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LAFAYETTE, MARQUIS DE. (1757-1834). French general and political leader. ALS. (“Lafayette”). 4pp. 4to. Witmold-Holstein, August 30, 1798. To JAMES MCHENRY (1753-1816), signer of the Constitution and U.S. secretary of war from 1796-1800.

When I had last the pleasure to write to you I was far from thinking I should at this period of the year be still detained in Europe. The health of my wife, the primary cause of those delays, has been continually so bad, it had in the spring taken a so dangerous turn, that until now there has not been for me a moral possibility to embark. Even now that she is so far recovered as to have just been able to undertake an indispensable journey, for a few months, to France, I find that besides tender motives not to hasten to put between us the Atlantic she shall soon be ready to cross with me. My presence on this Continent is essential to forward arrangements respecting her property which she is about to make. I need not telling [sic] you, my dear friend, that had I the smallest hope to be useful in public concerns no personal considerations, not even the dearest ones to my heart, could one instant detain me. – May I in my inactive but not unconcerned retirement be soon blessed with the intelligence, now earnestly expected, of a mutual disposition to reestablish harmony between two nations in the fate of whom my whole soul is so deeply interested!

My principles and sentiments have long been known to you. The appeal to liberty in the old world has reminded you of our conversations in the new one. In my doctrine of opposition to every despotism of obedience in a free constitution to national laws you could anticipate the part which, in the several circumstances, I have had to act. From your knowledge of my Republican heart you are sensible that my objections to the present state of France are not owing to her form of Government, but to her want of Freedom. –While that Government, who rescued me out of prison and with whose agents abroad I have every personal reason to be satisfied, are nevertheless far from wishing to facilitate my return, or discouraging the non sense now and then published against me, I am not myself in having to witness measures which I disapprove, nor am I uncertain of the national opinion in my behalf. But such as I am situated I cannot be prejudiced by any other influence than my attachment to the two countries when I now am persuaded that on the part of the Directory there are actual and sincere dispositions to make up this unhappy quarrel. Hitherto I have not in my expressed hopes ventured so far; but now, I repeat it, I have reasons to think that they are in earnest, and to flatter myself that either directly or through the Batavian mediation, which I know is to be offered to you, matters may be properly and amicably adjusted. Thus far although the Americans have been materially injured, the moral advantages remain theirs. It appears to me the French Government had caught the example not long ago given by that of Britain. This system of oppression on the part of the late plunderers and incendiaries of the country, the late prison ship managers, the constant enemies to American independence, unjustifiable as it was, had some thing less shocking than an imitation of such an unfair policy by the early defenders, the first and essential friends of the United States. No doubt their rulers were led into it on a supposition that it had been the means to bring about your English treaty. Thank God, instead of submission, they have met with noble, spirited resistance. The Dignity of America has been asserted and a reconciliation on proper terms cannot but leave her with an increase of national respectability and political consequence. That situation of hers, in which no man can more heartily exalt than I do, would, in my opinion, be lost if by a rejection of honorable means to restore harmony between the two Republics, by a precipitation of measures unnecessary for self defense, or an eagerness to be too far entangled with other European powers, you did countenance the accusation of having seized on the faults of the Directory to engage elsewhere that independence which you are now so justly applauded to defend. –

The British Court I dislike and mistrust, not for their intrigues against me, nor for their vindictive share in my captivity. It is a matter of course, nor shall they ever forgive American names formerly doomed to proscription. But I have heard the boasts and hopes of those men with respect to America, I have known their machiavelism in Holland, I have witnessed their wicked exertions to vitiate the revolution of France, and while I think England has many of the most enlightened and virtuous friends of true liberty to boast of, while I glory in my obligations to her fine characters, I am convinced that in her present Government no confidence is to be had. On the other hand, although my love to my native Country is unalterable, the arbitrary measures of her Government at home cannot agree with me; and not withstanding I ever expected the doctrine of the rights of man to be extended from France throughout the ancient world as from the United States to the rest of America, I never lost a due respect for the mutual independence of enfranchised nations. Nay there have been in certain revolutionary circumstances compliments from the United States which I would not have paid to the then Governors of France; and while I don’t deny that the idea of a war between those two dear countries cuts me to the heart, you my confidential friend, have known that in every transaction, great or trifling, no man has been more than me tenacious of the interest and honour of the American Republic, nor more attached to the happy system of federal union. May I not, therefore, however averse I am to the actual government of Britain, however bound to my native country by everlasting ties of duty and affection, however anxious to see the true American principles of liberty, equality and republicanism fairly and honestly spread throughout the world; may I not, says I, trust my own opinion of the dangers arising from your connection with England against France, of the advantages to be found in an honourable reconciliation, and of the dispositions of the French Directory, to make for it a sincere and proper trial.

