As a member of the sword nobility, Lafayette was unusual among the school’s student body. Most of his classmates hailed from the less prestigious Nobility of the Robe, whose families owed their rank to judicial or governmental service. There were even a handful of outstanding scholarship students from bourgeois backgrounds, like Antoine-Joseph Gorsas, the son of a shoemaker from Limoges. Having lived in near isolation until now, Lafayette discovered that he enjoyed the camaraderie and respect he found among his fellow students. They liked him, and Lafayette felt like a rising star among devoted friends who gave him his first taste of leadership. Although he traveled in a circle of older boys, he recalled that the other students acted like “disciples” who “would have defended me fiercely if there was ever a need.” The boys’ dedication did not, however, necessarily extend to the causes Lafayette championed, as he learned on the day he “wanted to mount a revolt to prevent the unjust punishment of one of my comrades.” To Lafayette’s surprise, he found that “I was not as well-supported as I might have hoped.” This was to become a lifelong theme, as Lafayette’s unbounded zeal frequently generated both admiration and bewilderment.
Lafayette later recalled in his memoirs that he learned to enjoy the playful pomp that his newfound wealth allowed. His boys’ nights out must have been a sight to behold. It was his habit to dine in the city with classmates, whom he described as “children sporting épées … which went quite well with their embroidered suits, their bourses [taffeta sacs that collected long hair at the back of the neck], and their curls garnished with powder and pomade.”
This is not to say that Lafayette gave up his dreams of military distinction. He remembered “burning with the desire to have a uniform,” and when he was thirteen years old, he finally received one, thanks to his great-grandfather the Comte de La Rivière, who secured him a place in a unit that had welcomed many earlier members of the family: the Black Musketeers, soldiers of the king’s guard. Lafayette was delighted with this turn of events at the time, but in retrospect he recognized that the appointment was ceremonial. The troops of the Maison du Roi had disgraced themselves in the War of Austrian Succession, during the 1740s, when they’d bolted from combat, and thereafter they were relied upon to be little more than mannequins in smart uniforms. Still, Lafayette took an adolescent pride in his membership and was pleased to discover that participating in a picturesque review before the king counted as an excused absence from class—a bonus that any schoolboy would have appreciated. Writing about this in his memoirs, he adopted the self-deprecating tone that so endeared him to the American public, noting that he had been thrilled “to ride to Versailles in full uniform to hear the king tell me … that he had nothing to order, and to report back to the commander of the musketeers the same news that was repeated to him three hundred and sixty-five days a year.”
Nonetheless, four years at the Collège du Plessis helped Lafayette grow into the serious man who would leave his mark on history. The yearning for achievement that had inspired him to pursue the Beast of the Gévaudan motivated him to prove his mettle in the academic arena, and he succeeded admirably—albeit not admirably enough to satisfy his desires. Lafayette recalled with pride that he won the prize for Latin rhetoric given out by his collège, but he remained disappointed that he had not triumphed in the university-wide stage of competition. Implying a miscarriage of justice, his memoirs lament that boys who had taken the same Latin class several times over were permitted to compete in the contest, while he had completed the course only once. Lafayette believed that he would have carried the day despite the handicap if only he had been a better copyist, as his paper had been graded harshly by a judge who took off one point for each missing word of an inadvertently omitted sentence.
Although the study of Latin did not immediately yield the laurels that Lafayette craved, it may well have been the single most important undertaking of his young life. Latin gave the excitable lad a potent means of focusing his youthful enthusiasms—through the language, history, and philosophy of the ancient Roman republic and the classical world. Through his coursework, he imbibed the moral and ethical principles put forth in such texts as Cicero’s “On Moral Duties,” Virgil’s pastorals and Georgics, and the odes and satires of Horace—all standard reading in the colleges of Paris. History, represented in the curriculum by the Grecian progenitor of the discipline, Herodotus, and biography, where Plutarch loomed large, both became lifelong passions. Books by these authors, their contemporaries, and their followers lined the shelves of his libraries, and the lessons they taught shaped the outlines of his life.
