June 1, 2025 • 62 mins
Exploring the Life and Historical Impact of the Marquis de Lafayette
Who was the Marquis de Lafayette, and why does he matter so much in both France and the United States? In this episode of the Join Us in France Travel Podcast, host Annie Sargent talks with Elyse Rivin about the life, legacy, and travels of this iconic figure. Lafayette was more than just a name in a history book—he was a young French noble who risked everything to support the American Revolution and later tried to bring those same ideals back to France during the French Revolution.
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Annie and Elyse dive into his fascinating biography, from his childhood in Auvergne to his close relationship with George Washington. They discuss Lafayette’s political struggles in France, his imprisonment, and his lasting influence on both sides of the Atlantic. The episode explores why Lafayette is considered a hero in two countries and how you can visit places in France connected to his life.
If you're planning a trip to France and love history, this episode offers great travel tips too. You'll hear about the Château de Chavaniac-Lafayette, Picpus Cemetery in Paris, and the replica of the Hermione, the ship that carried him to America.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. Whether you're into French history, Revolutionary War connections, or looking for meaningful places to visit in France, this episode is packed with insight and inspiration.
Table of Contents for this Episode
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:15):
This is Join Us in France, episode548, cinq cent quarante huit.
Bonjour, I'm Annie Sargent, and Join Usin France is the podcast where we take
a conversational journey through thebeauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today, I bring a conversation withElyse Rivin, of Toulouse Guided
Walks, about the fascinatinglife of the Marquis de Lafayette.
(00:40):
From his youthful exploits in theAmerican Revolution to his significant
role in the French Revolution, weexplore how this French nobleman
became a hero in two countries.
Join us for an exhilaratingjourney through history.
This podcast runs on good vibes,crispy chocolatine, and the
(01:01):
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You book itinerary consults, explorewith me on VoiceMap, hop into my
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And it means the world.
Want to keep the showrolling and skip the ads?
You'll find the magic link inthe show notes, or go straight
(01:24):
to joinusinfrance.com/boutiqueto purchase any of my services.
Et vive les fans du podcast!
If you'd like all the links andsee the full transcript of this
episode, it's all on the episodepage at joinusinfrance.com/episodes.
And there won't be a magazinepart of the podcast today
(01:44):
because this recording ran long.
But I do want to say thank you to mypatrons and customers and encourage you
to become a patron of Elyse as well.
You'll find Elyse's corner atpatreon.com/ElysArt, because she brings
so much to this podcast, doesn't she?
(02:16):
Bonjour, Elyse.
Bonjour, Annie.
We have a fascinating topic today, andI say this all the time, but this time
it's really true because we're goingto talk about the Marquis de Lafayette.
Yes.
And this is someone I knew a littlebit about, but when we decided to
take on this topic, I started readinga book, it's a very big book, I'll
(02:38):
put the reference in the show notes.
I listened to it, and it just grabbed me.
Even though it's kind of drywriting, because it's like a lot
of battles and a lot of, but thestory of the guy is extraordinary.
And I think it did thesame to you, didn't it?
Oh, yes.
It's strange because having suggestedthe idea of doing a podcast about
(02:59):
Lafayette, it was because we were kindof going, "Okay, who should we do? 18th
century, 19th century, 20th century?"
And I realized that he is somebodywho speaks to people from the United
States as well as people from France,and that I knew a little about him.
But I think what set me off was thatI watched, I have to admit, I didn't
(03:21):
watch the whole series, but I watchedthe first three episodes of the series
called 'Franklin' last year with MichaelDouglas playing Benjamin Franklin.
And in the first few episodes, yousee him being introduced to this young
Marquis de Lafayette, who, at thetime, is not even quite 19 years old.
I mean, the thing about the age ofthese people is absolutely mind-boggling
(03:42):
to me too, and they kind of set meoff thinking about his relationship
to both France and the United States,because it is a fact that in the United
States, at least it was certainly whenI was in school, we learn about him.
We learn about him in relation tothe history of the American War of
Independence, and he is a hero in theUnited States, and there are many, many,
(04:03):
many places, streets, schools, cities,zillions of things named after him.
Yeah, you said 6,000, right?
6,000, yeah, 6,000.
New York has Lafayette Square, LafayetteStreet, there's schools named after
him, there's counties named after him.
Apparently, there's a mountain also namedafter him in the southern Appalachians.
(04:24):
This is somebody whose name is familiarto people who have studied and gone
through school in the United states.
Right, but they, so in America, theyalways spell it Lafayette in one word.
In French, it would beLa Fayette, other word.
But I mean, it's fine.
By now, we call him Lafayettein one word as well.
One of the things I read, and I have tosay that I didn't read just one book when
(04:45):
I was online, but I was doing my Russiandoll of going from this one to this one
to this one to this one, back and forth.
They say that at the end of his life,he signed it with making it one word.
Makes sense, yeah.
It's less royalty, isn't it?
Exactly.
But this is a man who, firstof all, he had an incredibly
interesting, fascinating life.
(05:05):
He managed and had the chance or luckto live a long life, certainly for
the time, it was relatively long.
And it's, as you say, it isunbelievably fascinating.
So there we are.
Yeah.
Okay.
I want to talk about the places whereyou can go visit the places where he
lived, and really, the only one thatyou can visit for sure is the chateau
(05:30):
where he was born in the Auvergne.
Yes.
I'll put the link in the show notes.
It's not open year-round, butit closes early November, and
it's closed until the end of...
This year, it opens on the 2nd of April.
There you go.
It opens on the 2nd of April, andthere's going to be, there are audio
guides, there are guided tours.
(05:51):
Yeah.
And on the 5th of April, there'ssome kind of special event
going on with a treasure hunt.
I'm not sure why because that wasn'this birthday, so I'm not sure why.
Right.
So I don't remember the name of thetown right this second, but I'll
put the link in the show notes.
But it's like an hour anda half southwest of Lyon.
Yeah, it's in the Auvergne area.
(06:12):
Yeah, it's in the Auvergne area.
So it's not a part of France thatmost visitors go to, but it's a
beautiful, beautiful part of France,and if you're interested in Lafayette,
definitely this is the one place to go.
And of course, the other places arel'Hôtel de Ville in Paris, because he gave
many speeches there, especially duringles Trois Glorieuses, the revolution of...
(06:36):
1830.
1830. I was hesitatingbetween 1830 and another date.
I know.
So he participated in that a lot.
Of course, Versailles, he participatedin all of the negotiations that happened
at Versailles while he was alive.
So there are places like that.
We have lots of squares called Lafayette,a few streets, but it is a, it is for real
(06:57):
that there are more places celebratingLafayette in the US than in France.
Yep.
And we are going to tell you why.
All right.
Take it away, Elyse.
Okay.
So Mr. Marie Joseph PaulYves Roch Gilbert du Motier.
Oh, my.
Le
(07:18):
Marquis de Lafayette, commonlyknown as Lafayette, or according
to his politics, was referred toby others as Du Motier because that
is considered to be his last name.
He was born in 1757 in this chateauthat we just mentioned, into a noble
(07:42):
family, and I have to just make thisas an aside because being American, I
went online, I wanted to make sure Iunderstood really the difference between
being an aristocrat and being noble.
Noble is inherited, it is alineage that you can't get
rid of once you've gotten it.
Basically, you are born into a certainkind of family, and it turns out that Le
Marquis de La Fayette, was the descendantof nobility going back, tracing his
(08:07):
family back as far as the 13th century.
He was from one of the most prestigiousnoble families in France at the time
that he was born, and he was borninto a very, very wealthy family.
His father was a military man, as wasoften the case, especially if it was
not the first son of the family, whodied at the age of 25 when the Marquis
(08:29):
de La Fayette, I will just call himGilbert from now on, was two years old.
And he was killed by the British ina battle between the French and the
British, which of course creates an echoin everything that the Marquis de La
Fayette does for the rest of his life.
And at the time, his mother, a youngwidow, left Gilbert and his little
sister in the hands of family andgrandparents and went off to Paris.
(08:50):
And basically, I don't thinkhe had very much to do with his
mother for the rest of his life.
He was orphaned at the ageof 13, she died in 1770.
And at the time of her death, asthe male inheritor in the family, he
received a huge fortune, and then ashort time after, apparently one of
her brothers, because she was also froma wealthy, noble family, also died.
(09:10):
So by the time he was 15,he had a huge fortune.
He was very, very wealthy.
And because nobility is or was certainly,what it was, which meant you stuck
around and you didn't mix with anybodyelse, his heritage made him what
the French would call un bon parti.
(09:31):
Right, he was very, very wealthy.
And this chateau that we couldn'tname a second ago is the Chateau de
Chavignac-Lafayette dans la Haute-Loire.
And he was definitely born very wealthyand one of the wealthiest in France.
You would say he wasdefinitely top 1% of...
(09:51):
Definitely top 1%.
Almost as rich as the king.
A lineage that was apparently consideredto be really high end of nobility.
The descending order, is interesting,because a marquis is just under duke,
you know, and the dukes are basicallybrothers and the sons of kings.
But what happens is, because ofthe importance of this family, he
(10:11):
is married off at the age of 16.
These numbers, for some reason, seemto stick in my mind because they always
surprise me, to a young lady who is 14.
14 everybody, listen to that, you know?
And she is the daughter of the Duc ofNoailles, and the Noailles family is
one of the most important families inFrance and had been for generations.
(10:32):
You couldn't be more creamof the crop in France if you
tried, is the reality of this.
And she brings with her a dowry thatmakes him, between his own inherited
fortune and hers, one of the top fourrichest men in France at the age of 17.
Right, and from her, with her, towardsthe end of his life, the last 30 years
(10:56):
of his life they together lived inher chateau which is... Near Meaux.
It's East of Paris.
And I'm not even going to look upthe name because you can't visit it.
It's owned by a kind of foundation,that is dedicated to preserving his
history because he was a prolific writer.
(11:16):
So they have correspondence of his toand from lots and lots of people, and so
they are safekeeping all of that stuff.
It's a preservation fund probably.
It's a preservation fund, andit's also made up of a lot of very
wealthy people, some of them noble.
So this is what's interesting, the Marquisde La Fayette, he is not a great student.
(11:39):
His family and his father-in-law push himto try and become a member of the court
at Versailles, and this is still underLouis XV, but that doesn't agree with him.
He's not into being what they call thecourtesan and sort of lèche-bottes.
I don't know even how... You know,I mean, part of the thing about
being in the court was that you wereconstantly, you know bowing down
(12:00):
to people and asking for favors anddoing all this kind of... Anyway.
He says, "No, never mind," and hedecides that he's going to do what his
father did, which is basically becomea military man, and he enters into the
Musketeers, and he joins the army underhis father-in-law, the Duc of Noailles,
who is a great military hero at the time.
(12:22):
Yeah, and the book I was readingcalled them the Black Musketeers.
These are not ones we've heardabout a lot, but there were a
lot of companies of Musketeers.
It was a type of infantry, I guess.
I guess.
... Do general fighting.
But yeah, I think that the Musketeerswere associated with being guards.
They're attached to a specificimportant person, usually.
(12:45):
So, it's the king's musketeers,the bishop's musketeers,
the count's musketeers.
Right.
Yeah.
It's a private army that these people had.
But, so the rest, now, really basically,his domestic life is not the most
important part of this history.
His wife dies relatively young.
She dies when she's in her middle 40s.
(13:05):
They have four children together, threewho live to be adults, one son, and that
son is very important in his life, andthe history that follows afterwards.
But his life is devoted to his activityas a military man, and also ideas that
he discovers by joining various circles.
And so what happens is that in 1775, atthe age of 18, he's invited to what is
(13:32):
called in history the Souper de Metz,the City of Metz, in the east of France.
And he is invited to a great dinner inthe honor of the Duke of Gloucester, who
happens to be the English king's brother.
And he's invited there by a man whowas very important in many years in the
history of what happens next, and that isa man named the Count de Broglie, who is
(13:53):
very close to Versailles and to the king.
But strangely enough, first of all,Lafayette hates the English because of
course they killed his father when hewas only two years old, so he has this
thing against the English in general.
A lot of French people did, yeah.
And at this dinner, he hears aboutthe insurgence in the colonies.
(14:14):
Now of course, this is notthe United States yet, this
is still called the colonies.
And there's this incredible discussionaround the table about the whole idea of
why they want their freedom, and why theywant their independence from England.
