Chapter 13

LADY DAY,originally the name for all the days in the church calendar marking any event in the Virgin Mary’s life, but now restricted to the feast of the Annunciation, held on the 25th of March in each year. Lady Day was in medieval and later times the beginning of the legal year in England. In 1752 this was altered to the 1st of January, but the 25th of March remains one of the Quarter Days; though in some parts old Lady Day, on the 6th of April, is still the date for rent paying. See Annunciation.

LADYSMITH,a town of Natal, 189 m. N.W. of Durban by rail, on the left bank of the Klip tributary of the Tugela. Pop. (1904) 5568, of whom 2269 were whites. It lies 3284 ft. above the sea and is encircled by hills, while the Drakensberg are some 30 m. distant to the N.W. Ladysmith is the trading centre of northern Natal, and is the chief railway junction in the province, the main line from the south dividing here. One line crosses Van Reenen’s pass into the Orange Free State, the other runs northwards to the Transvaal. There are extensive railway workshops. Among the public buildings are the Anglican church and the town hall. The church contains tablets with the names of 3200 men who perished in the defence and relief of the town in the South African War (see below), while the clock tower of the town hall, partially destroyed by a Boer shell, is kept in its damaged condition.

Ladysmith, founded in 1851, is named after Juana, Lady Smith, wife of Sir Harry Smith, then governor of Cape Colony. It stands near the site of the camp of the Dutch farmers who in 1848 assembled for the purpose of trekking across the Drakensberg. Here they were visited by Sir Harry Smith, who induced the majority of the farmers to remain in Natal. The growth of the town, at first slow, increased with the opening of the railway from Durban in 1886 and the subsequent extension of the line to Johannesburg.

In the first and most critical stage of the South African War of 1899-1902 (seeTransvaal) Ladysmith was the centre of the struggle. During the British concentration on the town there were fought the actions of Talana (or Dundee) on the 20th, Elandslaagte on the 21st and Rietfontein on the 24th of October 1899. On the 30th of October the British sustained a serious defeat in the general action of Lombard’s Kop or Farquhar’s Farm, and Sir George White decided to hold the town, which had been fortified, against investment and siege until he was relieved directly or indirectly by Sir Redvers Buller’s advance. The greater portion of Buller’s available troops were despatched to Natal in November, with a view to the direct relief of Ladysmith, which meantime the Boers had closely invested. His first attempt was repelled on the 15th of December in the battle of Colenso, his second on the 24th of January 1900 by the successful Boer counterstroke against Spion Kop, and his third was abandoned without serious fighting (Vaalkranz, Feb. 5). But two or three days after Vaalkranz, almost simultaneously with Lord Roberts’s advance on Bloemfontein Sir Redvers Buller resumed the offensive in the hills to the east of Colenso, which he gradually cleared of the enemy, and although he was checked after reaching the Tugela below Colenso (Feb. 24) he was finally successful in carrying the Boer positions (Pieter’s Hill) on the 27th and relieving Ladysmith, which during these long and anxious months (Nov. 1-Feb. 28) had suffered very severely from want of food, and on one occasion (Caesar’s Camp, Jan. 6, 1900) had only with heavy losses and great difficulty repelled a powerful Boer assault. The garrison displayed its unbroken resolution on the last day of the investment by setting on foot a mobile column, composed of all men who were not too enfeebled to march out, in order to harass the Boer retreat. This expedition was however countermanded by Buller.

LAELIUS,the name of a Roman plebeian family, probably settled at Tibur (Tivoli). The chief members were:—

Gaius Laelius, general and statesman, was a friend of the elder Scipio, whom he accompanied on his Spanish campaign (210-206B.C.). In Scipio’s consulship (205), Laelius went with him to Sicily, whence he conducted an expedition to Africa. In 203 he defeated the Massaesylian prince Syphax, who, breaking his alliance with Scipio, had joined the Carthaginians, and at Zama (202) rendered considerable service in command of the cavalry. In 197 he was plebeian aedile and in 196 praetor of Sicily. As consul in 190 he was employed in organizing the recently conquered territory in Cisalpine Gaul. Placentia and Cremona were repeopled, and a new colony founded at Bononia.He is last heard of in 170 as ambassador to Transalpine Gaul. Though little is known of his personal qualities, his intimacy with Scipio is proof that he must have been a man of some importance. Silius Italicus (Punica, xv. 450) describes him as a man of great endowments, an eloquent orator and a brave soldier.

See Index to Livy; Polybius x. 3. 9, 39, xi. 32, xiv. 4. 8, xv. 9. 12, 14; Appian,Hisp.25-29; Cicero,Philippica, xi. 7.