Measures, I hear, have been taken with respect to the piracies which I really believe have far exceeded the intentions of Government. Letters from Paris tell me that the neutral navigation shall soon be on better footing. Was I not fearful to lose the opportunity to write to you, I would have waited for answers I daily expect. I just now have hinted that besides direct communications the Batavian Commonwealth is ready to interfere. Mr. Murray has acquainted you with the changes operated in that country. To judge the sentiment of her actual Government one private circumstance may help you. On my eviction from the Olmütz Bastille the Batavians intended to invite me to their country. The January revolution, long foreseen, put an end to their plan. Now that the Jacobins are out, the new Government has taken up the same idea. My going there, as in their kindness for me I understand it will be agreeable to them, appears to be advantageous in many respects, particularly as it is much nearer to my family. Yet I am not hitherto determined.

Notwithstanding the efforts and threats of England and Russia, the Kings of Danemark and Sweden have refused to part from their system of neutrality. So has the King of Prussia who is satisfied with protecting the north of Germany. At Vienna the two hostile courts are aided by female Neapolitan influence, and it is possible an Austrian war may be renewed, the results of which will be the ruin of the Royal father in law and heavy losses to the imperial young man. Bonaparte, after the taking of Malta, has arrived safely and even uninterrupted at Alexandria. That expedition is big with consequences.

The name and merits of Vaublanc are not unknown to you. He was in [17]92 a member of the Legislative Assembly where his virtues, eloquence and courage commanded universal admiration and exposed him to great dangers. His life highly valuable to his country and his friends has been happily preserved to make him again shine in the Council of the Cinq Cent, and among the more undeserving victims of the fructidorian proscription, there is not a more illustrious and upright states man. This excellent patriot is now wandering out of France to which he shall soon or late be gloriously restored. His wife and daughter, lately married to General Pinckney’s nephew, are gone to America and intend to land some where in Virginia. I beg you, my dear McHenry, I also request all other friends, to pay them the attentions that are due to their personal merit and to the husband and father with whom they are blest. To him I am under great obligations. He has in [17]92 stood my defender; he has risked his life in my cause. Gratitude and affection bind me for ever to him. I depend on you to let the two ladies experience that my American friends feel with me on the interesting occasion. --

Here is an affair of a quite different nature. A French emigrant of the aristocratic party having, in a letter to me, on my release from the coalitionary prisons, exposed the state of misery to which he is reduced, and reminded me of his services in the American army; I regretted not to have it in my power to present him with a pecuniary assistance. To the expression of that sentiment it was natural to add an offer to carry his petition to America; the enclosed one he sent to me. But for fear of differing too much I forward it to you who best know what can be [done]. The part incumbent on me I felt the readier to act as I spurn the idea that his having in Europe belonged to a party opposed to us could make me forgetful of his services to our cause under American colours. --

There goes with this letter one to General Washington. I beg you to present my respects to the President, [to] the vice president, and to remember me to all other friends about you. I can’t know whether or not the expressions of my dutiful patriotic attachment of my profound and lively gratitude have ever reached the United States. If not I hope it will not be imputed to any deficiency on my part, but I beg you to let me know what has been received from me; I have written to you unanswered letters. My son George requests me to remember him to you. I join with him in affectionate respects to your lady and family. A[dieu] my dear McHenry, you know how friendly I am. Yours…

Pay my best compliments to my generous friends Bolman and Huger. No answer from this excellent and heroic Huger has yet reached me. How happy I would be to hear from him.

