Chapter XV: America’s Message to France--“lafayette, (6)

The Netherlands offered Lafayette a home, and he went to the little town of Vianen, near Utrecht, to live. Here he wrote many letters to his friends in America, studied the amazing events that had happened in France since the day on which the States-General had first met at Versailles, and watched the wonderful course of the new leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, across the fields of Europe. Bonaparte puzzled him; he was not sure whether the Corsican was a liberator or a despot; but he saw that the General was restoring order to a France that was greatly in need of it, and hoped that he might accomplish some of the ends for which Lafayette and his friends had worked. Presently the time came when the exile felt that he might safely return to his home.

XII

IN THE DAYS OF NAPOLEON

After the treaty of Campo Formio with Austria, which had secured the liberation of Lafayette, Napoleon Bonaparte returned to Paris the leading man of France. The government in Paris, which had gone through one change after another since the end of the Reign of Terror, was now in the hands of what was known as the Directory. But the members of this, divided in their views, were not very popular with the people, who were so tired of disorder that they desired above everything else a strong hand at the helm of the state. The people were already looking to the brilliant young general as such a helmsman, and the Directors knew this, and so grew increasingly jealous of Bonaparte.

Having settled his score with Austria Bonaparte suggested to the French government that he should strike a blow at England by invading Egypt. The Directory, glad to have him out of the country, agreed to this, and in May, 1798, Bonaparte departed on such an expedition. As soon as Bonaparte was safely away the enemies of France resumed their attacks, and when the French people saw that the Corsican was their surest defender they began to clamor more loudly against the Directory. Bonaparte kept himself informed of what was happening at home, and when he thought that the proper moment had come he left his army in Egypt and appeared in France. His welcome there made it clear that the people wanted him for their leader; they were weary of turmoil and constant changes in government, they were ready for a strong and able dictator.

France had known ten years of disorder, bloodshed, anarchy, democratic misrule, financial ruin, and political failure, and the people were no longer so much concerned about liberty as they had once been. Bonaparte was crafty; he pretended that he wanted power in order to safeguard the principles that had been won in the Revolution. He went to Paris, and there, on November 9, 1799, was made First Consul, and the real dictator of France. The country was still a republic in name, but at once the First Consul began to gather all the reins of authority in his own hands.

Under the Directory Lafayette had been an exile, forbidden to enter French territory. But with Napoleon in power conditions changed. Lafayette felt the greatest gratitude to the man who had freed him from Olmutz, he had the deepest admiration for the general who had won so many brilliant victories for France, and he was disposed to believe that Napoleon really intended to secure liberty for the country. When he heard of Napoleon’s return from Egypt he wrote to his wife, who was in France at the time, “People jealous of Bonaparte see in me his future opponent; they are right, if he wishes to suppress liberty; but if he have the good sense to promote it, I will suit him in every respect. I do not believe him to be so foolish as to wish to be only a despot.”

He also sent a letter to Napoleon, in which he said, “The love of liberty and country would suffice for your arrival to fill me with joy and hope. To this desire for public happiness is joined a lively and profound sentiment for my liberator. Your greetings to the prisoners of Olmutz have been sent to me by her whose life I owe to you. I rejoice in all my obligations to you, citizen-general, and in the happy conviction that to cherish your glory and to wish your success is an act of civism as much as of attachment and gratitude.”

Friends procured the exile a passport and he returned to Paris. But Bonaparte was not glad to have him come back; the First Consul was in reality no friend of the principles of the Revolution, and he felt that such a man as Lafayette must inevitably oppose him and might even prejudice the people against him. He showed his anger unreservedly when friends told him of Lafayette’s arrival, and the friends immediately advised the latter that he had better return to the Netherlands. But Lafayette, having made up his mind to come, would not budge now. “You should be sufficiently acquainted with me,” he said to the men who brought him the news from the First Consul, “to know that this imperious and menacing tone would suffice to confirm me in the course which I have taken.” And he added, “It would be very amusing for me to be arrested at night by the National Guard of Paris and imprisoned in the Temple the next day by the restorer of the principles of 1789.”

Madame Lafayette called on the First Consul, who received her kindly. She pleaded so eloquently for her husband, pointing out his natural desire to be in France, that Napoleon’s anger vanished. He said that he regretted Lafayette’s return only because it would “retard his progress toward the reëstablishment of Lafayette’s principles, and would force him to take in sail.” “You do not understand me, madame,” he continued, “but General Lafayette will understand me; and not having been in the midst of affairs, he will feel that I can judge better than he. I therefore conjure him to avoid all publicity; I leave it to his patriotism.” Madame Lafayette answered that that was her husband’s wish.

Believing that Lafayette had no desire to oppose him, Napoleon soon restored him to citizenship. Different as the two men were, each admired the strong qualities of the other. The First Consul could appreciate Lafayette’s devotion to the cause of liberty, and Lafayette said to Napoleon, “I have but one wish, General,--a free government and you at the head of it.”

