Excerpts from The Gazette of the American Friends of Lafayette
Library of Congress Filmed Documents Loaned by Count Rene de Chambrun
Washington .DC. It was in 1956 that the count Rene de Chambrun found a large collection of papers of his ancestor, the Marquis de Lafayette, at La Grange, the 15th century chateau, which he had acquired. The cache was found in one of its towers behind fake walls and fake cabinets.
According to an article by Sarah Booth Conroy in the Washington Post September 11, 1995, the collection amounted to 50,000 papers containing long hidden, barely rumored secrets of the American, French, and at least three other revolutions as well as impassioned love letters.
The Library of Congress greeted the Count who had made arrangements for the national library to film these valuable documents. They include a secret code used by Washington and Lafayette during the Revolutionary War, a letter from John Adams to Lafayette in which he informs the French nobleman of this defeat in the Presidential election of 1800, and a handwritten note by Lafayette of the siege of Yorktown.
Dr. James Billington, the librarian of the Library of Congress and the one who organized a team to travel to France to microfilm the remarkable discovery, arranged accommodations for the Count de Chambrun at the Hotel Madison.
The filming was completed recently and scholars will soon be able to research this extraordinary treasure.