OPINION:
THE MARQUIS: LAFAYETTE RECONSIDERED
By Laura Auricchio
Knopf, $30, 409 pages
Directly north of the White House stands Lafayette Square, named in 1824 to honor the then-elderly Marquis de Lafayette, who embarked on a triumphal return tour of the United States the same year. By far the most famous of many foreign volunteers who had flocked to these shores during the American Revolution to serve the cause of independence, Lafayette — only 19 years old when he joined George Washington’s forces, and a wealthy nobleman who lavished large amounts of his own cash as well as hazarding his life on the battlefield — captured the American imagination. Here was a figure from romance, a chivalrous beau sabreur with the common touch who became a surrogate son to George Washington, father of our country but with no children of his own.
But there is something odd about Lafayette Square, and that oddity reflects the fluctuating fortunes of its namesake. Though named after Lafayette, the square is dominated by a towering equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson, erected in 1853 when Old Hickory’s party had recaptured the White House after a period of Whig dominance. A considerably smaller statue of Lafayette, on foot, was later consigned to the square’s southeastern corner, marginalized, as it were, by a more politically partisan, homegrown hero.
For most of his life — once his salad days as Washington’s youthful comrade-in-arms had passed — it was Lafayette’s fate to be upstaged and overshadowed by later, larger figures, especially in his native France, as Laura Auricchio points out in her intelligent, sympathetic and often moving new biography. Brave, honest, energetic and sincerely dedicated to social justice, Lafayette was a hero missing a few essential parts. He lacked his idol Washington’s iron will and ability to learn from defeat. And, despite his own share of naive vanity — Thomas Jefferson, observing him in Paris, claimed Lafayette had a “canine” appetite for publicity — he also lacked the ruthless zeal of political fanatics like Robespierre and the equally ruthless, opportunistic lust for power of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Returning to France as a hero after the American Revolution, Lafayette believed in all the right things and pursued his beliefs unselfishly. He opposed absolute monarchy, serfdom, colonial slavery and all infringements on legitimate individual rights. He favored a parliamentary government within a constitutional monarchy, roughly modeled on the British system. Unfortunately, this put him at odds with both the die-hard majority of his fellow noblemen and the bloodthirsty Parisian mob. To aristocratic ultras he was a traitor to his class; to the mob he was just one more privileged aristo.
When the enlightened center collapsed, so did his popularity. At the height of the Reign of Terror, facing almost certain death by guillotine, Lafayette fled to the Austrian Netherlands (modern Belgium) where he was promptly arrested as a revolutionary sympathizer. He remained a political prisoner for the next five years. Only the heroic efforts of his wife, Adrienne, who tirelessly crusaded for his release and voluntarily joined him in captivity, would finally gain his freedom. He was allowed to return to a France now under the dictatorial rule of Napoleon, who tolerated Lafayette’s presence as long as he stayed out of politics and out of Paris.
In this internal exile, Lafayette imitated his hero Washington, throwing himself into the role of enlightened gentleman farmer and humane landlord. He did, however, enjoy three brief curtain calls, helping to form a provisional government after the fall of Napoleon, triumphally touring America in the 1820s, and once more playing a key transitional role in France in 1830 when the last Bourbon King of France, the authoritarian Charles X, was forcibly replaced by his supposedly more moderate Orleans cousin, Louis Philippe. Then it was back to the farm and growing obscurity.
Only World War I would finally revive Lafayette’s popularity with Frenchmen, thanks largely to the way Americans invoked his name in coming to their aid, e.g., the Lafayette Escadrille, a crack unit of volunteer American fliers serving under French colors, and the famous declaration delivered at Lafayette’s graveside by Charles E. Stanton, an aide to Gen. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force (and sometimes misattributed to Pershing himself): “Lafayette, we are here.”
It was a well-deserved tribute to a man who had once been the hero of two continents and two revolutions, a gallant if flawed leader who, in biographer Laura Auricchio’s words, “failed at more ventures than most of us will ever attempt and succeeded at efforts that stymied countless men, but never abandoned the belief that he could change the world, and never despaired of success. Of all his accomplishments, these might be the most extraordinary.”
• Aram Bakshian Jr., a former aide to Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, has written widely on politics, history, gastronomy and the arts.
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