Historic Boyhoods Part 11

Next day, however, came the retribution. The courtiers were up in arms.

They had managed to go through one such evening, but they did not propose to stand another. The most important people in France went to the King and placed their grievances before him. Louis loved peace, so that now he was willing to take the side of the courtiers, and as a result the day of the children was over.

Marie Antoinette, fond of pleasure above everything else, tried to have her way for a short time, but before a month had pa.s.sed, the weight of its old time formal dignity had fallen on Versailles, and the children were again made to pattern after their elders.

Fond as the young Marquis had been of the good times with playmates of his own age at Versailles, he could not endure the stiff court nor look with any satisfaction to the formal life which most of the young men of the time led. He was naturally too independent to bow and sc.r.a.pe as was required. In spite of his careful training he found that he had not acquired the endless flow of frivolous talk which was popular at court.

He was usually silent in company, and more and more given to going away by himself, in order to escape the affectations of the life about him.

His only chance seemed to lie in the army, and therefore he spent a great deal of his time with his regiment of Black Musketeers, and began to plan for a military career.

He had been made a cadet of the old French regiment called the Black Musketeers when he was only twelve years old. Then he was a slight little chap with bright reddish hair and very fair complexion, and much too small to carry a man's arms; but he was so fond of the splendid-looking set of men that whenever they paraded he was sure to be somewhere near at hand to watch them. The boy's name had been placed on the Musketeers' rolls, though not as a regular cadet, very soon after his birth, because his great-uncle had been a member of the regiment and was eager to have his family name connected with it.

It happened that this twelve-year-old cadet was already a very important person in the kingdom of France. He had been baptized by the names of Marie Paul Joseph Roche Ives Gilbert de Mottier, and held the t.i.tle of Marquis of Lafayette. His father had been killed at the battle of Minden when he was only twenty-four years old, but had already won a great name for bravery. His mother died soon afterward, and so the young Marquis was left almost alone in his great castle of Chavaniac in the Auvergne Mountains of southern France.

He must have been very lonely with no playmates of his own age and only masters and governesses about him. He was what people called "land poor," which meant that although he owned a large part of French territory, it brought him in but small profit, and he had little money to spend.

To make up for his lack of playmates, his masters spent much time drilling the boy Marquis in the etiquette of the French n.o.bility.

High-born French youths at that time had many things to learn, but they were such things as would make the boy an ornamental piece of furniture at court. He must be able to enter a drawing-room with perfect dignity, to compliment a lady, to pick up a fan, to offer his arm with an air of gallantry, to take part in the formal dances of the period, to draw his sword in case his honor should require it.

The little boys and girls of Louis XVI's reign were dressed in stiff court clothes almost as soon as they were old enough to talk, and were taught bows and curtsies, gallant words and dancing steps when other children would have been playing out-of-doors. As a result they grew up much alike, most of them merely fas.h.i.+on plates to decorate the royal palace at Versailles.

Fortunately for the boy his lonely life in the mountains ended when he was twelve years old. Then his great uncle sent for him to come to Paris, and placed him at the College du Plessis, where a great many other young courtiers were being educated. The school taught him very little of history, of foreign languages, or sciences, but a great deal about riding and fencing and dancing, and how to write a letter which should be full of worldly wisdom. At about the same time his grandfather died, and he inherited a very large fortune, so that the small boy bore not only one of the oldest t.i.tles in the kingdom but possessed enough money to do exactly as he pleased. There was only one course open to him--the life of a courtier at Versailles.

In that age of ceremony marriage was quite as much a formal matter as other affairs of life. The young Marquis's guardians, according to the custom of the time, immediately looked about for a girl of equal rank who might marry their boy. They decided on little Marie Adrienne de Noailles, daughter of a great peer of France. The girl was only twelve years old, and her mother was very unwilling to have her married to a boy whose character was unformed, and whose fortune would allow him to become as wild as he chose. Her father, however, liked the match, and her mother finally agreed, insisting, however, that the children should wait two years before their wedding.

When these arrangements had all been made and the engagement was formally announced, the boy Marquis was taken to call at the house of his future wife, and was presented to her in the garden. Formal paths wound under a row of chestnut-trees, carefully tended flower-beds were arranged with mathematical precision, a few peac.o.c.ks strutted across the lawn, and here and there a marble statue or a great stone jar from Italy gave a cla.s.sic touch to the scene.

