marquis & peele
Or, my favorite boy the Marquis de Lafayette, the Ferris Bueller of the 18th century.
Hello friends!
Things are percolating along busily behind the scenes in Book World, though alas, I can’t talk about any of it publicly yet. (If I were to make shirts about the publishing process, they would say “I Have News But I Can’t Tell You Yet.” Alternately, “Authors Actually Don’t Have Any Control Over How Fast Your Amazon Order Arrives So Please Don’t Give The Book One Star For That.”)
So for now, let’s just get right into what you came here for!
I don’t generally talk about America’s Founding Fathers in this newsletter, because most of them sucked in a way that is not entertaining to me personally. Notable exception, of course, being Benjamin Franklin, America’s weird horny grandpa.
But I’m making another exception for today’s subject, who is not a true dirtbag so much as a “person who did everything with so much unnecessary flair I cannot help but be obsessed, so I’m gonna talk about him and you can’t stop me.”
Everyone please give it up for:
Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Moitier, Marquis de Lafayette, America’s Favorite Fighting Frenchman!
(This teenage weirdo has exactly as much audacity as he has first names and I love him for that, but we’re just going to call him Lafayette for obvious reasons.)
Lafayette was born in 1755 in Chavaniac-Lafayette in France, so if you were like “hmm, was his family rich and important?” may I kindly remind you that the entire city was named after them. What I like best about Lafayette’s childhood is that in any other Dirtbags Through the Ages story, every event I’m about to describe would end in absolute catastrophe. But not for Lafayette, the Luckiest Child Ever Born!
Everything’s Going So Well!!
Lafayette’s father was killed in battle in 1759 during the Seven Years’ War,1 leaving four-year-old Lafayette both fatherless and also the youngest, most important marquis in all of France. Usually when a small child inherits a title, bad things happen immediately. Scheming regents, child kidnappings, men named Esmé, etc. But not for Lafayette! He grew up pleasantly un-kidnapped and moved to Paris at age 11 and enrolled as a Musketeer in the army serving the current French King, Louis XV.
We simply do not raise kids the way we used to. Imagine enrolling an 11-year-old in the Marine Corps today. But not only did Lafayette not get stabbed immediately, he achieved the rank of Second Lieutenant at the age of roughly 13 and a half. The audacity of this child. Can you imagine being in his squadron. Taking orders from a fifth-grader. You’d never hear the end of it.
But it doesn’t stop there! Sure, he didn’t get baby-assassinated or die of child-bayoneting, but he was a nobleman in France, so surely that means he’s going to have an awful arranged marriage! Well, guess again, buddy! Some asshole duke decided he wanted Lafayette to marry his daughter Marie Adrienne Françoise de Noailles, but Marie Adrienne’s mom decided that the kids were too young to get married.
So What! She! Did! Was to casually arrange public meetups between Lafayette and Marie Adrienne, pushing them together in social situations and setting up romantic vibes until the kids fell in love on their own. And it worked! Marie Adrienne and Lafayette became friends, then lovers. They were married in 1774, and they adored each other for the rest of their days.
To reiterate: the Marquis de Lafayette’s mother-in-law conned him into a series of meet-cutes like they were in a modern AU fanfic AND IT WORKED.
Children of the Revolution
Newly married, the teenage Lafayette was still hanging around with military people in France: riding horses, waving his sword around, getting involved in Freemasonry, as one does. But everything came to a head in 1776, when Lafayette started learning more about the brewing revolution happening over in Britain’s American colonies.
Why did Lafayette give a shit about the Americas, you ask? Well, two primary reasons. First, he was French, and the French hated the British, so it’s not like he was going to take England’s side.
But more importantly, Lafayette had zero common sense and a bigger hero complex than you could shake a stick at. I mean, think about it. He’s 18 years old, has been in charge of the army since he was 11. Nothing bad has ever happened to him ever. He’s rich as God and no one has ever told him no. He’s got no parents and seven brain cells, and every one of those brain cells is yelling “you are going to SAVE THE WORLD” the way we all felt when we were college freshmen.
So my boy Lafayette gets the idea that he’s going to run away and join the American Revolution. His father-in-law was extremely against the idea. In fact, he went to Louis XV and convinced the king to issue a proclamation saying French officers were forbidden from serving in the American Revolution—officers generally, and dumbass teenagers named Lafayette in particular.
You’re the Marquis de Lafayette. The Sausage King of Chicago.
Did this work? Of fucking course it did not. Because Lafayette was about to engage in some Ferris Bueller’s Day Off-level shenanigans.
First, Lafayette went off and bought a warship for 112,000 pounds cash—the modern equivalent of roughly TWELVE POINT SIX MILLION US DOLLARS—and started outfitting the ship for war. Meanwhile, he sent a quick note home to see how his family was responding to his intention to run off and fight a revolution that involved him in no way, shape, or form.
