Lafayette Knew They and the World Would Never See His Kind Again

1. His nativity name was extremely long.
The future hero of the American Revolution was born Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette in an expansive chateau in Chavaniac, France, on September half-dozen, 1757. "It's non my error," he joked in his autobiography. "I was baptized similar a Spaniard, with the proper name of every conceivable saint who might offer me more protection in battle."

2. King George III'due south brother convinced Lafayette to fight against Great United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland.
In Baronial 1775, Lafayette attended a dinner party at which Peachy Uk's Duke of Gloucester, younger blood brother of King George III, was the guest of laurels. The duke, who had been condemned by the king over his recent choice of a bride, hit back at his majestic blood brother's policies in the American colonies and praised the exploits of liberty-loving Americans at the opening battles of the American Revolution at Lexington and Concord months earlier. Lafayette, whose begetter died in 1759 fighting the British during the Seven Years' War, received the inspiration he needed to strike back against the empire. "From that 60 minutes," he wrote, "I could recall of nothing only this enterprise, and I resolved to go to Paris at once to make further inquiries."

3. Lafayette was simply 19 years old and without gainsay experience when he arrived in America.
Defying the explicit orders of Male monarch Louis XVI, who did non wish to provoke Uk, the marquis eluded regime and crossed the Atlantic Ocean to assistance the rebellious Americans in 1777. Although still a teenager who spoke piffling English language and lacked any battle experience, Lafayette convinced the Continental Army to commission him a major general on July 31, 1777.

Wounding of Lafayette at Brandywine. (Credit: Keystone View Visitor/FPG/Annal Photos/Getty Images)

4. He was shot in the leg during his first boxing.
During the Boxing of Brandywine, near Philadelphia, on September 11, 1777, Lafayette was shot in the calf. Refusing handling, the armed services novice managed to organize a successful retreat. Following a two-month recuperation, Lafayette was given command over his own division for the first time.

5. Lafayette named his only son after George Washington.
As both a "friend and a father," the commander of the Continental Army held the young Frenchman in high esteem. Lafayette remained at Washington's side during the harsh winter at Valley Forge in 1777 and through to the conclusive boxing at Yorktown in 1781. In 1779 the marquis named his newly born son Georges Washington de Lafayette in accolade of the American revolutionary. Three years later, at the proffer of Thomas Jefferson, Lafayette named his youngest daughter Marie Antoinette Virginie to honor both the French queen and the country of Virginia.

George Washington and Lafayette at Valley Forge.

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half dozen. Hounds that Lafayette sent to Washington helped to create a new breed of dog.
In 1785, Lafayette sent seven large French hounds beyond the Atlantic Sea as gifts for Washington. To increase the size of a pack of blackness-and-tan English language foxhounds that had been given to him by his patron, Lord Fairfax, the future kickoff president of the Us bred the hunting dogs with the imports. The combination of the English hounds, descended from those brought to the American colonies by Robert Brooke in 1650, and French canines helped to create the American Foxhound. The American Kennel Club, which calls the domestic dog "easy-going, sweet-tempered, independent," recognized the American Foxhound as a brood in 1886.

READ MORE: George Washington Was a Passionate Dog Breeder

7. Lafayette co-authored the Annunciation of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.
Inspired past the ideals of the American Revolution, the marquis penned one of history'south most of import documents about human and civil rights with the help of Jefferson, the Annunciation of Independence's principal architect. The National Assembly adopted the Proclamation of the Rights of Human and the Denizen on August 27, 1789, and it remains enshrined in French republic's present-twenty-four hour period constitution.

An 1824 portrait of Lafayette that hangs in the House Chamber of the U.S Capitol.

8. Lafayette is an honorary American citizen.
In 1784, Maryland conferred honorary citizenship upon Lafayette, and other colonies followed suit. The U.S. State Department, however, determined in 1935 that the measures did non result in the marquis becoming a The states citizen following the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. That inverse in 2002 when Lafayette became the 6th foreign national to be given honorary American citizenship past Congress.

9. At the age of 72, he was still a revolutionary leader.
After King Charles Ten dissolved the National Assembly and suspended the gratuitous press in 1830, Lafayette took accuse of the National Guard and rushed to the assistance the revolutionaries who erected barricades in the streets of Paris. After the rex was forced to abdicate, Lafayette turned down a chance to rule equally dictator and instead backed the installation of Louis-Philippe on the throne every bit a constitutional monarch. The new male monarch chop-chop disappointed the marquis with his lack of reforms, and Lafayette led the liberal opposition to the ruler in his last years.

10. Lafayette was buried in France underneath dirt taken from Bunker Colina.
Later on the 76-year-old Lafayette died in Paris on May 20, 1834, he was laid to rest next to his wife at the city's Picpus Cemetery. To carry out the asking of "The Hero of the Two Worlds" to be cached in both American and French soil, his son covered his coffin with dirt they had taken from Bunker Hill in 1825 when the marquis laid the cornerstone to the monument that still marks the battleground.

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-marquis-de-lafayette

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