The small boy, dressed in court clothes of velvet, his fair hair in long curls, his three-cornered hat held beneath his arm, his court rapier hanging at his side, bright silver buckles at knees and on shoes, advanced down the walk to the little lady who was waiting for him. She was in flowered satin, her long, yellow hair falling to her shoulders, her light-blue eyes looking timidly at the boy, and her pale cheeks flus.h.i.+ng as he approached. As he stood before her, she held out her hand, and he delicately lifted it with his and touched his lips to her fingers. She blushed redder, then he paid her a few stately compliments, and they walked down the path laughing shyly at this new intimacy. She had seen few boys before, and he had known few girls, and yet their guardians had destined them for man and wife.

It was a curious, old-world picture that the two children made, but the scene was quite characteristic of the age.

At the time he lived at Versailles and made one of the group about the little King and Queen, the guardians of the young Marquis expected to find him growing more and more popular with the royal court, and they were very much surprised when they learned how reserved he was becoming and how little he seemed interested in the pursuits of his age. When they heard of his being one of the ringleaders at the Queen's party, they were horrified. They determined to try and make him more like themselves, and so sought to get him a place in the household of one of the royal family, the Duc de Provence.

Lafayette was very much disturbed at the thought, and secretly determined to defeat the plan. Before the position was finally offered him he went to a masked ball, and learning which was the Duc de Provence in disguise, went up to him and spoke republican sentiments which were not at all to the n.o.bleman's liking. Then the boy allowed the masked man to recognize him. The Duc said sharply that he should remember the interview. Thereupon young Lafayette made him a profound bow and replied calmly that memory was often called the wit of fools. This, of course, ended the chance of his preferment in the royal household, and the boy was freed from what he considered an irksome task.

As a result however he was no longer popular at court, and soon asked that he might be allowed to go back to his distant castle in Auvergne until he was old enough to take his place in the army. His guardians were glad to have him safely out of the way for a time, and granted his request.

So for a year the little Marie Jean Paul de Lafayette went back to his mountain home and browsed in his father's library and rode over his estates. He liked the peasants in the country. They were a brighter race, not so sullen and discontented as the people in the streets of Paris, but even here, far from Versailles, the boy heard much of the frightful poverty of the people and the gross extravagance of the court.

It made him think, and the more he considered the matter the more he thought the people's claims were just.

At the end of a year the boy went back to Paris and married the girl to whom he had been betrothed. He was sixteen, she fourteen, but the d.u.c.h.ess considered that the boy had shown that he was neither a spendthrift nor a fool, and that her daughter could be trusted to him.

So the two, scarcely more than school children, opened their residence in Paris, and took their place in that gay world which was riding so rapidly to its downfall.

Meanwhile news was constantly coming to France concerning the glorious stand which the American colonists were making against England. The love of liberty was strong in the boy's heart, and the desire to help the colonists soon came to be his greatest wish. Beneath his reserved manner and his silent habits there lay the greatest enthusiasm, and the most determined character.

He soon had concluded that there was little hope of winning laurels in the regiment of Black Musketeers, and he cast his eyes longingly across the seas to where real fighting was taking place; but when he told his wish to his friends they all opposed him. He went to an old general who had long been a friend of his family, and urged him to help him in his plan to go to America.

"Ah, my boy!" said the general, "I have seen your uncle die in the Italian wars. I saw your father killed at Minden. I will not help in the ruin of the last member of your family. You would only risk life and fortune over there without any chance of reward."

That was exactly what Lafayette was anxious to do, and he would not give up his plan. He crossed the Channel to London, and there met some of the men who were interested in the colonial cause. He went to a secret meeting, and heard them discuss plans to help the Americans. They, on their part, at first looked askance at the tall, slender, reddish-haired young Frenchman, who had so little to say himself, and who seemed so easily embarra.s.sed. But when they learned that he had a great fortune, and that if he should aid their cause other young n.o.blemen would follow him, they did their best to win his help. They little knew how invaluable his rare spirit would prove in winning freedom for their land.

As he was an officer in the French army, the young Marquis found it very difficult to leave France without the consent of the government, and this he could not gain. He and a friend, named Baron de Kalb, made their plans to escape secretly from Paris to Bordeaux. When he reached the port he found that his s.h.i.+p was not ready, and before he could sail two officers arrived from court, bearing peremptory orders forbidding him to go to America or to a.s.sist the colonists.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LAFAYETTE TELLS OF HIS WISH TO AID AMERICA]

He would not give up his great desire, and so although he pretended that he was willing to obey the command, he planned secretly to escape across the Spanish border and sail from a Spanish port. He and a friend left Bordeaux in a post-chaise, announcing that they were on their way to the French city of Ma.r.s.eilles. As soon as their carriage reached the open country the young Marquis stepped out, and, now disguised as a courier, mounted one of the horses and rode on ahead, ordering the relays. When they reached the road which led toward Spain they changed their course. The officers who had been set to spy upon him, however, now were giving chase, and at the next inn Lafayette was obliged to hide in the straw of a stable until the pursuers should pa.s.s.