His son,Gaius Laelius, is known chiefly as the friend of the younger Scipio, and as one of the speakers in Cicero’sDe senectute,De amicitia(orLaelius) andDe Republica. He was surnamedSapiens(“the wise”), either from his scholarly tastes or because, when tribune, he “prudently” withdrew his proposal (151B.C.) for the relief of the farmers by distributions of land, when he saw that it was likely to bring about disturbances. In the third Punic War (147) he accompanied Scipio to Africa, and distinguished himself at the capture of the Cothon, the military harbour of Carthage. In 145 he carried on operations with moderate success against Viriathus in Spain; in 140 he was elected consul. During the Gracchan period, as a staunch supporter of Scipio and the aristocracy, Laelius became obnoxious to the democrats. He was associated with P. Popillius Laenas in the prosecution of those who had supported Tiberius Gracchus, and in 131 opposed the bill brought forward by C. Papirius Carbo to render legal the election of a tribune to a second year of office. The attempts of his enemies, however, failed to shake his reputation. He was a highly accomplished man and belonged to the so-called “Scipionic circle.” He studied philosophy under the Stoics Diogenes Babylonius and Panaetius of Rhodes; he was a poet, and the plays of Terence, by reason of their elegance of diction, were sometimes attributed to him. With Scipio he was mainly instrumental in introducing the study of the Greek language and literature into Rome. He was a gifted orator, though his refined eloquence was perhaps less suited to the forum than to the senate. He delivered speechesDe Collegiis(145) against the proposal of the tribune C. Licinius Crassus to deprive the priestly colleges of their right of co-optation and to transfer the power of election to the people;Pro Publicanis(139), on behalf of the farmers of the revenue; against the proposal of Carbo noticed above;Pro Se, a speech in his own defence, delivered in answer to Carbo and Gracchus; funeral orations, amongst them two on his friend Scipio. Much information is given concerning him in Cicero, who compares him to Socrates.

See Index to Cicero; Plutarch,Tib. Gracchus, 8; Appian,Punica, 126; Horace,Sat.ii. 1. 72; Quintilian,Instit.xii. 10. 10; Suetonius,Vita Terentii; Terence,Adelphi, Prol. 15, with the commentators.

LAENAS,the name of a plebeian family in ancient Rome, notorious for cruelty and arrogance. The two most famous of the name1are:—

Gaius Popillius Laenas, consul in 172B.C.He was sent to Greece in 174 to allay the general disaffection, but met with little success. He took part in the war against Perseus, king of Macedonia (Livy xliii. 17, 22). When Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, invaded Egypt, Laenas was sent to arrest his progress. Meeting him near Alexandria, he handed him the decree of the senate, demanding the evacuation of Egypt. Antiochus having asked time for consideration, Laenas drew a circle round him with his staff, and told him he must give an answer before he stepped out of it. Antiochus thereupon submitted (Livy xlv. 12; Polybius xxix. 11; Cicero,Philippica, viii. 8; Vell. Pat. i. 10).

Publius Popillius Laenas, son of the preceding. When consul in 132B.C.he incurred the hatred of the democrats by his harsh measures as head of a special commission appointed to take measures against the accomplices of Tiberius Gracchus. In 123 Gaius Gracchus brought in a bill prohibiting all such commissions, and declared that, in accordance with the old laws of appeal, a magistrate who pronounced sentence of death against a citizen, without the people’s assent, should be guilty of high treason. It is not known whether the bill contained a retrospective clause against Laenas, but he left Rome and sentence of banishment from Italy was pronounced against him. After the restoration of the aristocracy the enactments against him were cancelled, and he was recalled (121).

See Cicero,Brutus, 25. 34, andDe domo sua, 31; Vell. Pat. ii. 7; Plutarch,C. Gracchus, 4.

1The name is said by Cicero to be derived fromlaena, the sacerdotal cloak carried by Marcus Popillius (consul 359) when he went to the forum to quell a popular rising.

LAER(orLaar),PIETER VAN(1613-c.1675), Dutch painter, was born at Laaren in Holland. The influence of a long stay in Rome begun at an early age is seen in his landscape and backgrounds, but in his subjects he remained true to the Dutch tradition, choosing generally lively scenes from peasant life, as markets, feasts, bowling scenes, farriers’ shops, robbers, hunting scenes and peasants with cattle. From this taste, or from his personal deformity, he was nicknamed Bamboccio by the Italians. On his return to Holland about 1639, he lived chiefly at Amsterdam and Haarlem, in which latter city he died in 1674 or 1675. His pictures are marked by skilful composition and good drawing; he was especially careful in perspective. His colouring, according to Crowe, is “generally of a warm, brownish tone, sometimes very clear, but oftener heavy, and his execution broad and spirited.” Certain etched plates are also attributed to him.