Their response:
In addition to the royal proclamation already mentioned, his in-laws had also sent a family friend to track Lafayette down and send him to join an army battalion in Marseilles, under the assumption that if an army commander was watching him, he couldn’t get up to any trouble.
Lafayette pretended to follow orders, setting out on his horse and riding a few miles in a general Marseilles-ward direction. But as soon as the family friend’s back was turned, he turned around and snuck through the woods, giving his ship the order to depart and head for America. The ship was searched in the port of Pauillac—but Lafayette was too smart for them! He’d snuck over to Basque country and hopped on the ship at the very last possible minute: too late for anyone to stop him.
One imagines Lafayette jumping over the backyard fences of Basque homes and skidding onto the ship, his French father-in-law standing on the Iberian peninsula shaking his fist while Lafayette flips him the double bird from the deck of the Victoire.
*Looking at George Washington* Are You My Mother?
When the Victoire landed, Lafayette went straight to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia and demanded that he get introduced to General George Washington. His pitch seems to have been “I am a big fan of your revolution and also I am willing to work without pay because I just dropped $12.6 million dollars on a warship so clearly money means nothing to me.”
And that’s all it took! Lafayette met Washington and immediately became the General’s biggest fanboy, and Washington, not immune to flattery, took the teen onto his staff. Basically, the orphan teen Lafayette shook Washington warmly by the hand and said “hi I’m your son now,” and the childless Washington said “nice to meet you, son, I’m Dad.”
Lafayette was not technically given command of a division at this point, since he was a foreign citizen and also just some guy who had showed up uninvited, but it doesn’t seem anyone properly explained this to him. Even so, he was extremely valuable during the Revolution. Unsurprisingly so, as he’d been a career soldier since age 11 and most of the Continental Army was made up of guys who three days ago had never shot anything bigger than a squirrel.
It’s not a funny anecdote, but Lafayette spent the entire horrible winter of 1777–78 with his troops at Valley Forge, which my American readers will recognize as “that horrible time when no one had shoes and everyone froze to death.” He camped alongside his men and spent his own money on clothes and shoes to keep them warm. Learning this was the exact moment fifth-grade me developed a temporally improbable crush on the Marquis de Lafayette, so I’m compelled to include it.
Lafayette took a brief break to go home to France, say hi to his cool wife, and convince the king to send 6,000 French soldiers back to fight in the American Revolution—so, like, productive vacation, as far as they go. Upon his return, it was time for the Battle of Yorktown, AKA the Act One finale of the Broadway musical Hamilton. Lafayette and Washington trapped the British troops using military tactics that do not interest me, and at the end of this battle, the British commander surrendered.
Lafayette, now age 26, had just won the American Revolution.
Potent Notables
For most people, that would be enough revolutions for one day! But remember, this is Lafayette we’re talking about. If there’s one thing he loves more than pissing off his father-in-law, it’s getting extremely engaged in an idealistic fight for justice that inconveniences some rich people. So back to France he went, for the sake of the idiom!
This guy had exactly five chill years in which to hang out with Marie Adrienne before things went to hell in France. He spent a lot of this time getting involved in the abolition movement, later saying “I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America if I could have conceived that I was founding a land of slavery.” Swoon.
Then, in 1787, King Louis XVI called an Assembly of Notables—basically a bunch of rich people coming together to figure out the busted economy that they themselves had busted. He invited Lafayette, which I can only explain by assuming Louis XVI had never met Lafayette a day in his life.
Obviously, Lafayette got up and immediately started arguing for things like liberty and equality and giving every teen a warship and a musket &c. What else did you think he was gonna do? The idiom demanded it.
One thing led to another, yadda yadda yadda,2 and before you know it, it’s July 14, 1789 and the citizens of Paris are storming the Bastille. I can’t decide if Lafayette’s reaction would have been more “fuck yeah revolution my favorite!” or more “oh my god can I have one day where the people are not rising up to demand the Rights of Man I am so tired.”
In Which We Have No Choice But To Stan Lafayette’s Wife
Lafayette was named Commander in Chief of the Parisian National Guard and given the impossible order of “stop the French Revolution from happening.” He did his best, even posing on the balcony of the Tuileries with Marie Antoinette to show a cool guy like him wasn’t mad at her. His MO during the early revolution was to convince the government to make as many liberal concessions as possible while also making sure people did not murder the king.
This is a hard job, and he could only do it for so long. King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette almost escaped from France in 1791 in an escapade called the Flight to Varennes, and everyone blamed Lafayette for almost letting them get away. Notorious 30–50 Feral Hog Survivor Georges Danton decided that Lafayette was a royalist and started turning people against him, and things got even worse in July 1791 when Lafayette ordered the National Guard to open fire on protesters at the Champs de Mars. Hard to make jokes about that, but these were dark times for my boy.
Things got even more French Revolutiony in 1792, when both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed and Danton put out a warrant for Lafayette’s arrest. Lafayette, wisely, decided now was a great moment for a relative centrist to get the fuck outta town. He skedaddled off to Austria, but he was immediately recognized as The Dirtbag Teen Who Can’t Stop Fighting in Revolutions, and the Emperor of Austria sent him to prison.
