"the town of Olmutz, a four-day carriage journey from Vienna, was in 1794 the scene of what was possibly one of the most brash rescue attempts in history. Lafayette had been captured by the enemies of the French revolution in Belgium two years earlier and had been shuttled across Europe from one fortress to another. Lafayette, the 'hero of two worlds', the champion of liberal reform, had fallen out with the revolutionary Jacobins and also with his fellow aristocrats and the monarchist reactionaries everywhere. His distinguished friends in France, England and America tried in vain to secure his release - but at that time the deadly struggle between the old and the new regime would admit of no compromise. It remained for two brazen young men, a German doctor and an American medical student, to attempt the almost impossible. They hired a carriage, extra horses and a servant, and set out for Olmutz. There, on a Saturday afternoon, they whisked the prisoner from his guard! The developments that lead up to this challenge to authority, and the subsequent repercussions, are described against a shifting scene that carries the reader right through contemporary Europe to Washington's America."