Lafayette was hardly alone in his fascination with republican Rome, whose citizens shunned despotism to govern themselves according to principles of virtue and honor. Louis-Sébastien Mercier, an incisive chronicler of eighteenth-century Paris, wrote in 1781 that “Rome was the first name that reached my ears … the names of Brutus, of Cato and Scipio followed me in my sleep.” So fully did the Decades of the Roman historian Livy fill his mind that Mercier reported it took him “a good deal of time to return to being a citizen of my own country” after he put down his schoolbooks. Mercier did not miss the irony that France’s absolute monarchy employed teachers to “explain solemnly all the eloquent declarations advanced against the power of kings” by the ancient Romans. “One comes away from the study of the Latin language with a taste for republics,” he observed. But he warned that young men emerging from the collèges “must lose and forget” such political lessons quickly “for their safety, for their advancement and for their happiness.” As Mercier suggested, any student who found “himself at Versailles” dreaming, “despite himself, of Tarquin, of Brutus, of all the proud enemies of royalty” was in a highly awkward situation.
On April 3, 1770, Lafayette was still immersed in tales of Roman virtue when his mother died in the family’s rooms at the Luxembourg Palace. A few weeks later his grandfather, too, was lost—perhaps, as Lafayette wrote, due to grief. At twelve years old, Lafayette was an orphan—an extraordinarily wealthy orphan. Lafayette’s inheritance from his grandfather dwarfed the income from the lands in the Auvergne. From those southern properties, Lafayette received approximately 18,000 livres annually, while his grandfather’s estates in Brittany and Touraine yielded more than 60,000 livres per year. And upon the death of his great-grandfather in 1781, another 17,000 livres would be expected every twelve months. Altogether, with investments in the East India Company and rent from properties in Paris, Lafayette’s annual revenues routinely topped 100,000 livres. In some years, he brought in nearly 130,000 livres—all of it returns on investments. By way of comparison, a skilled laborer with steady employment seldom earned more than 1,000 livres per year at this time. Incomes as large as Lafayette’s were rarely found outside of the highest levels of nobility, and they were almost never seen in the hands of a young boy from the provinces.
Lafayette was too young, too naïve, and too lost in mourning to manage such sums. Even in the best of times, money interested him very little; for much of his life he relied on friends, family members, and advisers to help him watch over his wealth. In the early years, relatives in Paris managed Lafayette’s day-to-day finances while his grandmother kept tabs on developments from Chavaniac, and the entire clan began to look for a suitable bride to marry the suddenly rich young heir. Arranging a marriage among noble families naturally involved an intricate social and financial calculus. That the bride and groom might be personally compatible was always to be desired, but the preferences of two individuals carried less weight than the benefits a proposed alliance might bring the families. Given Lafayette’s stunning fortune, his guardians were not obliged to find a bride who would bring a large dowry, but they were eager to find a match that would give the young man a ready-made network of influence. To avoid a lifetime of obscurity at Chavaniac, Lafayette needed an advantageous marriage that would provide entrée to court.
Lafayette could not have hoped for a wife better suited to this purpose than the youn
g woman selected for him, Adrienne de Noailles, who was descended from one of France’s most distinguished and influential families. Her father, the Duc d’Ayen, was renowned as both a chemist and a courtier; other close kin ranked among Louis XV’s most trusted advisers. Adrienne’s great-uncle the Duc de Mouchy had been inducted into several prestigious chivalric orders—the Order of the Golden Fleece, the Order of the Holy Spirit, the Order of Saint Louis—and in 1775 he would be named maréchal de France, the nation’s highest military honor. Élisabeth Vigée-LeBrun, the most sought-after portraitist in Paris and a favorite of Marie Antoinette’s, dined frequently at the home of the maréchal, where she shared the table with a select roster of guests who, she wrote in her Souvenirs, were chosen from among “the literary celebrities and the most distinguished figures of the city and the court.” The maréchal’s wife, the Comtesse de Noailles, had been appointed dame d’honneur to Marie Antoinette upon the dauphine’s arrival in France and charged with the daunting task of introducing the notoriously informal Austrian princess to the intricate social protocol required of the wife of the French heir apparent. So renowned was the comtesse for her stern demeanor and unyielding insistence on propriety that Marie Antoinette bestowed upon her the affectionately mocking nickname “Madame l’Étiquette.” Aside from princes and princesses of royal blood, few families wielded as much power as the Noailleses.