In 1784, several U.S. states awarded citizenship to Lafayette in gratitude for his active role in the American Revolution, but this was just the beginning of a volatile revolutionary career. Returning to France a celebrated “Hero of Two Worlds,” Lafayette led the liberal aristocrats, and in 1789 he was elected a representative to the States General, supporting its conversion into the more revolutionary National Assembly. Lafayette offered a draft of a Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (mentioned in our letter), which the National Constituent Assembly adopted on August 26, 1789. He had been appointed head of the National Guard the day after the storming of the Bastille on July 14, and promptly rescued Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette from the crowd’s fury. At a demonstration at the Champs de Mars in 1791, Lafayette’s National Guard fired into a crowd, killing up to fifty people, and later that year he resigned his post, though he remained committed to protecting the monarchy.

With the French declaration of war against Austria in April 1792, Lafayette was placed in command of an army, though he told the Assembly that a negotiated peace would be preferable as the military, in his opinion, was inadequately prepared. He also sent a letter from the field to the Assembly warning of the growing influence of political clubs, urging that they be shuttered. These two actions placed Lafayette under suspicion and his arrival in Paris at the end of June to argue his case before the Assembly was taken as proof that he was planning a coup d’état. At the beginning of August, the Assembly attempted to impeach Lafayette for leaving his post. The royal family was attacked two days later and when the National Convention took power it suspended Louis XVI’s authority. Envoys were sent to the front to secure Lafayette’s oath of loyalty to the new government but he refused and accused the new government of illegally seizing power. The Assembly charged Lafayette with treason, prompting him to flee to the Netherlands where he eventually hoped to escape and find refuge in the United States. Arrested by France’s enemies in Rochefort, Belgium, along with a band of compatriots, he was imprisoned at Nivelles and then in Luxemburg. There a coalition military tribunal declared the captives political prisoners and in September 1792 conveyed them to Coblentz. French forces soon threatened this location forcing the prisoners’ removal to Magdeburg, where they were incarcerated from the beginning of 1793 to early 1794. When Prussia concluded a peace with France, it no longer had any use for its prisoners of war, and handed them over to the Holy Roman Emperor, Austria’s Francis I, who was still at war with France. In 1794, the Hapsburg monarch transferred the inmates to a prison in Olmütz, Moravia. During his incarceration, Lafayette’s friends and supporters throughout Europe and the United States lobbied for his release and even tried to help him escape. One notable, but failed effort was orchestrated by Alexander Hamilton’s sister-in-law who collaborated with Hanoverian Justus Erich Bollman (1769-1821)and Lafayette’s friend from the Revolutionary War Benjamin Huger (1746-1779).

French-American relations became strained in 1794, the same year the Jacobins, mentioned in our letter, fell from power. France was outraged by U.S. negotiations with Great Britain, formerly their shared enemy, as the Jay Treaty, signed in 1794 and referred to in our letter as “your English treaty,” sought to reduce the enmity that existed between the U.S. and Britain. The United States had also refused to side with either the French (or the British) in their conflict, with the final affront being America’s refusal to repay its debt to France claiming that the money had been owed to the now defunct French crown that had been deposed during the revolution in 1792. The French navy and privateers began to launch attacks on American commercial ships and so an attempt was made to negotiate an agreement through Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (1746-1825), an American Revolution veteran and America’s choice as minister to France, along with John Marshall and Elbridge Gerry. They were approached by three agents of French Foreign Minister Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand who attempted to extort huge sums from the American officials in order to enter into negotiations. This grew into the infamous XYZ Affair and further strained relations between the two countries. On July 7, 1798, less than two months before our letter was written, Congress nullified its treaties with France and authorized attacks on French vessels, officially touching off the Quasi-War that lasted until 1800 when the Convention of September 30, 1800 ended the misunderstanding.

While the French navy attacked American merchant ships on the high seas, revolutionary forces, led by the ambitious Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), invaded the Papal States, Geneva, Malta, Southern Netherlands, and Egypt, precipitating the War of the First Coalition that pitted France against an alliance of monarchist nations seeking to curb its revolutionary influence and military ambitions. Lafayette notes his concern about Napoleon’s victory at Alexandria which occurred on July 2, 1798. Also in July Napoleon prevailed at the Battle of the Pyramids and captured Cairo, but was defeated by Admiral Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Abukir Bay on August 1.

