The Wife of Lafayette

THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE.

THEY have in Europe a mysterious thing called rank, which exerts a powerful spell even over the minds of republicans, who neither approve nor understand it.

We saw a proof of its power when the Prince of Wales visited New York some years ago. He was neither handsome, nor gifted, nor wise, nor learned, nor anything else which, according to the imperfect light of reason, makes a fair claim to distinction. But how we crowded to catch a sight of him! In all my varied and long experience of New York crowds and receptions, I never saw a popular movement that went down quite as deep as that. I saw aged ladies sitting in chairs upon the sidewalk hour after hour, waiting to see that youth go by—ladies whom no other pageant would have drawn from their homes. Almost every creature that could walk was out to see him.

Mr. Gladstone is fifty times the man the Prince of Wales can ever be. Mr. Tennyson, Mr. Bright, George Eliot, Mr. Darwin, might be supposed to represent England better than he. But all of these eminent persons in a coach together would not have called forth a tenth part of the crowd that cheered the Prince of Wales from the Battery to Madison Square. There is a mystery in this which every one may explain according to his ability; but the fact is so important that no one can understand history who does not bear it in mind.

The importance of Lafayette in the Revolutionary War was chiefly due to the mighty prestige of his rank—not his rank as a major-general, but his imaginary, intangible rank as marquis. His coming here in 1777, a young man of twenty, was an event which interested two continents; and it was only his rank which made it of the slightest significance. The sage old Franklin knew this very well when he consented to his coming, and wrote a private note to General Washington suggesting that the young nobleman should not be much hazarded in battle, but kept rather as an ornamental appendage to the cause. He proved indeed to be a young man of real merit—a brave, zealous, disinterested, and enterprising soldier—one who would have made his way and borne an honorable part if lie had not been a marquis. But, after all, his rank served the cause better than any nameless youth could have served it.

I met only the other day a striking illustration of this fact, one that showed the potent spell which his mere rank exerted over the minds of the Indians. On coining here early in the Revolutionary War, he performed a most essential service which only a French nobleman could have rendered. It was a terrible question in 1777, which side the Six Nations would take in the strife. These tribes, which then occupied the whole of central and western New York, being united iii one confederacy, could have inflicted enormous damage upon the frontier settlements if they had sided against Congress. Lafayette went among them ; and they, too, were subject to the spell of his rank, which is indeed most powerful over barbarous minds. He made a talk to them. He explained, as far as he could, the nature of the controversy, and told them that their old friends, the French, were joined, heart and soul, with the Americans, against their old enemies, the English. He prevailed. They afterwards admitted that it was owing to his advice, and especially his confident prophecy of the final victory of the Americans, that induced so large a portion of the Six Nations to remain neutral. What young man of twenty, unaided by rank and title, could have done this service?

The war ended. In 1784 the marquis returned to America, to visit General Washington and his old comrades. There was trouble again with the Six Nations, owing to the retention by the British of seven important frontier posts, Detroit, Mackinaw, Oswego, Ogdensburgh Niagara. and two forts on Lake Champlain. Seeing the British flag still floating over these places confused the Indian mind, made them doubt the success of the Americans, and disposed them to continue a profitable warfare. Congress appointed three commissioners to hold a conference with them at Fort Schuyler, which stood upon the site of the modern city of Rome, about a hundred miles west of Albany. Once more the United States availed themselves of the influence of Lafayette's rank over the Indians. The commissioners invited him to attend the treaty.

In September, 1784, James Madison, then thirty-three years of age, started on a northward tour, and, meeting the marquis in Baltimore, determined to go with him to the treaty ground. The two young gentlemen were here in New York during the second week of September, and the marquis was the observed of all observers. Both the young gentlemen were undersized, and neither of them was good-looking ; but the presence of the French nobleman was an immense event, as we can still sec from the newspapers of that and the following week. After enjoying a round of festive attentions, they started on their way up the Hudson river in a barge, but not before Mr. Madison had sent off to the American minister in Paris (Mr. Jefferson) a packet of New York papers containing eulogistic notices of Lafayette, for the gratification of the French people.

They arrived at Fort Schuyler in due time—the marquis, Mr. Madison, the three commissioners, and other persons of note. But the Indians had no eyes and no ears except for the little Frenchman, twenty-seven years of age, whom they called Kayenlaa. The commissioners were nothing in their eyes, and although they did not enjoy their insignificance, they submitted to it with good grace, and asked the Indians to listen to the voice of Kayenlaa. He rose to speak, and soon showed himself a master of the Indian style of oratory.