These ideas would just seem to go clickin his mind very quickly because this is
not a man who's an intellectual at all.
I think he was longingfor a chivalresque fight.
(14:39):
A cause.
A cause.
Yeah.
He was raised in this atmosphereof chivalry and you have to be,
you have to lead the troops and youhave to be an example and whatever.
A detail about his wife, her name wasAdrienne, she played a really important
role in his life because she agreed withhim on his views about the world and
(15:04):
equality, liberty, things like that.
She was very patient withhim because he left, a lot.
He only came home to gether pregnant and left again.
He wasn't entirely faithful to her,but he wasn't the most horrible, you
know, there's some guys, like, it'saffair after affair after affair.
He had a few when he was veryyoung, and then he got over it.
(15:27):
And they were very faithful toeach other, and very attached.
You know, he wrote her lots of lettersthat always emphasized how much he loved
her and their children and all of that.
Which is not bad when you think thatthey were... they never met before, they
were married to each other at 14 and 16.
Yeah, yeah.
It was match.
It was a match.
It was a good match.
Yeah.
People matched them togetherbecause of their fortune, but
(15:51):
it worked out in their case.
So, this dinner, which is a whole episodein the history of his life, spurred him
to do things like join what was calledat the time a philosophical society.
This is all the end of the 18thcentury, this is the age of
enlightenment and this is new ideasabout liberty, about equality.
And he hears about this concept calledthe rights of man, which of course becomes
(16:16):
part of what is known as the Constitution.
And talking to various people whowere involved in all these societies,
he becomes sympathetic to the ideaof the abolition of slavery, and the
idea of equality between the races.
All of this, for a man who wasnot brought up at all to be
involved in ideas like this.
And he also does something else whichis really important because it has to
(16:39):
do with the friends he makes when hejoins the colonies in the New World.
He becomes a member of a masonic lodge.
Right.
He was a mason in France as well.
Yes.
It played a big role becausehe was able to fraternize by
sharing signs and whatever.
Even though when he arrived in theUS, he couldn't speak English very
well, but he knew masonry, andthat was their common language, and
(17:02):
he was accepted in very quickly.
Besides, he was probably a young,good-looking marquis, and they called
him the Marquis from the beginning.
That was his name over there.
That was his name.
Yes, and of course George Washington,who is one of the first people that
he met and who became literallyhis surrogate father, was a mason.
Most of the first presidents ofthe United States were masons.
(17:25):
Jefferson was a mason.
So this is a source of a kind ofappartenesce, you know, a belonging
to a group that has great influence,and has, in the United States, it's
always had a very great influence,much more than in France, where
they are mistrusted enormously.
So, what happens is that, obviouslybeing a very restless... I imagine this
is someone who is very restless, beinga military man, whatever was happening
(17:48):
in France was not enough for him.
And all of these ideas spur him todo something that, you know, when you
think about it, is a little bit crazy,maybe even a lot crazy, and that is,
he decides that he is going to go tothe colonies to join the insurgents
as a military man and help them fightfor independence against the English.
(18:10):
Right.
And what... Something I did not knowis that he was hardly the only one.
There were many French military menwho did the same thing, many of them
were just hoping for glory, some ofthem wanted to introduce some sort
of sham government that would beessentially guided by the French king.
(18:31):
Anyway, that didn't work out.
But a lot of young French they wereall officers, went to the Americas
hoping to do the same thing Lafayettedid, many of them, it didn't...
they were not accepted, you know.
They... because, "Who are you? Youcan't even speak English," you know?
Yeah.
I actually didn't know that,but I did know that he certainly
(18:52):
enabled a group to go with him.
He recruited a bunch of officers, too.
Yeah.
It was a popular thing to do at the time.
Now, understand that this is a memberof the close circle of the king, and the
king, who at the time is still Louis XV,publicly tells him that he is forbidden
to go, that he is not allowed to go.
(19:12):
The French are, at this point, notsure how they want to deal with the
insurgents, how they want to dealwith this in relation to English,
all of many years of the fightingbetween the English and the French.
However, in secret, the king does givemoney so that the Count de Broglie, who is
a very close friend of both the king andbecomes kind of mentor for the Marquis,
(19:32):
helps him acquire a boat called TheVictory, and he sets sail in 1776, almost
1777 with 30 men and over 5,000 rifles.
This is the first incursion thathe makes into the New World and
participate in the War of Independence.
He arrives in Georgetown,South Carolina in 1777.
(19:54):
He leaves behind his wife, who hadnow just given birth to their first
daughter, who unfortunately is the onlyone did not survive into adulthood.
And as you said, he's not home alot in this time, in this period
of his life, and he has a letter ofintroduction from Benjamin Franklin,
who will... by the way, has spentseveral years living in Paris and
(20:15):
hanging out at the Court in Versailles.
And the letter introduces him toGeorge Washington and to the rulers
who are in Philadelphia, which is atthe time the capital of the colonies.
And so he's taken in by alandowner in South Carolina, and
he is taken up to Philadelphia,where he meets George Washington.
And now, what I read, I read a wholebunch of articles because I found this
(20:37):
so fascinating, George Washington wasmarried to Martha, which most people
from the United States know, but hedidn't have any children of his own.
She was a widow who had a bunchof children, but he apparently
took to the Marquis immediately.
He was 23 years older than theMarquis, and basically, they hit it
off immediately, and within a year, hewas treating him like he was his son.
(21:01):
And when Lafayette told him that he cameto fight with the insurgents against
the English, the initial reaction was,"You can't, you're not from here. You're
French." I mean, it's kind of... you know,we have echoes of this now, unfortunately,
with things going on in Ukraine withpeople from other countries going to
fight and they do it not officially.
It's not considered to be kosher togo and do this on an official basis.
(21:25):
But what happens is, he says, "No, butyou can be my aide-de-camp, and you
can go into battle with me, and we cantalk about military tactic together,"
and what happens is, having brought allof these arms and... it turns out that
he's a brilliant military strategist.
Right.
He was good at it, yeah.
He was really good at it.
(21:45):
And so seeing what is happening insome of the battles I am not going
to go into detail because evenfor me, the list of the different
battles becomes almost endless.
Eventually, without waiting too muchlonger, gets permission to participate
actively in the battles themselves.
Oh, yeah.
And he would lead the battles, hewould... he was injured several times.
(22:07):
He was injured in Brandywine.
This is one of the big battleswas the Battle of Brandywine.
He was resented by some of the otherinsurgent officers, you know, "Who's
this upstart young French guy, withhis airs?" I'm sure he did have certain
airs about him, he was a marquis afterall, who was basically, apparently he
got into some really bad disputes withseveral of the colonels and generals
(22:30):
leading the insurgent army becausehe didn't agree with their tactics,
because a couple of the battleswere lost, and he said, "No, no, no.
That's not what you should have done."
So there was a certain amount oftension, but because he was really
taken under the wing of GeorgeWashington, who in fact was of course
in charge of the entire independencearmy, he smoothed things over.
(22:51):
He allowed the Marquis to become a majorplayer in the battles that were fought.
He was wounded at Brandywine.
He was wounded in the leg.
He recuperated for several monthsand then went right back into battle.
And because of this, sending lettersback to France in 1778, well before
(23:12):
the United States was officiallycreated, France officially recognized
the independence of the colonies.
I think France was the first country.
It was the very first country.
To do that, yes.
Absolutely, it was very first country.
And it was really thanks to Lafayetteand his missives back to France and
playing the emissary between the two.
(23:35):
And of course, Benjamin Franklin playeda huge role in this as well, because
he was pushing for aid from France.
He had secretly arrived in Franceand part of what he was there for
was to get them to help as muchas possible against the English.
Right.
And if I can interjectthat there for a second.
I read up a little bit about that.
Lafayette personally, over his wholelife invested about the equivalent in
(23:59):
today's money of five million dollars inhis fight for the American independence.
Five million dollars of his own money.
And France overall spent $32million, in today's money, to
support American independence.
And so it's always really, reallyimportant for listeners to put it into
(24:21):
perspective that when Louis XVI, when hiswife, Marie Antoinette, was accused of
being spending fortune and the wealth,actually she didn't spend any $32 million,
her husband did, and Louis XV as well,to support the American Revolution.
It played a huge role in theFrench Revolution and what
(24:44):
happened afterwards to Louis XVI.
Yes.
Unfortunately, even though it was,you could consider in some ways,
from our point of view, for a goodcause, it also was money that could
have been put into the country.
So, that's another whole story altogether.
Well, yeah, and it doesn't make anysense for a French king to be you
know, I know he hated the English.
He hated the English.
But he also, they really believed inthe ideals of the American Revolution.
(25:08):
It was full of contradictions, becausethe Americans kept on harping on about
liberty while they all held slaves.
And the French kept talking aboutliberty while they had a super strong
caste system almost, that kept the richpaying no taxes, you know, I mean...
But I think it was also the investmentwas, an investment in long term
(25:31):
because the French had their sightson parts of North America as well.
Yeah, it didn't work out so well, did it?
It didn't work so well, no.
But, so this is what's interesting.
I hadn't known this.
Of course, this is information that has...He came back to, he went back to France.
I mean, he stayed for a couple of years.
He went back to France in 1779,managed at this time to get his wife
(25:52):
pregnant with the third child, who isand became his only son, who lived a
relatively long and respectable lifeas well and who would play an important
part in his life, in his old age.
And he named him...
And he named him, not legally on hisbaptism papers, but basically everyone
called him George Washington duMotier, and in his teens was sent to
(26:15):
the United States to study in Harvard.
Yeah.
The family was very much French American.
And we don't have any... thisson didn't have any sons.
He only had daughters.
And so there are no named descendantsdirectly from Lafayette, but
he has a lot of descendants.
Well, I was looking this up too, becauseI saw something on YouTube because I
(26:37):
have... We're skipping ahead, but I havevisited the Hermione twice, which is
the second boat, the second ship that hesailed with when he went back to colonies.
And last year, his descendant, the lastmale descendant on the line of his cousins
who has now legally taken the name ofLafayette, became a matelot on the ship.
(27:00):
Very nice.
And he's a young bankerand he's in his 20s.
And so there's this YouTube littleinterview with him where he is very
embarrassed because when he getson the ship and everybody asks him,
"Why are you here?" And he kindof mutters, "Well, I'm actually a
descendant of Lafayette." You know?
It's like he wanted to have the experienceof actually shipping out the Hermione.
(27:21):
But anyway, what happens is, ofcourse, that by this time, this
has become a more official mission.
This is no longer doing this on the sly.
The King has this time promised6,000 men, and several generals to
be sent as well as more arms andlots and lots of, of course, money.
And Lafayette, who stays home for justabout a little bit under a year, he leaves
(27:45):
again on this ship called the Hermione.
And by the way, this isa place you can visit.
Yeah, you can visit.
I don't know why Ididn't think to mention.
I should have thought tomention it at the beginning.
I've been on this ship twice, right now,it's in the Basque country on the coast.
It moves around a lot,but it is visitable.
You can actually... Now,you don't see Lafayette.
No, and there's nothing that says hewas here, but you see this ship and
(28:08):
you can imagine with all its canons,how people lived, the close quarters,
and the fact that these are the shipsthat they took back and forth across
the Atlantic with these hundreds andhundreds of men and the arms, you know?
Right.
And the Hermione made a tripto the US a few years back.
It moves around.
Its home port is Rochefort.
But when I went toRochefort, it wasn't there.
(28:30):
So, you know, you need to lookit up if you're interested.
It's usually on the AtlanticCoast of France, between Basque
country and Nantes or whatever.
And Charente.
Yeah.
But it's a very nice thing tovisit, about maritime history
and Lafayette, and all of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it is definitely worth it, if you'reinterested in all of that, you know?
(28:51):
So 1780, Lafayette goes back, andparticipates in a whole series of battles,
and is the leading officer in the majorvictory at Yorktown against the General
Cornwall, the famous British general.
And this causes the capitulationof Cornwall, and basically it's the
turning point and the end of the war.
(29:16):
1781, he returns to France.
He has made a glorious militarycareer in the colonies.
He's made a name forhimself as a reformer.
And when he arrives back in France.
The 1780s is the great period ofunrest leading up to the Revolution.
He comes back to turmoil.
(29:36):
He comes back to what word inFrench that I like is le grondement.
Things are boiling up, you can sensethat things are going to come to a head.
