Part 8

The negotiations for peace were long drawn out, and in the autumn of 1782 France and Spain again planned a joint expedition against the English in America. A strong fleet of sixty battle-ships and an army of twenty-four thousand men were gathered with the purpose of sailing from the Spanish port of Cadiz to capture the English island of Jamaica and attack New York and Canada. Lafayette was made chief of staff of the combined expedition, and, wearing the uniform of an American general, he set sail from Brest early in December for Cadiz. But the grand fleet was still in port when a courier arrived with news that a treaty of peace had just been signed in Paris. So the fleet did not sail. A protocol, or provisional treaty, was drawn up, and on September 3, 1783, the final treaty was signed, by which Great Britain acknowledged the independence of the United States.

As soon as he heard the good news, Lafayette borrowed a ship, appropriately named the _Triumph_, and sent it off to Philadelphia with the earliest word of peace. And by the same ship he despatched a letter to Washington. “As for you, my dear general,” he wrote, “who can truly say that all this is your work, what must be the feelings of your good and virtuous heart in this happy moment! The eternal honor in which my descendants will glory, will be to have had an ancestor among your soldiers, to know that he had the good fortune of being a friend of your heart. To the eldest of them I bequeath, as long as my posterity shall endure, the favor that you have conferred upon my son George, by allowing him to bear your name.”

To Vergennes Lafayette wrote, “My great affair is settled; America is sure of her independence; humanity has gained its cause, and liberty will never be without a refuge.”

From Cadiz the Marquis went to Madrid, where he straightened out affairs between the United States and the court of Spain. Then he went back to Paris, made several visits to his old castle and estates in Auvergne, and helped Franklin and Adams and John Jay in putting the affairs of the new republic on a satisfactory footing.

He wanted greatly to see that young republic, now that war was over and peace had come, and at last his wish was gratified. Washington had written him frequently, urging the Marquis to visit him, and had begged Madame de Lafayette to come with her husband. “Come then, let me entreat you,” Washington wrote to Adrienne. “Call my cottage your own; for your own doors do not open to you with more readiness than would mine. You will see the plain manner in which we live, and meet with rustic civility; and you will taste the simplicity of rural life. It will diversify the scene, and may give you a higher relish for the gayeties of the court when you return to Versailles.”

Adrienne de Lafayette, however, was as much of a home-lover as George Washington. Versailles had never attracted her, and she liked to spend most of her time at the castle of Chavaniac. The voyage across the Atlantic was a long and trying experience in those days and so she answered that she preferred to stay in France. She also sent Washington a letter from her little daughter, born while her husband was in camp in America.

Lafayette sailed from Havre on July 1, 1784, and reached New York, which he had never yet seen, on August fourth. Throngs, eager to sing his praises, met him at the harbor, and followed him everywhere on his travels. From New York he went to Philadelphia, and then to Richmond, where Washington met him. He visited the scenes of his great Virginia campaign at Williamsburg and Yorktown, and spent two happy weeks with his beloved friend George Washington at the latter’s home at Mount Vernon. From there he went north again, to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. Up the broad Hudson he traveled to Albany, where he went with American commissioners to a council with dissatisfied Mohawk chiefs. And to the sons of primitive America the young Frenchman, lover of liberty everywhere, spoke so appealingly that he quickly won them away from their enmity for their white neighbors. “Father,” said the Mohawk chief, “we have heard thy voice and we rejoice that thou hast visited thy children to give to them good and necessary advice. Thou hast said that we have done wrong in opening our ears to wicked men, and closing our hearts to thy counsels. Father, it is all true; we have left the good path; we have wandered away from it and have been enveloped in a black cloud. We have now returned that thou mayest find in us good and faithful children. We rejoice to hear thy voice among us. It seems that the Great Spirit had directed thy footsteps to this council of friendship to smoke the calumet of peace and fellowship with thy long-lost children.”

Indeed it did seem that the Great Spirit directed the steps of this man to the places where he was the most needed.

From Albany Lafayette went across country to Boston, where he was given a great reception and banquet in Faneuil Hall. A portrait of Washington was unveiled behind the Marquis at the table, and he sprang to his feet and led in the burst of cheers that followed. Through New England he went as far as Portsmouth in New Hampshire, and then turned south to make a second visit to Mount Vernon. Everywhere he went he was received as the man whom the United States especially desired to honor. Unquestionably he deserved all the praise and gratitude that was showered upon him, for he had left his wife, his home, his friends, his fortune, and had come to America in one of the darkest hours of her fight for independence, and by his confidence in her cause had done much to help her win her victory. He had brought French troops and money, but most of all he had brought that unselfish devotion which had so heartened the people. The United States did not forget what it owed to Lafayette in 1784, it has never forgotten it; the republic of the Western World has shown that it has a long and faithful memory.

