Lafayette's Burial Place

In Picpus Cemetery. .. LAFAYETTE'S BURIAL PLACE Sir Knight Thomas Rigas St. Bernard Commandery No. 35, Chicago, Illinois The American flag forever waves over wrote a masterpiece opera that is still the grave of Brother and Marquis de performed today in Europe. Lafayette in the tiny cemetery at Rue de In recent years, Count Rene de Picpus 25, away from the briglit hghts of Chambrun, the great-great-great-great- the Champs-Elysees in Paris, France. grandson of Brother Lafayette, has been On July 4 every year, direct descen dants of Brother Lafayette — who have had honorary American citizenship conferred on them by the U.S. Congress — proceed for official ceremonies to Brother Lafayette's grave, for which the U.S. ambassador and his staffare in attendance. It is a quiet yet fitting tribute for a great Freemason and French general who fought in the Revolutionary War for American independence. General Lafayette died in 1834, and at that time the state of Virginia shipped to France the earth in which Brother Lafayette was to be buried so that he miglit he eternally under American soil. Over his tomb, the American flag has flown every day for about 150 years. During the Nazi occupation of France in World War II, it was the only American Brother Lafayette flag to wave anywhere in occupied Europe, reflecting love on an international working with a cache of Brother and deeply personal level. Lafayette's papers, which were found Behind that snug Httle French hidden in the attic of his 15th-Century cemetery and "the flag that never came castle home in LaGrange where they had down," there is the incredible story of a been for nearly 100 years. So far, what woman — Lafayette's wife Adrienne — comes through strongly in the Lafayette who lovingly built the cemetery in 1800, papers is his remarkable wife Adrienne wliich can veritably be described as one who died in 1807 and is buried alongside of the world's most unusual burial her husband. grounds. Inside the small enclosure are Adrienne was a woman of nobility, the the graves of the 1,306 beheaded victims daughter of the Duke d'Ayen-Noaille, of the French Revolution, and tliat of the and at the high point of the Reign of immortal, idealistic French poet Andre Terror, she saw her mother, grandmother, Chenier, about whom Umberto Giordano and one of her sisters being knight templar taken to the guillotine. Siie was to be the her family and the other guillotine next victim but was saved in the nick of victims had been buried. After she time by the American minister in Paris located the huge common grave, she and, coincidentally, by the fall of conceived the idea of creating a memorial Robespierre. cemetery around the burial hole. Having After languishing three years in a built a new chapel on the site, she arranged French prison cell, she was finally freed for walls that now enclose the Picpus Adrienne died on Christmas Eve, 1807, after a remarkable life of continuous self-sacrifice and devo tion to her husband and family. Moments before she died, she whispered her last words to Brother Lafayette — Je sitis tuute a vous translated into English, slie said "I am completely yours!" From that day on until he died 27 years later, Brother Lafayette wore her locket, on which he had inscribed those five words. The locket is buried Picpus Cemetery, where the Sisters ofthe with liim. Order ofthe Sacred Heart eternally pray.; Today, the Sisters of the Order of the Sacred Heart and Perpetual and immediately she took her two little AdorationA occupy the convent' that daughters to join her husband, who at theAdrienne A built and who have agreed to time was locked up in an Austrian dungeon, recitere the prayers around the clock, Although Lafayette had been a Majoreternally el offering the same prayer, one General in Brother George Washington's thattl' Adrienne reportedly wrote on her army and had served gallantly on manydeathbed. df an American battlefield, especially at You can visit the cemetery and chapel Yorktown where he played a key role,by b; applying to the caretaker. Wlien you he had been imprisoned by the Austrian dod< visit the chapel, wliich is a few feet Emperor when captured by Austrian awaya\ from the Lafayette grave, you will troops, which were part of a counter- seese at least two white-robed nunskneeling revolutionary Allied army. in prayer, reciting the following: An audience with the emperor was arranged with great difficulty by "Bestow upon them, O Lord, Adrienne, and although the emperor eternal tranquility. And grant your flatly refused to liberate Brother Lafayette, forgiveness unto those who did not he did give Adrienne permission to join know how to forgive. " her husband in his prison cell in Olmutz. sir Knight Rigas lives at 2600 West Farwell Cooped up for two long, miserable years, aAvenue, Chicago. Illinois 50645. the Lafayettes shared a difficult life of hardship in the bare dungeon, which had neither a toilet nor running water. The Lafayettes were finally released after Napoleon's victories over the Austrians. Once back in Paris, Adrienne sought to find the hidden pit where the bodies of february 1985.

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