184 Chapter IX
newspapers, and hired a room or met in a tavern to read and discuss them. It is for
France that most is known about these clubs. There is even a theory, somewhat
anti- revolutionary in overtones, that attributes the French Revolution, in a mea-
sure, to frequentation of these clubs by disgruntled middle- class people who na-
ïvely supposed that they knew what was good for the country. There were, however,
many such clubs in other countries; it is true that most of them turned pro-
revolutionary when revolution came. Meanwhile, before 1789, the American Rev-
olution was undoubtedly the topic of many eager discussions.
The Masonic lodges played a similar role, and their membership reached into
higher social and political circles. Various branches of Masonry had spread
throughout Europe and British America in the eighteenth century. The fact that
Washington and other American leaders were Masons made European Masons
feel akin to them, and one of the first things done by Franklin, to propagandize for
America when he arrived in Paris in 1777, was to join the Lodge of the Nine Sis-
ters. The network of Masonry, with its mysterious rituals and its select member-
ship, which, however, was recruited without regard to social class, created an inter-
national and interclass sense of fellowship among men fired by ideas of liberty,
progress, and reform. At Budapest the Masons called themselves the American
Lodge. A Swiss Mason enlisted the Italo- Virginian, Philip Mazzei, in the service
of Poland.
Another channel bringing an image of America to Europe was that of the re-
turned soldiers, of whom the most memorable was the Marquis de Lafayette. The
influence of America on Lafayette is well known through the researches of Profes-
sor Gottschalk. Lafayette, according to Gottschalk, was not inspired to volunteer
in the American army by any idealized love of liberty already formed in France.
Rather, it was his experience in America that gave him an idealized love of liberty,
and made him return to France with a strong predilection toward what were called
republican sentiments. He was an impressionable young man, eager for action in
his military career, and the liberty that he rushed off to fight for was the “freedom
of the seas,” that is, a chance to strike a blow against England. He met and was
closely associated with Washington, feeling toward him almost as a son; through
his admiration for Washington, his wanting to think and act and speak like him,
he even became a little like Washington himself.^7
There were hundreds of other French officers who saw service with Rocham-
beau in 1780. For most of them the effects of their experience can only be conjec-
tured. Some, like the Count de Ségur, were clearly inspired by what they saw of
liberty and equality in America. Of Rochambeau himself, it can at least be said
that he lived to accept the French Revolution; the Count de Custine, French
quartermaster- general in America in 1780, commanded an army of the French
Republic in 1792—and died on the guillotine. Others were unmoved in their aris-
tocratic predilections; the Swedish Count Axel de Fersen, aide- de- camp to Ro-
chambeau, is chiefly famous as the admirer of Marie- Antoinette and emissary of
counterrevolution in 1791.
7 See especially the fourth volume of L. R. Gottschalk ’s life of Lafayette, Lafayette between the
American and the French Revolution, 1783–1789 (Chicago, 1950), 1–11.