Adopted Son Read online

  European nobles were notorious for the hands-off way they raised their children. Their marriages were arranged and often loveless, dynastic contracts between rich families to produce offspring and legitimize the transfer of titles and property between generations. The children grew up under the guidance of tutors and nurses until it became time for them to marry and for the boys to become military cadets. Lafayette was fortunate among his generation in that he was closely raised and loved by blood relations.

  His grand-mère paternelle, Edouard’s widow, had brought Chavaniac into the family as part of her dowry. She had lived in the house since 1701. Madame de Chavaniac was an unusually enlightened mistress over the family’s estates, allowing the peasants to hunt and garden on her lands and to take firewood from her forests. When times were hard she made sure nobody went hungry. Moreover, she was a canny businesswoman who expanded the family’s properties. She also bought out all supervising feudal rights over Lafayette, so he owed allegiance to no lord but the king.11

  With her at Chavaniac was her spinster daughter, Madeleine, mademoiselle du Motier. When Lafayette was five, the household was joined by Madeleine’s widowed sister, Charlotte Guèrin, baronne de Chavaniac, and her six-year-old daughter, Marie de Guèrin, who became like a sister to him. Lafayette, an unusually beautiful, cherubic little boy, grew up among—not under the supervision of—three generations of females, who doted on him.12

  In fact, they let him run wild. He roamed over the estate playing games, especially war games, and dragooned peasant boys into following him in mock battles and parades. “From the time I was eight,” he recalled years later, “I longed for glory.” A cousin visited Chavaniac in 1768, when Gilbert was ten, and reported that he saw in the boy the “seed of self-esteem and even of ambition.” The seed thus planted was of what Thomas Jefferson later described as Lafayette’s “canine appetite for popularity and fame.”13

  At the age of eight, Lafayette recalled when he was twenty-two, his heart pounded when he heard of a hyena that was wreaking havoc in the neighborhood. What he referred to was the “Hyena of the Gévaudan,” which showed up in the area in 1765. It killed livestock, terrorizing the region enough that the king sent royal gamekeepers to bag it. When a newspaper said that somebody named Lafayette had met the beast and run from it, he wrote a vicious letter to the editor, which his aunt intercepted.

  The monster continued to roam the territory until 1787, when a hunter killed it. If it was the same animal that had appeared two decades earlier, it turned out to be either a big lynx or a wolf (accounts differ) with an inflated reputation. That was not enough for Lafayette about twenty years further on. Typically revising his early life in his memoirs, he described the “Beast of the Gévaudan” as the killer of 120 women and children along with its usual diet of sheep. He claimed that he grabbed his father’s musket from the wall and headed into the forest when the monster first appeared, but his tutor and aunts made him come home.14

  Lafayette’s glorious obsessions were fueled by his education at Chavaniac. His grandmother hired his first tutor when he was five. Two years later an itinerant pedagogue, the Abbé Fayon, entered the household, and stayed to teach the young marquis and his cousin. Daily instruction emphasized reading, writing, and arithmetic, along with such broader learning as children their age could take.

  This generation of young Frenchmen was saturated with the virtues of the Roman Republic, especially through the writings of Plutarch, Livy, and Tacitus. Lafayette first encountered Julius Caesar’s Commentaries under Fayon’s guidance. He gained a valuable insight from the Roman’s work: a writer can brag about himself shamelessly and get away with it if he writes in the third person. The various reminiscences and memoirs that began pouring out of him in the late 1770s were often written that way.15

  “But a child’s real education,” Lafayette said, “comes from the feelings and the attitude of the family in which he grows up…. It was but natural that I should hear much talk of war and glory among close relatives whose minds were ever filled with memories and regrets and a profound veneration for my father’s memory.” What he received was a combination of history from Fayon and family yarns from his grand-maman. Since his was a military family, it was military glory that he absorbed most.16

  The line of soldiers whose portraits in shining armor decorated the walls of Chavaniac extended back 700 years. In 1250 Lafayettes rode in the Sixth Crusade and, according to family lore, captured the Crown of Thorns from the Saracens. In the next century Gilbert de Lafayette II fought England’s Black Prince Edward at Poitiers, one of the great battles of the Hundred Years’ War. In 1428, Gilbert III, maréchal de France, was Joan of Arc’s general at Orléans, smashing the beef-eating Anglais and saving French independence. There was Lafayette blood shed aplenty, up to his grandfather’s three wounds and his father’s ghastly death.

