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PAUL JONES
Founder of the American Navy

PAUL JONES
Founder of the American Navy
31 i$imtv

BY
AUGUSTUS C. BUELL

IN TWO VOLUMES
Volume II

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK .•.•.-.•.•. 1900

Copyright, igoo, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

TROW DIRECTORY
'RINTINQ AND SOOKBINDINQ COMPANY
HEW YORK

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I PAGE
The Chevalier Paul Jones  1

CHAPTER II
Controversies and Honors in America .... 36
CHAPTER III
Prize-Money Settlements  . 86
CHAPTER IV
Admiral in the Russiajj Navy  143
CHAPTER V
The Conquest of the Turks  180
CHAPTER VI
Russian Intrigue and Calumny  223
CHAPTER VII
Last Tears and Death . . ... . 267

contents appendix PAGE
The Portraits op Paul Jones  337
Roster op the Ranger  339
Roster op the Bon Homme Richard  343
Roster op the Serapis  352
Works Consulted  355
INDEX  361

ILLUSTRATIONS

Portrait of Paul Jones  Frontispiece
From a painting hy Cliarles Willson Peale. FACIHQ PAGE
Fac-simile op an Autograph Letter from Paul
Jones to VS^'ashington  144
From a photograph of the original in the Department of State
a/rchives, Washington.

PAUL JONES
FOUNDER OF THE AMERICAN NAVY
CHAPTER I
THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
The numerous biographers of Paul Jones do not
agree in their estimates of the motives that prompt
ed the Commodore to let the Alliance go so easily
when he had in his hands full power to stop her, at
all hazards. Most of them take the view that he
was actuated wholly by impulses of humanity ; that
he knew or believed Landais, backed and encour
aged as he was by Arthur Lee, would make the
effort to get out in defiance of the French author
ities ; that if he should do so Thevenard would
open on him with the one hundred and thirty-eight
heavy guns of the Barrier Forts, some of which
were sixty-eight pounders, and as they commanded
the narrow channel at close range, such a fire must
tear the little frigate to pieces in five minutes ; and
that it would be better to submit to the wrong done
by two men than to subdue them by measures cal
culated to destroy more than two hundred men who
had done no wrong. This view we think reason-
VoL. IL— 1 1

PAUL JONES
able, and it is borne out by Jones's own records of
the affair presented in the foregoing pages.
Others hold that the Commodore was not desirous
of returning home in the Alliance ; that he preferred
to stay in France, where he still believed, or at least
hoped, he might obtain a new command and make
another cruise in European waters. Yet others — at
least two— the Edinburgh life and " Guerres en
course frangaise " (" History of French Privateer
ing ") — intimate that he was loath to tear himself
away from the charms of Parisian society, of which
he was at that moment par excellence the lion.
Be the actual truth what it may, as between these
conflicting theories, it is beyond question that the
Commodore wasted no time in mourning. The next
day after the Alliance sailed he wrote to Dr. Frank
lin asking him to exhaust his good offices to obtain
for him the command of the Serapis, then nearly
ready to receive a crew and sea-stores. He already
had the Ariel, rating as a twenty-gun corvette
which the King had lent to Dr. Franklin to accom
pany the Alliance home. The Ariel was a fine ship
of her rate, carrying eighteen twelve-pounders and
four long sixes, and berthing one hundred and eighty
men. After Arthur Lee and Landais had seized the
Alliance, Jones held back the Ariel for future con
tingencies. Before sailing in the Alliance, Landais
had sent ashore Lieutenants Dale and Stack * and
about sixty men of the Richard's old crew.
* Lieutenant Edward Stack and his comrade, Lieutenant Eugene Ma-
carty, of the old crew of the Bon Homme Richard, deserve a better place
in American history and a warmer spot in the American heart than have
hitherto been given to their memories. They were not Americana. They
2

THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
With these as a nucleus, the Commodore set out
to recruit a crew for the Ariel. And he was so con
fident of getting the Serapis that he sent Dale to
Nantes and Ned Stack to Brest to recruit any Ameri
can or L'ish seamen who might be adrift iu those
ports. The Ariel, meantime, was left in charge of
Lieutenant Lunt, and Jones, by order of Dr. Frank
lin, proceeded to Paris and Versailles to help along
the project of securing command of the Serapis.
From this time, which was early in July, until the
Ariel was ready for her first sailing, the Sth of Octo
ber, Jones spent most of his time at Court, endeav-
were not even Frenchmen, thongh both born and reared in Prance. They
were Irishmen. Their grandfathers had followed Lord Clare, among the
Irish patriots who left Ireland m the days of William of Orange, the
Boyne and Aghrim ; and who sought refuge in France under the flag
that the "Old Iriah Brigade " so dauntlessly and so successfully upheld
at Fontenoy. When Paul Jones began to recruit French volunteers for
the Bon Homme Richard, Stack and Macarty were sub-lieutenants in
Walsh's famous regiment of Marine Artillery, attached to the French
Navy. Being acquainted with Jones and being on duty at I'Orient, they
asked and obtained permission from the French naval authorities to join
the expedition. To their eflforts was mainly due the success Jones had
in filling up his complement with French volunteers.
Their respective records as officers in the Bon Homme Richard leave
nothing to be desired. Edward Stack commanded in the tops of the
Richard during the great battle, Eugene Macarty commanded, under
Richard Dale, the fore starboard division of the Richard's main gun-
deck battery until severely wounded. Both remained with Jones until
the Alliance retumed to I'Orient in February, 1780. After that Macarty
remained in France, and his subsequent career is obscure. But Ned
Stack came to America with Jones in the Ariel, became au American
citizen, and lived among our people to a ripe and honored old age. He
was not more than twenty-six years old when he came to this country
with Jones in the Ariel in 1781. After that he served afloat in the Con
tinental Navy a year or more. When peace came he married an Amer
ican girl and settled in Orange County, New York, where his worthy
descendants may be found to this day. 3

PAUL JONES
oring to arrange for command of his prize the Sera
pis, trying to conclude settlements of prize-money
accounts, and, incidentally, enjoying the social atten
tions that the entire haid to7i of the French capital
delighted to shower upon him. The eclat of his
name and fame was at this time prodigiously rein
forced by the conferment upon him of the Eoyal
Order of Military Merit, accompanied by the gift of
a gold-mounted sword of honor * from the King in
person, the decoration carrying with it letters pat
ent to the rank and title of Chevalier, correspond
ing in France to knighthood in England. This
was a singular distinction because it was the first
instance in the history of France of the conferment
of that order and title upon a subject or citizen of
a foreign state. There had been but few previous
instances of their bestowal upon French officers
under flag rank (that is to say, captains) — and, most
remarkable distinction of all, the letters patent and
brevet recited that Commodore Jones should be
entitled to all the rights, privileges, and protection
of a titled subject of the King of France, without
prejudice to his status as an American citizen.
At this point it seems pertinent to remark that the
close student of Jones's historical correspondence
during this period, which is quite voluminous and
has been printed in many books, including Dr.
* Paul Jones, while making his will, orally bequeathed this sword to
Richard Dale, through the hands of Gouverneur Morris, who delivered It
to Dale at the first opportunity. Jones's words of bequest were : " I
give this sword to Richard Dale — my good old Dick — because he did
more than any other to help me win it ! " The sword is now in the pos
session of Colonel Richard Dale, of Philadelphia, a lineal descendant of
Commodore Dale. 4

THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
Wharton's official "Diplomatic Correspondence of
the American Eevolution," might be confused by
an apparent discrepancy between the dates of his
official letters, which were dated almost uniformly
as if written at I'Orient, and our statement that he
spent most of his time at the French capital. The
explanation is that during this period he was techni
cally Captain of the Ariel, which lay in I'Orient har
bor, and both he and Dr. Franklin thought it best
that his official correspondence should be dated as if
on board that ship, though it was well understood
that his real duties and actual usefulness for the
time being required his almost constant presence at
Paris or at the Court of Versailles.
Some intimation has already been given in the
last chapter of Volume L of the social attentions
Paul Jones enjoyed during the summer of 1780.
To describe them in detail would expand this work
far beyond its proper limits. However, a few inci
dents may be offered as fair examples of the whole.
His first experience of the eminent position he had
almost unconsciously assumed in the eyes of the
French people came to him soon after he anchored
the Alliance at I'Orient in February, in the shape of
a bulky package forwarded by Aimee de Telison to
her hero, containing about twenty pamphlets and
two scrap-books of newspaper accounts, both French
and English, that her affectionate vigilance had col
lected concerning his cruise around the British
Islands, his conquest of the Serapis, and his diplo
matic duel with Sir Joseph Yorke in Holland. His
letter acknowledging the receipt of these tokens of
devotion is such an admirable sample of the average

PAUL JONES
tenor of the correspondence between him and Aimee,
that we offer it here verbatim ; or, rather, in as nearly
as practicable, literal translation from the French
original : Alli.4nce, l'Okient,
Sunday, March 5, 1780.
My Well-beloved Adele :
If I had ever doubted the truth of the proverb that a
man is not without honor, save in his own country, that
doubt would be forever dispelled by the most flattering
collection I have just had the honor and the joy to receive
from your dainty hands, of accounts of my recent advent
ures by flood and field. I have as yet had time only to
glance over them, to read their title-pages and thus glean
a general idea of their contents.
Prom even such cursory survey, however, I can see that
your gallant and martial-spirited countrymen have made
of me in my absence a kind of hero the character of whom
I sadly apprehend they will not flnd me to adequately sus
tain at sight or on close acquaintance.
Every man must surely value the approbation of his fel
low-men. If they be his friends in a common cause he will
measure their approval by either the wealth of their ap
plause or the kindness and charity of their criticisms. If
they be his enemies whom he has ' ' smitten, ' ' as the Good
Book says, "Hip and Thigh," he may often correctly
gauge the merit of his performances by the virulence of
their abuse. The collection you have so thoughtfully and
so affectionately sent to me seems to give scope for both
kinds of praise. But I am really astonished at the com
parative decency of two of the English newspaper com
ments which I found time to read entire ; particularly that
of the London Chronicle. And I am little less than amazed
at the tenor of Sir Joseph Yorke's official despatch which
appears in the Gazette, dated the very day after I left the
Texel and eluded the seven English ships on blockade.
6

THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
While I remained in tlie Texel, His Exc(>llency Sir Joseph
never thought of referring to me, officially, in any milder
terms than " pirate " and " state criminal ; " but the mo
ment my back was turned he describes me as ' ' the American
Commander," deplores that "His Majesty's blockading
squadron has apparently been driven off the coast by a so-
called gale which Captain Jones obviously regards as only
a fair sailing wind ; " and then, as if that were not com
pliment enough, he avows his fear that after all his efforts
to force me out so that his seven ships could pounce upon
me a league offshore, ' ' Captain Jones may add to his
already long list of most singular exploits that of escaping
the net spread for him, and enlarging himself once more
for new mischief at sea."
I have not read as yet the compliments of my friends.
But I do not anticipate that any of them can Invent any
thing that, all things taken into account, will be as truly
fulsome as that embraced in Sir Joseph's despatch of De
cember 38th last.
Of personal affairs there is little to write. I am likely
to be summoned up [to Paris] soon ; perhaps next week.
Then we will meet, and I shall once more enjoy the charm
of your presence and the magic of your wit. Till then,
adieu. Paul Jones.
P. S. — If you cannot yet read English well enough to
comprehend fully the meaning of Sir Joseph's despatch, I
will translate it into French for you when I come up. Paul.

The Commodore, however, was not summoned
up to Paris as soon as he expected. On March
17th he writes a brief letter to Aimee enclosing a
French translation of Sir Joseph Yorke's despatch
of December 28, 1779, and explaining some of its
points, among which is the following : " . . . You
7

PAUL JONES
must not, my dear Madame, in the childlike sim
plicity and honesty of your heart, imagine that Sir
Joseph really means to praise me. Far the reverse
of that! He only employs a left-handed compli
ment to my seamanship for the purpose of heaping
bitterness upon his undisguised censure of the ten
derness of the officers of his own service on the
blockade." *
In April, 1780, Jones went to Paris to consult Dr.
Franklin, and while there the Duchess de Chartres
gave a grand banquet in his honor. It had been her
intention to make this entertainment a fete cham-
petre, but the weather at the time forbade outdoor
festivities. For months the wonderful combat off
Flamboro' Head had been the talk of Paris, of all
France, and of Europe at large ; the subject of innu
merable pamphlets ; it had been made the theme of
ballads and of representation on the stage. No name
at that moment was more widely known or more
universally honored than that of Paul Jones. It was
also known that the King intended to confer upon
him the honor of knighthood. But the rarest dis
tinction of all was that the Duke and Duchess de
Chartres, in total disregard of the etiquette of the
French Court, had commanded him to accept, dur
ing his stay, an apartment in their palace ; a dis
tinction to which no person not of royal blood was
then admitted.
* Among Jones's letters to Aimee de Telison about this time was one
giving a general account of his recent exploits. This letter was couched
in the most formal terms, and bears internal evidence of having been
specially adapted by Jones for exhibition by Aimee to her friends. It is
too long for reproduction here. Its full text may be found iu the Sher
burne Collection, edition of 1851.

THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
Jones was not without art. He knew as well as
anyone in the world how to be dramatic. Among the
treasures of victory that he brought to Paris was the
sword that Captain Pearson had yielded to him on
the deck of the Bon Homme Eichard at thirty-five
minutes past 10 p.m., September 23, 1779. This
sword, carefully encased, he had close at hand on the
occasion of the Duchess de Chartres's dinner. At a
suitable point during the banquet he asked the
Duchess if she deigned to remember having given
to him her grandfather's watch two years before, and
his promise, if fortune should favor him, to " lay an
English frigate at her feet " in token of it.
She bowed assent.
Then Jones sent an attendant to bring from his
apartment in the palace a leather case. When the
attendant returned, Jones took from the case a
sword and said :
Tour Royal Highness perceives the impossibility of keep
ing my promise in kind. The ' ' English frigate ' ' proved
to be a forty-four on two decks, and she is now at I'Orient,
with French colors flying. The best I can do toward keep
ing my word of two years ago is to place in your dainty
hands the sword of the brave officer who commanded the
English forty-four. I have the honor to surrender to the
loveliest of women the sword surrendered to me by one of
the bravest of men — the sword of Captain the Honorable
Richard Pearson, of His Britannic Majesty's late ship the
Serapis !
That sword is still — or ought to be — among the
relics of the house of Bourbon-Orleans. The re
mark of Jones that French colors were then flying
on the Serapis was true, that ship having been
9

PAUL JONES
transferred to the King of France in December,
1779, for diplomatic reasons that have been ex
plained in foregoing pages. A French historian *
says that " the disregard of Bourbon-Orleans eti
quette involved in the entertainment of a son of
Scottish peasants, en famille, by a Duke and Duch
ess of the blood royal, caused almost as much con
sternation among the courtiers as the Commodore's
fierce foray upon the English coast had caused at
Whitehall and St. James's. The Duke de Chartres
had already more than once violated the rigid eti
quette of the French Court, and his contempt in
1780 for the Bourbon traditions proved the avant-
courrier of his open revolt against the dynasty itself
a decade later."
In connection with this dinner of the Duchess de
Chartres there is another story of yet more delicate
flavor. After the Duke and Duchess de Chartres
became Duke and Duchess of Orleans, by succes
sion, the Duke embraced the cause of the Eevolution,
renounced his ducal title, and took the name of Cit
izen Philippe Egalite. After acting a prominent
part in the earlier scenes of the Eevolution, Phi
lippe was guillotined in 1793 when " the Mountain "
got control. His eldest son, Louis Philippe, after
ward King of the French, escaped the fury of the
Eeign of Terror and fled to Switzerland, where he
subsisted for some time by teaching in an academy.
During this period a book was anonymously print
ed in Switzerland entitled " Souvenirs of the Good
King." It was largely made up of extracts from
the journal or diary of Louis Philippe's mother,
* Historical Anecdotes, etc.
10

THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
the Duchess de Chartres in Paul Jones's time.
Louis Philippe was believed to be its author. In
fact a German translation of it published in Vienna
in 1816 says, in the title-page : " By H. E. H. Louis
Philippe, of Bourbon-Orleans." *
One of the extracts from the journal of the Duch
ess de Chartres is as follows :
. . . Though the company at table was most distin
guished. Commodore Jones, fresh from his marvellous vic
tories, was easily the centre of attraction to all. I said to
him that all the world had read the accounts of his exploits,
and the more we read the more we marvelled. And I asked
him what thought, what impulse, what inspiration could
have sustained him to persevere when his ship was on flre
and sinking under his feet, and his men almost all in the
throes of death about him.
* Mary Adelaide of Orleans was born in 1750 ; daughter of the Duke
de Bonrbon-Penthievre, granddaughter of the Count de Toulouse, and
great-granddaughter of Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan. By
the death of her brother the Prince Lamballe aud the extinction of the
ducal house of Maine she became at the age of seventeen sole heiress of
the enormous estates of Penthievre, Maine, and Toulouse, the income ot
which was about £180,000 annually, according to Dr. Cooke Taylor,
author of the Standard History of the House of Orleans. This made
her by far the greatest heiress in Prance if not in the world ; because
any given sum of money meant then three or four times the same sum
now. She was married to Louis Philippe Joseph, Duke de Chartres, In
May, 1768, and became the mother of five children — three boys and two
girls. The eldest boy was Louis Philippe, bom October 6, 1773, to he-
come King of the French in 1830-48.
She was not only remarkably beautiful, but was a woman of extraor
dinary intellect. Like her husband, she ardently sympathized with the
American cause from the beginning, and was the first Frenchwoman of
high rank to become acquainted with Paul Jones. She was thoroughly
admired and appreciated by Franklin and Jeflferson, who were always
welcome at her salon. Her fondness for Franklin was extreme and she
invariably addressed him as "Monsieur le Sage" ("Mr. The Wise").
Her habit was to give sobriquets to people she liked. Jefferson she
11

PAUL JONES
To this he replied, with a profound bow and the gravest
solemnity : ' ' May it please Your Eoyal Highness, I could
not be flrst to strike the flag that I had been first to exhibit
in Europe ; and, besides, surrender must have postponed
the rapture of greeting you again ! ' '
Then I could only reply as I did, ' ' Ah, my dear Commo
dore, not Bayard or Charles le Temeraire himself could
have laid his helmet at a lady's feet with such knightly
grace ! ' '
At an afternoon luncheon which the Duchess gave
to the Commodore a few weeks after the dinner just
mentioned, another interesting bit of history trans-
used to call " Monsieur I'HabUe" ("Mr. The Clever"). Washington,
whom she never saw, she used to call "Sa Majeste sans Couronne"
("His Uncrowned Majesty "). As for Paul Jones, she had half a dozen
nicknames for him: " Le Chevalier sans titre de la mer," "L'Achille
fougueux de I'Oce'an," and "Le Bayard a flot" (" The Untitled Knight
of the Sea," " The Wrathful AchOles of the Ocean," and " The Bayard
Afloat ").
Though not a writer, and though living in an age that produced Ma
dame Neckar and Madame de Stael, the legends of her time indicate
that Mary Adelaide of Orleans lost nothing by intellectual comparison
with her gifted and famous contemporaries. What she did for American
Independence will never be fully known. Behind every subscription to
raise money in France for the purchase of supplies for our struggling
armies could always be found her fortune. The help she gave to Paul
Jones, munificent though it might be, was but a part, and a small one at
that, of the whole. On one occasion she said : " People usually do
things for either love or hate. I do these things for both. I love the
Americans of my own accord and I inherit the hatred my great-grand
father bore to the English ! "
In 1784 she became Duchess of Orleans, and as such was, ex-offlcio,
chief of the Ladies-in- Waiting, who, on state occasions, had to dress the
Queen. The reader of Madame Campan will find some interesting anec
dotes of her in this capacity. Her chief occupation was charity toward
the poor of Paris, for whioh purpose a part of her income itself equal to
a fortune was regularly set apart. This made her so popular with the
sans-culottes that when the Reign of Terror came on she was the only
person of the Bourbon blood-royal allowed to remain in France. How-
13

