Two new books about LaFayette

[jon_norstog]

This is a pretty good review in the New Yorker of the two books, one f them American, the other French. It is a long read but tells a pretty good story about the man and his times. Married at 16, to a 14-year old girl! Joined the Continentals in the summer of '77 and stuck with us through the worst of it. The review is worth reading.

A couple quotes

"He was .... a flexible improviser of possibilities, picking up his sword in the most wildly different circumstances to fight for a nebulous but essential ideal of human liberty. Routinely castigated as self-centered and naive, he was right, again and again, in the essentials of his judgment; he somehow always kept himself safe from the allure of perpetual excuses for cruelty, the "despite the unfortunate excesses" style of rationalization that sooner or later lames us all. He refused, in every sense, to lose his head to the absolutists of any party."

"He didn't create a utopian state, or start a reign of terror, or conquer another country, or take power in his own country and lay down the law. But nobody did more to help secure French liberty, rather than merely imagine it, and nobody did more for the best side of the American democratic ideal. Lafayette didn't write a philosophical book or think up a system, or even win a big battle. He was just a terrific friend to all good causes. We were lucky to have known the guy."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...rate-lafayette

jn