And because of all of his contactwith the people in the colonies, and
because of the societies that he hasbelonged to, Lafayette adheres to
a lot of the ideas that become partof the program of the Revolution.
(30:00):
And the suppression of taxes,the idea of equality, the idea of
participation of all civilians,the idea that the peerage is not
necessarily something that you inherit.
These were absolutelyrevolutionary ideas, and certainly
coming from someone like him.
Right.
So, the big deal in France wasthat nobility of any sort, of
(30:22):
any level, paid zero taxes.
None.
Not a penny.
It was the opposite.
People were paying them.
So, you had huge incomeinequality in France.
It was just obscene.
And, you know, because income inequalityis growing now, especially in the
US, but it's also growing in Europein many places, we can feel the fact
(30:47):
that people are... It's not fair.
This sense that this is not fair.
And the people, what you called thegrondements, the grumblings, I guess,
became louder and louder and louder.
And if the French king had been able,which he tried to do, if he had been able
to convince nobility to pay some taxes.
He wasn't even going to tax them thatmuch, but on principle, they weren't
(31:11):
going to pay any taxes, because they hada God-given right to be rich, you know?
This is how it is.
And if he had been able to convince themto pay some taxes, which the English
king did convince his nobility tostart paying taxes, it helped greatly.
It would have avoided a lot of things.
So, that's the first thing, isnobility needed to start paying taxes.
(31:33):
It was vital for France.
So this is what I find so fascinating.
He made it back to France in 1781, but in1784, he goes back to the United States.
He makes a round tripto the United States.
And it is at this point where heis actually invited privately by
George Washington, and he is almostofficially made into his son.
(31:58):
And George Washington is made godfatherof his son, of the Marquis' son.
This is his official title.
He's acclaimed as a hero in theUnited States, and he spends time with
Washington, and he meets Jefferson,and he meets Adams, and he meets all
of these people who, of course, areinstrumental in forming what becomes
(32:19):
the United States at this time.
So, in 1784, he goes to theStates, and then back to France.
And in 1785, he starts to be activein politics, which of course, is
something new for him, becausehe had been just a military man.
He's actually received as a hero atfirst in Paris, but then, of course,
(32:39):
his ideas seem to irk the nobility,because how can anybody who has this kind
of lineage possibly have these ideas?
And at the same time, he's notcompletely trusted by the bourgeois,
that is, the middle class, who are theones who really make up the backbone
of the revolutionary structure,because after all, he is a nobleman.
(33:02):
How can you trust a nobleman?
So, this becomes the situationthat he lives through, through all
the years that follow in France.
We enter into the period of basicallywhat we can call pre-revolutionary period.
And there are committees that are formedand he joins the committee as a member,
of what is called the Liberal Aristocrats.
(33:23):
That is, and there are a number of them,actually quite a few, interestingly
enough, including one of the king'sbrothers, who are in favor of the
Revolution and who declare that they willgive up their privileges and their rights
and will take names that have no titles.
It doesn't work for all of themunfortunately, but for some of them.
(33:44):
And they are, many of themare actually quite sincere in
these pledges that they make.
So in 1787, he joins acommittee that talks about the
abolition of the monopolies.
He votes for the suppression ofthe salt tax, le gabelle, which
of course is very interestingbecause the gabelle, the salt tax.
Why the salt tax?
Why?
Because for centuries and centuries,the only way to preserve foods
(34:07):
was by using salt on them.
And so, you bought salt to preserve yourfood, and you paid a tax on the salt you
bought, which is kind of crazy becausePierre Paul Riquet, who built the Canal
du Midi, was a collector of the salt tax.
And he made his moneyby skimming off the top.
Right.
Right.
(34:27):
Getting his little percentage.
That's how the tax collectors made money.
Yeah.
That's how the tax collectorshad made their money, you know?
This is what happened.
And he joins Society ofFriends of the Black Race.
He starts preaching and writingarticles about equality between the
races, about the abolition of slavery,about the end of monopolies, about
suppression of taxes, and the idea thatcitizens, regular citizens, should be
(34:53):
able to participate in the creationof the government and of the laws.
And it is the influence of havingseen the Constitution and the ideas
of the American Constitution thatare the basis for all that he thinks
and all he does from this point on.
The problem is, and it is a problem,is that the aristocrats consider him a
(35:15):
traitor, and the middle class is not surethat he really believes in what he says
and that he's going to stick to his ideas.
And at first, he agrees that there shouldbe an end to the monarchy because he
says very clearly that he does not thinkthat there's such a thing as a God-given
right to inherit any kind of title, andthat people should be able to govern
(35:39):
themselves and not be abased by a monarch.
He writes all of these,he writes these articles.
There's also a conversation he has inwriting with Washington about slavery
and saying, you know, "Why do you haveslaves? You shouldn't have slaves."
But of course he also says, "Oh,the Americans are so rich, rich
and so fantastic." Well, withoutthe slaves they wouldn't have been
(36:02):
so rich and successful, you know?
And it's just a fact.
Somebody has to do the work.
So he becomes a member of the Revolution.
He becomes a participant in what'scalled the Convention in 1789, and
he is considered to be a person to betrusted for a certain amount of time.
He is then put in charge ofsomething that is created, and
(36:23):
that is the new National Guard.
The National Guard that is not justofficers that are nobility, but that are
normal citizens, that the entire NationalGuard was a total of 48,000 civilians.
And believe it or not, he is the man,as an officer and head of the National
Guard, who is responsible for thedestruction of the prison of the Bastille.
(36:46):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was interesting.
'It is interesting, He isactually the person who did it.
He freed them.
He allowed the people to leave.
I don't know if everybody knows that,but the people that were left in the
Bastille, which didn't have too manypeople left in it, were actually taken out
of the building before it was destroyed.
But on the 26th of July of 1789, heled the troops to destroy the Bastille.
(37:07):
Not the 26th.
No, the destruction of theBastille was on the 14th of July.
No, okay.
because that sort of said, hmm.
I didn't think it was the 14th itself.
I thought the actualdestruction was on the 26th.
Well, it might have take a f-it might have taken a few days.
Yes.
You're right.
Anyway, July, July of 1789.
So these are some of theideas that he adhered to.
Trial by jury.
(37:27):
My God, something that neverexisted certainly in France, huh?
Abolition of hereditary nobility,equal rights for all citizens,
equal rights for people of color.
Women, not so much.
Not so much.
No.
They don't want, no, we're stillin the end of the 18th century.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Sorry.
It actually got worseafter the Revolution.
For women, I mean.
(37:48):
For women, you know.
Well, well, that's another whole topicwe have to talk about another time.
We will talk about thatplenty, don't worry.
1790. As the Revolution advances andthe ideas become more and more extreme,
Lafayette realizes that his positionis relatively moderate compared
(38:08):
to the group called Les Jacobins.
By the way, that's because theywere meeting on the Rue Jacob,
in case anybody really wants toknow why they were called that.
Because of that, he decides as they startto propose killing the king, first they
have him imprisoned of course, but theidea of killing the king, he says, "No,
no, no, no, no. No. No." What we needis actually a constitutional monarchy.
(38:33):
We need to have law and order.
I just translated a couple oflines because it's extremely
important.... because he put thisforth in front of the convention.
Is that "for a revolution to happen, itis necessary to have disorder, because the
ancient order was nothing but servitude.
So insurrection at first is in order,but to have a Constitution, it is
(38:59):
necessary that a new order is createdand that the laws are respected.
Right.
So in his mind, it would have been bestto have a Constitution, of course, that
guarantees a lot of rights that peopledidn't have so far, but also to keep the
status quo by making it putting a monarchat the head, even if, like in England,
(39:24):
the monarch doesn't have much power,it would have appeased a lot of people.
It would have appeased people, and Ithink from what I can understand from
all these readings, it's that he sawthe revolution turning into The Terror.
He saw the revolution turning intobrutality, destruction, one group
(39:44):
hating the other, everyone askingfor everybody else to be destroyed.
Yeah, he was imprisoned several times.
His wife's sister, his wife's grandmotherwere killed, were guillotined.
You know, he saw it firsthand.
And so what happens is that by 1790,you know, the French Revolution, I'm
not an expert, you know more than I do,Annie, but it is certainly extremely
(40:05):
complicated and extremely dense.
In a period of very few years,there's so much that happens.
But what happens is that by 1790, becausehe has come out against regicide, against
the killing of the king, and specificallysays, "No, no, no, the most important
thing is that we have a Constitution,that we have a series of laws that apply
(40:27):
to everyone, but it is not necessary tokill the king. It is not necessarily, to
have all of this, this blood on the handsof everybody." He's come to be called the
infamous Motier by the Jacobin becausehe's a traitor, as far as he's concerned.
The Jacobin hated him becausehe wasn't extreme enough.
(40:48):
They wanted blood.
All they could see is that you hadto get rid of all the opposition
by killing them to the point wherethey killed one another off as well.
You know, they were insane.
Like, it doesn't make any sensewhat they did, but they did it.
No, they were totallybloodthirsty and insane.
You know, and so in 1791, now thisis with the pressure on his family,
(41:10):
of course, he proposes a generalamnesty to try and bring peace back
because he wants law and order.
This is a man who assumes that youcannot do anything if people do
not accept to follow law and order.
He draws up a constitution.
It is rejected, and in 1792, with TheTerror, and everybody killing everybody,
(41:32):
everybody arresting everybody, heis denounced officially as a traitor
for defending the king and foradvocating a constitutional monarchy.
And he writes a letter, apublic letter, put out on the
streets denouncing the Jacobin.
So what happens is, because of that, in1792, he decides, and probably, probably
(41:55):
advised by a whole bunch of people whowere friends with him, that he is put on
the list, and he will be next, and that hebetter get out of there as fast as he can.
And so he, with three of hisaides-du-camp, three of his most loyal,
actually military officers who are alsoaristocrats, but who have been faithful
to his own ideas all this time, heinforms his wife and his children, who
(42:19):
are gone into hiding, and he flees.
He leaves France.
And he goes... I don'tunderstand why, actually.
This is interesting.
He goes first to Liege, which is, ofcourse, part of Belgium, and then he goes
to Austria, and now Austria, of course, iswhere Marie Antoinette came from, and so
Austria, which is against the Revolutionand is trying to create an army to go in.
(42:42):
But what happens is, he thinks that he'sgoing to be safe in Austria because he
is a nobleman, but when he arrives inAustria, he's arrested and put in prison.
And the reason why is becausefor them, he's a revolutionary.
Yeah.
I thought he went to Holland.
No, at the end.
Okay, okay.
He actually spends three years ina prison in Austria with his three
(43:03):
aides-du-camp, three full years, he'sin this terrible prison in Austria.
Well, in a way, they protected him.
He couldn't be killedwhile he was in the prison.
Yeah, and they didn't...
Apparently he was beaten up a littlebit, tortured at first, and then they
basically left him alone, but at theend of the three years, they allow
him to leave this prison and theysend him to Moravia, of all places.
(43:26):
And that is when his wife andhis two daughters join him.
She joins him in 1795.
They've been writing to eachother all of this time, and
she has been in a safe place.
I don't know exactly where shespent those few years, obviously.
I think Holland.
I think her family ʾDeNoailles went to Holland.
Went to Holland, because they spenttwo years together in Moravia,
(43:46):
and then he goes to Holland withhis wife and his two children.
So all in all, he spendsseven years in exile.
From 1792 to 1799, he is inexile, the last two years of
those, that time in Holland.
And what happens is that in1797, Napoleon takes charge.
(44:08):
Right, because then we have Napoleon andthen we have the kings coming back...
And this is what's so fascinating.
So here, he knew Napoleon.
Napoleon was at first abrilliant revolutionary officer.
They were both officers.
I mean, they had a lot in common, exceptthat Napoleon, who at first taking charge
of the armies, doesn't present himselfas the emperor dictator that of course
(44:32):
he soon reveals himself to be, and hasnow become the post-immediate revolution
head of the government basically.
He's head of the armies.
And Lafayette writes to him, andNapoleon negotiates his release
from prison, he negotiates hisability to circulate freely.
(44:52):
But he tells Lafayette that he doesnot want him coming back to France
because he does not trust him.
And why does he not trust him?
Well, as far as I understand, hedoesn't trust him because he thinks
that Lafayette is going to start... ifNapoleon already has ideas of declaring
himself an emperor and creating whatis basically in any other terms another
(45:16):
monarchy, he doesn't trust Lafayette tonot start up and cause trouble for him.