THE CHEVALIER I'AUL JONES
pired. Jones describes this in his last journal (1791)
as follows :
There was a story that annoyed me excessively, to the ef
fect that, when I was informed in Paris that Captain Pear
son had not only been honorably acquitted by his court-
martial but that King George III. had knighted him for his
bravery in defending his ship and thereby saving his valu
able convoy, I stated that " if I ever catch him at sea again
I will make a lord of him, ' ' or something of that kind.
When I was in England recently, I met, among other Brit
ish officers, Captain Ralph Willett Miller, a native of New
York, who adhered to the royal cause. Captain Miller was
a gentleman of particular interest to me, knowing many
people in New York and elsewhere in America whom I knew,
and he was most delicately civil to me. In his last cruise
Captain Miller had been in American ports and had seen
this silly story in the newspapers, they evidently regarding
it as keen humor. Captain Miller told me Captain Pearson
had seen the story in print, and had expressed his doubts
of my ever having made such an observation, saying, as
Captain Miller in most polite phrase repeated to me, that
he (Captain Sir Richard Pearson) could not believe that
ever, the execution of her husband, the exile of her sons and, withal, the
espionage to which she herself was subjected — annoying rather than
dangerous, because its purpose was really to protect her from fanatics —
soon made residence in France intolerable to her, and she went unmo
lested to Spain. When Napoleon came into power, he signified to her
that there was no reason why she might not return to France. But she
would not accept a privilege denied to her sons. On the Restoration of
1814 she came back to Paris. During the Hundred Days she remained
there. Napoleon giving orders that she be not disturbed, and she was the
only Bourbon in Paris during that period. After the final restoration of
Louis XVIII. she lived several years, and came to her death, June 33,
1821, in her seventy-first year, from injuries caused by a heavy book fall
ing from an upper shelf in her library and striking her on the breast,
inflicting a bruise that eventuated in a species of cancer. Few women
have done as much good to mankind as Mary Adelaide of Orleans. No
other woman ever made BO little noise about her own well-doing as she.
13

PALTL JONES
any brave officer would be capable of such a remark. I at
once thanked Captain Miller for giving me the opportunity
to set this silly story at rest. I told him I had also seen it
in print and had always denounced it ; that it was not only
unoflBcerlike in tone but it also exhibited me in the charac
ter of a buffoon, than which nothing could be more foreign
to my aspirations. Then I related the real fact from which
the story must have sprung. It was this :
A long time after the battle I was at Versailles endeavor
ing to obtain means for fltting out another squadron,
and one day the Duchess de Chartres commanded me to
luncheon at her palace. There was a numerous company
at table. Her Royal Highness asked if I had seen the last
English Gazette — the Court Gazette. Upon my responding
in the negative, she said : "It contains an announcement
of interest to you. The order of knighthood has been
conferred by His Britannic Majesty upon your adversary,
Captain Pearson, for his conduct in the action that ended
by his surrender to you. ' '
I at once assured Her Royal Highness that the informa
tion was gratifying to me, particularly as I had said to
Captain Pearson, when tendering to me his sword, that he
had defended his ship with credit to himself and honor
to his service, and I hoped his sovereign would suitably re
ward him. But I pursued that, as rewards were then going
in the British Navy, knighthood alone was hardly a suit
able reward for such conduct as Captain Pearson had ex
hibited ; that he ought to have been fully ennobled, and,
comparatively to services for which other ofiicers were being
knighted then, a dukedom would not have been extrava
gant for Captain Pearson.
To some of the ladies this appeared like persiflage ; but
I assured them of my entire candor, and explained to them
that, though he lost his ship and her consort, the Countess
of Scarboro', he, by his protracted and desperate resistance,
enabled his large and valuable convoy of merchant ships to
wholly escape, which would not have been the case if he
14

THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
had run from me or surrendered earlier. I also explained
that Captain Pearson had every reason to believe that he
would have to flght not only my ship but the Alliance also,
which was in the offing and if properly handled might have
laid him alongside in half an hour from the flrst shot. He
had no means of knowing what the behavior of Captain
Landais, of the Alliance, would be, and therefore he was
bound to consider that he would have to fight two frigates,
each a little inferior, but together much superior to his
single ship.
Due weight, I urged, must be given to these facts in any
fair consideration of Captain Pearson's conduct. This view
of the affair was warmly approved by the Chevalier de
Ternay and the Marquis de Vaudreuil, both admirals of the
highest distinction. However, these table-talks were gos-
sipped abroad and ultimately fell into print in the guise of
the absurd story referred to.
Louis Philippe, the son of the Duchess de Char
tres, always cherished the memory of Paul Jones.
In 1797, while an exile from France and travelling in
the United States, he was for a time the guest of the
Morris family, and noticed there Houdon's bust of
Paul Jones, which he instantly recognized. Survey
ing the bronze image, the future King of France,
as related in Taylor's " Louis Philippe : The Citizen
King," said:
One of my proudest memories is that, when a little boy,
I enjoyed the society of that wonderful man, to promote
whose success was my mother's most ardent ambition. And
next I cherish in memory that my mother, more than any
one else in France, helped him at the most critical mo
ment of his fortunes to obtain the instruments of victory.
Next to my poor, unfortunate father, my mother's affection
was bestowed upon Paul Jones. She not only petted and
15

PAUL JONES
promoted him socially, but her fortune itself, then enor
mous, was at his disposal. During the three years, 1778-
1781, while Paul Jones made France his base of opera
tions ; while your Congress was too poor to even give him
the pay and allowances of his rank ; my mother with her
own hand gave him personally over ten thousand louis
d'ors [the louis d'or was about $4.70], besides contributing
large sums through M. de Chaumont toward the outfit and
supply of his ships and crews. If he hesitated to accept
her benefices she would say: "Commodore, I command
you ! this is not charity ; it is not even gratuity. It is
my offering to the great cause of which you are by far the
ablest and bravest champion on the sea."
As for Paul Jones, he adored my mother. His feeling for
her was the intense and beautiful chivalry of his nature,
transfigured by gratitude into a religion. To him she was
no longer human, but divine. Pierce and fearless as he
might be elsewhere, in my mother's presence Paul Jones
was always gentle as a lamb and obedient as a pet spaniel.
In all my chequered life I have never known so beautiful
a relation between woman and man as that of my mother
and Paul Jones.
When he came into Brest with the Drake as his prize in
May, 1778, my mother gave a grand fete to all the officers
and men of the Ranger, and at her own expense provided
clothing and other needed comforts for the poor sailors,
which your Commissioners were at the moment too poor to
supply. When the news of the taking of the Serapis reached Paris
early in October, 1779, and the marvellous conditions of the
victory became known, my mother, then living in the Old
Palais Royal, made a grand illumination, gave a great ball,
the invitations to which read "In Honor of Commodore
Paul Jones, ' ' and sent a bill of exchange for a large sum to
the Commodore through Mr. Dumas. She was one of the
calmest persons I ever knew ; but she almost went wild
over the victory of Paul Jones in the Bon Homme Richard.
16

THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
In due time my mother received a letter from the Com
modore, giving a brief account of the battle. A year or
so before she had given to him a Louis Quinze watch of
unique design. In his letter, after briefly recounting the
phases of the battle, he said : "The enemy surrendered
at thirty-flve minutes past 10 p.m. by your watch, which
I consult only to fix the moment of victory."
Mother read this to everybody about the Court of Ver
sailles, King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette included.
It was a pretty phrase. Everyone except my mother saw
in it merely the clever flattery of a subtle courtier — as Jones
unquestionably was. But my mother accepted it as the
homage of a knight like Bayard or Charles the Bold I And
she was right ! I do not believe, nor did my mother, that
Paul Jones ever had the least thought of trying to flat
ter her. He held her in an esteem far beyond the reach
of flattery. Whatever expression he ofiered was his own
conception of worship, of adoration, of that religious, I
might say spiritual, devoutness which human beings usu
ally pay to the divinities of their hearts and their faith I
In her he saw only the goddess of his chivalric mythology.
In him she saw, as she often said, only "The Wrathful
Achilles of the Ocean I " ("L 'Achille fougueux de I'Oo^ani '')
I am sure no one else ever appreciated or comprehended
him as she did ; no one else ever worshipped her as he did.
It was a rare and a beautiful relation between such a
woman and such a man.
The memoirs, historical anecdotes, and pamphlets
of that interesting period fairly teem with descrip
tions of Commodore Jones, and examples of his read
iness of resource at all times and under all circum
stances. Among the records of that nature worth
preserving is one * involving an unexpected rencontre
with the King, which serves to exhibit both the Com-
* Historical Anecdotes, Vol. II.
Vol. II.— 2 17

PAUL JONES
modore's ready aplomb and the unaffected demo
cratic simplicity of Louis XVL, whenever that good
but unfortunate monarch was free from the cares of
state :
Commodore Jones had passed part of an afternoon
with M. de Genet, first secretary or chief clerk of the
Foreign Offtce. This was about a month after the King
had knighted the Commodore. On leaving the Foreign
Offlce Genet proposed a stroll through the palace gardens,
in the hope of meeting his daughter, Madame Campan,
who would, likely, be taking an airing about that time of
day, and also with some expectation of meeting the Queen
herself. They did not encounter either Madame Campan or the
Queen, but they did overtake the King in the palace gar
dens, amusing himself by scattering handsful of corn on
the ground for a colony of squirrels, who were his particular
pets. As soon as the King saw the two gentlemen he left
his pet squirrels and walked quickly up to them, holding
out his hand and saying, in English : "How are you.
Commodore Jones ; I am glad to see you I Pray, now, do
not tell me that you are come to ask another ship from me I
The last one I gave to you you permitted to sink to the
bottom of the ocean while you were taking possession of
the enemy's ship you had conquered with her. Come, now,
tell me, do you think this a fair exchange ? ' '
"Your Most Gracious Majesty speaks a melancholy
truth, ' ' said the Commodore. ' ' But if you will now deign
to give me the ship I took possession of while the one you
gave me before was sinking, I promise Your Majesty on my
sacred honor that no such contretemps shall occur again I
That event taught me a lesson. Hereafter I shall always
sink the other ship and save my own. ' '
At this sally the King was much amused, but he quickly
became grave and said : ' ' Commodore, congratulate your
self that you are not a king. If you were a king you
18

THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
would be compelled to have ministers. And they would
make a slave of you, as I am 1 ' '
The King doubtless meant more in this parable than
a mere hon mot. The little interview occurred in the
month of August. During March, April, May, June,
and July — in fact ever since the Alliance arrived in
rOrient harbor — all kinds of applications and en
treaties had been made, not only by Franklin and
Jones, but by numerous and powerful friends of both
at Court, for the fitting out of another squadron.
Except the loan of the Ariel in April, nothing had
been accomplished. But even that was a purely
personal affair as between the King and Dr. Frank
lin, and the King had made the order in person over
the head of his Minister of Marine.
All other applications had found their way to the
desk of M. de Sartine, who had promptly and sol
emnly pigeon-holed them. Jones had on his side
the rather inert, or, at least, passive, good will of the
King, and he was backed with considerable earnest
ness by de Vergennes and de Maurepas. The King,
however, could never clearly comprehend the Com
modore's reasons for declining the commission as
captain in the French Navy offered to him while m
the Texel. At first the King had even been inclined
to view his declination as uncalled for and as ex
hibiting a lack of proper sense of his disposition to
help him. He had indeed said as much personally
to the Duke de la Vauguyon, who in turn had re
peated the King's message to Jones, with additions
or alterations enough to make it appear an expres
sion of royal displeasure. 19

PAUL JONES
This commission has been described in previous
pages as "provisional." It was made so by inter
lining four words in the text of a regular commis
sion, or as it was called in the French Navy, " brevet
du Eoi," as " capitaine de vaisseau." The regular
form ran as follows : " At the Eoyal Will and Pleas
ure of His Majesty the King," etc. The alteration
in the form of the one offered to Jones, by which it
was made " provisional," was effected by interlining
after the word " King " — or in the French text, " le
Eoi " — the words, "pendant la guerre actueUe " (dur
ing the present war). Jones, commenting on it long
afterward, said that the words interlined were in de
Sartine's own handwriting, and he expressed the
belief that the Minister had interpolated them after
the brevet had been signed. In a formal audience
Jones had with the King in 1784, after de Sartine
had been removed, he (the King) referred to the in
cident of declining the commission. Jones then re
marked that it was only provisional, or to be in effect
only " during the war." On this occasion, he says,
" the King disclaimed recollection of any such clause
in the brevet," and Jones drew the inference that de
Sartine had interpolated the words.
Jones was normally of intensely sanguine tem
perament. Though his suspicions of individuals
were easily aroused, and he was, often perhaps un
justly, inclined to attribute sinister motives to those
who stood in his way or crossed his path, he never
permitted that rather uncomfortable trait to becloud
the general hopefulness of his own horizon. The dec
oration and brevet of knighthood conferred upon him
was a trophy that most French officers would have
20

THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
considered the summit of ambition ; the full reward
of a lifetime of loyal and able service. Paul Jones
was by no means destitute of vanity. But he always
subordinated that, as he did his appetites and pro
pensities, to his higher ambitions. He was proud
of the distinction he had won, and never failed to
avail himself of all its privileges and prerogatives in
social affairs. But he did not regard it as an ulti
mate achievement. The principal value he attached
to it was that, as he thought, it would strengthen
his prestige in new endeavors, and make the road to
further and greater successes easier. This sanguine
view the sequel proved to be mistaken.
The Commodore's best friends, including even Dr.
Franklin, Bancroft, and the Duke de Chartres, rea
lized long before he would admit it that the star
and cross of knighthood and the gold sword were
intended by the Ministers — whatever may have been
the King's real wishes — to be in full recognition or
recompense of all his services so far as France was
concerned. These honors were, in fact, nothing
more nor less than an expedient devised — perhaps
by de Sartine himself — to end the importunities of
Jones for ships on the one hand, and the inveterate
cabals of the French captains to thwart him on the
other ; for, between the two, de Sartine had but little
peace from the time of Jones's arrival in the Ranger
till he sailed for home in the Ariel ; or until de
Castries succeeded him just before that event.
Most students of the romantic career of Paul Jones
jump at the conclusion that the persistent and some
times almost malignant cabals of the French captains
to thwart his operations in France, were actuated by
21

PAUL JONES
jealousy of his fame and envy of his achievements ;
that they were embittered by seeing him do what
they never dreamed of doing — that s, conquering an
English ship of superior force. Some of them may
have harbored such an ignoble impulse. But it is
only fair to the great majority of French captains of
that day to ascribe their efforts at heading Jones
off to no more culpable motive than the natural and
praiseworthy desire of naval officers in time of war
to obtain commands for themselves. The current
literature of France at the time shows that the ex
ploits of Jones were by no one else so intelligently
discussed or so generously and even extravagantly
praised as by several French captains who wrote
pamphlets of much merit and historical value about
him. The best and most valuable, both historically
and professionally, and also the most complimen
tary, of all the contemporary pamphlets was written
by Captain Beauvallon ; and the ink of the printer's
press was hardly dry upon its pages when he suc
cessfully exhausted his claims on the Ministry and
his interest at Court to get the Terpsichore away
from Jones and for himself.
Comparison of the French navy list of active offi
cers with the list of effective ships at any time dur
ing the American war shows that there were four
or five " capitaines de vaisseau " for every ship of
the line, and about an equal surplus of " capitaines
de fregate " for vessels of cruising rates. And it also
makes it plain that of frigates— the most desirable of
all cruising commands — there was never more than
one available for every ten French captains applying
for her. Yet this was the particular rate of ship
22

THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
that Jones was always struggling to obtain. From
these facts we think it not only untenable but unjust
to the French captains on the whole to ascribe their
so-called " cabals " against Jones to any motive other
than the proper and praiseworthy one of seeking
active service for themselves.
Taking all their points of view together, they rea
soned, in 1780 at least, that the King had already
given to Jones one grand opportunity ; that Jones
had splendidly improved it ; and that the King had
finally recognized his merit by conferment of the
highest and proudest distinction that, in their view,
any French officer of his grade had any right to as
pire to. In Jones's case they considered the brevet
of knighthood doubly valuable ; because it gave him
a fixed status in French society and under French
law, thereby effectually and for all time silencing the
tongues of those who would rate him an adventurer
or a soldier of fortune.
On such laurels the French captains in 1780
thought Jones ought to be content to retire ; and
perhaps the King shared their view. Thus it seems
probable that his observations to the Commodore in
the little interview described, though uttered in a
vein of semi-persiflage, were intended by the King
for serious construction on the part of the man to
whom he addressed them.
Be this as it may, Jones was never self-satisfied
with, much less inclined to self-gratulation upon, his
naval career in Europe. His failure to obtain a new
squadron and make another cruise in 1780 was, to
his dying day, a subject of the bitterest chagrin.
The fact that he had fought the best two battles and
23

PAUL JONES
won the most brilliant two victories recorded in
naval annals up to his time ; that these achievements
had gained for him a universal fame, and shed upon
his name a lustre never before even aspired to by
any officer of his rank — if, indeed, of any rank —
counted for little in his estimation when he contem
plated what he might have done with further oppor
tunity. In his later years he was wont to say, of the
taking of the Drake, that it was after all only a small
battle between two little ships, soon forgotten. As
for the taking of the Serapis he was willing to admit
that it was, to use his own words, " a more impres
sive battle ; " but he always lamented the escape of
the Baltic fleet, and insisted that " if the Alliance had
been commanded by Dick Dale, or even by James
Arthur Degge, at least a dozen of the Baltic ships
might have been taken along with the Serapis and
the Scarboro'."
Finally, on October 8, 1780, Jones sailed in the
Ariel from I'Orient bound for the United States
with a cargo of arms, including forty-two cannon,
twenty-eight eighteen-pounders and fourteen nine-
pounders. These guns had been contracted for
the previous year, and were to be used in the
Eichard, but were not completed in time for that
ship. The first day out the Ariel was caught in a
terrific storm, lost her fore and main masts, and
nearly foundered. Jones describes the situation of
his wrecked ship as follows : *
The Ariel now rode half water-logged in the open ocean
to windward of the Penmarques, perhaps the most danger
ous ledge of rocks in the world, for two days and three
* Miss Taylor's Collection, page 395.
24

THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
nights in a tempest that covered the shore with wrecks
and dead bodies and that drove ships from their anchors
ashore even in so sheltered a port as I'Orient. It was
fortunate that the Ariel had lost her masts, since no anchors
could have held her so long had the masts stood. By the
help of jury-masts, erected after the gale, we worked the
Ariel back to I'Orient and safely anchored on the 12th of
October. Long as I had followed the sea in all climates
and at all seasons, I never, till that event, conceived the
awful majesty of tempest or the unspeakable horrors of
shipwreck. The ship needed remasting throughout. Many of
the muskets in her cargo were wet with salt water
and had to be unshipped for cleaning. Some of the
powder was wet, and that which was not wholly
spoiled had to be taken out and dried. In fact her
whole cargo, water-casks, and stores had to be un
loaded. These operations, though vigorously pros
ecuted, consumed two months, so that the Ariel was
not ready to sail a second time until the 18th of De
cember. A wonderful commentary on the pertinacity
of Commodore Jones is the fact that he had hardly
brought his half -wrecked ship into port when he
renewed his efforts to get the Terpsichore. But he
found that she had been assigned to Captain Beau
vallon, and she was soon despatched to the East In
dies with orders and a convoy of supplies for Suf-
ren's squadron.
On the 1st of December the Marshal de Castries
became Minister of Marine, vice de Sartine, who
was removed. Jones hailed this event with delight,
as did all friends of the American cause. From the
beginning de Sartine had opposed the treaty of
25

PAUL JONES
alliance, and for a long time he had been the only
member of the French cabinet who was lukewarm
in support of the war. De Castries, on the other
hand, was in full sympathy with the American party,
and in all respects a much more liberal and ener
getic statesman than de Sartine. The Commodore
lost no time before paying his respects, which he
did in a brief note dated December 3, 1780, as
follows :
Permit me, my lord, to congratulate Your Excellency on
the happy choice His Majesty has made in appointing a
disinterested patriot of your liberal mind and comprehen
sive understanding to govern the royal navy of France.
Believe me, my lord, I anticipate with heartfelt pleasure
the happy events of your administration ; and I shall rejoice
to be found worthy of Your Excellency's protection and to
be made instrumental under your direction, in concert with
the Congress, to put an honorable end to this war. I take
the liberty of enclosing an outline of a project for action to
which I beg Your Excellency's attention, and which I hope
may meet the favor of so great and able a man as universal
fame holds you to be.
This project contemplated the return of Jones to
France early the next spring with two American frig
ates, the Alliance — which had then been taken from
Landais — and the Confederacy, of thirty-two guns,
or a new thirty-two-gun frigate fitting out at Boston,
to be ready for sea in March. With these and the
Ariel he proposed another and more powerful attack
on the British coasts than that of 1779, and he ex
pressed the hope that the new Minister might see
his way clear " to add the Serapis to the proposed
squadron, for reasons no less sentimental than prac-
26

THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
tical, which will be obvious to one of such martial
spirit and military renown as Your Excellency."
De Castries under date of December 12th grace
fully acknowledged the compliments of the Commo
dore. The subsequent relations between Jones and
de Castries, both personal and official, when the
Commodore returned to France, leave no room for
doubt that this diplomatic exchange of delicate
compliments permanently touched the suscepti
bilities of both. The Commodore many times in
his later life expressed the conviction that if de Cas
tries had superseded de Sartine at the beginning
of 1778 instead of at the end of 1780, the naval part
of the war would have been much more effective and
glorious than it was.
It is evident that this correspondence put Jones
in a better humor than he had enjoyed for some
time ; because on December 17th he wrote a farewell
letter to Aimee de Telison, a copy of which, or part
of it, he transcribed in his journal of the same
date. An extract is as follows :
In bidding adieu to you, dear madame, for how long a
time I cannot now determine, but which I hope may not
be protracted beyond the coming spring, I bid adieu also
to the beloved nation of France, where, though I have met
with some difficulties, I have found many reasons to be
satisfled. But above all I have been constantly charmed
by the courteous behavior that has so nobly marked the
character of that generous nation. If in official aud public
pursuits I have met with disappointments here and there,
it may be the fault of my own ambitions and an excess of
hope beyond the reasonable power of even King and Min
isters to gratify. 27

PAUL JONES
But when I turn to the memory of personal and social
affairs, in which it has been my happiness to be concerned
with your own gentle sex, the picture is without a blemish,
the page without a blot. The men of France I esteem, re
spect, and honor. They are brave, generous, and faithful.
But the women of France 1 what words can I find to ex
press my homage, my worship, my devotion ! They have
been in these years of toil and storm and battle my guar
dian angels ; they have saved me from despair ; and they
have inspired me to conquer. Their approving smiles and
tender praise have been to me more than the applause
of statesmen and even more than the favor of royalty
itself. Should fate decree this to be my last view of enchanted
France, I can at least perish somewhere far away, with the
music of the voice of a French woman soothing me and the
beauty of a French woman's face and form pictured in my
glazing eyes.
By the middle of December the Ariel was remasted,
rerigged, new sails bent, and so completely refitted
generally that Jones said she was " a much better
ship than before being wrecked ; " and he sailed
again in her the 18th of December. The voyage
was uneventful, excepting a brief night battle with
a British ship-sloop carrying twenty guns, fourteen
nine-pounders and six six-pounders. This force was
considerably inferior to that of the Ariel, whose
main battery was eighteen twelve-pounders and who
had a larger crew than her antagonist. The action
began at very close range, and in twelve minutes the
British ship ceased firing and hailed to say that she
had surrendered and was sinking, the night being
so dark that the striking of her flag could not be
observed. 28

THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
Jones at once lowered away a boat to take pos
session of the prize, not suspecting that the Eng
lishman would attempt to escape. But before the
boat was half way to the prize the latter, which had
meantime drifted somewhat to leeward, suddenly
wore and ran off before the wind, which was now be
ginning to blow quite fresh. Jones, unable for the
moment to determine where his boat was, owing to
the darkness, hesitated to reopen fire, and hailed
two or three times. Finally, receiving no answer, he
yawed the Ariel and fired two or three broadsides at
his fleeing prize, but the darkness and the greatly
superior sailing of the prize enabled her to get
away. This action occurred in latitude 26° N. and
longitude 59° 50' W., the night of February 6,
1781. Jones in his report of it describes the con
duct of the English captain as dishonorable and in
violation of the plainest rules of naval warfare ;
holding that after he had surrendered he had no
right to attempt escape. This rule may be good in
theory, but it is difficult to see why the conduct of
the English captain was less honorable than any
other of the ruses customarily resorted to by naval
commanders then or since.
The British side of the story is as follows : *
The vessel that sustained this action with the superior
force of Captain Jones until the hopelessness of further re
sistance was plainly seen, and then by a clever ruse of her
captain escaped, was a letter-of -marque called the Triumph,
mounting twenty guns— twelve or fourteen nine-pounders
and the rest sixes, with a crew of ninety-seven men and com
manded by Captain John Pindar, a loyalist, of New York.
* Naval Chronicle. 29

PAUL JONES
This ship had been built at Newburyport, on plans of the
celebrated Mr. Peck, of Boston, designed for an American
privateer, and was doubtless the fastest sailer of her day.
She was the property of a Mr. Tracey, of Newburyport, when
built, and was, in the fall of 1780, fitted out as a privateer,
under command of Captain Hopkins, son of Commodore
Ezek Hopkins. On her flrst cruise she was taken, while be
calmed in a fog off Nantucket Shoal, by some ships of Rod
ney's fleet. Being sent in to New York she was sold as a
prize and bought by an association of American loyalists,
who fltted her out as a King's letter-of -marque, under
command of Captain John Pindar, a New York loyalist
who had some time been employed as a Sandy Hook and
Sound pilot for His Majesty's fleet. She went to sea in
January, 1781, with a very short crew — ninety-seven men
and not more than five officers — nearly all loyalists, and
not more than half of the crew seamen.
The ship she encountered was a heavy corvette, belong
ing to the King of France, but loaned into the service of
Congress, carrying a battery of twenty twelve-pounders, a
crew of 180 men, mostly prime sailors, and commanded by
the redoubtable Paul Jones. Her escape from so superior
a force after an action of extraordinary severity, though
short, reflected great credit upon the audacity and address
of her commanding officer. Captain Pindar. And on his
arrival at Barbadoes he was highly complimented by the
British commander-in-chief, then at that island with the
fleet. The escape of the Triumph was facilitated by two
facts : flrst, the darkness of the night ; and, second, the
habit of Captain Jones to instruct his gunners to flre low,
whereby, though greatly damaging the hulls of ships he
attacked and inflicting much loss upon their crews, he sel
dom seriously damaged their rigging or impaired their sail
ing powers. In this brief action the Triumph had seven
men killed and seventeen wounded. The loss of the Ariel
is said to have been three men wounded.
30

THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
It is probable that had the Triumph been a regu
lar British man-of-war, her captain would have ob
served the proprieties of conduct. But the ship be
ing a letter-of-marque, and manned almost wholly
by Tories, he and his men dreaded (as perhaps they
well might at that time) the fate they thought would
attend such conditions, and so, seeing a chance of
escape, they made the best of it.
Jones's comment on the affair was as follows :
Such an enemy could not, as a matter of course, long
endure, at so close a range, the weight of flre received from
the broadside and tops of the Ariel.
But I was chagrined at the escape of the Triumph, by
stratagem, after she had surrendered. And though I main
tain that the conduct of the captain of the Triumph was
dishonorable, I shall not fail to say that, whatever may have
been the character of his artifice, I confess that the dark
ness of the night enabled him to outwit me ; and then the
better sailing of his ship enabled him to out-manceuvre me.
After this desultory encounter the Ariel proceeded
leisurely to the Capes of the Delaware, standing off'
and on much of the time in search of supply ships
or small cruisers of the enemy, and in this manner
consumed ten days between lat. 26°, long. 60° W.
and the Capes ; but nothing hove in sight, and she
anchored at Philadelphia the 18th of February.
There she remained long enough to discharge the
principal part of her cargo, consisting of small arms,
ammunition, and other supplies for the Continental
Army. She then sailed under command of one of
her lieutenants— either Dale or Henry Lunt— for
Portsmouth, N. H., to deliver there guns, mate
rials for the gun-carriages and other equipment
31

PAUL JONES
originally intended for the battery of the Bon
Homme Eichard, but which were completed too late
for that use. They were then brought to this coun
try in the Ariel for use in the battery of the America,
of seventy-four guns, building at Portsmouth, and
the pioneer ship of the line in our navy. The Ariel
reached Portsmouth in safety, though during the
voyage she twice barely escaped capture — once by a
fifty-gun ship and a frigate of the enemy cruising off
the Delaware Capes, and again by Arbuthnot's squad
ron off the east end of Long Island. In the latter
instance the leading ship of the enemy got near
enough to send three shots through her sails. After
this there is no distinct record of the Ariel except
that she was returned to the King of France about
the end of the year 1781. The twenty-eight eighteen-
pounder guns and carriages were used, with two
others, for the lower gun-deck battery of the Amer
ica and the nine-pounders were used on the quarter
deck and forecastle of that ship, her upper gun-deck
battery being made up of thirty-two long twelve-
pounders — which, by the way, were of American
manufacture, carriages and all.
The landing of Paul Jones at Philadelphia Feb
ruary 18th, or, more accurately speaking, his relin
quishment of command of the Ariel when she sailed
from Philadelphia for Portsmouth in May following,
terminated his active service in the Continental
Navy afloat. His sea service, beginning with the
commissioning of the Alfred in December, 1775, had
covered a period of five years and five months. Of
this about two years had been passed in American
and about three in European waters. The general
32

THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
result of all was to make of him far and away the
leading historical figure in the primary annals of
the American Navy. Other gallant and capable
men had held commands and had sailed and fought
skilfully and bravely. Of them all, not more than
four names will be promptly remembered by the
average reader of history ; and these would be Barry,
Nicholson, Barney, and Biddle. But none of them
could pretend to comparison with his in univer
sal eminence before the world at large. As a
natural consequence of the feebleness of its begin
nings and the might of its adversary, the story of
our Continental Navy had been one of almost un
broken misfortune and uniform disaster. And the
few bright pages scattered here and there in the
otherwise sad and gloomy volume bore, almost
without exception, in illuminated imprint, the name
of Paul Jones.
During that five years and five months Jones had
done a great deal more than make cruises, harass
the coasts and commerce of the enemy, and win
extraordinary naval victories. Solitary and distin
guished as was the eminence he had achieved as
a naval commander pure and simple, he had in
other directions incidental to his service found
opportunity to exhibit qualities and powers even
broader in scope and more comprehensive in effect.
He had demonstrated not only the capacity to
command ships but also the most thorough in
sight into the problems of naval administration,
alike as to personnel and material ; clear practical
knowledge of the construction, armament and
equipment of vessels - of - war ; and profound, far-
VoL. IL— 3 33

PAUL JONES
sighted conceptions of naval strategy on the grand
scale. And beyond all these strictly naval qualities he
had, in a most difficult situation and under most
trying conditions, exhibited a command of the arts
and the subtleties of diplomacy that would have
done credit to the most comprehensive and exhaus
tive special training and experience. Men quali
fied to judge of capacity in these diverse spheres,
who had opportunity to judge him by access to
his correspondence and familiarity with his con
duct, had already acknowledged that he was equal
to all situations and that his dealing with every
emergency confronting him, no matter how sud
den or how intricate, had invariably been that of a
master. Those who entertain the opinion that personal
modesty, self-abnegation, and self-effacement are
prime qualifications of a hero will likely be disap
pointed in the view Paul Jones took of this period
in his history. In a memorial which he addressed
to Dr. Franklin and Eobert Morris about two years
later, and which was almost immediately published,
he says :
With the enclosed statement of the Grand Pensionary,
M. Van Berckel, and the correspondence of Sir Joseph Yorke
with the British Foreign Offlce before you, I do not see
how you can doubt the advisedness of my conduct while
in the Texel with my prizes at the end of 1779, whatever
you may have thought of it in the absence of such informa
tion. And I trust you will pardon me if I suggest that less
pertinacious behavior on my part at that moment might
easily have had the effect to defeat the ultimate break be-
34

THE CHEVALIER PAUL JONES
tween the States General and England. I mention this in
order that my record in that affair may be suitably pre
served for exliibition if need be alongside of any records
that may be offered by the Duke de la Vauguyon, M. Du
mas, and the Chevalier de Livoncourt, who did not then
agree with me as to questions of expediency.

35

CHAPTEE II
CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
Just before leaving France, Commodore Jones
had learned of the deposition of Landais from com
mand of the Alliance during her voyage home the
previous summer. The first news that greeted him
on his arrival at Philadelphia, February 18, 1781,
was that Landais had been dropped from the rolls
of the American Navy and was therefore forever
beyond the reach of the court-martial he had had
in store for him since October, 1779. His only com
ment on this state of affairs that seems to be extant
— at any rate, the only one we have found — occurs
in a letter to Dr. Bancroft dated February 28, 1781.
He naturally wrote to Bancroft about it, because, as
previously stated, that gentleman had represented
him in the preliminary inquiry conducted by Dr.
Franklin in November and December, 1779, at Paris.
To Bancroft he wrote :
. . . Landais is, happily I think for all concerned,
out of reach now. He has been dropped from the navy for
other causes than those I have charged against him, and
even if he had not been so dropped I am not sure that I
could either more fully vindicate myself or more utterly
disgrace him by demanding that he be formally tried. It
is, however, a gloomy satisfaction that he owes his present
misfortune to a quarrel with the man to whom he so base-
36

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
ly lent himself as the miserable and unthanked tool of
vengeance upon me, after he had exhausted every other
poor expedient of his feeble nature in vain effort to destroy
me himself.
After all his crimes, it has been his cruel fate to receive
his conge at the hands of his friend, his co-mutineer and
his " constitutional adviser, " Arthur Lee! Could the
irony of fate be more ghastly ? But if the wretched tool,
Landais, is beyond my reach I can yet rejoice that his
hardly less Infamous master "^ is still within range. Nous
verrons ! . . .
The attitude which Jones assumed toward Arthur
Lee on his arrival home in the Ariel has been mis
understood. Lee had preceded him by six months.
When Jones arrived he found that efforts had been
made to poison public opinion against him. Ee-
membering their quarrels in France, Jones naturally
ascribed these efforts to Lee. As has been said, in
cases of this kind Paul Jones knew but one remedy,
and that was the quickest one. He believed that
Lee could easily be provoked to fight. He knew
that, shortly before leaving France for this country
* Of Arthur Lee's history the limits of this work afford space for only
a brief summary. Born in Virginia in 1740, brother of Richard Henry
and William Lee, he was educated almost wholly in England, graduat
ing at Eton, then studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh (Col
lege of Physicians and Surgeons). After taking there the degree of
M.D., he concluded that his tastes were better suited to the law than to
medicine. Entering the Temple in 1766, he was admitted to the London
Bar after the usual course. There is not much account of his practice of
the law. But he was active in politics and figured largely in the set of
which John Wilkes was the leader and the model. During the disturbed
period immediately preceding the American Eevolution, Lee's participa
tion in poUtics was mainly confined to the writing of open letters, over
the signature of " Junius Americanus," which he apparently considered
imitations, in tone and style, of the original " Junius Letters."
37

PAUL JONES
in April, 1780, while at I'Orient, Lee had thrown
down the gauntlet to Gerard, the French envoy, in
the most approved fashion of the code of honor. In
Jones's estimation, this left no obstacle to the re
alization of his own purpose.
Filled with this intent, he took into his counsel
John Cadwalader and Anthony Wayne. The latter,
desirous to avert if possible a hostile meeting of
Jones and Lee, went to Livingston, who was the
best if not almost the only friend Lee still had left
in this country at that time, outside of his own fam
ily, and intimated to him the intentions of Jones.
This brought about an interview between Lee and
Livingston on one side and Wayne on the other.
In the course of this interview Lee remarked that he
was not prepared to admit Jones's right to force a
quarrel of that nature upon him. He declared that
it was by no means a settled question whether Jones
was entitled to the privileges of a gentleman under
the code.
"Who is he, anyhow?" exclaimed Lee. "No
body but the son of obscure Scottish peasants, and
a man who has changed his name at that ! What
right can such a person claim to expect satisfaction
from a Virginia gentleman of my position and an
tecedents ? "
Wayne replied that he was not there to discuss
questions of parentage or name. " But permit me to
suggest, sir," he said, " that no one in this country
or before the American people can possibly reflect
credit upon himself by trying to bar Paul Jones
from the rights of a gentleman. It makes no differ
ence who his parents may have been or how many
38

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
times he may have changed his name, the American
people will never sustain any man in the pretence
of barring from a gentleman's privileges the con
queror of the Drake and the Serapis."
It appears that Livingston agreed with Wayne's
view and counselled Lee that Jones could not be
barred on the ground of antecedents ; and they
called attention also to the fact that no American
gentleman would be tolerated in an attempt to ques
tion the social rights of an American officer who,
holding the commission of captain in the navy and
offering such record as belonged to Jones, could, in
addition to all that, display an order of knighthood
from the hands of our great ally, the King of
France, granted as reward for and recognition of
most conspicuous display of all the qualities held to
belong to gentlemen. This of course ended all
thought of objection to Jones's social prerogatives,
in America or elsewhere, on the part of anybody.
From all that can be learned, in view of the
meagre remnant of documentary history extant on
this interesting subject. General Cadwalader's ad
vice was not as pacific as that of Jones's other
friends. Cadwalader advised Jones that the con
duct of Lee in relation to the command of the
Alliance, when on the point of sailing from I'Orient
to America, was of itself suitable provocation for an
affair, because, in that instance, Lee had personally
questioned the integrity of Jones in the representa
tions he made to the subordinate officers of that ship,
representations by which those officers were induced
to acquiesce in the assumption of the command by
Landais. Cadwalader also advised Jones that, as
39