LAESTRYGONES,a mythical race of giants and cannibals. According to theOdyssey(x. 80) they dwelt in the farthest north, where the nights were so short that the shepherd who was driving out his flock met another driving it in. This feature of the tale contains some hint of the long nightless summer in the Arctic regions, which perhaps reached the Greeks through the merchants who fetched amber from the Baltic coasts. Odysseus in his wanderings arrived at the coast inhabited by the Laestrygones, and escaped with only one ship, the rest being sunk by the giants with masses of rock. Their chief city was Telepylus, founded by a former king Lamus, their ruler at that time being Antiphates. This is a purely fanciful name, but Lamus takes us into a religious world where we can trace the origin of the legend, and observe the god of an older religion becoming the subject of fairy tales (seeLamia) in a later period.

The later Greeks placed the country of the Laestrygones in Sicily, to the south of Aetna, near Leontini; but Horace (Odes, iii. 16. 34) and other Latin authors speak of them as living in southern Latium, near Formiae, which was supposed to have been founded by Lamus.

LAETUS, JULIUS POMPONIUS[Giulio Pomponio Leto], (1425-1498), Italian humanist, was born at Salerno. He studied at Rome under Laurentius Valla, whom he succeeded (1457) as professor of eloquence in the Gymnasium Romanum. About this time he founded an academy, the members of which adopted Greek and Latin names, met on the Quirinal to discuss classical questions and celebrated the birthday of Romulus. Its constitution resembled that of an ancient priestly college, and Laetus was styled pontifex maximus. The pope (Paul II.) viewed these proceedings with suspicion, as savouring of paganism, heresy and republicanism. In 1468 twenty of the academicians were arrested during the carnival; Laetus, who had taken refuge in Venice, was sent back to Rome, imprisoned and put to the torture, but refused to plead guilty to the charges of infidelity and immorality. For want of evidence, he was acquitted and allowed to resume his professorial duties; but it was forbidden to utter the name of the academy even in jest. Sixtus IV. permitted the resumption of its meetings, which continued to be held till the sack of Rome (1527) by Constable Bourbon during the papacy of Clement VII. Laetus continued to teach in Rome until his death on the 9th of June 1498. As a teacher, Laetus, who has been called the first head of a philological school, was extraordinarily successful; in his own words, like Socrates and Christ, he expected to live on in the person of his pupils, amongst whom were many of the most famous scholars of the period. His works, written in pure and simple Latin, were published in a collected form (Opera Pomponii Laeti varia, 1521). They contain treatises on the Roman magistrates, priests and lawyers, and a compendium of Roman history fromthe death of the younger Gordian to the time of Justin III. Laetus also wrote commentaries on classical authors, and promoted the publication of the editio princeps of Virgil at Rome in 1469.

SeeThe Life of Letoby Sabellicus (Strassburg, 1510); G. Voigt,Die Wiederbelebung des klassischen Alterthums, ii.; F. Gregorovius,Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, vii. (1894), p. 576, for an account of the academy; Sandys,History of Classical Scholarship(1908), ii. 92.

LAEVIUS(?c.80B.C.), a Latin poet of whom practically nothing is known. The earliest reference to him is perhaps in Suetonius (De grammaticis, 3), though it is not certain that the Laevius Milissus there referred to is the same person. Definite references do not occur before the 2nd century (Fronto,Ep. ad M. Caes.i. 3; Aulus Gellius,Noct. Att.ii. 24, xii. 10, xix. 9; Apuleius,De magia, 30; Porphyrion,Ad Horat. carm.iii. 1, 2). Some sixty miscellaneous lines are preserved (see Bährens,Fragm. poët. rom.pp. 287-293), from which it is difficult to see how ancient critics could have regarded him as the master of Ovid or Catullus. Gellius and Ausonius state that he composed anErotopaegnia, and in other sources he is credited withAdonis,Alcestis,Centauri,Helena,Ino,Protesilaudamia,Sirenocirca,Phoenix, which may, however, be only the parts of theErotopaegnia. They were not serious poems, but light and often licentious skits on the heroic myths.

See O. Ribbeck,Geschichte der römischen Dichtung, i.; H. de la Ville de Mirmont,Étude biographique et littéraire sur le poète Laevius(Paris, 1900), with critical ed. of the fragments, and remarks on vocabulary and syntax; A. Weichert,Poëtarum latinorum reliquiae(Leipzig, 1830); M. Schanz,Geschichte der römischen Litteratur(2nd ed.), pt. i. p. 163; W. Teuffel,Hist. of Roman Literature(Eng. tr.), § 150, 4; a convenient summary in F. Plessis,La Poésie latine(1909), pp. 139-142.

LAEVULINIC ACID(β-acetopropionic acid), C5H8O3or CH3CO·CH2·CH2·CO2H, a ketonic acid prepared from laevulose, inulin, starch, &c., by boiling them with dilute hydrochloric or sulphuric acids. It may be synthesized by condensing sodium acetoacetate with monochloracetic ester, the acetosuccinic ester produced being then hydrolysed with dilute hydrochloric acid (M. Conrad,Ann., 1877, 188, p. 222).

