I hope everyone has an enjoyable and safe holiday….Happy Fourth of July!

Today we celebrate the document that proclaimed the colonies independence from mother England….but since this was the start of our Revolutionary War I want cover a hero that gets little recognition for his service…. Gilbert du Motier, better known as the Marquis de Lafayette.

When I was teaching a political history class at a local college my class of 12 had only one young lady that knew anything about the Marquis.,….I had one genus that thought he was a famous pirate.

The Marquis de La Fayette distinguished himself with his military deeds during the American War of Independence (1775-1783), earning the nickname “Hero of two worlds”. His experience in the United States stoked his love of liberty, and upon returning to France he took part in the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. He was commander of the National Guard during the Revolution, when his sympathies were split between the monarchy and the revolutionaries. He was eventually forced to flee the country.

He explained his attraction to the American cause in a letter to his wife: “The welfare of America is intimately connected with the happiness of all mankind; she will become the respectable and safe asylum of virtue, integrity, tolerance, equality, and a peaceful liberty.”

Receiving his commission as major general in the Continental Army in 1777, Lafayette first saw action in September of that year at the Battle of Brandywine where he was shot in the leg and recovered from his wound at the Moravian settlement in Bethlehem, Pa. His heroism in the battle encouraged Washington to give the young Frenchman command of a division, and Lafayette stayed with his troops at Valley Forge. After a visit to France in 1779, he returned to America in 1780 with assurances of thousands of French troops who would join the war, and helped Franco-American forces win the surrender of a large British army at Yorktown, Va., in 1781, the last major battle of the war.

Lafayette was injured in the Battle of Brandywine, but his tactical cunning and fearlessness in battle helped to save the Revolution on many occasions. In 1779, Lafayette returned to France and helped to win formal French support for the American cause. Lafayette came to Williamsburg during preparations for the Virginia Campaign of 1781. At Yorktown, Lafayette helped corner Britain’s Lord Cornwallis, whose surrender after several days of siege was a fatal blow that ensured the American victory.

After the American Revolution, Lafayette returned to France, where his popularity soared as he navigated between angry subjects and the monarchy. Lafayette drafted France’s celebrated Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen, and advocated for religious toleration and the end of slavery. When most of Europe declared war against France in 1792, Lafayette commanded a French army in the north. But he was taken prisoner by the Austrians and remained with them for nearly five years. Lafayette and his wife, Adrienne de Noailles, had four children, including a son named Georges Washington. The general died in 1834.

More on the life and times of the Marquis….https://theconversation.com/lafayette-helped-americans-turn-the-tide-in-their-fight-for-independence-and-50-years-later-he-helped-forge-the-growing-nations-sense-of-identity-249455

A hero in two worlds…the US and France.  He deserves much more recognition than he gets in our history classes.

The world needs more people like the Marquis….if we had them this would be a better world.

“The highest reward that can be bestowed on a revolutionary veteran is to welcome him with a sight of the blessings which have issued from our struggle for independence, freedom and equal rights.”

Class dismissed

+++This will be my only offering for today….I will be grilling for family and a few friends, a tradition of mine on this day….the menu will consist of ribs and burgers, grilled corn and squash and ice cold watermelon to top off the meal.+++

If you are out and about celebrating the fourth then please take care and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Since most of the news is redundant these I thought I would give my readers a break and force some history down their throats….

Most Americans are taught the the American Revolutionary War was won on the back of George Washington…..he became the savior of the idea of a republic and for his brilliance he became the first president of the United States of America.

Among the hundreds of eulogies delivered after the death of George Washington in 1799, Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College, averred that the general’s military greatness consisted principally in his “formation of extensive and masterly plans” and a “watchful seizure of every advantage.” It was the prevailing view and one that has been embraced by many historians.

In fact, Washington’s missteps revealed failings as a strategist. No one understood his limitations better than Washington himself who, on the eve of the New York campaign in 1776, confessed to Congress his “want of experience to move on a large scale” and his “limited and contracted knowledge . . . in Military Matters.”

In August 1776, the Continental Army was routed in its first test on Long Island in part because Washington failed to properly reconnoiter and he attempted to defend too large an area for the size of his army. To some extent, Washington’s nearly fatal inability to make rapid decisions resulted in the November losses of Fort Washington on Manhattan Island and Fort Lee in New Jersey, defeats that cost the colonists more than one-quarter of the army’s soldiers and precious weaponry and military stores. Washington did not take the blame for what had gone wrong. Instead, he advised Congress of his “want of confidence in the Generality of the Troops.”

In the fall of 1777, when Gen. William Howe invaded Pennsylvania, Washington committed his entire army in an attempt to prevent the loss of Philadelphia. During the Battle of Brandywine, in September, he once again froze with indecision. For nearly two hours information poured into headquarters that the British were attempting a flanking maneuver—a move that would, if successful, entrap much of the Continental Army—and Washington failed to respond. At day’s end, a British sergeant accurately perceived that Washington had “escaped a total overthrow, that must have been the consequence of an hours more daylight.”

Later, Washington was painfully slow to grasp the significance of the war in the Southern states. For the most part, he committed troops to that theater only when Congress ordered him to do so. By then, it was too late to prevent the surrender of Charleston in May 1780 and the subsequent losses among American troops in the South. Washington also failed to see the potential of a campaign against the British in Virginia in 1780 and 1781, prompting Comte de Rochambeau, commander of the French Army in America, to write despairingly that the American general “did not conceive the affair of the south to be such urgency.” Indeed, Rochambeau, who took action without Washington’s knowledge, conceived the Virginia campaign that resulted in the war’s decisive encounter, the siege of Yorktown in the autumn of 1781.

Much of the war’s decision-making was hidden from the public. Not even Congress was aware that the French, not Washington, had formulated the strategy that led to America’s triumph. During Washington’s presidency, the American pamphleteer Thomas Paine, then living in France, revealed much of what had occurred. In 1796 Paine published a “Letter to George Washington,” in which he claimed that most of General Washington’s supposed achievements were “fraudulent.” “You slept away your time in the field” after 1778, Paine charged, arguing that Gens. Horatio Gates and Greene were more responsible for America’s victory than Washington.

There was some truth to Paine’s acid comments, but his indictment failed to recognize that one can be a great military leader without being a gifted tactician or strategist. Washington’s character, judgment, industry and meticulous habits, as well as his political and diplomatic skills, set him apart from others. In the final analysis, he was the proper choice to serve as commander of the Continental Army.

(Smithsonian.com)

While Washington was the best choice to lead the army he was far from a brilliant tactician.

I will be writing about other myths from the American Revolution.

As most historians say ……history is written by the victors”

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I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”