Napoleon, however, had no real liking for a free government. He had forgotten any belief in liberty that he might have had in the days when he was a poor and obscure lieutenant. He had tasted power, and was already looking forward to the time when he should be not only the most powerful man in France but in the whole world. To do that he must make his countrymen forget their recently won liberties. He must keep Lafayette, the greatest apostle of freedom, in the background, and not allow him to remind the people of his liberal dreams. So Napoleon adopted a policy of silence toward Lafayette. In February, 1800, the celebrated French orator Fontanes delivered a public eulogy on the character of Washington, who had lately died. Napoleon forbade the orator to mention the name of Lafayette in his address, and saw to it that Lafayette was not invited to the ceremony, nor any Americans. The bust of Washington was draped in banners that the First Consul had taken in battle.

Lafayette’s son George applied for and was given a commission in one of Napoleon’s regiments of hussars. When his name was erased from the list of exiles Lafayette himself was restored to his rank of major-general in the French army, but he did not ask for any command. He went to Lagrange, an estate that his wife had inherited from her mother, and set himself to the work of trying to pay off the debts that had piled up while he was in prison in Austria. Like all the old aristocracy that returned to France after the Revolution he found that most of his property had been taken by the state and now had new owners and that the little that was left was burdened by heavy taxes.

Chavaniac and a few acres near it came into his possession, but there were relatives who needed it as a home more than he did and he let them live there. He himself cultivated the farm at Lagrange, and was able in a few years to pay off his French creditors. But he was still greatly in debt to Gouverneur Morris and other Americans who had helped his wife with money when she had need of it, and these were loans that were difficult to pay.

Lafayette was living quietly on his farm when Napoleon returned with fresh triumphs from Italy. The man who had been a general could not help but admire the great military genius of the First Consul. The latter felt that he had little now to fear from Lafayette, and the relations between the two men became quite friendly. Had they only been able to work together they might have accomplished a great deal for the good of France, but no two men could have been more fundamentally different in their characters and ideals than Lafayette and Napoleon.

Occasionally they discussed their views on government, and Lafayette once said to the First Consul, “I do not ignore the effect of the crimes and follies which have profaned the name of liberty; but the French are, perhaps, more than ever in a state to receive it. It is for you to give it; it is from you that it is expected.” Napoleon smiled; he had his own notions about liberty, and he felt himself strong enough to force those notions upon France.

Yet the First Consul did wish for the good opinion and support of Lafayette. It was at his suggestion that certain friends urged the latter to become a Senator. Lafayette felt that, disapproving as he did of some of the policies of the new government, he must decline, and did so, stating his reasons frankly. Then Napoleon’s minister Talleyrand offered to send him as the French representative to the United States, but this Lafayette declined also. His political views and the need of cultivating the farm at Lagrange were sufficient to keep him from accepting office.

Lafayette enjoyed his talks with Napoleon, though the latter was often inclined to be domineering. Lord Cornwallis came to Paris in 1802 to conclude the Treaty of Amiens between France and England, and Lafayette met his old opponent at dinner at the house of Joseph Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon. The next time Napoleon and Lafayette met the former said, “I warn you that Lord Cornwallis gives out that you are not cured yet.”

“Of what?” answered Lafayette. “Is it of loving liberty? What could have disgusted me with it? The extravagances and crimes of the tyranny of the Terror? They only make me hate still more every arbitrary system, and attach me more and more to my principles.”

Napoleon said seriously, “I should tell you, General Lafayette, and I see with regret, that by your manner of expressing yourself on the acts of this government you give to its enemies the weight of your name.”

“What better can I do?” asked Lafayette. “I live in retirement in the country, I avoid occasions for speaking; but whenever any one comes to ask me whether your system is conformant to my ideas of liberty, I shall answer that it is not; for, General, I certainly wish to be prudent, but I shall not be false.”

“What do you mean,” said Napoleon, “with your arbitrary system? Yours was not so, I admit; but you had against your adversaries the resource of riots.... I observed you carefully.... You had to get up riots.”

“If you call the national insurrection of July, 1789, a riot,” Lafayette answered, “I lay claim to that one; but after that period I wanted no more. I have repressed many; many were gotten up against me; and, since you appeal to my experience regarding them, I shall say that in the course of the Revolution I saw no injustice, no deviation from liberty, which did not injure the Revolution itself.”

Napoleon ended the conversation by saying, “After all, I have spoken to you as the head of the government, and in this character I have cause to complain of you; but as an individual, I should be content, for in all that I hear of you, I have recognized that, in spite of your severity toward the acts of the government, there has always been on your part personal good-will toward myself.”

And this in truth expressed Lafayette’s attitude toward Napoleon, admiration and friendship for the General, but opposition to the growing love of power of the First Consul.

That love of power soon made itself manifest in Napoleon’s election to the new office of “Consul for life.” Meantime Lafayette was busy cultivating his farm, work which he greatly enjoyed. And to Lagrange came many distinguished English and American visitors, eager to meet the owner and hear him tell of his adventurous career on two continents.

