Part 2

In 1780 he asked leave to take a position in the Southern Department where the situation of the American army is described in a letter to Lafayette by General Greene, then commanding the division.

"It is now within a few days of the time when you shall be with me. Were you to arrive you would find a few ragged, half-starved troops in the wilderness, destitute of everything necessary for either the comfort or convenience of soldiers.... The country is almost laid waste and the inhabitants plunder one another with little less than savage fury. We live from hand to mouth, and have nothing to subsist on but what we collect with armed parties.... I fear this department is to be the great Serbonian bog to the American armies and particularly to the general officers."

The vision of a Serbonian bog acted only as a magnet, and Lafayette started to join Greene. On his way, however, he was recalled by the commander-in-chief, General Washington, to take command of an expedition against Benedict Arnold, the traitor, now a brigadier-general in the enemy's army, who was marching into Virginia and with revengeful fury carrying fire and sword wherever he went. Lafayette was dispatched against him with specific orders that if Arnold surrendered there should be no stipulation made for his safety, and at the same time forbidding the slightest injury to his person;--it being the purpose of Washington, never however fulfilled, to bring Arnold to public punishment according to the rules and regulations of the army.

Lafayette's command seems to have been no better than Greene's. In a letter to Greene he describes his men as being in a condition of "shocking nakedness." Even the officers were destitute of money, clothing, and everything that could contribute to cleanliness and comfort. As for the men, they were poorly fed, their shoes worn out, without tents, and destitute of almost any protection from the inclemency of the weather. Some of his officers assured the Marquis that his command would speedily be reduced one-half by desertion,--and as a matter of fact thirteen out of one company deserted in a single day. A nauseous and contagious disease, generally produced by a want of cleanliness, overspread nearly the entire command. In consequence of these difficulties, Arnold escaped, but Lafayette forced his retreat.

The military genius of George Washington at last turned the tide of war. In October, 1781, he had the enemy's troops under Cornwallis cornered at Yorktown. In the course of the siege it became necessary to capture a certain redoubt possessed by the enemy. Washington determined to carry it with the bayonet, and appointed Lafayette to conduct the charge. The American infantry advanced with irresistible power, relying entirely upon their bayonets, and carried the redoubt by assault.

Shortly afterward Cornwallis surrendered his entire army to Washington, and the last battle of the American Revolution had been fought. In November, 1781, the confederated republics having won, Lafayette returned to France.

Washington and Lafayette! The American and the Frenchman. Great soldiers both, but above all, great men. The real soul of the soldier speaks out in this letter from the American to the Frenchman, written in 1784: "At length, my dear Marquis, I have become a private citizen on the banks of the Potomac; and under the shadow of my own vine and my own fig-tree, free from the bustle of the camp and the busy scenes of public life, I am solacing myself with those tranquil enjoyments, of which the soldier who is ever in pursuit of fame, the statesman whose watchful days and sleepless nights are spent in devising schemes to promote the welfare of his own, perhaps the ruin of other countries, as if this globe was insufficient for us all--and the courtier who is always watching the countenance of his prince in the hope of catching a gracious smile--can have very little conception. I have not only retired from all public employments, but am retiring within myself and shall be able to view the solitary walk, and tread the paths of private life with heartfelt satisfaction. Envious of none, I am determined to be pleased with all; and this, my dear friend, being the order of my march, I shall move gently down the stream of life until I sleep with my fathers."

The scene in the world-wide drama of democracy shifts across the Atlantic Ocean, from America to France. The French Revolution of 1789 and the Reign of Terror--a century's pent-up rage against despotism, let loose in a single hour!

When Madame Roland was summoned before the revolutionary tribunal she came with a smile upon her lips, her face sparkling with life and animation. Condemned in advance, she was falsely declared guilty of being the author of a "mutinous conspiracy against the unity and defense of the republic." She heard her sentence calmly. "You deem me worthy the fate of the great men you have murdered. I shall try to display the same courage on the scaffold." She was at once taken in a cart to the Place de la Revolution, a man guilty of treason being placed in the same cart. He was overwhelmed with terror and she occupied her time in soothing him. On reaching the guillotine, she bade him mount the steps first, that his sufferings might not be prolonged. As she took her place, her eyes fell on a colossal statue of Liberty, recently erected near by. "O Liberty," she cried, "what crimes are committed in thy name!"