PAUL JONES
the evidences of Lee's personal hostility to him were
cumulative and had been displayed by persistent
wrong and outrage through a long period, no single
act of reparation or no general apology could suffice ;
but that, in default of any indication on the part of Mr.
Lee to repair in severalty the outrages and indignities
he had for more than two years heaped upon him,
he (Jones) could have no remedy left but to fight.*
In the meantime, however, Morris, Livingston,
Hamilton, and others had succeeded in persuading
Jones that, whatever might be the sting of his griev
ances against Lee, the true interests of the service
would be best consulted if he would request Con
gress to make a general inquiry into the whole con
duct of affairs in Europe so far as he was concerned
in them, including any points of difference that
might exist between Mr. Lee and himself, and any
grievances he might hold against him.
Not more than three or four days after his arrival
at Philadelphia, Commodore Jones had received the
following document : Admiralty Office,
Philadelphia, Feb. 20, 1781.
Captain Paul Jones is hereby required to answer the fol
lowing questions, in writing, as soon as possible, and to
produce the original orders. By Order ofthe Board,
John Brown.
Secretary.
*It must not be inferred that John Cadwalader's motive in this was
that of mere blood-thirst — a trait which some nervous historians ascribe
to him. Cadwalader was not a blood-thirsty man. He siraply knew how
to shed blood when nothing else could right wrong or strangle conspiracy.
Not long before the event now under consideration, he had himself
40

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
A schedule of questions, forty-seven in number,
was enclosed with this formal order, and their scope
embraced the whole period from the sailing of the
Eanger, from November 1, 1777, to his arrival in the
Ariel, February 18, 1781. Jones has left an inter
esting record of the impression this order and the
arrangement of the questions produced upon him.
It is, we think, best to give here a synopsis of his
comments, with his introductory paragraph, only,
verbatim. He says :
The first thing I could perceive, on reading these inter
rogatories, if I had not known the fact before, was that
Arthur Lee must have reached America some time ahead of
me. Many of the questions were clearly drawn either from
his express dictation or by his own hand, because they in
volved presumptive versions, by implication, of certain
events which no one but he could have taken the view
of indicated by their wording. Others were in indispu
table character of internal evidence the product of his in
stigation. I could not help seeing from the text and style
of the questions alone, if I had been destitute of other
information, that he had diligently employed the advan
tage of his earlier arrival to load, cock, and prime the
Board as well as sundry members of Congress for a broad
side at me whenever I might land.
The tenor of some of the questions was cunningly
devised to compel Jones to express uncertainty as to
the exact facts, for the reason that they required him
brought to a summary and sanguinary end the notorious " Conway Cabal "
against Washington, by shooting the leader of it. Now, apparently, he
thought his friend and congenial confrfere Paul Jones might find similar
opportunity to end the cabal of the Lees, the Izards et at., against Dr.
Franklin. That was all. 41

PAUL JONES
to answer as to matters not wholly within his knowl
edge. Other questions were adroitly framed to put
him on an apparent defensive, as a man replying to
charges. Others were based upon sinister assump
tion or the insinuation of things that never existed or
of acts never done or contemplated. And a few of
them were in reality accusations of the most false and
malicious character, thinly veiled by interrogation
points. All that Jones did at the start was to ac
knowledge in three lines the receipt of the order of
the Board and the enclosed questions.
He then determined, as a preliminary measure, to
publish his paper on " Arthur Lee in France." His
object in this was to equalize or neutralize as far as
he could the advantage Lee had gained over him by
prior arrival in the country. And beyond that was
the ulterior object, which might or might not prove
incidental, to force the contest beyond the forum of
pen and ink. He was, however, induced to suppress
that remarkable document, though, as may be in
ferred from the tenor of a letter written to him by
George Washington a few weeks later, Messrs. Mor
ris, Livingston, and the other peacemakers found it
necessary to call in the commanding dignity of
Washington himself to help restrain the exasper
ated sailor.
This pai^er on "Arthur Lee in France," which
Jones was induced to refrain from publishing in this
country, never appeared in the print of the English
language. But Jones preserved it and it was found
among his manuscripts after his death. Considera
ble portions of it appear in the French Collection
printed at Paris in 1799, the translation being, prob-
42

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
ably, by Aimee de Telison — though the Commodore
may have translated it himself.
Judging from the parts of it that appear in the
French Collection, it must have been a terrible in
dictment. As samples of its general quality we
quote two paragraphs. One was a description of
the characters and operations of Arthur Lee's " pri
vate secretaries," Ford, Thornton, and Stephen
Sayre, substantially as set forth in preceding pages
of this work. Jones concluded this review as follows :
The perfidy and treachery of these creatures being es
tablished beyond question, not only by the evidence of
official documents but by their own fiight fi-om justice
and refuge on the enemy's soil, nothing can remain but
the task of estimating the nature of Mr. Lee's relation to
them and the motive for his indefatigable protection of
them. In making such estimate one of two things must,
inevitably, be taken for granted : Either they completely
deceived Mr. Lee, or he completely colluded with them.
There could not in the nature of things be a point of con
nection half way. If they deceived him, they did so long
after everyone else had detected and denounced them. As
to the other alternative, I rest it on the inference. But I
will say, what must be clear to all, that Mr. Lee can defend
himself from that inference only by pleading weakness of
head for the sake of his heart. If they deceived him, he was
an ass. If they did not deceive him, he must have been,
with them and like them, emissary, spy, and traitor.
Even more scathing and of much greater histor
ical consequence is another circumstantial charge,
beginning in the French text as follows : " Son Ex
cellence, M. le Comte de Vergennes peut, s'il lui
plaira, offrir les preuves les plus incontestables que
43

PAUL JONES
M. Arthur Lee a, au moment de la conclusion du
traite de Versailles, appris par ecriture. Milord
Shelburne, un grand homme d'etat anglais," etc. :
His Excellency the Count de Vergennes can, if it should
please him to do so, offer the most incontestable proofs
that Mr. Arthur Lee, at the moment of conclusion of the
Treaty of Versailles, informed, in writing, Lord Shelburne,
the great English statesman, that it was on the point of
being signed and that, if England desired to prevent an
alliance offensive and defensive between France and the
United States, there was not a moment to lose. Mr. Lee
also informed Lord Shelburne, as the Count de Vergennes
can prove, if he wishes, that, though the rapprochement
had proceeded very far, there was yet, in his opinion, op
portunity to break it if the British Ministry would quickly
propose an accommodation. The evidence does not indi
cate exactly what sort of ' ' accommodation ' ' Mr. Lee had
in mind ; but there is reason from other sources of infor
mation to believe that it involved, or would involve, abro
gation of the Declaration of Independence, provided the
King and his Ministers and Commons would make certain
perpetual charter grants to the late Colonies, that would
secure to them forever complete self-government, but as
an appanage or auxiliary state in all affairs of foreign
relation. Let this be as it may, I challenge dispute of the aver
ment that Mr. Lee, while a Commissioner of the United
States in France, was holding a kind of communication
with the enemies of his country that, if held by any other
man than one bearing the sacred name of Lee, would be
called treason, perfidy, and the offlce of a spy.
When the author of this work became aware of
the existence of the foregoing document he was
almost inclined to doubt its authenticity. Written
originally in the English language for publication
44

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
in Philadelphia in the year 1781, it was said to have
been found in a collection of papers printed in the
French language at Paris in 1799. That it had
never been published at Philadelphia — or elsewhere
within the bounds of research in our language — in
its original English text, was satisfactorily demon
strated. Its appearance in a French collection of
papers could, therefore, be accounted for only on the
hypothesis that, if genuine, it must have been pre
served by Jones in his English original manuscript
and afterward translated into French by him or by
the editor of his papers, which were published post
humously in that language. This theory, though
perhaps tenable on grounds of ordinary historical
credulity as to the genuineness of printed matter as
old as that was, the author of this work for a long
time declined to entertain. In view of the addi
tional fact that no trace of the English original re
mained, it seemed more rational to suppose that it had
been interpolated by the French editor for purposes
of his — or her — own, or, if not that, at least so warped
or metamorphosed in transcription or translation as
to be unworthy of inclusion within the pale of seri
ous or respectable history. At all events, the author,
though fairly conversant with many dubious pas
sages in the history of Arthur Lee, was not willing
to accept upon such testimony, unsupported and
uncorroborated as it then was, the theory that Lee,
when a co-Commissioner with Dr. Franklin repre
senting the infant United States at the Court of
Versailles, at the most critical moment in all our
history, had deliberately betrayed our most secret
policy to our arch-enemy !
45

PAUL JONES
This impression lasted until the year 1887, when
a work was published in France, byDoniol, entitled
" La Participation de la France a I'Etablissement
des Etats Unis." It is to be regretted that this work,
prepared with vast research, great ability, and liter
ary skill by its author, M. Doniol, has not been
translated into our tongue. Compiled from the rec
ords of the French Foreign Office, to which its author
had unlimited access for a lifetime, it is not only the
most valuable but the only absolutely trustworthy
recital of what France actually did, risked, and suf
fered to help our cause of Independence.
With this preface we may now, without being
abrupt, say that Doniol, in his third volume, pub
lished in 1887, quoting records of the French Foreign
Office, in the handwriting of the Count de Vergennes
himself, exactly and almost word for word verifies
the declaration made by Paul Jones against Arthur
Lee in 1781 — one hundred and seven years before.
It is not worth while to trouble the readers of this
work with a reproduction of Doniol's text in French,
further than to quote in the French original, in his
own handwriting, Vergennes's official endorsement
on the paper referred to, as follows : " Extrait d'une
lettre, ecrite par M. Arthur Lee h, Milord Shelburne,
immediatement apres la signature du traite entre la
France, et les Etats Unis de I'Amerique." * Dr.
Francis Wharton, in his " Diplomatic Correspond
ence of the American Eevolution," Vol. I., page
639, says that this memorandum not only helps to
explain Vergennes's uniform distrust of Arthur Lee,
but shows, if the copy be correct, that Lee personally
* Doniol, Vol. in., page 169.
46

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
sent immediate intelligence of the signing of the
treaty to England.
With this corroboratory evidence of 1887 before
him, the author of this work radically modified his
previously formed opinion as to the reliability of
Paul Jones's fierce onslaught in 1781 upon " Arthur
Lee in France." It now became clear that Ver
gennes, who was one of the best friends and most
ardent admirers Jones had in France, and who knew
all about his quarrel with Lee, must have taken the
Commodore into the secrets of the French Foreign
Office ; though there is no reason to suppose that, in
doing so, Vergennes intended to authorize Jones to
use at will that kind of private information to sus
tain himself in personal quarrels either in France or
in America. The probability is that Vergennes gave
Jones this information in return for equally valuable
advices that Jones, from his own investigations pre
viously described, was able to give to Vergennes
concerning the operations of the so-called private
secretaries of Arthur Lee ; that is to say, Ford,
Sayre, and Thornton. And yet it is almost impossi
ble to reconcile with the established character of
Jones in respect of fidelity to his friends the theory
that he could, wilfully, even with the Atlantic Ocean
between them, have violated the confidences re
posed in him by Vergennes, or have proposed to
publish such confidences without due authority and
consent. The extract from Arthur Lee's information to Lord
Shelburne under consideration, as it appears in the
French Collection of the Jones papers in 1799, is
marked by an asterisk, referring to a marginal note
47

PAUL JONES
by the compiler, which may be translated as follows :
" * This passage was particularly objectionable to
certain high diplomatic personages then in the
United States, and Commodore Jones was admon
ished that if he should cause it to be made public,
though true, he would fall under the signal dis
pleasure of the Count de Vergennes."
The natural inference from this marginal note is
that the influence of the Chevalier de la Luzerne
must have been brought to bear upon Jones in ad
dition to that of Washington, Morris, Livingston,
Hamilton and others, to restrain him from attacking
Lee in the manner he proposed. It is not difficult
to perceive the reasons why such a publication at
that time should have been deprecated with earnest
ness if not with alarm. The councils of the infant
government were distracted by factions, cabals, and
dissensions, both personal and political, the extreme
violence of which might easily have endangered the
stability of a government much more regularly con
stituted and more firmly established. Paul Jones
was known to be an ardent partisan of Dr. Franklin.
He had already publicly declared in an open letter
to Eobert Morris that he (Jones) " could ascribe no
reason for Mr. Lee's hatred and persecution of him
except that he had steadily refused to join him (Lee)
in his enmity to the great, the good, and the wise
Dr. Franklin." Also that he (Jones) " could conceive
no reason for Mr. Lee's hatred of Dr. Franklin ex
cept that his (Lee's) perverted mind is incapable of
comprehending, much less of properly valuing, the
lofty patriotism and the almost superhuman wisdom
of that incomparable man." 48

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
The full significance of this passionate comment
of Jones on his attitude toward Lee, or that of Lee
toward him, cannot be comprehended without a
brief review of the peculiar relations that existed
between Jones and Dr. Franklin. We do not believe
that a state of friendship, in every sense of the term,
ever existed between two men more ardent or so
unalterable as that of these two. Of all the prime
characteristics of manhood they had in common only
two — honesty and brains. For the rest, the Doctor
was a venerable man, long past the fighting time of
life, kindly in spirit, genial in temper, soft in man
ner, a philosopher, a savant, quiet, domestic, frugal ;
in short, a man who, having arrived at a hale old
age without vanity or vexation of spirit, found him
self endowed with a marvellous opportunity to em
ploy his few remaining years of vigor, with all tho
wealth of his ken and his experience, as a most
prominent, useful, and to be immortal, figure in one
of the most stupendous dramas ever enacted in
human affairs. To this destiny Dr. Franklin offered
mental power of exceptional quality, and, fortunate
ly, also physical energies seldom found in men of
his age.
On the other hand, Jones, except as to the general
native traits of honesty and brains, was every
thing that Dr. Fi-anklin was not. He was young,
reckless, a fighter of almost savage ferocity ; rest
less, a rover, discontented with the prospect of ease
and miserable in the realization of it ; extravagant
in his ideas of expenditure, prodigal in the outlay
of the energies that nature had gifted him with ;
and, though in affairs immediately confronting him
Vol. il— i 49

PAUL JONES
capable of craft and diplomacy, yet, at bottom
always panting for action and aching for battle.
Yet between these two— the old philosopher and
the young fighter — grew up on short acquaintance a
friendship of warmth almost unparalleled and of
duration ending only with death.
For nearly eight years they figured together in
all the history of the affairs on the other side of the
ocean that brought forth this Eepublic, christened
it, and nourished its tender aud troubled infancy.
In all that time they never quarrelled and they never
doubted nor ever suspected each other. Their cor
respondence, official and personal, would fill a vol
ume larger than this one. The tenor of it is always
interesting, sometimes amusing, and occasionally
comical ; but always frank and sincere. The grand
old Doctor by turns counsels, advises, admonishes,
praises, deprecates, and scolds Jones. And Jones,
alike by turns, reveres, flatters, implores, cajoles,
complains to, and expostulates and argues with, or
importunes the grand old Doctor. But never one
word between them of real unkindness or of even
the most transitory lapse of regard, confidence, or
affection. Doubtless Jones found in the calm old
Doctor the counterpoise he needed to his ovra im
petuosity. Doubtless the peaceful old philosopher,
immersed as he was in scenes of conflict really for
eign to his temperament, felt a serene satisfaction
in having in the hollow of his hand, as it were, so
potent and so deadly a weapon as Paul Jones was,
incarnate in human shape, to launch at will against
his country's foes. This explanation will enable
the casual reader to comprehend more clearly the
50

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
otherwise occult meaning of Paul Jones's reference
to the relations between Dr. Franklin and Arthur
Lee as an element of the relations between Lee and
himself. Under such conditions and in view of the popular
celebrity that Jones had already gained throughout
this country, which would cause universal attention
to anything from his pen, itis easy to see what a fire
brand such a document as "Arthur Lee in France,"
if spread broadcast, must have become.
At no time during the War of Independence were
the people so distrustful of their public servants or
the servants themselves so suspicious of each other
as in the spring of 1781. At best it was only possi
ble to keep up appearances, and that only by keep
ing down exposures. Had such a popular idol as
Paul Jones had even then become publicly assailed
such a man as Arthur Lee as a traitor and a spy,
and produced proofs to sustain his accusation, the
result must have been great and harmful excitement,
if not explosion, of popular sentiment. The people
who had calmly endured the military treason of an
Arnold might not have shown equal fortitude at the
diplomatic treachery of a Lee.
The late Dr. Francis Wharton, discussing this
affair with the author shortly after Doniol's work
came out, and comparing the published memoran
dum of de Vergennes with Paul Jones's accusation
in 1781, cautioned him that it would not be safe to
adopt Jones's extreme view of culpable perfidy or
treason on the part of Lee. Dr. Wharton said that
all the Lees were opposed to the French alliance.
They believed in independence as ardently as any-
51

PAUL JONES
bne ; but their English predilections and associa
tions were much stronger and more intimate than
those of any other Americans in public life or com
manding position then.
For these reasons the Lee idea persistently was
that the struggle ought to be terminated by aiding
the English Opposition to overthrow the Tory or
North Ministry ; that in such event a truce would at
once be made and an amicable separation arranged,
involving an alliance offensive and defensive, and
that in the negotiations for such separation and
alliance the Lees and their following hoped to come
to the front, thereby necessarily displacing Wash
ington, Franklin, Jefferson, Morris, and their school,
who were for fighting it out at all hazards. Dr.
Wharton said that Jones unquestionably knew all
this ; but his direct mode of reasoning, his ten
dency to swift conclusion, and his habit of summary
resolve, made him incapable of the tortuous and
subtle mental processes required to draw the proper
distinction between the motives inspiring the con
duct or attitude of Arthur Lee in diplomacy, and
those of Benedict Arnold in war. To calmer minds
Dr. Wharton said this distinction was — or might be
— wide and clear ; and this must account for the
strenuous measures taken by Washington, Jefferson,
and Morris to stay Jones's hand. There cannot,
we think, be the slightest doubt that Lee would have
fought Jones had not the latter been restrained ; be
cause, whatever may have been Lee's faults, want of
personal courage was never one of them. At its very
worst, there was never a taint of personal cowardice
in the Lee blood. 52

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
From all these considerations it seems impossible
to conclude otherwise than that, whatever may have
been the grievances of Paul Jones at the hands of
Lee, and howsoever truthful may have been the dis
closures he proposed to make, the men who re
strained him performed an eminent public service.
It was better that he should suffer in silence, as he
did, than to risk the consequences that might have
resulted from the execution of his original purpose.
At this distance the chief — in fact only — historical
value the incident possesses is its exhibit of the
almost inconceivable difficulties, distractions, and
dangers through which the comparatively few heads
that were calmest when the storms raged fiercest,
finally brought forth the permanent fabric of the
American Union. And these distressful conditions
were often aggravated by the fact that in many cases
men who were the best of public servants in one
capacity became the source of the gravest perils
in another.
Though Jones yielded for the time being to the in
fluence — or, possibly, we might say, the commands —
of Washington, Morris, and others to whom he would
listen, he would not wholly give up his fierce
purpose as to Lee. He was, however, persuaded to
answer the forty-seven inquiries of the " Board of
Admiralty " before trying to do anything else. At
first, actuated by his sense of the absolute injustice
and even iniquity of the form in which some of the
questions were framed, he was disposed to send the
whole schedule back to the Board with characteristic
comment and with demand for remodelling of the
questions from the form in which Mr. Lee had dictated
53