The United States treated him well. While he was still in prison at Olmutz he was placed on the army list at full pay. Congress voted to him more than eleven thousand acres on the banks of the Ohio, and when the great territory of Louisiana was acquired a tract near the city of New Orleans was set aside for him and he was informed that the government of Louisiana was destined for him. But Madame Lafayette’s health had been delicate ever since those trying days in Austria, and that, combined with Lafayette’s own feeling that he ought to remain in France, led him to decline the eager invitations that were sent him to settle in America.

Napoleon’s star led the Corsican on, farther and farther away from the path that Lafayette hoped he would follow. In May, 1804, the man who was “Consul for life” became the Emperor of France, and seated himself on the most powerful throne in Europe. Lafayette was tremendously disappointed at this step. Again Napoleon’s friends made overtures to the General, and the latter’s own cousin, the Count de Segur, who had wanted to go with him to America to fight for freedom, and who was now the Grand Master of Ceremonies at the new Emperor’s court, wrote to him asking him to become one of the high officers of the Legion of Honor. Lafayette refused the invitation, and from that time the friendship between him and Napoleon ceased. The Emperor had now no use for the lover of liberty, and carried his dislike for the latter so far that Lafayette’s son George, though a brave and brilliant officer in the army, was forced to resign his commission.

Napoleon went on and on, his victories over all the armies of Europe dazzling the eyes of his people. Those who had been aristocrats under Louis XVI. and those who had been Jacobins during the Reign of Terror were glad to accept the smallest favors from the all-powerful Emperor. But Lafayette stayed away from Paris and gave all his attention to his farm, which began to prove productive. In his house portraits of his great friends, Washington, Franklin, La Rochefoucauld, Fox, kept fresh the memory of more stirring times.

But France, and even the Emperor, had not forgotten him. Once in an angry speech to his chief councilors about the men who had brought about the French Revolution, Napoleon exclaimed, “Gentlemen, this talk is not aimed at you; I know your devotion to the throne. Everybody in France is corrected. I was thinking of the only man who is not,--Lafayette. He has never retreated an inch.”

And at another time, when a conspiracy against the life of the Emperor was discovered, Napoleon was inclined to charge Lafayette with having been concerned in it. “Don’t be afraid,” said Napoleon’s brother Joseph. “Wherever there are aristocrats and kings you are certain not to find Lafayette.”

Meantime at Lagrange Madame Lafayette fell ill and died in December, 1807. No husband and wife were ever more devoted to each other, and Lafayette expressed his feelings in regard to her in a letter to his friend Maubourg. “During the thirty-four years of a union, in which the love and the elevation, the delicacy and the generosity of her soul charmed, adorned, and honored my days,” he wrote, “I was so much accustomed to all that she was to me, that I did not distinguish her from my own existence. Her heart wedded all that interested me. I thought that I loved her and needed her; but it is only in losing her that I can at last clearly see the wreck of me that remains for the rest of my life; for there only remain for me memories of the woman to whom I owed the happiness of every moment, undimmed by any cloud.”

Madame Lafayette deserved the tribute. Never for one moment in the course of all the storms of her husband’s career had she wavered in her loyal devotion to his ideals and interests. The little girl who had met him first in her father’s garden in Paris had stood by him when all her family and friends opposed him, had been his counselor in the days of the French Revolution, and had gone to share his prison in Austria. History rarely says enough about the devoted wives of the great men who have helped the world. No hero ever found greater aid and sympathy when he needed it most than Lafayette had from his wife Adrienne.

From his home at Lagrange the true patriot of France watched the wonderful course of the Emperor of France. It was a course amazing in its victories. The men who had been an undrilled rabble in the days of the Revolution were now the veterans of the proudest army in Europe. The people did not have much more liberty than they had enjoyed under Louis XVI.; they had exchanged one despotic government for another, but Napoleon fed them on victories, dazzled their vision, swept them off their feet by his long succession of triumphs.

The treaty of Tilsit, made in July, 1807, followed the great victories of Eylau and Friedland, which crushed the power of Prussia and changed Russia into an ally of France. Napoleon’s might reached its zenith then. No European nation dared to contest his claim of supremacy. He was the ruler of France, of Northern Italy, of Eastern Germany; he had made Spain a dependency, and placed his brothers on the thrones of Holland, Naples, and Westphalia. For five years his power remained at this height. In 1812 he set out to invade Russia with an army of five hundred thousand men, gathered from half the countries of Europe. He stopped at Dresden, and kings of the oldest lineage, who only held their crowns at his pleasure, came to do homage to the little Corsican soldier who had made himself the most powerful man in the world. Only one country still dared to resist him, England, who held control of the seas, but who was feeling the effect of the commercial war he was waging against her.

But the very size of Napoleon’s dominion was a source of weakness. The gigantic power he had built up depended on the life and abilities of one man. No empire can rest for long on such a foundation. When Napoleon left the greater part of the grand army in the wilderness of Russia and hurried back to Paris the first ominous signs of cracks in the foundation of his empire began to appear. France was almost exhausted by his campaigns, but the Emperor needed more triumphs and demanded more men. He won more victories, but his enemies increased. The French people were tired of war; there came a time when they were ready to barter Napoleon for peace. The allied armies that were ranged against him occupied the hills about Paris in March, 1814, and on April fourth of that year the Emperor Napoleon abdicated his throne at Fontainebleau.