"There is no God." Thus in 1793, by solemn enactment of the Terrorists, was the Deity legislated out of existence. There is no God! What sayest thou now, Robespierre? Dost thou say so, now? How likedst thou thy brief space of usurpation? A few brief months of power--night and day with loaded pistols at thy side--no food till some one else had tasted from thy dish, lest it be poisoned. And then another scene in that same legislative hall, the hall of thy own great terrifying power. A vote ordering thy arrest! Vain are thy shrieks--a detachment of thy own soldiers forces its way into the room--a pistol shot rings out, and thou with shattered jaw, a ghastly spectacle, facest thy end. Thou fallest, and some spit upon thy prostrate form, others stab thee with their knives. Still living, thy body is hurried before the tribunal thou thyself didst form, and thence to the guillotine. O Robespierre, thinkest thou now there is a God?

License, not liberty. Mania, not reason. How fared the spirit of Lafayette during this debauchery in the name of freedom?

A brief interval of less than ten years intervened between the closing scenes of the American Revolution and the opening scenes of the French Revolution. Democracy in America was a victor, and the republic had been established. Democracy in France was just entering upon its cyclonic and hideous struggle for the right to live.

The government of France was at that time an absolute despotism. The king was the supreme arbiter of its destinies. He was the head of the army. He appointed his own ministers, made his own laws, levied and raised taxes at his pleasure, and lavished his treasures as he pleased. The common people were more like cattle than men. They tilled the ground and bore the yoke; the king and the aristocracy wielded the whip. Years of suffering ignorance for the many--years of riotous profligacy for the few!

True democracy is world-wide. It knows no nationality. All mankind are its countrymen. When at the close of the American war Lafayette returned to France, he hung in his house a copy of the American Declaration of Independence upon one of the walls, leaving the corresponding space on the opposite side vacant. "What do you mean to place here?" asked one of his friends. "A Declaration of Rights for France," he replied.

Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, the first giant of the Hohenzollerns and the fountain head of modern Prussian autocracy, attracted by Lafayette's military reputation, invited him to the royal palace at Potsdam to witness and take part in the review of the Prussian army. At dinner one evening Frederick declared confidently his opinion that America would not long be a republic, but would return to the good old system. "Never, sir," replied his guest. "A monarchy, a nobility can never exist in America." "Sir," said the monarch, "I knew a young man who, after having visited countries where liberty and equality reigned, conceived the idea of establishing the same system in his own country. Do you know what happened to him?" "No, sir." "He was hanged," replied the King with a smile.

In 1789 the mutterings of the coming storm became more ominous, but the King of France, deafened by the clamour of cackling advice from his aristocracy, either could not or would not hear. Almost bankrupt because of the extravagance of the court, he needed money, still more money, and called an "assembly of notables" to assist in devising measures to relieve his embarrassed finances. They were men from the most distinguished of the nobility. Lafayette was one. In a letter to Washington he humorously remarked that "wicked people called them not-ables." Lafayette's part in the assembly consisted in making a bold protest against the prodigality of the crown. "All the millions given up to cupidity or depredation," he forcefully exclaimed to the noble gathering, "are the fruit of the sweat, the tears, and perhaps the blood, of the nation"; and he concluded by requesting that the King convoke a real National Assembly, made up of representatives of the common people. It was the beginning of the Revolution. For Lafayette's part in this the King's prime minister, Calonne, proposed to the monarch to send Lafayette to the Bastile.

Nothing was accomplished by the notables, and the monarch then decided to assemble the states-general. This was not a legislative body, but an assembly of representatives from the nobility, the clergy, and the common people, sometimes called by the crown when it needed assistance, the commons always being in the minority. The commons, le tiers état grasped the opportunity, met by themselves, and on June 17, 1789, resolved themselves into a National Assembly, to accomplish the regeneration of France.

Troops were summoned by the crown to put down the rebellion, and more than fifty thousand mercenary troops from foreign states were engaged by the King to take the place of the French troops, whom he distrusted. Lafayette joined with the National Assembly, and then and there proposed to it the first draft of that French Declaration of Rights for which he had prophetically left a space on the wall of his home. The essence of his draft lies in the following extract: "No man can be subject to any laws, excepting those which have received the assent of himself or his representatives, and which are promulgated beforehand and applied legally. The principle of all sovereignty resides in the nation."

On July 14, 1789, the storm broke. The gigantic fortress of the Bastile which for ages had reared its menacing head among the people of Paris, a terrible engine of despotic military autocracy, was attacked and taken by the mob. M. De Launay, its Governor, was killed by a bayonet thrust, and his head cut from his body and carried through the streets upon a pitchfork. "And in this bloody manner, into those dungeons where thousands had wasted away, often without trial and with no knowledge of the charges against them, liberty sent her first ray of sunlight."

"When oppression renders a revolution necessary, insurrection becomes the holiest of duties," was the ringing message of Lafayette to the Assembly. The key of the Bastile was given to him as the representative of freedom in Europe, and together with a sketch of the ruins of that fortress of despotism, he sent it to George Washington. "It is a tribute," he wrote, "which I owe, as a son to my adopted father--as an aide-de-camp to my general--as a missionary of liberty to its patriarch."

