memoirs, "my heart was enrolled in it." The comte de Broglie, whom he consulted, discouraged his zeal for the cause of liberty. Finding his purpose unchangeable, however, he presented the young enthusiast to Johann Kalb, who was also seeking service in America, and through Silas Deane, an American agent in Paris, an arrangement was concluded, on December 7, 1776 by which La Fayette was to enter the American service as major general. At this moment the news arrived of grave disasters to the American arms. La Fayette's friends again advised him to abandon his purpose. Even the American envoys, Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee, who had joined Deane in France, withheld further encouragement and the king himself forbade his leaving. At the insistence of the British ambassador at Versailles orders were issued to seize the ship La Fayette was fitting out at Bordeaux and La Fayette himself was arrested. La Fayette escaped from custody disguised as a woman, and before a second lettre de cachet could reach him he was afloat with eleven chosen companions. Though two British ships had been sent in pursuit of him, he landed safely near Georgetown, South Carolina on June 13, 1777 after a tedious voyage of nearly two months, and hastened to Philadelphia, then the seat of government of the colonies.

American Revolution

When this lad of 19, with the little English he had been able to pick up on his voyage, presented himself to the Congress with Deane's authority to demand a commission of the highest rank after the commander-in-chief, his reception was chilly. Deane's contracts were so numerous, and for officers of such high rank, that it was impossible for Congress to ratify them without injustice to Americans who had become entitled by their service to promotion. La Fayette appreciated the situation as soon as it was explained to him, and immediately expressed his desire to serve in the American army upon two conditions—that he should receive no pay, and that he should act as a volunteer.

These terms were so different from those made by other foreigners, they had been attended with such substantial sacrifices, and they promised such important indirect advantages, that Congress passed a resolution, on July 31, 1777, "that his services be accepted, and that, in consideration of his zeal, illustrious family and connections, he have the rank and commission of major-general of the United States." The next day La Fayette met George Washington, who became his lifelong friend. They became so close, in fact, that the Marquis named his son George Washington-Lafayette, and asked Washington to be his godfather, which he accepted. Congress intended his appointment as purely honorary, and the question of giving him a command was left entirely to Washington's discretion. As a member of Washington's inner circle, La Fayette also became very close friends with young Alexander Hamilton, Washington's chief aide-de-camp. When Hamilton later co-founded an anti-slavery society, La Fayette wrote him to request that his name be added to the membership.

His first battle was Brandywine on September 11, 1777, where he showed courage, activity, and received a wound. Shortly afterwards he secured what he most desired, the command of a division – the immediate result of a communication from Washington to Congress of November 1, 1777, in which he said: "The Marquis de La Fayette is extremely solicitous of having a command equal to his rank. I do not know in what light Congress will view the matter, but it appears to me, from a consideration of his illustrious and, important connections, the attachment which he has manifested for our cause, and the consequences which his return in disgust might produce, that it will be advisable to gratify his wishes, and the more so as several gentlemen from France who came over under some assurances have gone back disappointed in their expectations. His conduct with respect to them stands in a favourable point of view—having interested himself to remove their uneasiness and urged the impropriety of their making any unfavourable representations upon their arrival at home. Besides, he is sensible, discreet in his manners, has made great proficiency in our language, and from the disposition he discovered at the battle of Brandywine possesses a large share of bravery and military ardour."

Though the commander of a division, La Fayette never had many troops in his charge. Whatever military talents he possessed were not the kind which appeared as conspicuous advantage on the theatre to which his wealth and family influence rather than his soldierly gifts had called him. In the first months of 1778 he commanded troops detailed for the projected expedition against Canada. His retreat from Barren Hill (May 28, 1778) was commended as masterly, and he fought at the Battle of Monmouth (June 28) and received from Congress a formal recognition of his services in the Rhode Island expedition (August 1778).

The treaties of commerce and defensive alliance, signed by the United States and France on February 6, 1778, were promptly followed by a declaration of war by Great Britain against the latter, and La Fayette asked leave to revisit France and to consult his king as to the further direction of his services. This leave was readily granted; it was not difficult for Washington to replace the major-general, but it was impossible to find another equally competent, influential and devoted champion of the American cause near the court of Louis XVI. In fact, he went on a mission rather than a visit. He embarked on January 11, 1779, was received with enthusiasm, and was made a colonel in the French cavalry. On March 4, 1779, Franklin wrote to the president of Congress: "The marquis de La Fayette is infinitely esteemed and beloved here, and I am persuaded will do everything in his power to merit a continuance of the same affection from America." He won the confidence of Vergennes.