Why would such a family marry their daughter to an unknown youth from a distant outpost? The Duc d’Ayen had his reasons. As the father of five girls, d’Ayen faced the unenviable task of assembling five dowries hefty enough for five sons-in-law to accept. Lafayette, with his solid finances but comparatively undistinguished social status, was the rare marital prospect who would care little about Adrienne’s fortune.
Adrienne’s mother, Henriette Anne Louise d’Aguesseau, the Du- chesse d’Ayen, was less sanguine. She had just arranged an ideal union for her eldest daughter, who was set to marry the well-bred Vicomte de Noailles, a cousin of the Duc d’Ayen’s. Perhaps she shared the prejudice articulated by the Comte de Ségur, a friend of Lafayette’s, who nonetheless thought ill of noblemen from the provinces in general. In his memoirs, Ségur blithely pronounced that “one almost always recognized a man of the court by his politeness, and it was among the young country gentlemen that one most frequently encountered arrogance and a tendency to be easily offended.” In the duchesse’s view, Adrienne, who was just twelve years old, still had plenty of time. Lafayette’s would surely not be the last offer, and the duchesse sincerely hoped that it would not be the best. So vehemently did duc and duchesse disagree that they could not bear to live under the same roof for several months. He stayed at the family home in Versailles while she remained in Paris until a compromise was struck: the marriage contract would be signed but kept secret—above all, from Adrienne—and the wedding would be put off for two years. If Lafayette were to embarrass himself in the interval, his prospective in-laws could break off the engagement and be spared the taint. Long before news of the planned union became public, the young man moved into a wing of the Noailles town house in Versailles in the capacity of a privileged lodger. He paid a rent of 8,000 livres a year, supplied his own servants, paid for his own food and fuel, and—most important from the perspective of the duchesse—remained under the constant surveillance of his future in-laws. Transforming the provincial marquis into a suitable husband was not a matter to be taken lightly.
Lafayette was therefore uprooted once more and would have to adjust to a new home, a new family, and a new school, not to mention a new set of expectations from his prospective in-laws. The transition was rocky. He abandoned the Collège du Plessis and its classical curriculum for the Académie de Versailles, which offered instruction in the finer points of comportment to children of the court nobility. There, Lafayette was expected to learn to ride like a gentleman officer, to dance with grace, and to wield an épée with aplomb. These skills could make or break a man at court, where impeccable manners were demanded at all times and a single miscue could mark a man for life. As the historian David A. Bell points out, a courtier’s emphasis on bodily performances was not purely arbitrary, since “the same qualities that made him a graceful and well-mannered noble … would also, he believed, make him an able warrior.” As a result, esoteric rules of behavior governed every moment at Versailles, and most of Lafayette’s new classmates had already absorbed this unwritten code of conduct as if by osmosis. Since early childhood, they had watched their elders perform rarefied rituals. By the time these boys reached adolescence, even outlandishly contrived postures and poses seemed like the most natural movements on earth. But all of this was foreign to Lafayette, who in truth was never able to master the finer points of a courtly existence.
The Académie also taught Lafayette harsh new lessons in social rank. For the first time in his life, he was immersed in a society of young men whose lineages surpassed his own in every respect. Their families were more ancient, better educated, and more successful in every way than any Lafayette had ever known. They wielded enormous power, enjoyed unchallenged esteem, and possessed truly breathtaking wealth. His most notable classmate was the Comte d’Artois, a brother of the future King Louis XVI. Lafayette had been transported into the most elevated of all possible realms, one where the battlefield deaths of his progenitors, the provincial fame of his grandmother, and his appointment to the Black Musketeers counted for much less than the dreamy boy from the Auvergne had once believed.
