Marquis de Lafayette

Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, was a French aristocrat and military officer whose service in the American Revolutionary War made him a transatlantic symbol of liberty. Born on September 6, 1757, in Chavaniac, Auvergne, he inherited a vast fortune at age thirteen and married into the Noailles family, one of the most powerful clans at Versailles.

At age nineteen, Lafayette defied King Louis XVI's orders and sailed to North America at his own expense to volunteer for the Continental Army. Commissioned as a major general in 1777, he forged a close bond with George Washington, who treated him almost as a son. He was wounded at the Battle of Brandywine, wintered with the army at Valley Forge, and helped corner Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781.

Returning to France a hero, Lafayette played a central role in the early French Revolution. He commanded the National Guard, helped draft the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen with Thomas Jefferson, and presented the keys of the dismantled Bastille to Washington. As the Revolution radicalized, the Jacobins denounced him; he fled in 1792 and spent five years in Austrian and Prussian prisons.

His later life included a triumphant tour of the United States in 1824 and 1825, during which he visited all twenty-four states and was greeted by enormous crowds. He died in Paris on May 20, 1834, and was buried under soil brought from Bunker Hill.

The name Marie-Joseph combines the Hebrew Miryam, meaning beloved or bitter, with Yosef, meaning he will add. Lafayette derives from the Old French la faye, beech grove. He carried the masculine forms of these names with pride.