The Marquis of Lafayette took part in the American Revolution since 1777, being wounded in the leg at the Battle of Brandywine in September 1777. Having participated two years in the war against the British forces, Lafayette returned to Paris in February 1779, where he convinced the French King Louis XVI to send more aid to America. Working with Benjamin Franklin, Lafayette secured another 6,000 soldiers to be commanded by General Jean-Baptiste de Rochambeau. In May 1780, he returned to America and was put in command of two light brigades, and by February 1781, he commanded three regiments. From September to October, 1781, Lafayette fought in the Siege of Yorktown along side Washington’s forces that defeated British army of Charles Cornwallis.

When Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, returned to France in December 1781, he was welcomed as a hero as he was received at Versailles by the French king and was promoted to field marshal. However, when the French Revolution broke out, Lafayette joined the National Assembly in June 1789. On July 11, Lafayette presented a draft of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen". The next day, after the dismissal of Finance Minister Jacques Necker, Camille Desmoulins organized an armed mob. On July 13, the Assembly elected Lafayette their vice-president; the following day, July 14, 1789, the Bastille was stormed.

On July 15, 1789, Lafayette was appointed by the National Assembly commander-in-chief of the National Guard of France, an armed force established during the French Revolution to maintain order under the control of the Assembly. Ideologically, Lafayette was a moderate who inclined in favor of a parliamentary monarchy, like the English political system. As leader of the National Guard, Lafayette attempted to maintain order. In May 1790, he instituted, along with Jean Sylvain Bailly, who was mayor of Paris, a political club called the "Society of 1789". The club’s intention was to provide balance to the influence of the Jacobins, who were on the extreme left as they favored the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic.

In June 1791, when the king and his family tried to escape from France, Lafayette was called a traitor by the Jacobins as the National Guard was responsible for the royal family custody. This event and the massacre of the Champs de Mars, where National Guard fired opened fire on a Parisian crowd, marked the decline of Lafayette as a key influencing figure of the French Revolution. And in August 1792, after National Convention relieved him of his command, Layayette fled to Holland with his family, for he feared being guillotined by the Jacobins. He remained in exile in the Danish province of Holstein and the Batavian Republic until Napoleon Bonaparte’s coup d’état of 18 Brumaire, November 9, 1799. Lafayette used the change of regime to slip into France with a passport in the name of "Motier". He managed to convince an angry Napoleon that he planned to live in rural obscurity. Not wanting to serve in Napoleon’s army, Lafayette resigned his commission. The Lafayettes retired to La Grange, which his wife Adrienne had inherited from her mother.

Otto Carius was born on May 27, 1922, in Zweibrücken, Germany. Although he had been rejected twice before by the German Army as not fit for service when he volunteered, Carius was finally accepted in the 104th Infantry Replacement Battalion in May 1940. After intensive tank training in the Panzer Corps he had volunteered for, he was transferred to the 21st Panzer Regiment. By the end of June 1941, during Operation Barbarossa, Carius had his baptism of fire as a gunner in a Panzer 38 light tank, suffering wounds from spalling.

Brief Biography

Arthur Wellesley was born on May 1, 1769, in Dublin, Ireland, to Garret Wesley, 1st Earl of Mornington, and Anne, the eldest daughter of Arthur Hill, Viscount Dungannon. He went to the diocesan school in Trim. He then enrolled at Eton, where he studied from 1781 to 1784. As he was not a good student at Eton, Arthur joined the army in 1787, on his mother initiative. He fought against the French in Flanders during the French Revolutionary Wars and in 1796 went to India. His brother Richard was appointed governor general there in 1797. In India, Wellesley obtained considerable military experience there, as he took part in the Mysore War against Tipu Sultan.

In 1804, Arthur Wellesley returned to England and became a member of Parliament. In 1806, he married Catherine Pakenham, with whom he had two children: Arthur and Charles. Although he had been appointed chief secretary of Ireland in 1807, his political career came to an end in that year, when he returned to active service against the French. In 1808, he took command of the British, Spanish, and Portuguese forces in the Peninsular War (1808-1814). There, he eventually forced the occupying French to withdraw from Spain and Portugal. When Napoleon abdicated in 1814, Wellesley returned home as a hero and was created Duke of Wellington. After the victors had exiled Napoleon to Elba in 1814, he served as ambassador to France. Since Napoleon’s confinement on Elba was short-lived, returning to France in 1815, Wellington became commander of the allied armies. Just before the arrival of Prussian forces, led by Gebhard von Blucher, Wellington defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815. The threat of Napoleon was at an end.

Jacques Necker was born on September 30, 1732, in Geneva, Switzerland, to Charles Frederick Necker, a lawyer from Custrin, Prussia, and his wife Jeanne Gautier. In 1747, Jacques was sent to Paris where he worked as an accountant in a bank owned by his father’s friend. In 1764, he married Suzanne Curchod, a young Swiss girl, with whom he had a daughter, Anne Louise Germaine Necker; his daughter would eventually become a famous writer known as Madame de Staël. In 1766, Necker became director of the French East India Company, which was a commercial enterprise founded in 1664. Since the company was not able to maintain itself financially, it was abolished in 1769.

In 1776, Necker was named France director-general of finance. Although he gained popularity in regulating the finances by attempting to divide the direct land tax on the French peasantry and capitation tax more equally, Jacques Necker’s greatest financial measures were his usage of loans to help fund the French debt and his usage of high interest rates rather than raising taxes. He also advocated loans to finance French involvement in the American Revolution. In 1781, he was dismissed by the King as director-general of finance, since he had been blamed for the high debt accrued from the American Revolution.

In 1788, as France had been struck by both economic and financial crises, Necker was called back and appointed director-general of finance again to stop the deficit and to save France from financial ruin. Nevertheless, his actions could not stop the French Revolution as he set to work to arrange for the summons of the Estates-General of 1789. Although Necker advocated doubling the representation of the Third Estate to satisfy the people, he failed to address the matter of voting; rather than voting by head count, which is what the people wanted, voting remained as one vote for each estate. Necker’s dismissal on July 11, 1789, made the people of France incredibly angry and provoked the storming of the Bastille on July 14.