author
marquis de Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert Du Motier Lafayette
1757–1834
A young French nobleman who crossed the Atlantic to fight in the American Revolution, he became one of the rare figures celebrated on both sides of the ocean. His life linked the struggles for liberty in America and France, and turned him into a lasting symbol of political idealism.
1 Audiobook
Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette
by marquis de Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert Du Motier Lafayette
About the author
Born in France in 1757, Lafayette inherited wealth and status early but made his name through action rather than title. Still in his teens, he volunteered to join the American cause during the Revolutionary War and quickly formed a close bond with George Washington. His service helped make him one of the best-known foreign supporters of American independence.
After returning to France, he became an important public figure during the opening years of the French Revolution. He backed constitutional government and individual rights, and he is closely associated with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. His political path was difficult and often dangerous, and during the upheavals of the 1790s he spent years in imprisonment.
Lafayette remained active in public life well into old age and was still widely admired when he revisited the United States in 1824–1825, where he was welcomed as a hero. He died in 1834, remembered as a soldier, statesman, and one of the few people whose story belongs fully to both French and American history.