LAFAYETTE, Marie-Jean-Gilbert Motier, Marquis of, a general and politician who occupied a prominent place in three great revolutions, and, without possessing great abilities, acquired fame in both hemispheres. He was born at the castle of Chavagnac in Auvergne, on the 6th of September, 1757, shortly after the death of his father, who fell in the battle of Minden. After completing his education at the college of Plessis in Paris, Lafayette was married at the early age of sixteen to a daughter of the duke of Ayen. After serving for a short time in the army, he was startled by the news of the revolt of the British colonies in America, and was one of the foremost of those French nobles and officers whom hatred of England or desire for active service, or love of liberty, impelled to offer their swords to General Washington. Lafayette, in spite of the king's prohibition, the opposition of his family, and the grief of his wife, fitted out a ship at his own expense in 1777, and sailed for America. He was only twenty years old, but, with the touch of chivalry that always characterized him, he offered his services to the American assembly, then at Philadelphia, on two conditions, namely, that he should be allowed to serve as a volunteer, and that he should defray all his own expenses. Washington was captivated by the honest enthusiasm of his new ally. At the battle of Brandywine Lafayette received a wound which disabled him for six weeks. In the affair at Gloucester he commanded the Virginian division. An expedition to Canada which he undertook in 1778 failed. He was in the retreat at Barren-hill, the battle of Monmouth, and the re-embarkation of Sullivan's troops after the failure of the attack on Rhode Island. He considered himself personally affronted by Lord Cornwallis, to whom he sent a challenge, which was declined. When war broke out between England and France, Lafayette obtained permission from congress to return home, where he arrived in February, 1779. A lettre-de-cachet was still in force against him, but he received merely a formal reprimand as a prelude to court smiles and popular favour. This "Scipio Americanus" was fêted on every side, but succeeded ill in obtaining assistance for his transatlantic friends. For a time he hoped to make some profit for them out of an expedition which, under the command of Paul Jones, was to ravage the English coasts; but in vain. At length four thousand men, under Count Rochambeau, were sent out to America by the French government. Lafayette, preceding them, reached the United States in 1780, and was received with demonstrations of gratitude. Being charged with the defence of Virginia, he showed much skill in baffling Arnold and Cornwallis, and contributed to that series of successes which ended in the capitulation of Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. Returning to Europe shortly afterwards, he continued to labour for the cause he had so warmly espoused, and was engaged in completing an expedition from Spain against the English possessions, when the peace with America was signed on September 3, 1783. Lafayette's third visit to the United States (1784-85), was in the character of a liberator enjoying the triumphant conclusion of the first revolution in which he had taken part. A more terrible experience of the nature of revolutions awaited him at home. His American republicanism had taught him to say that "a king was at least a useless being." He became an ardent supporter of the reforms for which all France began to cry out, and was one of those who charged Calonne with peculation. In the assembly of the notables, convened in 1787, Lafayette sat in the committee over which the Count d'Artois, afterwards Charles X., presided. In a speech on the deficit which had brought the government to the verge of ruin, the young marquis expressed a wish that a national assembly should be convoked. The words sounded ominously. "What, sir! do you ask for the convocation of the states-general?" said the Count d'Artois. "Yes, prince, and even better than that," was the reply. "Write it down," said the prince to the secretaries. It was written down, and proved to be the commencement of a new history of France. At the states-general, in 1789, Lafayette was the deputy of the nobility of Auvergne, having failed in an endeavour to become a representative of the third estate. Among other trophies of Lafayette's American career was his bust, presented by Virginia to the city of Paris, and preserved in the Town-hall. On the 10th of July, after the fall of the Bastile, when the assembled citizens were organizing themselves into a military body, Moreau de Saint-Mery, presiding in the Town-hall, pointed to the bust of Lafayette, who was elected by acclamation general of the national guard. His office, however, gave him little