Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (6 September 1757-20 May 1834) was a French aristocrat who is known as "The Hero of Two Worlds" for his roles in both the American Revolutionary War and French Revolution. The son of a nobleman killed in the Seven Years' War by Great Britain, Lafayette had a score to settle with the British, and he moved to the United States in 1777 to volunteer for the Continental Army during the colonies' war for independence against the British. He rose to the rank of Major-General under George Washington, and he would return to France after the war's end, struggling for people's rights back home. Lafayette became the commander of the National Guard after the Storming of the Bastille in 1789 and steered a middle path between the Jacobin Club and the royalists, refusing to have a role in Napoleon I's government. He died in 1834 and was buried in Paris under soil taken from Bunker Hill, the location of the Battle of Bunker Hill during the American War of Independence.
Biography[]
Early life[]
The Marquis in 1778
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette was born on 6 September 1757 in Chavaniac, Kingdom of France in the southern region of Auvergne. His family was a wealthy family with a martial tradition, and his father was an officer in the Royal French Army until he was killed at the Battle of Minden in the Seven Years' War. Lafayette was left with a hatred of Great Britain and a love for freedom, and in 1770 he became a commissioned officer at the age of thirteen.
American Revolutionary War[]
Lafayette inspecting his troops at Williamsburg, Virginia
At the age of nineteen in 1777, Lafateyye travelled to the United States to join the struggle for independence against Great Britain, and General George Washington befriended the young Frenchman. Washington viewed Lafayette as a sort of son, and Lafayette was wounded at the Battle of Brandywine, where he managed to assist the orderly retreat of the Continental Army; he again proved his heroism at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, when he took over command from the cowardly Charles Lee. In the middle of the war, he returned to France to lobby for the French government's support of the American cause, and in 1780 he was promoted to Major-General. The inexperienced Lafayette fought a failed campaign against Charles Cornwallis in Virginia in 1781, but it kept Cornwallis pinned down in the region as French Navy warships arrived in the Chesapeake Bay. In the ensuing Siege of Yorktown, Lafayette's French compatriots blockaded the port as the Americans besieged the British, leading to the surrender of the British and the American victory.
French Revolutionary Wars[]
After the end of the American Revolutionary War, Lafayette returned to France and was elected to the Assembly of Notables. In 1789, he was elected to the Estates-General before the French Revolution, and Thomas Jefferson assisted him in drafting the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a document similar to the US Declaration of Independence. Lafayette would be given command of the National Guard after the Storming of the Bastille, but in August 1792 the radicals ordered his arrest, as he was a nobleman and avoided aligning with either the royalists or Jacobins. He fled to the Austrian Netherlands, and in 1797 Napoleon Bonaparte secured his release from the Austrian Empire. He refused to take part in Napoleon's government due to its imperial stance, and Lafayette joined the Chamber of Deputies after the Bourbon Restoration in 1815. In 1824, US president James Monroe invited him to America, and Lafayette visited all twenty-four states in the union at the time. After the 1830 July Revolution, he refused to become dictator of France, and he supported King Louis-Philippe of France in establishing a constitutional monarchy. However, he turned against him when he became an autocrat, and he died in 1834. He was buried underneath soil from Bunker Hill, the location of the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775 during the American War of Independence.
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