The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered

Through 250 years of relations between France and the United States, one name stands out to embody the link between the two republics, the Marquis de Lafayette. His heroics and leadership on American battlefields at Brandywine, Valley Forge, Monmouth, and Yorktown are well known in the United States, but his role in the French Revolution is less widely known by Americans.

As a man of the Enlightenment with an aristocratic background and having married into the Parisian nobility, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette had all the ingredients necessary to be a leader. While the French nobility’s privileged status diminished, including his own, Lafayette remained faithful to his ideals and committed to equality, leading the Parisian National Guard’s attempt to maintain order during the early days of the French Revolution. After a series of political and military failures, he fled into exile in fear of the Jacobins, who had taken power and begun the “Reign of Terror.” After France’s Revolution of 1789, Lafayette returned as an opponent to Napolean Bonaparte.

Lafayette never forgot his attachment to America, and Americans likewise did not forget what the young Frenchman had done for them in their hour of need. In 1824, he returned for a grand triumphal visit to tour the nation he helped establish. Back in France, he wasn’t done contributing to revolutions, later becoming a key player in the July Revolution of 1830, in which he helped oust an absolute monarch to be replaced by a more liberal one in Louis-Phillipe. Laura Auricchio’s book, The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered, accurately treads in the footsteps of Lafayette, from his early years in America to his place at the forefront of French politics. She shows just how much the revolution of two worlds can be embodied in the person of the Marquis de Lafayette.

Read an excerpt from Auricchio’s book about Lafayette marching troops to Versailles to protect King Louis XVI in 1789.

Excerpt

Excerpt

Lafayette knew none of this as he rode slowly toward Versailles to meet a fate that was uncertain at best. As Morris described events in his diary, Lafayette “marched by Compulsion, guarded by his own Troops who suspect and threaten him.” Yet this was the selfsame Lafayette who had managed to keep his head at Barren Hill as the redcoats bore down on his detachment from three sides, and now, in 1789, he still possessed the composure that had served him so well in 1778. With scores of lives in his hands—not only his own and his companions' but also the lives of the royal family—he did everything in his power to ensure a peaceful resolution. With the sound of drums and the flicker of torches heralding his approach, Lafayette halted the march at around eleven o'clock near the National Assembly's meeting hall in Versailles. There, he administered an oath to remind his troops of their allegiances; the men swore to honor “the nation, the law, and the king” before continuing on. While two officers were sent ahead to the château bearing assurances that Lafayette came to protect the king and not to oust him, a representative of the king appeared to inform Lafayette that Louis “saw his approach with pleasure” and “had just accepted his declaration of rights.” Happily, everyone was in agreement on one point: they wanted to see as little bloodshed as possible.

Auricchio, Laura. The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered. (New York, NY: Penguin Random House, 2014), pg. 206.