At Trenton Lafayette stopped to resign his commission in the American army, and Congress sent a committee made up of one representative from each State to express the thanks of the nation. Then he returned to Washington’s estate on the banks of the Potomac, and there walked over the beautiful grounds of Mount Vernon, discussing agriculture with the owner, and sat with the latter in his library, listening to Washington’s hopes concerning the young nation for which both men had done so much. History shows no more ideal friendship than that between the great American and the great Frenchman, a friendship of inestimable value for the two lands from which they sprang.

When the time came for parting Washington drove his guest as far as Annapolis in his carriage. There the two friends separated, not to meet again. Washington went back to Mount Vernon, and there wrote a farewell letter to Lafayette. “In the moment of our separation,” he said, “upon the road as I traveled and every hour since, I have felt all that love, respect, and attachment for you, with which length of years, close connection, and your merits have inspired me.... It is unnecessary, I persuade myself, to repeat to you, my dear marquis, the sincerity of my regards and friendship, nor have I words which could express my affection for you, were I to attempt it. My fervent prayers are offered for your safe and pleasant passage, a happy meeting with Madame de Lafayette and family, and the completion of every wish of your heart.”

Lafayette answered after he had gone on board the _Nymphe_ at New York. “Adieu, adieu, my dear general,” said he. “It is with inexpressible pain that I feel I am going to be severed from you by the Atlantic. Everything that admiration, respect, gratitude, friendship, and filial love can inspire is combined in my affectionate heart to devote me most tenderly to you. In your friendship I find a delight which words cannot express. Adieu, my dear general. It is not without emotion that I write this word. Be attentive to your health. Let me hear from you every month. Adieu, adieu.”

On Christmas Day, 1784, Lafayette sailed for France, expecting to return to his adopted country in a few years. He was not to return, however, for a long time, and in the interval much was to happen to himself and his own land.

In the following summer the Marquis made a journey through Germany and Austria, where he was received not only as a French field-marshal, but as an informal representative of America and a friend of Washington, who could answer the questions about the new republic which every one was eager to ask. At Brunswick he visited the duke who was later to lead the German troops against the army of revolutionary France. At Potsdam he was entertained by Frederick the Great, who happened on one occasion to place Lafayette between the English Duke of York and Lord Cornwallis at table. Lafayette was, as always, delightful company, and the general he had defeated at Yorktown wrote home to a friend in England, “Lafayette and I were the best friends possible in Silesia.”

The Frenchman saw reviews of the Prussian armies, and was much impressed by the discipline of Frederick the Great. But he did not like that ruler, and spoke of his “despotic, selfish, and harsh character,” and he liked his military system still less. He wrote to General Knox, “The mode of recruiting is despotic; there is hardly any provision for old soldiers, and although I found much to admire, I had rather be the last farmer in America than the first general in Berlin.”

From Prussia he went to Austria, where he met the emperor, and there, as in all his travels, he told every one of his admiration for the United States and for Washington, and tried to make them see how much the young republic had already accomplished for the happiness of men.

The love of liberty was the dominant motive of Lafayette’s life. He had told Washington of his desire to find some means of securing the freedom of slaves, and he wrote to John Adams in 1786, “Whatever be the complexion of the enslaved, it does not in my opinion alter the complexion of the crime the enslaver commits,--a crime much blacker than any African face. It is to me a matter of great anxiety and concern to find that this trade is sometimes perpetrated under the flag of liberty, our dear and noble stripes to which virtue and glory have been constant standard-bearers.” So, on his return to France, he bought a plantation in Cayenne, and brought many negroes there, who, after being educated in self-government according to his directions, were to receive their freedom. He also tried to improve the condition of the French Protestants, who were very much persecuted, and ardently pleaded their cause before the King at Versailles.

In the meantime he constantly gave his help to furthering the affairs of America. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, who had been Governor of Virginia when Lafayette had fought his campaign there, was now the United States Minister to France. Jefferson wrote to Washington, “The Marquis de Lafayette is a most valuable auxiliary to me. His zeal is unbounded and his weight with those in power is great.... He has a great deal of sound genius, is well remarked by the King, and rising in popularity. He has nothing against him but the suspicion of republican principles. I think he will one day be of the ministry.”