Of course, yeah.
So, for two years basically theynegotiate with each other, and Napoleon
keeps saying to him, "Do what you want,but you're not coming back to France,"
basically, "because if you do, I'mgoing to cause trouble for you."
And then in 1799, Lafayette decides thathe's had enough of this and that he is
(45:41):
going to go back to France anyway, andthat he's going to live his life, and
if they don't want anything to do withhim, he will just go to his lands because
he has lots of estates everywhere, heand his wife, and that will be that.
So, in 1800, Lafayette, who is now43, imagine that, so he's 43, his son
is already a young adult, he returnsto France in spite of this injunction
(46:04):
against him by Napoleon, theoreticallysort of retires, goes to live on his
lands, whether his or his wife's becausehe had land everywhere, you know?
It was his wife's then.
He had the lands in the South,but mostly it was the lands of
his wife in the Champagne area.
But strangely enough, apparentlyhe becomes very good friends
with Napoleon's brother, Joseph.
I didn't know that.
(46:24):
Yeah.
And so he helps Joseph Bonaparte helpsnegotiate with his brother so that he
basically leaves Lafayette alone and takeshim off this infamous list of the émigrés.
The émigrés was a list of all ofthese aristocrats who had fled, and
basically if they came back, theycould lose their head, you know?
(46:45):
I mean, it was basically, "We cango back to prison if you fled."
But of course a lot of them aftera certain number of years, they
just came back to France andnothing happened to them anyway.
His son is now in the military.
But because Napoleon doesn'tever trust him, he actually
makes life difficult for his son.
So, he doesn't have enoughadvancement in the army.
He just keeps causing trouble, andLafayette basically decides that the best
(47:09):
thing to do at this time is to stay outof government, to stay out of politics.
He doesn't voice hisopinions about anything.
And this lasts for a couple of years.
He is told that the best thing for himto do would be to go back to the States.
Maybe.
Maybe, you know?
Apparently he was offered bythe United States a prestigious
(47:30):
position, he could represent France.
And then he says, "No, no, myplace is still here in France
in spite of everything."
They offer him the role of representativeof France in negotiating things with
the United States, not as an ambassador,but to doing commercial enterprises.
And he says that he's too Americanto represent the French because
(47:51):
he thinks like the Americans do.
This is interesting.
And then what happens?
And this is of course we're talkingabout the... this is the last huge
chunk of what happens in his life.
We have Napoleon declaring himselfemperor, and Lafayette who has completely
withdrawn from public life, he decidesit's time to start speaking up again.
(48:16):
Right, which was risky.
Which was very risky.
He was clearly someone who wasn't afraidto take risks, because clearly all of
his life he goes back and forth betweenspeaking out and then sort of withdrawing
so that he doesn't get into trouble.
But he starts writing lettersand talking about the dangers of
Napoleon, the dangers of an empire.
(48:37):
There was no revolution again at thispoint, but he really is advocating
for the getting rid of Napoleon.
In 1807, his wife dies.
She's very young.
She's 47 when she dies.
That is very young.
Well, if you consider that she marriedat 14 and had her first child at 17, you
know, but she apparently had some kindof long illness, probably something like
(48:59):
tuberculosis, one of those kinds of thingsthat dragged on for a very long time.
She was in very poor health.
In 1814, Lafayette makes a decisionwhich affects a lot of things in
terms of his reputation even today,and that is, he decides to support
the restoration of the monarchy.
Thinking that it will be finallywhat he has always hoped it will be,
(49:22):
which is a constitutional monarchy,he reluctantly agrees to support it
publicly, but starts complaining assoon as it's put into place, that
it's just basically the old again.
Right.
So he wanted to be pragmatic, but itdidn't work out because the king that
was put in place, which one was it?
(49:43):
This is Charles, I think.
Charles X?
No, it's Louis XVIII.
Yeah, and then he went against himand participated in his losing power,
and Louis-Philippe, and then hesaid, "Okay, let's try it again with
Louis-Philippe." That didn't work either.
No.
So the whole period of time between 1814and 1824, which is really interesting,
(50:03):
because what happens is you havethis first restoration in 1814, which
is when they got rid of Napoleon.
Just because he came back for a fewmonths, and then he was finally put
on the island and they got rid of him.
Literally, they poisonedhim and they got rid of him.
But what happens with Lafayette is that...
Not sure he was poisoned.
There's question about it, butthey said they found arsenic
(50:23):
in his liver, so who knows?
Stomach cancer.
I vote for stomach cancer.
Yeah.
In 1814, he's 57 years old,and he reenters public life.
And this time, he enters life as a deputy.
He's elected as a deputy fromthe region around Meaux, which is
the area where he was living ineast, the region east of Paris.
(50:46):
And he advocates for all ofthe same things that he's
advocated all of these years.
The idea of citizen participation,of reduction of taxes, of equality,
of abolition of the death penalty.
But when you say reduction of taxes,what it really is, is the rich have to
start paying taxes so the poor pay less.
(51:08):
That's true.
It's a rebalancing oftaxes, is what it is, yeah.
Yes, yeah.
Interestingly enough, in 1818, he joinsthe assembly on the left side, you know?
It's always interesting, I don'tknow if anybody even knows out
there why we call it left wing andright wing, and that, that's why.
Yeah, that's why, yeah.
That's really why.
And he actually, for the rest of hislife, when he is part of the politics,
(51:31):
when he enters as a deputy, becauseit goes in and out for the next 20
years, he stays on the left side.
Yeah, he belongs there.
He was someone who believed inspreading the wealth a little better.
Right.
Actually, he stays a deputy and heis absolutely persuaded that the
restoration of monarchy endangers whateverliberties that they had, or at least
(51:52):
tried to install during the Revolution.
And he writes a lot.
As you said, he writes and hewrites and he writes, and he writes
about how people should resist.
But it's interesting because...do you know about this thing
about the Charbonnerie?
I don't.
He apparently, starting in 1820, he...I think this is because of his, you
know, he's a mason, he's a memberof the Masonic Lodge, it, you know,
(52:15):
Masonic Lodge... My dad was a mason.
That's like, it's this weirdsecret society things, you know?
It's like, I always think of it as kind ofadults playing as little kids with secret
codes and ridiculous things, you know?
Secret handshakes.
Secret handshakes and all that nonsense.
But in fact Lafayette, he becomesa major player in a series of
conspiracies that are designed tooverturn the restoration, and one
(52:39):
of them is called the Charbonnerie.
It's really quite serious, actually.
There's a whole series of plots thatare created with various people who,
all of whom are very, very important.
He is one of the very few whomanages to escape any punishment
for taking part in these, and I'mnot sure if I remember exactly why.
A couple of people were put in prison, acouple of people had to exile themselves
(53:00):
because there was this whole periodof time when there was this real talk
of overturning the restoration, andnot necessarily in a nice, quiet way.
And then, because he's fed up witheverything, and the politics of France,
would imagine at this point, mustjust be so frustrating for him, he
decides, upon invitation of the newpresident of the United States, who
(53:26):
is John Quincy Adams, to return.
And so in 1824, at the age of 66, hetakes his son, who is already a grown
man and a father, and a secretary, andhe leaves convinced that he is absolutely
useless in France, and he goes back.
(53:46):
He is provided with a ship by theUnited States government, the trip
is paid for even though he certainlycould have paid for it by himself.
He is invited back and it is after40 years, he's actually been absent
from the United States for 40 years,and when he arrives, there is a crowd
of over 50,000 people in the harborin New York waiting to greet him.
(54:11):
And every place he goes,there are crowds like that.
Absolutely everywhere.
He goes to every major city inevery state that exists at that
time in the United States, hashonors given to him everywhere.
He's invited to stay andlive in the United States.
He's a widower.
His children are all adults,they're all married off.
(54:32):
I mean, he could havestayed in the United States.
He says, no, his place is back in France.
He is given an honorarydoctorate from Princeton.
Interesting.
He is given a huge banquet inthe White House, in the Capitol.
He is invited to speak.
The president is Monroe, andthen there's John Quincy Adams.
(54:52):
And he spends almost the entire yeartraveling around the United States,
and is received as a hero everywhere.
Absolutely everywhere.
I can't even imagine what it must'vebeen like for him, and also for his son,
to see just how much of a hero and arespected man he is in the United States.
(55:14):
It's a very nice way for him tohave been... I mean, it's great that
he was recognized like that at theend, towards the end of his life.
He goes to George Washington'sgrave to pay his respects.
And then, in spite of everything, hesays, "No, I do have to go back to
France. This is where I've come from."
And so he returns to France in 1825,and this is what happens during
(55:39):
the last nine years of his life.
He is a politician.
He's a deputy.
He, again, takes up the bannerof all of these ideas that he
has carried around with him forall of these decades and decades.
He travels all through theeastern part of France.
He goes through the region ofFranche-Comté and Lyon, and he
(56:01):
finds that it's time to fightagain for certain reforms.
The Second Restoration is in place.
This is where we have CharlesVIII, and then we have Louis,
King of the French, you know?
He says, "Yes, why not? But Idon't trust the monarchy anymore."
They say that they were goingto do a constitutional monarchy.
(56:21):
It never turns out to be exactly that.
He speaks to all kinds of groups.
He writes articles about social reform.
He advocates for a more liberalenvironment, for a free economy,
for a constitution, and he persists,and he persists, and he persists.
And at the age of 73, in 1830, he'smade again head of the National Guard.
(56:43):
And then we have the great, strange,very short Revolution of 1830.
Right, Les Trois Glorieuses.
Which if you've watched Les Misérables,Les Mis, that's what it's about.
It was very short, butit was very powerful.
It was very powerful.
And if you go in Paris, themonuments that are at the Place de
(57:03):
la Bastille are actually about that.
It's about the Revolution of 1830.
They barricaded Paris.
They tried once again.
There were several revolutionsin France, not just the one.
Yes, not just the one.
This one, unfortunately,did not last very long.
And then, of course, what we haveis the installation of the King of
the French, and at this point, hedecides that it's never going to
(57:27):
be what he had hoped it would be.
He is quite an old man, especiallyconsidering the times that he lived in.
But he is a deputy right up to the end.
And he dies of pneumonia.
Yeah, he had a... You know, hedied in his home in his bed.
He died in his home.
He was 77 years old, and he was a deputyright up to the moment that he dies.
(57:52):
And of course, the other placethat you need to visit is
the place where he is buried.
Which is?
The Picpus Cemetery.
So this is on the eastern side of Paris.
On the 12th, yes.
Very nice place.
Why isn't he in the Pantheon?
Well, probably because he advocated forthe French kings to continue, you know,
(58:13):
he was hoping for a monarchy of sorts.
I think he should be in the Pantheon.
I think he should be in the Pantheon, too.
But then again, you and I are not thepeople that they listen to, you know?
They won't listen to us.
Elyse and Annie say heshould be in the Pantheon.
So we can take a vote out there.
This is absolutely incredible.
I don't know if you're going todo this when you go in a couple
of weeks, but I think I'm goingto the next time I go up to Paris.
He is buried next to his wife in thecemetery in Picpus, which is where most
(58:39):
of the people condemned to death bythe Revolution are buried, by the way.
And because of his role in what happenedin the United States, the second he was
buried, there was the American ambassadorwho participated in the funeral services,
and they planted, which was at the timecertainly not the same flag as now,
(58:59):
an American flag next to his grave.
And that flag has been there since theday he was buried, and even during the
worst of the times in the history ofFrance, especially during the occupation,
World War II, it is the only flag thathas never been lowered, never been taken
down, and every single year on the 4thof July, the American ambassador goes
(59:22):
and pays his respects and puts a wreathon his tomb in the cemetery of Picpus.
Very nice.
So, Gilbert de Motier, le Marquisde Lafayette, I salute you.
Yes, an amazing person.
We kind of kept talking.
I'm telling you, the bookI listened to was 19 hours.
(59:42):
It's endless.
I can totally understand why peopleget taken into these stories.
We wanted to kind of summarize it, sofor you, who are visitors to France,
there... We could have gone into allsorts of directions with this, but we
just wanted to give you a brief summary.
It's longer than a normalepisode, but not by too much.
Not by much, just by a little bit.
But this is wonderful,learning all this about him.
