A Few of My Favorite Things... The Hero of Two Worlds
This past Monday, September 6th, was the anniversary of the birth of the Marquis de Lafayette. I would be remiss to let this day pass without acknowledging the legacy and legend of this august man. Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, Marquis de La Fayette, is one of my all time favorite historical personages. To his friends and family, he was known as Gilbert. To the world, he was and is still known as the Hero of Two Worlds.
During his life, what he leant his deeds and words to made him worthy of such a title.
Living in such a time as we do, it is almost impossible to comprehend the ingenuity and fearlessness such a man as he required to make the stands which he did, particularly at such a young age.
You see, when Lafayette was only seventeen years of age, he came into contact with world altering principles. Today these principles are so common place, they are taken for granted much of the time, particularly in the country of their original birth. However, in 1775, such ideas as the equality of mankind and the rights of individuals to rule themselves and have a say in how and by whom they are governed were truly revolutionary.
It was at a dinner in Metz, where Lafayette was serving with his militia, where he first heard about the upstart colonists across the sea in America. And who should he hear this news from but the brother of the English king himself, the Duke of Gloucester. And while the Duke certainly took every opportunity to deride and ridicule those traitorous rebels, Gilbert was instantly fixated. He spoke of this conversation in his memoirs, saying,
“My heart was enlisted and I thought only of joining my colors to those of the revolutionaries.”
Of course, there were innumerable obstacles to this youthful, passionate desire, chief amongst them being the open displeasure his political leanings conjured in his father-in-law, the Duc d’Ayen, commander of the king’s guards. Lafayette’s father-in-law held an incomprehensible amount of sway in the arena of French politics. One might even go so far as to say that he had the ear of the king. Therefore, if he disapproved of Lafayette’s desire to throw his lot in with the Americans, then it was a very educated deduction that the king would as well. In fact, he was forbidden to join the revolutionaries in America.
But the knell of Freedom and Liberty had sounded across the sea. Such noble ideals lured him with the magnetic draw of a siren’s song; Lafayette was as a man possessed. He surreptitiously absconded from France to American , risking the wrath of his Sovereign (which amounted to the potential of having not only his liberty but his property and all world possessions taken from him as well as the imprisonment of his family) and the ostracization of his wife’s father. Once on American soil, however, he distinguished himself not only as a soldier and advocate for the Patriots that fought the British, but also as a tireless champion for the cause of Liberty.
He risked much. At the start, it was his reputation within his family and country, but as the Revolution progressed, his life and personal fortune were staked more than once. Yet, the cause of liberty had become too dear to him to consider abandoning her.
Furthermore, in the unquenchable quest to see a nation formed that championed the unalienable rights of each individual, Lafayette found himself in the ranks of such personages as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and many others. The bond that formed between Washington and himself was so intimate, history records it as familial, with Washington finding a paternal place within Lafayette’s heart. Such a pairing was providential as Washington never had a son of his own and Lafayette’s own father had died when he was two. In fact, when Lafayette was wounded at the Battle of Brandywine (his first battle), Washington sent his personal physician to attend him with orders:
“Treat him as if he were my son.”
Returning to France to beseech his king to lend his support to the American revolutionaries, Lafayette furthered the cause of freedom. Were it not for his persuasive words, one wonders whether the French would have backed the Americans. Thankfully, they did and freedom from the British was achieved.
While that freedom was imperfect, Lafayette knew that the foundations of the United States were laid that would ultimately allow for a ‘more perfect union.’ (I have always appreciated that phrase within the preamble of our Constitution because it leaves much open for a nation to grow more and more into the principles upon which it was born.)
When Lafayette returned to France, it was as a hero. A champion of Liberty. A man of the people. For a nation that had such disparity between aristocrat and peasant, this was no small feat. Peasants worshipped him. Aristocrats entrenched in the system that upheld the Divine Right of Kings, feared and loathed him. Yet, there were those who found kinship with the ideals for which he stood.
Not only will you read about Madame de Lafayette in this post, but also about Voltaire. The book recommendations here are all excellent and will give you a good taste of what life was like at this time in history.
Men who had suffered for spouting like minded ideals in earlier ages, such as Voltaire, revered and respected Lafayette and his family. In fact, Voltaire even knelt before Madame de Lafayette in veneration for the strides she and her husband made toward the freedoms he had spent his life’s work questing after. (You can read more about Madame de Lafayette and her contribution to the cause of Liberty in my post Women of Influence: The French Edition.)
