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Ray Notgrass: He was 19 years old when he embarked on a great adventure, something he had dreamed about. He played an important role in a revolution. Then he returned home and served his country for decades, although he spent five years in prison. On today’s Exploring History podcast, we’ll look at the life of the Marquis de Lafayette.
Titus Anderson: [music in background] Welcome to Exploring History with Ray Notgrass, a production of Notgrass History.
Ray Notgrass: I’m Ray Notgrass. Thank you for listening, and thank you for coming back to the Exploring History podcast after several weeks of silence. I had surgery in early April, and it’s taken a while for me to get back into my rhythm of producing podcasts. I am excited to be back behind the microphone.
Next year, 2026, is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the founding of our country. Over the next year, I plan to use this podcast to celebrate the founding of America. Now is a time to renew and strengthen our love for our country and our appreciation for the great sacrifices that people made to bring this country into existence.
What most people know about the Marquis de Lafayette is that he was an aide to General George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. What I hope to show in this podcast is that Lafayette lived an entire lifetime of service, often at great sacrifice to himself.
On September 6, 1757, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de la Fayette was born into a wealthy family in France. His family called him Gilbert. His father was the Marquis de Lafayette at the time, a member of the French nobility. When Gilbert was two years old, British forces killed his father in a battle in the Seven Years’ War, known in America as the French and Indian War. The death of his father meant that when Gilbert reached maturity, he would become the next Marquis de Lafayette.
When Gilbert was 13, his mother died of an illness, leaving young Gilbert an orphan. Another wealthy family gave him a home. Gilbert grew up in a life of privilege, but he longed for a career that would bring him military glory, continuing the service his father had rendered to their country. However, the French military did not accept him into its ranks when he was a teenager.
As the conflict between Great Britain and its American colonies grew more heated in 1775 and 1776, a movement arose in France to help the American colonies. This was not because the French were defenders of liberty and believed in the principles of the Declaration of Independence. It was because Great Britain was the mortal enemy of France, and the French would do anything to embarrass and defeat the British. The French could not offer help to the Americans publicly or officially as the war began, because that would be taken as an act of war. So in 1777 Lafayette and a few other men sailed to America on their own. It was not difficult for them to find passage because Lafayette simply purchased the ship they sailed on. They landed in Charleston, South Carolina, and made their way overland to Philadelphia. At the time Lafayette was all of 19 years old.
Lafayette presented himself to George Washington, the commander of the Continental Army. Washington had seen other French glory seekers, but there was something different in this teenager. Lafayette could speak English. He had a clear-eyed view of what he wanted to do with his life. He was mannerly and respectful. Washington invited Lafayette to be part of his (quote) “family.” Washington meant part of his military family, but Lafayette took him to mean his personal family and acted as such.
Lafayette was in fact a good guy, positive and likeable. He WAS different from French soldiers of fortune. At the Battle of Brandywine Creek, Lafayette was wounded, shot in the leg, but remained on the field of battle. Washington told his personal physician to “treat him as if he were my son.” Washington promoted Lafayette to the rank of major general–yes, at age 19.
In the early days of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Army suffered setback after setback. America’s victory over the British at the Battle of Saratoga was the turnaround, and the Americans’ fortunes improved after that.
In January of 1779 Lafayette returned to France to drum up support for the American cause. Lafayette was actually in legal limbo at the time. He was a fugitive from the king’s justice because of his help to the Americans. His presence in America made it appear that France was a combatant before the French actually entered the war to help the United States. But now France WAS at war, so the king let him off. Lafayette was a popular hero when he returned, and he became an officer in the French army.
Lafayette had personal ups and downs during this time period. When he had come to America in 1777, he had left behind his young wife and a small child. His wife was also expecting another child. While he was gone, one of his children died. A year after he returned to France, his wife gave birth to another child on December 24, 1779, a son whom they named Georges Washington Lafayette, in honor of George Washington.
Lafayette was changing in his philosophy of government. He came to dislike the aristocracy and autocratic royal rule. The American way of democracy and freedom appealed to him as the better way to run a country.
Lafayette returned to the United States in 1780 along with 6,000 troops and several ships, and he rejoined Washington’s military family. He was an aide to Washington but also had a temporary field command, which he loved. He was present at Yorktown and had a hand in the defeat and surrender of the British General Lord Cornwallis there. He was 24 years old when the war effectively ended in the fall of 1781.