The illness of relatives brought Lafayette to Paris at the same time, and seeing the storms that again threatened his country he did what he could to bring order out of confusion. His son and his son-in-law Lasteyrie enlisted in the National Guard, and his other son-in-law, Maubourg, joined the regular army. When the allies entered Paris Lafayette witnessed the downfall of the Empire with mixed emotions. He had never approved of Napoleon, but he knew that he had at least given the country a stable government. And when the allies placed the brother of Lafayette’s old friend Louis XVI. on the throne, with the title of Louis XVIII., he hoped that the new king might rule according to a liberal constitution, and hastened to offer his services to that sovereign.

The people, tired of Napoleon’s wars, wanting peace now as they had wanted it after the Revolution, agreed passively to the change of rulers. But Louis XVIII., a true Bourbon, soon showed that he had learned nothing from the misfortunes of his family. Lafayette met the Emperor of Russia in Paris, and the latter spoke to him with misgiving of the fact that the Bourbons appeared to be returning as obtuse and illiberal as ever. “Their misfortunes should have corrected them,” said Lafayette.

“Corrected!” exclaimed the Emperor. “They are uncorrected and incorrigible. There is only one, the Duke of Orleans, who has any liberal ideas. But from the others expect nothing at all.”

Lafayette soon found that was true. The new king proved the saying about his family, that the Bourbons never learned nor forgot. Louis XVIII. was that same Count of Provence whom Lafayette had taken pains to offend at Versailles when he did not want to be attached as a courtier to his staff. The King remembered that incident, and when Lafayette offered to serve him now showed his resentment and anger very plainly.

Seeing that there was nothing he could do in Paris, Lafayette retired again to Lagrange, and there watched the course of events. Napoleon, in exile on the island of Elba in the Mediterranean, was watching too, and he soon saw that France was not satisfied with her new sovereign. Agents brought him word that the people were only waiting for him to overthrow the Bourbon rule, and on March 1, 1815, he landed on the shores of Provence with a few hundred soldiers of his old Guard to reconquer his empire.

He had judged the situation rightly. As he advanced the people rose to greet him, the cities opened their gates, the soldiers sent to oppose him rallied to his standard. As Napoleon neared Paris Louis XVIII. fled across the frontier.

Again Lafayette went to the capital. “I had no faith in the conversion of Napoleon,” he said, “and I saw better prospects in the awkward and pusillanimous ill-will of the Bourbons than in the vigorous and profound perversity of their adversary.” But he found that the people of Paris wanted Napoleon again, and he heard with hope that the restored Emperor had agreed to a constitution and had established a Senate and a Representative Assembly elected by popular vote. These decisions sounded well, and as a result of them Lafayette allowed himself to be elected a member of the Representative Assembly, or Chamber of Deputies.

The other nations of Europe were furious when they heard of Napoleon’s return. They collected their armies again and prepared for a new campaign. Exhausted though France was, the Emperor was able to raise a new army of six hundred thousand men. With these he tried to defeat his enemies, but on the field of Waterloo on June 18, 1814, he was decisively beaten and hurried back to Paris to see what could be done to retrieve defeat.

He found the Chamber of Deputies openly hostile; its members wanted him to abdicate. He held meetings with the representatives, among whom Lafayette now held a chief place. At last the Assembly gave Napoleon an hour in which to abdicate the throne. Finally he agreed to abdicate in favor of his son. The Assembly did not want the young Napoleon as Emperor, and decided instead on a government by a commission of five men. Napoleon’s hour was over, his star had set; he was sent a prisoner to the far-distant island of St. Helena to end his days.

Lafayette wanted to see the new government adopt the ideas he had had in mind when France had first wrung a constitution from Louis XVI., and would have liked to serve on the commission that had charge of the country. Instead he was sent to make terms of peace with the allied armies that had been fighting Napoleon. And while he was away on this business the commission in Paris was dickering behind his back to restore Louis XVIII. The allies had taken possession of the French capital with their soldiers, the white flag of the Bourbons was everywhere replacing the tricolor of the Empire, and when Lafayette returned he found the King again upon his throne. Lafayette was disgusted with what he considered the folly and selfishness of the rulers of his country; he protested against the return of the old autocratic Bourbons, but the people were now more than ever eager for peace and harmony and accepted meekly whomever their leaders gave them.

Louis XVIII. was a weak, despotic ruler; the members of his house were equally narrow-minded and overbearing. Lafayette opposed their government in every way he could. In 1819 he was elected a member of the new Assembly, and for four years as a deputy he fought against the encroachments of the royal power. He took part in a conspiracy to overthrow the King, and when his friends cautioned him that he was risking his life and his property he answered, “Bah! I have already lived a long time, and it seems to me that I would worthily crown my political career by dying on a scaffold in the cause of liberty.”

