Part 10

“Nature has made men free and equal; the distinctions necessary for social order are founded on general utility only. Every man is born with rights inalienable and imprescriptible: such are the liberty of his opinions; the care of his honor and of his life; the right of property; the entire disposal of his person, of his industry, of all his faculties; the communication of his thoughts by all means possible; the pursuit of happiness; and resistance to oppression.”[92]

In launching this Declaration, Lafayette vindicated it as “recalling sentiments which Nature has engraved on the heart of every one, but which take new force when recognized by all; and this development,” he said, “becomes the more interesting, since for a nation to love Liberty it is sufficient that she knows it, and to be free it is sufficient that she wills it.” He stated its further value as “an expression of those truths from which all institutions should spring, and by which the representatives of the nation should be guided.”[93]

The Declaration of the Rights of Man, presented 11th July, 1789, was a victory whose influence can never die. It redounded immediately to the glory of Lafayette. Lally-Tollendal, after declaring the ideas “grand and majestic,” said that their author “speaks of Liberty as he has already defended it.” These were words of sympathy. Already the Archbishop of Sens had remarked in the councils of the King, “Lafayette is the most dangerous of antagonists, as his politics are all in action.”

A few days later, the Bastile, at once fortress and prison, where for four hundred years the lawless will of arbitrary power had buried its victims in a living tomb, was levelled to the ground by the people of Paris, and with it fell the ancient monarchy. Elated by success, the people looked for a leader, and found him in the author of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Amidst heartfelt applause Lafayette was placed at the head of the embodied militia of the metropolis, which, under his auspices, was organized as the National Guard. Thus in a brief time two achievements were his,--first, the introduction of a Declaration of the Rights of Man, which he was foremost to present, and, secondly, the organization of the National Guard, which was the beginning of a citizen soldiery. Each was an event; the two together make an epoch.

Thus far champion of Liberty, it was now his part to maintain order; and never was this work more conscientiously pursued. The colors of Paris were _blue_ and _red_, but his spirit of conciliation was shown by adding to them _white_, which was the ancient color of France, out of these three forming that famous _tricolor_, which he then proudly proclaimed was destined “to make the tour of the world.” Strong in the popularity he had won, he shrank from none of the responsibilities of his perilous post, braving alike the multitude and the assassin,--unharmed himself, treading calmly the burning ploughshares of civil strife,--throwing over all the shield of his protection, and by chivalrous intervention at Versailles saving King and Queen from an infuriated mob,--but always telling the King, that, if his Majesty separated the royal cause from that of the people, he should remain with the people: of all which there are details written in blood.

Though engrossed by his post as Commander of the National Guard, Lafayette did not neglect those other duties as representative of the people. In the Assembly he boldly proclaimed the right of resistance to tyranny, saying, with sententious point, “Where Slavery prevails, the most sacred of duties is insurrection.”[94] He called for trial by jury,--liberty of worship,--the rights of colored people in the colonies,--the suppression of all privileges,--the abolition of the nobility itself. To one who asked, how, after the abolition of titles, they would replace the words “ennobled for having saved the State on a particular day,” he answered, “Simply by declaring that on the day named the person in question saved the State.” The proposition prevailed, and from that time this sincere and upright citizen laid down his own time-honored title, borne by his family for successive generations, and was known only as Lafayette. And otherwise he gave testimony by example,--accepting the honorary command of the National Guard formed by colored citizens of San Domingo, although he refused this distinction from other guards out of Paris, and entertaining colored men in the uniform of the National Guard at his dinner-table, where Clarkson, the English Abolitionist, met them in 1789.[95]

Beyond question, he was now the most exalted citizen of France,--centre of all eyes, all hopes, and all fears,--holding in his hand the destinies of King and people. Rarely has such elevation been achieved; never was such elevation so honestly won, and never was it surrounded by responsibilities so appalling. Nothing of office, honor, or power was beyond his reach, while peril of all kinds lay in wait for him or sat openly in his path. But he was indifferent alike to temptation and to danger. Emoluments in whatsoever form he rejected, saying that he attached no more importance to the rejection than to the acceptance. Field-Marshal, Grand-Constable, Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, Dictator even,--such were titles which he put aside. Had his been a vulgar ambition, he might have clutched at supreme power, and played the part of Cromwell or Napoleon. But, true to the example of Washington, and, above all, true to himself and those just sentiments which belonged to his nature, he thought only of the good of all. Calmly looking down upon the formless chaos, where ancient landmarks were heaving in confused mass, he sought to assuage the wide-spread tumult, and to establish that divine tranquillity, which, like the repose of Nature, is found only in harmony with law, to the end that Human Rights, always sacred, should have new force from the prevailing order. And this done, it was his precious desire to withdraw into the retirement of his home.

