Lafayette’s Return

The ‘Boy General’, the American Revolution, and the Hermione

‘She sails like a bird,’ the Marquis de Lafayette wrote about the Hermione, the ship that carried him and a decisive supply of arms across the Atlantic in aid of the nascent American Revolution. This summer, a recreated Hermione will set sail from France and spend July Fourth weekend in New York. The New-York Historical Society exhibition focuses on both the recreated ship and Lafayette himself, the Boy General whose close friendship with George Washington and diplomatic networks in Paris helped win the war. The show considers Lafayette’s early years from his initial advocacy on behalf of the Revolution in the late 1770s to the Hermione‘s voyage in 1780 and the events leading to the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781.

Event website