Lafayette returned to France universally admired and celebrated. He advised the American peace negotiators as they were hammering out the Treaty of Paris with Great Britain. After the war, Lafayette advocated greater trade between France and the U.S. He was also a strong advocate for the abolition of slavery. He returned to the U.S. in 1784 so he could see his adopted country when it was not in a state of war. He landed in New York City and was appropriately celebrated there before traveling south to visit other places. He visited Washington at Mount Vernon and was granted American citizenship. He also became friends with another founding father, James Madison. But despite his close friendship with Washington, he would never see George Washington again after this trip.
After he returned to France, Lafayette purchased an estate in the overseas French colony of Guyana. He wanted to run the plantation as an experiment. He freed the enslaved persons on the plantation (who numbered about 70) and established a plan to educate their children.
Lafayette was an advocate of liberty. That was his chief cause. This meant, among other things, civic freedoms for citizens and the abolition of slavery. Through his contacts in Great Britain and the United States, Lafayette was the first person to be involved in emancipation movements in 3 countries: France, Britain, and the United States.
After years of turmoil and increasingly strident rhetoric in France, the French Revolution boiled over in 1789. Lafayette had been a prominent voice urging reforms in government, but he was a moderate in the French Revolution. He supported the monarchy even though he believed that reforms were necessary. As a result of his position, Lafayette had friends and enemies on both sides of the bitter debate. But there were actually more than two sides. Monarchists wanted to maintain the Bourbon dynasty, but some who supported the king were willing to consider changes. Radicals wanted to see more thorough reforms, and the extreme radicals wanted to do away with the monarchy altogether. After the storming of the Bastille in July of 1789, Lafayette agreed to take command of the National Guard in Paris to try to keep order in the city. Some suspected that Lafayette was going to assume command of the French government, but that was never in his plans. Lafayette stood for liberty, but he also protected King Louis the Sixteenth and Queen Marie Antoinette. When the king and queen tried to escape from Paris (they were captured), many people blamed Lafayette for this breach of security. To illustrate the chaos of the times, some members of the nobility wanted to flee the country, while radicals wanted to spread the revolution to other countries.
During the upheavals and chaos of the French Revolution, Lafayette was at times a member of the legislature and at times was out of favor with the powers that ruled. He was eventually captured by monarchists and spent five years (1791-1796) in prisons in Germany and Austria. These were countries whose rulers were friendly to the French monarchy. Lafayette’s wife and other family members were arrested and put in prison for a time also. Louis the Sixteenth died under the guillotine in January of 1793. Marie Antoinette was executed in October of the same year. Lafayette hoped to go to Great Britain and then to America, but he was not able to do so. Meanwhile, the French government seized his property.
During Napoleon’s rise to power in France, he arranged for Lafayette to be released from prison. Though he had once been extremely wealthy, now Lafayette was homeless and penniless. He lived for a time in Denmark. He later returned to France and lived outside of Paris, but he did not become involved in political controversies, for a while anyway. For a time, the revolutionary government of France considered Lafayette to be an enemy because he had protected the king and queen. Lafayette lost his citizenship, but after his release from prison, he was able to regain that status.
When Napoleon seized control as emperor, Lafayette opposed that move, but he took no action to remove him from power. Lafayette always loved France. After the Louisiana Purchase, President Thomas Jefferson invited Lafayette to become governor of Louisiana Territory. Lafayette declined because he wanted to stay in France.
Napoleon was fighting wars constantly, and the French people got tired of his wars and his dictatorial rule and wanted to bring back the monarchy. After the French army’s defeat in Russia in 1812, Napoleon abdicated in 1814 and went into exile. Louis the Eighteenth, the late king’s brother, came to the throne. But the French people were suspicious of the family of Louis the Eighteenth, and they started longing for the days of Napoleon. Napoleon returned from exile in 1815, entered Paris, and was exalted as the ruler of France. He then took an army to meet the British General the Duke of Wellington and the armies of Europe at Waterloo. After his defeat there, Napoleon again abdicated. Lafayette was part of the delegation that went to Napoleon to accept his resignation.
After the experience with Napoleon, governing officials excluded Lafayette from the French government. Lafayette mostly stayed at home and welcomed his friends. He wanted to downplay his noble connections, so he preferred to be called General Lafayette, not the Marquis de Lafayette.
Lafayette lost an election for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies in 1817 but won an election to that body in 1818. The pattern of unsettled politics in France continued. Lafayette became part of a plot to install a liberal government in 1821, but the plot failed. He was defeated for reelection in 1824.
Later that year, U.S. President James Monroe invited Lafayette to travel to the United States in the coming months to visit battlefields and other places where he had served. Other prominent Americans echoed Monroe’s invitation and urged Lafayette to visit. The U.S. Congress issued him an official invitation.