La Fayette was absent from America about six months, and his return was the occasion of a complimentary resolution of Congress. From April until October 1781 he was charged with the defence of Virginia, in which Washington gave him the credit of doing all that was possible with the forces at his disposal; and he showed his zeal by borrowing money on his own account to provide his soldiers with necessaries. The siege of Yorktown, in which La Fayette bore an honourable if not a distinguished part, was the last of the war, and terminated his military career in the United States. He immediately obtained leave to return to France, where it was supposed he might be useful in negotiations for a general peace. He was also occupied in the preparations for a combined French and Spanish expedition against some of the British West India Islands, of which he had been appointed chief of staff, and a formidable fleet assembled at Cádiz, but the armistice signed on January 20, 1783 between the belligerents put a stop to the expedition. He had been promoted (1781) to the rank of maréchal de camp (brigadier general) in the French army, and he received every token of regard from his sovereign and his countrymen. He visited the United States again in 1784, and remained some five months as a guest of the nation.

Washington and Lafayette were both slaveowners who had come to view slavery with repugnance. Lafayette urged Washington to free his slaves as an example to others— Washington was held in such high regard after the revolution that there was reason to hope that if he freed his slaves, others would follow his example. Lafayette purchased an estate in French Guiana and settled his own slaves there, and he offered a place for Washington's slaves, writing "I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America if I could have conceived thereby that I was founding a land of slavery." Nevertheless, Washington did not free his own slaves in his lifetime. Documentation and letters in his Mount Vernon residence do show, however, that his wish after his death was for all slaves he owned be freed.

French Revolution

La Fayette did not appear again prominently in public life until 1787, though he did good service to the French Protestants, and became actively interested in plans to abolish slavery. In 1787 he took his seat in the Assembly of Notables. He demanded, and he alone signed the demand, that the king convoke the Estates-General, thus becoming a leader in the French Revolution. He showed liberal tendencies both in that assembly and after its dispersal, and in 1788 was deprived, in consequence, of his active command. In 1789 La Fayette was elected to the Estates-General, and took a prominent part in its proceedings. He was chosen vice-president of the National Assembly, and on 11 July 1789 proposed a declaration of rights, modelled on Jefferson's Declaration of Independence in 1776.

On July 15, the second day of the new regime, La Fayette was chosen by acclamation colonel-general of the new National Guard of Paris. He also proposed the combination of the colours of Paris, red and blue, and the royal white, into the famous tricolour cockade of modern France (July 17). For the succeeding three years, until the end of the constitutional monarchy in 1792, his history is largely the history of France. His life was beset with great responsibility and perils, for he was ever the minister of humanity and order in a time of great chaos. He rescued the queen from the hands of the populace in October 1789, saved many humbler victims who had been condemned to death, and he risked his life in many unsuccessful attempts to rescue others. Before this, disgusted with enormities which he was powerless to prevent, he had resigned his commission; but so impossible was it to replace him that he was induced to resume it.

In the Constituent Assembly he pleaded for the abolition of arbitrary imprisonment, for religious tolerance, for popular representation, for the establishment of trial by jury, for the gradual emancipation of slaves, for the freedom of the press, for the abolition of titles of nobility, and the suppression of privileged orders. Pursuing these goals he drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen which was adopted by the Assembly. In February 1790 he refused the supreme command of the National Guard of the kingdom.

Lafayette and other constitutional monarchists who supported the Revolution in its early years founded the "Society of 1789", which afterwards became the Feuillants Club, taking a position between Royalist supporters of absolute monarchy and Republicans such as the Jacobins and Cordeliers. Lafayette took a prominent part in the celebration of July 14, 1790, the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. After suppressing a riot in April 1791 he again resigned his commission, and was again compelled to retain it. Louis XVI's flight to Varennes undermined the position of the constitutional monarchists, especially Lafayette himself who, as Commander of the National Guard, had had the responsibility to keep the King secure. Shortly after, on July 17, 1791, a large crowd gathered at the Champ de Mars to sign a petition calling for the abolition of the monarchy. Jean-Sylvain Bailly, the Mayor of Paris, ordered the crowd to disperse, and when they did not and began to get rowdy, Lafayette ordered the National Guard to open fire. About 50 people were killed in what became known as the "Massacre of the Champ de Mars", which decisively marked the end of the alliance between constitutional monarchists and Jacobins. On the occasion of the proclamation of the constitution (September 18, 1791), feeling that his task was done, he tried to retire into private life. This did not prevent his friends from proposing him for the mayoralty of Paris in opposition to Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve.

