Lafayette

A Boy of the French Nobility

AMONG the rugged Auvergne Mountains, in the southern part of France, stands a castle that is severe and almost grim in its aspect. Two bare round towers flank the building on the right and on the left. Rows of lofty French windows are built across the upper part of the front, and the small, ungenerous doorway below has a line of portholes on either side that suggest a thought of warlike days gone by.

This castle, built in the fourteenth century, is called the Chateau de Chaviniac de Lafayette. Though it was burned to the ground in 1701, it was rebuilt as nearly like the earlier structure as possible; hence it represents, as it stands, the chivalrous days of the crusading period and so forms a fitting birthplace for a hero. In this half-military chateau was born one of the most valiant champions of liberty that any country has ever produced-the Marquis de Lafayette.

The climate of the Haute-Loire-the highlands of Auvergne-is harsh; it has been called the French Siberia. There are upland moors like deserts across which sweep fierce winds, where the golden broom and the purple heather-flowers of the barren heights-are all that will flourish. There are, indeed, secluded valleys filled with muskmallows and bracken, but these are often visited by wild tempests, and sudden floods may make the whole region dreary and dangerous.

In Lafayette's time the violence of the elements was not the only thing to be dreaded. When the children wandered too near the edge of the forest, they might catch sight of a wild boar nozzling about for mushrooms under the dead oak leaves; and if it had been a severe winter, it was quite within possibility that wolves or hyenas might come from their hiding places in the rocky recesses of the mountains and lurk hungrily near the villages.

The family living in the old chateau was one whose records could be traced to the year one thousand, when a certain man by the name of Motier acquired an estate called Villa Faya, and thereafter he became known as Motier de la Fayette. In 1240 Pons Motier married the noble Alix Brun de Champetières; and from their line descended the famous Lafayettes known to all Americans. Other Auvergne estates were added to the Chaviniac acres as the years went by, some with old castles high up in the mountains behind Chaviniac, and all these were inherited by the father of America's famous champion.

Lafayette's father was a notable warrior, as his father had been-and his-and his-away back to the days of the Crusades. Pons Motier de la Fayette fought at Acre; Jean Motier de la Fayette fell at Poitiers. There were marshals who bore the banner in many a combat of olden times when the life of the country was at stake. It was a Lafayette who won the battle at Beaugé in 1421, when the English Duke of Clarence was defeated and his country was compelled to resign hope of a complete conquest of France. Among other men who bore the name, there were military governors of towns and cities, aids to kings in war, captains and seneschals. Many of them spent their lives in camps and on battlefields. One of them saw thirty years of active service; another found that after thirty-eight years of military life he had been present at no less than sixty-five sieges besides taking part in many pitched battles. Lafayette's grandfather was wounded in three battles; and his uncle, Jacques Roch Motier, was killed in battle at the age of twenty-three.

During the summer before Lafayette's birth, his father, the young chevalier and colonel, not then twenty-five, had been living quietly in the Chateau Chaviniac. But a great conflict was going on-the Seven Years' War was being waged. He heard the call of his country and he felt it his duty to respond.

There was a sad parting from his beautiful young wife; then he dashed down the steep, rocky roadway from the chateau to the village, and so galloped away-over the plains, through fords and defiles, toward the German border-never to return.

Lafayette's ancestors on his mother's side were equally distinguished for military spirit. His mother was the daughter of the Comte de la Rivière, lieutenant general and captain of the second company of the King's Musketeers.

But this "hero of two worlds" inherited something more than military spirit. The ancestors from which he descended formed a line of true gentlefolk. For hundreds of years they had been renowned throughout the region of their Auvergne estates for lofty character and a kindly attitude toward their humble peasant neighbors. It was only natural that this most famous representative of the line should become a valiant champion of justice and freedom.