PAUL JONES
them into a form to which he could exhaustively
and at the same time, as he viewed it, honorably
respond. But the peacemakers argued him even
out of this. Finally he set about answering the
questions of the Board just as they were presented
to him. It took him about three weeks to do it ; and
under date of March 21, 1781, he filed with Mr.
Brown, Secretary of the Board, his complete answers
to the whole forty-seven questions ; but with his re
ply he filed a demand that the whole of the papers,
including his original orders and reports, be at once
handed over to Congress for custody and considera
tion, and that they be not kept in the custody of the
Board- To this demand the Board replied, on March 23d,
that they would refer the papers to Congress at
their pleasure. From this snub Jones vehemently
appealed. He went personally to the office of the
Board to demand his papers back again. Mr. Secre
tary Brown meekly handed them to him. He then
appealed to Mr. Morris, as he said, " for protection
against the chicanery of a packed Board, or permis
sion to handle this whole affair in my own way."
The result of this was immediate reference of his
papers to Congress, and, shortly afterward, the aboli
tion of the so-caUed Board of Admiralty, and the ap
pointment of Eobert Morris Minister of Marine— or,
more strictly speaking, his official title was " Agent
of the Marine "—which took effect August 1, 1781.
To reproduce the text of these forty-seven inqui
ries of the Admiralty Board, with Jones's categorical
answers, would require about sixteen pages of this
volume, and while such reproduction would be inter-
54

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
esting as a specimen of his official style of writing, it
may be said that sufficient samples have been given ;
while, as to the matter set forth, it has, in substance,
been recorded at appropriate points in preceding
pages. Briefly, then, the reply of Commodore
Jones was a concise, chronological compendium of
the history of his operations, beginning with the
sailing of the Eanger from Portsmouth, November 1,
1777, and ending with the arrival of the Ariel in the
Delaware, February 18, 1781 — a period of three
years, three months, and eighteen days. The tenor
of the Commodore's replies is, throughout, coldly
official. He nowhere betrays the least trace of per
sonal feeling, though the facts previously recorded
must show that he wrote the replies in a bitter frame
of mind ; and the conclusion is that the temperate
tone of the document could have been due only to
the most perfect self-command and most inflexible
self-restraint. To such of the questions as had been framed with
evident intent to lure him into expression of opinion
on matters with all the facts of which he was not
conversant, he replied simply that he did not know,
and explained calmly and convincingly the causes
of his lack of information with respect to them.
Such questions as were framed with apparent pur
pose to involve covert accusation he treated in the
same spirit, and effectually shattered every inference
they had been contrived to produce. On the whole,
he completely circumvented the plans of his enemies,
and, as the sequel proved, turned to his own credit
a document that had been cunningly devised to
embarrass if not to injure him.
55

PAUL JONES
Though in the main a synopsis of this remarkable
document seems to fulfil the requirements of history,
in view of the fact that close students can find the
original in full in the files of the Congressional Li
brary or printed in Colonel Sherburne's Collection,
edition of 1851, pages 215-224= inclusive, we think it
worth while to introduce the text of Question and
Answer No. 35, together with Commodore Jones's
explanatory comments on that branch of the sub
ject before the select committee of the Continental
Congress to whom the whole matter was referred,
and who examined the Commodore personally in
regard to it. The question, as propounded by the
Board of Admiralty — or, as Jones always held, by
Arthur Lee through that Board — was as follows :
" 35. When and why did Captain Landais resume
command of the Alliance at I'Orient ? Why did you
acquiesce in the same ? What passengers and what
and whose private property were brought to the
United States in the Alliance ? "
The reply of Commodore Jones to the Board was
as follows :
Answer No. 35. Captain Landais repossessed himself of
the Alliance the 13th of June. Mr. Arthur Lee and the
rest of his counsellors can best answer why he sailed con
trary to my orders as well as contrary to the orders of
Dr. Franklin. The passengers he had on board, to the
best of my knowledge, were Mr. Lee, his two nephews,
Mr. M. Livingston, Major Frazer, Mr. Brown, and three
officers now with the Marquis de Lafayette. I heard of
no others. I cannot answer as to what or whose private
property might have been on board the Alliance at the
time she left France. 56

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
This was all he saw fit to vouchsafe to the Board
of Admiralty. To the select committee of Congress,
however, he explained in greater detail. His expla
nation for what the Board in its question termed his
"acquiescence " in the seizure of the Alliance, etc.,
was as follows :
The correspondence on this point is before the committee
and speaks for itself. I have laid before you all the cor
respondence on this point between Dr. Franklin and my
self, the Chevalier de Thevenard and myself, and copy of
the orders to M. de Thevenard by his Government. This
will explain my course in the premises. I cannot answer
as to what or whose private property might have been on
board the Alliance when she sailed from France, for the
reason that I had not controlled the lading of her after
June 10, and have never seen any manifest of her cargo,
either public or private.
The interesting point in this particular question
and answer is that Jones, in correspondence previ
ously referred to, had attributed to Arthur Lee a de
sire to have his new private carriages, house-furni^
ture, pictures, bric-a-brac, etc., brought to the United
States in the Alliance, and this had become known
to Mr. Lee before the Alliance sailed. On ascertain
ing that Jones had made such a charge against him
to Dr. Franklin and also to Eobert Morris, Lee
caused his carriages and other belongings to be
transferred to the merchant ship Luzerne, which
sailed under convoy of the Alliance. Such being
the facts, Mr. Lee had framed Question No. 35 for
his tools in the Admiralty Board, with the view of
trapping Jones into repetition of his statement
above referred to, which could then have been re-
57

PAUL JONES
futed by exhibiting the manifest of the Luzerne.
But Jones was not to be trapped by so simple a de
vice. Commenting on it afterward in his journal,
he says :
The setting of such a transparent snare by Mr. Lee could
only argue either that he held a poor opinion of my powers
of perception, or that he was himself the clumsiest kind of
trapper. When I surveyed the text of the question, seeing
instantly through and through its origin and purpose, I
confess I was more amused at the shallowness of Mr. Lee's
capacity for artifice than resentful at the implied slur on
my own common sense, if he really had expected me to
bite at such a bare hook.
The document under consideration was transmit
ted to Congress March 28, 1781, and was at once re
ferred by that body to a select committee composed
of Mr. Varnum, Mr. Houston, and Mr. Mathews, who
summoned the Commodore before them for person
al examination and to explain points upon which -
they desired more detailed information. The Com
modore attended the sessions of the select com
mittee for several days, explaining all questions
and submitting on call all official documents and
original orders. He did not hesitate to inform the
committee as to the reasons why he was so much
more liberal in his communications to them than
he had been in his written answers to the so-called
Admiralty Board. And he did not fail to say to
them that he was sure the committee had not been
packed, as he knew the Board had, in the interests
of his enemy, Arthur Lee.
One of the members of that committee, Mr. Var-
58

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
num, of Ehode Island, has left a brief record of his
impressions. He says : *
When I was ordered on this committee, my impulse was
to ask excuse. Mr. Huntington advised me to serve. I
said I was badly impressed by what I had heard about
Commodore Jones's conduct in France. Mr. Huntington
said he would be accountable for my view of the matter
after I had heard the Commodore himself, and insisted
that I should serve. I then consented. The Commodore
came before us. He was the most self-possessed person I
ever saw. He knew everything, but he did not volunteer
anything. To every question we a,sked him he replied by
reference to documents, of which he had a stack about
waist-high. Finally after about four days' sessions, seven
or eight hours long, wading through these documents, we,
in despair, asked the Commodore to recite to us his version
of the case, without further reference to these tedious
documents. To our amazement, he replied : ' ' Gentlemen, I have no
version to recite. My version, as you call it, is all em
braced in those papers."
Then we said to him, " Go on and tell your story, on
your honor. ' '
"That," he replied, " isa different affair. But if you
mean all you say in that respect, and if you are prepared
to believe what I say to you upon honor, as an offlcer and
gentleman, I will proceed. ' '
We then unanimously told him that every word he
might say would be considered prima facie evidence.
Then, as if released from a sort of duress, he took up his
answers to the Board as a basis, and for three whole days'
sessions of the committee regaled us with a history of his
operations in Europe that altogether passes my powers
of description, much less repetition.
* " Memorial of James Mitchell Varnum; His Publick Services ; and
Excerpts from His Diary of Events. Printed for Subscribers, Provi
dence, 1793."
' 59

PAUL JONES
I confess that there was a magic about his way and
manner that I had never before seen. Whatever he said
carried conviction with it. From his beginning no one
thought of disputing him. Toward the end we seldom
ventured to ask him any questions. He made himself
master of the situation throughout. At the end the com
mittee felt honored by having had the privilege of listen
ing to him.
Mr. Varnum concludes his interesting reminis
cence as follows :
Toward the end of our inquiry Mr. Mathews, of South
Carolina, asked the Commodore how it was that he, after
having commanded a squadron and having performed ser
vices which had attracted the attention and admiration of
the whole world, could have cheerfully accepted the com
mand of a small ship like the Ariel, used more as a trans
port than as a ship of war. To this the answer of Com
modore Jones was, as I thought and as we all agreed after
he was gone, the most noble expression ever heard from a
man. He said :
'' Gentlemen, during the flve years or more of my service
I have received orders either directly from Congress or
from Dr. Franklin as the representative of Congress in
Europe. I took command of the Ariel because Dr. Frank
lin ordered me to do so. I have never troubled myself to
take the measurement of any ship that Congress or its
proper representative abroad has ordered me to command.
I have always obeyed orders and done my best to hurt the
enemy with whatsoever weapons Congress may have been
able to put in my hands. If Congress should now order
me to take any yawl along the river bank here in Phil
adelphia and go down to the Capes and try to destroy the
blockading squadron of English frigates, I would obey.
It would of course be a foolish order, but I would leave
60

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
that kind of judgment to history. I would not try to an
ticipate it by protest."
After this remarkable deliverance the gallant Commo
dore was excused from further attendance upon the com
mittee and went his way. As soon as he was gone, Mr.
Houston, of New Jersey, offered the following report and
resolution : *
' ' Report : That the select committee of Congress,
having examined the within papers and having interro
gated at length the Honorable Captain Paul Jones of the
U. S. Navy in respect thereto, do, without particular men
tion of matters in detail, unanimously report and recom
mend to be adopted the following resolution, to wit :
' ' That the United States in Congress assembled, having
taken into consideration the report of the Board of Ad
miralty of March 28 last respecting the conduct of the
Honorable Paul Jones, Captain in the Navy, do
"Resolve, That the thanks of the United States, in Con
gress assembled, be given to Captain Paul Jones, for the
zeal, prudence and intrepidity with which he has supported
the honor of the American Flag ; for his bold and success
ful enterprises to redeem from captivity the citizens of
these States who had fallen under the power of the enemy ;
and in general for the good conduct and eminent services
by which he has added lustre to his character and to the
American arms. ' '
Mr. Varnum continues :
Under the circumstances it was deemed the offlce of
proper courtesy to acquaint Commodore Jones with the
tenor of this proposed resolution, and Mr. Houston called
upon him for that purpose. The Commodore declined to
consider anything concerning the Committee's reference
to himself, but suggested that the following paragraph
be added, which was furnished in his own handwriting
* Sherburne Collection, Edition 1851, p. 325.
61

PAUL JONES
and appended in that form to the text as appears in the
minutes :
' ¦ That the thanks of the United States, in Congress
assembled, be also given to the officers and men (the
same as if by name to each individual) who have served
under him from time to time, for their steady devotion
to the cause of their country, and for the bravery and
perseverance they have ever manifested therein and there
for. "
The resolution, with the Commodore's amendment, was
reported April 14, 1781, and passed on flrst reading, under
suspended rules, by standing vote, nem. con. Then, on
motion of Mr. Madison, of Virginia, it was in like manner
agreed that the President of Congress, Mr. Huntington,
should cause the resolution to be engrossed, ornate, on
parchment with suitable devices, and presented to Commo
dore Paul Jones. Also that his right to wear a decoration
conferred by a foreign friendly and allied sovereign be
confirmed ; also that the said Paul Jones should, for life,
enjoy the privilege of entering at his pleasure upon the
floor of Congress, in session ; the same being an amendment
to a report to the Congress dated February 27, 1781. And
it was also ordered that the following be spread upon the
records of the Congress, to wit — " Passy, June 1, 1780.
"Samuel Huntington, Esq., President of the Congress.
' ' Sir : Commodore Paul Jones, who, by his bravery and
conduct, has done great honor to the American flag, desires
to have also the honor of presenting a line to the hands of
Your Excellency. I cheerfully comply with his desire and
recommend him to the notice of Congress and to Tour
Excellency's most potent protection ; though the records
of his actions must of themselves be the most effectual rec
ommendations ; in fact rendering any from me quite un
necessary. The occasion, however, affords me opportu
nity of showing my readiness to accord justice to merit and
62

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
of proclaiming the esteem and respect which I cherish tow
ard both the brave Commodore and Your Excellency.
" I am your most obedient servant,
"Benjamin Franklin."
Under date of April 18, 1781, Mr. Huntington,
President of Congress, formally communicated the
action of that body to the Commodore, who on the
22d acknowledged the distinction as follows :
PuiLADELPniA, April 22, 1781.
Sir : I have received the letter Your Excellency did me
the honor to write to me the 18th instant, enclosing a re
solve of the United States in Congress assembled, dated the
14th of this month, approving of and thanking me for my
past conduct as captain in the navy, after having taken
into consideration the report made thereupon from full
evidence by the Board of Admiralty, March 28 last.
The generous vote of thanks must necessarily gratify my
feelings both as an offlcer and as a man. I can aspire to
no higher honor than the approbation and confidence of
my fellow-citizens. Accept, sir, my sincere thanks for the
polite and affectionate manner in which you have com
municated to me the action of the United States in Con
gress assembled. I am, etc. ,
The Chevalier Paul Jones.*
* An interesting commentary on Jones's deference to publio opinion
is afforded by the fact that, though Congress had given him permission
to wear on his uniform the decoration conferred by Louis XVI. and to
use the title of Chevalier in his ofificial correspondence, he signed but
one ofificial letter "The Chevalier Paul Jones," and he never wore his
decoration when in this country. The letter referred to was the one
to Mr. Huntington, President of Congress, acknowledging the formal
notification of the vote of thanks passed April 14, 1781. This letter
was at once published. Shortly after that the Commodore was at dinner
at the house of Mr. McKean and some ladies present informed him that
63

PAUL JONES
On May 19th General Washington addressed to
Commodore Jones the following letter* of con
gratulation and compliment :
Headquaeteks, New Windsor, May 19, 1781.
The Chevalier Paul Jones, Captain in the U. 8. Navy.
Sir : My partial acquaintance with either our naval or
commercial affairs makes it altogether impossible for me
to account for the unfortunate delay of those articles of
military stores and clothing which have been so long pro
vided in France.
Had I any particular reasons to have suspected you of
being accessory to that delay, which I assure you has not
been the case, my suspicions would have been removed by
the very full and satisfactory answer which you have, to
the best of my judgment, made to the questions proposed
to you by the Board of Admiralty, and upon which that
Board have in their report to Congress testified the high
sense which they entertain of your merit and services.
Whether our naval affairs have in general been well or
ill conducted would be presumptuous in me to determine.
Instances of bravery and good conduct in several of our
officers have not, however, been wanting. Delicacy forbids
me to mention that particular instance which has attracted
the admiration of all the world and which has influenced
the most illustrious monarch to confer a mark of his favor
which can only be obtained by a long and honorable ser
vice or by the performance of some brilliant action.
That you may long enjoy the reputation you have so
justly acquired is the sincere wish of,
Sir, your most obedient and very humble servant,
George Washington.
they had heard deprecating comment concerning the use of a title derived
from a monarch by an ofificer of a free Republic. Jones never used the
title officially in this country afterward.
* Sherburne, pp. 335, 336, Edition 1857.
64

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
To this rather remarkable expression from a man
of such equipoise as Washington, Commodore Jones
promptly replied as follows, under date of Phila
delphia, May 31, 1781 :
Honored Sir : To your letter of the 19th instant, which
I had the lionor to receive from tlie hands of General
Hamilton, I am wholly without power to frame a suitable
reply. But if you will permit it, sir, I sliall say that,
much as I value the view which it has pleased Congress to
take of the nature of my services, and highly as I prize the
mark of favor of the most illustrious of monarchs, to which
you with such infinite delicacy refer, I hold, if possible, in
yet higher estimation your own expressions of personal
confidence and esteem. And I trust, sir, you will also per
mit me to say that history alone, and in the far future, can
determine the enduring value of such expressions from one
who, more illustrious than any mon.irch, must stand in the
sight of mankind forever as the founder of a new nation,
based, like none other past or present, upon the principles
of liberty and the rights of man.
It is interesting to bear in mind that the date of
the foregoing expression of Commodore Jones was
May 31, 1781. The general estimation in which
George Washington was held at that time was
nothing like what it is now. He had, indeed, then
profoundly impressed his personality upon his con
temporaries; but in 1781 the solitary and unap
proachable grandeur of the place he was destined
to hold in the history of our covmtry was yet more
a vision of prophecy than an established fact. Men
like Jefferson, Franklin, Morris, Hamilton, and,
possibly, John Adams had already perceived the
colossal stature the commander-in-chief had at-
VoL. II.— 5 65

PAUL JONES
tained ; but there was still room for question in the
most conservative minds as to its perpetuity. The
war was at its height. Its greatest and most de
cisive campaign was yet to be fought out ; was at
that moment, in fact, just beginning. Por the tra
ditional slip between the cup and the lip many
chances were still in the air. Prompt junction be
tween the forces of Washington aud Eochambeau
might have failed. De Grasse might have proved
unable to secure command of the sea even long
enough to give the allied land forces time to choke
Cornwallis into surrender less than five months
later. None of these possible failures occurred.
The success of the combinations as a whole de
stroyed Cornwallis's army and practically ended the
war. Had they failed, the ultimate result might
have been the same ; and it might not. But it is
beyond question that failure in the Yorktown cam
paign must have proved extremely detrimental, if
not disastrous, to the prestige of Washington, and it
must have roused into new life the spirit of cabal
which at no time during the war could be more than
temporarily repressed. But, with all such chances
to be risked, there is no more uncertain tone as to
the historical status of George Washington in Paul
Jones's letter to him dated May 31, 1781, than there
would be or need be in a letter dated now or a hun
dred or a thousand years hence.
After all, however, this particular expression is
only in keeping with everything that fell from the
pen or tongue of Paul Jones during the struggle.
From his letter to the Marine Committee in Sep
tember, 1775, to the end ; from his introductory re-
C6

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
mark then that they were " laying the keel-timbers
of a new navy " that " must become among the fore
most in the world," until independence was ac
knowledged ; he never spoke or wrote a word that
was not attuned to the unflinching resolution and
the unalterable faith that inspired his reply to
Pearson, when the Eichard was sinking and afire,
" I am just beginning to fight ! " So, in his forecast
of May 31, 1781, of Washington's inevitable place in
history— "in the far future" as he puts it— there
was probably more of the spirit that could not be
conquered than there was of prophecy.
This was followed on June 26th by a unanimous
resolution of Congress appointing the Commodore
to command the seventy-four-gun ship America,
building at Poi-tsmouth, N. H., the most important
naval assignment then within the gift of the Gov
ernment. On June 29th Eobert Morris wrote a letter to
Jones, in which he said :
. . . You should, I think, accept these accumulated
honors and proofs of the public confidence as most ample
vindication of yourself from any wrongs of which you may
have hitherto entertained a sense ; and you should also
view them as having placed you upon a plane of honor and
dignity from which you could but derogate by further
meditation of personal recourse in any direction whatso
ever. This, of course, was a characteristically adroit way
on the part of Mr. Morris of advising Jones that he
must now drop his quarrel with Arthur Lee, and he
appears to have promptly adopted the suggestion.
67

