The Boys Life of Lafayette 36

The Boys Life of Lafayette 36

If, as certain French historians say, Lafayette and Napoleon were

dictators in turn, Lafayette's task was in a way the harder of the two;

for Napoleon's turn came after the fury had spent itself and men were

beginning to recover, sobered by their own excesses. It was in the

mounting delirium of their fever that Lafayette's middle course brought

upon him first distrust, then enmity from both sides.

 

If an Austrian prison had not kept him from destruction he must have

perished during the Revolution, for he was never swerved by fear of

personal danger. One of his eulogists asserts that he was "too noble

to be shrewd." Another says that he judged men by his own feelings and

was "misled by illusions honorable to himself." After his experience in

America he undoubtedly expected to play a great part in the uprising

in France, and, not realizing the strength of selfishness and passion,

helped to let loose forces too powerful to control. One of his critics

has asserted that he never made a wise or a correct decision; but

critics and eulogists alike agree that he was upright and brave. They

are justified in saying he was vain. His vanity took the form of

believing himself right.

 

He was not self-seeking, and the lack of that quality caused him to

be regarded with puzzled surprise by men who could not understand his

willingness to step aside in favor of some one else, when he thought

the cause demanded it. "It seemed so foolish," said Madame de Staël

[Pg 295]in her sympathetic portrait, "to prefer one's country to

oneself... to look upon the human race, not as cards to be played for

one's own profit, but as an object of sacred devotion." Chateaubriand

said that forty years had to pass after Lafayette's death before people

were really convinced that he had been an idealist and not a fool. The

fact was brought home to them, little by little, as records scattered

to the four winds during the Revolution gradually saw the light of

print; here a public document, there a private letter, there again a

bit of personal reminiscence. Fitting together like a puzzle, they

showed at last how one single idea had inspired all Lafayette's acts,

even when they seemed most erratic. "Fortunately for him," says one

of his French biographers, "it was the idea of the century--political

liberty."

 

In his lifetime he arranged his papers for publication and dictated

occasional bits of comment; but these were only fragmentary, as many of

his papers were lost. Besides, it was a task for which he had no great

zest. He said it seemed ungracious to accuse men of persecuting him who

afterward died for the very principles he upheld. He was sure history

would accord to each his just deserts. Madame de Staël said that his

belief in the final triumph of liberty was as strong as the belief of a

pious man in a future life. He said himself that liberty was to him a

love, a religion, a "geometric certainty."

 

To his last day he pursued this ideal of his wherever it led him. His

failure to learn worldly wisdom irritated many. It was incongruous,

like the contrast between his polished old-time manners and the rash

[Pg 296]utterances that fell from his lips. It must be confessed that

in his latter years he was not always clear-sighted as to the means he

employed. Once he descended to methods better suited to Italy in the

Middle Ages than to political reformers in 1822. There were times, too,

when he seemed bent on self-destruction. Those near him were convinced

that he would like to lose his life provided he could thereby add to

the luster of his reputation. "I have lived long," was his answer to

intimate friends who gave him counsels of prudence. "It seems to me

that it would be quite fitting to end my career upon the scaffold, a

sacrifice to liberty."

 

Napoleon's estimate of him was short and severe. "Lafayette was another

of the fools; he was not cut out for the great rôle he wanted to play."

When some one ventured to remind the ex-emperor of Lafayette's spirited

refusal to give him up on the demand of the allied powers, Napoleon

answered dryly that he was not attacking Lafayette's sentiments or

his good intentions, but was merely complaining of the mess he made

of things. Lafayette's estimate of the former emperor was even more

severe. He thought Napoleon's really glorious title had been "Soldier

of the Revolution" and that the crown was for him "a degradation."

American history would have been the loser if either of these men

had not lived. Lafayette helped win us our country. By selling us

Louisiana, Napoleon almost doubled its extent. Napoleon's heart rarely

led him into trouble; personal ambition seldom led Lafayette far

[Pg 297]astray. The two can be contrasted, but not compared. There is

food for thought in the fact that a statue of Lafayette, modeled by an

American sculptor and given by five million American schoolchildren to

France, should have been erected in the Louvre on the spot once set

apart for a statue of the French emperor.

 

Madame de Staël thought Lafayette more like the English and Americans

than like the French, even in his personal appearance. Another French

estimate, that he had "a cold manner, masking concentrated enthusiasm,"

is quite in keeping with American character, as was his incorrigible

dash of optimism. It was to America, a country of wide spaces and few

inhabitants, that he followed his vision of liberty in early manhood,

and there where the play and interplay of selfish interests was far

less complicated than in France he saw it become a practical reality.

Later he championed many noble causes in many parts of the world. Next

to political freedom and as a necessary part of it, he had at heart

the emancipation of the negroes. This he tried himself to put into

practice. He was shocked when he returned to our country in 1824 to

find how much race prejudice had increased. He remembered that black

soldiers and white messed together during the American Revolution.

 

Religious liberty for Protestants, civil rights for Jews and

Protestants; suppression of the infamous _lettres de cachet_; trial

by jury; a revision of French criminal law to allow the accused

the privilege of counsel, of confronting witnesses, and of free

[Pg 298]communication with his family--benefits, by the way, which were

all enjoyed by the accused in the state trials which took place while

Lafayette was in power; abolition of the death penalty and freedom of

the press were some of the measures most ardently championed by this

believer in liberty and law.

 

He remained a man of visions to the end. After his death one of the

men who wrote in praise of him said that if he had lived during the

Middle Ages he would have been the founder of a great religious order,

one which had a profound moral truth as its guiding principle. Another

compared him to a Knight of the Round Table fighting for the lady of

his adoration, whose name was Liberty. Possibly no knight-errant,

ancient or modern, can seem altogether sane, much less prudent, to the

average unimaginative dweller in this workaday world. Yet what would

the workaday world be without its knights-errant of the past; the good

their knight-errantry has already accomplished; the courage it inspires

for to-day; the promise it gives us for the future?

 

If we dwell on the few times that Lafayette did not choose wisely, the

times when the warm impulses of his heart would have carried farther

had his head taken a more masterful part in directing his acts, we are

tempted to echo the criticism made upon the unfortunate Louis XVI,

"What a pity his talents did not equal his virtues!" But when we think

of the generous, optimistic spirit of Lafayette, and how that spirit

remained unchanged through good fortune and ill from boyhood to old

age; of his fearless devotion to right as he saw the right; of his

[Pg 299]charm, and of the great debt our country owes him, his mistakes

fade away altogether and we see only a very gallant, inspiring figure

uniting the Old World with the New.

 

There can be no better eulogy for this brave gentleman, beloved of

Washington, than the few words he wrote in all simplicity after he had

been called upon to make his great decision between Louis Philippe and

himself:

 

"I did as my conscience dictated. If I was mistaken, the mistake was made in good faith."