(01:00:04):
Yeah, I wish his originaldream for France had come true.
We're still not there.
We've made progress, but it takes sofreaking long to change cultural habits.
You know what I mean?
It's like, ugh, people are slow.
Yeah, people are slow.
People are slow.
(01:00:24):
But, you know, you got to do it that way.
Thank you very much, Elyse.
You are quite welcome, Annie.
Au revoir.
Au revoir.
The Join Us in France travelpodcast is written, hosted, and
produced by Annie Sargent, andCopyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance.
(01:00:48):
It is released under a CreativeCommons attribution, non-commercial,
no derivatives license.
This is Join Us in France, episode548, cinq cent quarante huit.
Bonjour, I'm Annie Sargent, and Join Usin France is the podcast where we take
a conversational journey through thebeauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today, I bring a conversation withElyse Rivin, of Toulouse Guided
Walks, about the fascinatinglife of the Marquis de Lafayette.
(00:40):
From his youthful exploits in theAmerican Revolution to his significant
role in the French Revolution, weexplore how this French nobleman
became a hero in two countries.
Join us for an exhilaratingjourney through history.
This podcast runs on good vibes,crispy chocolatine, and the
(01:01):
kindness of travel lovers like you.
You book itinerary consults, explorewith me on VoiceMap, hop into my
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And it means the world.
Want to keep the showrolling and skip the ads?
You'll find the magic link inthe show notes, or go straight
(01:24):
to joinusinfrance.com/boutiqueto purchase any of my services.
Et vive les fans du podcast!
If you'd like all the links andsee the full transcript of this
episode, it's all on the episodepage at joinusinfrance.com/episodes.
And there won't be a magazinepart of the podcast today
(01:44):
because this recording ran long.
But I do want to say thank you to mypatrons and customers and encourage you
to become a patron of Elyse as well.
You'll find Elyse's corner atpatreon.com/ElysArt, because she brings
so much to this podcast, doesn't she?
(02:16):
Bonjour, Elyse.
Bonjour, Annie.
We have a fascinating topic today, andI say this all the time, but this time
it's really true because we're goingto talk about the Marquis de Lafayette.
Yes.
And this is someone I knew a littlebit about, but when we decided to
take on this topic, I started readinga book, it's a very big book, I'll
(02:38):
put the reference in the show notes.
I listened to it, and it just grabbed me.
Even though it's kind of drywriting, because it's like a lot
of battles and a lot of, but thestory of the guy is extraordinary.
And I think it did thesame to you, didn't it?
Oh, yes.
It's strange because having suggestedthe idea of doing a podcast about
(02:59):
Lafayette, it was because we were kindof going, "Okay, who should we do? 18th
century, 19th century, 20th century?"
And I realized that he is somebodywho speaks to people from the United
States as well as people from France,and that I knew a little about him.
But I think what set me off was thatI watched, I have to admit, I didn't
(03:21):
watch the whole series, but I watchedthe first three episodes of the series
called 'Franklin' last year with MichaelDouglas playing Benjamin Franklin.
And in the first few episodes, yousee him being introduced to this young
Marquis de Lafayette, who, at thetime, is not even quite 19 years old.
I mean, the thing about the age ofthese people is absolutely mind-boggling
(03:42):
to me too, and they kind of set meoff thinking about his relationship
to both France and the United States,because it is a fact that in the United
States, at least it was certainly whenI was in school, we learn about him.
We learn about him in relation tothe history of the American War of
Independence, and he is a hero in theUnited States, and there are many, many,
(04:03):
many places, streets, schools, cities,zillions of things named after him.
Yeah, you said 6,000, right?
6,000, yeah, 6,000.
New York has Lafayette Square, LafayetteStreet, there's schools named after
him, there's counties named after him.
Apparently, there's a mountain also namedafter him in the southern Appalachians.
(04:24):
This is somebody whose name is familiarto people who have studied and gone
through school in the United states.
Right, but they, so in America, theyalways spell it Lafayette in one word.
In French, it would beLa Fayette, other word.
But I mean, it's fine.
By now, we call him Lafayettein one word as well.
One of the things I read, and I have tosay that I didn't read just one book when
(04:45):
I was online, but I was doing my Russiandoll of going from this one to this one
to this one to this one, back and forth.
They say that at the end of his life,he signed it with making it one word.
Makes sense, yeah.
It's less royalty, isn't it?
Exactly.
But this is a man who, firstof all, he had an incredibly
interesting, fascinating life.
(05:05):
He managed and had the chance or luckto live a long life, certainly for
the time, it was relatively long.
And it's, as you say, it isunbelievably fascinating.
So there we are.
Yeah.
Okay.
I want to talk about the places whereyou can go visit the places where he
lived, and really, the only one thatyou can visit for sure is the chateau
(05:30):
where he was born in the Auvergne.
Yes.
I'll put the link in the show notes.
It's not open year-round, butit closes early November, and
it's closed until the end of...
This year, it opens on the 2nd of April.
There you go.
It opens on the 2nd of April, andthere's going to be, there are audio
guides, there are guided tours.
(05:51):
Yeah.
And on the 5th of April, there'ssome kind of special event
going on with a treasure hunt.
I'm not sure why because that wasn'this birthday, so I'm not sure why.
Right.
So I don't remember the name of thetown right this second, but I'll
put the link in the show notes.
But it's like an hour anda half southwest of Lyon.
Yeah, it's in the Auvergne area.
(06:12):
Yeah, it's in the Auvergne area.
So it's not a part of France thatmost visitors go to, but it's a
beautiful, beautiful part of France,and if you're interested in Lafayette,
definitely this is the one place to go.
And of course, the other places arel'Hôtel de Ville in Paris, because he gave
many speeches there, especially duringles Trois Glorieuses, the revolution of...
(06:36):
1830.
1830. I was hesitatingbetween 1830 and another date.
I know.
So he participated in that a lot.
Of course, Versailles, he participatedin all of the negotiations that happened
at Versailles while he was alive.
So there are places like that.
We have lots of squares called Lafayette,a few streets, but it is a, it is for real
(06:57):
that there are more places celebratingLafayette in the US than in France.
Yep.
And we are going to tell you why.
All right.
Take it away, Elyse.
Okay.
So Mr. Marie Joseph PaulYves Roch Gilbert du Motier.
Oh, my.
Le
(07:18):
Marquis de Lafayette, commonlyknown as Lafayette, or according
to his politics, was referred toby others as Du Motier because that
is considered to be his last name.
He was born in 1757 in this chateauthat we just mentioned, into a noble
(07:42):
family, and I have to just make thisas an aside because being American, I
went online, I wanted to make sure Iunderstood really the difference between
being an aristocrat and being noble.
Noble is inherited, it is alineage that you can't get
rid of once you've gotten it.
Basically, you are born into a certainkind of family, and it turns out that Le
Marquis de La Fayette, was the descendantof nobility going back, tracing his
(08:07):
family back as far as the 13th century.
He was from one of the most prestigiousnoble families in France at the time
that he was born, and he was borninto a very, very wealthy family.
His father was a military man, as wasoften the case, especially if it was
not the first son of the family, whodied at the age of 25 when the Marquis
(08:29):
de La Fayette, I will just call himGilbert from now on, was two years old.
And he was killed by the British ina battle between the French and the
British, which of course creates an echoin everything that the Marquis de La
Fayette does for the rest of his life.
And at the time, his mother, a youngwidow, left Gilbert and his little
sister in the hands of family andgrandparents and went off to Paris.
(08:50):
And basically, I don't thinkhe had very much to do with his
mother for the rest of his life.
He was orphaned at the ageof 13, she died in 1770.
And at the time of her death, asthe male inheritor in the family, he
received a huge fortune, and then ashort time after, apparently one of
her brothers, because she was also froma wealthy, noble family, also died.
(09:10):
So by the time he was 15,he had a huge fortune.
He was very, very wealthy.
And because nobility is or was certainly,what it was, which meant you stuck
around and you didn't mix with anybodyelse, his heritage made him what
the French would call un bon parti.
(09:31):
Right, he was very, very wealthy.
And this chateau that we couldn'tname a second ago is the Chateau de
Chavignac-Lafayette dans la Haute-Loire.
And he was definitely born very wealthyand one of the wealthiest in France.
You would say he wasdefinitely top 1% of...
(09:51):
Definitely top 1%.
Almost as rich as the king.
A lineage that was apparently consideredto be really high end of nobility.
The descending order, is interesting,because a marquis is just under duke,
you know, and the dukes are basicallybrothers and the sons of kings.
But what happens is, because ofthe importance of this family, he
(10:11):
is married off at the age of 16.
These numbers, for some reason, seemto stick in my mind because they always
surprise me, to a young lady who is 14.
14 everybody, listen to that, you know?
And she is the daughter of the Duc ofNoailles, and the Noailles family is
one of the most important families inFrance and had been for generations.
(10:32):
You couldn't be more creamof the crop in France if you
tried, is the reality of this.
And she brings with her a dowry thatmakes him, between his own inherited
fortune and hers, one of the top fourrichest men in France at the age of 17.
Right, and from her, with her, towardsthe end of his life, the last 30 years
(10:56):
of his life they together lived inher chateau which is... Near Meaux.
It's East of Paris.
And I'm not even going to look upthe name because you can't visit it.
It's owned by a kind of foundation,that is dedicated to preserving his
history because he was a prolific writer.
(11:16):
So they have correspondence of his toand from lots and lots of people, and so
they are safekeeping all of that stuff.
It's a preservation fund probably.
It's a preservation fund, andit's also made up of a lot of very
wealthy people, some of them noble.
So this is what's interesting, the Marquisde La Fayette, he is not a great student.
(11:39):
His family and his father-in-law push himto try and become a member of the court
at Versailles, and this is still underLouis XV, but that doesn't agree with him.
He's not into being what they call thecourtesan and sort of lèche-bottes.
I don't know even how... You know,I mean, part of the thing about
being in the court was that you wereconstantly, you know bowing down
(12:00):
to people and asking for favors anddoing all this kind of... Anyway.
He says, "No, never mind," and hedecides that he's going to do what his
father did, which is basically becomea military man, and he enters into the
Musketeers, and he joins the army underhis father-in-law, the Duc of Noailles,
who is a great military hero at the time.
(12:22):
Yeah, and the book I was readingcalled them the Black Musketeers.
These are not ones we've heardabout a lot, but there were a
lot of companies of Musketeers.
It was a type of infantry, I guess.
I guess.
... Do general fighting.
But yeah, I think that the Musketeerswere associated with being guards.
They're attached to a specificimportant person, usually.
(12:45):
So, it's the king's musketeers,the bishop's musketeers,
the count's musketeers.
Right.
Yeah.
It's a private army that these people had.
But, so the rest, now, really basically,his domestic life is not the most
important part of this history.
His wife dies relatively young.
She dies when she's in her middle 40s.
(13:05):
They have four children together, threewho live to be adults, one son, and that
son is very important in his life, andthe history that follows afterwards.
But his life is devoted to his activityas a military man, and also ideas that
he discovers by joining various circles.
And so what happens is that in 1775, atthe age of 18, he's invited to what is
(13:32):
called in history the Souper de Metz,the City of Metz, in the east of France.
And he is invited to a great dinner inthe honor of the Duke of Gloucester, who
happens to be the English king's brother.
And he's invited there by a man whowas very important in many years in the
history of what happens next, and that isa man named the Count de Broglie, who is
(13:53):
very close to Versailles and to the king.
But strangely enough, first of all,Lafayette hates the English because of
course they killed his father when hewas only two years old, so he has this
thing against the English in general.
A lot of French people did, yeah.
And at this dinner, he hears aboutthe insurgence in the colonies.
(14:14):
Now of course, this is notthe United States yet, this
is still called the colonies.
And there's this incredible discussionaround the table about the whole idea of
why they want their freedom, and why theywant their independence from England.
These ideas would just seem to go clickin his mind very quickly because this is
not a man who's an intellectual at all.
I think he was longingfor a chivalresque fight.
(14:39):
A cause.
A cause.
Yeah.
He was raised in this atmosphereof chivalry and you have to be,
you have to lead the troops and youhave to be an example and whatever.
A detail about his wife, her name wasAdrienne, she played a really important
role in his life because she agreed withhim on his views about the world and
(15:04):
equality, liberty, things like that.
She was very patient withhim because he left, a lot.
He only came home to gether pregnant and left again.
