The ocean was no kinder than usual to Lafayette on his homeward voyage
and the reception he met in Havre lacked enthusiasm. Louis XVIII, who
was king when he went away, had died during his absence and another
brother of the ill-fated Louis XVI had mounted the throne, with the
title of Charles X. He was no other than the Comte d'Artois who had
presided over Lafayette's section in the Assembly of Notables and
had been blind to his presence when the two reached the same inn at
the same moment in Austria. His ministers were no more friendly to
liberals of Lafayette's way of thinking than those of his brothers had
been; but the liberals of France showed a distinct desire to notice
the home-coming of Lafayette. Police could and did disperse young men
on horseback who gathered under his windows at the inn in Rouen for a
serenade; but there were other ways of paying respect. One took the
form of a contest of poets "to celebrate a voyage which history will
place among the great events of the century." There were eighty-three
[Pg 277]contestants, and Béranger, who had already paid his tribute,
acted as a judge. In due time the victor was ceremoniously given a
prize. Lafayette must have been reminded of the burst of rhyme in
America quite as much by contrast as by similarity.
His children came to meet him, which more than compensated for official
neglect; and the welcome of several hundred neighbors when he reached
La Grange convinced him that his local popularity was not impaired.
On the whole he had reason to be well content. He brought home ruddy
health, knowledge of the love in which he was held by twelve million
warm-hearted Americans, and, a lesser consideration, doubtless, but one
for which to be properly grateful, the prospect of speedily rebuilding
the family fortunes. The grant of land voted by Congress was for
thirty-six sections of six hundred and forty acres each, "east of and
adjoining the city of Tallahassee in Leon County, Florida." So far
as the writer has been able to learn, it never greatly benefited him
or his heirs; but that fact was mercifully hidden in the future. In
addition to the land there was a goodly sum of money to his credit in a
Philadelphia bank.
He had stood the fatigues of the trip wonderfully. His cousin who
went to see him soon after his return marveled to find him "big, fat,
fresh, and joyous," showing not the least ill effects from having "gone
several months practically without sleep, in addition to talking,
writing, traveling, and drinking for all he was worth (_pour tout de
bon_) ten hours out of the twenty-four." And he brought home from
[Pg 278]across the sea another gift: an ease in public speaking which
astonished the friends who remembered the impatient scorn his silences
roused in Marie Antoinette and how seldom he made speeches in the
Assembly of Notables. During his command of the National Guard of Paris
his utterances had of necessity been more frequent and more emphatic,
but they betrayed none of the pleasure in addressing audiences that he
now evidently felt. It was as though the friendliness of the American
people had opened for him a new and delightful channel through which he
could express his good will toward all the world. His voice lent itself
well to public speaking; it could be soft or sonorous by turns, and
he had the art of using plain and simple words. His physician, Doctor
Cloquet, tells how some workmen were seen puzzling over a newspaper
and criticizing it rather severely until they came to a speech by
Lafayette. "Good!" said the reader, his face clearing. "At least we can
understand what this man says. He speaks French."
Delighting workmen was not a gift to ingratiate him with a Bourbon
king whose government was growing less popular every day. Lafayette
retired to La Grange among its vineyards and orchards in the flat
region of La Brie and took up life there again; cultivating his estate;
carrying on an immense correspondence in that small, well-formed script
of his which is yet so difficult to read; rejoicing in his family
and receiving many visitors. It was a cosmopolitan procession that
made its way up the Rozoy road to the château whose Norman towers had
[Pg 279]been old before the discovery of the New World. Some in that
procession were old friends, members of the French nobility, who came
in spite of Lafayette's politics; others were complete strangers drawn
to him from distant parts of the earth by these same opinions. French,
English, Americans, Austrians, Algerian sheiks, black men from the West
Indies--all were welcome.
