It is disheartening, at the very least, to witness our current apologist-in-chief tour the world castigating the United States for the misdeeds of the nation he was tragically elected to lead, the formerly great United States of America. It is somewhat comforting to remember those who passionately loved this nation, and demonstrated this devotion as only great men can do.
One of the most notable of these was Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, who was born in 1757 in Auvergne, France, and was destined to become one of the great patriots of the American Revolution. History knows him as the Marquis de Lafayette.
Orphaned at a very young age, he inherited a noble heritage and a great deal of money. Following in his father’s example, and that of his ancestors before him, the young French nobleman became a soldier and attained the rank of captain in the French cavalry at the age of 16. The Marquis de Lafayette was impassioned by the ideas, and the ideals, of the revolutionary activity occurring in the American colonies. It was actually said in the late 18th Century, on both the American and European continents, that the American Revolution was far more fashionable in the cafes of Paris than it was in the taverns of the future United States of America.
A relation of King Louis XVI, and a nephew-in-law to the French Ambassador to the Court of St. James, (the Duke de Noailles), the young French nobleman was ordered to curtail his obvious enthusiasm for the American Revolutionary activities. Instead, though he was already married to a devoted Adrienne de Noailles, a father with another child on the way, at the age of 19, Lafayette fled his home, (despite the royal disapproval of his actions), and escaped to Bordeaux. It was at this seaside city that he, again contrary to royal orders, purchased an oceangoing ship and set off across the Atlantic Ocean in order to join in the fight for American independence.
This extraordinary young man did not yet speak any English, nor did he personally know anyone in the American colonies. What the Marquis de Lafayette did have, and had in spades, was a belief in the first fight of its kind in history to achieve freedom and the rights of man. These intellectual ideas had actually started in Paris, and were being realized for the first time in America.
Another factor of this amazing young man’s actions was also the French visceral reaction to ‘le perfide Albion,’ which is how France had referred to their bitterest rival, England, for centuries, and which was shared by every Frenchman.
Back to the extraordinary histoire of Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier:
The Marquis landed in South Carolina in June, 1777, commandeered some horses (he was an excellent horseman), and rode to where he thought he could locate General George Washington. He felt that personal contact was necessary, and he was proven to be entirely right. The Marquis persevered until the two finally met in Philadelphia in July of that year, and it was to be the beginning of a life-long relationship of extraordinary closeness. He eventually became a Major-General of the American Revolution, at the age of 22, and served with great distinction during his entire American military career.
He was also instrumental in convincing his distant cousin, the French king, who eventually forgave his relation’s transgressions, to come to the aid of the nascent country. The Marquis accomplished this by travelling back and forth between the two countries several times during the Revolutionary War, in a series of successful efforts to secure French aid, not only in the form of funds, uniforms, guns and ammunition, among other things military, but also with what proved to be vital French army and naval participation. As a result of what the French contributed to the American Revolution, thanks to the Marquis de Lafayette, ably assisted by the great diplomat, (and so many other things) Benjamin Franklin, we were able to win our war.
The young French nobleman did eventually learn English, though it was always spoken by him in a largely incorrect but always charmingly melodramatic way. Nonetheless, the greatest of our Founders, George Washington, came to love this extraordinary young man, and this was thoroughly reciprocated by Lafayette. They came to feel about each other as if they were a son and his adoptive father, and in the 67 years of George Washington’s life, no one was more consistently devoted and loyal to the General than the Marquis de Lafayette.
He named his only son, the descendant of two of the greatest families of France, George Washington de Lafayette. He also named his second daughter Virginie, after the American state of Virginia.
Perhaps the most remarkable demonstration of this relationship was when Lafayette, who after his return to France after the American Revolution had been won, was made head of the National Guard at the beginning of the Revolution in France in 1789. As such, he was in charge of the demolition of the political prison, the Bastille, whose destruction by Parisian mobs in 1789 started the French Revolution. He retrieved the key to the front door of the prison, and sent the key, along with an engraving of the destruction of the prison, to his beloved General George Washington. He did so, as he said in his communication accompanying these extraordinary objects, that they were to be accepted:
“as a tribute – from a son to my adoptive father
as an aide-de-camp – to my General
and as a missionary of liberty – to its patriarch.”
The key to the Bastille remains in George Washington’s home, from that time to this day. There is also, in Mount Vernon, an original engraving of King Louis XVI, which was a gift from the King to General Washington to represent the King’s great regard for the American leader. One can see the Bourbon crest on the original frame surrounding the portrait. This was just a few years before the murder of the French King during the Terror in Paris. One can accurately infer that the relationship between the United States of America and France, its first and vital ally was as close as close could be, in large part due to the personal relationship between two extraordinary men.
The Marquis de Lafayette so loved his adopted homeland that he insisted that upon his death he was to be buried with soil he had brought back with him from Bunker Hill in Massachusetts. Thus, the Marquis de Lafayette, centuries ago, demonstrated more love for and devotion to the United States of America, the nation he so helped to form, than Barack Hussein Obama has done in over seven and a half years as our tragically elected 44th President.
Susan Smith brings an international perspective to her writing by having lived primarily in western Europe, mainly in Paris, France, and the U.S., primarily in Washington, D.C. She authored a weekly column for Human Events on politics with historical aspects.. She also served as the Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Children, Family, Drugs and Alcoholism, and Special Assistant to the first Ambassador of Afghanistan following the initial fall of the Taliban. Ms. Smith is a graduate of Wheeling Jesuit University and Georgetown University, as well as the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, France, where she obtained her French language certification. Ms. Smith now makes her home in McLean, Va.