Adrienne de La Fayette - French Revolution

French Revolution

In 1783, Lafayette bought a townhouse, at 183 rue de Bourbon, for 200,000 livres ($2 million). He and Adrienne were active in their salon, at the Hôtel de La Fayette, the headquarters of Americans in Paris, such as Benjamin Franklin, Mr. and Mrs. John Jay, and Mr. and Mrs. John Adams who met every Monday, and dined in company with family, and the liberal nobility, such as Clermont-Tonnerre, Madame de Staël, Morellet, and Marmontel.

Adrienne took a dislike to the pessimistic Gouverneur Morris, calling him an 'aristocrat'.

Lafayette joined the French abolitionist group Society of the Friends of the Blacks (Société des amis des Noirs), which advocated the end of the slave trade and equal rights for free Blacks. In 1783, in correspondence with Washington, he urged the emancipation of slaves; and to establish them as farmer tenants. Although Washington demurred, Lafayette purchased land in the French colony of Cayenne to "experiment" with education, and emancipation, at his plantation La Belle Gabrielle.

On 15 July 1789, he was acclaimed commander-in-chief of the National Guard (Garde nationale). His moderate (Constitutional Monarchist) views were rejected by the Royalists (Legitimists or Orléanist), and became marginalized, with the rise of the Girondists, and then Jacobin radicals, and the increasing polarisation of politics. Adrienne went with Lafayette to Chavaniac, in October 1791, after he lost the mayoral election.

After war was declared on Austria on 20 April 1792, Lafayette left for command of the army at Metz. After returning to Paris to defend the King, he was then accused of treason, and sought to escape to the Dutch Republic, but was arrested on 19 August by the Prussians at Rochefort, Belgium, and imprisoned at Wesel, and Magdeburg, Prussia. He was later transferred to the Austrians, and held at Olmutz. An escape attempt was unsuccessful.