power to restrain the madness of the people. Almost before his eyes the obnoxious Foulon and Berthier were hanged at the lantern. In dismay at this unexpected development of revolution, Lafayette resigned, and was with difficulty induced to resume his command. For the part of a French Cromwell, to which his position seemed to call him, he was unfitted by his chivalric sense of honour and his honest adherence to a preconceived theory of constitutional liberty. As he went about upon his white charger, vainly haranguing the sansculottes to preserve order, he earned the sobriquet of Cromwell-Grandison. For a brief period, however, he and his patrols kept down the mob in Paris. On the 5th of October "Paris was marching upon Versailles," to bring the king to the Tuileries; and Lafayette, after endeavouring by vain eloquence to stem the torrent, was compelled by his mutinous grenadiers to march too. His presence at Versailles was so far reassuring to the terrified court, that he suddenly recovered royal favour, and was hailed as a saviour. In the fearful attack on the palace on the 6th of October, he mastered the mob and saved the lives of the king and his family. Drawing the queen to a balcony, he kissed her hand in public; then embracing one of the royal bodyguard, he placed his own tricolor cockade in the hat of the latter, and thus appeased the mob. He escorted the royal family to Paris, and remained faithful to the king as a constitutional monarch until the flight of Louis to Varennes. As he had staked his head on the stay of the king in the capital, the royal flight was fatal to Lafayette's popularity, and Danton demanded in the jacobin club, "the person of the king, or the head of the commandant-general." This was in June, 1791. A few months earlier he had seemed to be the leader in a constitutional revolution. In his place in the assembly he had voted for the king's veto, the election of an upper and a lower house, and the abolition of titles of nobility. From marquis of Lafayette he became plain Sieur Motier. On the day of the federation, July, 1790, he had stood on the "altar of the country," erected in the Champ de Mars, and amid the acclamations of three hundred thousand people had sworn for himself and for armed France, fidelity to the king, the law, and the nation. On the 17th of July, 1791, exactly one year and three days after the federation, and on the very scene of its solemnization, the commandant-general was called upon to disperse an immense concourse of people gathered for the purpose of signing a petition for the deposition of the king. He declared martial law, and drove away the crowd by volleys of musketry. This was a fatal blow to his popularity. In October following, the work of the constituent assembly being completed, Lafayette resigned the command of the national guards and retired to his seat in Auvergne. He was shortly afterwards appointed to command the army of defence stationed on the northern frontier. The proceedings at Paris were meanwhile extremely distasteful to him. In June, 1792, in a letter dated Maubeuge, he remonstrated with the national assembly for permitting the violence of the clubs, and on the 28th of the same month he appeared before the assembly to reiterate his demands for a change, and to find that his influence and power were gone. He made proposals to the king which were coldly declined. He was denounced by Robespierre at the jacobin club, and accused by Collot d'Herbois before the assembly, but still found a majority in his favour. After the 10th of August he attempted a federation of certain departments in opposition to the centralizing authority of Paris; but failing, he was cashiered, and anticipated a decree of accusation by flight across the frontier. Taken by the Austrians, he was treated with rigour, and had to endure a captivity of five years in various German prisons. He contemptuously refused every invitation to serve in armies opposed to his countrymen. An attempt at escape served but to increase the severity of his jailers. His wife and daughters fled from the prisons of Robespierre to share the captivity of Olmutz. For a while the prisoners of Olmutz were an object of interest throughout Europe, and their claim to be set free was fruitlessly advocated in the English parliament by Fox, Sheridan, and other distinguished whigs. What English oratory could not procure, the authority of Napoleon at Campo-Formio easily obtained. After a detention of five years, Lafayette was set at liberty on the 19th September, 1797, but he was not permitted to re-enter France until Napoleon became first consul. The latter granted him the allowance due to his military rank, but never employed him. His steady adherence to principles of liberty made Napoleon consider him a simpleton. The Restoration, with its constitu-