"In selling your lands," said he, "do not consult the keg (f ruin, and give them away to the first adventurer."

lie reminded them of his former advice, and showed them how his prophecies had come true.

"My predictions," said he, have been fulfilled. Open your ears to the new advice of your father."
He urged them strongly to conclude a treaty of peace with the Americans, and thus have plenty of the French articles of manufacture of which they used to be so fond. The leader of the war party was a young chief, equally famous as a warrior and as an orator, named Red Jacket, who replied to Lafayette in the most impassioned strain, calling upon his tribe to continue the war. It was thought, at the time, that no appeals to the reason of the Indians could have neutralized the effect of Red Jacket's fiery eloquence. It was the spell of the Marquis de Lafayette's rank and name which probably enabled the commissioner to come to terms with the red men.

"During this scene." reports Mr. Madison, " and even during the whole stay of the marquis, he was the only conspicuous figure. The commissioners were eclipsed. All of them probably felt it."

The chief of the Oneida tribe admitted on this occasion that " the word which Lafayette had spoken to them early in the war had prevented them from being led to the wrong side of it." Forty-one years after this memorable scene—that is to say, in the year 1825—Lafayette was at Buffalo; and among the persons who called upon him was an aged Indian chief, much worn by time, and more by strong drink. He asked the marquis if he remembered the Indian Council at Fort Schuyler. He replied that he had not forgotten it, and he asked the Indian if he knew what had become of the young chief who had opposed with such burning eloquence the burying of the tomahawk.

"He is before you: " was the old man's reply.

" Time," said the marquis, "has much changed us both since that meeting."

"Ah " rejoined Red Jacket ; "time has not been so hard upon you as it has upon me. It has left to you a fresh countenance and hair to cover your head; while to me—look!

Such was the amazing power of that mysterious old-world rank which Lafayette possessed. Let us not forget, however, that his rank would have been of small use to us if that had been his only gift. In early life he was noted for two traits of character ; which, however, were not very uncommon among the young French nobles of the period. He had an intense desire to distinguish him-self in his profession, and he had a strong inclination toward Republican principles. He tells us whence he derived this tendency. At the age of nine he fell in with a little book of Letters about England, written by Voltaire, which gave him some idea of a free country. The author of the Letters dwelt upon the freedom of thinking and printing that prevailed in England, and described the Exchange at London, where the Jews and Christians, Catholics and Protestants, Church of England men and Dissenters, Quakers and Deists, all mingled peacefully together and transacted business without inquiring into one another's creed. The author mentioned other things of the same nature, which were very strange and captivating to the inhabitants of a country governed so despotic-ally' as France was when Lafayette was a boy.

The book made an indelible impression upon his eager and susceptible mind. e used to say in after years that he was " a republican at nine." He was, nevertheless, a member of the privileged order of his country, and if he had been born iii another age he would in all probability have soon outlived the romantic sentiments of his youth, and run the career usual to men of his rank.

In the summer of when he was not yet quite nineteen, he was stationed with his regiment at Metz, then a garrisoned town near the eastern frontier of France. An English prince, the Duke of Gloucester, brother to the King of England, visited this post a few weeks after Congress at Philadelphia had signed the Declaration of Independence. The French general in command at Metz gave a dinner to the prince, to which several officers were invited, Lafayette among the rest. It so happened that the prince received that day letters from England, which contained news from America.

The news was of thrilling interest: Boston lost—Independence declared—mighty forces gathering to crush the rebellion—Washington, victorious in New England, pre-paring to defend New York ! News was slow in traveling then ; and hence it was that our young soldier now heard these details for the first time at the table of his commanding officer. We can imagine the breathless interest with which he listened to the story, what questions he asked, and how he gradually drew from the prince the whole interior history of the movement. From the admissions of the duke himself, he drew the inference that the colonists were in the right. We saw in them a people fighting in defence of that very liberty of which he had read in the English Letters of Voltaire. Before he rose from the table that day, the project occurred to his mind of going to America, and offering his services to the American people in their struggle for Independence.

"My heart," as he afterwards wrote," espoused warmly the cause of liberty, and I thought of nothing but of adding also the aid of my banner."

And the more he thought of it, the more completely lie was fascinated by the idea. Knowing well how such a scheme would appear to his prudent relations, he deter-mined to judge this matter for himself. Ile placed a new motto on his coat-of-arms :

CUR NON ?

