The Marquis

by Laura Auricchio

  She made freeing her husband her first priority. Having developed a strategy as bold as it was selfless, she followed it through, step by step, until she succeeded. After arranging to send her son, George Washington Lafayette, to the United States, where she hoped he would be cared for by his Virginian namesake, Adrienne obtained passports for herself and her daughters, petitioned Emperor Francis II for permission to join her husband in prison, and arrived with Anastasie and Virginie at the door of the fortress of Olmutz on October 15, 1795. If Austrian forces were going to keep Lafayette under lock and key, they would have to suffer the public embarrassment of keeping his wife and daughters as well.

  For all of the public and private diplomacy that had gone into obtaining Lafayette’s liberty since 1792, nothing did more to further the cause than the outpouring of international sympathy prompted by Adrienne’s self-imposed incarceration. The story of the family’s imprisonment captured public attention from Paris to Philadelphia, and even those who were unsympathetic to Lafayette were forced to square their views with the poignant drama of the women’s self-sacrifice.

  Washington, who had hitherto kept a judicious distance from the matter, was finally moved to act. On May 15, 1796, he wrote to the emperor. Washington emphasized that his was a private letter, composed not in his capacity as the leader of a nation but merely as a man. “In common with the people of this Country,” Washington wrote, “I retain a strong and cordial sense of the services rendered to them by the Marquis De la Fayette; and my friendship for him has been constant and sincere.” He asked the emperor to consider whether Lafayette’s “long imprisonment, and the confiscation of his Estate, and the Indigence and dispersion of his family, and the painful anxieties incident to all these circumstances, do not form an assemblage of sufferings, which recommend him to the mediation of Humanity?” Private though the letter might have been, Washington was willing to extend the nation on Lafayette’s behalf, asking “that he may be permitted to come to this Country on such conditions and under such restrictions, as your Majesty may think it expedient to prescribe.”

  Around the same time, pressure to release Lafayette began to pour forth in the public sphere, as essays and prints by Lafayette’s supporters capitalized on the sentiments inspired by Adrienne’s sacrifice to build their case. Philippe Charles d’Agrain, a former adjutant general who had crossed into the Austrian Netherlands with Lafayette in 1792 but had been freed within the year, produced the most ambitious of these works—an eighteen-page poem entitled Captivity of Lafayette. Writing in the voice of Lafayette, Agrain tapped into the era’s fascination with dark tales of madness and injustice by painting a tragic picture of the erstwhile champion of freedom stooped under the weight of his irons and dying a slow death, forgotten by all of humankind. Driven to delirium, Agrain’s Lafayette is tormented by dreams of a reunion with his beloved wife until, as if emerging from a fog, he understands that Adrienne is truly there in his arms, with their daughters in tow. Augmented by forty-two pages of explanatory notes and documents detailing Lafayette’s lifelong campaign for righteousness, the poem was reviewed and excerpted in English and American magazines, where it rekindled interest in his imprisonment.

  Two poignant engravings underscore the pathos of Agrain’s narrative: one depicts the moment of the women’s arrival, and the other shows Lafayette alone in a stone room that is illuminated only by a feeble light shining through a small, barred window near the ceiling. In both, Lafayette’s circumstances seem irredeemably bleak, as chains dangle from the wall on the left of the reunion scene, and the words “suffer and die” can be seen inscribed on the masonry above them. Dank and unhealthful though it was, Lafayette’s imprisonment at Olmutz was somewhat less grim than Agrain’s words and images might suggest. Lafayette’s rooms were on the ground floor, not in the basement, and he had not been entirely alone before his family’s arrival—a servant lodged with him, as did two of the officers arrested with him at Rochefort, Charles César de Fay de La Tour-Maubourg (whose younger brother would later wed Lafayette’s daughter Anastasie) and Jean-Xavier Bureau de Pusy (whose son would marry Lafayette’s granddaughter). Agrain may not have been entirely accurate, but his version of events was deeply persuasive.