When, in December 1791, three armies were formed on the western frontier to attack Austria, La Fayette was placed in command of one of them. But events moved faster than La Fayette's moderate and humane republicanism, and seeing that the lives of the king and queen were each day more and more in danger, he definitely opposed himself to the further advance of the Jacobin party, intending eventually to use his army for the restoration of a limited monarchy. On August 19, 1792, the Assembly declared him a traitor. He was compelled to take refuge in the neutral territory of Liège, whence as one of the prime movers in the Revolution he was taken and held as a prisoner of state for five years, first in Prussian and afterwards in Austrian prisons (1794-1797 in Olomouc), in spite of the intercession of America and the pleadings of his wife. Napoleon, however, though he had a low opinion of his capacities, stipulated in the Treaty of Campo Formio (1797) for La Fayette's release. He was not allowed to return to France by the Directory. He returned in 1799; in 1802 he voted against the life consulate of Napoleon, and in 1804 he voted against the imperial title.

He lived in retirement during the First Empire, but returned to public affairs under the First Restoration and took some part in the political events of the Hundred Days. From 1818 to 1824 he was deputy for the Sarthe, speaking and voting always on the Liberal side, and even becoming a carbonaro. He then revisited America (July 1824–September 1825, attending the inaugural banquet of the University of Virginia, at Jefferson's invitation, and visiting St. Louis, Missouri where Lafayette Square Park was subsequently named in his honor) where his role in the Revolution placed him above the strong partisan divisions of the time. As a living symbol of a revolution that was then approaching its fiftieth anniversary, he was overwhelmed with popular applause and voted the sum of $200,000 and a township of land. From 1825 to his death he sat in the Chamber of Deputies for Meaux. During the revolution of 1830 he again took command of the National Guard and pursued the same line of conduct, with equal want of success, as in the first revolution. In 1834 he made his last speech—on behalf of Polish political refugees. He died in Paris on May 20, 1834 and was buried in the Cimetière de Picpus. In 1876, in the city of New York, a monument was erected to him, and in 1883 another was erected at Le Puy.

Legacy

Few men have owed more of their success and usefulness to their family rank than La Fayette, and still fewer have abused it less. He never achieved distinction in the field, and his political career proved him to be incapable of ruling a great national movement, but he had strong convictions which always impelled him to study the interests of humanity, and a pertinacity in maintaining them, which, in all the strange vicissitudes of his eventful life, secured him a very unusual measure of public respect. No citizen of a foreign country has ever had so many and such warm admirers in America, nor does any statesman in France appear to have ever possessed uninterruptedly for so many years so large a measure of popular influence and respect. He had what Jefferson called a "canine appetite" for popularity and fame, but in him the appetite only seemed to make him more anxious to merit the fame which he enjoyed. He was brave to the point of rashness, and he never shrank from danger or responsibility if he saw the way open to spare life or suffering, to protect the defenseless, to sustain the law and preserve order.

The admiration Americans feel for him is reflected in the many places named Lafayette, Fayette, and Fayetteville. Three U.S. naval vessels have been named in his honor, the most recent being the nuclear Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine USS Lafayette (SSBN-616) which served until 1991. Despite considerable anti-French sentiment in the United States at the time, Congress granted him honorary citizenship on August 6, 2002. During World War II, the U.S. flag was draped on his grave, even though it was in Nazi-occupied territory.

World War I

General Pershing is said to have declared upon his arrival in France during the First World War, "Lafayette, we are here!" (Lafayette, nous voilà!), suggesting that the United States was repaying its debt for his assistance during the Revolutionary War. However, this attribution is apocryphal, and was actually said by Lieutenant Colonel Charles E. Stanton at the tomb of La Fayette, in the cemetery Picpus in Paris, July 4, 1917.

La Fayette in the media

In 1961, La Fayette, a French-Italian movie about La Fayette's early years, was released in Europe, starring French television actor Michel Le Royer in the eponymous role. It boasted numerous guest-stars, including Orson Welles as Benjamin Franklin, Jack Hawkins and Vittorio De Sica.
In the 1989 two-part movie La Révolution française, the part of La Fayette was played by Sam Neill.
In the 1997 PBS mini-series Liberty! The American Revolution, the part of La Fayette was played by Sebastian Roché.
In PBS's 2002-2003 animated TV series Liberty's Kids, the Marquis de Lafayette was played by Ben Beck.
While not identified by name, a portrait of La Fayette appeared in the July 17, 2006 episode of the NBC reality series Treasure Hunters and a reproduction of his death mask is one of the seven "artifacts" needed to find the treasure.

References

External links

Public Law 107-209, conferring honorary citizenship of the United States posthumously on the Marquis de La Fayette.
Association of the Order of La Fayette, a Franco-American friendship association.
Color photo of Lafayette grave, 1917

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