Hero of Two Worlds was an awesome biography of Lafayette. Mike Duncan writes like he talks on his podcast, and that is a very good thing. He tells the story of Lafayette's life like a novel, and it's very easy to read. I haven't read a biography in a while so this was nice to do. I really like to read the story of someone's long life and see the phases they go through.
Lafayette's early life was marred by horrible tragedies. His father was killed at the Battle of Minden in the Seven Years' War when Lafayette was just two years old. It was the latest in a long line of Lafayette men killed in battle, and left his mother pregnant. She gave birth, but Lafayette's sister died just a few months after birth. Being an only child meant that he would inherit all of his father's wealth. Moreover, to add to the tragedy and to his inheritance, Lafayette's mother died when he was twelve, leaving him an orphan. And because his mother's only brother died as well, Lafayette was left one of the richest orphans in the world. Now one of the richest people in the Kingdom of France, Lafayette had land generating 100,000 livres annually at a time when common laborers could expect to make only 1,000 livres in their entire lives.
Due to his massive wealth, Lafayette was the most eligible bachelor in France, and he attracted the attention of the Noailles family, a family richer than the royal family with five daughters to marry off. In February 1773, the Noailles moved Lafayette into their family home in Versailles, where he became acquainted with their second daughter, who they secretly planned to marry him to, and they raised him for some years there. In Paris, Lafayette attended lessons with Charles Philippe, comte D'Artois, the third of three princes, all of whom were to become kings of France. At the time, Lafayette was a social outcast, not very good at dancing or riding, and not a social butterfly either. But in April 1774, he married Adrienne Noailles when he was 16 and she was 14, both being young for the social convention at the time.
Adrienne's father obtained a military commission of Lafayette when he was 18, but it came at the wrong time. Just as he got his commission, the new king, Louis XVI, was abolishing the old familial armies and placing Lafayette in the reserves. Luckily for Lafayette, this was June of 1776, and in July, he met Silas Deane, an American emissary trying to drum up support in France for the nascent American Revolution. Lafayette obtained a commission as a major general, and in the final days of 1776, Lafayette changed his family motto from "determination is enough to overcome adversity" to "why not?" Because French authorities opposed his entry into the war (Louis XVI signed a proclamation singling him out), Lafayette left the country in secret aboard a ship for a two-month journey to Charleston, South Carolina.
Onboard the ship, Lafayette read military manuals and tried to learn English, and adapted quicker than the other French arrivals who went with him. Unlike them, Lafayette was more idealistic and willing to engage with Americans, using broken English to endear himself to them. Upon arriving in Philadelphia, Lafayette and the other Frenchmen who arrived were met with consternation, as no one had authorized Silas Deane to give out all these officers' commissions. But unlike the other officers who wanted lots of money to serve, Lafayette asked only to be a volunteer, without pay, and to serve directly under George Washington. The Continental Congress agreed, and gave him the (honorary) rank of major general. Lafayette and Washington would eventually have an incredibly close relationship, possibly because Washington had no children and Lafayette had no father. Additionally, Lafayette may have felt more drawn to Washington because Washington referred to all of his staff as his "family," and told Lafayette he would be his son. Apparently, Washington said this to everybody on staff, but it may have had an additional impact on Lafayette due to the language barrier and due to his being an orphan. Lafayette saw his first combat at the Battle of Brandywine Creek. At the battle, he proved his virtues by running towards the combat when he could have stayed back, being that he was only an honorary member of the army. Moreover, he helped direct troops on the front lines, and was shot through the calf, which was reported in newspapers shortly after.
Washington became Lafayette's idol and he thought the man could do no wrong, especially when Washington turned down multiple offers to become king or to stage a coup to put him in absolute power. At a low point in the war with the Continental Army camped at Valley Forge, when there was talk of removing Washington, Lafayette told Washington that he would resign his commission if that came to pass. Lafayette went back and forth between the colonies and France a few times. He returned first to France in January 1779, now hailed as a hero. He spent the year in France, and on Christmas of 1779 his wife gave birth to a son, who they named Georges Washington Lafayette. But he spent few days with his family, and planned his return to America, where he led troops at Yorktown, ending the American war for independence. He returned home, and by the time he reached the French age of legal majority at 25, he was bankrupting himself with massive spending, high-interest loans and IOUs.