He wasn't entirely faithful to her,but he wasn't the most horrible, you
know, there's some guys, like, it'saffair after affair after affair.
He had a few when he was veryyoung, and then he got over it.
(15:27):
And they were very faithful toeach other, and very attached.
You know, he wrote her lots of lettersthat always emphasized how much he loved
her and their children and all of that.
Which is not bad when you think thatthey were... they never met before, they
were married to each other at 14 and 16.
Yeah, yeah.
It was match.
It was a match.
It was a good match.
Yeah.
People matched them togetherbecause of their fortune, but
(15:51):
it worked out in their case.
So, this dinner, which is a whole episodein the history of his life, spurred him
to do things like join what was calledat the time a philosophical society.
This is all the end of the 18thcentury, this is the age of
enlightenment and this is new ideasabout liberty, about equality.
And he hears about this concept calledthe rights of man, which of course becomes
(16:16):
part of what is known as the Constitution.
And talking to various people whowere involved in all these societies,
he becomes sympathetic to the ideaof the abolition of slavery, and the
idea of equality between the races.
All of this, for a man who wasnot brought up at all to be
involved in ideas like this.
And he also does something else whichis really important because it has to
(16:39):
do with the friends he makes when hejoins the colonies in the New World.
He becomes a member of a masonic lodge.
Right.
He was a mason in France as well.
Yes.
It played a big role becausehe was able to fraternize by
sharing signs and whatever.
Even though when he arrived in theUS, he couldn't speak English very
well, but he knew masonry, andthat was their common language, and
(17:02):
he was accepted in very quickly.
Besides, he was probably a young,good-looking marquis, and they called
him the Marquis from the beginning.
That was his name over there.
That was his name.
Yes, and of course George Washington,who is one of the first people that
he met and who became literallyhis surrogate father, was a mason.
Most of the first presidents ofthe United States were masons.
(17:25):
Jefferson was a mason.
So this is a source of a kind ofappartenesce, you know, a belonging
to a group that has great influence,and has, in the United States, it's
always had a very great influence,much more than in France, where
they are mistrusted enormously.
So, what happens is that, obviouslybeing a very restless... I imagine this
is someone who is very restless, beinga military man, whatever was happening
(17:48):
in France was not enough for him.
And all of these ideas spur him todo something that, you know, when you
think about it, is a little bit crazy,maybe even a lot crazy, and that is,
he decides that he is going to go tothe colonies to join the insurgents
as a military man and help them fightfor independence against the English.
(18:10):
Right.
And what... Something I did not knowis that he was hardly the only one.
There were many French military menwho did the same thing, many of them
were just hoping for glory, some ofthem wanted to introduce some sort
of sham government that would beessentially guided by the French king.
(18:31):
Anyway, that didn't work out.
But a lot of young French they wereall officers, went to the Americas
hoping to do the same thing Lafayettedid, many of them, it didn't...
they were not accepted, you know.
They... because, "Who are you? Youcan't even speak English," you know?
Yeah.
I actually didn't know that,but I did know that he certainly
(18:52):
enabled a group to go with him.
He recruited a bunch of officers, too.
Yeah.
It was a popular thing to do at the time.
Now, understand that this is a memberof the close circle of the king, and the
king, who at the time is still Louis XV,publicly tells him that he is forbidden
to go, that he is not allowed to go.
(19:12):
The French are, at this point, notsure how they want to deal with the
insurgents, how they want to dealwith this in relation to English,
all of many years of the fightingbetween the English and the French.
However, in secret, the king does givemoney so that the Count de Broglie, who is
a very close friend of both the king andbecomes kind of mentor for the Marquis,
(19:32):
helps him acquire a boat called TheVictory, and he sets sail in 1776, almost
1777 with 30 men and over 5,000 rifles.
This is the first incursion thathe makes into the New World and
participate in the War of Independence.
He arrives in Georgetown,South Carolina in 1777.
(19:54):
He leaves behind his wife, who hadnow just given birth to their first
daughter, who unfortunately is the onlyone did not survive into adulthood.
And as you said, he's not home alot in this time, in this period
of his life, and he has a letter ofintroduction from Benjamin Franklin,
who will... by the way, has spentseveral years living in Paris and
(20:15):
hanging out at the Court in Versailles.
And the letter introduces him toGeorge Washington and to the rulers
who are in Philadelphia, which is atthe time the capital of the colonies.
And so he's taken in by alandowner in South Carolina, and
he is taken up to Philadelphia,where he meets George Washington.
And now, what I read, I read a wholebunch of articles because I found this
(20:37):
so fascinating, George Washington wasmarried to Martha, which most people
from the United States know, but hedidn't have any children of his own.
She was a widow who had a bunchof children, but he apparently
took to the Marquis immediately.
He was 23 years older than theMarquis, and basically, they hit it
off immediately, and within a year, hewas treating him like he was his son.
(21:01):
And when Lafayette told him that he cameto fight with the insurgents against
the English, the initial reaction was,"You can't, you're not from here. You're
French." I mean, it's kind of... you know,we have echoes of this now, unfortunately,
with things going on in Ukraine withpeople from other countries going to
fight and they do it not officially.
It's not considered to be kosher togo and do this on an official basis.
(21:25):
But what happens is, he says, "No, butyou can be my aide-de-camp, and you
can go into battle with me, and we cantalk about military tactic together,"
and what happens is, having brought allof these arms and... it turns out that
he's a brilliant military strategist.
Right.
He was good at it, yeah.
He was really good at it.
(21:45):
And so seeing what is happening insome of the battles I am not going
to go into detail because evenfor me, the list of the different
battles becomes almost endless.
Eventually, without waiting too muchlonger, gets permission to participate
actively in the battles themselves.
Oh, yeah.
And he would lead the battles, hewould... he was injured several times.
(22:07):
He was injured in Brandywine.
This is one of the big battleswas the Battle of Brandywine.
He was resented by some of the otherinsurgent officers, you know, "Who's
this upstart young French guy, withhis airs?" I'm sure he did have certain
airs about him, he was a marquis afterall, who was basically, apparently he
got into some really bad disputes withseveral of the colonels and generals
(22:30):
leading the insurgent army becausehe didn't agree with their tactics,
because a couple of the battleswere lost, and he said, "No, no, no.
That's not what you should have done."
So there was a certain amount oftension, but because he was really
taken under the wing of GeorgeWashington, who in fact was of course
in charge of the entire independencearmy, he smoothed things over.
(22:51):
He allowed the Marquis to become a majorplayer in the battles that were fought.
He was wounded at Brandywine.
He was wounded in the leg.
He recuperated for several monthsand then went right back into battle.
And because of this, sending lettersback to France in 1778, well before
(23:12):
the United States was officiallycreated, France officially recognized
the independence of the colonies.
I think France was the first country.
It was the very first country.
To do that, yes.
Absolutely, it was very first country.
And it was really thanks to Lafayetteand his missives back to France and
playing the emissary between the two.
(23:35):
And of course, Benjamin Franklin playeda huge role in this as well, because
he was pushing for aid from France.
He had secretly arrived in Franceand part of what he was there for
was to get them to help as muchas possible against the English.
Right.
And if I can interjectthat there for a second.
I read up a little bit about that.
Lafayette personally, over his wholelife invested about the equivalent in
(23:59):
today's money of five million dollars inhis fight for the American independence.
Five million dollars of his own money.
And France overall spent $32million, in today's money, to
support American independence.
And so it's always really, reallyimportant for listeners to put it into
(24:21):
perspective that when Louis XVI, when hiswife, Marie Antoinette, was accused of
being spending fortune and the wealth,actually she didn't spend any $32 million,
her husband did, and Louis XV as well,to support the American Revolution.
It played a huge role in theFrench Revolution and what
(24:44):
happened afterwards to Louis XVI.
Yes.
Unfortunately, even though it was,you could consider in some ways,
from our point of view, for a goodcause, it also was money that could
have been put into the country.
So, that's another whole story altogether.
Well, yeah, and it doesn't make anysense for a French king to be you
know, I know he hated the English.
He hated the English.
But he also, they really believed inthe ideals of the American Revolution.
(25:08):
It was full of contradictions, becausethe Americans kept on harping on about
liberty while they all held slaves.
And the French kept talking aboutliberty while they had a super strong
caste system almost, that kept the richpaying no taxes, you know, I mean...
But I think it was also the investmentwas, an investment in long term
(25:31):
because the French had their sightson parts of North America as well.
Yeah, it didn't work out so well, did it?
It didn't work so well, no.
But, so this is what's interesting.
I hadn't known this.
Of course, this is information that has...He came back to, he went back to France.
I mean, he stayed for a couple of years.
He went back to France in 1779,managed at this time to get his wife
(25:52):
pregnant with the third child, who isand became his only son, who lived a
relatively long and respectable lifeas well and who would play an important
part in his life, in his old age.
And he named him...
And he named him, not legally on hisbaptism papers, but basically everyone
called him George Washington duMotier, and in his teens was sent to
(26:15):
the United States to study in Harvard.
Yeah.
The family was very much French American.
And we don't have any... thisson didn't have any sons.
He only had daughters.
And so there are no named descendantsdirectly from Lafayette, but
he has a lot of descendants.
Well, I was looking this up too, becauseI saw something on YouTube because I
(26:37):
have... We're skipping ahead, but I havevisited the Hermione twice, which is
the second boat, the second ship that hesailed with when he went back to colonies.
And last year, his descendant, the lastmale descendant on the line of his cousins
who has now legally taken the name ofLafayette, became a matelot on the ship.
(27:00):
Very nice.
And he's a young bankerand he's in his 20s.
And so there's this YouTube littleinterview with him where he is very
embarrassed because when he getson the ship and everybody asks him,
"Why are you here?" And he kindof mutters, "Well, I'm actually a
descendant of Lafayette." You know?
It's like he wanted to have the experienceof actually shipping out the Hermione.
(27:21):
But anyway, what happens is, ofcourse, that by this time, this
has become a more official mission.
This is no longer doing this on the sly.
The King has this time promised6,000 men, and several generals to
be sent as well as more arms andlots and lots of, of course, money.
And Lafayette, who stays home for justabout a little bit under a year, he leaves
(27:45):
again on this ship called the Hermione.
And by the way, this isa place you can visit.
Yeah, you can visit.
I don't know why Ididn't think to mention.
I should have thought tomention it at the beginning.
I've been on this ship twice, right now,it's in the Basque country on the coast.
It moves around a lot,but it is visitable.
You can actually... Now,you don't see Lafayette.
No, and there's nothing that says hewas here, but you see this ship and
(28:08):
you can imagine with all its canons,how people lived, the close quarters,
and the fact that these are the shipsthat they took back and forth across
the Atlantic with these hundreds andhundreds of men and the arms, you know?
Right.
And the Hermione made a tripto the US a few years back.
It moves around.
Its home port is Rochefort.
But when I went toRochefort, it wasn't there.
(28:30):
So, you know, you need to lookit up if you're interested.
It's usually on the AtlanticCoast of France, between Basque
country and Nantes or whatever.
And Charente.
Yeah.
But it's a very nice thing tovisit, about maritime history
and Lafayette, and all of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it is definitely worth it, if you'reinterested in all of that, you know?
(28:51):
So 1780, Lafayette goes back, andparticipates in a whole series of battles,
and is the leading officer in the majorvictory at Yorktown against the General
Cornwall, the famous British general.
And this causes the capitulationof Cornwall, and basically it's the
turning point and the end of the war.
(29:16):
1781, he returns to France.
He has made a glorious militarycareer in the colonies.
He's made a name forhimself as a reformer.
And when he arrives back in France.
The 1780s is the great period ofunrest leading up to the Revolution.
He comes back to turmoil.
(29:36):
He comes back to what word inFrench that I like is le grondement.
Things are boiling up, you can sensethat things are going to come to a head.
And because of all of his contactwith the people in the colonies, and
because of the societies that he hasbelonged to, Lafayette adheres to
a lot of the ideas that become partof the program of the Revolution.
(30:00):
And the suppression of taxes,the idea of equality, the idea of
participation of all civilians,the idea that the peerage is not
necessarily something that you inherit.
These were absolutelyrevolutionary ideas, and certainly
coming from someone like him.
Right.
So, the big deal in France wasthat nobility of any sort, of
(30:22):
any level, paid zero taxes.
None.
Not a penny.
It was the opposite.
People were paying them.
