Lafayette by Harlow Giles Unger Read Free Book Online Page B

presence on my father’s health and all the comfort her presence provided him. She was surprised to recover her ability to feel so happy and even felt somewhat guilty knowing that it came at the expense of keeping my father prisoner.” 34
    Adrienne’s illness—and her bold refusal to abandon her husband— raised the level of worldwide debate over the Prisoners of Olmütz to fever pitch. Even President Washington, the apostle of American neutrality, abandoned diplomatic discretion. He was in the last year of his second term as president and planned to retire. Dispensing with diplomatic caution, he sent a personal note instructing Pinckney in London “to make known to theAustrian Ambassador” the American president’s desire to see his friend Lafayette set free. “I need hardly mention how much my sensibility has been hurt by the treatment this Gentleman has met with; or how anxious I am to see him liberated therefrom.” 35 In May, he ignored the lack of formal diplomatic relations with Austria and sent a personal, handwritten letter to the Austrian emperor:
    It will readily occur to your Majesty that occasions may sometimes exist, on which official considerations would constrain the Chief of a Nation to be silent and passive, in relation to objects which affect his sensibility, and claim his interposition, as a man. Finding myself precisely in this situation at present, I take the liberty of writing this
private
letter to Your Majesty, being persuaded that my motives will also be my apology for it.
    In common with the People of this Country, I retain a strong and cordial sense of the services rendered to them by the Marquis de la Fayette; and my friendship for him has been constant and sincere. It is natural therefore that I should sympathize with him and his family in their misfortunes, and endeavor to mitigate the calamities which they experience, among which his present confinement is not the least distressing.
    I forbear to enlarge on this delicate subject. Permit me only to submit to your majesty’s consideration whether his long imprisonment and the confiscation of his Estate and the indigence and dispersion of his family— and the painful anxieties incident to all these circumstances, do not form an assemblage of sufferings, which recommend him to the mediation of Humanity? Allow me, Sir! on this occasion to be its organ; and to ask that he may be permitted to come to this country, on such conditions and under such restrictions, as your Majesty may think it expedient to prescribe. 36
    A torrent of letters flowed to Vienna, from England as well as America, from political leaders, men and women of letters, and ordinary citizens, but, like Washington’s letter, they had no effect—and Adrienne’s health continued to deteriorate by the day. “Because of the condition of my blood and the excessively unsanitary conditions of this prison,” she wrote to Robert Parish, the American consul at Hamburg, “my arms have been for some time unbelievably swollen, and my fingers incapable of movement. . . . My skin is peeling. . . . The pain, the impossibility of my closing my hands, and the spasms in my whole nervous system make my life more than a little disagreeable.” 37
    Under increasing pressure from the American public, Congress instructed Gouverneur Morris to go to Vienna to negotiate Lafayette’s release. He reached Vienna in September, but waited three months before the Austrian chancellor granted him an interview, prefacing it with a disdainful statement that Morris had no standing at court. Austria, he grumbled, would notnegotiate with a nation with which it had no diplomatic ties and which was an ally of France, with whom Austria was at war. He did, however, admit that Lafayette’s situation had become an embarrassment—and noted that England was Austria’s ally. “If England were to ask us for Lafayette,” he declared, “we would be all too happy to rid ourselves of him.” 38 Knowing that