PART FOUR
CHAPTER 18
On August 19, 1792, Lafayette rode out of camp at Sedan accompanied by fifteen officers, their servants, and the customary general’s escort. Having come to understand, as he put it in his memoirs, that “there was nothing left to do except to seek asylum in a neutral nation in order to save his proscribed head from the executioner, in the hope that he might one day serve liberty and France again,” Lafayette set out for his nation’s northeastern border. Stopping briefly at Bouillon, about a dozen miles from Sedan, he ordered his army to take up protective positions in case of an Austrian incursion, made temporary arrangements for the chain of command, and dismissed his escorts for their own safety.
Before continuing on the final stage of his journey, Lafayette posted a farewell letter to the municipality of Sedan, explaining his decision to emigrate. Although his letter was addressed to the city’s commissioners, it expressed thoughts Lafayette might have wished to share with all of France. “If the last drop of my blood could serve the commune of Sedan,” he assured his readers, the commune “would have a right to this sacrifice, and it would be less costly to me than what I am doing.” But, he continued, “since my presence among you will serve … only to compromise you, I must spare the city of Sedan the troubles of which I would be the cause.” The best thing he could do for the city would be to leave it—to “distance from it a head that all the enemies of liberty have proscribed, and that will never bow to any despotism.”
Around nine o’clock on that cool and drizzly night, Lafayette and forty-three other Frenchmen approached the gates of the fortified town of Rochefort, in the Austrian Netherlands (present-day Belgium). Like many thousands of men who had passed this way since the outbreak of revolution, they were officers, soldiers, and servants who had abandoned their posts in the French army. Unlike many émigrés, however, they had no intention of joining the coalition forces arrayed against their native land. Lafayette’s companions were men who had participated in his struggle to create and protect a constitutional monarchy. Louis Romeuf, the aide-de-camp who had been abused by a Parisian crowd when the king’s flight was discovered, was among their number, as wasAlexandre de Lameth, a former member of the Triumvirate.
Lafayette and his friends saw themselves as patriots who remained faithful to a constitution that had been travestied and loyal to a monarchy that had been overthrown. As they testified in a signed statement submitted to the authorities at Rochefort, they were honorable citizens who found themselves “unable to withstand any longer the violations of the constitution established by the national will.” The Frenchmen were equally adamant that they not “be considered military enemies.” Having “renounced” their posts, they presented themselves as noncombatants who deserved to be treated like all other “foreigners who request safe passage” to neutral territory. Had Lafayette not been among their number, they might well have been allowed to pass. As it was, the men were placed under guard and their weapons confiscated. Outraged at being denied the universal right of transit, Lafayette and his companions railed against their detention, but their objections fell on deaf ears. The marquis was a valuable prize.
Austria crowed about the capture, talking up Lafayette’s role in the revolution to the point of gross exaggeration. Responding to Lafayette’s request for release, the governor of the Austrian Netherlands, Herzog Albert von Sachsen-Teschen, baldly rebuked a man whose name had become inextricably linked with the anti-monarchist cause in the minds of the French king’s revanchist foreign allies:
You were the instigator behind the Revolution that turned France upside down.… It is you who placed irons on your king, deprived him of all his rights and his legitimate powers and kept him in captivity.… It is you who have been the principal instrument of all the disgraces that befell this unhappy monarch.
In light of these crimes, Sachsen-Teschen continued, Lafayette would remain in captivity “until such a time as your master, after having recovered his liberty and his sovereignty, will be able to decide your fate according to his justice or his clemency.”
On August 21, Lafayette put pen to paper in an attempt to explain to Adrienne—and perhaps to himself—how he had arrived at such a predicament. The revolution replayed in his mind as he mulled over the apparent contradictions between his principles and his actions. But the puzzle was so intricate that Lafayette tied himself into a logical knot, musing “that my heart would have been republican if my reason had not given me this nuance of royalism.” If Lafayette’s heart and mind were divided, his very essence was entirely American, or so he felt. In fact, he envisioned his current location as a stopping point on the way to the United States. He planned to continue on to England as soon as he was released, and he hoped that Adrienne would meet him there so that they could travel together to America. There, he assured her, “we will find the liberty that no longer exists in France, and my tenderness will seek to compensate you for all the joys that you have lost.” This was probably not conceived as an empty promise to a disappointed wife. Lafayette—ever as earnest as he was hopeful—fully expected his adopted nation to welcome him with open arms.
To hasten that wished-for embrace, Lafayette was soon drafting a letter to the nearest available American representative, William Short, who was then serving as the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands in The Hague. Accustomed to seeing his commands carried out, Lafayette expected Short to act promptly. Directing him to the capital of the Austrian Netherlands, Lafayette wrote, “You will greatly oblige me, my dear Sir, by setting out for Brussels as soon as this reaches you, and insist on seeing me. I am an American citizen, an American officer, no more in the French service. That is your right, and I do not doubt of your urgent and immediate arrival.” Determined to advance his cause by all possible means, Lafayette also sought Short’s assistance in publicizing his plight. He had learned hard lessons about the power of the press, and now he asked Short to arrange the publication of the signed declaration drafted in Rochefort. Lafayette’s statement appeared in the Leyden Gazette, but Short, a circumspect Virginian, did not hasten to Brussels.
