Ship a reminder of ally during the Revolution

By Lynn Miller

The centerpiece of the Tall Ships Philadelphia Festival coming to the Delaware River from June 25 to 28 is a meticulous reproduction of the Marquis de Lafayette's frigate, L'Hermione.

That ship carried him to America on his second visit, in April 1780, for what would be his finest hour, providing critical support for the Americans' final victory over the British.

Lafayette had arrived in America for the first time nearly three years earlier. Much had changed, both for him and the American cause, since then. In 1777, both the young nobleman's family and the court of Louis XVI had tried to dissuade what they saw as a reckless 19-year-old from leaving his pregnant wife in France to pursue his romantic dream of helping win America's freedom. Yet on this second visit, he came at the order of the king, a representative of France. His return aboard his gorgeous new frigate - which "sails like a bird," he exclaimed - was triumphant.

For three years, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington had played crucial roles in clearing a path for this young Frenchman in America. By 1780, thanks to Franklin's assiduous diplomacy in Paris, the French court was at last fully committed to the cause of American independence. Six thousand French infantrymen were ready to depart for America, news that Lafayette had been entrusted to relay to the Americans.

Lafayette had established close ties to Washington almost immediately after the two met in 1777. The young nobleman claimed the 45-year-old general as the father he had never known, his own father having died in battle with the English without ever laying eyes on his son. Before long, the childless Washington took to heart his guiding role in the young man's life and fully returned the other's affection. He invited the marquis to move into his own quarters. Within months, Washington persuaded Congress to appoint his young friend to the command of a division.

Washington's invitation to move into his own quarters may have been a bit calculated: Lafayette was well-connected to the French court and extremely rich, promising to serve at his own expense. But by the end of 1777, the usually aloof Washington was writing to Lafayette of his "friendship and attachment" and of his "purest affection," adding, "it will ever constitute part of my happiness to know that I stand well in your opinion."

When, only six weeks after they met, Lafayette was wounded in the Battle of Brandywine, he made light of his injuries when he wrote to his wife but was ecstatic in his adoration of Washington. "His tender interest for me soon won my heart to him," he wrote. "When he sent me his personal surgeon, he told him to take care of me as if I were his son, because he loved me like one." Back home in France in 1779, the Marquis named his son Georges Washington.

So when Lafayette sailed into Boston Harbor on L'Hermione in 1780, he was met with thunderous acclaim. A year later in Philadelphia, he would receive members of the Continental Congress aboard his ship. Finally, triumph came in the Battle of Yorktown, in October 1781. The division Lafayette commanded blocked Cornwallis' troops until American and French forces positioned themselves for the siege of Yorktown. That led to the surrender of the British, assuring America's independence. When word reached Paris, the king expressed his "most favorable opinion" of Lafayette, making the 24-year-old a brigadier general in France's armies.

Little more than a decade later, Lafayette was nearly destroyed by the national upheaval that consumed France. A leader in the early days of the French Revolution, he authored, with the advice of Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789. That grand testament to universal human rights was Lafayette to the core. He never strayed from those principles, though caught between successive waves of radicalism and reaction. Having escaped France after radicals tried to arrest him for monarchist sympathies, he was imprisoned by the Austrians as a revolutionary.

After more than five years in prison, he was finally released at Napoleon's initiative, but he refused to grant that Napoleon had come to power legitimately. After Napoleon's exile, Lafayette opposed the authoritarianism of the restored Bourbon monarchy. In 1830, however, he supported making Louis-Philippe a constitutional monarch, only to have his hopes dashed when the king showed his absolutist colors. Lafayette broke with him.

Lafayette visited America for the last time in 1824. Whatever his difficulties at home, he remained a great American hero who had been the prime defender of America's revolutionary principles in France. He received a hero's welcome in every city he visited. In Philadelphia, a grand triumphal arch bearing his name spanned Chestnut Street in front of the old State House, which, from that visit, began to be referred to as Independence Hall.

Ten years later, when word of Lafayette's death reached America, President Andrew Jackson ordered that he receive the same memorial honors as had been given Washington in 1799. He was buried next to his wife in a Paris cemetery. His son, Georges Washington, sprinkled earth on his grave that his father had brought back from Bunker Hill in 1824.