The Constitution, with its Declaration of the Rights of Man, was at length proclaimed. Amidst unprecedented pomp, in a vast field, the Campus Martius of France, surrounded by delegates from all parts of the country, and under the gaze of the anxious people gathered in uncounted multitudes, the King, sitting upon his throne, took the oath to support it. Lafayette, as Major-General of the Federation, did the same,--while National Guard and people, by voice and outstretched hand, united in the oath. How faithfully he kept this oath, true to the Constitution in all respects, upholding each department in its powers, subduing violence, watching the public peace, and for the sake of these hazarding his good name with the people whose idol he was,--all this belongs to the history of France. Assured that the Revolution had accomplished its work, he caused an amnesty to be proclaimed, and then deliberately laid down his vast military power. Amidst the gratulations of his countrymen and votes of honor, he withdrew to the bosom of his family at the home of his childhood. Unhappily, this was for a period very brief.

The emigrant nobles, with two brothers of the King, were gathering forces on the Rhenish frontier of France. Austria and Prussia had joined in coalition for the same hostile purpose. France was menaced; but its new government hurled three armies to meet the invaders. The army of the centre was placed under the command of Lafayette. At the mention of his name in the Assembly there was an outburst of applause, and when he appeared at its bar, the President, addressing him, said, “France will oppose to her enemies the Constitution and Lafayette.” Little was then foreseen how soon thereafter both were to fall.

A new influence was showing itself. Danton and Robespierre were active. Clubs were organized, whose daily meetings lashed the people to lawless frenzy. Extreme counsels prevailed. Violence and outrage ensued. The Jacobins, whose very name has become a synonym for counsellors of sedition, were beginning to be dominant. The Revolution was losing its original character. The generous Lafayette, who had been its representative and its glory, in whom its true grandeur and humanity were all personified, revolted at its excesses. From camp he addressed the National Assembly, denouncing the Jacobins as substituting license for liberty,--and then, supporting his letter, gallantly appeared at the bar of the Assembly and repeated his denunciation. But the Reign of Terror was lowering, destined to fill France with darkness, and to send a shudder through the world. After bloody conflict at the gates of the palace, the King and his family were driven to seek protection in the bosom of the Assembly. The scaffold was not yet entirely ready. But the Constitution was overturned, and with it Lafayette. Doubly faithful, first to the oath he had taken, and then to his own supreme integrity, he denounced the audacious crime. He was then at the head of his army; but Jacobin hate had marked him as victim. Shrinking from the horrors of civil contest, where success is purchased only by the blood of fellow-citizens, he resolved--sad alternative!--to withdraw from his post, and, passing into neutral territory, seek the United States, there from a distance to watch the storm which was desolating his own unhappy country.

As his eminence was without precedent, so also was his fall. Power, fortune, family, country, all were suddenly changed for a dungeon, where, amidst cruel privations, for more than five years, he wore away life. But not in vain; for who can listen to the story of his captivity without confessing new admiration for that sublime fidelity to principle which illumined his dungeon?

With heart rent by anguish and darkened by the gathering clouds, Lafayette, accompanied by a few friends, left his army at Sedan. Traversing the frontier, in the hope of reaching Holland, he fell into the hands of the Royal Coalition; and then commenced the catalogue of indignities and hardships under which his soul seemed rather to rise than to bend. His application for a passport was answered by the jeer that his passport would be for the scaffold, while a mob of furious royalists sought to anticipate the executioner. The King of Prussia, hoping to profit from his increasing debility, suggested that his situation would be improved in return for information against France. The patriot was aroused at this attempt on his character. “The King of Prussia is very impertinent,” he replied, while composing himself to the continued rigors which beset him. First immured at Wesel on the Rhine, he was next transported in a cart, by a long journey, to the far-famed Magdeburg, whose secrets have been disclosed by Baron Trenck, where for a year he was plunged in a damp subterranean dungeon, closed by four successive doors, all fastened by iron bolts, padlocks, and chains, when, on the separate peace between Prussia and the French Republic, he was handed over to Austrian jailers, by whom he was transferred to Olmütz, an outlying fortress, then little known, but now memorable in history, on the eastern border of Austria, further east than the old castle which witnessed the imprisonment of Richard Cœur-de-Lion and the generous devotion of Blondel. Here his captivity was complete. Alone in his cell, with no object in sight except the four walls,--shut out from all communication with the world,--shut out even from all knowledge of his family, who on their part could know nothing of him,--never addressed by name,--mentioned in the bulletins of the prison only by his number,--and, to cut off all possible escape by self-destruction, deprived of knife and fork: such was now his lot. If not a slave compelled to work without wages, he was even a more wretched captive.