  It matters not how much of that was fact; it was accepted. But most of it was ancient history. Lafayette was more interested in the gallant death of his uncle and the senseless sacrifice of his father. He belabored his grandmother on those points, and she repeated, and embellished, the stories. She told him that the cannoneer who killed his father was named Phillips, and urged him to hate the perfidious Anglais in general, and that one in particular.

  From Fayon he learned of Homer’s Iliad, about two armies of proud warriors who spent ten years killing each other for the pride of their kings and the treachery of a woman. Among them were the Trojan Hector, who went to certain death for the honor of his family, and Odysseus, smartest of the Greeks, who ended the war by using his brain as well as his sword arm. After a ten-year struggle to return home, he single-handedly vanquished a mob of enemies besieging his household.

  There were other heroes, including the Celtic Briton kings, those who inhabited Britannia before the Angles and Saxons and Normans became the hated Anglais. Among them was King Arthur, who warred against forces of darkness overrunning his homeland, leading the Knights of the Round Table. They were a brotherhood in arms, and what a noble band they were: Arthur, an orphan who became father of a new nation, his knights at his side. The greatest of them all was Launcelot du Lac (Sir Lancelot), a Frenchman, ferocious in battle and gentle in peace.

  There were more recent histories, such as the French chronicles of the Hundred Years’ War. In three great battles the flower of French knighthood was slaughtered by the unchivalrous Anglais, who had commoners rain arrows down on noble fighters rather than challenge them in manly combat, one on one. That was much like what had happened to his father.

  The Battle on the Plains of Abraham took place in the year Lafayette’s father died, 1759. The British general James Wolfe confronted the French general the marquis de Montcalm outside Quebec. Wolfe won, Montcalm lost, and both were mortally shot during the action. What fine, gallant deaths these handsome young generals presented (neither was really that handsome or that young, but that did not matter). The women of two countries wept at the news. West painted Wolfe’s fall, Watteau Montcalm’s, and engravers showed everyone the dramatic scenes.17

  Raised on this heady brew, the young marquis developed an overwhelming urge to ride at the head of the parade, to achieve honor and fame through bravery in battle. But for the moment, he had to content himself with boyish war games, learn his lessons, and harken to the wisdom of his grandmother. Content he was until he was snatched away from the happy halls of Chavaniac and the wilds of Auvergne.

  I WOULD MUCH RATHER HAVE BEEN VERCINGETORIX

  Lafayette’s great-grandfather the comte de La Rivière had been an outstanding soldier, so the boy inherited a martial temperament from both sides of his family. The comte was a blooded lieutenant colonel in the king’s armies, holder of the exclusive Grand Cross of the Royal and Military Order of St. Louis, the king’s highest military honor. La Rivière was an ancient, honorable, and powerful name in France, and in 1768 its only inheritor was the ten-year-old marquis de Lafayette. The old comte decided that the boy needed prepar
ation for his place in society. He ordered his granddaughter to travel to Auvergne and bring him home to the Palais de Luxembourg in Paris. To start the boy on his way to the highest ranks at court, he placed him on the list of future officers of the King’s Musketeers.18

  The young marquis resisted the move. He did not want to be separated from Chavaniac, where he was the little lord of the village, or from his grandmother and aunts. He was moving to a strange, crowded world where he would be surrounded by people—men as well as women—who would view him as a rustic curiosity and a social upstart.19

  The Abbé Fayon accompanied him, but otherwise he was cut off from everything he had known. The nobles swarming around him made it clear that they did not think he would amount to much. Nevertheless, he enrolled at the Collège du Plessis, a nursery for the sons of the most important nobles. It was supervised by the faculty of the Sorbonne, and its students typically won competitions with other schools in Paris. Its curriculum was standard for the day, emphasizing the Latin classics. Some masters also taught contemporary philosophy, theology, natural philosophy (science), and French. The students wore military-style uniforms, powdered court wigs, and child-size swords.