PALTi JONES
At all events, he proceeded at once to Portsmouth,
where he found the America on the stocks, requiring
much work to put her in readiness for launching,
not to speak of rigging, arming, and outfitting her.
The Commodore has recorded in his journal of
1782 an interesting description of the America, to
gether with a sui-vey of the state of the art of naval
architecture in the United States at that time. He
gives the principal dimensions and characteristics
of the ship as follows :
Length on the upper gun-deck  182^ feet
Length of keel for tonnage   150 "
Extreme breadth  50J- "
Depth in the hold  23 "
Burthen, in tons  1,982 "
Lower-deck battery  30 long 18s
Upper-deck battery  32 " 12s
Quarter-deck and forecastle  14 " 9s
Pull complement, 626 officers and men.
She was therefore the largest seventy-four-gun ship built
up to that time, though her lines were so delicately
moulded and her sheer so clean that, with her lower-tier
ports closed, she presented at the distance of a mile the
contour of a heavy frigate. She was one of the three
line-of-battle ships authorized by Congress in its resolu
tion of November 9, 1776, and her keel was laid in May,
1777, on Langdon's Island. The other two were never
attempted, and but little progress was made with the
America until the year 1781, except to get out and season
her timbers.
On leaving Philadelphia I had been given to understand
that the America was nearly ready for launching. But on
my arrival at Portsmouth I found her not planked much
above the bilges, no work done toward her decks except the
68

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
beams, and only twenty-four ship-carpenters employed on
her. Their work was much impeded by want of iron for
fastenings, as the materials of that kind attainable were
intended for smaller ships and could not be used in her.
The spar-work was no more advanced than the rest, and no
provision whatever had been made for rigging and sails.
Money to buy supplies and pay wages was also lacking,
the sum appropriated by Mr. Morris, Minister of Finance,
to that object having been diverted to the far more impor
tant and pressing use of the operations against Lord Corn
wallis in the south. I at once reported these facts, but
was told to proceed as best I could for the time being.
The patriotism of the good people of Portsmouth placed
some resources at my disposal, and I was otherwise able
to obtain much-needed material and even part of the skilled
labor on terms of credit which I was authorized by the
Honorable John Langdon to arrange in the name of Con
gress on his personal security. Yet the work progressed
slowly. I do not hesitate to say that the task of inspecting the
construction of the America was the most lingering and
disagreeable service I was charged with during the whole
period of the Revolution. The situation was further ag
gravated in the spring of 1781, when the enemy, ascertaining
that there was a prospect of the America being completed,
contrived various schemes for her destruction. The one of
which I had most reason to stand in fear was that of land
ing in force from their squadron, seizing the shipyard by a
night coup de main, setting fire to or blowing up the ship
on the stocks, and then making good their retreat. To
meet this danger I arranged with the workmen to mount
guard at night, by reliefs, taking my turn as officer of the
guard, and paying the men something extra for their guard-
service. On several occasions large whale-boats full of men
came into the river at night, but did not attempt to land
on the island, at the lower end of which I had two old six-
pounders mounted. Twice shots were fired at boats recon-

PAUL JONES
noitring too closely. The townspeople also assisted in
the guard-duty.
As the work proceeded I made several changes in the
plans of the vessel, mostly as to the arrangements of the
upper- works, and the spar-plan. I caused the main-mast
to be stepped three frames further aft than in the original
plan ; because if stepped according to that plan it would
bring the centre of sail-effort too close to the centre of re
sistance of the ship's side, thereby making her heady when
close-hauled, and also greatly diminishing her power to
hold a luff.
The original plans had provided to make the waist long
and shallow, with narrow gangways, and the quarter-deck
and forecastle to be short ; also to have a large and cum
brous stem-gallery. Instead of this I carried the quarter
deck forward, to break four feet forward of the main-mast ;
and I brought the break of the forecastle considerably aft,
besides carrying up the topsides in the waist flush with the
upper deck sheer. I then carried broad gangways on either
side of the waist, of equal height with the quarter-deck and
forecastle, leaving just room for the boats on a skid deck
between the gangways. Then, clear around all, from stem
to stern, I carried a low bulwark of stuff thick enough to
stop grapeshot. I also dispensed with the heavy stem-gal
lery, making only two light and small quarter-galleries,
and the weight thus saved I utilized by springing a light
poop-deck, carried forward to a point eight feet ahead of
the mizzen-mast. Around the poop-deck I carried a light
bulwark arranged to fold down on the deck. I also doub
led all the bow and stern planking, to aid in resisting rak
ing flre.
The figure-head I planned was a female figure, the God
dess of Liberty crowned with laurels. The right arm was
raised with the forefinger pointing to heaven as if appeal
ing to that high tribunal in behalf of the justice of the
American cause. On the left arm was a blue buckler with
thirteen silver stars. . . . 70

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
The difficulties of my task were much increased by the
fact that neither the master-builder. Major Hackett, nor
any of his workmen had ever worked on so large a ship,
and were therefore, from want of experience, unable to
make out the necessary calculations as to scantling sizes or
strength of fastenings required. However, the leading ship
wright, Mr. William Hauscom, though never before work
ing on any ship larger than the Alliance — which he had
helped to build — took up these questions with more address
than any of the others, and soon relieved me of these per
plexing details.
The launching was a most serious problem, as the ship
was too large and heavy for the narrow water-way between
the island and the main shore opposite the stern ; so that
the danger of her going on the opposite shore with the
sternway of launching could be overcome only by the diffi
cult expedient of paying out and breaking hawsers in suc
cession as she became water-borne in the stream. Three
were snapped before the fourth brought her up at no more
than barely safe distance from the opposite shore.
I had anticipated much difficulty in mounting the bat
tery. But just at the nick of time I was joined by my old
gunner, Mr. Gardner, who had then recently returned from
a great privateering cruise with Fanning and Mayrant in
French ships, from St. Maloes in the spring of 1780. Had
I been permitted to choose, I would have selected Mr. Gard
ner, in preference to all others I knew, for this particular
service. I at once secured his aid ; rated him acting-gun
ner of the America, with assurance that he should be war
ranted full, regular gunner when the ship was manned ; if,
indeed, I could not succeed in obtaining a lieutenant's com
mission for him. Mr. Gardner took entire charge of mount
ing the battery, including making of carriages, reeving of
breechings and side-tackle, preparation of rammers,
sponge-staves, quoins, handspikes, overhead tackle, shot-
racks, and all the other almost numberless details of the
battery of a line-of-battle ship. He also took supervision
71

PAUL JONES
of the internal fittings of the magazines, of which the
America had two ; besides attending to the racks for small
arms— in short, everything pertaining to the armament of
the ship. His services were invaluable, and much of the
good condition of the America when finished was due to his
skill and diligence. . . .
Early in December, 1781, Jones, learning that
Lafayette was coming to Boston to embark in the
Alliance for France, and knowing that the ship
would not be ready to sail until the end of the
month, wrote a letter to the Marquis inviting him
to come to Portsmouth for a short visit while the
Alliance was fitting for sea. In this letter, Jones,
commenting on the surrender of Cornwallis, in
formed Lafayette that, after undertaking the fitting
out of the America as ordered by Congress and
finding her construction so much delayed, he had
privately requested Eobert Morris to obtain three
or four months' leave for him so that he might join
Washington's army as a volunteer in the Virginia
(Yorktown) campaign, and that, in case such leave
should be granted, he had asked that he might be
assigned to duty with Lafayette's division. Mr.
Morris declined to grant the leave of absence, on
the ground that the early completion of the America
was a more important service, in his judgment,
than any that Jones could render as a volunteer in
connection with the operations of Washington's
army. Lafayette's response to Jones's letter is of histor
ical importance, if for no other reason than as evi
dence of the personal relations between them. The
original is in French, dated, " A bord la fregate
72

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
I'AUiance, au large de Boston, 22"°° Decembre,
1781," and is addressed :— " Mon cher Paul." The
material parts of it are as follows : *
The polite favor with which you have honored me, my
dear Paul, reached my hands when I was already on board
the Alliance, awaiting only the next tide to put to sea.
. . . As to the pleasure of taking you by the hand, you
so well know my affectionate sentiments and my very great
regard for you that I need not add anything on that sub
ject. . . .
The downfall of His Lordship [Cornwallis] is not only
a great event, but incomparably great at this moment be
cause the glory of it was equally shared by the two allied
nations. Could you have joined the division I had the
honor to command in that most glorious of campaigns, the
event would have been considered as an exalted compli
ment to one who loves you and knows your worth. . .
Your most ardent conceptions of war were realized in the
final assault of the main redoubt. I should not have for
gotten your penchant for the grand offensive in battle
when disposing my column for that assault.
. . . I hope you may soon be ready to sail in your
new ship of the line. We should unite, with her as your
flag-ship, every vessel of suitable rate the Congress can mus
ter, with a well-appointed force of marines for shore oper
ations, and then give you a free hand. I am sorry, my dear
Paul, that I could not see you ; I have so many things to
tell you. Write to me by every good opportunity ; but not
in cipher, unless the matter is extremely secret. I have
mislaid our code ; but on my arrival in France I may find
a copy of the one you gave me there ; I am almost certain I
have it among my secret papers at home.
I shall find pleasure in giving your friends in France
tidings of you as soon as I arrive. . . .
» Sherburne, p. 336. Also Taylor Collection, p. 333.
73

PAUL JONES
Under date of December 10, 1781, Jones wrote a
letter to John Adams enclosing receipts for certain
articles which he had brought over in the Ariel for
Mr. Adams's family ; also, a copy of the thanks
of Congress and of his orders to complete and
command the America. To this Mr. Adams, under
date of " The Hague, August 12, 1782," replied as
follows :
. . . I had yesterday the pleasure of receiving your
favor of December 10 last, and am much obliged to you
for your care of the articles which Mr. Moylan, at my de
sire, sent to my family.
The command of the America could not have been more
judiciously bestowed, and it is with impatience that I wish
her at sea, where she will do honor to her name. . . .
Indeed, if I could see a prospect of half a dozen line-of-bat
tle ships under the American flag, commanded by Commo
dore Paul Jones, engaged with a British force equal or not
hopelessly superior, I apprehend the event would be so
glorious for the United States and would lay so sure a
foundation for the prosperity of its navy that it would be
rich compensation for continuance of the war. ... I
shall ever be happy to hear from you, and remain always,
Your admiring Servant, John Adams.
Jones's reply to this letter was characteristic. He
knew that Mr. Adams did not and never would like
him personally, and he had not the slightest appre
hension that he himself would ever like Mr. Adams.
But those reflections only served to enhance, in his
estimation, the value of Mr. Adams's compliments.
The material part of his reply, dated Boston, De
cember 21, 1782, after the America had been given
74

r CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
to France^ and just before he embarked with Vau
dreuil, was as follows :
. . . I must confess, sir, that your reference to what
might be possible with half a dozen ships-of-the-line like
the America at sea, under my command, seems to me more
flattering than I have good reason to accept to the full.
Permit me to suggest, sir, that your view of such a future
may, perhaps, be dated from an event in the past where
the contest was of a more individual nature — ship to ship ;
or, as you might say, almost man to man. . . . But
you must permit me also to suggest that the conditions of
a single-ship combat and those of a squadron action of
ships-of-the-line would be vastly different. In a ship-to-
ship combat, the captain may be master of the whole affair.
But in a squadron or fleet action the commander-in-chief
must rely greatly on the skill, courage, and often — when
signals cannot be clearly made out — on the personal ini
tiative faculty of his captains. If I had a squadron of
ships like the America, commanded each by a captain like
Manly, Dale, Biddle, Barney, or Cottineau, I should let
fly the general signal for closer action and leave the result
to take care of itself. But if I had captains like Landais
or some others not needful to name, I should contemplate
the probable outcome with a shudder.
This correspondence requires little comment ; ex
cept, perhaps, the observation that there might have
lurked in Jones's mind, thinly veiled under the in
definite phrase, " some others not needful to name,"
his memories of Hopkins and Saltonstall. Notwith
standing the truce that Franklin had negotiated
between them at Passy three years before, there
was yet somewhat of the scintillation of flint and
steel in the correspondence of John Adams and
Paul Jones. 75

PAUL JONES
The Commodore's social popularity in Ports
mouth, says Elijah Hall, was very great. Hall con
tinues :
His command of the Ranger, which the good people there
always considered "their ship," and the considerable num
ber of sailors from that neighborhood who had been with
him in the Richard, made them regard him as almost a fel
low townsman. When he came back there in 1781 to com
mand the America, covered with world-wide fame, decor
ation, order of knighthood, and the thanks of Congress, he
became at once the most interesting character in the place.
The good people, staid in their notions of severe republi
can simplicity as they were, rejoiced to see that four years
of almost marvellous success had by no means spoilt him,
but that he was yet the same plain Paul Jones they had
known and liked so well in 1777. Busy as he was by day
with work on the ship, and by night with providing defence
for the harbor, he yet found time to attend social occasions ;
more particularly what were called the ' ' patriot parties ' '
where the ladies met to devise means for helping our sol
diers and sailors.
The young folks did little less than worship him ; be
cause his appearance among them was always the signal
for jolly yarns and interesting accounts of what he had
seen in the great world beyond seas.
On such occasions, when surrounded bythe young ladies,
to whom his stories of Paris and Versailles were almost
like fairy-tales, his usually sad, swarthy face would light
up with a rich glow as if his youth had come back again
and he would hold all listeners as in a trance.
Among the souvenirs he had brought from Prance
and also from Spain were rare little bits of lace handker
chiefs ; fans ot marvellous design ; gloves, slippers, and be
witching little ornaments for the hair. Most of these had
already met their fate among the Commodore's fair friends
in Philadelphia before he came to Portsmouth. But
76

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
such as were left soon found joyous possessors among our
girls. ... On Thursday, November 39, 1781, the full
significance of Yorktown having become known, there was
a Day of Thanksgiving in New Hampshire. In the even
ing the people of Portsmouth met at the Town Hall, where
Governor Langdon made a brief congratulatory address.
Meantime a committee of young ladies, including the Misses
Langdon, Sherburne, Hauscom, Hackett and others, had
persuaded the Commodore to say a few words.
The Governor spoke of what the Fathers and the Sons of
America had done in the war for Liberty, referring most
ly to the Continental Army. It was expected that Com
modore Jones would speak of what the sailors of the Con
tinental Navy had done. But when, at the conclusion
of the Governor's brief remarks, Judge Sherburne intro
duced Paul Jones, the Commodore astonished everyone by
announcing that, as his distinguished friend the Governor
had so eloquently spoken of the Fathers and Sons, he would,
in his sailor fashion, say something about the Mothers and
Daughters. Though unaccustomed to public speaking and
having promised to speak no earlier than four o'clock the
same afternoon, which gave him no time for preparation,
the Commodore faced his audience, already strung to a
high pitch by the eloquence of the practised orator, John
Langdon, with the same self-possession that he had shown
on the quarter-decks of the Ranger and the Richard. The
listener would have thought that he had been practising
oratory all his life, instead of making, as he was, his very
flrst effort of that kind to an audience packed until there
was hardly standing-room. Wasting no time in preface or
excuse, he began right away, shook the reefs all out of his
sails, squared on the starboard tack, and said :
"Let me say that this occasion fills my memory with a
flood of thoughts, every one of which dates from this most
patriotic of cities. I will tell you why I say ' most patri
otic. ' The other evening I was at the house of a friend
who now hears my voice, and his little ten-year-old daugh-
77

PAUL JONES
ter asked me : ' Commodore, did you ever see a Tory, that
I hear so much about ? If you did, pray tell what they
look like. I have never seen any.' The child was right,
as children usually are. No little daughter of patriotic
Portsmouth can ever see a Tory without going a long
ways from home.
' ' When I came here, more than four years ago, to take
your little Ranger to Europe, I was unknown to you per
sonally ; but a flag was made for that ship by the dainty
hands of Portsmouth's daughters, of a pattern new to the
world. That flag the Ranger carried across the sea and
showed it alike to our French friends and our English
enemies. Our French friends saluted it with the cannon
of their grand fleet. Our English enemies twice lowered
their haughty emblem to it. And even now it is still fly
ing somewhere at the bottom of the North Sea, over the
battered wreck of the good old ship that sunk disdaining
to strike it. The story of that flag made by the daughters
of Portsmouth has been written in letters of blood and
flame that can never be rubbed out so long as Liberty shall
be the watchword of brave men and virtuous women.
" In olden times the classic writers thought worthy of
immortal mention a woman of Sparta, who, sending her
only son forth to battle in defence of his native land, en
joined upon him : ' Bring back your buckler to me or be
brought back upon it ! ' That Spartan mother has been
multiplied in our day by as many times as there are
patriot mothers in America ! ' '
The Commodore then related an anecdote of little
Johnny Downes, a Portsmouth sailor boy, who was with
him in the Ranger and also in the Richard. Johnny, only
son of the late Captain Robert Downes and his wife, Rachel,
of Portsmouth, was about seventeen years old when he sailed
in the Ranger, but small for his age and of slender build.
When the Ranger returned to Brest after takmg the Drake,
Johnny attracted the attention of a French noblewoman,
wife of a naval offlcer of high rank. She said to him,
78

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
" Why are you here? Such a child 1 You are not big or
strong enough for war. Why did your mother let you
come here ? ' '
" My mother did not let me come here, madame," re
plied Johnny — " she sent me here ! "
' ' Why, then, did she send such a little and delicate boy ? ' '
" Because, madame, she had no other boy to send. But,
madame, ' ' said Johnny, by no means abashed, " I am
much stronger than you think. I can keep my station
with the best of them, as the Captain will tell you, if you
do me the honor to ask him. True, I am small ; but that
is an advantage, because the enemy can't hit me in battle
as easily as they could if I was large."
"At this," said the Commodore, "the Duchess turned
to me and exclaimed : ' Ah, Monsieur le Capitaine, com
bien des gens !— des meres ! — des enfants ! personne ne peut
les vaincre, jamais! Ces Spartiates modernes ! ' ["Ah,
Captain, what a people ! What mothers ! What children 1
No one can ever conquer them ! They are the Spartans of
modern times 1 "]
Mrs. Downes — the Spartan mother — was in the audience,
listening to the Commodore. But her brave boy was at
that moment far away somewhere on the Indian Ocean,
with John Mayrant, in the French privateer La Bonne
Aventure, and his mother had never seen him since he
sailed away in the Ranger with Paul Jones, November 1,
1777. Finally, about September 1, 1782, the America
was nearly completed, and about three hundred and
eighty men had been enlisted for her crew. Eich
ard Dale was to be her first lieutenant, and Edward
Stack, Nathaniel Fanning, and John Mayrant, of the
Eichard's old crew, and Elijah Hall,* of the Eanger,
* The delicacy of Jones's sense of professional honor is exemplified in
his dealings with Elijah Hall, who had been his second lieutenant in the
79

