The Marquis de Lafayette's Brother-in-Law Participated in Three Revolutionary Wars, Supporting American Independence but Brutally Suppressing an Uprising by Enslaved Africans in Haiti

When Louis-Marie, Viscount de Noailles, was a young man, he fought alongside his brother-in-law, the Marquis de Lafayette, in the American Revolution. A skilled soldier, Noailles won the respect of several key patriot leaders, including Alexander Hamilton, who declared, “Wherever you are, you will be useful and distinguished.” America’s fight for independence from Great Britain marked Noailles’ first brush with revolution—but it wouldn’t be his last. He played a pivotal role in the French Revolution, presiding over the Constituent Assembly on August 4, 1789, the night that the governing body abolished feudalism in France.

Nearly a decade and a half later, Noailles led French forces sent by Napoleon Bonaparte to reclaim the colony of Saint-Domingue from the formerly enslaved Africans who had revolted against their oppressors during the Haitian Revolution. By the end of the conflict in 1804, these rebels would emerge victorious, establishing Haiti as the first Black republic. The story of the man who fought in three revolutionary wars also sheds light on the inherent contradiction of such campaigns: How could Western revolutionaries champion the cause of freedom while actively or implicitly supporting the continuation of slavery?

The issue is a complex one, but in Noailles’ case specifically, the answer may be straightforward: “He fights wherever France fights, because he’s a soldier and he believes in France,” says Marlene Daut, a historian at Yale University and the author of The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe. That’s his identity.” Noailles was born in Paris in 1756, into one of the oldest and most prominent families in the French aristocracy. According to the recollections of a childhood friend, Louis-Philippe, Comte de Ségur, the young Noailles was “wholly occupied with pleasures, play and women,” but a “military ardor” soon seized him, and from then on, “he dreamed of nothing but arms and horses.” In 1773, Noailles married his cousin Anne, whose younger sister would, in turn, wed Lafayette the following year.

When war broke out across the Atlantic in 1775, Noailles, Ségur and Lafayette were eager to join the fight, which they saw as an opportunity to pursue glory and put Enlightenment ideals into practice. Unfortunately for the young men, their families discouraged them from joining the patriot cause; Lafayette, however, could not be dissuaded, and in 1777, he was commissioned as a major general in the Continental Army. Noailles joined the French Army in 1778, distinguishing himself during the capture of Grenada, a British-held island in the Caribbean, the following year.

By then, France had joined the American Revolution on the patriots’ side, freeing Noailles to finally join Lafayette in the United States. Upon his arrival, Noailles quickly became a popular figure among the revolutionary set. The gens de couleur libres, free Black fighters from French colonies such as Saint-Domingue, also fought in the battle; their ranks reportedly included André Rigaud, a mixed-race soldier who would become an important but controversial leader in the early Haitian Revolution, and a drummer boy named Henry Christophe, who would later serve as the first and only king of Haiti.

What did it mean for these Black men to fight for Americans’ “freedom” on soil worked by enslaved people? They lived in an extremely unequal and unfree society,” where they were elevated above the enslaved but still looked down upon by white colonizers. In the 18th century, “when people are talking about liberty and equality, they mean social classes,” Daut explains.