But never for one moment was his soul shaken in its majestic fidelity; never was his example more lofty. At the beginning, he was careful, by official declaration, to make known his principles, so that he might not be confounded with fugitive royalists. But his prison cell was a constant testimony. Letters now exist, written at peril of life, with toothpick dipped in soot moistened with vinegar, where his wonderful nature is laid bare.[96] Confessing his joy that he suffers from that despotism which he combated, rather than from the people he loved so well, he announces his equal hostility to the committees of Jacobinism and the cabinet of the Coalition,--declares his firm conviction, that, amidst all the shocks of anarchy, Liberty will not perish,--remembers with a thrill the anniversary of American Independence, as that day comes round,--says of his own Declaration of the Rights of Man, that, if he were alone in the universe, he would not hesitate to maintain it,[97] and repels with scorn every effort to vindicate him at the expense of his well-known sentiments, declaring that he would give his blood, drop by drop, to the people’s cause, and that on the scaffold his first and last words should be “Liberty and Equality,” while he charges all the wrongs, all the crimes, all the perils, all the sufferings of the Revolution upon the wretched departure from these sacred principles.[98] His political faith was grandly declared, when, addressing the Minister of the United States at London, he calls down a blessing upon our Republic, saying, “May _Liberty and Equality_, with all the virtues truly republican, honest industry, moderation, purity of manners, frankness and liberality of spirit, obedience to the laws, firmness against all usurpation, continue to prove that American Freedom has its roots deep, not only in the head, but at the bottom of the heart of its citizens! May public prosperity, happiness of individuals, and federal concord be a perpetual recompense to the United States, and an example for other people!”[99] These words of benediction, original as great, aptly define that “American Era” which our hero had already hailed, while they invoke upon our country all that virtuous heart could desire. But never did soul rise to purer heights than when, at the beginning of his captivity, he bequeathed this consoling truth as his legacy to mankind, that the satisfaction from a single service rendered to Humanity outweighs any suffering inflicted by enemies, or even by the ingratitude of the people,[100]--and then, as the dungeon closed upon him, forgetting all that he was called to undergo, his own personal afflictions and prolonged captivity, he sends his thoughts to the poor slaves on his distant plantation in Cayenne, whose emancipation he had sought to accomplish. In the universal wreck of his fortunes he knew not what had become of this plantation, but he trusts that his wife “will take care that the blacks who cultivate it shall preserve their liberty.”[101] Search history, whether ancient or modern pages, let Greece and Rome testify, but you can find nothing more sublimely touching than this voice from that heavy-bolted dungeon, serenely pleading for the liberty of others far away. That noblest woman, mated with him in soul as in marriage vow, had already exerted herself to accomplish this purpose,--but, alas! without effect. Cruelly was their liberty confiscated with his estates.[102]

This confiscation, where Liberty itself disappeared, was the terrible climax of that proscription which now enveloped his friends and his family. In the prevailing masquerade of blood the charge of _Fayettism_ was equivalent to a decree of death. Nor was tender woman spared. The grandmother, the mother, and the sister of his wife, all of the same ducal house, perished on the scaffold. His wife was thrown into prison, and escaped the same fate only by the timely overthrow of Robespierre. Regaining liberty after a cruel imprisonment of sixteen months, her maternal care was for her son, George Washington Lafayette, still a boy, whom she sent to his great namesake at Mount Vernon with a letter from herself, and then, accompanied by her two youthful daughters, with the protection of an American passport, she makes her way across Germany to Vienna, where she throws herself before the Imperial despot. To her prayer for the release of her husband, he answers that “his hands are tied”; but, moved by her devotion, so womanly, so wifely, so heroic, he yields so far as to consent that she, with her daughters, may share his wretched captivity. Penetrating his dungeon, she learned that the first change of raiment allowed him was on her arrival, when the tattered rags which scarcely covered his emaciated form were exchanged for a garb of coarsest material,--an indulgence not accorded without the insult of informing him that this had been purposely sought, as with such alone was he worthy to be clothed.[103] Three silver forks in her little inventory were seized by the jailer, and this refined family during a lingering imprisonment were driven to eat with their fingers. These things are not to be forgotten, because, while exhibiting the cruelty of despotic power, against which the world now rises in judgment, they show how his fidelity was tried, as also that of his family. The wife, becoming ill, was refused permission to leave the dungeon for medical advice at Vienna, except on condition of not returning, when she beautifully declared, for herself and her daughters, that they had agreed to participate the rigors of his captivity, and now repeated, with all their hearts, that they were happier with him in the dungeon than they could be anywhere else without him. Lafayette himself, when tempted by offer of release on certain conditions or promises, was stern as his jailer, and refused inexorably,--choosing to suffer, sooner than compromise in any respect his rights and duties as Frenchman or as American citizen, which latter title he always claimed.