A National Guard, a new army of two hundred thousand citizen soldiers, was authorized and formed by the National Assembly, both for the protection of the rights of the people at home and for resistance to possible foreign aggression. Lafayette, now thirty-two years of age, was chosen its commander-in-chief. Thus was born democracy in France.

A foreign peasant, from a land of despotic autocracy, who had just immigrated to the United States, was once haled into one of our police courts, charged with almost murdering his wife with a club. His defense was that he now was in a land of liberty and he thought he could do what he liked. Multiply this by a million-fold and you have the Reign of Terror, the second chapter of the French Revolution.

"Aimez les amis du peuple et l'enthousiasme pour la liberté, mais réservez l'aveugle soumission pour la loi," said Lafayette to the Federation of National Guards. The atrocities, both at the storming of the Bastile and afterward, he would not countenance, and on more than one occasion, at the head of his armed troops, he enforced law and order. Finally, Austria and Prussia declared war upon France, and Lafayette was sent from Paris and at the head of a French army of twenty-eight thousand men was stationed at Sedan.

It was inevitable that he and the Jacobins, the leaders in the mad orgy of debauched democracy that succeeded the initial stages of the revolution, should soon split. For a long time the Jacobins had seemed to shrink from a contest with him, probably because they hoped to win him over to their excesses. Finding him inflexible, when at last they controlled the government, they vowed his destruction, and he was deprived of his command. They proposed that a price should be set upon his head and that "chaque citoyen pût courir sus"--that is to say, that any one who pleased might murder him.

Deprived of his command, and with destruction awaiting him in the rear, his only resource was flight. Even then he hesitated, but reason prevailed and on a dark and rainy night, with a few companions on horseback, he started for Holland. To get there he had to pass through territory occupied by the Austrian and Prussian troops. Facing the almost certain chance of falling in with a superior force, he determined to make a bold front, and went directly to the Austrian commander at Namur, declaring that he was a French officer attached to constitutional measures and seeking an asylum in Holland. Instead of being given a passport, he was, when recognized, detained, given over to a Prussian commander, sent in a cart to Wesel on the Rhine and there put in a cell in irons. It was then intimated to him that the burden of the situation would be lightened if he would draw up certain plans to be used against France. The Prussians, finding that he would not do this, instead of treating him as a prisoner of war threw him into a dungeon at Magdebourg. His estate at home was confiscated and his wife imprisoned. After a year's imprisonment at Magdebourg in a dirty and humid vault he was transferred by the Prussians from one dungeon to another, and at last confined in the Austrian citadel of Olmutz.

The walls of his dungeon at Olmutz were six feet thick and the air was admitted through openings two feet square secured at each end by massive iron bars. Before these loopholes was situated a broad ditch, which was filled with water only when it rained; at other times it was a stagnant marsh continually emitting disease; beyond this were the outer walls of the castle, so that the slightest breeze could never refresh the inmate. Each cell had two doors, one of iron, the other of wood nearly two feet thick, and both were covered with bolts, bars, and padlocks. When the soldiers twice a day brought the prisoner's wretched portion it was carefully examined to find out if there was any note or communication contained in it. A messy bed of rotten straw filled with vermin, together with a broken chair and an old worm-eaten table, formed the whole furniture of his establishment. The cell was from eight to ten paces long and six wide; in storms the water frequently flowed through the loopholes; when the sun did not shine he remained almost in darkness during the whole day.

He was a prisoner of war and entitled to be treated as such. But instead he was confined in a dungeon and was given to believe that he would never again see beyond its four walls, that he would never receive news of any events or persons, that his name would be unknown in the citadel, and that in all accounts of him sent to Court he would be designated only by a number. Even knives and forks were denied him, and he was told that this was done because his situation was such as naturally to lead to suicide. His sufferings proved almost beyond his strength. The want of air and decent food, and the loathsome dampness of his dungeon brought him more than once to the borders of the grave. His frame was wasted by diseases, and on one occasion he was so reduced that "his hair fell from him entirely by the excess of his sufferings."

Following a bold attempt to escape, the torture of his imprisonment was increased. Irons were securely fastened around his ankles. During the winter of 1794-1795, which was extremely severe, he had a violent fever and almost died; he was deprived of proper attendance, of air, of suitable food, and of decent clothes; in this state he had nothing for his bed but a little damp and mouldy straw; around his waist was a chain which was fastened to the wall and barely permitted him to turn from one side to the other. No light was admitted into his cell. To increase his miseries, almost insupportable mental anguish was added to his physical suffering. He was made to believe that he was only saved for a public execution, while at the same time he was not permitted to know whether his family were still alive or had perished under the axe during the Reign of Terror.