Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Lafayette's Imprisonment




“Joss and I hope to glimpse him on the road tomorrow,” said Father. “After all, it is not often we meet someone who has sacrificed so much for his belief in liberty.”
Elder Putney nodded. “Yes, after helping us gain our freedom from England, the poor man did his best to put France on the path to liberty, too. Instead, he ended up imprisoned for more than five years. And his wife and two daughters chose to suffer through that with him. They stayed at his side in a dungeon cell for a couple of those years.” - A Buss from Lafayette © 2016 by Dorothea Jensen

 
My Bublish discussion of this excerpt:  Lafayette returned to France after the American Revolution hoping he could help secure some "liberty" for his own country. Unfortunately, the goal he chose was a middle path: a limited constitutional monarchy similar to that of England. Because of this, he was hated by not only those who wanted no change (to keep the absolute monarchy intact) and also by those who wanted total change (to get rid of the monarchy altogether). Of course it was all much more complicated than this simple statement, but it could be said that this was essentially the reason he ended up in a dungeon cell.
To learn more about Lafayette's imprisonment, visit the Lafayette College webpage about it, here.

No comments:

Post a Comment