Lafayette

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

A Boy of the French Nobility

AMONG the rugged Auvergne Mountains, in the southern part of France, stands a castle that is severe and almost grim in its aspect. Two bare round towers flank the building on the right and on the left. Rows of lofty French windows are built across the upper part of the front, and the small, ungenerous doorway below has a line of portholes on either side that suggest a thought of warlike days gone by.

This castle, built in the fourteenth century, is called the Château de Chaviniac de Lafayette. Though it was burned to the ground in 1701, it was rebuilt as nearly like the earlier structure as possible; hence it represents, as it stands, the chivalrous days of the crusading period and so forms a fitting birthplace for a hero. In this half-military château was born one of the most valiant champions of liberty that any country has ever produced—the Marquis de Lafayette.

The climate of the Haute-Loire—the highlands of Auvergne—is harsh; it has been called the French Siberia. There are upland moors like deserts across which sweep fierce winds, where the golden broom and the purple heather—flowers of the barren heights—are all that will flourish. There are, indeed, secluded valleys filled with muskmallows and bracken, but these are often visited by wild tempests, and sudden floods may make the whole region dreary and dangerous.

In Lafayette's time the violence of the elements was not the only thing to be dreaded. When the children wandered too near the edge of the forest, they might catch sight of a wild boar nozzling about for mushrooms under the dead oak leaves; and if it had been a severe winter, it was quite within possibility that wolves or hyenas might come from their hiding places in the rocky recesses of the mountains and lurk hungrily near the villages.

The family living in the old château was one whose records could be traced to the year one thousand, when a certain man by the name of Motier acquired an estate called Villa Faya, and thereafter he became known as Motier de la Fayette. In 1240 Pons Motier married the noble Alix Brun de Champetières; and from their line descended the famous Lafayettes known to all Americans. Other Auvergne estates were added to the Chaviniac acres as the years went by, some with old castles high up in the mountains behind Chaviniac, and all these were inherited by the father of America's famous champion.

Lafayette's father was a notable warrior, as his father had been—and his—and his—away back to the days of the Crusades. Pons Motier de la Fayette fought at Acre; Jean Motier de la Fayette fell at Poitiers. There were marshals who bore the banner in many a combat of olden times when the life of the country was at stake. It was a Lafayette who won the battle at Beaugé in 1421, when the English Duke of Clarence was defeated and his country was compelled to resign hope of a complete conquest of France. Among other men who bore the name, there were military governors of towns and cities, aids to kings in war, captains and seneschals. Many of them spent their lives in camps and on battlefields. One of them saw thirty years of active service; another found that after thirty-eight years of military life he had been present at no less than sixty-five sieges besides taking part in many pitched battles. Lafayette's grandfather was wounded in three battles; and his uncle, Jacques Roch Motier, was killed in battle at the age of twenty-three.

During the summer before Lafayette's birth, his father, the young chevalier and colonel, not then twenty-five, had been living quietly in the Château Chaviniac. But a great conflict was going on—the Seven Years' War was being waged. He heard the call of his country and he felt it his duty to respond.

There was a sad parting from his beautiful young wife; then he dashed down the steep, rocky roadway from the château to the village, and so galloped away—over the plains, through fords and defiles, toward the German border—never to return....