Le Carnet de France – the Marquis de La Fayette
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
By Frederick H. Dulles and Martine P. Dulles
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AUTHORS
To Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette:
Editor’s Note: The authors write from France and prefer the French form La Fayette instead of the American one and prefer noble titles capitalized even standing alone; note how it shifts in usage, but in the spirit of the “old alliance,” we will at times go French on this page — de rien.
As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence, we recognize, with admiration and gratitude, your contribution to the American cause. You came to America at the age of 19 to engage personally in the war against Great Britain. You were instrumental in securing France’s military and financial support for the colonists, enabling them to win the War of Independence.
You were born on September 6, 1757. Your full name is Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier (in the French tradition, you have multiple first names). You were born into a wealthy, aristocratic family in Auvergne (in central France), with a long military heritage dating back to Joan of Arc in 1429. Your father was killed by an English cannonball, and at the age of two, you became the Marquis de La Fayette.
You were educated at the University of Paris and at the Académie de Versailles. Following a family arrangement, in 1774, when you were 16, you married Adrienne de Noailles, who was 14. You had four children, and your marriage lasted until Adrienne’s death in 1807. You had received a lieutenant’s commission in the Noailles Dragoons (your father-in-law’s regiment) in 1773.
You were intrigued by the new ideas of the Enlightenment (“Les Lumières”) and fascinated by the colonists in America who were challenging British rule on the basis of the new philosophy.
On August 8, 1775, you were at a dinner in Metz (the East of France) with the Duke of Gloucester, the younger brother of King George III of Great Britain, where the duke ridiculed the American rebels in the British colonies. This attitude shocked you, and the dinner was allegedly a turning point in your thinking. You decided to support the American colonists and go to the United States of America (the official name from September 1776) to fight with the rebels.
So, you purchased the sailing ship Victoire and, in 1777, left for America. You landed on North Island near Georgetown, South Carolina, on June 13, 1777. In America, your name was gradually simplified to “Lafayette.” On July 31, 1777, the Continental Congress commissioned you as a major general, but you would serve without pay. In August, you met George Washington (25 years your senior), and you and he became lifelong friends. In December 1779, Adrienne gave birth to your son, whom you even named Georges Washington Lafayette.
In September 1777, you saw action in the Battle of Brandywine in Pennsylvania, where you were wounded in the leg. That winter, you were with George Washington at Valley Forge. He sent you to Albany, New York, and while there, you recruited the Oneida native tribe to the American cause — they called you Kayewla (fearsome horseman).
You returned to France in February 1779 to a hero’s welcome, and you went hunting with King Louis XVI. With Benjamin Franklin, who was the American representative in France, you secured a promise of 6,000 soldiers to go to America. In March 1780, you left again for America aboard the frigate Hermione.
You were involved in a lot of action, culminating in the decisive Battle of Yorktown, Virginia. The Battle of the Capes at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, in which the French fleet outmaneuvered the British fleet, was decisive in preventing aid to the British forces at Yorktown. The British commander, Lord Cornwallis, surrendered on October 19, 1781. That was the effective end of the Revolutionary War.
You left Boston for France on December 18, 1781. You then worked with Thomas Jefferson, U.S. minister to France, on trade agreements. You returned to the U.S. in 1784-85, where you were received exuberantly in Boston and elsewhere. You received an honorary degree from Harvard University.
In Paris, you and Thomas Jefferson prepared a draft Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in July 1789, which led to a later version being adopted by the National Constituent Assembly on August 26, 1791. For you, the question of slavery was important. You tried to convince George Washington and other American leaders to abolish slavery, but without success.
Following the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, you became the commander of the National Guard and, throughout the years, tried to maintain order in Paris and elsewhere in France. That was a difficult task, with popular opinion divided between supporting and opposing the monarchy. In all of that, you were promoted to lieutenant general.
After France started a war with Austria, you were captured, and you remained a prisoner in various locations from 1792 to 1797. With the help of the American representatives, you had certain privileges, and Adrienne and your daughters were with you for the last two years. General Napoleon Bonaparte negotiated your release in 1797.
The end of Napoleon’s regime was complicated. You were received by Louis XVIII in 1814. But after Waterloo, when Napoleon abdicated, you arranged for his passage to America, but the British did not accept this, and Napoleon ended his days on the British island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.
You made a grand tour of the U.S. in 1824-25, visiting all 24 states then part of the Union. You were at the White House on February 9, 1825, when the House of Representatives selected John Quincy Adams over General Andrew Jackson as the sixth president. Jackson and Adams shook hands, with you there.
After you died on May 20, 1834, King Louis-Philippe ordered a military funeral. In the U.S., President Andrew Jackson ordered military honors for you, and both houses of Congress were draped in black for 30 days. Later, John Quincy Adams gave a three-hour eulogy for you.
Places honoring Lafayette while visiting Paris
While visiting Paris, dear readers, you may want to see sites where Lafayette lived or worked.
In the 1st arrondissement, between 202 rue de Rivoli and 211 rue Saint-Honoré, stood the Hôtel de Noailles, which belonged to Marie-Adrienne de Noailles’s family and where her marriage to the Marquis de La Fayette took place in the chapel of the mansion on April 11, 1774.
It is also in this Hôtel (private mansion) that Queen Marie-Antoinette welcomed the Marquis back home from America in 1779.
In 1783, the Marquis and his family moved to the Hôtel Lafayette, which he had built at 183 rue de Bourbon. This street is now named rue de Lille. It was then, and still is today, one of the most elegant streets in Paris. The family, without Marie-Adrienne, who died in 1807, lived there until 1827. Unfortunately, the Hôtel Lafayette has since been demolished as well.
The Treaty of Paris, ending the American Revolution, was signed on September 7, 1783, in the Hôtel d’York, 56 rue Jacob, in the 6th arrondissement. The U.S. was represented by Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and John Adams; King George III was represented by David Hartley, a member of the British Parliament.
In the last seven years of his life (1827-1834), the Marquis moved to the right bank of the Seine, in the 8th arrondissement, at 8 rue d’Anjou. A plaque indicates that General La Fayette died in this mansion on the 20th of May 1834.
The Marquis and his wife are both buried in the Picpus Cemetery, 35 rue Picpus in the 12th arrondissement. The Marquis brought back some American soil from Bunker Hill on his last journey from America ten years earlier, to be used for his grave. An American flag flies on his tomb continually, and during the Second World War, it was the only U.S. flag to be seen in occupied Paris. The Picpus Cemetery is a private cemetery open only in the afternoon, Monday through Saturday.
In the 16th arrondissement, on the Place des États-unis, stands a monument of La Fayette and George Washington, shaking hands. This statue was ordered by the American publisher Joseph Pulitzer from Auguste Bartholdi and was given to the city of Paris.
Acknowledgments: The Grand Palais RMN Éditions; French National Archives in Paris; Embassy of the United States of America in France.
Martine and Frederick Dulles live in France. Martine’s email address is mpd@dullesdeleu.com. Frederick’s email address is fhd@dullesdeleu.com.