So, you had huge incomeinequality in France.
It was just obscene.
And, you know, because income inequalityis growing now, especially in the
US, but it's also growing in Europein many places, we can feel the fact
(30:47):
that people are... It's not fair.
This sense that this is not fair.
And the people, what you called thegrondements, the grumblings, I guess,
became louder and louder and louder.
And if the French king had been able,which he tried to do, if he had been able
to convince nobility to pay some taxes.
He wasn't even going to tax them thatmuch, but on principle, they weren't
(31:11):
going to pay any taxes, because they hada God-given right to be rich, you know?
This is how it is.
And if he had been able to convince themto pay some taxes, which the English
king did convince his nobility tostart paying taxes, it helped greatly.
It would have avoided a lot of things.
So, that's the first thing, isnobility needed to start paying taxes.
(31:33):
It was vital for France.
So this is what I find so fascinating.
He made it back to France in 1781, but in1784, he goes back to the United States.
He makes a round tripto the United States.
And it is at this point where heis actually invited privately by
George Washington, and he is almostofficially made into his son.
(31:58):
And George Washington is made godfatherof his son, of the Marquis' son.
This is his official title.
He's acclaimed as a hero in theUnited States, and he spends time with
Washington, and he meets Jefferson,and he meets Adams, and he meets all
of these people who, of course, areinstrumental in forming what becomes
(32:19):
the United States at this time.
So, in 1784, he goes to theStates, and then back to France.
And in 1785, he starts to be activein politics, which of course, is
something new for him, becausehe had been just a military man.
He's actually received as a hero atfirst in Paris, but then, of course,
(32:39):
his ideas seem to irk the nobility,because how can anybody who has this kind
of lineage possibly have these ideas?
And at the same time, he's notcompletely trusted by the bourgeois,
that is, the middle class, who are theones who really make up the backbone
of the revolutionary structure,because after all, he is a nobleman.
(33:02):
How can you trust a nobleman?
So, this becomes the situationthat he lives through, through all
the years that follow in France.
We enter into the period of basicallywhat we can call pre-revolutionary period.
And there are committees that are formedand he joins the committee as a member,
of what is called the Liberal Aristocrats.
(33:23):
That is, and there are a number of them,actually quite a few, interestingly
enough, including one of the king'sbrothers, who are in favor of the
Revolution and who declare that they willgive up their privileges and their rights
and will take names that have no titles.
It doesn't work for all of themunfortunately, but for some of them.
(33:44):
And they are, many of themare actually quite sincere in
these pledges that they make.
So in 1787, he joins acommittee that talks about the
abolition of the monopolies.
He votes for the suppression ofthe salt tax, le gabelle, which
of course is very interestingbecause the gabelle, the salt tax.
Why the salt tax?
Why?
Because for centuries and centuries,the only way to preserve foods
(34:07):
was by using salt on them.
And so, you bought salt to preserve yourfood, and you paid a tax on the salt you
bought, which is kind of crazy becausePierre Paul Riquet, who built the Canal
du Midi, was a collector of the salt tax.
And he made his moneyby skimming off the top.
Right.
Right.
(34:27):
Getting his little percentage.
That's how the tax collectors made money.
Yeah.
That's how the tax collectorshad made their money, you know?
This is what happened.
And he joins Society ofFriends of the Black Race.
He starts preaching and writingarticles about equality between the
races, about the abolition of slavery,about the end of monopolies, about
suppression of taxes, and the idea thatcitizens, regular citizens, should be
(34:53):
able to participate in the creationof the government and of the laws.
And it is the influence of havingseen the Constitution and the ideas
of the American Constitution thatare the basis for all that he thinks
and all he does from this point on.
The problem is, and it is a problem,is that the aristocrats consider him a
(35:15):
traitor, and the middle class is not surethat he really believes in what he says
and that he's going to stick to his ideas.
And at first, he agrees that there shouldbe an end to the monarchy because he
says very clearly that he does not thinkthat there's such a thing as a God-given
right to inherit any kind of title, andthat people should be able to govern
(35:39):
themselves and not be abased by a monarch.
He writes all of these,he writes these articles.
There's also a conversation he has inwriting with Washington about slavery
and saying, you know, "Why do you haveslaves? You shouldn't have slaves."
But of course he also says, "Oh,the Americans are so rich, rich
and so fantastic." Well, withoutthe slaves they wouldn't have been
(36:02):
so rich and successful, you know?
And it's just a fact.
Somebody has to do the work.
So he becomes a member of the Revolution.
He becomes a participant in what'scalled the Convention in 1789, and
he is considered to be a person to betrusted for a certain amount of time.
He is then put in charge ofsomething that is created, and
(36:23):
that is the new National Guard.
The National Guard that is not justofficers that are nobility, but that are
normal citizens, that the entire NationalGuard was a total of 48,000 civilians.
And believe it or not, he is the man,as an officer and head of the National
Guard, who is responsible for thedestruction of the prison of the Bastille.
(36:46):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was interesting.
'It is interesting, He isactually the person who did it.
He freed them.
He allowed the people to leave.
I don't know if everybody knows that,but the people that were left in the
Bastille, which didn't have too manypeople left in it, were actually taken out
of the building before it was destroyed.
But on the 26th of July of 1789, heled the troops to destroy the Bastille.
(37:07):
Not the 26th.
No, the destruction of theBastille was on the 14th of July.
No, okay.
because that sort of said, hmm.
I didn't think it was the 14th itself.
I thought the actualdestruction was on the 26th.
Well, it might have take a f-it might have taken a few days.
Yes.
You're right.
Anyway, July, July of 1789.
So these are some of theideas that he adhered to.
Trial by jury.
(37:27):
My God, something that neverexisted certainly in France, huh?
Abolition of hereditary nobility,equal rights for all citizens,
equal rights for people of color.
Women, not so much.
Not so much.
No.
They don't want, no, we're stillin the end of the 18th century.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Sorry.
It actually got worseafter the Revolution.
For women, I mean.
(37:48):
For women, you know.
Well, well, that's another whole topicwe have to talk about another time.
We will talk about thatplenty, don't worry.
1790. As the Revolution advances andthe ideas become more and more extreme,
Lafayette realizes that his positionis relatively moderate compared
(38:08):
to the group called Les Jacobins.
By the way, that's because theywere meeting on the Rue Jacob,
in case anybody really wants toknow why they were called that.
Because of that, he decides as they startto propose killing the king, first they
have him imprisoned of course, but theidea of killing the king, he says, "No,
no, no, no, no. No. No." What we needis actually a constitutional monarchy.
(38:33):
We need to have law and order.
I just translated a couple oflines because it's extremely
important.... because he put thisforth in front of the convention.
Is that "for a revolution to happen, itis necessary to have disorder, because the
ancient order was nothing but servitude.
So insurrection at first is in order,but to have a Constitution, it is
(38:59):
necessary that a new order is createdand that the laws are respected.
Right.
So in his mind, it would have been bestto have a Constitution, of course, that
guarantees a lot of rights that peopledidn't have so far, but also to keep the
status quo by making it putting a monarchat the head, even if, like in England,
(39:24):
the monarch doesn't have much power,it would have appeased a lot of people.
It would have appeased people, and Ithink from what I can understand from
all these readings, it's that he sawthe revolution turning into The Terror.
He saw the revolution turning intobrutality, destruction, one group
(39:44):
hating the other, everyone askingfor everybody else to be destroyed.
Yeah, he was imprisoned several times.
His wife's sister, his wife's grandmotherwere killed, were guillotined.
You know, he saw it firsthand.
And so what happens is that by 1790,you know, the French Revolution, I'm
not an expert, you know more than I do,Annie, but it is certainly extremely
(40:05):
complicated and extremely dense.
In a period of very few years,there's so much that happens.
But what happens is that by 1790, becausehe has come out against regicide, against
the killing of the king, and specificallysays, "No, no, no, the most important
thing is that we have a Constitution,that we have a series of laws that apply
(40:27):
to everyone, but it is not necessary tokill the king. It is not necessarily, to
have all of this, this blood on the handsof everybody." He's come to be called the
infamous Motier by the Jacobin becausehe's a traitor, as far as he's concerned.
The Jacobin hated him becausehe wasn't extreme enough.
(40:48):
They wanted blood.
All they could see is that you hadto get rid of all the opposition
by killing them to the point wherethey killed one another off as well.
You know, they were insane.
Like, it doesn't make any sensewhat they did, but they did it.
No, they were totallybloodthirsty and insane.
You know, and so in 1791, now thisis with the pressure on his family,
(41:10):
of course, he proposes a generalamnesty to try and bring peace back
because he wants law and order.
This is a man who assumes that youcannot do anything if people do
not accept to follow law and order.
He draws up a constitution.
It is rejected, and in 1792, with TheTerror, and everybody killing everybody,
(41:32):
everybody arresting everybody, heis denounced officially as a traitor
for defending the king and foradvocating a constitutional monarchy.
And he writes a letter, apublic letter, put out on the
streets denouncing the Jacobin.
So what happens is, because of that, in1792, he decides, and probably, probably
(41:55):
advised by a whole bunch of people whowere friends with him, that he is put on
the list, and he will be next, and that hebetter get out of there as fast as he can.
And so he, with three of hisaides-du-camp, three of his most loyal,
actually military officers who are alsoaristocrats, but who have been faithful
to his own ideas all this time, heinforms his wife and his children, who
(42:19):
are gone into hiding, and he flees.
He leaves France.
And he goes... I don'tunderstand why, actually.
This is interesting.
He goes first to Liege, which is, ofcourse, part of Belgium, and then he goes
to Austria, and now Austria, of course, iswhere Marie Antoinette came from, and so
Austria, which is against the Revolutionand is trying to create an army to go in.
(42:42):
But what happens is, he thinks that he'sgoing to be safe in Austria because he
is a nobleman, but when he arrives inAustria, he's arrested and put in prison.
And the reason why is becausefor them, he's a revolutionary.
Yeah.
I thought he went to Holland.
No, at the end.
Okay, okay.
He actually spends three years ina prison in Austria with his three
(43:03):
aides-du-camp, three full years, he'sin this terrible prison in Austria.
Well, in a way, they protected him.
He couldn't be killedwhile he was in the prison.
Yeah, and they didn't...
Apparently he was beaten up a littlebit, tortured at first, and then they
basically left him alone, but at theend of the three years, they allow
him to leave this prison and theysend him to Moravia, of all places.
(43:26):
And that is when his wife andhis two daughters join him.
She joins him in 1795.
They've been writing to eachother all of this time, and
she has been in a safe place.
I don't know exactly where shespent those few years, obviously.
I think Holland.
I think her family ʾDeNoailles went to Holland.
Went to Holland, because they spenttwo years together in Moravia,
(43:46):
and then he goes to Holland withhis wife and his two children.
So all in all, he spendsseven years in exile.
From 1792 to 1799, he is inexile, the last two years of
those, that time in Holland.
And what happens is that in1797, Napoleon takes charge.
(44:08):
Right, because then we have Napoleon andthen we have the kings coming back...
And this is what's so fascinating.
So here, he knew Napoleon.
Napoleon was at first abrilliant revolutionary officer.
They were both officers.
I mean, they had a lot in common, exceptthat Napoleon, who at first taking charge
of the armies, doesn't present himselfas the emperor dictator that of course
(44:32):
he soon reveals himself to be, and hasnow become the post-immediate revolution
head of the government basically.
He's head of the armies.
And Lafayette writes to him, andNapoleon negotiates his release
from prison, he negotiates hisability to circulate freely.
(44:52):
But he tells Lafayette that he doesnot want him coming back to France
because he does not trust him.
And why does he not trust him?
Well, as far as I understand, hedoesn't trust him because he thinks
that Lafayette is going to start... ifNapoleon already has ideas of declaring
himself an emperor and creating whatis basically in any other terms another
(45:16):
monarchy, he doesn't trust Lafayette tonot start up and cause trouble for him.
Of course, yeah.
So, for two years basically theynegotiate with each other, and Napoleon
keeps saying to him, "Do what you want,but you're not coming back to France,"
basically, "because if you do, I'mgoing to cause trouble for you."
And then in 1799, Lafayette decides thathe's had enough of this and that he is
(45:41):
going to go back to France anyway, andthat he's going to live his life, and
if they don't want anything to do withhim, he will just go to his lands because
he has lots of estates everywhere, heand his wife, and that will be that.