Lafayette was in prison from September 1792 to September 1797. He spent numerous letters to American Founding Fathers asking them to bust him out of prison, but George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were fucking worthless, and all this went nowhere.
The only person in this story who was worth a good goddamn? That’s right: All-Star Wife Marie Adrienne Françoise! In 1795, she and Lafayette’s two daughters rode to Austria from France and petitioned the Emperor to let them live with Lafayette in prison. And they did! They spent the next two years together! This is the cutest goddamn thing in the world! THEY LOVED EACH OTHER SO MUCH!
More Like No-Poleon
Finally, the height of the French Revolution had blown over, and an up-and-coming French general was able to negotiate Lafayette’s release. It gives me absolutely no pleasure to report that this French general was none other than Dirtbag Enemy Number One Napoleon Bonaparte.
It does, however, give me great pleasure to report that Napoleon demanded Lafayette swear his allegiance before he could return to France, and Lafayette explicitly said “I will not do that because the French Directorate is tyrannical and also you suck, kindly fuck off.”
In this house we cannot help but love a guy who told Napoleon to go fuck himself.
Unfortunately, France did not like this, and the Directorate seized all of Lafayette’s property and banished him. After Napoleon came to power, Lafayette made a fake passport and snuck back into the country, because although he was 42 years old now, his teenage Ferris Bueller antics never left him. He lived quietly, keeping his distance from Napoleon and responding to all invitations to serve in politics with “Did you not see the way I just spent five years in prison and people were burning effigies of me, I am on vacation.”
Marie Adrienne died in 1807 from an illness sustained during their time together in prison, with her last words to Lafayette being “Je suis toute à vous.” Which physically forces me to say: WHY did we just get another goddamn Napoleon movie and to my knowledge Lafayette and Marie Adrienne have never received a single big-budget historical film?? A travesty.
If Y’all Foment Another Revolution Around Me I Swear To God I Will Turn This Car Around
The Napoleonic era came and went, and Lafayette spent much of this time mourning his wife and hanging out with his American friends. In 1824, he traveled back to America to celebrate the country’s 50th anniversary. He was greeted with parades and celebration and cheering crowds and a colossal amount of merch with his face on it, as this goddamn legend deserved.
Lafayette returned to France in late 1825… Just in time for the July Revolution of 1830!!!
God, I wish I was kidding. Lafayette turned up in Paris and before you could say “is this man made of three revolutions in a trenchcoat,” the Parisians were building barricades in the street and demanding the overthrow of King Charles X.3 Once Louis-Philippe was instated on the throne, Lafayette loudly said “thank you for your email but I am retiring” and retreated to his home.
Lafayette passed away in May 1834, ostensibly of pneumonia but probably because his body had exceeded its recommended daily dose of revolution. He was buried next to Marie Adrienne, because they are the cutest couple in history and if they were not together in death as in life I would have to start rioting.
That’s all for this time, friends! Substack tells me this post is too long for email, but then we did have a statistically improbable number of revolutions to get through, so thank you for joining me on this adventure. I was perhaps stretching the definition of “dirtbag” to include Lafayette in this publication, I’ll admit. However, he’s my all-time favorite and I’m the one who writes this, so therefore I get to do what I want.
Until next time, be well, and stay true to your idiom, especially if that means spending $12.6 million on something that pisses off your father-in-law,
-Allison
DID YOU ALL KNOW THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR IS THE SAME WAR AS THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR???? I was today years old when I learned this. What do you mean the French and Indian War was also being fought in Westphalia and was connected to the GODDAMN HAPSBURGS. What do you mean the French and Indian War wasn’t a WHIMSICAL RACIST NORTH AMERICA-ONLY CONFLICT THAT EXISTED ONLY TO FORESHADOW GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THE FORT WHERE PENCILS COME FROM. American public education is BULLSHIT.
Listen, I cannot summarize the entire French Revolution and the American Revolution in this newsletter. It’s not my fault this man was the Forrest Gump of the 18th century.
This is not the Les Mis revolution. This is the one two years before the Les Mis revolution, notable because it worked at least briefly, not everybody died, and to my knowledge Hugh Jackman played no role.
Very glad you stretched the definition of dirtbag for this one. It’s a joyous read and only improved by all the Ferris Bueller comparisons.
Lafayette was AMAZING! Lovelovelove him! Here’s a true story from the American Revolution (researched him while in college in Baltimore & writing TV vignettes in Maryland history): While visiting Baltimore in 1781, a ball was thrown for this French hero. But he wasn’t dancing & looked sad. When asked by the ladies why he wouldn’t dance, he replied “I cannot enjoy the gaiety of the scene while so many of the poor soldiers are in want of clothes.” The women of Baltimore went to work the next morning in that very ballroom, making over 500 garments for the army. Lafayette’s letter of thanks arrived July 3. Gotta love this man!