II.--Letter from M. de Lafayette to M. de Vergennes




NOTICE BY THE EDITORS.


Under the title of _Revolution of America_, are comprised eight years
of M. de Lafayette's life, from the commencement of 1771 until the end
of 1784. His three voyages to the United States divide those eight
years into three periods: 1777, 1778; 1779-1781; and 1782-1784.~[1]

1st. Circumstantial Memoirs, written for his friends after the peace
of Versailles, and which were to have extended to 1780, open this
collection.

2nd. These are continued and completed by two detached relations,
composed between 1800 and 1814; the first, which has no title, and
might be called _Notice of the American Life of General Lafayette_,
appears to have been written for a person intending to publish the
history of the war, or of General Washington; the second is entitled,
_Observations on some portion of American History, by a friend of
General Lafayette_.

As these two relations, both written by M. de Lafayette, and which we
designate under the names of Manuscript, No. 1, and manuscript, No. 2,
contain a second, and occasionally a third, account of events already
mentioned in the Memoirs, we have only inserted quotations from them.