Baron Wilhelm Reichsfreiherr zu Inn-und Knyphausen was born in 1716 in Luxembourg. He became a general in Hesse, but traditionally served the Prussian kings.¹⁰ In 1776, he was sent to North America as second in command of the hired German troops; in 1777, at the age of 61, he became their overall commander. The previous year, he had been instrumental during the assault on Fort Washington on upper Manhattan Island (near the site of the George Washington Bridge today). A Philadelphian described him as “a noble specimen of a German baron, of the ordinary height & strong frame; there was a sabre mark on one of his cheeks extending from the eye to the chin.”11

Although baptized Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, and was hereditarily Marquis du Lafayette, Baron de Vissac, and Seigneur de St. Romain, he was better known as simply, the Marquis de Lafayette. The native of Chavaniac Auvergne, France, who was born on September 6, 1757, grew to more than six feet tall, a height which at that time was nearly as imposing as his name. Lafayette’s father died two years later at the battle of Minden in 1759 during the Seven Years’ War. In 1768, Lafayette moved to Paris with his mother to enter the College du Plessis. Two years later, when his mother and grandmother died during the same week, the young man inherited a great deal of wealth and joined the royal army as a sous-lieutenant in the Kimip Musketeers. Four years later at 16, he entered a pre-arranged marriage with the 14-year-old Marie Adrienne Francoise de Noalles, a member of one of the most powerful families in France, and became a member of the Free Masons.