It may also be prepared by heating the anhydride of γ-methyloxy-glutaric acid with concentrated sulphuric acid, and by oxidation of methyl heptenone and of geraniol. It crystallizes in plates, which melt at 32.5-33° C. and boil at 148-149° (15 mm.) (A. Michael,Jour. prak. Chem., 1891 [2], 44, p. 114). It is readily soluble in alcohol, ether and water. The acid, when distilled slowly, is decomposed and yields α- and β-angelica lactones. When heated with hydriodic acid and phosphorus, it yields n-valeric acid; and with iodine and caustic soda solution it gives iodoform, even in the cold. With hydroxylamine it yields an oxime, which by the action of concentrated sulphuric acid rearranges itself to N-methylsuccinimide [CH2·CO]2N·CH3.

LA FARGE, JOHN(1835-1910), American artist, was born in New York, on the 31st of March 1835, of French parentage. He received instruction in drawing from his grandfather, Binsse de St Victor, a painter of miniatures; studied law and architecture; entered the atelier of Thomas Couture in Paris, where he remained a short time, giving especial attention to the study and copying of old masters at the Louvre; and began by making illustrations to the poets (1859). An intimacy with the artist William M. Hunt had a strong influence on him, the two working together at Newport, Rhode Island. La Farge painted landscape, still life and figure alike in the early sixties. But from 1866 on he was for some time incapacitated for work, and when he regained strength he did some decorative work for Trinity church, Boston, in 1876, and turned his attention to stained glass, becoming president of the Society of Mural Painters. Some of his important commissions include windows for St Thomas’s church (1877), St Peter’s church, the Paulist church, the Brick church (1882), the churches of the Incarnation (1885) and the Ascension (1887), New York; Trinity church, Buffalo, and the “Battle Window” in Memorial Hall at Harvard; ceilings and windows for the house of Cornelius Vanderbilt, windows for the houses of W. H. Vanderbilt and D. O. Mills, and panels for the house of Whitelaw Reid, New York; panels for the Congressional Library, Washington; Bowdoin College, the Capitol at St Paul, Minn., besides designs for many stained glass windows. He was also a prolific painter in oil and water colour, the latter seen notably in some water-colour sketches, the result of a voyage in the South Seas, shown in 1895. His influence on American art was powerfully exhibited in such men as Augustus St Gaudens, Wilton Lockwood, Francis Lathrop and John Humphreys Johnston. He became president of the Society of American Artists, a member of the National Academy of Design in 1869; an officer of the Legion of Honour of France; and received many medals and decorations. He publishedConsiderations on Painting(New York, 1895),Hokŭsai: A Talk aboutHokŭsai(New York, 1897), andAn Artist’s Letters from Japan(New York, 1897).

See Cecilia Waern,John La Farge, Artist and Writer(London, 1896, No. 26 ofThe Portfolio).

LA FARINA, GIUSEPPE(1815-1863), Italian author and politician, was born at Messina. On account of the part he took in the insurrection of 1837 he had to leave Sicily, but returning in 1839 he conducted various newspapers of liberal tendencies, until his efforts were completely interdicted, when he removed to Florence. In 1840 he had publishedMessina ed i suoi monumenti, and after his removal to Florence he brought outLa Germania coi suoi monumenti(1842),L’ Italia coi suoi monumenti(1842),La Svizzera storica ed artistica(1842-1843), La China, 4 vols. (1843-1847), andStoria d’ Italia, 7 vols. (1846-1854). In 1847 he established at Florence a democratic journal,L’ Alba, in the interests of Italian freedom and unity, but on the outbreak of the revolution in Sicily in 1848 he returned thither and was elected deputy and member of the committee of war. In August of that year he was appointed minister of public instruction and later of war and marine. After vigorously conducting a campaign against the Bourbon troops, he was forced into exile, and repaired to France in 1849. In 1850 he published hisStoria documentata della Rivoluzione Siciliana del 1848-1849, and in 1851-1852 hisStoria d’ Italia dal 1815 al 1848, in 6 vols. He returned to Italy in 1854 and settled at Turin, and in 1856 he founded thePiccolo Corriere d’ Italia, an organ which had great influence in propagating the political sentiments of the Società Nazionale Italiana, of which he ultimately was chosen president. With Daniele Manin (q.v.), one of the founders of that society, he advocated the unity of Italy under Victor Emmanuel even before Cavour, with whom at one time he had daily interviews, and organized the emigration of volunteers from all parts of Italy into the Piedmontese army. He also negotiated an interview between Cavour and Garibaldi, with the result that the latter was appointed commander of the Cacciatori delle Alpi in the war of 1859. Later he supported Garibaldi’s expedition to Sicily, where he himself went soon after the occupation of Palermo, but he failed to bring about the immediate annexation of the island to Piedmont as Cavour wished. In 1860 he was chosen a member of the first Italian parliament and was subsequently made councillor of state. He died on the 5th of September 1863.

See A. Franchi,Epistolario di Giuseppe La Farina(2 vols., 1869) and L. Carpi,Il Risorgimento Italiano, vol. i. (Milan, 1884).

