Two Worlds' Hero

LAFAYETTE--Andreas Latzko--Doubleday, Doran ($3). From his day to the present, Lafayette has been one of the lustrous names every U. S. schoolboy has known. Aside from his name, little that is true about him remains in the grade-schooled memory, in which he figures as a mincing French marquis who served on George Washington's staff and then went back to France to live happily ever after. Andreas Latzko's biography corrects this misconception, fills in the full-length portrait of Lafayette with many a forgotten fact. No Strachey, Latzko makes no bones about his admiration for his hero; he is a Lafayettist, and he presents a strong, if not completely convincing case. Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, Baron de Vissac, Seigneur of Saint-Romain et al. had red hair and was called "Gil" by his family. With his ancestry and connections he might have made himself a nice niche at Louis XVI's court, but he was filled to the brim with libertarian ideas. A millionaire orphan at 14, he was snatched up as a son-in-law by the socially potent Due d'Ayen-Noailles, married his daughter two years later. When his father-in-law schemed to get him an influential sinecure, Lafayette put a stop to that by deliberately insulting the King's brother. After that, there was nothing for him to do but retire to his regiment. There was little glory to be had at regimental headquarters, and Lafayette panted for glory. When he heard of the revolution in America against the tyranny of George III, his tindery ambition blazed. His commanding officer was glad to give him leave, Benjamin Franklin was pleased to recommend him as a volunteer without pay, but the French Government, chary of England's friendship, flatly forbade him to go. It cost Lafayette much patience, money and daring before he finally got away. By the time he reached Philadelphia the Continental Congress was so fed up with giving commissions to European adventurers that Lafayette had a cold welcome. Nothing daunted, he went back to his inn, wrote Congress a characteristic letter: "After the sacrifices that I have made in this cause, I have the right to ask two favours at your hands: the one is, to serve without pay, at my own expense; and the other, that I be allowed to serve at first as a volunteer in the ranks." Congress blinked over this, decided to take another look at the quixotic Frenchman, then gave him an honorary commission on Washington's staff. But this 20-year-old fire-eater had no intention of remaining a mere supernumerary. At the Battle of Brandywine he proved himself, got a painful wound in the leg. Before he was fully recovered he joined the army again at Valley Forge to share its worst winter. Soon he was leading his own troops with dash and success. He and Washington, who was old enough to be his father, quickly struck up a life-long friendship. (Lafayette named his only son Georges Washington.) After two years' campaigning, at the end of which he nearly died of fever, he went home for a year's leave. By this time France had joined the Colonies against England, and Lafayette was as popular at home as abroad. He returned to the U. S. to cap all his achievements by bottling up Cornwallis in Yorktown, holding him there between his army and the French fleet until Washington's army arrived and the war was over. At 24 Lafayette's colossal reputation be strode the Atlantic; he was known as "the hero of two worlds." The French Court that had despised him now crowded to do him homage. Louis XVI promoted him to brigadier general in the French Army. Maryland's General Assembly gave him and all his male heirs hereditary citizenship. (Later, after the French Revolution had left Lafayette almost penniless, Congress voted him $200,000 and 24,000 acres of land.) Home again, Lafayette settled down on his country estate, but even there he soon showed his besetting quixotry. When his bailiff suggested that it was time to sell his grain, because corn was so scarce it was worth its weight in gold, Lafayette growled : "Then, sir, the time has come to give." And he measured out the bailiff's hoarded grain to the hungry peasants. Lafayette, like many an enlightened aristocrat, saw that France was ripe for trouble, but thought things would improve "little by little, without a great convulsion." He welcomed the convocation of the States-General, took his seat among the Auvergne nobility and prepared to do his bit in giving France a constitution and legalized reform. Then came the fall of the Bastille. Torn between his sworn loyalty to the King and his democratic idealism, Lafayette did his quixotic best to ride the whirlwind. For a while he seemed to be firmly in the saddle. He organized and commanded the famed National Guard of Paris, invented the tri color cockade, gave work to thousands by ordering the Bastille razed. At the tremendous ceremony on the Champ de Mars, when 250,000 Parisians watched Lafayette review his 200,000 National Guards, his popularity reached its zenith. Its waning was rapid.

When Louis and his family nearly escaped, it was Lafayette, their guardian, on whom the blame fell. When National Guards fired on a crowd of peaceful revolutionaries, again it was Lafayette's reputation that suffered. Put at the head of an army to defend France's frontier, he left his command when he heard the King's life was in danger, hurried back to Paris to save him. Instead of saving the King he almost lost his own life: proscribed as a traitor, he fled over the border to Belgium. There, to his intense surprise, he was picked up by an Austrian patrol, clapped into prison. For the next three years, in one grim fortress after another, he was kept in solitary confinement. His captors had a bad conscience about him, kept him incommunicado as long as they could. For 14 months his wife did not know where he was or whether he was alive.

Lafayette's estates were confiscated, his wife and her family imprisoned. Her mother, grandmother and sister were guillotined a few days before the Terror ended; she had better luck. When she finally got her freedom she raised heaven & earth to get her husband his. An attempt at escape, engineered from outside, was unsuccessful. Then she got permission to share his imprisonment, and for two years she and her two daughters emphasized his martyrdom by their own. They were finally freed by the threatening imminence of General Bonaparte and his conquering army.

Still proscribed like any emigre, although the emigres all hated him, Lafayette could not go home again until Napoleon's coup d'etat. Then he settled once more on his restored country estate, too poor to buy a second plow or cultivate more than half his land. Napoleon offered him a Senatorship, wanted to send him as Minister to the U. S. Lafayette not only declined both offers but voted against Napoleon's life consulship, wrote him a personal letter telling him why.

When Napoleon fell, Lafayette made his last spurt into public life. Under the brief Bourbon restoration he orated fiercely in Parliament, in secret headed the Carbonari. Charles X, his lifelong enemy, gave him his due: "There are only two men in France who have remained true to their convictions under all circumstances: M. de Lafayette is one and I am the other." When he was defeated for the Chamber of Deputies he took the opportunity to pay a final visit to the U. S. It was one long triumph: the old man returned with a shipload of presents and prizes, one chest of U. S. soil for his grave (a protest against Bourbon tyranny). He had one more taste of power. When Charles X was kicked out in the revolution of 1830, Lafayette once more commanded the National Guard, for a few hours again ruled Paris. Though the net result of the revolution was to substitute Louis-Philippe for Charles X, Lafayette thought he was fighting on the right side. Biographer Latzko says affectionately: "It had never been his way, indeed, to peep distrustfully behind the scenes." The Author-- Born in Budapest in 1876, Andreas Latzko was meant to be a banker, like his forbears, but turned to journalism instead. The World War's outbreak brought him home from a trip round the world with his wife and child to join his artillery regiment. He commanded a division of Tyrolese, fighting against their compatriots on the Austro-Italian border. Shellshocked, he got a year's furlough in Switzerland, where he wrote his famed Men in War. Translated into 20 languages, the book was promptly suppressed by the belligerent governments. Latzko was reduced to the ranks, condemned to death, but saved his life by staying in Switzerland. Other U. S.-translated books: The Judgment of Peace, Seven Days.

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