The bestselling revised edition of the biography.

With forty cities, a river and a mountain named after him in the United States, the Marquis Gilbert de La Fayette is hardly a forgotten figure in this country. On this 250th anniversary of his birth, the descendant of Madame de La Fayette is being fully celebrated. Yet some of the most interesting details of his life, and that of the revolutionary era, are unique to this meticulously researched and lively biography.

At 14 La Fayette found himself at once an orphan and inheritor of a vast fortune. This allowed him at age 16 to marry the woman of his life, and to seek fame, if not more fortune, overseas. Despite a notorious lack of entente with the Dauphine, Marie-Antoinette, the king counted him amongt his most trusted, and the Marquis was a member of the world’s first secret service, the infamous “Secret du Roi”. But he was a royal in search of a cause, and what inspired him the most was the notion of liberty. When he heard that the colonists were rising up against the British, he immediately set sail. Upon his arrival in Philadelphia he was introduced to George Washington who made him a general at the age of 19. After the battle of Yorktown, La Fayette, and France itself, became decisive partners in the victory of the revolutionary war on both sides of the Atlantic.

From his birth in 1757 to his death in 1834, here is Gonzague Saint Bris’ lively and meticulously researched portrait of one of the most influential and popular figures of his time.