  Philippe Charles d’Agrain, Captivité de Lafayette: Héroïde, et des notes historiques, non encore connues du public, sur les illustres prisonniers d’Olmutz, en Moravie (Paris: Chocheris, 1797), this page. (illustration credit 18.2)

  Anglophones soon took up their pens in support of the cause. In the United States, former attorney general William Bradford contributed “La Fayette: A Song” to the New-York Weekly Magazine, while the Philadelphia newspaperman Mathew Carey translated Agrain’s engravings into words. Carey was an Irishman who had worked for Benjamin Franklin in France and founded an American newspaper in 1785, with financial backing from Lafayette. In 1797, his paper, the Daily Advertiser, published “Lafayette: A Fragment.” As the article describes it, Lafayette had been sitting “on a coarse misshapen bench” with “ponderous chains” weighing on his legs when “the door creaked on its rust-eaten hinges,” signaling the arrival of Adrienne and her daughters. Recalling with gratitude that Lafayette had entrusted “his fortunes” to America’s “tempest-tost bark” and emerged “crowned with laurels at Yorktown,” the author urges the United States to remember its hero, who, we read near the end, “casts his longing eyes towards America, that country to which the best, the choicest days of his existence were so zealously and so usefully devoted … he trusts she will not cease to reiterate her applications for his relief, till they are crowned with success.” Lafayette had helped establish freedom in America, and Americans wanted to return the favor.

  Calls to intercede came from England as well. Samuel Taylor Coleridge published “Sonnet to the Marquis de La Fayette” in London’s Freemason’s Magazine, while the fiery Whig politicians Charles James Fox and General Richard FitzPatrick tugged at the heartstrings of their fellow MPs with moving speeches. On May 10, 1796, Fox took the floor of the House of Commons to describe the plight of Adrienne, who, after “enduring a series of most dreadful sufferings under the brutal Robespierre … flew on the wings of duty and affection, to Vienna,” where she begged for permission to join her husband. When Adrienne arrived at Olmutz, Fox continued, the jailors did their best to shake her determination. They told her that, in the wake of his recent attempt to escape, Lafayette was now subjected to privations that were stricter than usual, and “that if she resolved to go down to the dungeon to her husband, she must submit to share in all the horrors of his captivity.” At this, the parliamentary record attests, “a burst of indignation and sorrow broke from every part of the House.” Despite every effort to prevent her from taking this fateful step, Fox reported, the virtuous Adrienne refused to be put off.

  FitzPatrick reprised the theme on December 16. Asking his listeners to imagine “what a scene must the reunion of this unhappy family have presented in the circumstances under which they met,” he related a new slew of horrors that Adrienne had suffered since joining her husband. Seven months in the pestilential prison had taken its toll on Adrienne’s health; she was granted permission to seek medical attention in Vienna only on the condition that she not return to Olmutz. Preferring illness to a second separation, Adrienne chose to remain where she was. The most painful injury Adrienne endured, though, was the insult to her piety: a devout Roman Catholic, she was denied the solace of attending Mass or having her confession heard. “It is a torment to her conscience,” FitzPatrick explained, to be barred from exercising “that duty which her religion has prescribed.” So moving was the speech that, before embarking on a rebuttal, FitzPatrick’s archrival William Pitt had little choice but to acknowledge “that a more striking and pathetic appeal was never made to the feelings of the House.”

  By 1797, France’s five-member Directory—the executive branch of the government established after Robespierre’s fall—felt pressed by both internal and external forces to act on Lafayett
e’s behalf, but the matter was beyond its control. Not only did Lafayette remain imprisoned by Austria—a foreign power—but the two nations were still at war. Moreover, the directors had little sway in the ongoing peace negotiations, which were being overseen on the French side by a man who was effectively accountable to no one: General Napoleon Bonaparte. The Corsican-born military leader was not yet thirty years old, but as commander of France’s victorious Army of Italy, he was one of the most popular men in the nation, and quite possibly the most powerful man in Europe. After months of quiet prodding and unofficial negotiations regarding the Lafayette household’s predicament, the president of the Directory wrote to Napoleon on August 1, 1797, asking him to do what he could “to end their captivity as soon as possible.” Lafayette’s family and their fellow captives were released on September 19.