CHAPTER 2
THE OUTSIDER
On the morning of Saturday, March 26, 1774, the sixteen-year-old Lafayette played a central role in the recurring drama known as the presentation at court. Although the leading players changed with each performance, the essence of the event had remained essentially the same since the age of Louis XIV—the Sun King—who’d transformed the Château de Versailles from a hunting lodge into a dazzling theater of royal power during the seventeenth century.
As the clock approached ten, the jaded denizens of Versailles assembled in the palace’s richly decorated corridors to watch the spectacle unfold. Soon a nobleman would appear in their midst, offering himself up for dissection by their sharp eyes and sharper tongues. Even garments made of the softest silks would do nothing to soothe his anxieties: the ceremonial sword hanging by his side might cause him to stumble; worse still, his powdered wig might be styled in last year’s fashion. Surreptitious glances would size him up as he passed through towering gates of gilded iron, climbed the vibrantly colored marble steps of the Queen’s Staircase, and walked through the collection of martial regalia that filled the King’s Guard Room on the way to the king’s bedchamber, at the center of the palace. The antechamber to the king’s bedroom, the Salon de l’Oeil de Boeuf, named for its bull’s-eye window, was the newcomer’s hall of judgment, its gilt paneling punctuated by mirrors facing mirrors that multiplied his every gesture. His self-consciousness might increase as murmurs reached his ears; courtiers might wonder aloud about this stranger, but none would speak to him. At long last a door would open and, as His Majesty entered the room, a maréchal would whisper the name of the newcomer. The king might gaze upon the debutant—or he might not—without ever breaking his stride as he continued on his way.
Lafayette was presented as a member of the “nobility of old extraction”—an honor reserved for those whose aristocratic lineages dated back at least to the year 1500. But even with an ancient family tree, most sons of the provincial nobility could not expect to bask in the presence of the king for more than a single day. Lafayette’s own father had made just one appearance at Versailles before returning to the countryside. In general, men who lived in the rural regions of France did not possess the financial resources to acquire elevated military appointments, the social connections to serve in the royal household, or the education needed for diplomatic or ministerial posts. Lafayette, however, was not typical. His fortune was substantial, and he was set to marry into one of the court’s most respected families
in less than a month. For him, this would be the first of many visits to the Salon de l’Oeil de Boeuf.
Lafayette’s place at Versailles had seemed to be assured when he’d married the fourteen-year-old Adrienne de Noailles on April 11, 1774. The wedding Mass was celebrated by the Abbé Murat, the same cousin who had baptized Lafayette sixteen years earlier. As the family gathered to witness the holy union in the lavish chapel of the Hôtel de Noailles in Paris, a grand complex just a few blocks from the Tuileries Palace, there could be no doubt that Lafayette had come a long way from the simple village church where he’d received his first sacrament. And yet, although the building was surely one of the city’s architectural treasures, for Lafayette it was a gilded cage.
The animated boy who’d attracted a following at the Collège du Plessis became taciturn and awkward at the Hôtel de Noailles. The Comte d’Espinchal, a fellow Auvergnat who served as captain of the Regiment of the Queen’s Dragoons and never forgave Lafayette for his part in the French Revolution, described him as “pale, cold and lifeless.” Even the Comte de Ségur, one of Lafayette’s closest friends, remembered him having “a cold and serious bearing, which sometimes created a false impression of timidity and embarrassment.” Lafayette became notorious for refusing to participate in discussions that did not, in his opinion, merit consideration; naturally forthright, he was uncomfortable in conversations that privileged style over substance. Worse than unfashionable, his silence generated widespread disfavor—an effect, Lafayette acknowledged, exacerbated “by the gaucheness of my manners which, without being out of place on any important occasion, never yielded to the graces of the court or to the charms of supper in the capital.” With a touch of remorse, Lafayette confessed in his memoirs that “disguised pride” lay at the root of his reticence. His withdrawn manner was a protective feint, intended to stave off any embarrassment that he might unwittingly bring upon himself while he got his bearings in a world that was as unfamiliar as it was unforgiving.
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