Lafayette_Courtier to Crown Fugitive, 1757-1777 Read online

  “Your Eminence,” spoke up another soldier with his own dirt-stained tears, bowing his head as he spoke through his bandages. “There shall be better days, will there not? We all heard him shout, just before he was slain, “I shall make my son proud—Glory to France!”

  Wiping away his tears, as much at the battle’s loss as for one soldier’s unkindly death, the Duc de Broglie was ready to move on to give new commands and set dispositions of troops towards an uncertain morrow. As a parting thought, he said to those within earshot, “Indeed it is a sad day for us all, but yes, like our beloved country, the Marquis’s son shall grow to know the rekindled glory of France!”

  2.

  NINE YEARS LATER, 1767

  Events of the year: Where the Colonies are pleased the Stamp Act has been repealed the year before they will again become angered upon learning the British Parliament has passed the Townsend Act placing duties on American imports. Upon hearing the news, George Washington, a plantation owner and member of the Virginia House of Burgess, states he will not buy any British taxed goods [“paper only excepted”]. Benjamin Franklin, agent to the Pennsylvania Colony, is in France where, recognized for his experiments in electricity, he is presented at court to King Louis XV and Queen Marie.

  The Seeding of Purpose

  True war on a battlefield must be extremely tiring. He considered this truism quite seriously as his sword flailed against his enemies and time and time again his blows smote down a threatening soldier, then subjugated a platoon, no, an entire battalion fell to mortal wounds. Around and around he sallied, lunging with hacking swipes, side stepping in riposte parries and in blistering demonstration he held the line, yelling to his comrades to mount the parapet and stand beside him to seize the castle.

  Finally, in panted victory, he lowered his wooden sword and observed that such pounding against the aged oak had made but a few notches in the gnarled bark.

  He, alone, with no allied army at his back, no evil horde before him, sat exhausted, leaning against his sole opponent, the stalwart tree. He wiped perspiration from his eyes with a ruffled shirt sleeve. Only now, his eyes dilated by his body’s watered salt did he blink for clarity. He saw the prospect before him, the sharpness of the Auvergne country morning—fresh flowered smells, the honking of farm geese. From where he rested on the raised prospect of the Châteaux Chavaniac, his home, he watched his grandmother’s tenants, to be his tenants in the future, tilling the rich soil. Heavy in labor their hoes dug out weeds among new growth rows of corn stalks. Drifting up to him he heard their rasping, grunted sing-song cadence with each blow at Mother Earth:

  MARLBROOK THE PRINCE of Commanders [their hoe strikes the ground]

  Is gone to war in Flanders, [strike, dig]

  His fame is like Alexander’s, [strike, dig]

  But when will he ever come home? [strike, dig]

  Mironton, mironton, mirontaine. [strike, dig, dig]

  MILADY IN HER WATCH-tower

  Spends many a pensive hour,

  Not knowing why or how her

  Dear lord from England stays.

  Mironton, mironton, mirontaine.

  Away from the workers in their field, below the chateau was the small pond half covered with a mantle of green coated algae where the boy swam on hot summer days. Above the still water a rainbow of the late morning rose and shimmered with the mist. This moment struck him.

  That could be an omen, he considered, where such a symbol might lead me to accomplish great things. He recalled his lessons: Like Constantine and his vision at the Milivani Bridge—In hoc signo vinces [‘with this sign you will conquer’]. He knew his Latin phrases well, so said his tutor, Abbé Fayon.

  There the rainbow was, then gone,—poof—destroyed when behind a silver fluffed cloud a ray of sunlight struck and robbed the pond of its floral spectrum. Perhaps not the best allusion and symbol to his fate, he now concluded, but the mystery of nature had already left its imprint upon a young mind’s imagination. He was a boy of the outdoors.

  Craack! A breaking branch within the wooded grove caused the boy to jump reflexively, quick fear into a readiness to use his sword as a true weapon, then relaxed when he spied the old village woodcutter, his back crippled heavy, bent with a tied load of forest kindling, making his daily delivery to the chateau’s kitchen cooking hearth.

