In America, their names were Washington, Greene, Hancock . . . and . . . . . . Lafayette—Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette was the New World’s first—and the Old World’s last—great and gallant knight of old, sprung from Arthurian romances, in quest of honor and glory, atop his great white steed, charging through history, sword flashing, poised for attack. His warrior roots reached back across the centuries to the year 1000, when Pons Motier emerged from the mists of the Middle Ages as lord of Villa Faya—one of the small, crumbling demesnes the Romans had long ago abandoned in the forbiddingly cold, black hills of central France. Pons Motier de Villa Faya, or de La Fayette,1 as the name devolved, sired a race of swordsmen. In 1250, they rode with Saint Louis in the Sixth Crusade and seized the Crown of Thorns from Moslem infidels. A century later, Gilbert de La Fayette II repelled England’s Black Prince Edward at Poitiers, in the Hundred Years’ War. In 1428, the legendary Gilbert III, maréchal de France, attacked British lines alongside Joan of Arc at Orléans, scattering the enemy and saving the French throne for Charles VII.2 “It was natural that I grew up hearing many tales of war and glory in a family so closely tied to memories and sorrows associated with war,”
