The film plays with the truth parhaps for the
benefit of a war weary French public. The real life
Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette,
was anything but a pacificist. The offspring
of one of the oldest noble families of France,
Lafayette was already at 19 a Captain in the celebrated King's
musketeers and burning with rage at Britain for the death of his father
in the battle of Minden during the previous phase of Britain's
500 year war with France. Lafayette openly spoke of his bitterness.
The movie returns to the truth when it shows
the complicity of the American representatives
in Lafayette's secretive departure with General De Kalb aboard LA VICTORIE,
all contrary to the orders of the French King.
At Philadelphia, Lafayette's presentation of his credentials
to Congress raised an uproar.
The movie accurately shows the mood in which Congress nearly rejected
the three finest officers who ever served the American Army: the heroic
DeKalb killed in hand-to-hand combat at Camden, the drillmaster Stuben (von Steuben)
and the resourceful Lafayette.
Stung with disappointment, the witty Lafayette
wrote Congress with an offer to serve at his own expense and without a command.
To true cynics, the Congress of the movie Lafayette
is a nest of wardheelers, swaying in the breeze cheering for one thing one minute and then just
the opposite. However while the two scenes in Congress
are appropriately humourous, the extras used in assembling
this Congress had a distinctive, dignified European bearing.
The filmmakers might have used American extras for these scenes
or lacking real Americans scraped some beggars and tramps out of
any English slum to capture that signature American lack of taste.
Congress relented and Lafayette and the others received their commissions. But time for command
would come. Reporting in at the Battle of Brandywine, Lafayette organized soldiers
milling around (Cluster F---ing apparently has ancient roots) into a rear guard to break a British onslaught.
The action caught Washington's attention. The limitations imposed by Congress on Lafayette's commission
were ignored. Lafayette served with distinction at Monmouth, one of Washington's near misses
in facing the British in open European combat and decisively defeating them.
The Brandywine-Germantown campaign was fateful. Though
the Americans lost both battles and the capitol of Philadelphia as well,
their quick recovery from both defeats persuaded the French military that a new
war with Britain could be won.
Popular sentiment supporting renewed hostility with Britain
stemmed from well-spread reports of Lafayette's heroism. The importance
of Lafayette's family in the old chivalric order certainly were a clinching factor.
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The movie correctly shows Lafayette's triumphal return to France
now an ally in America's War with Britain.
After receiving a nominal punishment for violating the King's declaration of neutrality,
Lafayette was promoted mestre de camp (colonel).
Back in America, Lafayette was dispatched to Virginia with an elite unit
to face the traitor Arnold and marauding Cornwallis. A cat and mouse game ensued culminated in
the battle of Yorktown where Lafayette's attack forced British surrender.
The movie ends with the surrender at Yorktown, but records the surrender
incorrectly. This is surprising. Yorktown won American independence, but
was one of France's few moments of glory in its long wars with Britain.
In the movie the British properly surrender to General Washington who takes their sword and sheaths it.
In actuality the British sent out the Irish General O'Hara who attempted to
surrender to the French. The French refused the surrender as did Washington
who in turn dismissed General O'Hara and insisted upon a surrender to a subordinate.
The total humiliation of the British would seem to exaggerate
the extent of the French victory.
There the movie ends, but the War and Lafayette's life continued.
Later Life: The Revolution Reaches France
The "American Marquis," now "the friend of Washington" and
"the hero of two worlds" was all of 24 years old
when legislatures voted him US citizenship by acclamation in New York,
Maryland and Virginia. Upon his homecoming in 1782, Lafayette was promoted to the rank
of marechal-de-camp (major general) in the French Army by Louis XVI in preparation for
an expedition to conquer Canada. Admiral Rodney's offencive in 1782 the Carribean destroyed the French fleet and
effectively cancelled that invasion.
Yet despite its losses in the war, France gladly took credit for victory over its
ancient enemy. Lafayette became a national icon, adored by the court and
acclaimed by the public. Lafayette would remain content with
indolent adulation only so long.
The storm clouds of Revolution were reaching France.
The author of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man
which follows
Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of the Rights and Privileges of The Inhabitants of Virginia,
Lafayette rose to command the new National Guard sworn to uphold
the nation, the law and the King. Lafayette would advocate a new distinctly
French form of government, a limited monarchy like England's with a
written constitution like America's.
Like many who would follow Lafayette in attempting to construct
the middle course between England and America throughout France's subsequent
history of two wobbly monarchies, two aggrandizing, self- destructive empires and five shaky
republics, Lafayette would suffer disappointment, exile and imprisonment.
The monarchy fell and a republic proclaimed. Declared an enemy of the state by the French republic in its feverous blood rage,
Lafayette fled the country on his way he hoped to an exile in friendly America.
Captured by the Austrian, Lafayette was imprisoned as a dangerous radical.
His imprisonment is commemorated in the Byron Poem Prisoner of Chillon:
My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,
As men's have grown from sudden fears:
My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil,
But rusted with a vile repose,
For they have been a dungeon's spoil,
And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are bann'd, and barr'd--forbidden fare;
Finally relenting to pressure perhaps from the British,
the Austrians yielded up Lafayette to the America counsel, as an American citizen.
Refusing the honors and patronage of the Napoleanic Empire
Lafayette took up the life of a farmer. Upon his return to the United States
in 1824, Lafayette was greeted by unbounded enthusiasm.
At age 70 Lafayette served briefly as an interim President of France,
but handed over to an Orleanist restoration in the person of France's last
King Louis Phillippe,
an unassuming man who preferred the simple cloth of the merchant class rather
than robes of state.
At Lafayette's death in 1834, the U.S. Liberty Bell
gave a muffled toll. He is buried in Paris in American soil taken
from Bunker Hill. His prestige in Europe was so great that
even under German occupation, the thiteen starred flag was raised
by a honor guard without fail every day.
It might be months, or years, or days--
I kept no count, I took no note--
I had no hope my eyes to raise,
And clear them of their dreary mote;
At last men came to set me free;
I ask'd not why, and reck'd not where;
- - Lord Byron