This is Latin for, Why not ? He chose those words, he says, because they would serve equally as an encouragement to himself and a reply to others. His first step was to go on leave to Paris, where Silas Deane was already acting as the representative of Congress, secretly favored by the French ministry. Upon consulting two of his young friends, he found their enthusiastic in the same cause, and abundantly willing to go with him, if they could command the means. When, however, he submitted the project to an experienced family friend, the Count de Broglie, he met firm opposition.

" I have seen your uncle," said the count, "die in the wars of Italy; I witnessed your father's death at the battle of Minden, and I will not be accessory to the ruin of the only remaining branch of the family."

He tried in vain to dissuade the young man from a purpose which seemed to him most rash and chimerical. One person that favored his purpose was his beautiful young wife, already the mother of one child and soon to be the mother of a second. She, with the spirit and devotion natural to a French lady of eighteen, entered heartily into the very difficult business of getting off her young husband to win glory for both by fighting for the American insurgents.

Anastasie de Noailles was her maiden name. She was the daughter of a house which had eight centuries of recorded history, and which, in each of these centuries, had given to France soldiers or priests of national importance and European renown. The chateau of Noailles (near the city of Toul), portions of which date as far back as A. D. 1050, was the cradle of the race : and to-day in Paris there is a Duke de Noailles, and a Marquis do Noailles, descendants of that Pierre de Noailles who was lord of the old chateau three hundred and fifty years before America was discovered.

Old as her family was, Mademoiselle de Noailles was one of the youngest brides, as her Marquis was one of the youngest husbands. An American company would have smiled to see a boy of sixteen and a half years of age, presenting himself at the altar to be married to a girl of fourteen. We must beware, however, of sitting in judgment on people of other climes and other times. Lafayette was a great match. His father had fallen in the battle of Minden, when the boy was two years of age, leaving no other heir. It is a curious fact that the officer who commanded the battery front which the ball was fired that killed Lafayette's father, was the same General Phillips with whom the son was so actively engaged in Virginia, during the summer of 1781.

The mother of our marquis died ten years after her husband. Her father, a nobleman of great estate, soon followed her to the grave, and so this boy of fourteen inherited the estates of two important families. Mademoiselle de Noallies had great rank and considerable wealth. It is perhaps safe to infer that she was not remarkable for beauty, because no one of her many eulogists claims it for her. Nearly all marriages among the nobility were then matters of bargain and interest, mutual love having little to do with them ; yet many marriages of that kind were very happy, and in all respects satisfactory. Lafayette's was one of these. The pair not only loved one another with ardent and sustained affection, but the marriage united the two families, and called into being numerous children and grandchildren.

Imagine them married then, in April, 1774, the year in which the Continental Congress met at Philadelphia.

The young husband—officer in a distinguished regiment—was not much at home during the first two years after his marriage ; a circumstance which was probably conducive to the happiness of both, for they were too young to be satisfied with a tranquil domestic life.
One day in the summer of 1776 he returned suddenly and unexpectedly to Paris. his wife observed that some great matter possessed his mind. There is reason to believe that she was among the first to be made acquainted with his scheme of going to America and entering the service of Congress. A married girl of sixteen—the very age of romance—she sympathized at first with his purpose, and always kept his secret. Nine months of excitement followed, during which he went and came several limes, often disappointed, always resolved ; until at length Madame de Lafayette received a letter from him, written on board the ship Victory, that was to convey him to America.

This was in April, 1777, when already she held in her arms their first child, the baby Henriette, who died while her father was still tossed upon the ocean. It was many months after his landing in America before he heard of his child's death, and he kept writing letter after letter in which he begged his wife to kiss for him the infant whose lips were cold in the grave. His letters to her during his long absences in America were full of affection and tenderness. He calls her his life, his love, and his dearest love. In the first letter written at sea, he tries once more to reconcile her to his departure.

"If," said he, " you could know all that I have suffered while thus flying from all 1 love best in the world!  Must I join to this affliction the grief of hearing that you do not pardon me ? "

He endeavored to convince her that he was not in the least danger of so much as a graze from a British bullet.

Ask the opinion," said he, " of all general officers—and these are very numerous, because having once obtained that height, they are no longer exposed to any hazards."

Then he turned to speak of herself and of their child. "Henrietta," said he, " is so delightful that she has made me in love with little girls."

And then he prattled on with a happy blending of good feeling and good humor, until the darkness of the evening obliged him to lay aside the pen, as he had prudently forbidden the lighting of candles on board his ship. It was easy to write these long letters in the cabin of his vessel, but it was by no means easy to send them back across the ocean, traversed by English cruisers. When Madame de Lafayette received this letter their Henriette had been dead for nearly a year. He ran his career in America. He was domesticated with Gen. Washington. e, was wounded at the battle of Brandywine. He passed the memorable winter at Valley Forge.
In June, 1778, thirteen months after leaving home, a French vessel brought to America the news of the French alliance, and to him that of the death of his Henriette, and the birth of his second daughter, Anastasie. There is nothing in their correspondence prettier than the manner in which he speaks to her of his wound.