In fact, none of the Americans in Europe leapt to Lafayette’s rescue. Rounds of letters circulated among Short, Morris, and Thomas Pinckney, the U.S. ambassador to England, leading the three men to arrive at a unanimous conclusion: neither they nor the nation they represented had the authority to intervene in the matter of Lafayette’s detention. Assessing the problem on September 12, Morris wrote to Short that, even “supposing that Monsieur de La Fayette were a natural born Subject of America, and taken under the Circumstances in which he was plac’d, I do not exactly see how the United States could claim him.” Would it be possible, asked Morris, for the United States to “interfere in an Affair of this Sort without making themselves Parties in the Quarrel?” Morris expressed himself more bluntly to Pinckney the next day: “The less we meddle in the great Quarrel which agitates Europe the better will it be for us,” he wrote. Pinckney concurred. The men also agreed on another point: that Lafayette, for all of his dedication to their nation’s cause, was not, in point of fact, an American citizen. As Morris put it, “Monsieur de La Fayette is a Frenchman, and it is as a Frenchman that he is taken and is to be treated.” Or, as Pinckey wrote, “A claim of the rights of an American Citizen to a person in the Marquiss’s circumstances appears to me to be claiming nothing.”
When October arrived with no sign of help from America, Adrienne took matters into her own hands. From that moment on, she would be Lafayette’s most ardent champion. On October 8, she wrote directly to George Washington. Where her husband’s commands had failed, perhaps her sentimental invocation might succeed. “In this abyss of grief,” she wrote, “the idea of owing to the U.S. and to M. Washington—the life and liberty of M. Lafayette re-animates my heart with some hope. I hope every thing from the goodness of a people with whom he has set an example of that liberty of which he is now the victim.… Shall I dare speak what I hope?” She dared. Her wish was that an envoy be sent “to reclaim him in the name of the Republic of the U.S.” and to carry him to the “bosoms” of the American people. Casting Lafayette as a beloved husband and cherished father, she added that “if his wife & his Children could be comprised in this happy mission, it is easy to judge how sweet it would be to her and to them; but if this would retard or embarrass, in any degree, the process or his success—we will defer the happiness of a reunion yet longer.”
Sympathetic though he surely was, there was very little Washington could do about an international affair in which the United States was not a party. He handed the problem over to Vice President Jefferson with only the vaguest of instructions: “Enclosed is a letter from poor Madam La Fayette! How desirable it would be, if something could be done to relieve that family from their unhappy Situation.” Three weeks later, he wrote again to Jefferson, asking him to ghostwrite a reply to the distraught Adrienne, sending her “all the consolation I can with propriety give her consistent with my public character and the National policy; circumstanced as things are.” Although Washington had issued a gift of personal funds to Adrienne, he deemed it wise to keep the country out of European affairs. At most, he was willing to authorize Morris “to neglect no favorable opportunity of expressing informally the sentiments and wishes of this Country respecting M. de la Fayette.” Three months would pass before Washington would express his “sincere sympathy” to Adrienne. To this, he added only his “most ardent prayers that you may be again united to M. de Lafayette under circumstances that may be joyful to you both—and that the evening of that life, whose morning has been devoted to the cause of liberty and humanity, may be crowned with the best of heaven’s blessings.” With that, Washington signed off.
At Chavaniac, Adrienne struggled. She had married one of the wealthiest men in France, but now she was on the verge of penury. As Gouverneur Morris described Lafayette’s finances in an August 22 letter to Jefferson, “His circle is completed. He has spent his fortune on a revolution and is now crushed by the wheel which he put in motion.” Arch as always, Morris added, “He lasted longer than I expected.” Lafayette admitted as much in his letter to Adrienne. Disappointed though he was that he had failed to set France on a safe course, what weighed on him more heavily was that his attempts to do so had depleted the fortunes of his dependents. Still, he insisted that he would “make no excuse, neither to my children, nor to you, for having ruined my family. There is not a person among you who would want to owe your fortune to conduct contrary to my conscience.” Lafayette could not even afford to pay for his own upkeep—a grim requirement for prisoners who wished to enjoy a modicum of comfort. On January 23, 1793, Morris instructed agents in Amsterdam to place ten thousand florins at Lafayette’s disposal. America could not free its stalwart friend, but it would see to his needs as best it could.
By the time Adrienne received her husband’s letter of August 21, it was clear that she and her children would soon be left with nothing. Before the month was out, Lafayette’s name had been added to the nation’s rapidly expanding list of men and women officially designated as émigrés—a designation with very real consequences. The law required that the belongings of émigrés be inventoried, seized, and, if the nation so desired, sold. By choosing exile, Lafayette had effectively forfeited all of his possessions. On August 30, 1792, four men appointed by local authorities arrived at Chavaniac to begin the inventory. Adrienne and Lafayette’s aunt Madame de Chavaniac could only look on as the men opened every door, counted every item, and rifled through every piece of paper in every room of the house. For two days the men worked their way from the kitchen (“42 red copper casseroles …”) to the chapel (“1 silver-plated Christ …”) to the barnyard and stables (“2 black cows, one with a calf …”), taking note whenever Madame de Chavaniac tried to protect what she could by claiming animals and objects as her own personal property—not that of her émigré nephew.
Madame de Chavaniac had lived in the château far longer than Lafayette, but his imprint was everywhere. When a more expert commission of inspectors arrived in February to assign values to everything they found, they came across mementos of Lafayette’s public life scattered about the estate. A stone from the Bastille carved in the shape of the prison and a foot-high statuette of Liberty personified were stashed in an outbuilding near the stables. A framed portrait of George Washington decorated a small room on the second floor of the main house. And the walls of Adrienne’s cabinet, where she relaxed by playing the piano or with a game of trictrac, featured five small scenes depicting battles of the American Revolution and a two-foot-wide painting commemorating the storming of the Bastille. All of it would be confiscated, and little was ever returned.
