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| Lafayette as a dashing young general (Portrait by Joseph-Désiré Court) |
Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis
de Lafayette (1757 –1834) is remembered chiefly today, especially in the United
States, as one of the heroes of the
American Revolution. The popular image is of the dashing young French general
who became an all but surrogate son to George Washington but this was at the very
outset of his remarkable career. He was to be one of those rare long-lived
people who came to maturity in a world that was shortly to disappear forever and
was to participate in – and barely survive – vast revolutionary turmoil thereafter,
who was to spend seven years in an Austrian prison and who was to remain
politically influential into his old age.
In the post-Waterloo
period, in which the Bourbon monarchy had again been restored to France,
Lafayette, out of sympathy with the regime, took no role in government. By the early 1820s he was the last surviving
general of the War of Independence and his reputation was probably higher in the
United States than in France itself. The heroes of the period were dying off,
even as the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence was
approaching – though John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were to survive to die simultaneously
on the exact date, 4th July 1826. The time was never more
appropriate for Lafayette to revisit the United States. He declined an offer of
transport on a ship of the US Navy and instead took passage on a merchantman,
the Cadmus.
I recently found an account by an un-named British army-officer
of his strange meeting with Lafayette in mid-Atlantic. It appeared in a book tantalising
entitled Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny,
Murder And Piracy, published in New York at an unspecified date in the 19th
Century, and it offers a pleasing insight to Lafayette’s character. I quote in
full below:
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| The mature Lafayette, 1825 (Portrait by Matthew Harris Jouett) |
“In June, 1824, I embarked at Liverpool on board the Vibelia transport with the head-quarters
of my regiment, which was proceeding to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Our passage
across the Atlantic was smooth, though long and tedious. After passing over the
great bank of Newfoundland, catching large quantities of codfish and halibut,
and encountering the usual fogs, we were one morning, about the end of July,
completely becalmed. All who have performed a voyage, know the feeling of
listlessness to which a landsman abandons himself during a calm. The morning
was slowly passed in looking for appearances of a breeze—whistling for a wind,
and the other idle pursuits usual on such occasions. Towards noon, a sailor
from aloft pointed out to our observation a vessel at a distance, also, of
course, becalmed. All eyes and glasses were immediately directed towards her, but she was too far off
for the most experienced to determine whether she was English or foreign,
man-of-war or merchantman. After a time it occurred to me, that it was a favourable
opportunity for breaking in upon the monotony of the day. My influence with our
captain obtained permission for the small cutter to be lowered, but he would
not allow a single seaman to leave the ship. I therefore became coxswain of the
boat, and, accompanied by four of my brother officers as rowers, we pushed off,
determined to pay a visit to the strange sail. To our landsmen’s eyes and
judgment, she had appeared to be about four miles from us, but we found
ourselves very much out in our calculation — it was more than double that
distance. The rowers, however, pulled on bravely — we neared the stranger,
making her out to be a large American merchantman, and as he was approached, we
observed a number of persons on deck reconnoitring us through glasses.
At
length we were alongside, and I passed on board, followed by three of my
companions, one remaining in charge of the boat. On reaching the deck, we found
it crowded with men, who seemed to regard us with wondering looks. I stepped
forward and was received by the Captain, who acquainted me that his vessel was
the American ship Cadmus, on her
passage from Havre-de-grace to New York, with General the Marquis de Lafayette
and suite as passengers. A noble, venerable looking veteran advanced from the
poop towards us, and offered his greetings with the courtesy of the old French
school. He was Lafayette. My explanation of who we were, and the motive of our
visit, appeared to excite his surprise. That five officers of the land service,
unaccompanied by a single sailor, should leave their vessel on the open ocean,
and from mere curiosity, visit a strange sail at such a distance, was, he
declared, most extraordinary. He said they had observed our ship early in the
morning—had been occupied (like ourselves) in vain endeavours to make us
out—had remarked an object, a mere speck upon the sea, leave the vessel and
move towards them, and when at length it was made out to be a boat, the
probable cause of such a circumstance had given rise to many surmises. I told
him in mitigation of what he deemed our rashness, that we were, as a nation, so
essentially maritime, that every man in England was more or less a sailor. At
all events, I ventured to add if we had encountered some little risk, we had
been amply repaid in seeing a man so celebrated, and of whom we had all heard and
read.
Our comrade being relieved by an American sailor in the care of the boat,
we accepted the General’s offer of refreshment, proceeded to the cabin, and
passed a most agreeable hour. The fast approach of evening and appearances of a
breeze springing up induced us to take leave. We separated from the old chief,
not as the acquaintance of an hour, but with all the warmth—the grasp and
pressure of hand—of old friends. As I parted from him at the gangway, he
mentioned having caused a case of claret to be lowered into our boat, which he
begged us to present to our Colonel and the other officers of our mess. We
pulled cheerily back, but it was not until long after dark that we reached the Vibelia, and which we perhaps could not
have accomplished, but for their having exhibited blue lights every few minutes
to point out her position. We found our comrades had been in great alarm for
our safety. Various had been the surmises. That we had boarded a pirate, and
been sacrificed, or made prisoners, was most prevalent, and a breeze was
anxiously prayed for, that they might bear down, and release or revenge us.
Half an hour after we returned to our ship, a light wind sprang up, which very
shortly freshened into a gale, so that in the morning we had completely lost sight
of the Cadmus."
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| Souvenir plate commemorating Lafayette's arrival at The Battery, New York, 1824 |
Lafayette’s subsequent
tour of the United States, starting with his reception by vast enthusiastic
crowds in New York, was to last 13 months. It took him all over the United
States as it then was – essentially all east of the Mississippi and the endless
round of parades, speeches, civic receptions and visits to battlefields he had
fought on must have been exhausting. It was ironic that, having survived death
in battle or by the guillotine, he was to have a narrow escape in peacetime
when the steamboat carrying him up the Ohio River sank and he had to escape in
a lifeboat. He was prevailed upon to accept passage home in an American warship
– the aptly named USS Brandywine, called
after the battle in Pennsylvania in which he had been wounded in 1777.
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| The USS Brandywine, the warship in which Lafayette returned to France in 1825 |
Though 68 when
he returned to France, Lafayette was to play a significant political role in his
final years. He was an outspoken critic of the Bourbon monarchy in the lead-up to
the Revolution of 1830 and a strong advocate of American-type representative
government. He played a leading role in this new revolution but shied away from
establishing a republic, supporting instead a constitutional monarchy with the duc
d'Orleans, as “The Citizen King”, Louis Philippe. Lafayette went into retirement
thereafter and grew increasingly disillusioned with the regime he had helped
set up. He died in 1834, the last senior military leader of America’s War of Independence. Even today,
as it was at the time of his death, he is probably better known in the United
States than in his native land.
Britannia’s Shark by Antoine Vanner
1881 and the power of the British Empire seems unchallengeable.
But now a group of revolutionaries threaten the economic basis of that power. Their weapon is the invention of a naïve genius, their sense of grievance is implacable and their leader is already proven in the crucible of war. Protected by powerful political and business interests, conventional British military or naval power cannot touch them. A daring act of piracy draws the ambitious British naval officer, Nicholas Dawlish, and his wife into this deadly maelstrom. Amid the wealth and squalor of America’s Gilded Age, and on a fever-ridden island ruled by savage tyranny success – and survival –will demand making some very strange alliances...
Britannia’s Shark brings historic naval fiction into the dawn of the Submarine Age.
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