“CITOYEN GÉNÉRAL: The prisoners of Olmütz, happy to owe their deliverance to your irresistible arms, had, during their captivity, rejoiced at the thought that their liberty and their life were attached to the victories of the republic and to your personal glory. It is with the utmost satisfaction that they now do homage to their liberator. We should have liked, _Citoyen Général_, to have offered to you in person the expression of these feelings, to have witnessed with our own eyes the scenes of so many victories, the army which has won them, and the general who has placed our resurrection amongst the miracles he has accomplished. But you know that the journey to Hamburg has not been left to our choice. From the place where we took leave of our jailers we address our thanks to their victor. “In the solitary retreat on the Danish territory of Holstein, where we shall try to recover our health, we shall unite our patriotic wishes for the republic with the most lively interest in the illustrious general to whom we are still more attached on account of the services he has rendered to the cause of liberty and to our country than for the special obligation we rejoice in owing to him, and which the deepest gratitude has forever engraved in our hearts. “_Salut et respect_, “LA FAYETTE, “LA TOUR-MAUBOURG, “BUREAUX DE PUSY.” Among the letters which greatly gratified La Fayette upon his liberation was the following from Madame de Staël, addressed to him when it was announced that he was to be delivered. “JUNE 20, 1797. “I hope this letter will reach you. I should like to be one of the first to tell you of the feelings of indignation, grief, hope, fear, anxiety, discouragement, with which your fate has filled, during these last five years, the hearts of all those who love you. I do not know whether it is possible to make these cruel recollections bearable to you; nevertheless, I may say, that, while calumny was destroying every reputation, while faction, unable to triumph over the cause, was attacking every individual, your misfortunes have preserved your glory; and if your health can be restored to you, you come out whole from a tomb where your name has acquired fresh lustre. “Come directly to France; there is no other country for you. You will find that republic which your opinions led you to wish for when your conscience bound you to royalty. You will find it illustrated by victory and free from the crimes which stained its origin. You will uphold that republic, because without it no liberty can exist in France, and because, as a hero and as a martyr, you are so united with freedom that I pronounce your name and the name of liberty at the same moment to express what I wish for the honor and welfare of France.