page_title: Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette
section_title: Hero of two worlds
hierarchical_section_title: Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette / Hero of two worlds
context_page_description: Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette was a French aristocrat and military officer who fought in the American Revolutionary War, commanding American troops in several battles, including the Siege of Yorktown. After returning to France, he was a key figure in the French Revolution of 1789 and the July Revolution of 1830.
  Lafayette was born into a wealthy land-owning family in Chavaniac in the province of Auvergne in south central France. He followed the family's martial tradition and was commissioned an officer at age 13. He became convinced that the American revolutionary cause was noble, and he traveled to the New World seeking glory in it. He was made a major general at age 19, but he was initially not given American troops to command. He was wounded during the Battle of Brandywine but still managed to organize an orderly retreat, and he served with distinction in the Battle of Rhode Island. In the middle of the war, he sailed for home to lobby for an increase in French support. He returned to America in 1780 and was given senior positions in the Continental Army.
context_section_description: Yorktown was the last major land battle of the American Revolution, but the British still held several major port cities.  Lafayette wanted to lead expeditions to capture them, but Washington felt that he would be more useful seeking additional naval support from France. Congress appointed him its advisor to America's envoys in Europe, Benjamin Franklin in Paris, John Jay in Madrid, and John Adams in The Hague, instructing them "to communicate and agree on everything with him".  It also sent Louis XVI an official letter of commendation on the marquis's behalf.
  Lafayette left Boston for France on 18 December 1781 where he was welcomed as a hero, and he was received at the Palace of Versailles on 22 January 1782. He witnessed the birth of his daughter, whom he named Marie-Antoinette Virginie upon Thomas Jefferson's recommendation. He was promoted to maréchal de camp, skipping numerous ranks, and he was made a Knight of the Order of Saint Louis. He worked on a combined French and Spanish expedition against the British West Indies in 1782, as no formal peace treaty had yet been signed. The Treaty of Paris was signed between Great Britain and the United States in 1783, which made the expedition unnecessary; Lafayette took part in those negotiations.
  Lafayette worked with Jefferson to establish trade agreements between the United States and France which aimed to reduce America's debt to France.  He joined the French abolitionist group Society of the Friends of the Blacks which advocated the end of the slave trade and equal rights for free blacks. He urged the emancipation of slaves and their establishment as tenant farmers in a 1783 letter to Washington, who was a slave owner. Washington declined to free his slaves, though he expressed interest in the young man's ideas, and Lafayette purchased a  plantation in French Guiana to house the project.
  Lafayette visited America in 1784–1785 where he enjoyed an enthusiastic welcome, visiting all the states. The trip included a visit to Washington's farm at Mount Vernon on 17 August. He addressed the Virginia House of Delegates where he called for "liberty of all mankind" and urged emancipation of slaves, and he urged the Pennsylvania Legislature to help form a federal union (the states were then bound by the Articles of Confederation). He visited the Mohawk Valley in New York to participate in peace negotiations with the Iroquois, some of whom he had met in 1778. He received an honorary degree from Harvard, a portrait of Washington from the city of Boston, and a bust from the state of Virginia. Maryland's legislature honored him by making him and his male heirs "natural born Citizens" of the state, which made him a natural-born citizen of the United States after the 1789 ratification of the Constitution. Lafayette later boasted that he had become an American citizen before the concept of French citizenship existed. Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia also granted him citizenship.
  Lafayette made the Hôtel de La Fayette in Paris's rue de Bourbon the headquarters of Americans there. Benjamin Franklin, John and Sarah Jay, and John and Abigail Adams met there every Monday and dined in company with Lafayette's family and the liberal nobility, including Clermont-Tonnerre and Madame de Staël. Lafayette continued to work on lowering trade barriers in France to American goods, and on assisting Franklin and Jefferson in seeking treaties of amity and commerce with European nations. He also sought to correct the injustices that Huguenots in France had endured since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes a century before.
caption: Lafayette and Washington at Mt. Vernon, 1784
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