  Looking up from under his burden, the ancient man said with a phlegmatic rattle. “Have you killed more of the English, today, my lord?”

  “Do not jest with me, sir,” said the boy, his voice at first high pitched moved to seek a deep bass, masking his childish trill. “This is my daily practice if I am to be a good solider...” he paused, and reaffirmed his devotion, “as good as my father.”

  “My comment means no offense, your grace. It is a noble calling to bear arms for the king. I too, many years back, served well with pike and in good service it was, in the army of our beloved King Louis. Perhaps you noticed my limp. At Fontenoy, in the heat of battle, a bayonet thrust in the back of this leg ended my marching days.” The old man held silence with a distant memory, and the boy, looked upon him admiringly as if this peasant-soldier was once Achilles of ancient. He sought his own thoughts to wonder what this savage ‘heat of battle’ must be like, and indeed if men must sweat torrents as they fought and died. A fear hit him. Perhaps such soldiers might expire without glory, more from the sun’s blaze than the blade thrust or musket ball. I cannot die bare of fame.

  The woodcutter shifted his load with a groan, “So much blood a triumph on that day cost us all. But not to be for you, young lord, if you to be a general or a warrior duke. I hear great things about your adventures from the children in the village. The children, I mean, sire, those troops that you command. It is said the master of the Château Chavaniac knows, by God’s curse, the English are his sworn enemies.”

  “Indeed, it is so. My father, a colonel in the Grenadiers, was slain by the English artillery at Minden. It is my duty to uphold his honor.” He threw his frail sword of cut wood to the ground in disgust, as if realizing only hard metal could accomplish such blooded obligation. “I shall revenge him on the field of battle.” That sentiment expressed with true feeling for it was one of the few emotions he held in his early life with a certainty of purpose, tradition drilled into him by his tutor and by his family.

  A light smile broke through the woodcutter’s scarred, wrinkled face. “A worthy enemy are those heretics, and indeed a quest I am sure you will no doubt succeed to. But before I join you, and, as a loyal subject to you and your grandmother, I would most surely march to your command, I first must take my faggots to your house so that there may be light for your evening prayers and boiling heat to your meals. Adieu, mon general.”

  And what he said was true of the boy’s playmates. He did command a small squad of younger children, who took his orders, seeing him as the leader of his imaginary adventures. They knew he must be important because of the large fortress manor he came from, understood he was the grandson of the landlord of all the property and tenants for miles around. These playmates were the very young of the scattered village hovels situated around the central estate house, Chavaniac, where those others of his age, those children six to ten years old, and he being the latter at ten years, were daily, except the Sabbath, hard at work in the fields or apprenticed out in crafts of the nearby village. In such games of play, Gilbert du Motier, was the accepted leader over the smaller boys, if not for rank then for exuberance, and in variety of their amusements, he became the Christian knight, el Cid, fighting the Moors, or Vercinetorix spilling the imaginary blood of Caesar’s legions within the forests of Gaul. This neighborhood within the province of Auvergne, 400 kilometers from Paris, bore such embattled histories and Gilbert had been raised in their story-telling.

  The young boy found himself again alone, as he had been most of his life. The woodcutter had disappeared into a tangled path of wild roses climbing towards the back of the châteaux, the entry for all servants and vendors. />
  Gilbert picked up his sword and with an en garde salute to the tree, his implacable and immovable foe, he began a new battle, refreshed with purpose. I shall revenge my father, he swore, yet not so sure how that was to be accomplished in these times of peace.

  Birthplace – The Château de Chavaniac in the province of Auvergne in south central France

  3.

  1767

  Several weeks later, at the evening meal, his grandmother, Marie-Catherine de Chavaniac, within the family called Grandmère, responded appropriately to the boy’s announcement. [Formally, she went by her pre-marriage name, du Motier.]

  “Gilbert, you cannot be serious?”

