, took place on the 19th, which
ended, practically, the American war of independence, though the
final treaty of peace was not signed till January 20, 1783, the
first knowledge of which came to Congress by a letter from
Lafayette, who had returned to Europe in the meantime. Revisiting
the United States in 1784, he was treated with great consideration
by his old comrades in arms, and the next year he travelled through
Russia, Austria, and Prussia, in the last of which he attended the
military reviews of Frederick the Great in company with that
renowned soldier.

[Footnote 5: The condensed form of the name, when used apart
from the title, is preferable to the open, for, though he
employed the conventional style, De La Fayette, up to the
time of the French Revolution, he then abandoned it, and
always afterward wrote it as one word, Lafayette, which is
now the family name.]

From this time Lafayette's history is bound up with that of his
country. Beginning by formulating plans for meliorating the
condition of the slaves on his plantation in French Guiana, his
philanthropic thoughts soon turned homeward. He saw France groaning
under oppression and the people suffering from a thousand antiquated
abuses. Some of these he succeeded in mitigating, in his capacity of
member of the Assembly of the Notables, in 1787, but, as nothing of
permanent value was accomplished by that body, he urged the
convocation of the States General. In this assemblage, which met at
Versailles, on May 4, 1789, he sat at first among the nobility, but
when the deputies of the people declared themselves to be the
National Assembly--afterward called the Constituent Assembly--he was
one of the earliest of his order to join them and was elected one of
the vice-presidents. On July 14th the Bastille was taken by the mob,
and on the following day Lafayette was chosen commandant of the
National Guard of Paris; an irregular body, partly military, partly
police, having no connection with the royal army and in full
sympathy with the people, from which its ranks were filled. On the
17th King Louis XVI. came into the city, where he was received by
the populace with the liveliest expressions of attachment and
escorted to the Hotel de Ville, where Lafayette and Mayor Bailly
awaited him at the foot of the staircase, up which he passed under
an arch of steel formed by the uplifted swords of the members of the
Munic