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.