A stone from the Bastille carved in its shape. A similar object was found among Lafayette’s belongings at Chavaniac. (illustration credit 18.1)
Far more tragic were the seizures of Lafayette’s possessions in Cayenne, where he had purchased three plantations and the slaves who worked them in order to conduct an experiment in gradual emancipation. Although Lafayette had always intended to free these slaves, he had never actually done so. Now these men, women, and children were the property of an émigré, and they would be impounded, inventoried, and sold like any other assets. On November 28, 1792, Adrienne wrote a pleading letter to the Ministry of the Marine, whose director was also in charge of the colonies, asking for help. Moved by “sentiments of humanity,” she hoped to protect “the small number of blacks” who lived on Lafayette’s land. Instead of selling the plantations, she suggested, the treasury might instead leave them be while enjoying all the profits they produced. She wrote, too, to the plantations’ overseer, Louis de Geneste, explaining that “nothing could have ever impelled me to sell” these people but that she did not have the funds to purchase them from new owners.
When the plantation of Saint Régis was inventoried on April 5, 1794, each family of slaves counted as one item. Sixty-three people, ranging from a newborn girl not yet named to a sixty-six-year-old man named André, appeared under item numbers 31 to 57 and were valued at 73,250 livres. They constituted, by far, the most valuable portion of the plantation’s holdings, estimated to be worth 87,068 livres in all. Although the colonial administrators rejected Adrienne’s proposal, they made a gesture toward humanitarianism by agreeing to acquire the slaves for the nation. This way, “people accustomed to living together” would not be separated. The sale was completed on June 24, 1795.
After Lafayette’s name was stricken from the list of émigrés in 1799, he wrote to the Ministry of the Marine hoping to be reimbursed for “at least 48” of the slaves taken from him. By that time, slavery had been abolished in the French colonies. The people were free, and Lafayette would not be compensated. At an earlier moment in his life, before financial concerns began to impinge on his idealism, Lafayette might not have asked for reimbursement. Condorcet’s 1781 Reflections on Negro Slavery—which had influenced Lafayette’s thinking on the subject—had stated quite clearly that, when slaves are freed, “the Sovereign owes no reparations to the slave master, just as nothing is owed to a thief except a judgment upon depriving him of a stolen object.” In this instance, Lafayette seems to have felt that he simply could not afford his principles.
Adrienne’s pleas to liberate the slaves came while she was deprived of her own freedom. If several brave men—some friends, some strangers—had not come to her aid, she would not have survived. On August 19, 1792, the day Lafayette crossed the border, a warrant was signed in Paris for the arrest of Adrienne and any of her children found with her. On August 25, Adrienne added an addendum to her last will and testament leaving the management of household affairs to her brother-in-law; it was at least the fourth time in eighteen months she had annotated her will. Adrienne and Anastasie, the elder of her two daughters, were taken into custody at eight o’clock on the morning of September 10. George had been away from home and Virginie hiding in the house whenAlphonse Aulagnier, the justice of the peace charged with their capture, arrived at Chavaniac. Aulagnier had traveled through the night from the departmental capital of Le Puy, accompanied by eighty-six soldiers, gendarmes, and members of the National Guard. It was a massive show of force, far out of proportion to any resistance Adrienne might conceivably have offered, but apparently Aulagnier was quietly sympathetic to his captives’ plight. Explicitly disobeying orders to escort the women to a prison in Paris, Aulagnier kept them in his municipality. As he explained to Minister of the Interior Jean-Marie Roland, “the events of September 2 and 3” made it clear “what fate would await my illustrious prisoners” in the capital. Aulagnier was referring to the September massacres of 1792, when the streets of Paris ran red with the blood of more than a thousand men, women, and children and triumphant murderers processed through the streets carrying the head (and, according to some accounts, the entrails) of thePrincesse de Lamballe, a close ally of Marie Antoinette’s. Roland—who might well have fallen victim himself had the bloodshed continued—ultimately relented, allowing Adrienne and Anastasie to return to Chavaniac under house arrest until further notice.
Anxiety filled Adrienne’s days. News of her husband arrived only sporadically, and when it did, it generally took the form of rumor or speculation. Even his location was often uncertain, as he was shuttled from city to city and prison to prison, spending time in Nivelles, Luxembourg, and Wesel before arriving at Magdeburg, where he remained for all of 1793. The couple’s financial woes also continued unabated. Despite Grattepain-Morizot’s wishful insistence that “after all debts have been settled, there will still be a balance left of nearly two million” livres, the seizure of all of Lafayette’s lands and resources meant that there was no balance left at all. Had it not been for a loan of 100,000 livres extended personally by Gouverneur Morris in June 1793, Adrienne would not have been able to pay her most basic bills.
Adrienne’s situation was hardly unique: fear and uncertainty gripped French households throughout 1793 as the nation lurched from crisis to crisis and the National Convention clung to power with an increasing sense of desperation. Events transpired at lightning speed. The month of March, which opened with the war abroad going badly, saw the implementation of a massive conscription effort, the outbreak of a full-fledged counterrevolutionary revolt in the Vendée region of western France, and the National Convention’s establishment of a Revolutionary Tribunal and a Committee of Surveillance, each vested with extraordinary powers. On April 6, the Jacobin-dominated convention created the Committee of Public Safety—a super-legislative body of nine members (later increased to twelve) authorized to “deliberate in secret,” to “oversee and accelerate administrative actions delegated to the Provisional Executive Council,” to suspend the council’s decrees “when it deems them contrary to the national interest,” and “to take, in urgent circumstances, measures for general external and internal defense.” With power thus consolidated, a purge of the National Convention’s moderates began. And when the “incorruptible” Robespierre—a purist, in his way, who believed that the success of the revolution justified any actions taken on its behalf—joined the Committee of Public Safety on July 27, 1793, the stage was set for the climactic act of the French Revolution’s lethal drama: the Reign of Terror.