  Fayon had prepared him well, and he received advanced placement. His chief concentration was Latin composition, and he showed a gift for languages, winning Latin contests against older boys every year. He was steeped in tales of Greek and Roman heroes, read Caesar’s Commentaries in the original Latin, and learned about Vercingetorix’s last stand in his home province. He had “a higher regard for Vercingetorix defending our mountains than for Clovis and his successors [the Franks],” he said years later. He did not know whether his distant forebears were Gauls or Franks, but he hoped he was a Gaul. “I would much rather have been Vercingetorix defending the mountains of Auvergne,” he claimed.20

  Lafayette may have had Gaulish blood in him, or Norman. In contrast to his dark-haired, dark-eyed French schoolmates, he was red-haired, blue-eyed, light-complexioned, and befreckled. That set him apart, along with his shyness and rather hostile attitude to the bustling world around him. He spent four years at Plessis, but he made no lasting friends there.

  Not all the teachers took to him, either, although a rhetoric master found his boyish defiance leavened by cleverness. When the master described the perfect horse as one that would obey at the first sight of a rider’s whip, Lafayette piped up that a perfect horse would be one smart enough to throw its rider at the first sight of a whip. Expecting to receive his own taste of a lash, the young marquis earned instead an amused chuckle from the teacher.21

  While Lafayette was still a student at Plessis, returning to the Luxembourg Palace on weekends, he received a double shock in the spring of 1770. In early April, his mother died, not yet thirty-three years old. His great-grandfather followed her within a few weeks. Wealth tumbled down onto the twelve-year-old like an avalanche. Besides his own estates in Auvergne, he now owned his mother’s in Brittany and a dozen other La Rivière estates. His annual income jumped by over 120,000 livres. Suddenly, he was one of the richest aristocrats—certainly the richest orphan—in France. Despite his young age, he was also the most eligible bachelor in the kingdom. Noble families quickly began to circle the marquis de Lafayette. With no one to look after him but a few indifferent uncles, he felt very alone.22

  One of those uncles paid enough attention to decide that it was time for the boy to join the army. On April 9, 1771, he became a sous-lieutenant (sub-lieutenant or officer cadet) in the Black Musketeers. “I was all on fire to have a uniform,” the boy soldier said later. He loved being reviewed by the king and riding to Versailles in full dress uniform.23

  Lafayette reveled in the experience as only a glory-hound boy could. The Musketeers were the elite of all French troops, not for their battlefield record—they had none—but because their officers were from the finest families. Lafayette participated in a daily ceremony at the palace. An officer would be selected to trot up to the king to receive the day’s orders, then back to the commander with the sovereign’s response. Of his first time performing that duty in front of King Louis XV, the young marquis recalled, “The king told me that all was well and that he had no orders. I returned to my commanding officer to repeat words he heard repeated three hundred sixty-five days a year.”24

  Lafayette finished college in 1772, his highest distinction being his marital eligibility. His great wealth cried out for a mate, busybody friends of the La Rivières said. He should be married “as soon as nature would allow,” taking into account that he was not yet fifteen years old. Self-appointed matchmakers offered one prospective bride after another; one was almost six years older than he was. His future matrimony became the business of the whole extended flock of nobles fluttering around Paris and Versailles, but nothing came of their proposals.25

  Nothing, that is, until the Noailles family placed its bid. They were among the oldest, richest, and most powerful of the noble clans, even more than the La Rivières. The patriarch, Louis, third maréchal, duc de Noailles, commanded the historic regiment Dragons de Noailles (the Noailles Dragoons), a position inherited down through the family for generations. His son, général de brigade (brigadier general) of the king’s armies, Jean-Paul-François de Noailles, duc d’Ayen, had fathered one son, who had died as an infant. The beefy, domineering general had five daughters, and he wanted them married “as soon as nature would allow.” In particular, he wanted one of them to marry the marquis de Lafayette. There was a problem, however, and the duc was married to her.26

