Who was the Marquis de Lafayette?

The Marquis de Lafayette was a young French aristocrat and major general who fought alongside George Washington from 1777 to 1781, used his connections to help bring France into the war on the American side, and became a lifelong symbol of Franco-American friendship. He was born Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier on September 6, 1757 at the Chateau de Chavaniac in Auvergne, France. He inherited a vast fortune at age 13 after his father's death in battle in 1759 and his mother's death in 1770, and he married Adrienne de Noailles into one of the most powerful French families in 1774.

Inspired by Enlightenment ideas of liberty, he ignored French royal disapproval and sailed for America in 1777 at age 19 aboard La Victoire, a ship he largely paid for himself. He arrived in South Carolina in June 1777 and Congress commissioned him a major general on July 31, 1777, although the appointment was initially honorary. He met Washington at a Philadelphia dinner in August 1777, and the two formed a close personal bond that lasted Washington's lifetime.

Lafayette was wounded in the leg at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777, recovered at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and returned to take command of a Virginia division in November 1777. He endured the winter at Valley Forge with Washington in 1777 to 1778. He played a steady role in subsequent campaigns, leading the rear guard at the Battle of Monmouth on June 28, 1778.

He returned to France in 1779 and lobbied directly with King Louis XVI, foreign minister Vergennes, and the court for full military aid. France had already signed the alliance treaties of February 6, 1778, but Lafayette's advocacy helped secure the dispatch of a French expeditionary force under Comte de Rochambeau that landed at Newport, Rhode Island in July 1780.

Back in America, Lafayette commanded the small American army shadowing Lord Cornwallis through Virginia in spring and summer 1781. He maneuvered Cornwallis into Yorktown, where the combined American and French forces under Washington and Rochambeau and the French fleet under Comte de Grasse trapped the British army between September 28 and October 19, 1781.

After the war Lafayette returned to France, played a leading role in the early French Revolution, drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man with Thomas Jefferson's input in August 1789, commanded the Paris National Guard, and survived imprisonment by the Austrians from 1792 to 1797. He toured all 24 American states from 1824 to 1825 as the Nation's Guest. He died on May 20, 1834 in Paris, buried under American soil shipped from Bunker Hill.