Marquis de Lafayette

Marquis de Lafayette

"The play, sir, is over."
October, 1781

The French general the Marquis de Lafayette, called the hero of two worlds, was prominent in both the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Born on Sept. 6, 1757, to a noble family in the Auvergne, he defied the French authorities in 1777 by crossing the Atlantic to offer his services to the Continental Congress at Philadelphia. He was a friend of George Washington, who became his model, and served under him at the Battle of the Brandywine and at Valley Forge.

In 1779 he went to France to expedite the dispatch of a French army, but he returned to distinguish himself again at Yorktown (1781). Brave in battle and staunch in adversity, Lafayette won enduring popularity in America, and his fame did much to make liberal ideals acceptable in Europe.

As discontent in France mounted, Lafayette (left) advocated the convocation of the States-General in 1789. He became a deputy and proposed a model Declaration of Rights. Elected commander of the National Guard on July 15, 1789, he appeared gallantly with his troops at the Festival of Federation on July 14, 1790, to celebrate the apparent coming of age of a free and united community.

However, Lafayette proved unable to fulfill the promise of his youth. Although he had enormous potential power as a mediator, he had neither a realistic policy of his own nor the flexibility to support the more practical comte de Mirabeau. Despised by the court as a renegade aristocrat whose bourgeois army was unable to protect the royal family, he was also hated by the populace for trying to suppress disorder, especially after he fired on a crowd in Paris in July 1791.

In 1792, as an army commander, Lafayette made a futile attempt to save the monarchy and then deserted to the Austrians, who promptly imprisoned him as a dangerous revolutionary. Released in 1797 at Napoleon Bonaparte's insistence, Lafayette was allowed to return to France in 1799.

In 1815 he was one of those who demanded Napoleon I's abdication.

In 1824, Lafayette made a triumphant tour of the United States. By then his home, La Grange, was a place of pilgrimage for liberals throughout the world. When the July Revolution of 1830 occurred, he was again called on to command the National Guard, to identify the monarchy of Louis Philippe with the ideals of 1789.

He died in Paris on May 20, 1834; his name continues to signify freedom.

(See Bibliography Below)

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Picture Credit: Marquis de Lafayette (1779) by Charles Willson Peale, Washington and Lee University (top); Independence National Historic Park, Philadelphia (bottom).
Bibliography: Bernier, Olivier, Lafayette: Hero of Two Worlds (1983); Buckman, Peter, Lafayette: A Biography (1977); Gerson, Noel B., Statue in Search of a Pedestal: A Biography of the Marquis de Lafayette (1976); Gottschalk, Louis R., Lafayette Comes to America (1935; repr. 1974), Lafayette Joins the American Army (1937; repr. 1974), Lafayette and the Close of the American Revolution (1942; repr. 1974), Lafayette between the American and French Revolution (1950; repr. 1974), Lafayette in the French Revolution, through the October Days (1969), and Lafayette in the French Revolution: From the October Days through the Federation (1973); Horn, Pierre, Marquis de Lafayette (1989); Idzerda, Stanley J., et al., eds., Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution: Selected Letters and Papers, 1776-1790, 4 vols. (1977-81).