Yes, it did! See, as an American, I acquired a very un-nuanced, one-dimensional picture of Lafayette over the years, which basically comes down to: "Lafayette, a success!"
YUP, I can confirm that this was how I thought of Lafayette too! And, Selena, I feel that it's pretty clear that this was also the picture Lin-Manuel Miranda had in his head as well :P
Well, to be fair, Miranda only shows him as a young man in the Colonies (where he was successful), and in the second part, he does let Jefferson ask "What about Lafayette?" in the cabinet battle; if you know what happened to him in the later stages of the Revolution, pre Napoleon (prison in Prussia, prison in Austria, meanwhile, his wife, who does survive, gets to watch the entire rest of her adult family executed in France), Hamilton's "Lafayette is smart, he'll manage" is pretty callous. Especially since as the review of the two new Lafayette biographies points out, French support really was a key factor for the American revolutionaries to win the war, they wouldn't have without it, and handwaving that by saying "eh, our treaty was with your former, now beheaded government" when France is about to be attacked by most of Europe might be good realpolitik, but loyal, it's not. Yes, France rallied, not least because of the key difference between the revolutionary troops and the French army in, say, the 7 Years War, to wit, no commanders at the top because they have the right bloodline, and the army is actually convinced they're defending their country. And then a few years later Napoleon happens and the French army steamrolls over most of the continent, but no one saw the later coming, and the former was very unexpected, too.
(Goethe, who was with Carl August at the initial Allies-vs-Revolutionary-France campaign, in his letters home to his mistress Christiane is initially confident they'll be in Paris soon. And then famously the Battle of Valmy happens, handing the indignant European royalist army which is mainly led by Prussia (!) a significant defeat, to which Goethe famously comments: "Here and today, a new epoch in the history of the world has begun, and you can boast you were present at its birth.")
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Re: Zweig
YUP, I can confirm that this was how I thought of Lafayette too! And, Selena, I feel that it's pretty clear that this was also the picture Lin-Manuel Miranda had in his head as well :P
Re: Zweig
(Goethe, who was with Carl August at the initial Allies-vs-Revolutionary-France campaign, in his letters home to his mistress Christiane is initially confident they'll be in Paris soon. And then famously the Battle of Valmy happens, handing the indignant European royalist army which is mainly led by Prussia (!) a significant defeat, to which Goethe famously comments: "Here and today, a new epoch in the history of the world has begun, and you can boast you were present at its birth.")