Lafayette

What an incredible life! Born into great wealth, and married into even greater wealth at 16, Lafayette enlists in the American Continental army in 1776 and sails for his adopted country to serve in the fight for liberty - at 19! He does not receive a warm welcome. Given his age, his difficulties with English, and his lack of experience, Lafayette has great difficulty convincing Congress to give him a commission. But he is intellingent, passionate, and very likable and he persists.. Ultimately he joins Washington's staff and a warm relationship with the commanding general quickly develops. He displays great courage in battle, leading his troops from the front, is wounded, and manages some key victories, and perhaps more importantly, he and his army manage to escape from potential disasters - and survive. He also survives Valley Forge and negotiates a treaty with a tribe of Senecas. The relationship with Washington deepens into an "adopted" son/father union.Lafayette returns to France a hero and immediately begins lobbying for French support of the American cause with money , ships and troops. Again he is successful and returns to America. More battlefield success. Now leading one of the Americans three armies, Lafayette eventually draws the British into a trap at Yorktown, forcing Cornwallis to surrender. Again back to Paris where he assists Franklin in his diplomat role and Lafayette becomes a key player in finalizing the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War..Concurrently Lafayette begins his attempts to introduce American liberty in France. Louis XVI initially shares some of Lafayette's enthusiasm for reforms but quickly imposes limits. Lafayette rejects the King's propositions and his offer of key positions in the government. The economy turns sharply downward, pockets of famine develop throughout France, mobs form, and so begins a long cycle of violent, bloody revolt. Factions form - royalists, republicans (who look to Lafayette for leadership) , Jacobins. In two years, the French send one million of their twenty-six million men, women and children to prison. 200,000 are killed by guillotine including the grandmother, mother, and sister of Adrienne, Lafayette's wife. Lafayette is imprisoned for five years, several in a rat-infested, stinking, dark cell in Olmutz. Eventually he is released but lives in exile; Napolean comes to power, Lafeyette returns to France and continues to press for his 'American" rights and on it goes.Now a reader may ask, "How is the book? Did Unger do a good job with the material?" Rest assured, he did an excellent job, telling the story of this great man in a tight 383 page, well written, well documented, detailed biography. He includes a number of illustrations, using the portraits and landscapes of the day (after all, Lafayette was French, and though a lot of art was destroyed during the French revolution, much remains) and he cited a good bit of Lafayette's correspondence particularly with American patriots and especially with Washington - all in a very flowery, diplomatic and emotional tone. For example:Lafayette to Washington: ".....Remember our Valley Forge times........What a sense of pride and satisfaction I feel......You, my dear general, who truly can say you have done all this, what must your virtuous and good heart feel on the happy instant where the revolution you have made is now firmly established. I cannot but envy the happiness of my grandchildren when they will be about celebrating and worshiping your name-to have had one of their ancestors among your soldiers"But for me the most moving and well done passages by Unger cite Lafayette's last trip (his 4th) to the United States in 1824, Lafayette returns with his son, George Washington Lafayette, at the invitation of Congress to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the country's founding: "...dozens of ships jammed New York Harbor, their masts and stays aflutter with flags and ensigns. Guns boomed and church bells pealed from all directions, and tens of thousands lined the shores to cheer him as his ship passed by. Thirty thousand greeted him on Lower Manhattan when he landed: fifty thousand more awaited on Broadway to see the huge procession that would escort him up to City hall. At the foot of the gangway, a group of veterans in patched-up, ill-fitting old uniforms stood as straight as their crooked old limbs allowed. As he passed before them, each snapped out his name and company, and the battle where he had served with the marquis: 'Monmouth, sir'; 'Barren Hill, sir'; 'Brandywine, sir'....It was all too much for the old man and he burst into tears.'