On September 5, 1793, leaders of Paris’s forty-eight sections, joined by the Jacobin Club, appeared before the National Convention to demand drastic measures. Observing that “the nation’s dangers are extreme,” the deputation insisted that “the remedies must be equally so.” Just as the convention had instituted a nationwide draft to repulse foreign attackers, so too must the republic expel “the traitors within, who divide us, who pit us one against the other.” The representatives further noted that a “revolutionary army” must be established with powerful tribunals that would make it “a terrible instrument of vengeance,” and that they must remain active “until the soil of the Republic is purged of traitors, and until the death of the last of the conspirators.” “Terror,” their petition demanded, must become “the order of the day.” Presiding over the National Convention, and speaking on its behalf, Robespierre averred that “all the French” would bless the Jacobin Club and the city of Paris for seeking such “imperious and definitive measures.” He concluded with a promise: “All villains will perish on the scaffold, the Convention solemnly swears it.”
On September 17, 1793, the National Convention began to make good on Robespierre’s pledge by passing the Law of Suspects. This law, which Adrienne termed the “fatal decree,” declared that “all suspects found in the territory of the Republic, and who are still at liberty, will be placed under arrest.” The operative definition of “suspects” was both broad and vague. It encompassed not only those who had emigrated, been refused certificates of good citizenship, or been suspended from public functions by the National Convention, but also “those who, whether by their conduct, their relations, their intentions or their writings, have shown themselves to be partisans of tyranny or federalism and enemies of liberty.” Likewise targeted for arrest were “those former nobles, including husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons or daughters, sisters or brothers, and agents of émigrés, who have not constantly demonstrated their attachment to the Revolution.” According to these definitions, Adrienne and her entire family were enemies of the people.
Roundups began almost immediately. Adrienne’s mother, the Du- chesse d’Ayen, and her sister, the Maréchale de Noailles, were arrested in early October. They were permitted to remain under surveillance in the Hôtel de Noailles until April, at which time they were transferred to the Luxembourg Palace, Lafayette’s first home in Paris, which had been requisitioned for use as a prison. Madame de Chavaniac was placed under house arrest in January 1794. Adrienne was imprisoned on November 13 in Brioude—the closest town to Chavaniac—and was subsequently moved to the prison of La Force in Paris. By the time of her arrival in the capital on June 7, some sixty people per day were being sent to the guillotine.
The months leading up to Adrienne’s transfer had been bloody indeed, and many of the men who played roles in Lafayette’s rise and fall justly or unjustly met their demise. Marat was murdered in his bathtub on July 13, 1793; Jacques-Pierre Brissot went to the guillotine on October 31, 1793; the Duc d’Orléans was guillotined, despite his new republican name of Philippe Égalité, on November 6, 1793; Jean-Sylvain Bailly, former mayor of Paris, followed on November 12; Antoine Barnave, the triumvir who’d developed an affection for Marie Antoinette while escorting her back from Varennes, was guillotined on November 29; the abolitionist philosopher Condorcet died in prison—a likely suicide—on March 28, 1794; Danton was executed on April 5, 1794.
On July 22, 1794, Adrienne’s mother, sister, and grandmother joined the roster of victims. Robespierre himself, who had orchestrated the executions of so many real and perceived enemies, was guillotined less than one week later. Had the Noailles women lived just a few days longer, they would have survived the revolution. Adrienne, concluding her privately published narrative of her mother’s life, wrote, “I have given up trying to explain anything because what I feel is inexplicable.”
Adrienne escaped her family’s fate thanks to American intervention. When Gouverneur Morris learned that Adrienne had been transferred to Paris, he understood the dire implications of the move and hastened to her aid. Morris had no official authorization, but he also had no time to spare. Waiting for approval to cross the Atlantic would have taken weeks under the best of circumstances, and recently Morris’s letters had been suffering greater delays than usual because, as he wrote to his brother, “the Comité de Surveillance have done me the honor to peruse some of them.” So he would have to act first and inform Washington later. As he explained to the president, he had written to France’s minister of foreign affairs, Philibert Buchot, on June 29 “as a citizen and not as a commissioner.” While taking pains to stress to Buchot that his was an unofficial letter, Morris reminded the minister of Lafayette’s place in the hearts of the American public: “The family of Lafayette is beloved in America,” he wrote, adding,
that without examining his conduct in this country … my fellow-citizens confine themselves to the grateful remembrance of the services he has rendered us, and that therefore the death of his wife might lessen the attachment of some among them to the French Republic; that it would furnish the partisans of England with means of misrepresenting what passes here; that I cannot but think her existence of very little consequence to this government; and that I am sure its enemies will rejoice at the destruction of anything which bears the name of Lafayette.
Morris never received a reply, but Adrienne believed ever after that he had saved her life. Lafayette, whose feelings about Morris were actually quite mixed, preferred to credit Morris’s successor—his former comrade-in-arms James Monroe. Whatever the impetus may have been, Adrienne was liberated on February 2, 1795.
She made freeing her husband her first priority. Having developed a strategy as bold as it was selfless, she followed it through, step by step, until she succeeded. After arranging to send her son, George Washington Lafayette, to the United States, where she hoped he would be cared for by his Virginian namesake, Adrienne obtained passports for herself and her daughters, petitioned Emperor Francis II for permission to join her husband in prison, and arrived with Anastasie and Virginie at the door of the fortress of Olmutz on October 15, 1795. If Austrian forces were going to keep Lafayette under lock and key, they would have to suffer the public embarrassment of keeping his wife and daughters as well.