LA FAYETTE, GILBERT MOTIER DE(1380-1462), marshal of France, was brought up at the court of Louis II., 3rd duke of Bourbon. He served under Marshal Boucicaut in Italy, and on his return to France after the evacuation of Genoa in 1409 became seneschal of the Bourbonnais. In the English wars he was with John I., 4th duke of Bourbon, at the capture of Soubise in 1413, and of Compiègne in 1415. The duke then made him lieutenant-general in Languedoc and Guienne. He failed to defend Caen and Falaise in the interest of the dauphin (afterwards Charles VII.) against Henry V. in 1417 and 1418, but in the latter year he held Lyons for some time against Jean sans Peur, duke of Burgundy. A series of successes over the Englishand Burgundians on the Loire was rewarded in 1420 with the government of Dauphiny and the office of marshal of France. La Fayette commanded the Franco-Scottish troops at the battle of Baugé (1422), though he did not, as has been sometimes stated, slay Thomas, duke of Clarence, with his own hand. In 1424 he was taken prisoner by the English at Verneuil, but was released shortly afterwards, and fought with Joan of Arc at Orleans and Patay in 1429. The marshal had become a member of the grand council of Charles VII., and with the exception of a short disgrace about 1430, due to the ill-will of Georges de la Trémouille, he retained the royal favour all his life. He took an active part in the army reform initiated by Charles VII., and the establishment of military posts for the suppression of brigandage. His last campaign was against the English in Normandy in 1449. He died on the 23rd of February 1462. His line was continued by Gilbert IV. de La Fayette, son of his second marriage with Jeanne de Joyeuse.

LA FAYETTE, LOUISE DE(c.1616-1665), was one of the fourteen children of John, comte de La Fayette, and Marguerite de Bourbon-Busset. Louise became maid of honour to Anne of Austria, and Richelieu sought to attract the attention of Louis XIII. to her in the hope that she might counterbalance the influence exercised over him by Marie de Hautefort. The affair did not turn out as the minister wished. The king did indeed make her the confidante of his affairs and of his resentment against the cardinal, but she, far from repeating his confidences to the minister, set herself to encourage the king in his resistance to Richelieu’s dominion. She refused, nevertheless, to become Louis’s mistress, and after taking leave of the king in Anne of Austria’s presence retired to the convent of the Filles de Sainte-Marie in 1637. Here she was repeatedly visited by Louis, with whom she maintained a correspondence. Richelieu intercepted the letters, and by omissions and falsifications succeeded in destroying their mutual confidence. The cessation of their intercourse was regretted by the queen, who had been reconciled with her husband through the influence of Louise. At the time of her death in January 1665 Mlle de La Fayette was superior of a convent of her order which she had founded at Chaillot.

SeeMémoires de Madame de Motteville; Victor Cousin,Madame de Hautefort(Paris, 1868); L’Abbé Sorin,Louise-Angèle de La Fayette(Paris, 1893).

LA FAYETTE, MARIE JOSEPH PAUL YVES ROCH GILBERT DU MOTIER.Marquis de(1757-1834), was born at the château of Chavaniac in Auvergne, France, on the 6th of September 1757. His father1was killed at Minden in 1759, and his mother and his grandfather died in 1770, and thus at the age of thirteen he was left an orphan with a princely fortune. He married at sixteen Marie Adrienne Françoise de Noailles (d. 1807), daughter of the duc d’Ayen and granddaughter of the duc de Noailles, then one of the most influential families in the kingdom. La Fayette chose to follow the career of his father, and entered the Guards.

La Fayette was nineteen and a captain of dragoons when the English colonies in America proclaimed their independence. “At the first news of this quarrel,” he afterwards wrote in his memoirs, “my heart was enrolled in it.” The count de Broglie, whom he consulted, discouraged his zeal for the cause of liberty. Finding his purpose unchangeable, however, he presented the young enthusiast to Johann Kalb, who was also seeking service in America, and through Silas Deane, American agent in Paris, an arrangement was concluded, on the 7th of December 1776, by which La Fayette was to enter the American service as major-general. At this moment the news arrived of grave disasters to the American arms. La Fayette’s friends again advised him to abandon his purpose. Even the American envoys, Franklin and Arthur Lee, who had superseded Deane, withheld further encouragement and the king himself forbade his leaving. At the instance of the British ambassador at Versailles orders were issued to seize the ship La Fayette was fitting out at Bordeaux, and La Fayette himself was arrested. But the ship was sent from Bordeaux to a neighbouring port in Spain, La Fayette escaped from custody in disguise, and before a secondlettre de cachetcould reach him he was afloat with eleven chosen companions. Though two British cruisers had been sent in pursuit of him, he landed safely near Georgetown, S.C., after a tedious voyage of nearly two months, and hastened to Philadelphia, then the seat of government of the colonies.

