To George Washington from the Marquise de Lafayette, 18 April 1795
From the Marquise de Lafayette
29 germinal. [18 April 1795]1
Monsieur.
Je vous envoye mon fils; qu’oique je n’aye pas eu la consolation de me faire entendre et d’obtenir de vous le genre de demarches que je croyais propres a delivrer son Pere des mains de nos ennemis parceque vos vues etaient differentes des miennes, ma confiance n’est pas alterée et cest avec ce sentiment bien profond et bien sincere que je mets ce cher enfant sous la protection des etats unis qu’il est depuis longtems accoutumé a regarder comme une seconde patrie et que je regarde depuis si longtems comme devant etre notre asyle et sous la protection particuliere de leur president dont je connais les sentimens pour son pere.2
celui qui vous remettra cette lettre, monsieur, a été depuis tous nos malheurs, notre appui, notre ressource, notre consolation, le guide de mon fils;3 je desire qu’il ne cesse de l’etre, que jusqu’a son arrivée mon fils reste retiré dans la maison de m. Russel,4 qu’une fois reunis, il ne se separe jamais de lui et que nous ayons le bonheur de nous reunir un jour ensemble dans la terre de la Liberté. cest aux soins genereux de cet ami que mes enfans doivent la conservation de la vie de leur mere; il vint malgré tous les risques exposer à m. Morris l’horrible situation ou j’etais et aprés avoir eu le courage de traverser toute la france dans ce moment d’horreurs a la suite d’une prisoniere devouée selon toutes les apparences a la mort, il obtint du ministre des Etats Unis des demarches dont leffet a probablement ete de differer mon supplice ce qui m’a fait atteindre l’epoque de la revolution du dix thermidor.5 il vous dira que je n’ai jamais fourni de pretexte a aucune accusation, que jamais mon pays n’a eu rien a me reprocher, et moi je vous dirai que c’est prés de lui, avec lui que mon fils apprenait sans cesse et dans labyme du malheur a distinguer la Liberté de toutes les horreurs auxquels on avait osé meler son nom et qu’en recevant chaque jour de lui l’exemple des vertus les plus genereuses, il se formait a cette generosité qui a conservé et conservera toujours je lespere dans son cœur l’amour dune patrie ou des victimes si cheres ont été immolées, ou son pere est meconnu et persecuté et ou sa mere a été quinze mois captive. le comble des sacrifices que cet ami nous a faits est a present de se separer d’une famille qu’il cherit tendrement. le besoin de mon cœur est de faire connaitre à Monsieur Washington ce qu’il est et ce dont nous lui sommes redevables. une simple lettre remplit bien mal cet objet. quand sera ce que je pourai le remplir moi meme.
Mon vœu est que mon fils mene une vie trés obscure en Amerique, qu’il y reprenne des etudes que trois ans de malheur ont interrompues et qu’eloigné des lieux ou d’affreuses images pouraient ou abattre ou indigner trop fortement son ame il puisse travailler a se rendre capable de remplir les devoirs de Citoyen des Etats unis dont les sentimens et les principes seront toujours daccord avec ceux d’un citoyen francais. je ne Vous dirai rien aujourdhuy de ma position ni de celle qui m’interesse beaucoup plus que la mienne;6 je m’en rapporte à l’ami qui se charge de vous present⟨er⟩ cette lettre pour etre l’interprete des sentimens de mon cœur beaucoup trop fletri pour etre capable d’en exprimer d’autres que celui de la reconnaissance. jen dois beaucoup à M. Monroe, M. Skypwith et M. Mountflorence pour leur bienveillance et les differens services qu’ils m’ont rendus.7 Je supplie Monsieur Washington d’agreer avec bonté lhommage de ma confiance, de mon respect et de mon attachement.
Transcript, DLC: Marquis de Lafayette Papers, 1757–1990. A second transcript in the collection supplies the year, which matches the time Mme. Lafayette obtained her release from prison and when her son George Washington Motier Lafayette came to the United States. The second transcript is similar to this letter but is missing several words and phrases.
Mme. Lafayette informs GW that she has sent her son to the United States. Although she has been unable to make herself heard or obtain from the president suitable measures to free her husband from prison, her trust remains. Mme. Lafayette places her son under the protection of the United States, which he has long considered a second homeland.
The person who will deliver her letter to GW has remained a source of comfort and a guide to her son during all their misfortunes. She desires that her son stay at the home of Mr. Russell until his guide arrives and that once reunited the two will not separate. Her children owe the preservation of their mother’s life to the generous care of this friend. He came, despite all the risks, to describe the horrible situation about her condition to Gouverneur Morris. He obtained help from Morris for measures which most likely deferred her agony and enabled her to reach the tenth of Thermidor [28 July].