When Lafayette returned to the U.S. in 1824 for a grand tour, it was during the period called the Era of Good Feelings. Almost 50 years had passed since the American Revolution. All across the U.S., Americans were honoring as heroes those who had fought in the revolution. Lafayette was the last surviving major general of the Continental Army. He felt as though France wanted to be rid of him while the United States wanted him to be there.
So Lafayette arrived in New York City in August of 1824. He had planned a four-month visit, but he received so many invitations to banquets and other activities in his honor that he wound up staying over a year! In New York City, he was the honoree of a gala parade and banquet featuring a huge sign that read “The Nation’s Guest.” In Boston he laid the cornerstone for a monument on Bunker Hill. He collected soil from the Bunker Hill battlefield to take home with him so he could be buried under it. He visited with old friends Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, all of them knowing that this would be the last time they would see each other. He visited Fayetteville, North Carolina, the first place in the United States to be named for him. Hundreds more cities, counties, parks, streets, and squares would follow. He visited Alexander Hamilton’s widow. Hamilton and Lafayette had become good friends during the Revolutionary War. He visited Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother, who had been living in the U.S. for some time.
Lafayette visited Mount Vernon and there saw the key to the Bastille that Lafayette had sent to Washington after the start of the French Revolution. Lafayette was saddened at the practice of slavery that he saw continuing in the U.S., and he was also saddened at the policy of the removal of native nations to the west, a policy which American officials were just starting to formulate. He visited John Quincy Adams, who at the time was secretary of state and a candidate in the presidential election of 1824. Lafayette visited William Clark, who had been part of the Lewis and Clark expedition. He visited Kaskaskia, Illinois, which had been capital of the Illinois territory and was a center of French culture in the U.S. He visited Niagara Falls and took a ride on the as-yet-uncompleted Erie Canal. He visited Andrew Jackson at the Hermitage near Nashville in early 1825. At the time, Jackson was still bitter from what he considered his unfair loss in the presidential election of the previous year. Jackson showed Lafayette a pair of pistols that Lafayette had given to George Washington and that the Washington family had later given to Jackson. When Lafayette left the U.S. in August of 1825, he had visited all 24 states that were in the Union at the time.
Back in France, political turmoil continued. Lafayette won election to the Chamber of Deputies in 1827. The king, Charles the Tenth, abdicated in 1830 during what was called the July Revolution. Charles was the last member of the Bourbon dynasty to rule France. Lafayette was popular again with many Frenchmen during this period of transition and uncertainty. The new king, Louis Philippe, asked Lafayette to be in charge of the National Guard and the regular army in Paris. Lafayette guided the city through yet another political crisis, then resigned under pressure. He still served in the Chamber of Deputies, though, so he still had a hand in the ongoing political struggles of the nation. His household was always the unofficial welcoming place for any Americans who were visiting Paris.
by Louise-Adéone Drölling (French, 1830)
by Louise-Adéone Drölling (French, 1830)
Lafayette died on May 20, 1834, at the age of 76. Two hundred thousand people lined the streets of Paris for the funeral procession. He was laid to rest next to his wife, who had died in 1807 at the age of 48.
The American Friends of Lafayette organization is currently sponsoring a Lafayette 200 series of events across the 24 states that Lafayette visited in 1824 and 1825. They have planned these events in the order in which Lafayette visited places during his farewell tour. My wife Charlene and I enjoyed participating in the events at the Hermitage, the home of Andrew Jackson near Nashville, Tennessee. Her ancestor Timothy Demonbreun attended a banquet in Lafayette's honor during his visit to the area. Visit Lafayette200.org to see a list of events and to get more information.
General Gilbert de Lafayette rendered quite different service in the United States and in France. He helped America win its independence as a young soldier and as a close associate of George Washington. He had a great relationship with American soldiers. His reputation was unsullied in America for the rest of his life.
His service in France was more complicated. He spent considerable time both in and out of favor with the French people and with the changing French government. But he served for decades in various ways with an unwavering commitment to freedom that persevered despite changing circumstances. In the end, the French people recognized what he had accomplished for their country. That is why Lafayette earned the nickname Hero of Two Worlds.
I’m Ray Notgrass. Thanks for listening.
Titus Anderson: This has been Exploring History with Ray Notgrass, a production of Notgrass History. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcast app. And please leave a rating and review so that we can reach more people with our episodes. If you want to learn about new homeschool resources and opportunities from Notgrass History, you can sign up for our email newsletter at ExploringHistoryPodcast.com. This program was produced by me, Titus Anderson. Thanks for listening!
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