When this lad of nineteen, with the command of only what little English he had been able to pick up on his voyage, presented himself to Congress with Deane’s authority to demand a commission of the highest rank after the commander-in-chief, his reception was a little chilly. Deane’s contracts were so numerous, and for officers of such high rank, that it was impossible for Congress to ratify them without injustice to Americans who had become entitled by their service to promotion. La Fayette appreciated the situation as soon as it was explained to him, and immediately expressed his desire to serve in the American army upon two conditions—that he should receive no pay, and that he should act as a volunteer. These terms were so different from those made by other foreigners, they had been attended with such substantial sacrifices, and they promised such important indirect advantages, that Congress passed a resolution, on the 31st of July 1777, “that his services be accepted, and that, in consideration of his zeal, illustrious family and connexions, he have the rank and commission of major-general of the United States.” Next day La Fayette met Washington, whose lifelong friend he became. Congress intended his appointment as purely honorary, and the question of giving him a command was left entirely to Washington’s discretion. His first battle was Brandywine (q.v.) on the 11th of September 1777, where he showed courage and activity and received a wound. Shortly afterwards he secured what he most desired, the command of a division—the immediate result of a communication from Washington to Congress of November 1, 1777, in which he said:—

“The marquis de La Fayette is extremely solicitous of having a command equal to his rank. I do not know in what light Congress will view the matter, but it appears to me, from a consideration of his illustrious and important connexions, the attachment which he has manifested for our cause, and the consequences which his return in disgust might produce, that it will be advisable to gratify his wishes, and the more so as several gentlemen from France who came over under some assurances have gone back disappointed in their expectations. His conduct with respect to them stands in a favourable point of view—having interested himself to remove their uneasiness and urged the impropriety of their making any unfavourable representations upon their arrival at home. Besides, he is sensible, discreet in his manners, has made great proficiency in our language, and from the disposition he discovered at the battle of Brandywine possesses a large share of bravery and military ardour.”

Of La Fayette’s military career in the United States there is not much to be said. Though the commander of a division, he never had many troops in his charge, and whatever military talents he possessed were not of the kind which appeared to conspicuous advantage on the theatre to which his wealth and family influence rather than his soldierly gifts had called him. In the first months of 1778 he commanded troops detailed for the projected expedition against Canada. His retreat from Barren Hill (May 28, 1778) was commended as masterly; and he fought at the battle of Monmouth (June 28,) and received from Congress a formal recognition of his services in the Rhode Island expedition (August 1778).

The treaties of commerce and defensive alliance, signed by the insurgents and France on the 6th of February 1778, were promptly followed by a declaration of war by England against the latter, and La Fayette asked leave to revisit France and to consult his king as to the further direction of his services. This leave was readily granted; it was not difficult for Washington to replace the major-general, but it was impossible to find another equally competent, influential and devoted champion of the American cause near the court of Louis XVI. In fact, he went on a mission rather than a visit. He embarked on the 11th of January 1779, was received with enthusiasm, and was made a colonel in the French cavalry. On the 4th of March following Franklin wrote to the president of Congress: “The marquis de La Fayette ... is infinitely esteemed and beloved here, and I am persuaded willdo everything in his power to merit a continuance of the same affection from America.” He won the confidence of Vergennes.

La Fayette was absent from America about six months, and his return was the occasion of a complimentary resolution of Congress. From April until October 1781 he was charged with the defence of Virginia, in which Washington gave him the credit of doing all that was possible with the forces at his disposal; and he showed his zeal by borrowing money on his own account to provide his soldiers with necessaries. The battle of Yorktown, in which La Fayette bore an honourable if not a distinguished part, was the last of the war, and terminated his military career in the United States. He immediately obtained leave to return to France, where it was supposed he might be useful in negotiations for a general peace. He was also occupied in the preparations for a combined French and Spanish expedition against some of the British West India Islands, of which he had been appointed chief of staff, and a formidable fleet assembled at Cadiz, but the armistice signed on the 20th of January 1783 between the belligerents put a stop to the expedition. He had been promoted (1781) to the rank ofmaréchal de camp(major-general) in the French army, and he received every token of regard from his sovereign and his countrymen. He visited the United States again in 1784, and remained some five months as the guest of the nation.

