The Marquis de Lafayette was a French aristocrat who sailed to America in 1777, aged 19, and became a major general in the Continental Army. He was wounded at Brandywine, fought at Monmouth, helped bring French troops in 1780 and in 1781 held Cornwallis in Virginia until the British were trapped at Yorktown.
In June 1777 a nineteen-year-old French nobleman stepped ashore near Georgetown, South Carolina, after crossing the Atlantic in a ship he had bought himself. He had never seen a battle. Four years later he commanded the American army in Virginia that kept Lord Cornwallis in play until the trap at Yorktown closed.
The documented story beats the fairy tale: an ambitious young man hungry for glory, a general who learned fast, and a friendship with George Washington that survives in decades of letters.
Why a French nobleman sailed to America
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, was born on 6 September 1757 at Chavaniac in Auvergne1. His father was killed fighting the British at Minden in 17591, and by thirteen the boy was an orphan with one of the largest fortunes in France. At sixteen he married Adrienne de Noailles, of a powerful court family.
His biographers do not pretend his motives were pure: idealism about liberty, a wish to strike at the nation that had killed his father, and a hunger for glory. The king forbade the venture, but he bought a ship, the Victoire, and sailed in April 1777. Congress, weary of French officers demanding rank, accepted him because he offered to serve without pay, and he was commissioned a major general on 31 July 17772.
Brandywine: a wound and a reputation
His first battle came on 11 September 1777 at Brandywine, when General Howe's flank march rolled up the American right. Lafayette rode into the collapsing line to rally the troops and was wounded in the leg early in the battle3. He stayed with the troops long enough to help organise the retreat to Chester.
The wound made his name: a foreigner who had bled for the cause could no longer be dismissed as a titled tourist. Casimir Pulaski also made his American debut that day. Late in 1777 Lafayette received a division of Virginia troops.
Valley Forge and the bond with Washington
Lafayette spent most of December 1777 and January 1778 at Valley Forge. According to Mount Vernon's historians he spent his own money on uniforms and muskets for his men4 and lived among them through the worst of the winter.
That winter some officers and congressmen openly criticised George Washington. The Board of War offered Lafayette a planned invasion of Canada, which some saw as a way to detach him from the commander in chief. He insisted on remaining answerable to Washington, and the expedition collapsed for lack of men and supplies.
The friendship is documented, not imagined. The two wrote to each other until Washington's death in 1799, and Lafayette named his son, born in 1779, Georges Washington. The childless Washington never adopted him; the father and son image is a fair summary of the letters, not a legal fact.
Barren Hill and Monmouth
In May 1778 Washington gave Lafayette his first independent command: about 2,200 men sent forward to watch the British2 in Philadelphia. On 20 May British columns tried to surround him at Barren Hill. He slipped away down a road they had left open and crossed the Schuylkill at Matson's Ford with his force intact.
When the British left Philadelphia, Washington offered Lafayette the advance force after General Charles Lee declined it. Lee then changed his mind and reclaimed the command2. At Monmouth on 28 June 1778 Lee's attack fell apart, Washington rallied the army in person, and Lafayette commanded part of the line through the hot afternoon.
Winning French support
The victory at Saratoga helped bring France into an alliance in February 1778, but an alliance on paper did not yet mean French soldiers in America. Lafayette sailed home in January 1779 and spent a year lobbying ministers at Versailles for an army.
He returned on the frigate Hermione, reaching Boston on 28 April 1780 with news that a French expeditionary force was coming. In July about 5,500 French troops under the Comte de Rochambeau landed at Newport, and Lafayette became Washington's go-between with the French command.
Virginia 1781 and Yorktown
In early 1781 Washington sent Lafayette south with about 1,200 troops5 to deal with Benedict Arnold, who was raiding Virginia. By late May Lord Cornwallis had arrived from the Carolinas, and the British in Virginia numbered over 7,000. Even with Anthony Wayne's Pennsylvanians and the Virginia militia, Lafayette had about 4,000 men.
He could not risk a battle, so he shadowed Cornwallis, close enough to threaten and never close enough to be destroyed. At Green Spring on 6 July Wayne's 800 men attacked what they took for a rearguard and met most of the British army. American losses were 28 killed, 99 wounded and 12 missing5, and Lafayette's horse was shot from under him.
In August Cornwallis dug in at Yorktown. Lafayette reported the move, Washington and Rochambeau marched south and the French fleet sealed the Chesapeake. By late September over 17,000 American and French soldiers surrounded the town5. On 14 October 400 men of Lafayette's light infantry under Alexander Hamilton stormed Redoubt No. 10 while the French took Redoubt No. 9. Cornwallis surrendered on 19 October 1781; see the siege of Yorktown and Washington vs Cornwallis.
After the war: a second revolution and a farewell tour
Lafayette sailed for France in December 1781 and came back in 1784 to visit Washington at Mount Vernon. In 1789 he presented a draft declaration of rights to the National Assembly and took command of the Paris National Guard, but the revolution outran him. In 1792 he fled, fell into Austrian hands and was imprisoned in Prussia and Austria from 1792 to 17976.
At President James Monroe's invitation he returned to America in August 1824 and by September 1825 had visited all 24 states, greeted by huge crowds. He died in Paris on 20 May 1834 and, as he had asked, was buried under soil from Bunker Hill3.
Lafayette and slavery
His views on slavery are well documented. Writing to Washington from Cádiz on 5 February 1783, he proposed buying an estate together and freeing the enslaved people on it to work as tenants. "If it be a wild scheme, I had rather be mad7 that way," he added. Washington answered warmly but never joined in.
In 1786 Lafayette told Washington he had bought a plantation in French Guiana for 125,000 livres to try gradual emancipation; when his property was confiscated in 1792, its people were sold back into slavery. In 1784 he certified the intelligence work of James, an enslaved Virginian who had spied in Cornwallis's camp, and the testimonial supported James's successful petition for freedom in 1787. James took the surname Lafayette.
Why America still remembers him
Maryland made Lafayette a citizen in his lifetime, and towns and counties across the country bear his name. Public Law 107-209, approved on 6 August 20028, made him an honorary citizen of the United States, an honour previously given to Winston Churchill, Raoul Wallenberg, William and Hannah Penn and Mother Teresa.
Other foreigners crossed the ocean for the Revolution, as Tadeusz Kosciuszko and the Polish heroes of the American Revolution show. What sets Lafayette apart is the arc: a teenager with money and a title who learned war under fire and by 1781 was trusted to hold a British army at bay with a fraction of its numbers. Americans remembered. When their troops reached France in 1917, Colonel Charles E. Stanton stood at his grave and said: "Lafayette, we are here."