Lafayette (72 page)

“We shall look upon you always as belonging to us, during the whole of our life, as belonging to our children after us. You are ours by more than patriotic self-devotion with which you flew to the aid of our fathers at the crisis of our fate; ours by that unshaken 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 endless ages of time with the name of Washington. . . . Speaking in the name of the whole people of the United States, and at a loss only for language to give utterance to that feeling of attachment with which the heart of the nation beats as the heart of one man, I bid you a reluctant and affectionate farewell.”
³²

An eternity passed before Lafayette finally brought his emotions under control long enough to reply: “God bless you, Sir; and all who surround you. God bless the American people, each of their states and the federal government. Accept this patriotic farewell of a heart that will overflow with gratitude until the moment it ceases to beat.”
³³

Lafayette broke into sobs and embraced Quincy, then limped into an anteroom with George to recover his composure before returning to his carriage for his last ride on American soil. A line of militiamen stood at attention on either side of the drive as his carriage rolled out the drive. The president remained in the peristyle waving good-bye until Lafayette’s carriage disappeared into the mass of humanity along the route to the quay on the Potomac. The cannons boomed their customary twenty-four-salvos—one for each state—but instead of provoking the usual cheers, the shots echoed eerily across an all but silent city. The thousands who watched his carriage pass stood silent, in mourning, their children perched on their shoulders clutching small American flags in their tiny hands, their voices too choked with tears to sustain more than an occasional hoarse “Good-bye, marquis” or a sad “A-doo, marquis, a-doo.” They were mourning not only the passing of the man but the end of the most glorious age in American history—an age of heroes; an age of chivalry that gave them a new nation unlike any in history, with liberties that ordinary people had never before enjoyed.

The Custis and Washington families waited at quayside to say good-bye, and a column of Lafayette’s own Virginia militia stood at the ready as he and George walked to the boat. Thick crowds lined both banks of the river waving and calling “A-doo” as his steamboat carried him downstream to board America’s newest frigate, the
Brandywine
, which the president and Congress had commissioned to take him back to France.

Twenty-four days later, the speedy new ship approached Le Havre, fired a salute, and received an answering salute—to the immense relief of all
aboard who had anticipated an unpleasant reception by French authorities. A friendly crowd waited at quayside to greet Lafayette, and, as he was about to disembark, the officers aboard the
Brandywine
struck the national ensign and presented it to him. “Here, General, take it,” said the ship’s commander. “We could not confide it to more glorious hands.”
³⁴

The next day, Lafayette left for Paris; when he reached Rouen—about halfway to the capital—a crowd of well-wishers gathered outside his inn to serenade him while he and his son dined. When he appeared on the balcony to thank them, troops charged from all sides, swords drawn, slashing and clubbing at the men, women, and children in the crowd, wounding dozens and arresting others. Lafayette and his son thought of the America they had left and despaired for their native land.

Fat King Louis xviii died while Lafayette was in America, and his younger brother, the comte d’Artois, succeeded to the throne as Charles X. Charles’s years of exile during the Terror and the Empire had transformed the once profligate playboy into a vengeful tyrant, intent on recovering absolute rule. The French were bristling under his ever-tightening restrictions when Lafayette returned to La Grange. The people of Brie built a triumphal arch to welcome his return, proclaiming him
L’Ami du Peuple
—The People’s Friend. In the spring of 1827, they elected him to the Chamber of Deputies, and, a month later, police arrested an editor for publishing one of Lafayette’s fiery speeches attacking the royal regime. “If the words are blamable,” Lafayette protested to the police magistrate, “the responsibility falls on me, and if they need explanation no one more than I should be called to give that explanation.”
¹

Fearing worldwide condemnation if he silenced the Prisoner of Olmütz, the king silenced all the voices in the Chamber by dissolving it and calling for new elections and a new, more accommodating Chamber. But the people of Brie returned Lafayette to the new Chamber the following year, and his Tuesday evening salon at his house in the rue d’Anjou became the most important liberal institution in Paris—as it had been on Monday evenings in the rue de Bourbon. Once again, his dining table overflowed with food and drink. In Adrienne’s place, Virginie and Anastasie took turns as hostess, while George tried his best to bar the door to spies, bores, and spongers. As in the rue de Bourbon, his salons attracted prominent Americans, from whom he learned that his old friend, the retired president James Monroe, was in dire financial straits. Monroe had saved Adrienne’s life when he was an American envoy in Paris, and, as president, he had coaxed Congress into giving Lafayette title to an entire Florida township and enough government bonds to wipe out his debts from the Charbonnier fiasco. Monroe’s financial problems stemmed from his carelessness as an envoy in Europe, where he had paid his expenses with his own money and failed to demand immediate reimbursement from public funds.