PAUL JONES
were to be lieutenants. Of the three hundred and
eighty men enlisted, about one hundred were sur
vivors of the Eanger and the Bon Homme Eichard,
who came to join their old commander from places as
far away as Annapolis and Virginia, when they heard
that Jones was enlisting a crew for the America.
But again, and for about the tenth time. Com
modore Jones was doomed to disappointment. In
August, 1782, the French seventy -four-gun ship, the
Magnifique, belonging to the fleet under command
Ranger in 1777-78 and was first lieutenant of that ship when it was
captured at Charleston, 1780. Mr. Hall was held a prisoner of war for
some months after the capitulation of Charleston, but was finally pa
roled and returned to his home in Portsmouth about the time Jones took
charge of the America. Jones was extremely fond of Elijah Hall, and in
fact made his home with the Hall family most of the time while at
Portsmouth. Had he been permitted to commission the America, his
intention was to make Mr. Hall her first lieutenant, if properly ex
changed ; unless Dale should be available, and in that case, Mr. Hall
was to have been master or navigating officer. But in 1781, when Jones
took charge, Mr. Hall was still on parole and had not been regularly ex
changed. Being not only a iirst-rate sea-officer biit also a competen
master shipwright, Mr. Hall desired to assist in the construction of the
America. Jones, however, doubted whether a paroled prisoner, under
the nicest construction of the law of professional honor, had a right to
engage in even so indirectly belligerent an occupation as that of help
ing to build a ship of war prior to regular exchange.
Mr. Hall himself had doubts upon the point, and they agreed to refer
the whole question to Governor Langdon and the Hon. John S. Sher
burne, Judge of the Admiralty Court of New Hampshire (father of the
editor of the Sherburne Collection). Governor Langdon and Judge
Sherburne promptly ruled that a parole must be construed literally ; that
Mr. HaU had agreed, upon honor, " not to bear arms " against the forces
of the Crown until regularly exchanged ; that working or superintend
ing work on a ship was not " bearing arms; " and therefore Mr. Hall
was at liberty to pursue his vocation as master shipwright, irrespective
of the character of the vessel in whose construction he might be em
ployed. Jones then assigned him to duty as chief inspector of materials
and purchasing agent. 80

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
of the Marquis de Vaudreuil, was wrecked at the en
trance to Boston Harbor. On the 3d of September
following. Congress passed a resolution giving the
America to the King of France, to replace the Mag
nifique. The next day Eobert Morris, then head of
the Continental Navy, wrote to Jones, enclosing the
resolution, and directing him to hand the ship over
to the Chevalier de Martigne, who had commanded
the lost Magnifique. This was done on November
5th, and the next day Commodore Jones left Ports
mouth for Philadelphia. He took his disappoint
ment, though it was perhaps the most poignant
of the many he had undergone, with characteristic
grim philosophy. His letter of September 22d ac
knowledging receipt of the orders of Congress called
forth the following comment from Eobert Morris,
to whom it was addressed : " I have received your
letter of the 22d of last month. The sentiments
contained in it will always reflect the highest honor
upon your character. They have made so strong
an impression upon my mind that I immediately
transmitted an extract of your letter to Congress."
Thus the America passed out of our navy into that
of France without the opportunity to fire a gun for
our cause."'
The Commodore was now, at the end of seven
* The America was not finished in all respects when Commodore Jones
delivered her to the Chevalier de Martigne. Had she been ready for sea,
she would have been at once manned by the crew of the Magnifique, and
have joined the squadron of M. de Vaudreuil for the expedition to the
West Indies. In fact, the French admiral sent two ships of the line to
Portsmouth to escort the America to Boston. These were the Auguste,
of eighty guns, and the Pluton, of seventy-four. After waiting at Ports
mouth for some time it was found impracticable to get the America ready
Vol. II.— 6 81

PAUL JONES
years' continuous service, without a command and
without employment of any kind. The War of In
dependence, so far as the United States was con
cerned, had to all intents and purposes ended with
the surrender of Cornwallis a year before. The
only British force of any consequence remaining on
our soil was shut up in New York ; and, except pred
atory descents here and there on our coast, naval
warfare against us had ceased. But our European
allies, particularly France and Spain, still kept up
the conflict ; Spain doggedly resolved to retake
Gibraltar and France, hoping to, in some measure
at least, recoup in the West Indies and the East
Indies her loss of Canada twenty years before. At
the end of 1782 France and Spain had prepared an
enormous armament, embracing, jointly, no fewer
than seventy ships of the line and an army of eigh
teen thousand men, with the object of destroying
the British fleet in the West Indies and conquering
Jamaica. A part of this force was the squadron of
the Marquis de Vaudreuil, ten sail of the line, and a
division of troops under de Viomesnil, about to sail
from Boston to rendezvous in the West Indies with
the main French fleet under the Count d'Estaing
and the Spanish fleet under Admiral Don Solano,
which were to sail from Cadiz.
Seeing no hope of other employment. Commodore
for sea in time for the expedition, and the Auguste and the Pluton sailed
without her. in the spring of 1783, after the peace, the America was
taken to France. There was already a ship of the line called I'Amerique
in the French navy ; and so, to avoid confusion, and also to confer a com
pliment upon the great man who had so long and so acceptably been our
diplomatic representative near his court, King Louis directed that the
America be renamed " le Franklin." 82

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
Jones now asked permission of Congress to embark
as a volunteer on board the flag-ship of his friend
the Marquis de Vaudreuil in the grand expedition
to the West Indies. This being granted, the Com
modore joined de Vaudreuil on board the flag-ship,
the three-decker Triomphante, and on December 24,
1782, sailed for Porto Cabello. Delays on the part
of the Spanish commander, Don Solano, prevented
an early junction of the allied fleets ; and the vigi
lance of the British admirals in the West Indies,
Hood and Pigott, frustrated the carrying out of
the attack on Jamaica until the spring was well
advanced, when the news of the general peace and
acknowledgment by Great Britain of American in
dependence reached the West Indies in a fast-sail
ing French frigate on April 7th. The next day the
squadron sailed from Porto Cabello, and on the
16th arrived at Cape Francois. Here Commodore
Jones took leave of his friend the Marquis de Vau
dreuil and sailed for home in a French frigate sent
with despatches to de la Luzerne, arriving at Phil
adelphia May 18tli. He carried a letter from Vau
dreuil to Luzerne, of which the following is a trans
lation :
M. le Chevalier Paul Jones, who embarked with me, re
turns to his beloved country. I was glad to have him with
me. His high and well-deserved reputation caused me to
accept his company with much pleasure, and I had no
doubt we might meet with some occasion in which his tal
ents might be again displayed. But peace, for which we
must all rejoice, interposes an obstacle that renders our
separation necessary after five months of the most pleasant
and, to me, profitable association. His talents are so won-
83

PAUL JONES
derful and of such diversity that each day he brings forth
some new proof of cleverness [habilit6].
Permit me, sir, to pray you to recommend him to his
chiefs. The close and intimate acquaintance I have formed
with him since he has been on board the Triomphante,
makes me take a lively interest in his fortunes ; and I shall
feel infinitely obliged to you if you can find means of doing
him service. He is one of the bravest, ablest, and most hon
orable of men.
For the first time in his career, the Commodore,
though only thirty-six years old, now showed signs
of breaking down. During the West Indian cruise
he had suffered a severe though brief attack of
fever, and, though by no means an invalid when
he arrived home, he felt the need of rest. Of this
he says in his Journal of 1787 :
It was not until peace came, and vnth it no immediate
prospect of active service nor any incentive to ambition,
that I realized how prodigally I had drawn upon Nature's
bequest to me of an iron frame and a strong constitution.
Por the first time in my life I felt what the doctors call the
effects of reaction. Fortunately, my affairs were in a con
dition that enabled me to rest without serious disquietude
on the score of means. I therefore adopted the advice of
my physician and went to the town of Bethlehem, where
I passed the months of June, July, August, and part ot
September in the bracing air of the Lehigh Valley and
enjoying the hospitable, unaffected society of its people.
And this with so much beneflt that, in November, I was
able to undertake a mission to Prance, by appointment of
Congress, as special and plenipotentiary agent to adjust
and collect all prize-moneys due and unpaid in that coun
try to American seamen who had served under my com
mand. 84

CONTROVERSIES AND HONORS IN AMERICA
The resolution conferring this appointment was
passed November 1, 1783. It was adopted on the
report and recommendation of a select committee
of three members, to whom the subject had been
referred October 18th. It is a quaint commentary
on the proverb that time makes all things even,
to observe that the three names signed to this
favorable report were Samuel Huntington, James
Duane, and Arthur Lee— then a member of Con
gress from Virginia.

85

CHAPTEE III
PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
In a previous chapter, somewhat anticipatory of
exact chronology, mention has been made of a fort
unate speculation by Commodore Jones. This affair
occurred at the time of which we now write. Prior
to his appointment as agent for the collection of
prize-money, the Commodore had turned his atten
tion, in default of other occupation, to commercial
possibilities. Knowing that there was a brisk mar
ket for illuminating oils in Europe, and aware also
that large quantities of whale oil had been tied up in
American warehouses during the war, he concluded
that good returns must accrue from the prompt ship
ment of it. Therefore, on leaving Bethlehem early
in September, 1783, he went to New York, New
London, New Bedford, and as far as Boston, to ar
range for the purchase and shipment of several car
goes of oil to Nantes, Antwerp, and Amsterdam. His
personal credit at this time seems to have been un
limited, as may be judged from the ease with which
he obtained the bond in the sum of $200,000 required
by the Act of Congress appointing him prize-money
agent. At all events, he had no diifieulty in charter
ing ships and negotiating for cargoes of oil on terms
86

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
requiring very small cash advances. At the same
time he wrote to Dr. Bancroft in France, to the Van
Staphorst Brothers, of Amsterdam, and to Neuville
& Co., of Antwerp and Brussels, to arrange for
disposing of the cargoes on arrival, and, of course,
consigning the oil to them as his correspondents,
his bankers being, in Paris, Le Grand ; in Amster
dam, Van Berckel, and at Antwerp, Neuville. The
author of the "Historical Anecdotes," previously
quoted, says that the Commodore's profits from
this enterprise were "£7,500 to £8,000." This is
probably an exaggeration, but they must have been
considerable — doubtless at least more than half of
the sum mentioned.
It appears from his correspondence with Bancroft
that he continued his enterprises in these directions
to the extent even of shipping a cargo to London in
1784, which, though the ship that carried it under
went some vicissitudes, proved in the end fairly
remunerative. He also about this time promoted
other commercial alliances between houses in the
United States and in Holland, Belgium, and France,
in which, though he did not actively or publicly fig
ure, he evidently stood for a share of the proceeds.
In these enterprises his early training as a merchant
captain, reinforced by the acquaintances and personal
reputation he had made during the war, doubtless
proved of great use both to himself and his associ
ates, as his ventures were nearly always successful ;
and the style in which he lived, in view of his total
lack of compensation for public services, must argue
ample sources of private income.
The only pointed references to any of these affairs
87

PAUL JONES
we have been able to find in his extant correspond
ence occur in a letter written by him from Paris to
Dr. Bancroft at London, in which he urges at least
the partial settlement of an account of £5,175 (say
$25,000) due to him from Ledyard & Co., and sug
gests that " for ready cash in specie bills on either
Paris or Amsterdam I will rebate ten per cent, on
the whole amount ; '' and again in a letter to Mon
sieur Gourlade, a banker at Nantes — formerly Amer
ican agent during the war — requesting " payment
of 100,000 livres on account of a total indebtedness
of 236,000 livres to myself and associates, now nine
months due."
From these fragmentary evidences it must appear
that Paul Jones in peace was almost as enterprising
in spirit and fertile in resource in the cai^acity of a
business man as he had been bold in war and reso
lute in combat.
Be these things as they may — and the proof of
them is rather that of inference than of actual rec
ord — it is clear from the argument of circumstances,
and from the unavoidable logic of situations, that
during the nine years of his survival of the advent
of peace, Paul Jones made a great deal of money in
commercial and financial ventures. And perhaps
the only clearer fact is that he never received any
compensation worth mentioning for his eight years
of service in our War of Independence except his
share of prize-money, gained by ships he com
manded in battles that he won.
On this point, away back in his earlier career,
during the year 1778, he makes a characteristic
comment. It occurs in a letter to Joseph Hewes,

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
written from Brest, after his return to that port
with the Drake as a prize. It is as follows :
. . . With all the poverty of our Commissioners and
all their protests of my rightful and duly authorized
drafts, I have the consolation that whenever I can get a
chance to draw on His Majesty King George III. , through
his Lords of the Admiralty, my bills are promptly honored.
Our Commissioners have at their disposal, no doubt, a
much larger balance of quibbles than of current funds. But
King George, thanks to the courage and spirit of my gun
ners, has never yet been able to make effective protest of
my drafts against such of his property as I have been able
to flnd off shore.
Pursuant to the resolution of Congress, Novem
ber 1, 1783, Commodore Jones received his com
mission and plenipotentiary credentials November
Sth, and on the 10th sailed from Philadelphia in
the ship Washington for France. After a remark
ably fortunate passage of twenty days, the Wash
ington was headed off in the channel by an easterly
gale and put into Plymouth, England. Anxious
to arrive at the scene of his mission, and being,
moreover, the bearer of important official de
spatches to Dr. Franklin and also to Mr. Adams,
then our Minister at The Hague, Jones determined
not to await the return of fair weather for the
packet to sail, but set out at once by post-chaise
from Plymouth to London on December 1st. Some
of his fellow-passengers cautioned him against
venturing on the soil of England so soon after his
public and official denunciation as a " pirate and
state criminal," but he ridiculed these apprehen-
89

PAUL JONES
sions, saying that, whatever might be its other
faults, the British government did not violate flags
of truce nor wage war after signing treaties. Be
fore reaching London he learned from a newspa
per picked up at a town en route that Mr. Adams
was in that city, the newspaper notice, fortunately,
giving his address there.
Immediately on his arrival in London Jones called
at Mr. Adams's hotel and, finding him in his apart
ments, delivered the mail and despatches addressed
to him. Mr. Adams was as much astonished to see
Paul Jones in London as the latter had been at learn
ing of Mr. Adams's presence there. He informed
Jones that the object of his visit was to sound the
Ministry on the subject of a commercial treaty with
the United States, and he expressed the opinion that
the despatches which Jones had for Dr. Franklin re
ferred to the same subject. But, as they were sealed,
Mr. Adams would not take the responsibility of open
ing them, though Jones insisted that he had a perfect
right to do so. Mr. Adams informed Jones that the
despatches for him, which were intended for delivery
at The Hague, referred to a project for a commercial
treaty, but indicated the jirior necessity of consul
tation with Dr. Franklin, who, being dean of our dip
lomatic representatives in Europe, was Mr. Adams's
superior. Mr. Adams, anxious to set the negotia
tions on foot at the earliest moment, advised Jones
to proceed at once to Paris, deliver the Franklin
despatches, and then, if necessary, return to Lon
don with any communication the Doctor might de
sire, after reading the despatches, to make to him,
adding that, as at present advised, he (Mr. Adams)
90

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
did not intend to leave London for The Hague under
a month or six weeks.
Jones then left London the next morning, and
arrived at Paris the morning of December 7th, only
twenty-seven days from Philadelphia, including
twenty-four hours' stop-over in London. It turned
out that Mr. Adams's surmise as to the character
of the despatches Jones bore to Dr. Franklin was
true. They contained instructions that he, in con
junction with Mr. Adams, should make overtures to
the British Ministry for a commercial treaty, and
for more definite regulation of the fisheries, and they
outlined the preliminary conditions which our Gov
ernment was willing to entertain. Dr. Franklin,
after examining the despatches, proposed to send
Jones back to London at ouce with a memorandum
to Adams outlining a course of preliminary proce
dure. But Jones was anxious to begin operations
under his own special mission, and he was also de
sirous of visiting Amsterdam and Antwerp in connec
tion with the commercial ventures he had set on foot
before leaving the United States ; and as Colonel
Livingston happened to be in Paris at the time
with nothing in particular to do, he suggested that
the Doctor employ Colonel Livingston to bear his
communications to Mr. Adams in London, which
the Doctor did.
Some of Jones's biographers, particularly Sims
and Dr. Sands, the editor of Miss Janette Taylor's
collection of her uncle's papers, intimate that the
Commodore's disinclination to return to England at
this time was due to fear of improper treatment, if
his presence there should become known. Nothing
91

PAUL JONES
could be more absurd. As will hereafter appear, on
the most irrefragable evidence, Jones had no more
fear of unpleasant personal consequences in England
than he had in America, France, or HoUand, or any
where else. The intimations that he could have
harbored such fears can be ascribed only to that pe
culiar tendency of some minds to prefer mystery
to fact when there is a possible choice between the
two. The real reason why Jones suggested that
Colonel Livingston instead of himself be sent to
wait on Mr. Adams in London was simply that he
(Jones) had something else to do, and desired to set
himself at it without loss of time.
Having arranged this affair in his own way, Jones
now took up with characteristic vigor the main ob
ject of his mission. In the prosecution of it he had
to deal about equally with Vergennes, Minister of
Foreign Affairs, and de Castries, Minister of Marine.
And he also had to be on good terms with the Eing
himself ; because, many affairs coimected with the
outfit of the commands he had held from 1778 to
1781 were personal to or by the Ejng, and for that
reason the records of them might depend on the
royal memory as much as on the records on file. It
has already been intimated that there was no lack
of personal acquaintance between Louis XVI. and
Paul Jones. From an historical anecdote in pre
vious pages it may be inferred that this personal
acquaintance had been less advantageous to the
King than to Jones ; but there is quite equal evi
dence that His Most Christian Majesty did not
regret it.
About ten days after the arrival of Commodore
92

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
Jones at Paris — December 17th — Dr. Franklin, as our
Minister to France, officially accredited him, in his
office of plenipotentiary agent, etc., to the Miarshal
de Castries, Minister of Marine ; and on December
20th the Marshal formally presented Jones in that
capacity at Court. This occasion is thus described
in " Historical Anecdotes," being also referred to in
the Janette Taylor Collection (page 352).
The King conferred on Commodore Jones the honor of
an invitation (or, as the phrase then was, a command) to
lunch at the royal table ; a distinction that no naval ofiicer
under the rank of Admiral had enjoyed in France since
Louis XIV. similarly entertained Jean Bart. After lunch
eon the King held a short conversation with the Minister
of Marine, and, upon its conclusion, the Minister informed
Commodore Jones that the King had directed him to "be
assured that His Majesty wauld always find pleasure in
being useful to his fortunes. "
After this repast the Commodore enjoyed another honor ;
one to which he had often aspired but never before realized :
that of being presented to the Queen, Marie Antoinette.
This was a marked triumph for the Commodore ; because,
while the war was in progress, notwithstanding the per
suasions of many of his friends, including even Madame
Campan, the Queen had steadily declined to lend her coun
tenance to the Commodore's enterprises and ambitions.*
*The author of Guerres en course fran9aises says: "The repug
nance of the Queen to the policy of espousing the American cause was
most notorious and she could not comprehend the King's motive for do-
mg it. Poor, purblind, Austrian woman ; benighted daughter of the be
sotted and decaying House of Hapsburg, she could not perceive that her
husband, Louis XVL, was a Bourbon only in name. She could not see
what everyone else saw, that the blood in his veins was the blood of his
Polish grandmother, Maria Leczinska, and that the heart in his bosom
was the heart ot his Polish ancestor John Sobieski, who had long ago
93

