"The Marquis de Lafayette played a major part in three revolutions, spent five years in dismal imprisonment, and many more in exile... Despite the number of times he had seen the principles he espoused fail to take hold, Lafayette never became a cynic. His long life of activism and defense of liberty aptly illustrates the problems with which radicals have always been confronted... Lafayette was the creature as well as the controller of the crowds that changed France, and Mr. Buckman sets out to show the interplay between the individual and the mass which has so often determined history"--from jacket flaps.