Lafayette, Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de (1757-1834), French military leader and statesman, who fought on the side of the colonists during the American War of Independence and later played a prominent part in the French Revolution.

Lafayette was born on September 6, 1757, into a noble family in Chavaniac (now Chavaniac-LaFayette) and was educated at the Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He served in the French army from 1771 to 1776, rising to the rank of captain. Sympathizing with the American cause in the War of Independence, Lafayette, after the colonies declared their independence from Great Britain, went to America and offered his services to Congress. By special resolution of Congress he was given a commission as major general (1777) in the Continental army. He became an intimate of General George Washington and a member of his staff. He was wounded in the Battle of the Brandywine, was made a division commander, and fought at Monmouth.

In 1778 France and the United States entered into an alliance against Great Britain, which thereupon declared war on France; Lafayette returned to France for six months and did much to further the granting of financial and military aid to the Americans. In 1780 he returned to America and served with distinction in the Virginia campaign that ended with the surrender of the British general Lord Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. Lafayette returned to France the same year; when he revisited the United States in 1784 he was given a hero's welcome.

A strong advocate of democratic principles, Lafayette took a leading part in the French Revolution, becoming in 1789 a member of the National Assembly, in which he promulgated a bill of rights based on the American Declaration of Independence. He was an organizer and commander of the National Guard and a founder of the Feuillants, a society of political moderates who advocated a constitutional monarchy. In 1792 he commanded an army in the French war against Austria, but was denounced by the Jacobins for opposing their radical policies and planning to turn his troops against them; the assembly declared him a traitor, and he fled to Flanders. There he was arrested by the Austrians, who at that time occupied the country, and was held in Prussian and Austrian prisons from 1792 to 1797. In 1799 he returned to France but played little part in politics because he disapproved of the policies of Napoleon Bonaparte. After the downfall of Napoleon, he resumed political activity, serving as a member of the Chamber of Deputies in 1815 and from 1818 to 1824. He visited the United States from 1824 to 1825 on invitation of Congress, which voted him a gift of $200,000 and a large tract of land. From 1825 until his death he was again a member of the Chamber of Deputies, and in the July Revolution of 1830 he served once more as commander of the National Guard. He died in Paris on May 20, 1834.

As a moderate liberal devoted to social reforms consistent with the maintenance of public order, Lafayette earned the enmity both of the Royalists, who considered him a traitor to his class, and of the radical revolutionaries such as the Jacobins, who considered him half-hearted in his advocacy of changes to the social structure. Lafayette maintained his democratic convictions even when his own properties were confiscated during the French Revolution, and throughout his life he urged social equality, popular representation, religious tolerance, and freedom of the press.