That conspiracy failed, and although Lafayette was known to have been connected with the plot, neither the King nor his ministers dared to imprison him or even to call him to account. A year later he joined with other conspirators against the Bourbons, but again the plans failed through blunders. The Chamber of Deputies attempted to investigate the affair, but Lafayette so boldly challenged a public comparison of his own and the government’s course that the royalists shrank from pursuing the matter further. They knew what the people thought of their champion and did not dare to lay a hand upon him.

He retired from public life after this second conspiracy and went to live with his children and grandchildren at his country home of Lagrange. From there he wrote often to Thomas Jefferson and his other friends in the United States. If the Revolution in France had failed to bring about that republic he dreamed of the struggle in America had at least borne good fruits. More and more he thought of the young nation across the sea, in the birth of which he had played a great part, and more and more he wished to visit it again. So when he was invited by President Monroe in 1824 he gladly accepted, and for the fourth time set out across the Atlantic.

XIII

THE UNITED STATES WELCOMES THE HERO

The first half century of American independence was drawing near, and the Congress of the United States, mindful of the days when Lafayette had offered his sword in defense of liberty, voted unanimously that President Monroe be requested to invite the General to visit America as the guest of the nation. President Monroe joyfully acted as Congress requested, and placed at Lafayette’s service an American war-ship. The Frenchman, now sixty-seven years old, was eager to accept, but he declined the use of the war-ship, and sailed instead, with his son George Washington Lafayette and his private secretary on the American merchantman _Cadmus_, leaving Havre on July 13, 1824.

As he sailed out of Havre the American ships in the harbor ran up their flags in his honor and fired their guns in salute, an intimation of the welcome that was awaiting him on the other side of the Atlantic. The _Cadmus_ reached Staten Island on August fifteenth, and the guest landed in the midst of cheering throngs. Most of the men who had taken part with him in the birth of the country had now passed off the scene, and to Americans Lafayette was a tradition, one of the few survivors of the nation’s early days of strife and triumph. He was no longer the slim and eager boy of 1777; he was now a large, stout man, slightly lame, but his smile was still the same, and so was the delight with which he greeted the people.

The United States had grown prodigiously in the interval between this visit and his last. Instead of thirteen separate colonies there were now twenty-four united States. The population had increased from three to twelve millions. What had been wilderness was now ripe farmland; backwoods settlements had grown into flourishing towns built around the church and the schoolhouse. Agriculture and commerce were thriving everywhere, and everywhere Lafayette saw signs of the wisdom, honesty, and self-control which had established a government under which men could live in freedom and happiness.

His visit carried him far and wide through the United States. From New York he went by way of New Haven and Providence to Boston, from there to Portsmouth by the old colonial road through Salem, Ipswich, and Newburyport. From there he returned to New York by Lexington, Worcester, Hartford, and the Connecticut River. The steamer _James Kent_ took him to the old familiar scenes on the banks of the Hudson, reminding him of the day when he and Washington had ridden to the house of Benedict Arnold.

Starting again from New York he traveled through New Jersey to Philadelphia, the scene of the stirring events of his first visit, and thence to Baltimore and Washington. He went to Mount Vernon, Yorktown, Norfolk, Monticello, Raleigh, Charleston, and Savannah. In the spring of 1825 he was at New Orleans, and from there he ascended the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, sailed up Lake Erie, saw the Falls of Niagara, went through Albany and as far north as Portland, Maine. Returning by Lake Champlain he reached New York in time for the great celebration of the Fourth of July in 1825. He had made a very comprehensive tour of the United States.

The whole of this long journey was one triumphal progress. He constantly drove through arches bearing the words “Welcome, Lafayette!” Every house where he stopped became a Mecca for admiring crowds. The country had never welcomed any man as it did the gallant Frenchman. Balls, receptions, dinners, speeches, gifts of every kind were thrust upon him; and the leading men of the republic were constantly by his side.

He was present at the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill Monument and heard the great oration of Daniel Webster. “Fortunate, fortunate man!” exclaimed the orator turning toward Lafayette. “With what measure of devotion will you not thank God for the circumstances of your extraordinary life! You are connected with both hemispheres and with two generations. Heaven saw fit to ordain that the electric spark of liberty should be conducted, through you, from the New World to the Old; and we, who are now here to perform this duty of patriotism, have all of us long ago received it from our fathers to cherish your name and your virtues. You now behold the field, the renown of which reached you in the heart of France and caused a thrill in your ardent bosom. You see the lines of the little redoubt, thrown up by the incredible diligence of Prescott, defended to the last extremity by his lion-hearted valor, and within which the corner-stone of our monument has now taken its position. You see where Warren fell, and where Parker, Gardner, M’Cleary, Moore, and other early patriots fell with him. Those who survived that day, and whose lives have been prolonged to the present hour, are now around you. Some of them you have known in the trying scenes of the war. Behold, they now stretch forth their feeble arms to embrace you! Behold, they raise their trembling voices to invoke the blessing of God on you and yours forever!”

