Marquis de Lafayette was a gallant Frenchman who generously placed his life and his fortune at the disposal of the American colonist.

At birth his full give family name was Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbaert du Motier. His father died in the battle of Minden when he was 2 years old. From his father he inherited a castle and the title of marquis and after his mother died he inherited a princely fortune. At the age of 16, he married Marie Adrienne Francoise de Noalles, daughter of one of the most influential families in France. Shortly after Lafayette became a captain in the Calvary Three years later at the age of 19; the news came that the American colonies had declared their independence of England. He later purchased a ship, disobeying the king and his father-in-law he left for America in 1777. He offered to serve without pay, and Congress gave him the rank of major general.

He proved himself to be a good officer and also a wise and honest advisor to the people. At his first battle of Brandywine River he was slightly wounded in September of 1777. The next year at Barren Hill he was commended for a masterly retreat and played an honorable part in the battle of Momouth Court House and in the Rhode Island expedition.

One of the most important things he did while leading the Americans was his influence in including the French government in signing a treaty of alliance with the colonies. Without this treaty America could not have won the war. To aid this alliance in 1779 Lafayettte was back in France, he returned to America in time to assist in the Virginia campaign and in the final movement that lead to General Cornwallis' surrender, in 1781 in Yorktown.

In 1789 his love for liberty led him to join the French noblemen who favored the Revolution of 1789 in his own country. He, while in the Estates-General, presented a draft for a Declaration of Rights based on America's Declaration of Independence. The day after the storming of Bastille on July 14, 1789, he was made commander in chief of the new National Guard; this was organized to safeguard the Revolution.

He rescued Queen Marie Antoinette from the mob that stormed the Palace of Versailles on October 5, 1789, and issued orders to have King Louis XVI stopped when he tried to escape from France. As the head of an army raised to defend France against Austria, he planned to overthrow the Jacobins and also to support a limited monarchy. On August 10, 1792 the monarchy was overthrown and was proclaimed a traitor. To escape arrest and guillotine he fled to Belgium. In Belgium he was arrested by the Austrians and imprisoned for 5 years from 1792 to 1797, then Napoleon obtained his release.

Lafayette disapproved of the rule of Napoleon and took no part in public affairs until after his overthrow. Lafayette was generally politically inactive until the people were again oppressed. Then he led the opposition and in 1830 he took part in his third revolution. He commanded the Army of National Guards that drove Charles X from France and placed Louis Phillipe on the throne, the "Citizen King."

Twice after the close of the American Revolution, Lafayette revisited the United States in 1784 and 1824. On his visit in 1824 Congress voted to give him $200,000 and an additional township of land. He welcomed this gift for during the French Revolution he lost his property.

In 1834 in Paris, Lafayette died; this deeply saddened the French and the Americans, for Lafayette was not a great general and statesman, but a lover of liberty who played a vital role in the winning of the American Revolution.