1757-1834 French Officer

Hands Across the Sea.

More than anyone else, Marie- Joseph -Paul-Yves -Roch- Gilbert de Motier, Marquis de Lafayette symbolizes the assistance Americans received from Europeans in their struggle for independence. Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben wrote the tactical manual for the American army and drilled it in European methods; Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur comte de Rochambeau commanded an army at Newport and Yorktown; Adm. Francois-Joseph- Paul de Grasse was crucial to the victory at Yorktown; Baron Johann de Kalb commanded a division and was wounded at Camden; Thaddeus Kosciusko designed the defenses at Saratoga and West Point; and Count Casimir Pulaski was mortally wounded at the head of his cavalry unit at the siege of Savannah. But no foreign officer was so revered in his lifetime and afterward as the Marquis de Lafayette. Background. Born in...