  On October 5, 1797, Samuel Williams, the United States’ consul to Hamburg, wrote to Washington that he “had the happiness of embracing our beloved Friend, General La Fayette, accompanied with his Lady & Daughters.” Washington was a private citizen now, living under the presidency of John Adams, but his interest in Lafayette had for many years been more personal than political. As Williams reported, the company had been warmly received in every town they passed on their way to Hamburg and all were “in pretty good health, excepting Madame Lafayette, who mends daily.” Adrienne had indeed suffered the most severely. When she emerged from prison, a rash covered her body, a gaping sore vexed her leg, and her stomach was constantly unsettled. Williams’s assessment that Adrienne’s health was improving could best be described as wishful thinking.

  The freed captives would not be in Hamburg long. As William Vans Murray, the U.S. consul to The Hague, explained to Washington on August 26, Francis II had “ordered their release provided the necessary steps be taken here to convey them off the territory of the Empire to Holland or America, eight days after their arrival at Hamburgh.” Naturally, Lafayette wanted to embark for the United States as soon as possible, but as Williams wrote to Washington, a few obstacles stood in the way. First, Adrienne was not yet well enough to make such a long voyage. Second, France and the United States were perched on the brink of hostilities. Nonetheless, Williams had assured Lafayette that he would find “a most affectionate reception” in America whenever he should choose to sail. Unfortunately, Williams was mistaken.

  Lafayette was saddened to learn that relations between his native land and his adopted nation had deteriorated so badly. On October 8, he expressed his dismay to the American Francis Huger, a son of Major Huger, at whose house Lafayette had inadvertently landed when he first set foot in America in 1777. Although he did not yet know what had caused the Franco-American breach, he lamented its consequences, writing that “nothing could be more impolitic for the two countries, and more painful for me.” But Lafayette would not give up on his dream, and before putting down his pen he reclaimed the bold optimism that had driven every major decision of his life, for better or for worse, writing, “My most ardent desire is to see these differences resolved quickly.” Contemplating a resolution to the international dispute, he prayed, “May it please God that it might be in my power to contribute to it!!”

  Lafayette’s indefatigable spirit had triumphed over the harsh environs of Olmutz, but even his copious goodwill would not be enough to solve the problems that plagued French-American relations. The once and future allies were on the verge of an international crisis that would go down in history as the Quasi-War. The dispute began with the Jay Treaty—a pact negotiated by John Jay, ratified by Congress, and signed by Washington that settled lingering boundary disputes and reestablished limited commerce between the United States and Great Britain. When the treaty went into effect, on February 29, 1796, France was outraged. From the perspective of a French nation now at war with England—indeed, with most of Europe—the agreement flew in the face of America’s proclaimed neutrality in European affairs while abrogating the 1778 Treaties of Amity and Commerce. Soon, French privateers were attacking American merchant ships with abandon, and hundreds of ships were lost in the space of a year.

  When Lafayette was released from prison, things were going from bad to worse. Adams, who had never much cared for the French, was losing his patience, and the so-called XYZ Affair of 1798 pushed him to his limit. The ill-fated escapade involved three American envoys who, having been sent to Paris to negotiate a resolution to the ongoing hostilities, were greeted by three shadowy go-betweens—known merely as X, Y, and Z—demanding an apology from Adams and substantial financial payments. Apparently Talleyrand, now serving as French foreign minister, would not meet with the Americans until his own pockets had been sufficiently lined and his nation’s coffers replenished by the United States, which, as all of France was well aware, had not yet repaid loans made during the American Revolution. Angry, insulted, and empty-handed, the Americans were told to leave the country.

  Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Adams was pushing for a military buildup in a political climate marked by increasing partisan animosity. On one side stood Adams, Hamilton, and their colleagues affiliated with the Anglophile Federalist Party. On the other side were Jefferson, Madison, and other Francophile members of the Democratic-Republican Party. Involving, as it did, thorny questions of transatlantic allegiances, the Quasi-War became hotly contested on the home front as the country’s first two political parties battled for control of national policy.