In his study, an upper room in one of his five towers, he was literally
in the center of his world. From a window overlooking the farm-yard he
could direct the laborers by megaphone if he did not choose to go down
among them. His "speaking-trumpet," as Charles Sumner called it, still
lay on his desk when this American made his pious pilgrimage years
after Lafayette's death. On the walls of the library and living-room
hung relics that brought vividly to mind the history of two continents
during momentous years. The American Declaration of Independence and
the French Declaration of Rights hung side by side. A copy in bronze
of Houdon's bust of Washington had the place of honor. A portrait
of Bailly, a victim of the Revolution, hung over the fireplace in
Lafayette's study. There were swords presented by French admirers and
gifts from American cities and Indian chiefs. There was one room which
was entered only by Lafayette and his children, and that but once a
year, on the anniversary of his wife's death. It had been hers and was
closed and kept just as she left it.
Her death marked a distinct period in his life. There were those who
said that when she died Lafayette lost more than a loved companion;
[Pg 280]that he lost his conscience. In proof of this they pointed out
how in the later years of his life, after her steadying influence was
removed, he veered about in the troubled sea of French politics, like a
ship without a rudder. It is true only in a superficial sense; but it
is true that he was never quite the same after she died.
For seven years immediately after this loss he took no active part in
public affairs; partly because of his private sorrow, partly because
of his opposition to the emperor. He had been disappointed in Napoleon
and the latter distrusted him. "All the world is reformed," Napoleon
grumbled, "with one exception. That is Lafayette. He has not receded
from his position by so much as a hair's breadth. He is quiet now, but
I tell you he is ready to begin all over again." George and Lafayette's
son-in-law suffered from this displeasure in their army careers.
"These Lafayettes cross my path everywhere!" Napoleon is said to have
exclaimed when he found the names of the young men on an army list
submitted for promotion, and promptly scratched them off.
Then fortune began to go against the emperor and invading armies came
marching into France. Lafayette offered his sword and his experience
to his country, but the advice he gave appeared too dangerous and
revolutionary. What he desired was to force the abdication of Napoleon
at that time. He was in Paris on March 31, 1814, when foreign soldiers
entered the city. Powerless to do anything except grieve, he shut
himself up in his room. Napoleon retired to Elba and the brother of
[Pg 281]Louis XVI was summoned to take the title of Louis XVIII.
This was the prince Lafayette had intentionally offended when he was
scarcely more than a boy.
After he was made king, however, Lafayette wrote him a note of
congratulation and appeared in uniform at his first royal audience
wearing the white cockade. That certainly seemed like a change of
front, but Lafayette thought it a necessity. "It had to be Napoleon
or the Bourbons," he wrote Jefferson. "These are the only possible
alternatives in a country where the idea of republican executive power
is regarded as a synonym for excesses committed in its name." He
accepted the government of Louis XVIII as more liberal than that of the
emperor. Time and again after this he aided in the overthrow of one man
or party, only to turn against the new power he had helped create. He
even tried to work with Napoleon again after Louis XVIII fled to Ghent
and Bonaparte returned from Elba to found his "new democratic empire,"
known as the Hundred Days. Waterloo came at the end of it; then
Lafayette voiced the demand for the emperor's abdication and pressed it
hard.
"What!" he cried in answer to Lucien Bonaparte's appeal to the Chamber
of Deputies not to desert his brother, because that would be a
violation of national honor, "you accuse us of failing in duty toward
honor, toward Napoleon! Do you forget all we have done for him? The
bones of our brothers and of our children cry aloud from the sands of
Africa, from the banks of the Guadalquivir and the Tagus, from the
[Pg 282]shores of the Vistula and the glacial deserts of Russia. During
more than ten years three million Frenchmen have perished for this man
who wants to-day to fight all Europe. We have done enough for him. Our
duty now is to save our country!"
Lafayette was one of the deputation sent by the Chamber to thank the
ex-emperor after his abdication, and admired Napoleon's self-possession
during that trying scene. He thought Napoleon "played grandly the role
necessity forced upon him." Lafayette was also one of the commission
sent to negotiate with the victorious allies. It was there that he gave
his spirited answer to the demand that Napoleon be given up. "I am
astonished you should choose a prisoner of Olmütz as the person to whom
to make that shameful proposal."