Lafayette was becoming more and more of a true liberal by the end of 1782 and the beginning of 1783. He wrote to Washington in February of 1783 proposing that they purchase a small estate and free the slaves on it, educating them, and hopefully inspiring slavers across America and the West Indies to do the same. But where Lafayette was idealistic, Washington was not. He gave an answer that Lafayette would end up hearing a lot from Americans when he proposed the eventual abolition of slavery: that it would have to happen eventually, but that it wasn't the right time yet, although they commended Lafayette for feeling that way. It must have been very disappointing and disheartening for Lafayette, although at least in Washington's case, Lafayette would not assign his hero any blame. So in their letters, Washington said it would be better if they discussed it in person. Lafayette and Washington did meet again, but nothing came of it. Lafayette ended up buying his own estate in Cayenne, Guyana, in 1786, and wrote to Washington to tell him about his plan of gradual emancipation and education for seventy slaves of all ages. But he never freed those slaves. Since the plan was for gradual emancipation, education was still ongoing in 1792, when Lafayette's property was seized in the French Revolution. However, France freed all slaves in 1794, so they did eventually obtain their freedom.
When the French Revolution began and the National Assembly was convened, Lafayette when to Paris as a representative. Lafayette played no part in the Tennis Court Oath, but he was responsible for drafting large parts of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Shortly thereafter, the Paris electors proclaimed Lafayette the commander-general of the Paris militia, which would soon be renamed the National Guard. Most members of the National Guard did not earn salaries, and the majority had to provide their own weapons, uniforms, and equipment, making the membership lean towards the wealthier classes. Lafayette gave them cockades of red and blue, the colors of Paris, and then added White, the color of the Bourbon monarchy, creating what would eventually become the flag of France.
I'm not writing much at this point because I am tired, but it is interesting to note that Lafayette marched to stop the women of Paris from arresting King Louis XVI and his family and bringing them back from Versailles. He was initially successful, but when he fell asleep after twenty-four hours awake, they stormed the gates and eventually took the royal family. But problems emerged with Lafayette both being a democratically elected member of the assembly as well as the commander of the National Guard. He had become the most powerful man in Paris in 1790, a position he was uncomfortable with. But by the end of 1790 and surely by the summer of 1791, he sided more with moderates than with the radicals, who were rising. The situation was made worse when the royal family snuck out of Paris on his watch in late June, although they were captured again. But then, on July 17, 1791, when dealing with massive crowds of protestors on the Champ de Mars, the National Guard fired into the crowd, killing protestors, and ending Lafayette's popularity.
It was then that France was turning truly radical and Lafayette left the country in 1792, expecting to be able to freely send for his family to go live abroad. However, he was jailed by Austria, and suffered poor conditions, little food, and even periods of solitary confinement. At some points he wasn't allowed anything to write with, but used a toothpick and ash to write notes that would be smuggled out. Americans wanted to help him, but our diplomats couldn't risk involving our then-weak nation in a European war so soon. So instead, diplomats were able to convince the French government to delay in executing Lafayette's family (which saved them), and George Washington hosted Lafayette's son, Georges Washington Lafayette, for two years. Washington also sent money in his personal capacity for Lafayette's family to live on. In 1794, Congress passed an allocation to grant funds to Lafayette to support himself in Austrian prison. Lafayette's freedom was only obtained when Napoleon Bonaparte won great victories against Austria in 1797, bargaining for the release of all French prisoners of war and prisoners of state.
Originally forbidden to return to France, Lafayette and his family lived with the other families of the prisoners of Olmutz in Holstein, on the border of Germany and Denmark. But they were allowed back into France in 1800, but on the condition that Lafayette stay out of politics. And that he did. For the rest of the reign of Napoleon, Lafayette privately opposed the Emperor, but publicly avoided comment. They had some correspondence initially, but that stopped once the extent of their disagreement on the cause of liberty was revealed.
Lafayette made his triumphant return to America in 1824, which ended up being an 18-month tour, in which he christened a monument on Bunker Hill marking the fiftieth anniversary of that battle and was treated as a beloved celebrity. Lafayette even attended a session of the House of Representatives during the acrimonious "corrupt bargain" that had Henry Clay hand a contested election to John Quincy Adams. It was the end of the Era of Good Feelings, but Lafayette's visit reminded Americans of our (imagined) unity during the Revolution.
Throughout the 1820s and 1830s, Lafayette may have had some hand in supporting more liberalization, and was accused without evidence of supporting the revolutionary Carbonari in their attempts at revolutions in the 1820s. Returning to politics at the end of his life, Lafayette opposed the dictatorial policies of Charles X and Louis Philippe I. He remained a revolutionary liberal for his entire life, until he died in 1834 at 76 years old.
Miscellaneous Facts:
- The French city of Auvergne derives its name from Arverni, the ancient Gallic tribe of Vercingetorix, who led the final Gallic resistance to Roman conquest.
- Lafayette owned a slave in Philadelphia, used to run errands. But there are no records made of the boy after September 1777.
- In March of 1784, when his lands in Auvergne were suffering from a poor harvest and famine, Lafayette's financial advisors counselled him to sell stockpiles of grain to fix his poor financial situation. But Lafayette responded that it was precisely the time to be giving grain away, and made sure his people were fed.
- By the mid-1780s, 50% of the French monarchy's annual expenses were interest payments on debt to finance France's participation in the American War of Independence.
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