In the following summer the Marquis made a journey through Germany and Austria, where he was received not only as a French field-marshal, but as an informal representative of America and a friend of Washington, who could answer the questions about the new republic which every one was eager to ask. At Brunswick he visited the duke who was later to lead the German troops against the army of revolutionary France. At Potsdam he was entertained by Frederick the Great, who happened on one occasion to place Lafayette between the English Duke of York and Lord Cornwallis at table. Lafayette was, as always, delightful company, and the general he had defeated at Yorktown wrote home to a friend in England, “Lafayette and I were the best friends possible in Silesia.” The Frenchman saw reviews of the Prussian armies, and was much impressed by the discipline of Frederick the Great. But he did not like that ruler, and spoke of his “despotic, selfish, and harsh character,” and he liked his military system still less. He wrote to General Knox, “The mode of recruiting is despotic; there is hardly any provision for old soldiers, and although I found much to admire, I had rather be the last farmer in America than the first general in Berlin.” From Prussia he went to Austria, where he met the emperor, and there, as in all his travels, he told every one of his admiration for the United States and for Washington, and tried to make them see how much the young republic had already accomplished for the happiness of men. The love of liberty was the dominant motive of Lafayette’s life. He had told Washington of his desire to find some means of securing the freedom of slaves, and he wrote to John Adams in 1786, “Whatever be the complexion of the enslaved, it does not in my opinion alter the complexion of the crime the enslaver commits,--a crime much blacker than any African face. It is to me a matter of great anxiety and concern to find that this trade is sometimes perpetrated under the flag of liberty, our dear and noble stripes to which virtue and glory have been constant standard-bearers.” So, on his return to France, he bought a plantation in Cayenne, and brought many negroes there, who, after being educated in self-government according to his directions, were to receive their freedom. He also tried to improve the condition of the French Protestants, who were very much persecuted, and ardently pleaded their cause before the King at Versailles.