Louis XVIII returned to power and soon Lafayette was opposing him.
So it went on for years. He said of himself that he was a man of
institutions, not of dynasties; and that he valued first principles so
much that he was very willing to compromise on matters of secondary
importance. He cared nothing for apparent consistency and did whatever
his erratic republican conscience dictated, without a thought of how
it might look to others. He was a born optimist, but a poor judge of
men; and in spite of repeated disappointments believed the promises
of each new ruler who came along. Liberal representative government
was of supreme importance in his eyes. If France was not yet ready
for a president, she could have it under a king. Each administration
[Pg 283]that promised a step in this direction received his support,
each lapse from it his censure. That appears to be the key to the many
shifting changes of his later life.
His popularity among the people waxed and waned. Usually it kept him
his seat in the Chamber of Deputies. From 1818 to 1824 he represented
the Sarthe; from 1825 to the close of his life the district of Meaux.
It was in the interval between that he made his visit to America. He
returned to find Charles X king. As that monarch lost popularity his
own influence gained. Charles's ministers thought their sovereign
showed ill-placed confidence and esteem when he freely acknowledged
that this liberal leader had rendered services to his family that no
true man could forget. "I know him well," Charles said. "We were born
in the same year. We learned to mount a horse together at the riding
academy at Versailles. He was a member of my division in the Assembly
of Notables. The fact is neither of us has changed--he no more than I."
That was just the point. Neither had changed. Charles X was a Bourbon
to the bone, and Lafayette had come back from America with renewed
health, replenished means, and all the revolutionary impetuosity of
youth. He had not one atom of that willingness to put up with "things
as they are" which grows upon many reformers as their hair turns gray.
John Quincy Adams divined this and advised Lafayette to have nothing
more to do with revolutions. "He is sixty-eight years old, but there is
fire beneath the cinders," the President of the United States confided
to his diary in August, 1825.
[Pg 284]The cinders glowed each time Charles X emphasized his
Bourbonism; and caught fire again when the king made the Prince de
Polignac prime minister in defiance of all liberal Frenchmen. That
happened in 1829. Lafayette took occasion to visit Auvergne, the
province of his birth, in company with his son, and was received with
an enthusiasm rivaling his most popular days in America. The journey
was prolonged farther than strict necessity required and did much
to unite opposition to the king, for leaders of the liberal party
profited by banquets and receptions in Lafayette's honor to spread
their doctrines. More than one official who permitted such gatherings
lost his job in consequence. Lafayette returned to La Grange; but in
the following July, when the storm broke, he called for his horses
and hurried to Paris. The Chamber of Deputies was not in session; he
thought it ought to be; and he started as soon as he had read a copy
of the Royal Ordinances which limited the freedom of the press and
otherwise threatened the rights of the people.
Before he reached Paris blood had been shed and barricades had been
thrown across the streets. Alighting from his carriage, he told the
guards his name, dragged his stiff leg over the obstructions, and
joined the little group of legislators who were striving to give this
revolt the sanction of law. Having had more experience in revolutions
than they--this was his fourth--he became their leader, and on July
29, 1830, found himself in the exact position he had occupied forty
[Pg 285]years before, commander of the National Guard and practically
dictator of France. An unwillingly admiring biographer says that he had
learned no wisdom in the interval; that he "pursued the same course
with the same want of success." This time he held the balance of power
for only two days, but it was actual concentrated power while it
lasted. It was he who sent back to Charles the stern answer that his
offers of compromise came too late, that the royal family had ceased to
reign. And it was he who had to choose the next form of government for
France.
It was a dramatic choice. He was frankly ambitious; and quite within
his reach lay the honor he would have preferred above all others. The
choice lay between becoming himself President of France or, making a
new king. It was put to him fairly and squarely: "If we have a republic
you will be president. If a monarchy, the Duc d'Orléans will be king.
Will you take the responsibility of a republic?" A man with "a canine
appetite for fame" and nothing more could have found but one answer,
and that not the answer Lafayette gave. In his few hours of power he
had talked with men from all parts of France. These confirmed his
belief that the country was not yet ready for the change to a republic.
