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Marquis de Lafayette  Marquis de Lafayette "...Lafayette is a
young man of royal birth, with liberal politics and what
Jefferson later called 'a canine appetite for fame.' Someone
said he was 'a statue in search of a pedestal.' But he was
intoxicated with, [had] a rather theoretical love of, liberty.
It was theoretical because liberty wasn't known to many
Europeans. [Lafayette] was a great romantic and he fell in love
with America, the concept of America that the French had. This
wild new world where you could start the world over, to use Tom
Paine's phrase." —Scholar Richard Norton Smith  European
adventurers, soldiers-of-fortune, and romantics like Lafayette
flocked to the Continental Army during the American Revolution.
A long list of European soldiers aided the Continental cause,
including: Baron von Steuben, from Prussia, who is credited with
shaping Washington's independent-minded army into a well-drilled
fighting machine; Tadeusz Kosciuszko, th