The welcome he received in New York and New England was equaled by that of Philadelphia and Baltimore and the South. At Charleston Colonel Huger, the devoted friend who had tried to rescue Lafayette from his Olmutz prison, was joined with him in demonstrations of the people’s regard. A great military celebration was given in Lafayette’s honor at Yorktown, and in the course of it a box of candles was found which had formed part of the stores of Lord Cornwallis, and the candles were used to furnish the light for the evening’s entertainment.

Lafayette first went to Washington in October, 1824. He was met by twenty-five young girls dressed in white and a military escort. After a short reception at the Capitol he was driven to the White House. There President Monroe, the members of his cabinet, and officers of the army and navy were gathered to receive him. As the guest of the nation entered, all rose, and the President advanced and welcomed him in the name of the United States. Lafayette stayed in Washington several days and then went to make some visits in the neighborhood.

During his absence Congress met and received a message from the President which set forth Lafayette’s past services to the country, the great enthusiasm with which the people had welcomed him, and recommended that a gift should be made him which should be worthy of the character and greatness of the American nation. Senator Hayne described how the rights and pay belonging to his rank in the army had never been claimed by Lafayette and how the land that had been given him in 1803 had afterward through a mistake been granted to the city of New Orleans. Then Congress unanimously passed a bill directing the treasurer of the United States to pay to General Lafayette, as a recognition of services that could never be sufficiently recognized or appreciated, the sum of two hundred thousand dollars.

When he returned to Washington he went to the Capitol, where Congress received him in state, every member springing to his feet in welcome to the nation’s guest. Henry Clay, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, held out his hand to the gallant Frenchman. “The vain wish has been sometimes indulged,” said Henry Clay to Lafayette, “that Providence would allow the patriot, after death, to return to his country and to contemplate the immediate changes which had taken place; to view the forests felled, the cities built, the mountains leveled, the canals cut, the highways constructed, the progress of the arts, the advancement of learning, and the increase of population. General, your present visit to the United States is a realization of the consoling object of that wish. You are in the midst of posterity. Everywhere you must have been struck with the great changes, physical and moral, which have occurred since you left us. Even this very city, bearing a venerated name, alike endeared to you and to us, has since emerged from the forest which then covered its site. In one respect you behold us unaltered, and this is the sentiment of continued devotion to liberty, and of ardent affection and profound gratitude to your departed friend, the Father of his Country, and to you, and to your illustrious associates in the field and in the Cabinet, for the multiplied blessings which surround us, and for the very privilege of addressing you which I now exercise. This sentiment, now fondly cherished by more than ten millions of people, will be transmitted with unabated vigor down the tide of time, through the countless millions who are destined to inhabit this continent to the latest posterity.”

Henry Clay was a great prophet as well as a great orator. We know now how the affection of the United States for Lafayette has grown and grown during the century in which the republic has stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific and its people increased from ten millions to more than a hundred millions.

In his journey through the country Lafayette passed through thousands of miles of wilderness and had several opportunities to renew his old acquaintance with the Indians. He had won their friendship during the Revolution by his sympathy for all men. Now he found that they had not forgotten the young chief whom they had called Kayoula. A girl of the Southern Creeks showed him a paper she had kept as a relic which turned out to be a letter of thanks written to her father by Lafayette forty-five years before. In western New York he met the famous chief Red Jacket, who reminded him that it was he who had argued the cause of the Indians at the council at Fort Schuyler in 1784. Lafayette remembered, and it delighted him greatly that the Indians were as eager to greet him as their white brothers.

Only one mishap occurred during the many journeys which might easily have proved full of perils. While ascending the Ohio River on his way to Louisville his steamer struck on a snag on a dark and rainy night. The boat immediately began to fill. Lafayette was hurried into a small boat and rowed ashore, in spite of his protests that he would not leave the steamer until he secured a snuff-box that Washington had given him. His secretary went below and got the snuff-box and his son George saved some other articles of value. All the party were safely landed, but they had to spend some hours on the river-bank with no protection from the rain and only a few crackers to eat. The next morning a freight steamer took them off and they proceeded on their journey.

When he was in Washington Lafayette made a visit to Mount Vernon, and spent some time in the beautiful house and grounds where he had once walked with the man whose friendship had been so dear to him. Like Washington, almost all the men of the Revolution had departed. The Frenchman found few of the soldiers and statesmen he had known then. One, however, Colonel Nicholas Fish, who had been with him at the storming of the redoubt at Yorktown, welcomed him in New York and went with him up the Hudson. “Nick,” said Lafayette, pointing out a certain height to Colonel Fish, “do you remember when we used to ride down that hill with the Newburgh girls on an ox-sled?” Many places along the Hudson served to remind him of incidents of the time when Washington had made his headquarters there.

