The Hero of Two Worlds
The French Officer given the most credit for helping the citizens of the colonies of North America win the Revolutionary War was a humble general officer, but came from anything but a humble beginning. Having the full birth name, Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roche Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette, he is most commonly referred to in America as Lafayette. He was born on September 6th 1757, at the Château de Chavaniac, an estate in Haute-Loire, in the Auvergne region of France. Before his second birthday, his father, a Colonel of grenadiers in the French army, was killed at the Battle of Minden. The battle was fought on August 1st, 1759 during the Seven Years’ War. The French army fought against a British and Prussian force led by Prince Ferdinand, a Prussian Field Marshall. “Ferdinand’s army suffered 2,800 fatalities while the French army lost between 10,000 and 11,000 men” (Gilbert). In 1768, Lafayette was taken by his mother to Paris and entered the College of Louis le Grand. Then in 1770, at the age of twelve, his mother passed away and a few weeks later he lost his grandfather as well. He was left a very young and extremely wealthy orphan. Lafayette became a page to the queen of France, Marie Leczinska, who was a Polish noblewoman, and wife of Louis XV. In 1771, at the age of fourteen, and partly because of his important position, he was able to receive a lieutenant’s commission in the royal musketeers: the body soldiers charged with the personal defense of the king (Appleton). Two years later, at the age of sixteen, Lafayette was married to Marie Adrienne Francoise de Noalilles, a member of one of the wealthiest and most influential families in France. An immediate promotion made him a captain in the French cavalry.
Possibly harboring a disdain for the British because of his father’s death in the Seven Years’ War, and seeking revenge against the British, or merely an activist for the cause of liberty,...