La Fayette did not appear again prominently in public life until 1787, though he did good service to the French Protestants, and became actively interested in plans to abolish slavery. In 1787 he took his seat in the Assembly of Notables. He demanded, and he alone signed the demand, that the king convoke the states-general, thus becoming a leader in the French Revolution. He showed Liberal tendencies both in that assembly and after its dispersal, and in 1788 was deprived, in consequence, of his active command. In 1789 La Fayette was elected to the states-general, and took a prominent part in its proceedings. He was chosen vice-president of the National Assembly, and on the 11th of July 1789 presented a declaration of rights, modelled on Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence in 1776. On the 15th of July, the second day of the new régime, La Fayette was chosen by acclamation colonel-general of the new National Guard of Paris. He also proposed the combination of the colours of Paris, red and blue, and the royal white, into the famous tricolour cockade of modern France (July 17). For the succeeding three years, until the end of the constitutional monarchy in 1792, his history is largely the history of France. His life was beset with very great responsibility and perils, for he was ever the minister of humanity and order among a frenzied people who had come to regard order and humanity as phases of treason. He rescued the queen from the hands of the populace on the 5th and 6th of October 1789, saved many humbler victims who had been condemned to death, and he risked his life in many unsuccessful attempts to rescue others. Before this, disgusted with enormities which he was powerless to prevent, he had resigned his commission; but so impossible was it to replace him that he was induced to resume it. In the Constituent Assembly he pleaded for the abolition of arbitrary imprisonment, for religious tolerance, for popular representation, for the establishment of trial by jury, for the gradual emancipation of slaves, for the freedom of the press, for the abolition of titles of nobility, and the suppression of privileged orders. In February 1790 he refused the supreme command of the National Guard of the kingdom. In May he founded the “Society of 1789” which afterwards became the Feuillants Club. He took a prominent part in the celebration of July 14, 1790, the first anniversary of the destruction of the Bastille. After suppressing anémeutein April 1791 he again resigned his commission, and was again compelled to retain it. He was the friend of liberty as well as of order, and when Louis XVI. fled to Varennes he issued orders to stop him. Shortly afterwards he was made lieutenant-general in the army. He commanded the troops in the suppression of anotherémeute, on the occasion of the proclamation of the constitution (September 18, 1791), after which, feeling that his task was done, he retired into private life. This did not prevent his friends from proposing him for the mayoralty of Paris in opposition to Pétion.

When, in December 1791, three armies were formed on the western frontier to attack Austria, La Fayette was placed in command of one of them. But events moved faster than La Fayette’s moderate and humane republicanism, and seeing that the lives of the king and queen were each day more and more in danger, he definitely opposed himself to the further advance of the Jacobin party, intending eventually to use his army for the restoration of a limited monarchy. On the 19th of August 1792 the Assembly declared him a traitor. He was compelled to take refuge in the neutral territory of Liége, whence as one of the prime movers in the Revolution he was taken and held as a prisoner of state for five years, first in Prussian and afterwards in Austrian prisons, in spite of the intercession of America and the pleadings of his wife. Napoleon, however, though he had a low opinion of his capacities, stipulated in the treaty of Campo Formio (1797) for La Fayette’s release. He was not allowed to return to France by the Directory. He returned in 1799; in 1802 voted against the life consulate of Napoleon; and in 1804 he voted against the imperial title. He lived in retirement during the First Empire, but returned to public affairs under the First Restoration and took some part in the political events of the Hundred Days. From 1818 to 1824 he was deputy for the Sarthe, speaking and voting always on the Liberal side, and even becoming acarbonaro. He then revisited America (July 1824-September 1825) where he was overwhelmed with popular applause and voted the sum of $200,000 and a township of land. From 1825 to his death he sat in the Chamber of Deputies for Meaux. During the revolution of 1830 he again took command of the National Guard and pursued the same line of conduct, with equal want of success, as in the first revolution. In 1834 he made his last speech—on behalf of Polish political refugees. He died at Paris on the 20th of May 1834. In 1876 in the city of New York a monument was erected to him, and in 1883 another was erected at Puy.

Few men have owed more of their success and usefulness to their family rank than La Fayette, and still fewer have abused it less. He never achieved distinction in the field, and his political career proved him to be incapable of ruling a great national movement; but he had strong convictions which always impelled him to study the interests of humanity, and a pertinacity in maintaining them, which, in all the strange vicissitudes of his eventful life, secured him a very unusual measure of public respect. No citizen of a foreign country has ever had so many and such warm admirers in America, nor does any statesman in France appear to have ever possessed uninterruptedly for so many years so large a measure of popular influence and respect. He had what Jefferson called a “canine appetite” for popularity and fame, but in him the appetite only seemed to make him more anxious to merit the fame which he enjoyed. He was brave to rashness; and he never shrank from danger or responsibility if he saw the way open to spare life or suffering, to protect the defenceless, to sustain the law and preserve order.

His son,Georges Washington Motier de La Fayette(1779-1849), entered the army and was aide-de-camp to General Grouchy through the Austrian, Prussian and Polish (1805-07) campaigns. Napoleon’s distrust of his father rendering promotion improbable, Georges de La Fayette retired into private life in 1807 until the Restoration, when he entered the Chamber of Representatives and voted consistently on the Liberal side. He was away from Paris during the revolution of July 1830, but he took an active part in the “campaign of the banquets,” which led up to that of 1848. He died in December of the next year. His son,Oscar Thomas Gilbert Motier de La Fayette(1815-1881), was educated at the École Polytechnique, and served as an artillery officer in Algeria. He entered the Chamber of Representatives in 1846 and voted, like his father, with the extreme Left. After the revolution of 1848 he received a post in the provisional government, and as a member of the Constituent Assembly he became secretary of the war committee. After the dissolution of the Legislative Assembly in 1851, he retired from public life, but emerged on the establishment ofthe third republic, becoming a life senator in 1875. His brotherEdmond Motier de La Fayette(1818-1890) shared his political opinions. He was one of the secretaries of the Constituent Assembly, and a member of the senate from 1876 to 1888.