  The doe-eyed, strong-jawed duchesse d’Ayen was unusually protective of her children, and famously stubborn to boot. She never quite got over the loss of her son, and her own recent recovery from tuberculosis had made her want to keep her family around her. She thought her babies were too young to be married. The oldest, Louise, was barely fourteen; the next, Adrienne, was twelve; and the youngest was just five. Aristocratic marriages commonly happened at a young age, but the duchesse believed that her husband was pushing things too much. They got into a notorious row, keeping the salons of Paris and Versailles abuzz.

  They settled their argument in September 1772, and the duc won, though not hands down. Louise would be betrothed to a distant cousin, Louis, vicomte de Noailles, which would at least keep the name in the family. Adrienne would marry Lafayette, uniting two of the greatest fortunes in the country. But the mother demanded and won certain conditions for this union. The marriage would be deferred for two years while both children continued their educations. Neither would be told about the plan until Adrienne’s mother thought fit to do so. Lafayette would move into the family palace at Versailles, and the happy couple would live there for at least a year after the ceremony.

  Adrienne’s father and Lafayette’s uncle, with their attorneys and stewards, spent weeks drawing up the marriage contract, without either of the intendeds knowing anything about what was going on. The transaction concluded with an agreement that Adrienne’s dowry would be at least 200,000 and possibly as much as 1.5 million livres. It was an enormous sum, but a small investment considering that it gave d’Ayen access to the Lafayette fortune.

  The duchesse d’Ayen arranged for Adrienne and Lafayette to meet as if by accident. The marquis seemed not to notice the heart-wrenchingly pretty, dark-eyed girl with a baby-doll face. But she tumbled for the shy, awkward, skinny boy; for her, it was love at first sight. Moreover, the duchesse fell for him, as Adrienne said later, as if he were “a most beloved son.”27

  The details of the marriage contract and the dowry were worked out, and most documents signed, by February 1773. The king’s approval was pending. One detail regarding Lafayette’s moving into the Noailles palace was a concession to his family—he would spend the week in Versailles and weekends in Paris at the Palais de Luxembourg. He remained homeless, shuttling from place to place, with others making his decisions behind his back.

  In February the fifteen-year-old Lafayette, the Abbé Fayon still with him, moved
into the Noailles home. His future mother-in-law was kind, but the duc made it clear that he thought the boy pretty enough, if gangly and awkward, but otherwise of little account. He did his best with the material at hand, however. Fayon continued his private instruction, and d’Ayen hired a former army officer to tutor him in military subjects. As soon as there was an opening, he enrolled the marquis in the Académie de Versailles, a glorified riding school for princes and other high nobility. Lafayette was surrounded by young men with truly impressive lineages, and he felt out of place with his merely fourth-generation title and country ways. Moreover, he began to grow rapidly, and became clumsy.28

  Lafayette was lonely. He was not at home among his future in-laws, who seemed to keep him as a house pet. D’Ayen never failed to let him know that he was worthless except for his title and fortune, a drone who required constant pushing to amount to something. The duc arranged his appointment as a full lieutenant in the Noailles Dragoons in April 1773, the better to keep an eye on him. The marquis, being an adolescent, seethed at the leashes being strapped onto him.

  The match, made not in heaven but in a lawyer’s office, approached. Adrienne’s older sister, Louise, married Noailles in the fall of 1773. A date for Adrienne’s own wedding was set for just after Easter the next spring. Still she did not know, although Lafayette received the news that winter. Problems with the inventory of his property—essential to determine what would become joint tenancy under the marriage contract—delayed the plans a bit. Although Adrienne was the last to know what was coming, when she heard about it she was delighted because she was really in love with her betrothed. There was no sign that he returned her affection, but he would do his husbandly duty. He could not fail to see how pretty she was.