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Jim Tresner, 33°, Grand Cross
P.O. Box 70, Guthrie, Oklahoma 73044–0070
Book Reviews Editor, The Scottish Rite Journal
 We
don't really know as much about the lives of heroes as most of
us think we do. I would have said, if asked, that I knew about
Lafayette: he was a young Frenchman, came to America to help fight
the War of Independence, joined the Fraternity, sent a key to
the Bastille to George Washington. What else is there to know?
A lot! The book reviewed in this column gives a full portrait
of the man and is just what the book's publicity says- "a
gripping and intimate portrait of the heroic young French solder
who, at 19, renounced a life of luxury in Paris and Versailles
to fight and bleed for liberty."
Harlow Giles Unger, Lafayette,
John Wiley & Sons Publishers, Hoboken, New Jersey, 2002. Hardcover,
452 pages with numerous illustrations. Available on the Internet
for about $24.00. ISBN 0-471-39432-7
This is a downright wonderful book. Buy one for yourself, and
ask your Lodge to buy one for its own library and one to give
to a high school or college library. It's that good. If you enjoy
biography or history, it is a natural, of course. But if your
preference is in the "ripping yarns" tradition, with
daring escapes and improbable adventures, this is for you as well.
And it's all true.
I should have known, but didn't, that Lafayette's political contributions
in France were even more important in winning the war than his
military contributions in America. He got caught up in the Terror
of the French Revolution and just managed to escape the guillotine
after spending months in a dungeon (some members of his family
weren't that lucky).
And it is delightful that Unger gives Freemasonry its due in
Lafayette's life and in the Revolutionary War. Very few historians
do, although there has lately been a great awakening of academic
interest in the Fraternity. To quote a passage from page 15:
In France "hundreds of officers lined up each day to
volunteer in the American Revolution and avenge the French army's
humiliation by the British in the Seven Year's War, a dozen years
earlier. Lafayette fell victim to the frenzy after his commanding
general, Charles-François, comte de Broglie, a grand master
Freemason, invited Lafayette, Noailles, and Ségur to 'see
the light' by joining the Masonic military lodge. Nowhere in the
political and intellectual darkness of Europe's aristocratic monarchies
did the Age of Enlightenment shine brighter than in France's Masonic
lodges, where the American Revolution represented a struggle by
Freemasons like Washington and Franklin for principles and man's
right to life, liberty, and property. Lafayette embraced his new
fraternity with all his heart. The orphaned country boy with no
brothers had found an entire brotherhood-each a brother to him
and he a brother to each. De Broglie invited Lafayette and other
Freemasons to dine with the duke of Gloucester, the younger brother
of English King George III. An outspoken foe of his brother's
policies in the American colonies, Gloucester fired Lafayette's
chivalric-and now, Masonic-imagination with descriptions of Americans
as 'a people fighting for liberty.'"
The book has many other references to the Fraternity as well.
Unger has done a fine job of making the enormous political complexities
of the time transparent to a modern reader. If you are a fan of
history or of heroes, this is a book for you.
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