For all of the public and private diplomacy that had gone into obtaining Lafayette’s liberty since 1792, nothing did more to further the cause than the outpouring of international sympathy prompted by Adrienne’s self-imposed incarceration. The story of the family’s imprisonment captured public attention from Paris to Philadelphia, and even those who were unsympathetic to Lafayette were forced to square their views with the poignant drama of the women’s self-sacrifice.
Washington, who had hitherto kept a judicious distance from the matter, was finally moved to act. On May 15, 1796, he wrote to the emperor. Washington emphasized that his was a private letter, composed not in his capacity as the leader of a nation but merely as a man. “In common with the people of this Country,” Washington wrote, “I retain a strong and cordial sense of the services rendered to them by the Marquis De la Fayette; and my friendship for him has been constant and sincere.” He asked the emperor to consider whether Lafayette’s “long imprisonment, and the confiscation of his Estate, and the Indigence and dispersion of his family, and the painful anxieties incident to all these circumstances, do not form an assemblage of sufferings, which recommend him to the mediation of Humanity?” Private though the letter might have been, Washington was willing to extend the nation on Lafayette’s behalf, asking “that he may be permitted to come to this Country on such conditions and under such restrictions, as your Majesty may think it expedient to prescribe.”
Around the same time, pressure to release Lafayette began to pour forth in the public sphere, as essays and prints by Lafayette’s supporters capitalized on the sentiments inspired by Adrienne’s sacrifice to build their case. Philippe Charles d’Agrain, a former adjutant general who had crossed into the Austrian Netherlands with Lafayette in 1792 but had been freed within the year, produced the most ambitious of these works—an eighteen-page poem entitled Captivity of Lafayette. Writing in the voice of Lafayette, Agrain tapped into the era’s fascination with dark tales of madness and injustice by painting a tragic picture of the erstwhile champion of freedom stooped under the weight of his irons and dying a slow death, forgotten by all of humankind. Driven to delirium, Agrain’s Lafayette is tormented by dreams of a reunion with his beloved wife until, as if emerging from a fog, he understands that Adrienne is truly there in his arms, with their daughters in tow. Augmented by forty-two pages of explanatory notes and documents detailing Lafayette’s lifelong campaign for righteousness, the poem was reviewed and excerpted in English and American magazines, where it rekindled interest in his imprisonment.
Two poignant engravings underscore the pathos of Agrain’s narrative: one depicts the moment of the women’s arrival, and the other shows Lafayette alone in a stone room that is illuminated only by a feeble light shining through a small, barred window near the ceiling. In both, Lafayette’s circumstances seem irredeemably bleak, as chains dangle from the wall on the left of the reunion scene, and the words “suffer and die” can be seen inscribed on the masonry above them. Dank and unhealthful though it was, Lafayette’s imprisonment at Olmutz was somewhat less grim than Agrain’s words and images might suggest. Lafayette’s rooms were on the ground floor, not in the basement, and he had not been entirely alone before his family’s arrival—a servant lodged with him, as did two of the officers arrested with him at Rochefort, Charles César de Fay de La Tour-Maubourg (whose younger brother would later wed Lafayette’s daughter Anastasie) and Jean-Xavier Bureau de Pusy (whose son would marry Lafayette’s granddaughter). Agrain may not have been entirely accurate, but his version of events was deeply persuasive.
Philippe Charles d’Agrain, Captivité de Lafayette: Héroïde, et des notes historiques, non encore connues du public, sur les illustres prisonniers d’Olmutz, en Moravie (Paris: Chocheris, 1797), this page. (illustration credit 18.2)
Anglophones soon took up their pens in support of the cause. In the United States, former attorney general William Bradford contributed “La Fayette: A Song” to the New-York Weekly Magazine, while the Philadelphia newspaperman Mathew Carey translated Agrain’s engravings into words. Carey was an Irishman who had worked for Benjamin Franklin in France and founded an American newspaper in 1785, with financial backing from Lafayette. In 1797, his paper, the Daily Advertiser, published “Lafayette: A Fragment.” As the article describes it, Lafayette had been sitting “on a coarse misshapen bench” with “ponderous chains” weighing on his legs when “the door creaked on its rust-eaten hinges,” signaling the arrival of Adrienne and her daughters. Recalling with gratitude that Lafayette had entrusted “his fortunes” to America’s “tempest-tost bark” and emerged “crowned with laurels at Yorktown,” the author urges the United States to remember its hero, who, we read near the end, “casts his longing eyes towards America, that country to which the best, the choicest days of his existence were so zealously and so usefully devoted … he trusts she will not cease to reiterate her applications for his relief, till they are crowned with success.” Lafayette had helped establish freedom in America, and Americans wanted to return the favor.
Calls to intercede came from England as well. Samuel Taylor Coleridge published “Sonnet to the Marquis de La Fayette” in London’s Freemason’s Magazine, while the fiery Whig politicians Charles James Fox and General Richard FitzPatrick tugged at the heartstrings of their fellow MPs with moving speeches. On May 10, 1796, Fox took the floor of the House of Commons to describe the plight of Adrienne, who, after “enduring a series of most dreadful sufferings under the brutal Robespierre … flew on the wings of duty and affection, to Vienna,” where she begged for permission to join her husband. When Adrienne arrived at Olmutz, Fox continued, the jailors did their best to shake her determination. They told her that, in the wake of his recent attempt to escape, Lafayette was now subjected to privations that were stricter than usual, and “that if she resolved to go down to the dungeon to her husband, she must submit to share in all the horrors of his captivity.” At this, the parliamentary record attests, “a burst of indignation and sorrow broke from every part of the House.” Despite every effort to prevent her from taking this fateful step, Fox reported, the virtuous Adrienne refused to be put off.