Vain, during this long period, was every effort for his liberation. Not Fox, thundering in the British Parliament,--not the gentler voice of Wilberforce, uniting with Fox,--not Cornwallis, his old enemy at Yorktown, personally pleading with the Emperor himself,[104]--not Washington, prompting our Ministers abroad and writing directly to the Emperor, could open these prison doors.[105] Lafayette was declared to be a representative not only of the French Revolution, but of Universal Enfranchisement, whose liberty was incompatible with the safety of European governments: therefore must he be immured in a dungeon. But private enterprise, inspired by those generous promptings which are the glory of the human heart, for a moment seemed about to prevail. This was before the arrival of his wife and daughters. The health of the imprisoned champion had suffered to such degree, that, under medical direction, the rigors of confinement were relaxed so far as to allow occasional exercise in the open air. Here was an opportunity for which two friends, Bollmann, a German, and Huger, an American, of South Carolina, had watched for months, and they were able secretly to apprise the captive of their plans. With their assistance, after desperate conflict, in which his hand was torn to the bone, he succeeded in disarming the guards, and then enjoyed a gleam of liberty. It was a gleam only. Helped on a horse by one of his devoted friends, he started; but, ignorant of the way, and oppressed with fatigue, wounded, bleeding, after a flight of twenty-four hours, he was recaptured, brought back, and plunged again into the worst torments of his dungeon. This endeavor, though unsuccessful, is never read without a gush of gratitude towards the courageous men, who, taking life in hand, braved Austrian tyranny. Human nature seems more beautiful from their example.[106]

All had now failed, and the dungeon seemed to have closed upon Lafayette forever. The hearts of his friends were wrung with anguish, and especially here in America. Washington, at the fireside of Mount Vernon, shed tears for his friend,--while to that noble wife, who in all things was not less faithful than her heroic husband, he addressed an earnest letter, regretting that he had not words to convey his feelings, and placing a considerable sum of money to her credit, which he mentioned as the least he was indebted for services, of which he had never yet received an account.[107] But an intervention was at hand which would not be denied. It was the early sword of Napoleon Bonaparte, which, flashing across the Alps from his Italian victories, broke open the dungeon of Olmütz. Lafayette had been a captive five years,--his wife and daughters shut up with him twenty-two months. In the negotiations ending in the Treaty of Campo Formio, it was required, under special instructions from the French Directory, that he should be released; and the conqueror was heard to say afterwards, that, among all the sacrifices exacted of tottering Austria, not one was so difficult to obtain. The captive of many years, at last in the enjoyment of liberty, hastened to Hamburg, where he found welcome with the American consul.

This was in the autumn of 1797, and he was forty years of age. But life with him, though brief in years, had been extended by events full of lessons never to be forgotten; above all was that great lesson of perpetual fealty to Human Rights. And now this same lesson was illustrated again. As in dungeon, so in exile, Lafayette could not forget the cause to which his life was devoted, especially the liberty of the African. From the obscure retreat in Holstein, where he lingered, he addresses Clarkson, the English Abolitionist, in eloquent words, against the Slave-Trade, which was still the scandal of nations, and announces that the mission of France, while healing the wounds of the past, should be to assure _Liberty for all, whether white or black_, under the equal protection of Law.[108] Better far such mission than battle and conquest, which this ambitious nation craved. In a letter to Washington at the same time he gives utterance to his aspiration, that, for the good of the world, the North and the South should gradually adopt the principles on which the Independence and the Liberty of the United States have been happily founded.[109] How in thinking of himself Lafayette thought instinctively of the slave appears in an incident of exile at this time. In the straitened circumstances to which he was reduced, stripped of the wealth to which he was born, poor and homeless, his thoughts turned to the broad continent across the Atlantic, and he conceived the plan of buying a farm,--although without what he denominates “the first dollar” necessary,--either in Virginia, not far from what he calls the “Federal City,” or in New England, not far from Boston,--and thus, in one of those tender letters to his wife, he balances between these two places. “I am aware, dear Adrienne,” he writes, under date of 5th August, 1799, “that I, who complain of the serfs of Holstein, as something very melancholy to a friend of Liberty, should find in the valley of the Shenandoah negro slaves; for Equality, which in the Northern States is for everybody, exists in the Southern States for the whites only. Therefore, while I perceive all the reasons which should draw us to the neighborhood of Mount Vernon and the seat of the Federal Union, yet I should prefer New England.”[110] Never more simply or conclusively was the special difference between North and South presented for judgment.