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Friday, 7th December 2007 (3213 views)

A gold medal presented to the Marquis de Lafayette by the family of George Washington is set to be auctioned in mid-December, the Associated Press has reported.

The medal, which features an image of an eagle surrounded by a wreath, measured one and a half inches in diameter and is expected to sell for an amount between $4 million and $10 million (£1.97 million and £4.93 million).

It will be sold by descendants of Lafayette, who is widely considered to be a hero of the American Revolutionary War.

The medal was originally presented to the French aristocrat by George Washington's adopted daughter in 1824.

It has been kept inside the Lafayette family home in Paris for nearly two centuries.

Lafayette famously left his native France in the late 1770s for America, where he befriended Washington and served in the Revolutionary War before returning to France, where he was eventually made commander-in-chief of the country's national guard in 1789.

 

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