This is an extremely well-written biography which just happens to be about Lafayette, and which to my extreme luck somehow came with an autograph by the author. It was a must-read in preparation for my own book about the main key to the Bastille, which Lafayette gave to George Washington. In Unger's book you'll find information you'll likely not find elsewhere. For example, you'll learn that besides his loyalty to Washington, the reason why Lafayette accepted his assignment to the troublesome, malaria-ridden southern theater in the latter stages of the American Revolution was revenge: the traitor Benedict Arnold was there as well as British General Phillips, the man that had killed Lafayette's father at the Battle of Minden. The book also outlines the major, repeat major, ways in which through his many talents -- from donations of much-needed money, to singular diplomacy, to courageous and inspired leadership on the battlefield -- Lafayette helped the American Revolution succeed. Also included are insights into why Lafayette was good at starting revolutions but not so good at finishing them in forms he would have been happy with. Regardless, you'll come to love the man. Vive Lafayette!If the author does revise his book, I would recommend he take a look at the following: p 39. Washington was likely not 6 foot 4 inches tall, as the author describes him. Washington’s undertaker had him measured at 6 foot 3.5 inches (with toes pointing). Almost everyone else has him at 6 foot 2 inches. The author has Lafayette at 6 foot 1 inch in this book. In “The Unexpected George Washington,” the heights are reversed. p 48. The author has Washington begin soldiering in 1754 as a lieutenant colonel under General Braddock. Actually, in 1753 as a major, Washington traveled on a mission to the Ohio Valley. p. 120 The author has Benedict Arnold receiving a crippling leg wound at Quebec in 1776, which made him reluctant to assume any more battlefield commands. Actually, it was the further leg wound and his horse falling on him at Saratoga in 1777 that finally sent Arnold to noncombatant status in Philadelphia and subsequently to West Point. p 229. Maryland didn’t cede just 10 square miles for Washington, DC. Together, Maryland and Virginia together ceded 10 miles square (100 square miles). Virginia later took back its portion. p 236. 5 cannons didn’t blast through the Bastille’s outer walls. The Bastille’s governor surrendered when the attackers were about to fire at the drawbridge. The mob didn’t hang the Bastille’s governor; they decapitated him. p 240. Lafayette didn’t salvage the key from the rubble of the Bastille. It was presented to him by Brissot, a member of the city council, at Paris’ city hall. p 250. It’s questionable that the King’s troops actually trampled their revolutionary cockades. More likely it was a vicious rumor concocted by the journalist Marat to spur the Women’s March to Versailles. These issues aside, however, the book is excellent!Check out one of William J. Bahr’s books:  George Washington's Liberty Key: Mount Vernon's Bastille Key – the Mystery and Magic of Its Body, Mind, and Soul , a best seller at Mount Vernon.

I found it difficult that a very young and inexperienced foreigner could have overwhelmed George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and other more mature and experienced Notables. My impression was a bonhomie, rich socialite with time on his hands to visit the colonies and to fight France’s enemy the British. A vagabond looking for adventure. Without his family’s money and connections he would have been like the rest of French citizens, a poor peasant. We read unending letters between Lafayette and Washington expressing ad nauseam their respect, love and devotion to each other. The young knight is continually writing letters to everyone about everything with the impression they are read and responded to immediately. Of course Washington is happy with Gilbert as he freely spends half his fortune supporting the revolution against the Brits. However, Gilbert fails to understand that his own countrymen are vastly different than the upstart americans. Mayhem and slaughter ensues with his involvement in the three French revolutions. His selfish refusal of both political and military leadership of his fellow citizens only inflames the Jacobins to more violence. What I found more intriguing was the secret dealings of the French in attempts to usurp Washington’s command and supplying the colonies unbeknownst to England. He failed all those young revolutionaries that came to his door seeking his leadership. He said the ideas of liberty are fermenting everywhere. And he was sure the young will support the right to pure liberty. His experience and support and leadership of the colonies was for naught in his own country. Instead he retired to his country estate.

Lafayette, by H.G. Unger is a well written book; good style with comprehensive bibliography.An excellent analysis of the 18th Century; politics, socio-economic structures, and reasoning (enlightenment).Apart from the American Revolution it also shed objective light on the French and the French Revolution.American high school pupils should read this book to know & understand the process incurred by the founding fathers (Washington etc.).I highly recommend this book.

A biography of a very interesting person, but ultimately it does not give you much idea of the character of the man, and the writing is a bit pedestrian. Not as good as the author's biography of John Hancock for example. However failing any better biography (and there are few available), then it is still worth reading.