During that time of horrors, her son received an education in generosity that preserved, she hopes, the love of a native land where victims so dear have been sacrificed, his father forgotten and persecuted, and where his mother was captive for fifteen months. The sacrifices this friend has made for the family now require him to separate himself from loved ones. A single letter is inadequate to describe why they are indebted to this man, and she hopes to see GW one day to explain in person.
Mme. Lafayette desires her son to lead an obscure life in America, resume studies interrupted by three years of misfortune, and work toward rendering himself capable of fulfilling the duties of a U.S. citizen whose sentiments and principles will always accord with those of a French citizen. She declines to describe her situation or that of her husband, relying on the letter carrier to interpret the sentiments of her heart. After acknowledging the services of James Monroe, Fulwar Skipwith, and James C. Mountflorence, Mme. Lafayette closes by imploring GW to accept her trust, respect, and attachment.
1. The transcript has May, but the correct date for 29 germinal is 18 April.
2. George Washington Motier Lafayette (1779–1849) arrived at Boston in late summer. He stayed in that city for a time and then traveled to New York in October. (For the capture and imprisonment of the Marquis de Lafayette, see Marquise de Lafayette to GW, 8 Oct. 1792, and Gouverneur Morris to GW, 23 Oct. 1792, n.1). Young Lafayette had a right to look upon the United States as a second homeland, because in the 1780s some states had conferred citizenship on the marquis and his children (; , 5:439). He remained in the United States until 1798, when he rejoined his family. When Napoleon Bonaparte removed their names from the emigré list, young Lafayette entered the French army and served until 1807. Lafayette revisited the United States when his father toured the country in 1824–25.
3. Mme. Lafayette referred to Felix Frestel, former secretary to the Marquis de Lafayette. He currently served as companion and tutor of her son George. For reasons of security, he had traveled to America separately from his pupil ( 266).
4. Joseph Russell, Jr., of Boston and his brother-in-law Isaac Winslow helped young Lafayette travel to Le Havre, France and board a vessel to the United States. The young man had taken the Lafayette family name of Motier, and stayed in the house of Russell’s father until Frestel joined him ( 266; Eighteeth Report of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution [Washington, 1916], 45).
5. In September 1792 the French Revolutionary government ordered the arrest of the Marquise de Lafayette. She was at first confined to the family estate at Chavaniac in Auvergne, but when the Jacobins gained control of the government in 1793, the National Convention ordered her arrest in November in accord with the Law of Suspects passed on 17 Sept. of that year. Mme. Lafayette remained confined at Brioude, a community on the banks of the Allier River, before her transfer to Paris in June 1794. For the arrest of the Marquise de Lafayette, see Gouverneur Morris to GW, 25 July 1794.
During her time in prison Mme. Lafayette endured cold, a lack of funds, and separation from her children. She learned that her grandmother, Catherine de Cossé-Brissac, duchesse de Noailles; her mother, Henriette-Anne-Louise d’Aguesseau, duchesse d’Ayen; and sister, Anne Jeanne Baptiste Louise, vicomtesse d’Ayen, had been guillotined. When she arrived in Paris, Gouverneur Morris, then U.S. minister to France, informed the French foreign minister Philibert Buchot that her death could not benefit the French government, but would hurt American support for the revolution. She finally obtained her release from prison on 21 Jan. (see Morris to GW, 25 July 1794, and 205–47, 256–62).
Ten Thermidor (28 July 1794) was the day on which Maximilien-François-Marie-Isidore de Robespierre was sent to the guillotine.
6. Mme. Lafayette referred to the arrest of her husband.
7. Monroe, who replaced Morris as U.S. minister to France, brought news of her husband and repeatedly urged the French authorities to release Mme. Lafayette. He proved instrumental in persuading French authorities to move her to an infirmary for her health ( 261; 3:127).
James Cole Mountflorence (d. 1820) grew up in France. He immigrated to America during the Revolution and settled in North Carolina, where he served as a brigade major in that state’s militia and then as quartermaster for the Salisbury District. After the war, Mountflorence moved to Nashville, Tennessee. He returned to France in 1792 as an agent for merchants Thomas Blount and John Gray Blount. By 1795 he worked with U.S. consul Fulwar Skipwith and became increasingly influential as an emissary between American and French officials. He left France as a result of the 1797–98 XYZ affair. Mountflorence then worked as a private secretary to William Vans Murray, U.S. minister to the Batavian Republic, and in 1801 with Robert R. Livingston, U.S. minister to France.