  “Oh, but I am, grandmère. I intend to kill the beast. I am lord of this village and it is up to me to defend it.”

  “Is this why you had that huge monstrosity taken off the wall to be cleaned... for hunting? That musket might have been your father’s but it was my father’s before that, a relic. I am surprised my papa did bequeath to dear Michèl this match-burning arquebus. Such old weapons are only what we have here for defense.”

  Said Gilbert, “Pierre has cleaned the barrel of slight rust and says it will fire the ball. And I can shoot from the resting stand, though he said he would have to cut it down to my size.”

  Four women around the roughed hewn dining table inspected Gilbert from different vantage points of their positioning. Two of them were his great aunts, Louise-Charlotte de Chavaniac and Marguerite-Madeleine du Motier. In their comparative gossip between themselves, they found the young red-haired noble, a hand-full. With no father to sternly punish the lad’s wild ramblings or abuse him of his character of pouting until he got his way, they had to reluctantly defer to their mother for the proper treatment of such stubbornness.

  Not present that evening was Gilbert’s own mother, Marie Louise Jolie de la Rivière, who had fled to Paris when her husband was slain by English cannon. As the widow La Fayette she would come to the country to see her boy and her dead husband’s family every summer for two months, and more so to seek the cooling of the Auvergne hills. Paris was an inhospitable place to raise a child for a widow and she did not want to have her life as a marquise at Court offset with motherhood problems from any nursemaids. Her mother-in-law could raise the boy.

  Marquise Marie Louise’s life course was determined by the indirect fate of war. To maintain her linked family, rural as they may be, within the lesser nobility of the royal court, she was the sole trumpeter of her lineage and required to be on the scene to protect the inheritances left from her husband’s untimely death. She accomplished such through her youthful beauty and art of conversational flattery and this visibility in the Versailles court enhanced the names of the La Rivière and the La Fayette family clans.

  Another at the table that evening was Charlotte’s daughter, Marie de Guèrin, a year older than the boy, and Gilbert’s playmate when he was confined to more domestic at-home play; Marie openly admired that Gilbert could always create so many worlds of adventure. It was she who spoke up.

  “I have heard the Beast of Gévaudan has killed a hundred women and children,” she said in quiet awe at such a horror. “Abbè Fayon says it could be a gigantic hyena that escaped from a circus in Lyon.”

  “A sickly wolf that feeds on the flesh of babies,” a babbled rumored guess whispered aloud from the servant girl clearing off the soup plates, trying to cross herself for protection but with hands full. A stern look from her mistress sent her scurrying out of sight.

  Gilbert’s grandmother, the true hands-on manager of the estate, studied the boy’s intensity, seeing the determination which had become his trait, not leading to tantrums as more to silent challenges of will against those who opposed him. She loved him like a true son, not a replacement to her lost son, dead these last eight years, a young man sacrificed to the Royal prerogative of duty. Instead of smothering the young marquis with motherly concern, she gave over to prudent release, like dropping the reins of a running wild stallion, wishing, though not once believing, this pent-up energy would drain him into a contemplative and serious student.

  She found him many days daydreaming when not at his studies for he could ignore the hard life outside since it had no bearing on his daily life in his grandmother’s chateaux. Gilbert was not pampered, but simply a child of privilege. Even his earnest desire when of age to go a’soldiering had never been considered to him a profession entailing sacrifice or any loss of comfort. To him and his relatives it was always the calling that he should go to the military, a fact, he never wanted to question. To his way of thinking, at least his tutor’s teachings to him, any self-suffering would receive God’s blessing and lead to enlightenment of the soul.

  “And what are your plans to slay this demon, Gilbert?” asked his Aunt Charlotte.

  “I shall leave tomorrow, perhaps be gone a week, until I find and kill whatever it is.” He sounded confident though his hesitant voice betrayed a strategy not yet worked out.

  “Let us not be too hasty, young man,” a stiff firmness from his Grandmother. “A true hunt must be launched like a military campaign, something even I have some knowledge of, and first and foremost, is the importance of a good quartermaster.”