" Whilst endeavoring to rally the troops," he tells her, " the English honored me with a musket-ball, which slightly wounded me in the leg—but it is a trifle, my dearest love ; the hall touched neither bone nor nerve, and I have escaped with the obligation of lying on my back for some time."

In October, 1778, about a year and a half after his departure, Madame de Lafayette enjoyed the transport of welcoming her husband home on a leave of absence.

Once, during the spring of 1778, she was present at a party at a great house in Paris, which was attended by the aged Voltaire, then within a few weeks of the close of his life. The old poet, recognizing her among the ladies, knelt at her feet, and complimented her upon the brilliant and wise conduct of her young husband in America. She received this act of homage with graceful modesty. When Lafayette again returned, at the end of the war, we can truly say he was the most shining person, age in Prance. At court the young couple were overwhelmed with flattering attentions, and the king promoted the marquis to the rank of field-marshal of the French army. During the next seven years, Madame de Lafayette was at the height of earthly felicity. Her two daughters, Anastasie and Virginie, and her son, George Washington, were affectionate and promising children, and there seemed nothing wanting to her lot that could render it happier or more distinguished.

Then cause the storm of the French Revolution. Both husband and wife were cast down before it. While he was immured in an Austrian dungeon, she, with her two daughters, was confined in one of the prisons of Paris, along with other gentle victims of the Terror. Many of her friends went from her embrace to the guillotine. She, fortunately, escaped the axe, and, a few months after the death of Robespierre, she was released, and prepared at once to penetrate to the remote fortress in which her husband was confined. She sent her son to America, con-signing him to the care of President Washington, who accepted the trust, and superintended the education of the lad with the affectionate care of a father. The mother and her daughters, in September, 1795, set out for Vienna, she calling herself Mrs. Motier, and giving herself out as an English lady traveling in disguise to escape pursuit.

Upon reaching Vienna she obtained an audience of the Emperor, and implored her husband's release; alleging truly that he had been Marie Antoinette's best friend in France. The Emperor's reply was, "My hands are tied." He refused to release the General, but permitted Madame de Lafayette and her daughters to share his confinement. For twenty-two months they remained in prison with him, suffering the horrors of a detention, which was cruelly aggravated by superserviceable underlings. Anastasie, the elder daughter, was then sixteen years of age, and Virginie was thirteen. Though they, too, were subjected to very rigorous treatment, they preserved their health and cheerfulness. The mother suffered extremely, and more than once she was at death's door. When, in September, 1797, the doors of the fortress of Olmutz were opened, she could scarcely walk to the carriage which bore them to liberty. They made their way to Hamburg, where they were all received into the family of John Parish, the American consul. Mr. Parish afterwards described the scene:

" An immense crowd announced their arrival. The streets were lined, and my house was soon filled with people. A lane was formed to let the prisoners pass to my room. Lafayette led the way, and was followed by his infirm lady and two daughters. He flew into my arms; his wife and daughters clung to me. The silence was broken by an exclamation of,
" 31y friend! My clearest friend! My deliverer! See the work of your generosity! My poor, poor wife, hardly able to support herself !'

"And indeed she was not standing, but hanging on my arm, bathed in tears, while her two lovely girls had hold of the other. There was not a dry eye in the room.

"I placed her on a sofa. She sobbed and wept much, and could utter but few words. Again the Marquis came to my arms, his heart overflowing with gratitude. I never saw a man in such complete ecstasy of body and mind."

Madame de Lafayette never recovered her health. She lived ten years longer, and died December 21, 1807, aged forty-seven years, leaving her daughters and her son happily established. An American who visited, twenty years after, the Chateau of La Grange, which was the abode of General Lafayette during the last forty years of his life, found there a numerous company of her descendants, a son, two daughters, and twelve grand-children, forming a circle which he described in glowing terms of admiration. The house was full of America. On the malls were portraits of Washington, Franklin, Morris, Adams, Jefferson, and a painting of the siege of Yorktown. Objects brought from America, or received thence as gifts, were seen everywhere, and there was one room containing nothing but American things, which the General called by the name " America." There was an American ice-house in the garden, and groves of American trees in the park. It was one of the most estimable and happy families in France. Alas! that the fond mother and the devoted wife should have been wanting to it.
  

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