S DE LA FAYETTE[4]

[Footnote 4: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By WILLIAM F. PECK

(1757-1834)

[Illustration: Marquis de la Fayette.]

Marie Jean Paul Roch Yves Gilbert Motier, Marquis de la Fayette,[5]
one of the most celebrated men that France ever produced, was born
at Chavaignac, in Auvergne, on September 6, 1757, of a noble family,
with a long line of illustrious ancestors. Left an orphan at the age
of thirteen, he married, three years later, his cousin Anastasie,
Countess de Noailles. Inspired from the earliest age with a love of
freedom and aversion to constraint, the impulses of childhood became
the daydreams of youth and the realities of maturer life. Filled
with enthusiastic sympathy for the struggling colonies of America in
their contest with Great Britain, he offered his services to the
United States, and, though his enterprise was forbidden by the
French Government, hired a vessel, sailed for this country, landed
at Charleston in April, 1777, and proceeded to Philadelphia. His
advances having been treated by Congress with some coldness, by
reason of the incessant application of other foreigners for
commissions, he offered to serve as a volunteer and at his own
expense. Congress may be excused for having taken him at his word;
on July 31st it appointed him major-general, without pay the titular
honor, which carried with it no command, being, perhaps, the highest
ever given in America to a young man of nineteen years. Having
accepted the cordial invitation of General Washington, the
commander-in-chief, to live at his head-quarters and to serve on his
staff, Lafayette was severely wounded in the leg at the battle of
the Brandywine, on September 11th, and the intrepidity he displayed
in that engagement was equalled by the fortitude that he evinced
during the following winter, in which he shared the privations of
the American army in the wretched camp at Valley Forge. His fidelity
to Washington at this time, when the latter was maligned by secret
foes and conspired against by Conway's cabal, cemented the
friendship between those great men. Lafayette was soon afterward
detached to take command of an expedition that was to set out from
Albany, cross Lake Champlain on the ice, and invade Canada; but, on
arriving at the intended starting-point, and finding that no
adequate preparations had been made, he refused to repeat the
unfortunate experiment of Montgomery and Arnold of two years before,