SeeMémoires historiques et pièces authentiques sur M. de La Fayette pour servir à l’histoire des révolutions(Paris, An II., 1793-1794); B. Sarrans,La Fayette et la Révolution de 1830, histoire des choses et des hommes de Juillet(Paris, 1834);Mémoires, correspondances et manuscrits de La Fayette, published by his family (6 vols., Paris, 1837-1838); Regnault Warin,Mémoires pour servir à la vie du général La Fayette(Paris, 1824); A. Bardoux,La jeunesse de La Fayette(Paris, 1892);Les Dernières années de La Fayette(Paris, 1893); E. Charavaray,Le Général La Fayette(Paris, 1895); A. Levasseur,La Fayette en Amérique1824 (Paris, 1829); J. Cloquet,Souvenirs de la vie privée du général La Fayette(Paris, 1836); Max Büdinger,La Fayette in Oesterreich(Vienna, 1898); and M. M. Crawford,The Wife of Lafayette(1908); Bayard Tuckerman,Life of Lafayette(New York, 1889); Charlemagne Tower,The Marquis de La Fayette in the American Revolution(Philadelphia, 1895).

1The family of La Fayette, to the cadet branch of which he belonged, received its name from an estate in Aix, Auvergne, which belonged in the 13th century to the Motier family.

LA FAYETTE, MARIE-MADELEINE PIOCHE DE LA VERGNE,Comtesse de(1634-1692), French novelist, was baptized in Paris, on the 18th of March 1634. Her father, Marc Pioche de la Vergne, commandant of Havre, died when she was sixteen, and her mother seems to have been more occupied with her own than her daughter’s interests. Mme de la Vergne married in 1651 the chevalier de Sévigné, and Marie thus became connected with Mme de Sévigné, who was destined to be a lifelong friend. She studied Greek, Latin and Italian, and inspired in one of her tutors, Gilles de Ménage, an enthusiastic admiration which he expressed in verse in three or four languages. Marie married in 1655 François Motier, comte de La Fayette. They lived on the count’s estates in Auvergne, according to her own account (in a letter to Ménage) quite happily; but after the birth of her two sons her husband disappeared so effectually that it was long supposed that he died about 1660, though he really lived until 1683. Mme de La Fayette had returned to Paris, and about 1665 contracted an intimacy with the duc de la Rochefoucauld, then engaged on hisMaximes. The constancy and affection that marked this liaison on both sides justified it in the eyes of society, and when in 1680 La Rochefoucauld died Mme de La Fayette received the sincerest sympathy. Her first novel,La Princesse de Montpensier, was published anonymously in 1662;Zaydeappeared in 1670 under the name of J. R. de Segrais; and in 1678 her masterpiece,La Princesse de Clèves, also under the name of Segrais. The history of the modern novel of sentiment begins with thePrincesse de Clèves. The interminable pages of Mlle de Scudéry with thePrécieusesand their admirers masquerading as Persians or ancient Romans had already been discredited by the burlesques of Paul Scarron and Antoine Furetière. It remained for Mme de La Fayette to achieve the more difficult task of substituting something more satisfactory than the disconnected episodes of theroman comique. This she accomplished in a story offering in its shortness and simplicity a complete contrast to the extravagant and lengthy romances of the time. The interest of the story depends not on incident but on the characters of the personages. They act in a perfectly reasonable way and their motives are analysed with the finest discrimination. No doubt the semi-autobiographical character of the material partially explains Mme de La Fayette’s refusal to acknowledge the book. Contemporary critics, even Mme de Sévigné amongst them, found fault with the avowal made by Mme de Clèves to her husband. In answer to these criticisms, which her anonymity prevented her from answering directly, Mme de La Fayette wrote her last novel, theComtesse de Tende.

The character of her work and her history have combined to give an impression of melancholy and sweetness that only represents one side of her character, for a correspondence brought to light comparatively recently showed her as the acute diplomatic agent of Jeanne de Nemours, duchess of Savoy, at the court of Louis XIV. She had from her early days also been intimate with Henrietta of England, duchess of Orleans, under whose immediate direction she wrote herHistoire de Madame Henriette d’Angleterre, which only appeared in 1720. She wrote memoirs of the reign of Louis XIV., which, with the exception of two chapters, for the years 1688 and 1689 (published at Amsterdam, 1731), were lost through her son’s carelessness. Madame de La Fayette died on the 25th of May 1692.

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