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numbered over three millions of men, the command of which was confided to La Fayette. 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 inconceivable responsibility and perils, for he was ever the minister of humanity and order among a frenzied people who had come to regard order and humanity as phases of treason. He rescued the queen from the murderous hands of the populace on the 5th and 6th of October 1789, not to speak of multitudes of humbler victims who had been devoted to death. He risked his life in many unsuccessful attempts to rescue others. He was obliged to witness the butchery of Foulon, and the reeking heart of Berthier torn from his lifeless body and held up in triumph before him. Disgusted with enormities which he was powerless to prevent and could not counte nance, he resigned his commission; but so impossible was it to replace him that he was induced to resume it. In the Constituent Assembly, of which he was a member, his influence was always felt in favour of Republican principles, 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. When the Constitution was proclaimed, on the 14th of July 1790, the first anniversary of the destruction of the Bastille, he again and definitively resigned his command, and retired to private life. Shortly after his resignation he was invited by the friends of liberty with order to stand for the office of mayor of Paris. By a strange madness the remnants of the royal party supported his competitor Péthion, the most rancorous of Jacobins, and were for the royal family but too fatally successful.
The royalist party, and certain members of the royal family who had taken refuge in frontier states, were already intriguing with the Austrian Government to march an army into France and restore absolutism, while the king, after an unsuccessful attempt to escape from France, was reduced to the humiliating necessity of declaring war against Austria and her allies. Three armies of 50,000 each were levied. Of one of these the command was given to La Fayette. But it was with sad misgivings that the general left his country retreat to take this command. As he passed through Paris the president of the Assembly said to him in full session that "the nation would oppose to its enemies the constitution and La Fayette"; but what was to be expected of a war conducted by a king in secret league with the nation's enemies, or of a legislature conspiring to destroy the king and constitution to which they had only just sworn allegiance and support? La Fayette's loyalty to his king, to his constitution, and to his country seemed only to strengthen as the situation grew desperate. Four days before the outrages which occurred at the Tuileries on the 16th June 1792 he publicly denounced the Jacobin Club, and called upon the Assembly to suppress them. Henceforth he became the special object of Jacobin rage. On the 8th of August a motion was made to have him arrested, and tried as an enemy of his country. Though the motion was defeated by 446 votes against 224, scarce two days elapsed before tho palace was stormed, and the king and queen were sent to the prison from which they passed to the scaffold.
With the destruction of the constitution, the monarchy, and the Government, La Fayette's occupation as the priest of liberty, humanity, and order was gone. He would have marched to Paris to defend the constitution, but his troops were too generally infected with the sentiments which triumphed in the disorders of the 10th of August. He was compelled to take refuge in the neutral territory of Liége, where he was taken by the Austrians and held as a prisoner of state for five years, first in Prussian and after wards in Austrian prisons, in spite of the intercession of America and the pleadings of his wife. Napoleon, however, who called him a "noodle," stipulated for his release, 19th September 1797. He was not allowed to return to France by the Directory; when he did, it was to vote against the life consulate of Napoleon, as he, later on, voted against the imperial title. Many years of his life were then spent in retirement at the castle of La Grange. He was called from it to become vice-president of the Assembly, under Louis XVIII., before the battle of Waterloo. He afterwards sat for Meaux and became a frequent speaker upon foreign politics and military economy. But his early influence was gone, except in America, to which he returned in 1824, to be overwhelmed with popular applause and to be voted the sum of $200,000 and a township of land. 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 political refugees. He died at Paris, May 20, 1834.
Few men have owed more of their success and usefulness in the world 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 marvellous vicissitudes of his singu larly 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 even to rashness; his life was one of constant personal peril, and yet he never shrank from any danger or responsibility if he saw the way open to spare life or suffering, to protect the defenceless, to sustain the law and preserve order.
See Mémoires historiques et pièces authentiques sur M. de La Fayette pour servir a l'histoire des revolutions, Paris, l'an second de la liberté française; La Fayette et la Révolution de 1830, histoire des choses et des hommes de Juillet, by B. Sarrans, Paris, 1832; Mémoires et Manuscrits de La Fayette, published by his family, 6 vols., Paris, 1837-38; and numerous eulogies and monographs in French and English. (J. BI.)
LA FLÈCHE, chief town of an arrondissement in the
department of Sarthe, France, is situated on the right
bank of the Loir, about 24 miles south-west of Le Mans.
The chief buildings are the military academy (Prytanée),
originally a college founded in 1607 by Henry IV., the
church of St Thomas, the prison, and the hospital. Near the
bridge are the ruins of an ancient castle. La Flèche carries
on manufactures of cloth, gloves, hosiery, candles, and glue,
besides wax bleaching, tanning, and paper-making. It has
the usual country trade, managed mainly by means of
fairs. The population in 1876 was 7468.
LA FONTAINE, Jean de (1621-1695), one of the most popular and original of French poets, was born at Château Thierry in Champagne, probably on the 8th of July 1621, and died at Paris on the 13th of April 1695. His father was Charles de La Fontaine, "maître des eaux et forêts" – a kind of deputy-ranger of the duchy of Château Thierry; his mother was Françoise Pidoux. On both sides his family was of the highest provincial middle class, but was not noble; his father was also fairly wealthy. Jean, who was the eldest child of his parents, was educated
