Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette | Page 4

others the care of collecting the recollections, as well as the fruits, of my labour.
After having enjoyed an uninterrupted course of good fortune for fifteen years, I presented myself, with a favourable prospect of success, before the coalition of kings, and the aristocracy of Europe: I was overthrown by the simultaneous fury of French jacobinism. My person was then given up to the vengeance of my natural enemies, and my reputation to the calumnies of those self-styled patriots who had so lately violated every sworn and national guarantee. It is well known that the regimen of my five years' imprisonment was not favourable to literary occupations, and when, on my deliverance from prison, I was advised to write an explanation of my conduct, I was disgusted with all works of the kind, by the numerous memoirs or notices by which so many persons had trespassed upon the attention of the public. Events had also spoken for us; and many accusers, and many accusations, had fallen into oblivion.
As soon as I returned to France, my friends requested me to write memoirs: I found excuses for not doing so in my reluctance to judge with severity the first jacobin chiefs who have shared since in my proscription,--the Girondins, who have died for those very principles they had opposed and persecuted in me,--the king and queen, whose lamentable fate only allows me to pride myself upon some services I have rendered them,--and the vanquished royalists, who are at present deprived of fortune, and exposed to every, arbitrary measure. I ought to add, likewise that, happy in my retreat, in the bosom of my family and occupied with agricultural pursuits, I know not how to purloin one moment from the enjoyments of my domestic life.
But my friends have renewed their request, and to comply in some degree with it, I have consented to place in order the few papers that I still possess and assemble together some relations which have been already published, and unite, by notes, the whole collection, in which my children and friends may one day find materials for a less insignificant work. As to myself, I acknowledge that my indolence in this respect is owing to the intimate conviction which I feel, that liberty will ultimately be established in the old as well as in the new world, and that then the history of our revolutions will put all things and all persons in their proper places.
Footnote
1. Although this notice, written a short time after the 18th Brumaire, be anterior to a great number of events, in the midst of which General Lafayette continued his public life, we have placed it in this part of the work, as a sort of general introduction to the various materials it contains.
* * * * *

FIRST VOYAGE
AND
FIRST CAMPAIGN IN AMERICA 1777-1778.

MEMOIRS WRITTEN BY MYSELF,~[1]
UNTIL THE YEAR 1780.
TO MY FRIENDS.
If I were to confound, as is too often done, obstinacy with firmness, I should blush at beginning these memoirs, after having so long refused to do so, and at even increasing their apparent egotism by my style, instead of sheltering myself under cover of the third person; but I will not yield a half compliance to the request of that tender friendship which is far more valuable to me than the ephemeral success which a journal might obtain. It is sufficient for me to know that this relation, intended for a few friends only, will never extend beyond their circle: it even possesses two very great advantages over many celebrated books: these are, that the public not being concerned in this work it cannot need a preface, and that the dedication of affection cannot require an epistle.
It would be too poetical to place myself at once in another hemisphere, and too minute to dwell upon the particulars of my birth, which soon followed the death of my father at Minden;~[2] of my education in Auvergne, with tender and revered relations; of my removal, at twelve years of age to a college at Paris,~[3] where I soon lost my virtuous mother,~[4] and where the death of her father rendered me rich, although I had been born, comparatively speaking, poor; of some schoolboy successes, inspired by the love of glory and somewhat disturbed by that of liberty; of my entrance into the regiment of the black musketeers, which only interrupted my studies on review days; and finally, of my marriage, at the age of sixteen, preceded by a residence at the academy of Versailles.~[5] I have still less to say relating to my entrance into the world; to the short favour I enjoyed as constituting one member of a youthful society; to some promises to the regiment de Noailles; and to the unfavourable opinion entertained of me owing to my habitual silence when I did not