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Author : Harlow Giles Unger
Genre : Nonfiction
I found Mr. Unger’s book exceptionally well written; richly and densely detailed. It’s an admirable account of the marquis’s two revolutions-one might even say his two lives-the French and the American. It also captures the private Lafayette and his remarkable wife, Adrienne, in often moving detail. Lafayette was a prolific letter writer, both to American government officials and influencers as well as to those in his own country.
Orphaned at a young age and raised by his grandmother, at age 14 he begins training as a Musketeer. Born into immense wealth, he is married at age 16 to one of the richest families in France. At age 19, he buys a ship against the king’s wishes and sails to America to join Washington in fighting for the Republic.
Harlow Unger’s Lafayette is a remarkable and dramatic account of a life as fully lived as it is possible to imagine, that of Gilbert de Motier, marquis de Lafayette. This book provides a stark reminder of just how  fragile our War of Independence was and how much the victory hinged on the help of French allies, especially assisted by George Washington’s “adopted” son, Lafayette. Unger’s account also includes Lafayette’s idealistic but naive efforts to plant the fruits of the American democracy he so admired in the unreceptive soil of his homeland.
“Because chronic absenteeism rendered Congress to impotent, Washington had little choice but to expand his role into the public spheres. Surrounded by a cadre of loyal, experienced, and effective officers—he appointed a provisional ‘cabinet: Quartermaster General Nathaneal Greene, and General Henry Know. Alexander Hamilton remained his personal secretary, but assumed functions as a presidential chief of staff. Washington gave Lafayette responsibility for ‘foreign affairs,,’ and Lafayette did not disappoint him. He sent a stream of letters to Versailles and Paris, urging everyone he knew of influence to support America.”
“With the cavalry in sure hands, Lafayette turned to training his own division, spending his own money to clothe and arm them and using Steuben’s techniques to drill and train them for the summer campaign. What made his training remarkable—and bonded his troops to him—was his habit of questioning them respectfully about their previous campaigns and the tactics they found most effective. For a major general—a European nobleman at that—to converse and consult with his men astonished them. He later claimed that he learned more from them than they from him.”
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