The United States at that time especially needed aid in establishing trade relations with France, and it was here that Lafayette proved himself very valuable. He obtained concessions in regard to the importing and sale of oil and tobacco, and his efforts on behalf of the American whale fishery were so successful that the citizens of Nantucket voted at a town-meeting that every man on the island who owned a cow should give all of one day’s milk toward making a cheese to weigh five hundred pounds, and that the cheese should be “transmitted to the Marquis de Lafayette, as a feeble, but not less sincere, testimonial of their affection and gratitude.”

The cheese was greatly appreciated, as was also the action of the State of Virginia, which ordered two busts of the Marquis to be made by the sculptor Houdon, one to be placed in the State Capitol at Richmond and the other in the Hôtel de Ville in Paris.

The United States had won its independence, though its statesmen were now perplexed with the problem of making one united nation out of thirteen separate states. But France had yet to deal with its own problem of liberty. There were many men who dreamed of equality in that nation and who hoped for it, but the King and the court were despotic, the peasants yoked to the soil, bowed down by unjust taxes, crushed by unfair laws. There was a spirit abroad that was destined to bring a temporary whirlwind. So the thinking men of France, and Lafayette one of the chief among them, turned their attention to affairs at home.

IX

HOW LAFAYETTE SOUGHT TO GIVE LIBERTY TO FRANCE

The people of the thirteen American colonies that became the United States had always had more liberty than the people of France. Most of the colonies had been settled by men who had left Europe and gone to America in order that they might enjoy civil or religious independence. They largely made their own laws, and by the time of the Revolution had become so well educated in self-government that they were able to draw up a Constitution and live by its terms with extremely little friction or unrest. The success that followed the forming of the republic of the West was a marvel to Europe; that success was mainly due to the lessons of self-restraint and the real appreciation of what liberty meant that had come to the colonists before the Revolution. Progress that is to be real progress must begin right, and Washington and Jefferson and Franklin were far-sighted and clear-headed builders. The people of France had been putting up with wrongs a thousandfold worse than those the Americans had borne, but they had never been educated in self-government, and so when they tried to win liberty they plunged headlong into turmoil.

France was still governed very much as it had been in the Middle Ages. The peasants were reduced to the very lowest form of living, starvation and ignorance were common through the country. The business classes were hampered by unjust laws. The nobility were idle, corrupt, and grossly extravagant. Almost all power lay in the King, and Louis XVI., amiable though he was, followed the lines of his Bourbon ancestors, Louis XIV. and Louis XV., the former of whom had said, “The State, it is I,” and had ruled by that principle.

Unhappily for Louis XVI., however, the world had progressed from the view-point of the Middle Ages, and men were beginning to talk of constitutions and of the duties that sovereigns owed their people. He shut his ears to such talk as well as he could, and his courtiers helped him to ignore the protests. The court continued to spend money on entertainments as if it was water, while the peasants starved. Then it was found that the expense of aiding the United States in the war had added enough to the nation’s debt to make it impossible to pay the interest and to find means to carry on the government. Either the court’s expenses must be lessened or new taxes must be levied. The nobles furiously resisted the first alternative, and the people resisted the second. Toward the end of 1786 Calonne, the Minister of Finance, had to admit that the treasury was bankrupt and advise the King to call a meeting of the Assembly of Notables to find some way out of the difficulty.

The Assembly was made up almost entirely of men of the highest rank, who failed to appreciate the distresses of the country. Lafayette was known to hold very liberal views, he was constantly talking of the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and at first a part of the court opposed his membership in the Assembly. He was given his seat there, however, and with one or two others tried to convince the council of the need of reforming the laws. But the nobles would not listen. They were immovably arrogant and autocratic; they would hear nothing of reforms or constitutions or the rights of the people.

The Assembly of Notables reached no satisfactory conclusion. When it adjourned conditions grew steadily worse. The affairs of the country were in a terrible muddle, each class in the land thought only of itself, and each was divided, envious and hostile to the others. Lafayette fought heroically to bring them to the point of view of Washington’s countrymen. The Marquis, however, was too much of an enthusiast and too little of a statesman to see that the long downtrodden peasants of France were a different type from the educated American farmers. Americans in France, John Adams and Gouverneur Morris, realized better than he did that the people of France were not yet fitted to govern themselves; but he would not listen to these statesmen’s opinions. His rôle was that of a popular leader, not that of a far-seeing statesman in very difficult times. But the sufferings of the people were always present to him, and he took the most direct course he could to relieve and satisfy them.

When he saw that the Assembly of Notables would accomplish nothing to help the situation Lafayette startled the meeting by asking that they beg the King to summon a National Assembly of the States-General, a council that had not met for one hundred and seventy-three years and the existence of which had almost been forgotten.

