Maurepas: Collection Description (excerpt)
LAFAYETTE: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE (excerpt)
Full text https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/RMM04611.html#d1e303
Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, was born at Chavaniac, Auvergne, in 1757, to an old, illustrious family of the provincial and military nobility. He lost both his parents early: his father was killed by the British at the Battle of Minden when Lafayette was two years old (1759), and when he was thirteen and attending the prestigious Collège de Plessis in Paris both his mother and grandfather died (1770). The latter’s death left Lafayette with a sizable inheritance: he was actually the richest bachelor in France. In 1771 Lafayette became one of the King’s Musketeers, thus embarking on the military career he had always envisioned for himself. In February of 1773 he moved to Versailles as a protégé of Jean de Noailles, the duc d’Ayen, becoming a lieutenant in the Noailles Dragoons in April and promoted to captain one year later, shortly after his arranged marriage to the duc d’Ayen’s daughter, Adrienne de Noailles, on April 11, 1774. And yet, Lafayette’s chances at obtaining a position matching his wealth and status were curtailed by the prevailing reformist mood and, when the Ministry of War cut costs and suppressed his regiment, he was relegated to reserve status (June 1776).
Lafayette first heard of the American revolt in 1775, at a dinner given by his commander the comte de Broglie in Metz. Inspired to serve the American cause though he knew very little about America beyond what he had read in Raynal and what he heard from Franklin, Lafayette managed to sign on as a future major-general in the American army in December 1776. But although by this time the French government was sending covert aid to the Americans in the hope of securing French trade interests (the “arms-for-tobacco deal”), Lafayette had to buy his own ship, La Victoire. It sailed from Spain on April 20, 1777 and arrived at North Island, South Carolina on June 13, 1777. Initially disappointed to find himself a general without a command, Lafayette was to return to France in 1782 having earned gloire for himself as well as liberty for the American colonies.
When Lafayette met George Washington on July 31, 1777, it was the start of a famous and long-lasting friendship, often described as a father-son relationship. Lafayette first saw combat at Brandywine (September 11, 1777). The leg wound he received there lent him military credibility, and he received command of the Virginia division of the Continental Army, with which he spent the winter at Valley Forge under nearly unlivable conditions. In 1778 Lafayette took part in battles at Barren Hill and Monmouth Court House and served with the Continental detachment in Rhode Island in conjunction with d’Estaing’s expeditionary force. Earlier that year, Congress had chosen Lafayette to lead a campaign into Canada, but the campaign was ultimately abandoned as unfeasible.
Lafayette returned to a France that was now officially an ally of the United States at the beginning of 1779. He was thus in France for the birth of his son George Washington Lafayette, as he had not been when Adrienne de Lafayette gave birth to their second daughter, Anastasie (1777), and buried Henriette, their first (1778). During this year at home, in addition to pleading the American cause to his compatriots, Lafayette was appointed to the French army as it prepared to invade England. The invasion never came about, and Lafayette was in America again by April 1780. In February 1781, Lafayette led a detachment against troops led by the traitor Benedict Arnold. Later that year he commanded forces against Cornwallis in the decisive campaign of the American war.
MAUREPAS: COLLECTION DESCRIPTION
https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/FRENCHREV/maurepas/fa/colldesc.html
The Maurepas Collection consists of correspondence, reports, financial and official records, and other papers in French, Spanish and Italian drawn from the administrative files of the comte de Maurepas (1701-1781), Secretary of the Navy and of the Royal Household under Louis XV. The collection consists of 694 items covering the years 1694-1749, with most pertaining to the wartime years 1739-1749. The earliest items predate Maurepas and his ministry, and include a substantial group of letters between Maurepas’ father and grandfather, both of whom were government ministers. The Maurepas Papers are divided into two series: letters and documents, with each series arranged chronologically. Letters that accompanied documents have been filed with the correspondence.
As naval minister and liaison to the king, Maurepas served as a clearing-house for a great quantity of often detailed information relayed from all over Europe and the Americas, from land and shipboard, and from men of diverse occupations, rank, and social status. Taken together, the papers document, often through firsthand accounts, the naval, commercial, colonial, and political history of France in the first half of the eighteenth century. Much of the incoming correspondence is concerned with ways to increase the strength and improve the operations of the Navy in a period of intense commercial and military competition with Britain, and with sounding out foreign territories and governments for possible acquisition or economic exploitation by France.
Major subjects include war with England; the War of Austrian Succession; France’s support of the Jacobite cause in England, and other aspects of French foreign policy; the state and position of the French, British and Spanish navies; colonial expeditions to Louisiana and Canada; Navy finances; taxation; diplomatic relations and exterior trade with Spain, Portugal, Russia, the Levant, and others; colonial trade; South American expeditions; armaments; shipbuilding; navigation; cartography and hydrography; scientific expeditions; life at the court of Versailles; and the royal academies of the arts.
Documents include reports and memoranda on the military, navigational, and engineering problems encountered by the French Navy; proposals for reform and innovation (marine law, methods of recruitment, fundraising); plans for inventions, such as a dredging machine; military and other campaign orders; illustrated instruction booklets on sailing and navigation; journals; royal ordonnances, some printed; inventories of ships, arms, and provisions; personnel records; financial records; a letter of marque authorizing a privateer; and assorted requests for promotions, raises, and titles.
As Secretary of the Royal Household, Maurepas corresponded with members of the Comédie Francaise and Académie Royale de Musique, mostly concerning disputes between performers and directors. Personal papers include letters from Maurepas’ aunt informing him of life and court politics at Versailles, and correspondence with his aristocratic friends.
Principal correspondents include Jérôme Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain; Louis de Pontchartrain (chancelier); his aunt Armande de la Porte Mazarin, marquise de Mailly-Nesle; Joseph Pellerin, First Clerk of the Navy; Voltaire; Louis XV; Charles Edward Stuart (“The Young Pretender”); King George II; Thomond; Louis François Armand, duc de Richelieu; Nicolas de la Rochefoucauld, duc d’Enville; Saint-Simon.