FitzPatrick reprised the theme on December 16. Asking his listeners to imagine “what a scene must the reunion of this unhappy family have presented in the circumstances under which they met,” he related a new slew of horrors that Adrienne had suffered since joining her husband. Seven months in the pestilential prison had taken its toll on Adrienne’s health; she was granted permission to seek medical attention in Vienna only on the condition that she not return to Olmutz. Preferring illness to a second separation, Adrienne chose to remain where she was. The most painful injury Adrienne endured, though, was the insult to her piety: a devout Roman Catholic, she was denied the solace of attending Mass or having her confession heard. “It is a torment to her conscience,” FitzPatrick explained, to be barred from exercising “that duty which her religion has prescribed.” So moving was the speech that, before embarking on a rebuttal, FitzPatrick’s archrival William Pitt had little choice but to acknowledge “that a more striking and pathetic appeal was never made to the feelings of the House.”
By 1797, France’s five-member Directory—the executive branch of the government established after Robespierre’s fall—felt pressed by both internal and external forces to act on Lafayette’s behalf, but the matter was beyond its control. Not only did Lafayette remain imprisoned by Austria—a foreign power—but the two nations were still at war. Moreover, the directors had little sway in the ongoing peace negotiations, which were being overseen on the French side by a man who was effectively accountable to no one: General Napoleon Bonaparte. The Corsican-born military leader was not yet thirty years old, but as commander of France’s victorious Army of Italy, he was one of the most popular men in the nation, and quite possibly the most powerful man in Europe. After months of quiet prodding and unofficial negotiations regarding the Lafayette household’s predicament, the president of the Directory wrote to Napoleon on August 1, 1797, asking him to do what he could “to end their captivity as soon as possible.” Lafayette’s family and their fellow captives were released on September 19.
On October 5, 1797, Samuel Williams, the United States’ consul to Hamburg, wrote to Washington that he “had the happiness of embracing our beloved Friend, General La Fayette, accompanied with his Lady & Daughters.” Washington was a private citizen now, living under the presidency of John Adams, but his interest in Lafayette had for many years been more personal than political. As Williams reported, the company had been warmly received in every town they passed on their way to Hamburg and all were “in pretty good health, excepting Madame Lafayette, who mends daily.” Adrienne had indeed suffered the most severely. When she emerged from prison, a rash covered her body, a gaping sore vexed her leg, and her stomach was constantly unsettled. Williams’s assessment that Adrienne’s health was improving could best be described as wishful thinking.
The freed captives would not be in Hamburg long. As William Vans Murray, the U.S. consul to The Hague, explained to Washington on August 26, Francis II had “ordered their release provided the necessary steps be taken here to convey them off the territory of the Empire to Holland or America, eight days after their arrival at Hamburgh.” Naturally, Lafayette wanted to embark for the United States as soon as possible, but as Williams wrote to Washington, a few obstacles stood in the way. First, Adrienne was not yet well enough to make such a long voyage. Second, France and the United States were perched on the brink of hostilities. Nonetheless, Williams had assured Lafayette that he would find “a most affectionate reception” in America whenever he should choose to sail. Unfortunately, Williams was mistaken.
Lafayette was saddened to learn that relations between his native land and his adopted nation had deteriorated so badly. On October 8, he expressed his dismay to the American Francis Huger, a son of Major Huger, at whose house Lafayette had inadvertently landed when he first set foot in America in 1777. Although he did not yet know what had caused the Franco-American breach, he lamented its consequences, writing that “nothing could be more impolitic for the two countries, and more painful for me.” But Lafayette would not give up on his dream, and before putting down his pen he reclaimed the bold optimism that had driven every major decision of his life, for better or for worse, writing, “My most ardent desire is to see these differences resolved quickly.” Contemplating a resolution to the international dispute, he prayed, “May it please God that it might be in my power to contribute to it!!”
Lafayette’s indefatigable spirit had triumphed over the harsh environs of Olmutz, but even his copious goodwill would not be enough to solve the problems that plagued French-American relations. The once and future allies were on the verge of an international crisis that would go down in history as the Quasi-War. The dispute began with the Jay Treaty—a pact negotiated by John Jay, ratified by Congress, and signed by Washington that settled lingering boundary disputes and reestablished limited commerce between theUnited States and Great Britain. When the treaty went into effect, on February 29, 1796, France was outraged. From the perspective of a French nation now at war with England—indeed, with most of Europe—the agreement flew in the face of America’s proclaimed neutrality in European affairs while abrogating the 1778 Treaties of Amity and Commerce. Soon, French privateers were attacking American merchant ships with abandon, and hundreds of ships were lost in the space of a year.
When Lafayette was released from prison, things were going from bad to worse. Adams, who had never much cared for the French, was losing his patience, and the so-called XYZ Affair of 1798 pushed him to his limit. The ill-fated escapade involved three American envoys who, having been sent to Paris to negotiate a resolution to the ongoing hostilities, were greeted by three shadowy go-betweens—known merely as X, Y, and Z—demanding an apology from Adams and substantial financial payments. Apparently Talleyrand, now serving as French foreign minister, would not meet with the Americans until his own pockets had been sufficiently lined and his nation’s coffers replenished by the United States, which, as all of France was well aware, had not yet repaid loans made during the American Revolution. Angry, insulted, and empty-handed, the Americans were told to leave the country.
Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Adams was pushing for a military buildup in a political climate marked by increasing partisan animosity. On one side stood Adams, Hamilton, and their colleagues affiliated with the Anglophile Federalist Party. On the other side were Jefferson, Madison, and other Francophile members of the Democratic-Republican Party. Involving, as it did, thorny questions of transatlantic allegiances, the Quasi-War became hotly contested on the home front as the country’s first two political parties battled for control of national policy.
So virulent was anti-French sentiment in Federalist circles that even the beloved name of Lafayette became fair game for political wrangling. In the spring of 1797, two rival Federalist newspapers—Noah Webster’s American Minerva, published in New York, andPorcupine’s Political Censor, published by William Cobbett in Philadelphia—spilled copious amounts of ink in an argument over whether or not it was patriotic to support Lafayette. Although both papers routinely denounced the excesses of the French Revolution, Webster believed that Cobbett went too far in “retailing abuse against Lafayette, whose sufferings (even suppose him to have been in fault, which is doubtful or not admitted) are far too severe, and call for the sympathy of all mankind.” As Webster saw it, Cobbett’s habit of praising France’s old regime “denotes a man callous to the miseries of his species, and extremely disrespectful to the opinions of the Americans, who entertain friendship and gratitude for Lafayette.” Cobbett, who was never one to back away from a fight, countered “that a desire to ingratiate yourself with the deceived part of the public, together with that of injuring me, led [Webster] to bring forward the stalking horse Lafayette, and not any friendship, gratitude, or compassion that you entertained for him.” Then again, he observed that Webster had been foolish enough to pin his “political faith on the sleeve of this unfledged statesman” in the early days of the French Revolution, and that, “like Bailly and Lafayette, you adored the holy right of insurrection, till it began to operate against yourselves.”
Choosing their words carefully, several of Lafayette’s American friends did their best to persuade him to abandon, or at least to postpone, his planned emigration. Alexander Hamilton, Lafayette’s former comrade-in-arms who had become a Federalist leader, wrote from New York on April 28, 1798, bluntly stating the political differences that now separated them: the execution of Louis XVI and other instances of violence had, he explained, “cured me of my good will for the French Revolution.” Although he assured Lafayette that “no one feels more than I do the motives which this country has to love you, to desire and to promote your happiness,” Hamilton concluded that “in the present state of our affairs with France, I cannot urge you to us.”
Even Washington, who just two years earlier had suggested to the emperor that Lafayette be free to immigrate to America, now seconded Hamilton’s sentiments. On Christmas Day 1798, Washington wrote to Lafayette that “no one in the United States would receive you with opener arms, or with more ardent affection that I should”—but only “after the difference between this Country and France are adjusted, and harmony between the Nations is again restored.” Continuing the letter, which was destined to be his last to Lafayette (Washington died less than a year later), he added:
It would be uncandid, and incompatible with that friendship I have always professed for you to say, (and on your own account) that I wish it before. For you may be assured, my dear Sir, that the scenes you would meet with, and the part you would be stimulated to act in case of an open rupture, or even if matters should remain in status quo, would be such as to place you in a situation which no address, or human prudence, could free you from embarrassment. In a word, you would lose the confidence of one party or the other, perhaps both—were you here under these circumstances.
Lafayette was still not dissuaded. Replying to Washington on May 9, 1799, he pointed to his half dozen letters as evidence of “how ardently, in spite of difficulties, I long to be in America.” Lafayette conceded that Washington had not been alone in warning him away from the United States, but he added, “I am not without some distant hopes, that … I may become not quite useless to the purpose of an American negotiation.” And although he promised that he would try not to sail before receiving Washington’s reply, he left the possibility open by noting that “in the improbable case where I would suddenly pop upon you, be certain, my dear g[ener]al that my motives should be such as to convince you of their urgency, & then I hope individual independence would be left to an harassed old friend by American parties.”
Washington and Hamilton, who harbored fond memories of Lafayette, could not have been surprised by his single-minded persistence. But William Vans Murray was just getting to know him and was astounded by Lafayette’s unreconstructed optimism. On March 19, 1799, Murray reported to John Quincy Adams, then serving as America’s minister to Prussia, about a visit with Lafayette and his family, who were now living in Vianen, near Utrecht. Murray wrote that “Lafayette is young in look and healthy, but what I did least expect he is cheerful.” Lafayette was prone to declaring “his attachment ‘to Liberty’ ” without any prompting, Murray observed. “But what exceeded even the pictures of imaginary perseverance, is, that he still … wishes to be instrumental in curing political evils—ameliorating mankind!! Lord have mercy upon us!!” Murray could hardly believe it, but Lafayette did not appear to be jesting: the words flowed from Lafayette’s mouth most “naturally and unaffectedly.”
At the time, Murray felt as though he were in the company of the misguided Doctor Sangrado who, in the picaresque novel Gil Blas, admits that “it is indeed true … that all my prescriptions have brought people to their graves, and I should change my principles and practice; but I have written a book to support them!” Murray found Lafayette’s delusions “lamentable, for he seems to be really governed by a most insatiable thirst after honesty and good intentions, and is certainly generous and amiable.” Adams, who had inherited some of his father’s wariness of Lafayette’s motives, was less generous in his response, writing that, “I am glad you have seen La F[ayette] and not surprised that you found him full of the same fanaticism … a great part of which however with him, is what it always was, ungovernable ambition in disguise.” Adams admitted that Lafayette “thinks his intentions as good as you allow them to be; but he is a man apt to mistake the operations of his heart as well as those of his head.”