“My dear Monroe,” Lafayette wrote eagerly, “permit your earliest, your best and your most obliged friend to be plain with you. It is probable that, to give you time and facilities for your arrangements, a mortgage might be of some use. The sale of one-half of my Florida property is full enough to meet my family settlement. . . . You remember that in similar embarrassment I have formerly accepted your intervention. It gives me right to reciprocity.”
²

Charles X tried suppressing criticism of his reign by tightening sanctions on the press and all forms of entertainment. The censorship grew intolerable, with police charging even into a crowd of operagoers emerging from a
performance of Rossini’s
Guillaume Tell (William Tell
)—the story of Swiss rebellion against the Austrian empire. Rioting ensued, and, after the elections in the spring of 1830, Charles opened the Chamber of Deputies with a warning to Lafayette and other liberals: “Should subversive activities present my government with any obstacles, I will find the power to remove them. I am resolved to maintain public order.”
³
The Chamber immediately rebuked the king, saying that the Constitutional Charter required “that your government’s political views and the wishes of your subjects be in unity. . . . This unity does not exist.”
⁴

Infuriated by the rebuke, the king dissolved the Chamber a second time and ordered new elections, but subjected periodicals to prepublication censorship to prevent publicity for liberals. When the election of July 12 failed to change the political complexion of the new Chamber—indeed, Lafayette won reelection by the largest margin ever—the incorrigible king dissolved the Chamber a third time, even before it had a chance to meet—and provoked another French Revolution. Antiroyalists poured into the streets and raised barricades with toppled trees, paving stones, and old furniture—on the Place de la Bastille, along the rue Saint-Antoine, in side streets, and on the quays. After a bloody battle at river’s edge, a mob seized the Hôtel de Ville, as its forebears had done in 1789. King Charles tried to halt the flood of antigovernment leaflets by ordering printing presses to shut down, but the mechanics and printers refused to obey and spilled into the streets to join workers, shopkeepers, and students at the barricades. When he learned of the insurrection, the seventy-three-year-old Lafayette raced into Paris from La Grange. A crowd of military-school cadets filled the rue d’Anjou in front of his door at four the next morning to ask his instructions. As dawn spilled across Paris, the church bells rang out as they had in 1789. King Charles fled to his country château at Rambouillet, thirty miles southwest of Paris, but before leaving he ordered royal troops to attack the barricades. The revolutionaries, however, had seized the army’s water supplies. By mid-afternoon, the thirsty troops fell back exhausted in the stifling August heat, but not without leaving a trail of dead and wounded as a bloody reminder of their might.

When Lafayette appeared for a meeting of deputies the next morning, the sight of the brave old veteran limping from his carriage evoked cheers from onlookers. Suddenly, the spontaneous cry of
“Vive Lafayette! Vive la liberté!”
spread through the streets and across the barricades. The vision of the legendary knight captured the imagination of the young, inspiring them to battle on, battle harder, but Lafayette’s presence so terrified the royal commanding general that he ordered Lafayette’s immediate arrest. When he heard the general’s order, Lafayette shouted angrily to his fellow deputies, “Let us rather
order
[the general] in the name of the law to cease firing on the people.

“These events, Messieurs,” he barked, “can no longer be confined within the limits of strict legality. This is a revolution. A provisional government is necessary, and should be formed immediately.” When the other deputies hesitated, Lafayette lost patience: “Already, Messieurs, my name is placed, by the confidence of the people and with my consent, at the head of the insurrection. I ardently desire the approval of my colleagues, but if you do not reach a decision by tomorrow, I shall consider myself at liberty to act alone, and in my own name. Tomorrow I will establish my headquarters at Paris.”
⁵

That evening, Lafayette limped up to the barricades and embraced soldiers, former Charbonniers, workers, students. For two days they had fought without direction, but when the legendary hero suddenly emerged from their nation’s past, they eagerly raised him to leadership. On the third day, the fighting renewed on all fronts until midday, when the royal troops retreated, at first in orderly fashion, then, fearful of possible massacres, in full flight up the Champs-Elysées and out of Paris. The deputies charged Lafayette with bringing the revolution under control to forestall the madness and excesses of 1789. They resanctioned the National Guard and named him commander, and, as he had in 1789, he donned the uniform of a French general and ordered his citizen’s militia to restore calm to the city.

“My duty commands me to respond to the public confidence and to devote myself to the common defense,” he told the deputies. “My conduct at seventy-three will be what it was at thirty-two.” Outside, the chants of the crowd grew more insistent:
“Vive Lafayette! Vive la liberté!”
As he had in ’89, he led the procession to the Hôtel de Ville—limping on foot now instead of riding his stately white horse, but nonetheless a knight triumphant. And as their parents had done in ’89, the people of Paris cheered him wildly as he passed—from the rooftops, from every window, and along the streets and squares. History repeated itself eerily as he climbed the steps into the Hôtel de Ville and up the grand staircase. When a guardsman offered to show him the way to the Grande Salle, he laughed, assuring the young man he knew the building well. As he reached the council chamber, he saw the broken fragments of the busts of Louis XVIII and Charles X— smashed by the mob, much as an earlier mob had smashed the busts of him and Bailly. Shreds of white Bourbon flags with the fleur de lys lay about the room. He ordered the revolutionary tricolor raised over the Hôtel de Ville and proclaimed an end to the “Three Glorious Days,” as the Revolution of 1830 has been called ever since.