The Notables were amazed. “What, sir!” exclaimed the Count d’Artois, who was presiding at the meeting. “You ask the convocation of the States-General?”

“Yes, monseigneur,” said Lafayette, “and even more than that.”

“You wish that I write,” said the Count, “and that I carry to the King, ‘Monsieur de Lafayette moves to convoke the States-General’?”

“Yes, monseigneur,” was Lafayette’s answer.

The proposal was sent to the King, with Lafayette’s name the only one attached to the request. But as soon as the news of his petition became known the people hailed the idea with delight.

The States-General was a much more representative body than the Assembly of Notables, and Louis XVI. was loath to summon it. The situation of the country was so unsatisfactory, however, that he finally yielded and ordered the States-General to meet in May, 1789.

Lafayette had great hopes of this new parliament. He wrote to Washington, describing the situation. “The King is all-powerful,” he said. “He possesses all the means of compulsion, of punishment, and of corruption. The ministers naturally incline and believe themselves bound to preserve despotism. The court is filled with swarms of vile and effeminate courtiers; men’s minds are enervated by the influence of women and the love of pleasure; the lower classes are plunged in ignorance. On the other hand, French character is lively, enterprising, and inclined to despise those who govern. The public mind begins to be enlightened by the works of philosophers and the example of other nations.” And when the state of affairs grew even more disturbed he wrote again to the same friend, “In the midst of these troubles and this anarchy, the friends of liberty strengthen themselves daily, shut their ears to every compromise, and say that they shall have a national assembly or nothing. Such is, my dear general, the improvement in our situation. For my part, I am satisfied with the thought that before long I shall be in an assembly of representatives of the French nation or at Mount Vernon.”

Elections were held throughout the country to choose the members of the States-General, which was composed of representatives of the three orders, the nobles, the clergy, and what was known as the third estate, or the middle class. Lafayette went to Auvergne to make his campaign for election, and was chosen as deputy to represent the nobility of Riom. On May 2, 1789, the States-General paid their respects to the King, and on May fourth they marched in procession to hear Mass at the Church of St. Louis. The third estate marched last, dressed in black, and in their ranks were men destined before long to upset the old order, Mirabeau, Danton, Marat, Guillotin, Desmoulins, Robespierre.

On May fifth the States-General formally met for business. Then began continual struggles between the orders of nobles and clergy on the one hand and the third estate on the other, finally ending by a declaration of the latter that if the first two orders would not act in agreement with them they would organize themselves, without the other two, as the States-General of France.

On June twelfth the third estate met and called the roll of all the deputies, but none of the nobles or clergy answered to their names. Next day, however, three clerical members appeared, and the meeting felt itself sufficiently bold, under the leadership of Mirabeau, to declare itself positively the National Assembly of France. The indignant nobles answered this by inducing the King to suspend all meetings until a “royal session” could be held on June twentieth. But the third estate, having had a taste of power, would not bow to command so easily, and when they found that the hall where they had been meeting was closed they withdrew to the tennis-court, where they took the famous oath not to separate until they had given a constitution to France.

At their next meeting the third estate were joined by a large number of the clerical members of the States-General and by two of the nobles. This gave them greater assurance. At the “royal session” on June twentieth, however, the King tried to ignore the power that the third estate had claimed, and the latter had to decide between submitting to the royal orders or rebelling. They decided to take the second course and stand firmly on their rights as representatives of the people. When the master of ceremonies tried to clear the hall where they had gathered Mirabeau said defiantly, “The commons of France will never retire except at the point of the bayonet.”

The King, although surrounded by weak and selfish advisers, at last yielded to the demands of the third estate, and the nobles and clergy joined the meetings of the National Assembly.

Lafayette, who had been elected as a deputy of the nobility, had found his position extremely difficult. He had thought of resigning and trying to be elected a second time as a deputy of the people, although Thomas Jefferson, the American minister, had urged him to take his stand outright with the third estate, arguing that his well-known liberal views would prevent his gaining any influence with his fellow-nobles and that if he delayed in taking up the cause of the people the latter might regard him with suspicion. This difficulty was solved when, at the King’s command, the deputies of the nobles finally joined with the third estate.

The States-General, or the National Assembly, as it was now generally called, went on with its meetings which took on more and more a revolutionary color. There was rioting in Paris and Versailles, and the King ordered troops to guard both places. The Assembly considered that the soldiers were meant to intimidate their sessions and requested that they be sent away. The King refused this request, and as a result the breach between the crown and the parliament was still further widened.