So, in 1800, Lafayette, who is now43, imagine that, so he's 43, his son
is already a young adult, he returnsto France in spite of this injunction
(46:04):
against him by Napoleon, theoreticallysort of retires, goes to live on his
lands, whether his or his wife's becausehe had land everywhere, you know?
It was his wife's then.
He had the lands in the South,but mostly it was the lands of
his wife in the Champagne area.
But strangely enough, apparentlyhe becomes very good friends
with Napoleon's brother, Joseph.
I didn't know that.
(46:24):
Yeah.
And so he helps Joseph Bonaparte helpsnegotiate with his brother so that he
basically leaves Lafayette alone and takeshim off this infamous list of the émigrés.
The émigrés was a list of all ofthese aristocrats who had fled, and
basically if they came back, theycould lose their head, you know?
(46:45):
I mean, it was basically, "We cango back to prison if you fled."
But of course a lot of them aftera certain number of years, they
just came back to France andnothing happened to them anyway.
His son is now in the military.
But because Napoleon doesn'tever trust him, he actually
makes life difficult for his son.
So, he doesn't have enoughadvancement in the army.
He just keeps causing trouble, andLafayette basically decides that the best
(47:09):
thing to do at this time is to stay outof government, to stay out of politics.
He doesn't voice hisopinions about anything.
And this lasts for a couple of years.
He is told that the best thing for himto do would be to go back to the States.
Maybe.
Maybe, you know?
Apparently he was offered bythe United States a prestigious
(47:30):
position, he could represent France.
And then he says, "No, no, myplace is still here in France
in spite of everything."
They offer him the role of representativeof France in negotiating things with
the United States, not as an ambassador,but to doing commercial enterprises.
And he says that he's too Americanto represent the French because
(47:51):
he thinks like the Americans do.
This is interesting.
And then what happens?
And this is of course we're talkingabout the... this is the last huge
chunk of what happens in his life.
We have Napoleon declaring himselfemperor, and Lafayette who has completely
withdrawn from public life, he decidesit's time to start speaking up again.
(48:16):
Right, which was risky.
Which was very risky.
He was clearly someone who wasn't afraidto take risks, because clearly all of
his life he goes back and forth betweenspeaking out and then sort of withdrawing
so that he doesn't get into trouble.
But he starts writing lettersand talking about the dangers of
Napoleon, the dangers of an empire.
(48:37):
There was no revolution again at thispoint, but he really is advocating
for the getting rid of Napoleon.
In 1807, his wife dies.
She's very young.
She's 47 when she dies.
That is very young.
Well, if you consider that she marriedat 14 and had her first child at 17, you
know, but she apparently had some kindof long illness, probably something like
(48:59):
tuberculosis, one of those kinds of thingsthat dragged on for a very long time.
She was in very poor health.
In 1814, Lafayette makes a decisionwhich affects a lot of things in
terms of his reputation even today,and that is, he decides to support
the restoration of the monarchy.
Thinking that it will be finallywhat he has always hoped it will be,
(49:22):
which is a constitutional monarchy,he reluctantly agrees to support it
publicly, but starts complaining assoon as it's put into place, that
it's just basically the old again.
Right.
So he wanted to be pragmatic, but itdidn't work out because the king that
was put in place, which one was it?
(49:43):
This is Charles, I think.
Charles X?
No, it's Louis XVIII.
Yeah, and then he went against himand participated in his losing power,
and Louis-Philippe, and then hesaid, "Okay, let's try it again with
Louis-Philippe." That didn't work either.
No.
So the whole period of time between 1814and 1824, which is really interesting,
(50:03):
because what happens is you havethis first restoration in 1814, which
is when they got rid of Napoleon.
Just because he came back for a fewmonths, and then he was finally put
on the island and they got rid of him.
Literally, they poisonedhim and they got rid of him.
But what happens with Lafayette is that...
Not sure he was poisoned.
There's question about it, butthey said they found arsenic
(50:23):
in his liver, so who knows?
Stomach cancer.
I vote for stomach cancer.
Yeah.
In 1814, he's 57 years old,and he reenters public life.
And this time, he enters life as a deputy.
He's elected as a deputy fromthe region around Meaux, which is
the area where he was living ineast, the region east of Paris.
(50:46):
And he advocates for all ofthe same things that he's
advocated all of these years.
The idea of citizen participation,of reduction of taxes, of equality,
of abolition of the death penalty.
But when you say reduction of taxes,what it really is, is the rich have to
start paying taxes so the poor pay less.
(51:08):
That's true.
It's a rebalancing oftaxes, is what it is, yeah.
Yes, yeah.
Interestingly enough, in 1818, he joinsthe assembly on the left side, you know?
It's always interesting, I don'tknow if anybody even knows out
there why we call it left wing andright wing, and that, that's why.
Yeah, that's why, yeah.
That's really why.
And he actually, for the rest of hislife, when he is part of the politics,
(51:31):
when he enters as a deputy, becauseit goes in and out for the next 20
years, he stays on the left side.
Yeah, he belongs there.
He was someone who believed inspreading the wealth a little better.
Right.
Actually, he stays a deputy and heis absolutely persuaded that the
restoration of monarchy endangers whateverliberties that they had, or at least
(51:52):
tried to install during the Revolution.
And he writes a lot.
As you said, he writes and hewrites and he writes, and he writes
about how people should resist.
But it's interesting because...do you know about this thing
about the Charbonnerie?
I don't.
He apparently, starting in 1820, he...I think this is because of his, you
know, he's a mason, he's a memberof the Masonic Lodge, it, you know,
(52:15):
Masonic Lodge... My dad was a mason.
That's like, it's this weirdsecret society things, you know?
It's like, I always think of it as kind ofadults playing as little kids with secret
codes and ridiculous things, you know?
Secret handshakes.
Secret handshakes and all that nonsense.
But in fact Lafayette, he becomesa major player in a series of
conspiracies that are designed tooverturn the restoration, and one
(52:39):
of them is called the Charbonnerie.
It's really quite serious, actually.
There's a whole series of plots thatare created with various people who,
all of whom are very, very important.
He is one of the very few whomanages to escape any punishment
for taking part in these, and I'mnot sure if I remember exactly why.
A couple of people were put in prison, acouple of people had to exile themselves
(53:00):
because there was this whole periodof time when there was this real talk
of overturning the restoration, andnot necessarily in a nice, quiet way.
And then, because he's fed up witheverything, and the politics of France,
would imagine at this point, mustjust be so frustrating for him, he
decides, upon invitation of the newpresident of the United States, who
(53:26):
is John Quincy Adams, to return.
And so in 1824, at the age of 66, hetakes his son, who is already a grown
man and a father, and a secretary, andhe leaves convinced that he is absolutely
useless in France, and he goes back.
(53:46):
He is provided with a ship by theUnited States government, the trip
is paid for even though he certainlycould have paid for it by himself.
He is invited back and it is after40 years, he's actually been absent
from the United States for 40 years,and when he arrives, there is a crowd
of over 50,000 people in the harborin New York waiting to greet him.
(54:11):
And every place he goes,there are crowds like that.
Absolutely everywhere.
He goes to every major city inevery state that exists at that
time in the United States, hashonors given to him everywhere.
He's invited to stay andlive in the United States.
He's a widower.
His children are all adults,they're all married off.
(54:32):
I mean, he could havestayed in the United States.
He says, no, his place is back in France.
He is given an honorarydoctorate from Princeton.
Interesting.
He is given a huge banquet inthe White House, in the Capitol.
He is invited to speak.
The president is Monroe, andthen there's John Quincy Adams.
(54:52):
And he spends almost the entire yeartraveling around the United States,
and is received as a hero everywhere.
Absolutely everywhere.
I can't even imagine what it must'vebeen like for him, and also for his son,
to see just how much of a hero and arespected man he is in the United States.
(55:14):
It's a very nice way for him tohave been... I mean, it's great that
he was recognized like that at theend, towards the end of his life.
He goes to George Washington'sgrave to pay his respects.
And then, in spite of everything, hesays, "No, I do have to go back to
France. This is where I've come from."
And so he returns to France in 1825,and this is what happens during
(55:39):
the last nine years of his life.
He is a politician.
He's a deputy.
He, again, takes up the bannerof all of these ideas that he
has carried around with him forall of these decades and decades.
He travels all through theeastern part of France.
He goes through the region ofFranche-Comté and Lyon, and he
(56:01):
finds that it's time to fightagain for certain reforms.
The Second Restoration is in place.
This is where we have CharlesVIII, and then we have Louis,
King of the French, you know?
He says, "Yes, why not? But Idon't trust the monarchy anymore."
They say that they were goingto do a constitutional monarchy.
(56:21):
It never turns out to be exactly that.
He speaks to all kinds of groups.
He writes articles about social reform.
He advocates for a more liberalenvironment, for a free economy,
for a constitution, and he persists,and he persists, and he persists.
And at the age of 73, in 1830, he'smade again head of the National Guard.
(56:43):
And then we have the great, strange,very short Revolution of 1830.
Right, Les Trois Glorieuses.
Which if you've watched Les Misérables,Les Mis, that's what it's about.
It was very short, butit was very powerful.
It was very powerful.
And if you go in Paris, themonuments that are at the Place de
(57:03):
la Bastille are actually about that.
It's about the Revolution of 1830.
They barricaded Paris.
They tried once again.
There were several revolutionsin France, not just the one.
Yes, not just the one.
This one, unfortunately,did not last very long.
And then, of course, what we haveis the installation of the King of
the French, and at this point, hedecides that it's never going to
(57:27):
be what he had hoped it would be.
He is quite an old man, especiallyconsidering the times that he lived in.
But he is a deputy right up to the end.
And he dies of pneumonia.
Yeah, he had a... You know, hedied in his home in his bed.
He died in his home.
He was 77 years old, and he was a deputyright up to the moment that he dies.
(57:52):
And of course, the other placethat you need to visit is
the place where he is buried.
Which is?
The Picpus Cemetery.
So this is on the eastern side of Paris.
On the 12th, yes.
Very nice place.
Why isn't he in the Pantheon?
Well, probably because he advocated forthe French kings to continue, you know,
(58:13):
he was hoping for a monarchy of sorts.
I think he should be in the Pantheon.
I think he should be in the Pantheon, too.
But then again, you and I are not thepeople that they listen to, you know?
They won't listen to us.
Elyse and Annie say heshould be in the Pantheon.
So we can take a vote out there.
This is absolutely incredible.
I don't know if you're going todo this when you go in a couple
of weeks, but I think I'm goingto the next time I go up to Paris.
He is buried next to his wife in thecemetery in Picpus, which is where most
(58:39):
of the people condemned to death bythe Revolution are buried, by the way.
And because of his role in what happenedin the United States, the second he was
buried, there was the American ambassadorwho participated in the funeral services,
and they planted, which was at the timecertainly not the same flag as now,
(58:59):
an American flag next to his grave.
And that flag has been there since theday he was buried, and even during the
worst of the times in the history ofFrance, especially during the occupation,
World War II, it is the only flag thathas never been lowered, never been taken
down, and every single year on the 4thof July, the American ambassador goes
(59:22):
and pays his respects and puts a wreathon his tomb in the cemetery of Picpus.
Very nice.
So, Gilbert de Motier, le Marquisde Lafayette, I salute you.
Yes, an amazing person.
We kind of kept talking.
I'm telling you, the bookI listened to was 19 hours.
(59:42):
It's endless.
I can totally understand why peopleget taken into these stories.
We wanted to kind of summarize it, sofor you, who are visitors to France,
there... We could have gone into allsorts of directions with this, but we
just wanted to give you a brief summary.
It's longer than a normalepisode, but not by too much.
Not by much, just by a little bit.
But this is wonderful,learning all this about him.
(01:00:04):
Yeah, I wish his originaldream for France had come true.
We're still not there.
We've made progress, but it takes sofreaking long to change cultural habits.
You know what I mean?
It's like, ugh, people are slow.
Yeah, people are slow.
People are slow.
(01:00:24):
But, you know, you got to do it that way.
Thank you very much, Elyse.
You are quite welcome, Annie.
Au revoir.
Au revoir.
The Join Us in France travelpodcast is written, hosted, and
produced by Annie Sargent, andCopyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance.
(01:00:48):
It is released under a CreativeCommons attribution, non-commercial,
no derivatives license.
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