This great man was destined to have as many adventures as any boy of to-day could wish for. To recount them all would require not one book, but a dozen. Think of a lad of nineteen being a general in our Revolutionary War, and the trusted friend and helper of Washington! Lafayette was present at the surrender of Cornwallis, boyishly happy at the achievements of the American soldiery, and taking especial pride in his own American regiment. This period was followed by a worthy career in France, but for five years-from his thirty-fifth year to his fortieth-he was unjustly imprisoned in a grim old Austrian fortress. At the age of sixty-seven he made a wonderful tour through our country, being received with ceremonies and rejoicings wherever he went; for every one remembered with deep gratitude what this charming, courteous, elderly man had done for us in his youth. He lived to the ripe age of seventy-seven, surrounded by children and grandchildren, and interested in the work of the world up to the very last.

The birth of Lafayette is recorded in the yellow and timeworn parish register of Chaviniac. This ancient document states that on September 6, 1757, was born that "very high and very puissant gentleman Monseigneur Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert Dumotier de Lafayette, the lawful son of the very high and the very puissant Monseigneur Michel-Louis-Christophe-Roch-Gilbert Dumotier, Marquis de Lafayette, Baron de Wissac, Seigneur de Saint-Romain and other places, and of the very high and very puissant lady Madame Marie-Louise-Julie de la Rivière."

But it was only on official documents that Lafayette's full name, terrifying in its length, was used. Reduced to republican simplicity, the Marquis de Lafayette's name was Gilbert Motier, although he was always proud of the military title, "General," bestowed on him by our country. To tell the truth, imposing names meant little to this friend of liberty, who was a true republican at heart and who, during the French Revolution, voluntarily resigned all the titles of nobility he had inherited.

During his earliest childhood Lafayette was somewhat delicate. The child first opened his eyes in a sorrowful home at the old Chateau Chaviniac, for word had come, only a month before, that Lafayette's father had been killed at the battle of Minden, leaving the young mother a widow. The boy, however, grew in strength with the years. Naturally, all was done that could be done to keep him in health. At any rate, either through those mountain winds, or in spite of them, he developed a constitution so vigorous as to withstand the many strains he was to undergo in the course of his long and adventurous life.

The supreme characteristic of the man showed early in the boy when, at only eight years of age, he became possessed of an unselfish impulse to go out and perform a feat which for one so young would have been heroic. It was reported in the castle that a dangerous hyena was prowling about in the vicinity of the estate, terrifying everybody. The boy's sympathy was roused, and, from the moment he first heard of it, his greatest longing was to meet the cruel creature and have it out with him.

It is not recorded that the eight-year-old boy ever met that wild animal face to face, and it is well for the world that he did not. He was preserved to stand up against other and more significant spoilers of the world's welfare.

His education was begun under the care of his mother, assisted by his grandmother, a woman of unusually strong character; these, together with two aunts, formed a group whose memory was tenderly revered by Lafayette to the end of his life.

The boy Lafayette cared a great deal for hunting. Writing back to a cousin at home after he had been sent to Paris to school, he told her that what he would most like to hear about when she wrote to him would be the great events of the hunting season. His cousin, it appears, had written him an account of a hunt in the neighborhood, but she had not written enough about it to satisfy his desire. Why did she not give details? he asked. He reproachfully added that if he had been writing to her of a new-fashioned cap, he would have taken compass in hand and described it with mathematical accuracy. This she should have done concerning the great hunt if she had really wished to give him pleasure!

This fortunate boy could select any career he liked; courtier, lawyer, politician, writer, soldier-whatever he chose. Never came opportunity more richly laden to the doorway of any youth.

He chose to be a soldier. The double-barred doors of iron, the lofty, protected windows, the military pictures on the walls of his home-all spoke to the Chaviniac child of warfare and conflict. There was the portrait of his father in cuirass and helmet. There were far-away ancestors in glistening armor and laced jackets. There was also the military portrait of that Gilbert Motier de Lafayette who was marshal in the time of Charles VII, and whose motto "Cur non" (Why not?) was chosen by Lafayette for his own when he started on his first voyage. The instinct for warfare, for the organization of armies, for struggle and conquest, were strong in him, and were fostered and nourished by every impression of his boyhood's home.

* * *