It so happened that he had ridden over that road a little time before, and the innkeeper's daughter knew him by sight. When he rode into the courtyard she exclaimed, "There comes the Marquis de Lafayette!" and he was much alarmed, lest some of the bystanders should give away his secret. He made them understand, however, that he was traveling in disguise, so that when the pursuers arrived and asked questions, the people of the inn all agreed that no such gentleman as Lafayette had been seen in the neighborhood.

By means of alternate hiding and sudden rapid riding, the Marquis finally crossed the Spanish border, and reached the little town of Pa.s.sage. There, on April 20, 1777, he set sail in a boat happily named _La Victoire_, heading for North America.

America owes a great deal to this gallant young Frenchman who crossed the seas to aid the colonies. He was among the first of those foreigners who showed the colonists that the love of liberty was as wide as the world. He came when hope was low, and his coming meant much to the brave men who had to undergo the long, discouraging winter at Valley Forge, and the days when it seemed as though time would prove them only rebels and not patriots. He brought s.h.i.+ps, and men, and money to aid in the great cause, but more than all these were his own magnetic personality and the buoyant spirit that refused to be cast down.

The War of Independence came to an end, and Lafayette returned home.

Trouble was brewing there. The old n.o.bility had grown too overbearing; the men and women who tilled the soil were considered hardly better than mere beasts of burden. Such a state could not last, and so the time came when the mobs of Paris broke into the beautiful gardens of Versailles, stormed the Palace of the Tuilleries, scattered some of the vain and foolish old courtiers, but imprisoned many more, and brought to trial the hapless King Louis and the charming Marie Antoinette.

Lafayette, friend of their early days, stood by them through the height of the storm, but there was little he could do against the people's fury. The Revolution rolled over King and Queen, crus.h.i.+ng them and their resplendent court, and when it had pa.s.sed a different type of men and women governed France.

Only a few of the old n.o.bility were left, and they had learned their lesson. Lafayette and his wife were of that number. Lover of liberty as he was, these great events could scarcely have surprised him. The people had done much the same as had he when, a boy at Versailles, he rebelled against the selfish court that trod down all opposition with a heel of iron.

XI

Horatio Nelson

The Boy of the Channel Fleet: 1758-1805

It was a dark, rainy autumn afternoon, and the small boy, who was trudging along the post-road that led to the English river town of Chatham, was wet to the skin, and thoroughly tired into the bargain. He was thin and pale, with big-searching eyes, and coal black hair that hung tangled over his forehead. He had been traveling all day, and had had only a roll to eat since early morning.

Sometimes he was tempted to stop and ask people he met how far it still was to the town on the Medway, but he overcame the temptation, because he knew that he could reach his destination by six o'clock, and that thinking of the distance still to go would not help him.

Occasionally he would stop, fling his arms about his body for warmth, and stamp his feet hard to drive away the chill. But his stops were not frequent, because he was in a hurry to end his journey.

On such an autumn day night sets in early, and the road ahead was simply a gray blur by the time the boy had reached the outskirts of the town.

But when he did see the first straggling houses he could not help giving a little cry of satisfaction. He met a pedlar going the other way.

"Is this Chatham?" the boy asked, half fearing that the answer would be "No."

"Yes, this here's Chatham."

"And where are the docks, the war-s.h.i.+p docks?" asked the boy.

"Keep straight on this road and you'll walk clean into the water, and there's the s.h.i.+ps," said the man.

Doubtless he wondered what the boy wanted of the war-s.h.i.+ps, but the lad gave him no chance to satisfy his curiosity. He was hurrying on as fast as he could go.

Soon the houses grew more numerous and the post-road had become a street heading through the heart of an old-fas.h.i.+oned town. The boy had never been to Chatham before, but he did not stop to look at any of the curious houses he pa.s.sed. He saw a pasty-cook's window filled with buns and tarts, and he remembered how long it had been since breakfast, but even that thought did not make him loiter. He must reach the docks before all the men-o'-war's men had left for the night.