beginning of the French Revolution, a period of six years elapsed, during which France suffered much from the exhaustion of her resources in aiding the Americans. La Fayette lived at Paris, openly professing republicanism, which was then the surest passport to the favor both of the people and of the court. The Queen of France herself favored the republican party, though without understanding its objects or tendencies. La Fayette naturally became the organ and spokesman of those who desired a reform in the government. He recommended, even in the palace of the king, the restoration of civil rights to the Protestants; the suppression of the heavy and odious tax upon salt; the reform of the criminal courts; and he denounced the waste of the public money upon princes and court favorites.

The Assembly of the Notables convened in 1787, to consider the state of the kingdom. La Fayette was its most conspicuous and trusted member, and it was he who demanded a convocation of the representatives of all the departments of France, for the purpose of devising a permanent remedy for the evils under which France was suffering.

"What, sir," said one of the royal princes to La Fayette, "do you really demand the assembling of a general congress of France?"

"Yes, my lord," replied La Fayette, " and more than that." Despite the opposition of the court, this memorable congress met at Paris in 1789, and La Fayette represented in it the nobility of his province. It was he who presented the "Declaration of Rights," drawn upon the model of those with which he had been familiar in America, and it was finally adopted. It was he, also, who made the ministers of the crown responsible for their acts, and for the consequences of their acts.

When this National Assembly was declared permanent, La Fayette was elected its vice-president, and it was in that character that, after the taking of the Bastile, he went to the scene, at the head of a deputation of sixty members, to congratulate the people upon their triumph. The next day, a city-guard was organized to preserve the peace of Paris, and the question arose in the Assembly who should command it. The president rose

and pointed to the bust of La Fayette, presented by the State of Virginia to the city of Paris. The hint was sufficient, and La Fayette was elected to the post by acclamation. He called his citizen soldiers by the name of National Guard, and he distinguished them by a tri-colored cockade, and all Paris immediately fluttered with tri-colored ribbons and badges.

"This cockade," said La Fayette, as he presented one to the National Assembly, "will make the tour of the world."

From the time of his acceptance of the command of the National Guard, the career of La Fayette changed its character, and the change became more and more marked as the revolution proceeded. Hitherto, he had been chiefly employed in rousing the sentiment of liberty in the minds of his countrymen; but now that the flame threatened to become a dangerous conflagration, it devolved upon him to stay its ravages. It was a task beyond human strength, but he most gallantly attempted it. On some occasions he rescued with his own hands the victims of the popular fury, and arrested the cockaded assassins who would have destroyed them. But even his great popularity was ineffectual to prevent the massacre of innocent citizens, and more than once, overwhelmed with grief and disgust, he threatened to throw up his command.

On that celebrated day when sixty thousand of the people of Paris poured in a tumultuous flood into the park of Versailles, and surrounded the palace of the king, La Fayette was compelled to join the throng, in order, if possible, to control its movements. He arrived in the evening, and spent the whole night in posting the National Guard about the palace, and taking measures to secure the safety of the royal family. At the dawn of day he threw himself upon the bed for a few minutes' repose. Suddenly, the alarm was sounded. Some infuriated men had broken into the palace, killed two of the king's bodyguard, and rushed into the bedchamber of the queen, a minute or two after she had escaped from it. La Fayette ran to the scene, followed by some of the National Guard, and found all the royal family assembled in the king's chamber, trembling for their lives. Beneath the windows of the apartment was a roaring sea of upturned faces, scarcely kept back by a thin line of

National Guards. La Fayette stepped out upon the balcony, and tried to address the crowd, but could not make himself heard. He then led out upon the balcony the beautiful queen, Marie Antoinette, and kissed her hand; then seizing one of the body-guard, embraced him, and placed his own cockade upon the soldier's hat. At once, the temper of the multitude was changed, and the cry burst forth:

Long live the general! Long live the queen! Long live the body-guards!"

It was immediately announced that the king would go with the people to Paris; which had the effect of completely allaying their passions. During the long march of ten miles, La Fayette rode close to the door of the king's carriage, and thus conducted him, in the midst of the tramping crowd, in safety to the Tuileries. When the royal family was once more secure within its walls, one of the ladies, the daughter of the late king, threw herself in the arms of La Fayette, exclaiming :

"General, you have saved us."

