Lafayette, We Come! / The Story of How a Young Frenchman Fought for Liberty in America and How America Now Fights for Liberty in France

by Rupert Sargent Holland

At Metz Lafayette met Rochambeau, Luckner, and Narbonne, and it was arranged that the three generals should make their headquarters at Liège, Trèves, and Coblentz. News of these military measures somewhat cooled the ardor of the alliance against France and enemy troops stopped collecting along the border. Lafayette took advantage of this to prepare his raw recruits for a possible struggle. They needed this preparation, for the army of France, which had once been the proudest in Europe, had been allowed to scatter during the past few years.

He accomplished much in the way of discipline, was called to Paris to consult on a plan of campaign, found the leaders there as much at odds as ever, and returned to his post at Metz. Again the emigrant nobles and their allies were uttering threats against the French government, and finally, on April 20, 1792, the government declared war on its enemies.

Lafayette’s orders were to proceed against the Netherlands, marching from Metz to Givet, and thence to Namur. Meantime Rochambeau’s army was to attack the Austrians. But there was so much discord among Rochambeau’s divisions that the attack turned into a retreat, and Lafayette, learning this when he arrived at Givet, was obliged to wait there instead of marching farther. The conduct of his soldiers so discouraged Rochambeau that he resigned his commission and the territory to be defended was divided between Lafayette and Luckner. The former concentrated his troops at Maubeuge, and spent the month of May drilling and occasionally making sorties.

In Paris the cause of law and order was having a hard time. The Jacobins wanted to upset the constitution, dethrone the King, and establish a republic, and they were steadily growing stronger. The spirit of revolution was spreading through the country, and everywhere the people gave the greatest applause to the most revolutionary orators. The Assembly was treating Louis XVI. with insolence and the King was retaliating by regarding the deputies with unconcealed contempt. The monarchy and the constitution were fast falling to pieces, and the news of the defeat of the army on the frontier helped to hasten the climax. Gouverneur Morris wrote to Thomas Jefferson in June, 1792, “The best picture I can give of the French people is that of cattle before a thunder-storm.” And a week later he wrote, “We stand on a vast volcano; we feel it tremble and we hear it roar; but how and where and when it will burst, and who may be destroyed by its irruption, are beyond the ken of mortal foresight to discover.”

Lafayette, in camp at Maubeuge, alarmed at the reports from Paris, felt that the cause of liberty and order would be lost unless some effective blow could be dealt at the power of the Jacobins. If some one would take the lead in opposing that group, or club, he believed that the Assembly and the rest of the people would follow. So he wrote a letter to the Assembly, and in this he said, “Can you hide from yourselves that a faction, and, to avoid vague terms, the Jacobite faction, has caused all these disorders? It is this club that I openly accuse.” Then he went on to denounce the Jacobins as the enemies of all order.

When the letter was read in the Assembly the Jacobins attacked it furiously, charging that the General wanted to make himself a dictator. His friends supported him, but the Jacobins were the more powerful. Through their clubs, their newspapers, and their street orators they soon led the fickle people to believe that Lafayette, their idol of a few years before, was now a traitor to them and their greatest enemy.

Another quarrel arose between King Louis and the Assembly, and the former dismissed his ministers. The Jacobins seized on this to inaugurate a reign of terror. The streets were filled with mobs, passionate orators harangued the crowds, men and women pushed their way into the meetings of the Assembly and told the deputies what they wanted done. June twentieth was the anniversary of the Tennis Court Oath, and on that day a great rabble invaded the Assembly, denounced the King, and then marched to the Tuileries, where it found that the gates had been left open. The mob surged through the palace, singing the revolutionary song “Ça ira,” and shouting “Down with the Austrian woman! Down with Marie Antoinette!” The Queen and her children fled to an inner room, protected by a few grenadiers. The King watched the crowd surge by him, his only concession to their demands being to put a liberty cap on his head. After three hours of uproar the leaders felt that Louis had been taught a sufficient lesson and led their noisy followers back to the streets.

A story is told that a young and penniless lieutenant by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte was dining with a friend in the Palais Royal when the mob attacked the Tuileries. Taking a position on the bank of the Seine he watched the scene with indignation. When he saw the King at the window with the red liberty cap on his head, he exclaimed, “Why have they let in all that rabble? They should sweep off four or five hundred of them with cannon; the rest would then set off fast enough.” But the time had not yet come for this lieutenant to show how to deal with the people.

Lafayette heard of the mob’s invasion of the Tuileries and decided to go to Paris to see what he could do to check the spirit of revolution. General Luckner had no objection to his leaving his headquarters at Maubeuge, but warned him that if the Jacobins once got him in their power they would cut off his head. Undaunted by this idea Lafayette went to the capital, and arrived at the house of his friend La Rochefoucauld, entirely unexpected, on the twenty-eighth of June.