It would be better to have a king for a while longer, provided he was a
liberal king, pledged to support a constitution. The Duc d'Orléans gave
promise of being just such a king. He was son of the duke Lafayette had
banished from Paris after the mob attacked Versailles in 1789; but he
[Pg 286]had fought on the liberal side. The people knew him as Philippe
Égalité--"Equality Philip"--and during recent years he had given
evidence of being far more democratic than any other member of his
family. To choose him would please liberals and conservatives alike,
because he was next in line of succession after the sons of the deposed
king.
Being by no means devoid of ambition, the duke was already in Paris,
awaiting what might happen. The Deputies sent him an invitation to
become lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Accounts vary as to the
manner in which it was accepted. One has him walking with ostentatious
humility through the streets to the Hôtel de Ville, preceded by a
drummer to call attention to the fact that he was walking and that
he wore a tricolored scarf. Another has him on horseback without the
scarf. It matters little; they agree that he was not very well received
and that shouts of "No more Bourbons!" betrayed the suspicion that the
duke's liberality, like the scarf, if he wore one, could be put on for
the occasion. Accounts agree, too, that it was Lafayette who swung
popular feeling to his side. He met him at the foot of the stairs and
ascended with him to the Chamber of Deputies; and in answer to the
coolness with which he was greeted and the evident hostility of the
crowd outside, thrust a banner into the duke's hand and drew him to a
balcony, where he publicly embraced him. Paris was easily moved by such
spectacles. Carried away by the sight of the two enveloped in the folds
of the same flag, and that the Tricolor, which had been forbidden for
[Pg 287]fifteen years, they burst into enthusiastic shouts of "Vive
Lafayette!" "Long live the Duc d'Orléans!" Chateaubriand says that
"Lafayette's republican kiss made a king," and adds, "Singular result
of the whole life of the hero of two worlds!"
[Illustration: MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE AND LOUIS PHILIPPE
After the Revolution of 1830, it was Lafayette who swung popular
feeling to the side of Louis Philippe]
Louis Philippe, the new king, promised to approve certain very liberal
measures known as the program of the Hôtel de Ville; Lafayette saw
to that. The king even agreed in conversation with Lafayette that
the United States had the best form of government on earth. He
had spent some years in America and probably knew. He was called,
enthusiastically or mockingly, as the case might be, the Bourgeois
King; but the suspicion that his sympathies with the people were only
assumed proved well founded. As time wore on it became manifest that he
was as eager for arbitrary power as ever Louis XIV had been, without
possessing Louis XIV's great ability. At first, however, everything was
rose-colored. A few days after the new king had ascended the throne
Lafayette wrote: "The choice of the king is good. I thought so, and I
think so still more since I know him and his family. Things will not go
in the best possible way, but liberty has made great progress and will
make still more. Besides, I have done what my conscience dictated; and
if I have made a mistake, it was made in good faith."
That belief at least he could keep to the end. Two weeks after Louis
Philippe became king Lafayette was appointed general in command of the
National Guards of the kingdom, a position he held from August until
Christmas. Then a new law abolished the office in effect but not in
[Pg 288]appearance. Lafayette sent the king his resignation and refused
to reconsider it or even to talk the matter over, as the king asked
him to do. "No, my dear cousin, I understand my position," Lafayette
wrote Philip de Ségur. "I know that I weigh like a nightmare on the
Palais Royal; not on the king and his family, who are the best people
in the world, and I love them tenderly, but on the people who surround
them.... Without doubt I have been useful in his advancement. But if I
sacrificed for him some of my personal convictions, it was only on the
faith of the program of the Hôtel de Ville. I announced a king basing
his reign on republican institutions. To that declaration, which the
people seem to forget, I attach great importance; and it is that which
the court does not forgive.... From all this the conclusion follows
that I have become bothersome. I take my stand. I will retain the same
friendliness for the royal family, but I have only one word of honor,
and I cannot change my convictions."
So once again, near the close of his life, he found himself in
opposition to a government he had helped to create.
[Pg 289]XXX