At the same time her husband was languishing in prisons across Europe, Adrienne de Lafayette (1759-1807), had also been jailed in France awaiting her fate under the Guillotine’s blade, an execution aborted thanks to American diplomatic intervention. When she finally received permission to travel to the U.S. with her children, Adrienne chose instead to join Lafayette and spent the next two years incarcerated with him and their two daughters in Olmütz. Lafayette’s son, George Washington Lafayette (1779-1849), named for Lafayette’s close friend, American President George Washington (1732-1799), had been sent to America with his tutor in 1795, where he attended Harvard and visited his namesake at Mount Vernon and the Executive Mansion in Philadelphia. While in prison, Adrienne’s health deteriorated and never returned, a topic discussed in our letter. Ultimately, pressure from Lafayette’s supporters prompted Napoleon to negotiate the prisoners’ release in September 1797, just prior to the Treaty of Campo Formio, which concluded the War of the First Coalition in France’s favor. Upon their release, Lafayette and his fellow prisoners were placed under the protection of the American consul in Hamburg. Because both the Directory and Napoleon still viewed Lafayette as an adversary, he was forced to live two more years in exile in Danish-controlled Holstein (whence he wrote our letter) and in the Batavian Republic, whose January Revolution of 1795 is mentioned in our manuscript. In November 1799, Napoleon became First Consul of France after ousting the Council des Cinq-Cents (known as the Five Hundred), the lower house of the Directory, in the coup of 18 Brumaire. Lafayette then secretly reentered France, approached the new leader and promised to retire from public life if he could be allowed to return to his home in rural France. Thereafter, Lafayette spent much of his time at his estate, La Grange, growing ever more opposed to Napoleon’s authoritarian rule.

Our letter also mentions the King of Prussia, Frederick William III (1770-1840); the King of Denmark and Norway and Duke of Schleswig and Holstein, Christian VII (1749- 1808); and the King of Sweden, Gustav IV Adolf (1778-1837). The “imperial young man” in our letter is Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (1768-1835) who also ruled as Francis I, first emperor of Austria, the only Doppelkaiser in history. His wife was the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily, the “female Neapolitan influence” in Vienna, mentioned by Lafayette. Known to be a political advisor to her husband, Maria Theresa was the eldest daughter of Ferdinand I (1751-1825), the King of the Two Sicilies and the “royal father in law” referred to in our letter. In 1798, Ferdinand rebelled against the French Directory and marched against French troops in Rome. However, he was driven back to Naples where he fled aboard an English ship commanded by Horatio Nelson.

Additionally, our letter mentions the Fructidorian Proscription, during which large groups of people, including the royalist French politician Vincent-Marie Viénot, Count of Vaublanc (1756-1845), were deported as enemies of the Directory. In 1792, Vaublanc had led Lafayette’s defense against charges of treason. Vaublanc, a skilled orator, rallied support for Lafayette in the Assembly, and obtained an acquittal. For his actions he received death threats and was assaulted several times. Lafayette’s gratitude to Vaublanc is noted in our letter, in which he asks McHenry to welcome Vaublanc’s wife, Charlotte de Fontenelle of Saint-Dominingue (the future Haiti) and their daughter to the U.S. Vaublanc’s daughter was married to Pinckney’s nephew.

Despite Lafayette’s self-imposed exile, he maintained a keen interest in public affairs and continued to correspond with old friends and colleagues. By 1830, revolution was spreading across Europe and Lafayette, despite his professed retirement, refused to remain inactive. That year he commanded the National Guard in the monumental July Revolution, which replaced King Charles X with Louis-Philippe.

The Irish-born recipient of our letter, James McHenry, was a surgeon who represented Maryland at the Continental Congress and later signed the United States Constitution. During the Revolutionary War, Washington appointed him an aide, and he later served as Washington’s and Adams’ secretary of war. Baltimore’s Fort McHenry, whose attack by the British in 1812 prompted Francis Scott Key to write The Star-Spangled Banner, is named in his honor.

In our letter, Lafayette informs McHenry that he mailed a letter to George Washington at the same time. The latter responded on Christmas Day, 1798, apologizing for taking more than a year to reply to Lafayette’s five previous letters, (cf. Fitzpatrick, The Writings of George Washington from the original manuscript sources). The Lafayette Microfilm Collection at the Library of Congress includes an image of Lafayette’s secretarial retained copy (erroneously transcribed as addressed to Patrick Henry “My dear Mons. Henry” [!]). It is also published, with errors, in The Life and Correspondence of James McHenry by Bernard Christian Steiner. Silked, otherwise fine. Among the finest and longest letters of Lafayette ever offered.

Item #17077

Price: $15,000