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| Washington and Lafayette at Valley Forge |
His full name was Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, but we know him as the Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolution who was beloved by the American people during his lifetime but is now largely forgotten in the country he helped to create.
Born into a wealthy and noble French family on Sept. 6, 1757, Lafayette lost his father at two years of age, joined the Continental Army at 19, was wounded in battle, helped secure France’s invaluable support for the Revolution and played an important role in the pivotal American victory at Yorktown in 1781.
Lafayette purchased a ship, La Victoire, to take him to America. He learned a smattering of English while at sea, and made landfall in South Carolina in June 1777.
“Congress declined his services when Lafayette presented himself in Philadelphia, but his earnestness, and his assurance that he would serve at his own expense, won him the rank of major general,” according to www.history.org, the web site of Colonial Williamsburg.
“He quickly fell into the company of George Washington, and the two formed a bond of will and philosophy so strong that Washington came to regard Lafayette as his son, a relationship reciprocated by the young Frenchman.”
Lafayette was shot in the leg during the Battle of Brandywine in September 1777, as Washington noted in a letter to Congress recommending that he be placed in command of a division.
"He is sensible, discreet in his manners, has made great proficiency in our language,” Washington wrote, “and from the disposition he discovered at the battle of Brandywine possesses a large share of bravery and military ardour."
“The moment I heard of America, I loved her,” Lafayette wrote to the president of Congress in 1778. “The moment I knew she was fighting for freedom, I burnt with the desire of bleeding for her. And the moment I shall be able to serve her, in any time or any part of the world, will be among the happiest ones in my life.”
Lafayette returned to France in late 1781, but he visited the United States, including Mount Vernon, the following year. He was honored wherever he went on that trip, and again in 1824 and 1825, during his second and final post-war tour of America.
His traveling companions on that second journey included his son, George Washington de La Fayette. Father and son visited Washington’s grave shortly before they returned to France, as James Gaines notes in his book For Liberty and Glory.
His secretary did not take notes, and at the tomb Lafayette asked everyone to leave him, including George. He stayed inside for an hour. Virtually nothing was written about the visit, although someone who looked through a crack in the door said that he was kneeling.
Lafayette was buried in Paris in May, 1834. At his funeral, his son sprinkled soil from Bunker Hill on his grave.