Although Lafayette received no encouragement, he continued to plan for an American voyage for most of the year. Writing to Adrienne on July 4, 1799, he declared himself willing to cross the Atlantic in a hot air balloon if need be, and in August he sought Murray’s help in obtaining a passport. As before, Murray was flabbergasted. Relating the conversation to Washington, Murray reported that Lafayette had asked “could I not … be useful in uniting parties? I told him no!” Yet Lafayette was “much bent on going—Leaving his lady and daughter in France,” where they had returned to begin the long process of reclaiming whatever property they could. Intending “to settle for life” on the other side of the Atlantic, Lafayette planned to “land in the Chesapeake” and “pass the winter” as Washington’s guest and then “buy a farm near Mount Vernon.” So confident was Lafayette of his imminent relocation that by October, correspondents in Europe were addressing his mail to the United States.
To those unfamiliar with Lafayette, this giddy perseverance seemed to cry out for explanation. On June 25, 1799, Major General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina—one of the three American emissaries in the XYZ Affair—forwarded to Washington a letter speculating that Talleyrand was driving Lafayette’s plan. Written in cipher by a colleague in The Hague, the document asserted that Lafayette had received “letters from Talleyrand advising him strongly to it, and buoying him up with his canting flattery.” The author surmised that “trusting to what popularity, and influence [Lafayette] may still retain in the U[nited] States, especially among the people, Talleyrand expects that on his arrival, [Lafayette] would be courted, flattered and cherished by the Democrats and Anti’s.” By August, Murray, too, was growing wary that Lafayette might do more harm than good were he to emigrate. Writing to John Quincy Adams, Murray avowed that Lafayette seemed sincere in declaring “explicit federalism, and a support of our government, and abhorrence of the conduct of France towards it and our nation.” Yet Murray cautioned, “I think that I know his character—his ambition—too well not to fear that should he go, he will think that he finds reasons to change his tone.”
Washington, whose friendship with Lafayette had survived many ups and downs over the course of more than two decades, took all of the speculation in stride. Writing to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, he initially dismissed allegations that Talleyrand was behind Lafayette’s plans. “Surely Lafayette will not come here on such an errand, and under such circumstances,” Washington exclaimed. But further reflection led him to amend his views: “And yet—I believe he will, if the thing is proposed to him!” Washington knew all too well that Lafayette “has a blind side, not difficult to assail.” In the end, he concurred with Lady Macbeth that “what has been done, cannot be undone.… To make the best of it,” Washington concluded, “is all that remains to do.”
When Washington died, on December 14, 1799, news that Lafayette had abandoned his vision of an American retirement and abruptly returned to France had not yet reached the United States. Had Washington known, he would likely have been relieved. Murray, however, was stunned; Lafayette had left the Netherlands in November without so much as bidding him adieu.
When Napoleon Bonaparte carried out a coup d’état on November 9–10, 1799 (or 18–19 Brumaire year VIII, according to the French revolutionary calendar that dubbed September 22, 1792, the first day of “Year I” to signal the new era created by the foundation of the French republic), Lafayette’s aide-de-camp leapt into action. Over the course of two tumultuous days, General Bonaparte, recently returned from Egypt, had overthrown the troubled Directory and installed himself and two colleagues as a three-manConsulate. As Napoleon and his collaborators presented it, they had come to save the republic, not to bury it. The constitution, they argued, had been defiled by the misdeeds of the Directory and could no longer guide the nation. In its place, the consuls would institute a new system designed “to consolidate, guarantee, and inviolably consecrate the sovereignty of the French people, the Republic one and indivisible, the representative system, the division of power, liberty, equality, safety, and property.” As Napoleon pledged allegiance to the principles of 1789, and before the dust could settle, the aide hastened to Holland bearing a passport that Adrienne had obtained for Lafayette under an assumed name. Two hours after receiving the forged papers, Lafayette was on the road to France.
Fully understanding that Napoleon might not welcome the sudden appearance of a rival general, Lafayette wrote to Provisional Consul Bonaparte immediately upon reaching Paris. Lafayette acknowledged his “obligations” to Napoleon and minimized the appearance of threat by emphasizing that he was about “to depart for the distant countryside where I will reunite with my family.” These were not the first conciliatory words Bonaparte had received from Lafayette. Adrienne had begun laying the groundwork by meeting with Napoleon in October. On her recommendation, Lafayette had written an uncharacteristically succinct letter on October 30 reassuring Napoleon of his gratitude and support.
Nonetheless, Napoleon was incensed when he learned that Lafayette was in Paris. Possessing a keen strategic mind, Napoleon was wary of Lafayette’s uncommon “talent for making friends.” If allegiances had to be declared, Napoleon wondered, whom could he count on to choose him over of Lafayette?
Lafayette learned of Napoleon’s outrage from go-betweens who advised a prompt return to Holland. Lafayette remembered replying that “they surely knew me well enough to understand that this imperious and menacing tone would be enough to set me even more firmly in my course.” Moreover, he recalled saying, “It would be quite amusing if I were to be arrested in the evening by the National Guard and locked in the Temple the next day by the restorer of the principles of 89.” In other words, Napoleon could not move against Lafayette without undermining his claim to be the true heir of the revolution. Once again, Adrienne brokered a truce. Napoleon would permit Lafayette to remain in France on the condition that he avoid all “éclat” (brilliance or acclaim). In practice, this meant that Lafayette would have to settle outside of Paris and play no role in the public eye.
By far the more practical spouse, Adrienne arranged a retreat perfectly suited to the situation. When she had returned to France, one of her first orders of business had been securing her inheritance of the château and estate of La Grange. Located some forty miles southeast of Paris, La Grange had descended through Adrienne’s mother’s family and was far enough from the capital to appease Napoleon but near enough to allow Lafayette to keep abreast of current events. Although Lafayette never took his eye off the national and international struggles for liberty, his life would revolve around the house and grounds of La Grange for the next thirty-five years.