  Gilbert smiled at his success of gaining permission. She raised her hand to stop him from grabbing the musket and running out into the dark.

  “You cannot stray far. You are the true master of this house, and though you do not exercise your obligated rights or care less for the money it takes to run our household, you must bear the responsibility of your position.” Gilbert now recalled he did have a position of title, as had been drilled into him by his tutor and his grandmère. Heritage and tradition ran deep in his blood, all his family told him, though he had a hard time understanding how the abstract was attached. He had no patience for something he could not see. When he bled with cut or scrape that he could see, the pain he understood.

  “Your hunt shall only be gone two nights into the forest. You will take Pierre as arms man, and I will ask Gamekeeper Jacques to accompany you. Certainly, you must bring back the pelt of this creature. I will have a servant go to prepare meals.”

  “Only two nights?”

  “Report back to me how went your travel, and we will see what comes next. Is that acceptable?”

  Gilbert knew a small victory was still a victory. He slurped through the dinner of roasted lamb stew with onions and with a clatter of his spoon he begged a bowing excusè moi of etiquette and ran to find Pierre to tell the servant he had been promoted from coach valet to adjutant to the hunting party expedition. The Beast of Gévaudan was already bagged, as Gilbert saw the outcome as certain.

  Later, immediately after dinner, before Mme du Motier began her devotions, she was drawn to the window overlooking the gardens. Late summer left redness in the darkening sky. Torches had been lit and she could see Gilbert with his father’s musket, marching, shouldering his weapon, shouting out commands to himself, “Prime and Load”, “Handle Cartridge”, “Prime”, “About”, “Draw Ramrods”, “Ram Down Cartridge”, “Return Rammers”, “Make Ready”, “Present”, “Fire”. Of course, no explosion occurred. Gilbert again marched and again repeated the drill of mastering arms the loading sequences to discharge.

  She could not help but smile with a light laugh as when he went to raise the musket, struggling in his hands with its weight, wavering to gain any true target sighting on his imaginary charging beast. She knew if she had said ‘no’ he might exert his nature and run off to be a lone hunter in the woods, and, away from the bosom of familial security, and in this musket loading practice if suddenly real, as she witnessed, he could easily be hurt.

  She did fear for him but not merely as the reckless boy prone to childish mishaps and wild dares but as the last in blood of his noble line. One had to think in those terms in Royal France in these years of King Louis XV. The boy’s bloodline had meaning, importance, and must be guided to its destiny and expected reward.

 
; His baptized name when born on September 6, 1757 had all the protection from a litany of blessed saints: Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, inheritor of his father’s titles: baron de Vissac, lord of Saint-Roman, the property at Fix...to be addressed as the Marquis de La Fayette.

  4.

  1768

  In February, in Colonial America, Samuel Adams of Massachusetts writes a Circular Letter opposing taxation without representation and calling for the colonists to unite in their actions against the British government. The letter is sent to assemblies throughout the colonies and also instructs them on the methods the Massachusetts general court is using to oppose the Townshend Acts.—In September of this year, France begins the conquest of the island of Corsica. The next year Napoleone di Buonaparte will be born in Corsica, later declaring himself a citizen of France.

  I would be an explorer like Champlain and build an empire in a new world, make friends of all the savages, and defeat them if they would not come to parley.

  “Daydreaming again, Gil?”

  He blinked his eyes open to view the robin egg blue of the sky above him. Lying on the lawn, he turned on his side to answer Marie de Guèrin, his aunt’s daughter, his playmate for the quiet times. A year older than he, more refined in manners, she sat on a blanket, a picnic basket nearby and on her lap was an open book, and he knew which one, La Princesse de Cleves, by a distant ancestor, Madame de La Fayette, the first historical French novel, a thinking story he heard his grandmother say about it. The plot held intrigues of the court but no great battles so he had only read a few chapters and found the sentences tedious to follow.