In New York the Frenchman visited the widow of General Montgomery and Mrs. Alexander Hamilton. He found some old friends in Philadelphia and Baltimore. In Boston he saw again the venerable John Adams, who had been the second President of the country. He went to Thomas Jefferson’s home of Monticello in Virginia, and passed some days with the man whom he revered almost as much as he did Washington. With Jefferson he talked over the lessons that were to be learned from the French Revolution and the career of Napoleon. And he met foreigners in the United States who called to mind the recent eventful days in his own land. He visited Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother, at Bordentown in New Jersey. At Baltimore he found Dubois Martin, the man who as secretary to the Duke de Broglie had helped Lafayette to secure the ship in which he had first sailed to America. And at Savannah he discovered Achille Murat, the son of Joachim, the ex-king of Naples, one of the men Napoleon had placed upon a temporary throne, and learned that Murat was now cultivating an orange-orchard in Florida.

A man named Haguy came one hundred and fifty miles to see the General, and proved to be one of the sailors who had crossed on the _Victory_ with him and had later fought under him in the Continental Army. Here and there he found veterans of his campaign in Virginia, and Lafayette was as glad to see his old soldiers as they were to welcome him.

Before he left for Europe John Quincy Adams, the son of the second President, was elected to succeed Monroe. The new President invited Lafayette to dine at the White House in company with the three ex-Presidents Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, all of them old and trusted friends of the Frenchman. What a dinner that must have been, with five such men at the table!

Perhaps the thing that delighted him most in America was the self-reliant independence that marked the people everywhere. This type of democracy was most inspiring to a man who had seen the constant turmoil and bickerings of the Revolution and Napoleonic era in France. America was young and her citizens were too busy developing their country to pay much attention to class distinctions or the social ambitions that were so prominent in Europe. They felt quite able to run their government to suit themselves, and it seemed to Lafayette that they were working out their problems in a most satisfactory manner.

In 1824 he witnessed a Presidential election with four candidates, Adams, Jackson, Clay, and Crawford. Party feelings ran high, and there was great excitement. But when the election was over the people settled down to their work again in remarkable harmony and the government continued its course serenely. This Lafayette, with his knowledge of other countries, regarded as evidence of a most unusual genius for self-control in the American nation.

All parties, all classes of men, praised and venerated him as they praised and venerated the founders of their republic. His tour was a tremendous popular success, the greatest reception ever given to a guest by the United States. It must have made up to him for the many disappointments of his career in France. And when he sailed for home he knew that the country to which he had given all he had in youth would never cease to love and honor him.

President John Quincy Adams at the White House, standing beside Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, said to Lafayette, “You are ours, sir, by that unshaken sentiment of gratitude for your services which is a precious portion of our inheritance; ours by that tie of love, stronger than death, which has linked your name for the endless ages of time with the name of Washington. At the painful moment of parting with you we take comfort in the thought that, wherever you may be, to the last pulsation of your heart, our country will ever be present to your affections. And a cheering consolation assures us that we are not called to sorrow,--most of all that we shall see your face no more,--for we shall indulge the pleasing anticipation of beholding our friend again. In the name of the whole people of the United States, I bid you a reluctant and affectionate farewell.”

An American frigate, named the _Brandywine_, in compliment to Lafayette’s first blow for liberty in America, carried the guest of the nation back to France. And the memory of that visit, and of what it stood for, has been kept green in American history ever since.

XIV

THE LOVER OF LIBERTY

The frigate _Brandywine_ reached Havre on October 5, 1825. The French people had heard of the wonderful reception given Lafayette by the United States and now they, in their turn, wanted to welcome the returning hero of liberty. But the Bourbon king who sat on the throne of France and the royalists disliked Lafayette so much that they did their best to prevent the people from greeting him. It was only after a long discussion that the forts of the harbor at Havre were permitted to return the salute of the _Brandywine_, and at Rouen, while citizens were serenading their hero beneath the windows of the house where he was staying, officials of the government ordered a troop of soldiers to charge upon the crowd and disperse it with drawn swords. The people, however, insisted on honoring their famous fellow-countryman. They, as well as the Bourbon king, saw in him the patriot and champion of independence. Louis XVIII. had been succeeded on the throne by his brother, Charles X., and the latter said of Lafayette, “There is a man who never changes.” And the people knew this, and honored the General for his lifelong devotion to their cause.

He went back to his quiet family life at Lagrange. Prominent statesmen came to him for advice, but he rarely went to Paris. The nobility had been restored to their ancient social standing, and Lafayette was urged to resume his title of marquis. He refused to do this, however, and the refusal embittered the royalists even more against him. The Bourbon government feared his influence in 1825, just as the aristocrats had feared it in 1785, the Jacobins in 1795, and Napoleon in 1805.

Yet Charles X. could not always conceal the fact that he had a strong personal liking for the old republican. One day in 1829 the newspapers announced that Lafayette was ill. The King met several members of the Chamber of Deputies. “Have you any news of Monsieur de Lafayette?” asked King Charles. “How is he?”

“Much better, sire,” answered a deputy.

