“The flower of the young aristocracy of France, in their brilliant uniforms, and the farmers and frontiersmen of America, in their faded continentals, bound by a common baptism of blood, became brothers in the knighthood of liberty. With emulous eagerness to be in at the death, while they shared the glory, they stormed the redoubts at Yorktown, and compelled the surrender of Cornwallis and army. While this practically ended the war, it strengthened the alliance and cemented the friendship between the two great peoples. The mutual confidence and chivalric courtesy which characterized their relations has no like example in international comity. When an officer from General Carlton, the British commander-in-chief, came to headquarters with an offer of peace and independence, if the Americans would renounce the French alliance, Washington refused to receive him; Congress spurned Carlton’s secretary bearing a like message; and the states, led by Maryland, denounced all who entertained propositions of peace which were not approved by France as public enemies. And peace with independence meant prosperity and happiness to a people in the very depths of poverty and despair. France, on the other hand, though sorely pressed for money, said, in the romantic spirit which permeated this wonderful union: ‘Of the 27,000,000 livres we have loaned you, we forgive you 9,000,000 as a gift of friendship, and when with years there comes prosperity, you can pay the balance without interest.’ “With the fall of Yorktown La Fayette felt that he could do more for peace and independence in the diplomacy of Europe than in the war in America. His arrival in France shook the continent. Though one of the most practical and self-poised of men, his romantic career in the New World had captivated courts and peoples. In the formidable league which he had quickly formed with Spain and France, England saw humiliation and defeat, and made a treaty of peace by which she recognized the independence of the Republic of the United States.