Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette

Excerpt

Under the title of Revolution of America, are comprised eight years of M. de Lafayette's life, from the commencement of 1771 until the end of 1784. His three voyages to the United States divide those eight years into three periods: 1777, 1778; 1779-1781; and 1782-1784.~[1]

1st. Circumstantial Memoirs, written for his friends after the peace of Versailles, and which were to have extended to 1780, open this collection.

2nd. These are continued and completed by two detached relations, composed between 1800 and 1814; the first, which has no title, and might be called Notice of the American Life of General Lafayette, appears to have been written for a person intending to publish the history of the war, or of General Washington; the second is entitled, Observations on some portion of American History, by a friend of General Lafayette.

As these two relations, both written by M. de Lafayette, and which we designate under the names of Manuscript, No. 1, and manuscript, No. 2, contain a second, and occasionally a third, account of events already mentioned in the Memoirs, we have only inserted quotations from them.

3rd. A relation of the campaign in Virginia, in 1781, shall be inserted in its complete state.

4th. Extracts from the collection of the general's speeches, begun by him in 1829, will give some details of his third voyage to America (1784).

5th. With the account of each particular period that portion of the correspondence which may relate to it will be inserted. From a great number of letters, written from America, and addressed either to France or to America, or from France to America, those only have been suppressed whose repetitions or details, purely military, would render them uninteresting to the public.

6th. In the Correspondence, some letters have been inserted from General Washington, and other contemporaries, and also some historical records, of which M. de Lafayette had taken copies, or which have been extracted from various collections published in the United States.

Footnote

1. M. de Lafayette (Marie-Paul-Joseph-Roch-Yves-Gilbert Motier) born at Chavaniae, in Auvergne, the 6th of September, 1757; married the 11th of April, 1774; set out for America the 26th of April, 1777. The other dates will be mentioned in proper order, with each particular event. All the notes which are not followed by the name of M. de Lafayette, may be attributed to the members of his family, sole editors of this work.

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TO THE READER.~[1]

When, devoted from early youth to the ambition of liberty, I beheld no limit to the path that I had opened for myself, it appeared to me that I was sufficiently fulfilling my destiny, and satisfying my glory, by rushing incessantly forward, and leaving to others the care of collecting the recollections, as well as the fruits, of my labour.

After having enjoyed an uninterrupted course of good fortune for fifteen years, I presented myself, with a favourable prospect of success, before the coalition of kings, and the aristocracy of Europe: I was overthrown by the simultaneous fury of French jacobinism. My person was then given up to the vengeance of my natural enemies, and my reputation to the calumnies of those self-styled patriots who had so lately violated every sworn and national guarantee....