Once Lafayette had returned to French shores, the desire to see his own homeland embody the principles he had fought for grew. He composed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens and presented them to the king. This step, along with the calling of the National Assembly to invoke a Constitutional Monarchy, paved the way for the French Revolution in 1789.
Too often the horrors of the Reign of Terror overarch the actual Revolution. People consider the two events interchangeable, but they are not. The Revolution, of which Lafayette and his family honorably took part, set the stage for ‘a more perfect union’ with the adoption of a constitution and the Declarations of the Rights of Man and Citizens.
Lafayette and his wife could almost be accused of being naive. They believed that France could achieve the same sort of freedom that America had. Yet, as in any age, while Lafayette and his wife stood for the ideals of freedom, there were those who opposed them virulently.
As with any political change, there are those who wished to seize power for themselves. In 1789, two factions cropped up that put French liberty in peril- the Jacobins and the Duke d’Orleans. The Jacobins were fascist in their approach and bloodthirsty in their desire to see any elements of the aristocracy and the church expunged from society. The Duke d’Orleans simply wanted his chance to be king. Ultimately neither faction was successfully.
And while Lafayette and his nuclear family did escape Madame Guillotine, many of their loved ones and family met their fate at her cold blade. Furthermore, the Lafayette family did suffer. They were imprisoned for years and denied basic human dignities. As a result of their imprisonment, Madame de Lafayette never again recovered her health and ultimately died at an early age due to those health complications.
Lafayette remained tireless in his desire to see his homeland free. So much transpired during his lifetime. France was a monarchy, a constitutional monarchy, a republic, and a dictatorship. At the time of his death, Napoleon ruled France. He did not see his desire fulfilled within his own lifetime.
Yet, the seeds he planted did not return void. France ultimately embraced the same freedom championed in America to form a republic. Oddly enough, though he had been dead for nearly a century, it was Lafayette and the noble ideals he stood for that helped the people of France withstand the fascism of Vichy and the totalitarianism of the Nazis during World War II. In fact, the small village of Chavaniac, where Lafayette’s chateau is located, was the epicenter of the French Resistance during World War II; according to the account of Charles Boissier, a French Resistance fighter, said that the entire village had pledged to oppose the Nazis. I believe it is because the very soil of Chavaniac held the seeds of freedom that Lafayette planted and when the feet of oppressors stepped upon it, it could not tolerate it.
That last part is particularly inspiring to me because when an ideal is birthed in humility and nobility, when it possesses ultimate Truth, its power and potency withstands the onslaught of the forces of evil. Certainly, as with our own Founding Fathers, the Marquis de Lafayette was not the Messiah. He possessed the foibles of every other man and woman. Yet, the Godlike spirit within him yearned for the fruition of a more perfect union where each person possessed personal liberty, where their individuality was honored and protected from the despotism of tyranny that all too often accompanies the formations of governments. This is why he’s known as the Hero of Two Worlds- while he existed within the Old, he embraced the New and desired nothing more than the melding of the principles of the New to improve the Old.
The Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality he first encountered in the Declaration of Independence, has trickled down to become incorporated into many of the declarations and codes adopted throughout the world. We see the Declaration of Independence’s immediate influence in Lafayette’s own Declarations of the Rights of Man and Citizens. But, those ideals are echoed again in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, The Nuremberg Code, and innumerable documents in nations throughout the world. (You can read more about the individual and ongoing impact of the Declaration of Independence on the world in this interactive presentation from Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello.)
“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the creator with certain inalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. ”
With 32 sentences painstakingly rendered on parchment, our Founding Fathers lit the spark that kindled the flame of Freedom. It burned brightly within the breast of Lafayette; he lived his life to ensure its conflagration spread throughout his country.
This flame set the world on fire. And it cannot be quenched. For Freedom is an intrinsic desire within mankind. It will always be challenged and attacked by those who seek personal money, power, and influence, but it is endowed from our Creator, indelibly embedded within each human, and; therefore, it cannot be defeated.
“The happiness of America is intimately connected with the happiness of all mankind; she is destined to become the safe and venerable asylum of virtue, of honesty, of tolerance, and quality and of peaceful liberty.”