From this moment dates the decline of La Fayette's popularity; and his actions, moderate and wise, continually lessened it. He demanded, as a member of the National Assembly, that persons accused of treason should be fairly tried by a jury, and he exerted all his power, while giving a constitution to his country, to preserve the monarchy.

To appease the suspicions of the people that the king meditated a flight from Paris, he declared that he would answer with his head for the king's remaining. When, therefore, in June, 1791, the king and queen made their blundering attempt to escape, La Fayette was immediately suspected of having secretly aided it. Danton cried out at the Jacobin club:

"We must have the person of the king, or the head of the commanding general!

It was in vain that, after the king's return, he ceased to pay him royal honors; nothing could remove the suspicions of the people. Indeed, he still openly advised the preservation of the monarchy, and, when a mob demanded the suppression of the royal power, and threatened violence to the National Guard, the general, after warning them to disperse, ordered the troops to

fire, an action which totally destroyed his popularity and influSoon after, he resigned his commission and his seat in the Assembly, and withdrew to one of his country-seats.

ence.

He was not long allowed to remain in seclusion. The allied dynasties of Europe, justly alarmed at the course of events in Paris, threatened the new republic with war. La Fayette was appointed to command one of the three armies gathered to defend the frontiers. While he was disciplining his troops, and preparing to defend the country, he kept an anxious eye upon Paris, and saw with ever-increasing alarm the prevalence of the savage element in the national politics. In 1792, he had the boldness to write a letter to the National Assembly, demanding the suppression of the clubs, and the restoration of the king to the place and power assigned him by the constitution.

Learning, soon after, the new outrages put upon the king, he suddenly left his army and appeared at the bar of the Assembly, accompanied by a single aide-de-camp; there he renewed his demands, amid the applause of the moderate members; but a member of the opposite party adroitly asked:

"Is the enemy conquered? Is the country delivered, since General La Fayette is in Paris?"

"No," replied he, "the country is not delivered; the situation is unchanged; and, nevertheless, the general of one of our armies is in Paris.”

After a stormy debate, the Assembly declared that he had violated the constitution in making himself the organ of an army legally incapable of deliberating, and had rendered himself amenable to the minister of war for leaving his post without permission. Repulsed thus by the Assembly, coldly received at court, and rejected by the National Guard, he returned to his army despairing of the country. There he made one more attempt to save the king by inducing him to come to his camp and fight for his throne. This project being rejected, and the author of it denounced by Robespierre, his bust publicly burned in Paris, and the medal formerly voted him broken by the hand of the executioner, he deemed it necessary to seek an asylum in a neutral country. Having provided for the safety of his army, he crossed the frontiers, in August, 1792, accompanied by

twenty-one persons, all of whom on passing an Austrian post were taken prisoners, and La Fayette was thrown into a dungeon. His noble wife, who had been for fifteen months a prisoner in Paris, hastened, after her release, to share her husband's captivity.

For five years, in spite of the remonstrances of England, America, and the friends of liberty everywhere, La Fayette remained a prisoner. To every demand for his liberation, the Austrian government replied, with its usual stupidity, that the liberty of La Fayette was incompatible with the safety of the governments of Europe. He owed his liberation, at length, to General Bonaparte, and it required all his great authority to procure it. When La Fayette was presented to Napoleon to thank him for his interference, the First Consul said to him:

"I don't know what the devil you have done to the Austrians; but it cost them a mighty struggle to let you go."

La Fayette voted publicly against making Napoleon consul for life, and against the establishment of the empire. Notwithstanding this, Napoleon and he remained very good friends. The emperor said of him one day :

Everybody in France is corrected of his extreme ideas of liberty except one man, and that man is La Fayette. You see him now tranquil: very well; if he had an opportunity to serve his chimeras, he would reappear upon the scene more ardent than ever."

Upon his return to France he was granted the pension belonging to the military rank he had held under the republic, and he recovered a competent estate from the property of his wife. Napoleon also gave a military commission to his son, George Washington, and when the Bourbons were restored, La Fayette received an indemnity of four hundred and fifty thousand francs.

Napoleon's remark proved correct. La Fayette, though he spent most of the evening of his life in directing the cultivation of his estates, was always present at every crisis in the affairs of France to plead the cause of constitutional liberty. He made a fine remark once in its defence, when taunted with the horrors of the French Revolution :