“Ah! I am very glad of it!” said the King. “That is a man whom I like much, and who has rendered services to our family that I do not forget. We have always encountered each other, although moving in opposite directions; we were born in the same year; we learned to ride on horseback together at the Versailles riding-school, and he belonged to my bureau in the Assembly of the Notables. I take a great deal of interest in him.”

King Charles and his friends, however, paid no attention to the new spirit that was awake in France. The people had won a constitution, but the King tried to limit it as far as he could and to override it in some ways. He roused the resentment of the country by trying to bring back the old extravagance of his ancestors, and he even dared to attempt to intimidate the Chamber of Deputies. In 1829 he dissolved the National Assembly and appointed as ministers men who had won the hatred of the nation for their autocratic views. The gauntlet was thrown down between king and people, and the latter were not slow to pick it up.

At this time Lafayette happened to be traveling to Chavaniac, where his son now lived. He was greeted at every town with the usual marks of respect. At Puy he was given a public dinner, and toasts were drunk to “The charter, to the Chamber of Deputies, the hope of France!” When he reached the city of Grenoble he was met by a troop of horsemen, who escorted him to the gates. There citizens presented him with a crown of oak leaves made of silver “as a testimony of the gratitude of the people, and as an emblem of the strength with which the inhabitants of Grenoble, following his example, will sustain their rights and the constitution.”

All along his route he was greeted with cheers and expressions that showed the people looked to him to protect their rights. At Lyons a speaker protested against the recent unlawful acts of the King and spoke of the situation as critical. “I should qualify as critical the present moment,” Lafayette replied, “if I had not recognized everywhere on my journey, and if I did not perceive in this powerful city, the calm and even scornful firmness of a great people which knows its rights, feels its strength, and will be faithful to its duties.”

Through the winter of 1829-30 the hostile attitude of Charles X. to his people continued. The new Chamber of Deputies was rebellious, and again the King dissolved it and ordered fresh elections. The country elected new deputies who were even more opposed to the King than the former ones had been. Then King Charles, urged on by his ministers, resolved to take a decisive step, to issue four edicts revoking the liberty of the press and taking from the deputies their legal powers. “Gentlemen,” said the King to his ministers as he signed the edicts, “these are grave measures. You can count upon me as I count upon you. Between us, this is now a matter of life and death.”

The King had virtually declared war on the country. The country answered by taking up arms. The royal troops in Paris, moving to take control of important points in the city, were met by armed citizens who fought them in the streets. Marmont, head of the King’s military household, sent word to Charles, “It is no longer a riot, it is a revolution. It is urgent that your Majesty should adopt measures of pacification. The honor of the crown may yet be saved; to-morrow perhaps it will be too late.”

King Charles paid no heed. The citizens defeated the royal troops, and in a few days had them besieged in their headquarters. Then the deputies turned to Lafayette and urged him to accept the position of commander of the National Guard, the same position he had held many years before. “I am invited,” he answered, “to undertake the organization of the defense. It would be strange and even improper, especially for those who have given former pledges of devotion to the national cause, to refuse to answer the appeals addressed to them. Instructions and orders are demanded from me on all sides. My replies are awaited. Do you believe that in the presence of the dangers which threaten us immobility suits my past and present life? No! My conduct at seventy-three years of age shall be what it was at thirty-two.”

Lafayette took command of the Guards and quickly had the city of Paris in his possession. Only then did King Charles, fearing alike for his crown and his life now, consent to sign a new ordinance revoking his former edicts. Commissioners brought the ordinance of the King to Lafayette at the Hôtel de Ville. “It is too late now,” Lafayette declared. “We have revoked the ordinances ourselves. Charles X. has ceased to reign.”

The question now was as to the new form of government for the country. The people still remembered the days of the Reign of Terror and were not ready for a real republic. The Duke of Orleans, who had opposed King Charles, was very popular, and it was decided to appoint him lieutenant-general of the nation. The people would have liked to have Lafayette as their governor. The French captain of the ship that carried the fugitive Charles X. away from France, said to the ex-King, “If Lafayette, during the recent events, had desired the crown, he could have obtained it. I myself was a witness to the enthusiasm that the sight of him inspired among the people.”

But Lafayette did not want the crown, nor even to be the constitutional head of the nation. It seemed to him best that the Duke of Orleans should receive the crown, not as an inheritance, but as a free gift of the people accompanied by proper limitations. So he took steps to have the country accept the Duke as its new ruler.

The people of France had at last become an important factor in deciding on their own form of government. The Duke of Orleans, better known as Louis Philippe, did not seize the crown, as earlier kings had done; he waited until the Chamber of Deputies and Lafayette, representing the nation, offered it to him, and then he accepted it as a republican prince. The deputies marched with the Duke to the Hôtel de Ville, and as they went through the streets there were more shouts of “_Vive la liberté!_” than there were of “_Vive le Duc d’Orléans!_” Liberty meant far more to the people now than a king did, and Prince Louis Philippe knew it. As he went up the stairs of the Hôtel de Ville he said conciliatingly to the armed men among whom he passed, “You see a former National Guard of 1789, who has come to visit his old general.”