ple. On the same occasion, he also expressed his disappprobation of the new law of election. Shortly before his resignation, he exerted himself most praiseworthily to maintain order during the trial of the ex-ministers. The Poles made him first grenadier of the Polish national guards. He died at Paris, May 18, 1834. Regnault-Warin's Memoires sur le General Lafayette (Paris, 1824), contains many facts relative to his political life in France. His secretary, M. Levasseur, published an account of his tour in the United States (Paris, 1825), which has been translated in America.
ISRAEL PUTNAM.
Israel Putnam, a distinguished soldier in the French and English
wars, and subsequently in that of the revolution, was born of English
parents, at Salem, in the then province of Massachusetts, Jan. 7th, 1718.
Being intended for a farmer, he received only a common education. He
had a strong mind, vigorous constitution, great bodily strength, enterprise
and activity, excelled in athletic exercises, and, while a stripling, was
ambitious of performing the full labor of manhood. He married very
young, and removed, in 1739, to Pomfret, in Connecticut, where he had
purchased a tract of land. During his residence there, his flocks and
those of his neighbors being terribly thinned by a monstrous she wolf,
Putnam with a few associates, traced the ferocious animal to a deep cavern
in a rock. Into this he crept alone, with a torch in one hand and a musket
in the other, and, at the utmost personal risk, destroyed the creature,
When the war of 1755 broke out between France and England, he was
appointed, at the age of thirty-seven, commander of a company, enlisted
the necessary number of recruits from the young men in his vicinity,
and joined the army then commencing the campaign near Crown Point.
His services as a partisan officer were unremitting and great, and caused
him to be promoted, in 1757, to the rank of major, by the legislature of
Connecticut. In 1758, he fell into the Indian ambuscade, and was taken
prisoner, when returning to Fort Edward from an expedition to watch the
enemy's movements near Ticonderoga. The Indians were about to burn
him to death, having already tied him to a tree and set fire to a circle of
combustibles around him, when he was rescued by the interposition of
their leader, Molang, a famous French partisan officer. He was then
carried to Ticonderoga, where he underwent an examination before the
Marquis De Montcalm, who ordered him to Montreal. There he found
several fellow prisoners, among whom was colonel Peter Schuyler, who
immediately visited, and found him almost destitute of clothing and dreadfully
wounded and bruised. The colonel supplied him with money and,
having clothed himself in a decent garb, he was immediately treated with
the respect due his rank. An exchange of prisoners procured Putnam
his liberty. He resumed his military duties, and, having been previously
appointed a lieutenant-colonel, rendered especial service at the siege of
Montreal by the British, in 1760. In 1762, after war had been declared
between England and Spain, he accompanied the expedition, under Lord
Albemarle, against the Havana. In 1764, having been appointed colonel,
he marched, at the head of a regiment, with general Bradstreet,
against the savages of the western frontier. On his return from this
expedition, which resulted in a treaty between the contending parties, he