  So virulent was anti-French sentiment in Federalist circles that even the beloved name of Lafayette became fair game for political wrangling. In the spring of 1797, two rival Federalist newspapers—Noah Webster’s American Minerva, published in New York, and Porcupine’s Political Censor, published by William Cobbett in Philadelphia—spilled copious amounts of ink in an argument over whether or not it was patriotic to support Lafayette. Although both papers routinely denounced the excesses of the French Revolution, Webster believed that Cobbett went too far in “retailing abuse against Lafayette, whose sufferings (even suppose him to have been in fault, which is doubtful or not admitted) are far too severe, and call for the sympathy of all mankind.” As Webster saw it, Cobbett’s habit of praising France’s old regime “denotes a man callous to the miseries of his species, and extremely disrespectful to the opinions of the Americans, who entertain friendship and gratitude for Lafayette.” Cobbett, who was never one to back away from a fight, countered “that a desire to ingratiate yourself with the deceived part of the public, together with that of injuring me, led [Webster] to bring forward the stalking horse Lafayette, and not any friendship, gratitude, or compassion that you entertained for him.” Then again, he observed that Webster had been foolish enough to pin his “political faith on the sleeve of this unfledged statesman” in the early days of the French Revolution, and that, “like Bailly and Lafayette, you adored the holy right of insurrection, till it began to operate against yourselves.”

  Choosing their words carefully, several of Lafayette’s American friends did their best to persuade him to abandon, or at least to postpone, his planned emigration. Alexander Hamilton, Lafayette’s former comrade-in-arms who had become a Federalist leader, wrote from New York on April 28, 1798, bluntly stating the political differences that now separated them: the execution of Louis XVI and other instances of violence had, he explained, “cured me of my good will for the French Revolution.” Although he assured Lafayette that “no one feels more than I do the motives which this country has to love you, to desire and to promote your happiness,” Hamilton concluded that “in the present state of our affairs with France, I cannot urge you to us.”

  Even Washington, who just two years earlier had suggested to the emperor that Lafayette be free to immigrate to America, now seconded Hamilton’s sentiments. On Christmas Day 1798, Washington wrote to Lafayette that “no one in the United States would receive you with opener arms, or with more ardent affection that I should”—but only “after the difference between this Country and France are adjusted, and harmony between the Nations
is again restored.” Continuing the letter, which was destined to be his last to Lafayette (Washington died less than a year later), he added:

  It would be uncandid, and incompatible with that friendship I have always professed for you to say, (and on your own account) that I wish it before. For you may be assured, my dear Sir, that the scenes you would meet with, and the part you would be stimulated to act in case of an open rupture, or even if matters should remain in status quo, would be such as to place you in a situation which no address, or human prudence, could free you from embarrassment. In a word, you would lose the confidence of one party or the other, perhaps both—were you here under these circumstances.

  Lafayette was still not dissuaded. Replying to Washington on May 9, 1799, he pointed to his half dozen letters as evidence of “how ardently, in spite of difficulties, I long to be in America.” Lafayette conceded that Washington had not been alone in warning him away from the United States, but he added, “I am not without some distant hopes, that … I may become not quite useless to the purpose of an American negotiation.” And although he promised that he would try not to sail before receiving Washington’s reply, he left the possibility open by noting that “in the improbable case where I would suddenly pop upon you, be certain, my dear g[ener]al that my motives should be such as to convince you of their urgency, & then I hope individual independence would be left to an harassed old friend by American parties.”

  Washington and Hamilton, who harbored fond memories of Lafayette, could not have been surprised by his single-minded persistence. But William Vans Murray was just getting to know him and was astounded by Lafayette’s unreconstructed optimism. On March 19, 1799, Murray reported to John Quincy Adams, then serving as America’s minister to Prussia, about a visit with Lafayette and his family, who were now living in Vianen, near Utrecht. Murray wrote that “Lafayette is young in look and healthy, but what I did least expect he is cheerful.” Lafayette was prone to declaring “his attachment ‘to Liberty’ ” without any prompting, Murray observed. “But what exceeded even the pictures of imaginary perseverance, is, that he still … wishes to be instrumental in curing political evils—ameliorating mankind!! Lord have mercy upon us!!” Murray could hardly believe it, but Lafayette did not appear to be jesting: the words flowed from Lafayette’s mouth most “naturally and unaffectedly.”