Unger brings Lafayette--hero of the American Revolution and lifelong advocate of political liberty--back to life for the time you spend reading this excellent biography.Two things in particular drove me to opposite and profound emotions: pessimism, almost depression at the shabby treatment of him by contemporary Europeans, realizing that similar and abundant antagonism still exists toward liberty today; and optimism when considering the wellspring of joy and gratitude expressed by the American people at his visit in 1824-25 as "the Nation's Guest."The achievements of Lafayette and the other "founding fathers" reminds us that consistent adherence to sound principles by a very few brave men can yield unlimited societal benefit while the stubborn and mindless pursuit of political power yields destruction and death.This book clarifies that ideas determine actions, and human actions determine history.

Harlow Giles Ungere's Lafayette is a wonderful story that relates how a young boy, courageous and determined, helped Americans such as I to gain our independence. He details the amazing relationship between the boy Lafayette and George Washington, fatherly to the point of the most touching tenderness. He relates how Lafayette failed to control the French Revolution, simply because he hadn't spent enough time with Washington to learn the craft of governing. `'In rejecting political and military power, Lafayette's political ineptitude was matched only by that of the king....'' All of which led to a political vacuum which permitted the entrance of madmen such as Danton and Robespierre. But what can be done when we're assured in Lawday's Danton and Scurr's Robespierre that both men believed wholeheartedly in the power of the people, that the rich should be taxed to pay for the poor, and that the poor should be protected at all costs, that all power should be placed in the hands of the people, when this same people murdered the king's guards, the Black Musketeers, boys from age twelve; when they beheaded a baker who had nonetheless worked all night to provide bread for the mob that murdered him; when the people, mostly illiterate swine, dropped their pants to defecate in any available space, like errant dogs? The massacres continued and Danton and Robespierre's heads finally, fortuitiously, fell into a basket as filthy as the ambient dung heaps. The French then went on to accept an emperor, followed by more kings and other emperors, until the French Republic finally came into existence. All unsettling events. But still more unsettling is how another free people, the English, can still, in their vast majority, consent to live under a silly gaggle of royals, a democratic people who count for little unless they or their relatives or friends or acquaintances have the luck of being invited to their king's/queen's garden party. Anyway, Ungere's excellent book gives a wonderful overview of the American and French Revolutions--it is truly a five-star winner.

This book draws a brilliant portrait of Lafayette and contains many details about his life, his actions in the military and politics and his influence in French history.My main concern is about the pretended neutrality of the author who criticizes the lack of objectivity in the French historians.Indeed, the way the author describes the French people unable to rule itself and infected by revolutions and despots while giving the reasons for that (pressure from the european monarchs, influence of economic issues…) is confusing. Why blame the French people for the european wars? If the 1789 Revolution hadn’t occurred, the other European nations may never have known ideas of liberty and self-government, America being too distant from Europe continent. Sometimes good needs that bad things happen...The funniest part is about the last French colonial wars and overestimating the French casualties in conflicts that remain smaller (and older!) than the Vietnam War or other military offensives led by the US since the WWII. And what about the Amerindian people slaughtering, the American Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan, the witch hunt for communists, JFK’s assassination mystery, CIA’s operations to raise dictators in third world countries, the apology of capitalism and the over-consumerism, mass pollution, etc… ? I think it’s no better than the 2 last French colonial wars who are mainly the fruit of a frustration of the army born with the defeat of WWII. The US too expanded their territory through wars: against Mexico for control of Texas, against Spain for Cuba…Maybe the French history is not brilliant since 1789, but actions of the US since the last century are more and more appalling. And I can’t stand how the author dares compare the number of French constitutions with the only historic one in the US: what about firearms laws and other stupid rules that date from the XVIIIth century and have no reason to exist in the XXIst one?Yes, the cutting part is easy, but I don’t know if the sewing in America has been as well done as the author claims considering that the country makes many enemies worldwide and presents huge differences between its rich and poor people, for instance.America is sure enough a better example of liberty and equality than France…Despite all I said this book still gives a very interesting presentation of Lafayette although through biased American eyes.