PAUL JONES
"Whatever may be the modern view of such events
as those just described, it must be borne in mind ,
that in 1783, and at the Bourbon Court of Versailles,
they possessed a vast significance ; and this signifi
cance was, in turn, vastly intensified by the fact that
Commodore Jones was a foreigner, and also the arch
enemy, in the late war, of the English, whom at this
particular time, so soon after the peace, as recorded
by Madame Campan, the Queen was taking particu
lar pains to patronize and conciliate. It is worthy
of remark that Jones himself never made, in all his
voluminous correspondence or journals, the slightest
reference to any part of these events except a casual
mention in less than three lines that, " On Decem-
xescued Vienna from capture and the Hapsburg dynasty itself from ex
tinction by the bloody hand of the savage Turk. That was the true
secret of the liberalism of Louis XVI. He was heart and soul a decend-
ant of the liberty-loving kings of ancient Poland, seated, by the provi
dential accident of an illogical intermarriage, on the throne of the
French Bourbons. In brain and in heart he was no more Bourbon than
Washington, than Franklin, than Paul Jones. In brain and in heart
he was as Polish as John Sobieski of old, or as Thaddeus Kosziusko in
his own time. That was the real reason why France helped America to
establish her independence. The foundation, perhaps, of the great Re
public across the sea was laid when Louis XV. made his romantic match
at Strassbourg with the dark-eyed daughter of Stanislaus, the exiled
Polish king.
" It was the patriotic Polish blood in the veins, the liberty-love in the
Polish heart, and the free-born instinct in the Polish brain that Louis
XVI. inherited from his dark-eyed Polish grandmother, undiluted by
either the phlegm of his Saxon mother or the lustful serum of his Bour
bon grandsire, which led him, quite unconsciously but none the less
cheerfully, to admire Washington, to revere Franklin, and to patronize
and pet Paul Jones. There can be no doubt that Louis XVI. formed his
opinion and conceived his affection for Paul Jones long before he gave
expression to the one or effect to the other in the early part of 1779.
There can be no question but that the character of Jones as evinced iu
his early conduct iu European waters, and as soon afterward emphasized
94

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
ber 20, His Excellency the Marshal de Castries gra*
ciously presented me, in my official capacity, to the
King, who in turn presented me informally to Her
Majesty the Queen."
With this incident began, doubtless, all things
considered, the happiest three and a half years of
Paul Jones's life. The official business of his mis
sion proved to be much more complex and its proc
esses infinitely more dilatory than he had antici
pated. The prizes taken by the various ships under
his command from 1778 to 1781, and sent into the
ports of France, Holland, and Denmark, had been
sold at different times, in different ports, and un
der widely varying conditions. Ihree of them that
were sent into the then Danish port of Bergen, Nor
way, had been restored to their English owners, as
heretofore stated, so that in their case his task was
in correspondence that could not have been withheld from the King, im
pressed His Majesty not only in his capacity as monarch but also in his
deeper and far richer capacity as a man. On this score, and this alone,
can one account for the curious lack of regal conventionality with which
Louis always treated Paul Jones. On no other hypothesis can one ac
count for the profusion of honors and decorations Louis conferred upon
Paul Jones, to the manifest neglect of many French officers of equiva
lent rank, if not of equal brilliancy. But the Queen would have none of
this. She could not or would not understand it. She even resisted the
importunities of Madame Campan to be permitted to present, most for
mally, the bosom friend of her father, M. de Genet. At last, however,
the success of the Franco- American entente was so overwhelming and
the brilliancy of its result so dazzling that even Marie Antoinette's
sluggish and superstition-thickened Hapsburg blood was now and then
stirred to spasms of quickened energy and warmed up sympathy. It
was doubtless in one of these spasms that this haughty daughter ofthe
most despotic dynasty of Christian Europe condescended, after all possi
ble victories were won, to hold out her pink finger-tips for a kiss from the
lips of the son of Scottish peasants who was also the hero of two conti
nents. " 95

PAUL JONES
not that of adjusting an account of prize-sale, but
reclamation of their value from the Court of Den
mark on the plea of violation of neutrality ; and this
plea involved the determination of the most intricate
problems in international law and admiralty juris
prudence. There were also infinite complications
concerning the prizes sent into French and Dutch
ports, and there adjudicated and sold. Some of
them had been handled by agents whose authority
was open to question. The seamen entitled to share
— particularly those belonging to the crew of the
Alliance — had in many cases appointed, without
proper authority, agents or attorneys to receive their
shares. One of the Banger's prizes, as explained in
a previous chapter, had been seized and sold at
Brest by legal process, to recover advances made by
M. BersoUe for subsistence of the crew of the Hang
er and the prisoners taken in the Drake. And this,
though Jones thought the affair was finally disposed
of by the seizure and sale, gave him in the ultimate
adjustment more trouble than any other single inci
dent of his mission. In fact, it gave him so much
trouble that, in order to settle it, he found it neces
sary to retain at no little cost the services of a
statesman and international lawyer no less distin
guished than Mirabeau himself. In addition to this
special case the Commodore employed as his regular
or general counsel and adviser in matters of inter
national law and French admiralty jurisprudence
the venerable Malesherbes, whose rank in such
qualifications at that time, not only in France but
in the estimation of the civilized world, needs no
certificate here. And finally he had at all times and
98

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
In all cases the most intimate and confidential access
to, and benefit of the capacity, experience, and wis
dom, of Dr. Franklin.
On the whole, sixteen prizes were to be dealt with,
aside from the three that had been restored to their
English owners by the King of Denmark. Of the
sixteen, three were regular British men-of-war ; two
were British letters-of-marque or privateers ; and, of
the other eleven, the cases of two were complicated
by pretence of neutral papers, and the case of one by
alleged " protection," which it had pleased our au
thorities in 1776 to grant to vessels claiming owner
ship in certain Irish ports, and engaged in certain
not quite clearly specified traffic. Each of these
diverse cases required different consideration, and
each must, according to the practice of French
prize-courts, be adjudicated upon the basis of vari
ous doctrines, partly defined in treaties and partly
regulated by precedents in the admiralty jurispru
dence of France.
The prize laws and regulations of the American
Government had been more than once altered or
modified during the war. And, therefore, when
ever those laws and regulations could be made to
apply to any of the cases that Jones had to deal
with, the application must be made with a view to
the particular date at which the capture occurred,
and to the particular law or regulation in force at
the time of capture. On the whole, the situation
was an almost bewildering melange of diversities
and incongruities, which, at the outset, seemed
wholly incapable of definite solution or practical
outcome. Vol. il— 7 97

PAUL JONES
These complications soon impressed themselves
on the mind of Dr. Franklin. The old gentleman
had long since arrived at the period of life when
nothing is so welcome as tranquillity, and nothing so
distasteful as dispute. In one of his letters to Jones
while the latter was at I'Orient and had written to
him for advice, and also asking his opinion on a
question that had been raised by the " ordonnateur
de la marine" (the navy law ofiicer or solicitor)
at that port, the venerable Doctor ejaculates :
. . If I can once get rid of this business, nothing
shall ever induce me to approach it again. I know nothing
about it, I never did know anything about it, and I am too
old to begin learning it. I assume that you do know about
it; at least you ought to. On that assumption I now
assure you once for all that I will approve anything you
may recommend, and will vouch, personally or officially or
both, for the truth and righteousness of any claim you may
set up. But I beg you to have mercy on me, and refrain
from bothering me any more with masses of technical de
tails, and even sea-lingo, which is worse than Greek to me,
altogether. This quite natural petulance of the venerable
philosopher, diplomat, and statesman seems to have
appealed to Jones's sense of humor rather than to
his sympathies. His reply to the Doctor's scolding
letter, if offered in extenso, would fill about two
pages of this volume. In synopsis, it begins with
an apology for troubling the Doctor. It then re
cites that his reason for requesting the Doctor's
opinion was that he desired to incorporate it in an
appeal he intended to make from the ordonnateur
98

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
to the Minister of Marine. And the conclusion was
as follows :
. However, as you say you "will approve and
vouch for, ' ' etc. , I shall now pursue the affair in accordance
with my own sense and conviction of the right. I shall
traverse wholly and diametrically the opinion of the ordon
nateur in respect to the pretensions of M. Puchilberg, who
claims authority as designated agent of certain misguided
sailors of the Alliance's crew. I hope my representations
may find favor with His Excellency the Minister of Marine.
But at any rate you shall no more be perplexed by this class
of questions. If I have invaded your peace or disturbed
your tranquillity I am sorry and beg your forgiveness. I
could have been impelled to do so by no consideration less
flattering to you than the childlike faith and the artless
confidence I have ever reposed in your incomparable wisdom
and your unexampled grasp of affairs. And I trust you
will yet permit me to subscribe myself your
Most devoted and obedient foster son, etc.
This was not the only instance of the use of that
expression in Jones's letters to Dr. Franklin.*
* The appointment of Jones to this mission by Congress, though on
the face of the records, made at the request of Jones himself in October,
1783, had its foundation in a suggestion or recommendation, dated about
two months earlier, by Dr. Franklin to Mr. Jefferson. In this com
munication the Doctor declared that Thomas Barclay, then holding in
France a position analogous to that of Consul-General of the United
States, was incapable of dealing with the prize-money problems, and sug
gested that the best man for the duty would be the man who not only
had taken the prizes but who also knew better than anyone else the
laws and practices governing the disposition of them. It is a fair infer
ence that Dr. Franklin, in his effort to secure the selection of Paul Jones
for this duty, had also in view his own relief from the cares and per
plexities incident to it ; and, therefore, it is not difBcult to account for
the petulant tone of his reply to Jones's letter from I'Orient. At any
rate, it had the desired effect. 99

PAUL JONES
The scope of this work does not admit of more
than general reference to the correspondence in
volved in the settlement of prize-money accounts
in Europe. The text of that which passed between
Commodore Jones and the Marshal de Castries
alone would fill at least twenty-five to thirty pages
of this volume. Besides, there were numerous argu
ments and rejoinders on points of law and practice
raised from time to time, the reproduction of which
would easily swell the total to forty or forty-five
pages. This refers to the original matter on file in
the archives of France and written in the language
of that country, as Commodore Jones at this period of
his career always used the French language in his
correspondence with Frenchmen — and Frenchwomen
— both official and personal ; and not only that, but
the original text of the voluminous historical memo
randa and journals he prepared between his return
to France in 1783 and the end of his life was in
French. In the Sherburne Collection about twenty-
six pages of close print are occupied by translations
of the more important documents relating to the
prize cases ; but that does not include more than
one-half of the total. It is also interesting to note
that though the Commodore's facility of diction and
strength of expression in his own tongue were far
above the average of cultivated men, yet there always
was a vein of ruggedness in his English literary style
which cropped out here and there in spite of his
apparent efforts at smoothness and elegance ; and
this was particularly noticeable when he wrote, as
he often had to, under the influence of his feelings.
On the contrary, he did not write or speak the
100

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
French language with much freedom of idiom ; so
that his average style is that of " book French,"
and it bears throughout evidences of intense lin
guistic study. These evidences are manifest in the
few extant specimens of his rough drafts of letters
and other documents, which show many changes
from one form of expression to another by erasure
or interlineation. In writing English, he manifestly
let his pen run freely, giving more attention to the
matter than to the manner of his diction ; while in
writing French he had to study not only what he
wished to say, but also how to say it. In this he was
not only not singular, but his experience was the
common one of men who are compelled to transact
important business or compose historical papers in
an alien tongue. A case in point may be cited here :
Toward the end of his negotiations in settlement of
the prize-money accounts, or more particularly those
pending with the Court of Denmark, he deemed it
necessary to prepare a narrative of his naval opera
tions in European seas for the information of the
King of France himself, with a view to the possible
contingency that he might ultimately have to appeal
to the throne to secure co-operation of the French
Government in those cases.
In his letter to the King transmitting this journal
he says :
As Tour Majesty understands English, I have perhaps
judged iU by presenting these extracts from my journals
in French ; but my motive has been to give Tour Majesty
as little trouble as possible. Accept, Sire, with indul
gence, this confidential offering of my gi-atitude, which is
an original, written for your particular information.
101

PAUL JONES
Before presenting this narrative or memorial to
the King, Commodore Jones submitted it to his
confidential adviser, the venerable Malesherbes, for
revision, should any seem to him desirable. The
veteran statesman soon afterward returned the man
uscript, as Jones says in his Journal, " quite intact,"
with the following letter :
I have received with much gratitude the mark of con
fidence which you have given to me, and I have read
with great eagerness and pleasure your most interesting
relation. My first impression was to desire you to have it pub
lished, but after having read it more carefully I perceive
that you did not write it with a view to publication,
because there are passages in it which are written to the
King, for whose information alone they are intended.
However, actions so memorable as yours are ought to be
made known to the world by an authentic journal pub
lished in your own name.
I earnestly entreat you to work at it as soon as your
affairs may permit ; and in the meantime I believe the
King will read this particular narrative with that atten
tion which he owes to a relation of services rendered to
him by a person so celebrated.
I beg you to be persuaded always of the sincere attach
ment with which I have the honor to be, etc. ,
(Signed) Malesherbes.*
* The translation of Malesherbes's letter is our own, from the text of
the original. The commonly accepted translation is that which first ap
peared in the Sherburne Collection (pages 343-344, Appendix), and which
has been copied in most of the subsequent biographies. That transla
tion makes Malesherbes eay, " I hope that the King will read," etc.
What Malesherbes actually wrote was " je crois que le Roi," etc. How
any one who knew anything about the French language or who even had
access to a standard lexicon, could make the English "I hope "out of
103

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
The effort that Jones made to carry out the sug
gestion of Malesherbes resulted in the Journals of
1787, 1790, and 1791, concerning which the Eng
lish-speaking world knows comparatively little,
and that only through disconnected extracts in the
pages of various biographies and collections of
papers. The prize-money settlements, begun in January,
1784, were completed, so far as France was con
cerned, in July, 1786, by the payment to Commo
dore Jones of 181,000 livres in lump sum, through
the Minister of Marine, de Castries. At this time
Thomas Jefferson had relieved Dr. Franklin as
American Minister to France, and Jones turned over
the money to Mr. Jefferson, less certain deductions
for expenses, personal and legal, sundry advances,
and his own lawful share in the prizes. The Com
modore's accounting was forwarded to Mr. Jeffer
son with a letter of transmittal dated Paris, July 7,
1786, from which the following is an interesting
extract :
I have the honor to enclose and submit for your consid
eration the account I have stated of the prize-money in my
hands, with sundry papers that regard and explain the
charges for expenses.
I cannot bring myself to lessen the dividend of the
American captors by making any charge either for my
time or trouble. I only lament that it has not yet been
the French " je crois" is difficult to perceive. The difference is mate
rial ; because if Malesherbes only " hoped " the King would read the nar
rative, the expression must have implied doubt in his mind as to its re
ception at the hands of the King. But his use of the word "believe"
carries an altogether different significance, and might easily mean the
direct antithesis of the word " hope " used in such context.
103

PAUL JONES
in my power to procure for them advantages as solid
and extensive as the merit of their services. I would not
have undertaken this business from any views of personal
emolument that could possibly have resulted from it to
myself ; . . . but, the war being over, I made it my
first care to show to the brave instruments of my success
that their rights are as dear to me as my own.
Mr. Jefferson, under date of July 18, 1786, for
warded the accounts of Commodore Jones to Con
gress, with his approval.
Shortly after turning over to Mr. Jefferson the
money collected in France, Commodore Jones pro
posed to proceed in person to Copenhagen, in pur
suit of a settlement with the Danish Govemment
for the three prizes that had been restored by the
King of Denmark to their English owners at the
port of Bergen in 1779. Preliminary to this, how
ever, it was necessary to lay an authentic basis of
valuation. There had been no adjudication or sale
of these prizes, and the only official appraisement
ever made of them was that of the French consul at
Bergen, M. Duchezaulx, who, without opportunity
for detailed examination, had estimated the total
value of the three ships at £50,000.
This estimate, however, was not sufficiently au
thentic or official, in the estimation of either Mr.
Jefferson or the Commodore, to form a basis for ne
gotiation. Jones then undertook to go to England
and ascertain from all available sources as nearly
as possible the actual value of the ships and their
cargoes. This task proved comparatively easy in
the case of the least valuable of the three, which
was a merchant ship pure and simple, laden on
104

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
private account and fully insured ; so that her real
value could be officially and quasi-judicially deter
mined from the records of underwriters. The ship
was found to have been insured, including cargo,
for £8,600.
The other two, tho Union and the Betsy, were
armed ships, under letters of marque, and their car
goes were composed wholly of public stores, mili
tary and naval. For these reasons they carried no in
surance. The ratable value of the ships themselves
could be ascertained from the shipping lists of
Lloyd's Coffee-House, where such data were kept
for the information of underwriters. These lists al
ways contained abstracts showing the class, size,
age, condition and insurable limit of value of every
vessel in British registry ; and the character of those
records was semi-official. But there was no way of
finding out the value of the public stores composing
their cargoes, except by gaining access to the ac
counts of both the War Office and the Admiralty.
This of course was impossible by direct means, and
could be accomplished only through diplomatic
channels. Naturally the British Government would
not be likely to lend assistance to a scheme having
for its object the gathering of evidence in a claim of
such character under such circumstances. In this
dilemma, however, Mr. Adams, who was then our
Minister at the Court of St. James, came to the res
cue. He informed Commodore Jones that, while
American Minister at The Hague, he had learned in
formally from the Danish Minister there that in the
correspondence between the British and Danish
Governments on the subject of these prizes aud their
105

PAUL JONES
restoration, the British Government had informed
Denmark that the Betsey and cargo were valued at
£16,000 and the Union and cargo at £19,500, and
suggested to him that, by adroit diplomacy, he
might, when he should reach Copenhagen, draw this
information from the archives of Denmark. Mr.
Adams advised Jones that the adroit way to ap
proach this would be, first, induce the Danish For
eign Office to open negotiations on an indefinite
basis as to the amount to be claimed ; second, pro
ceed on that basis until it should become necessary
to state a definite amount; third, then declare an
araount exorbitantly high ; fourth, maintain the de
mand on that basis stubbornly. This course of pro
cedure, Mr. Adams thought, would ultimately com
pel the Danish Government to produce the official
British valuation from their files in self-defence, and
then the Commodore could use his own discretion as
to accepting it. But the main object of arriving at
an official basis of valuation would have been ef
fected. This line of characteristic Yankee diplo
macy was faithfully followed by Jones when he
went to Copenhagen, with the exact result that
Mr. Adams had so astutely pointed out.
Mr. Adams, while, as a matter of public duty, do
ing all he could to aid Jones in his efforts, strongly
deprecated, on grounds of policy, the pressing of
these claims on Denmark just at this time. In con
junction with Dr. Franklin, just prior to the relief of
the latter at Paris by Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Adams had
opened negotiations for a commercial treaty with
Denmark, and some progress had been made. Mr.
Adams apprehended that the pressing of the prize-
106

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
claims would interrupt these negotiations, though
he agreed with Jones that, until otherwise ordered
by authority of Congress, there was no alternative
but to proceed with the claims. As it turned
out, however, Jones did not immediately press the
Danish claims, and, in fact, did not go to Copen
hagen until more than a year after the events just
related. The Commodore's stay in England on this occa
sion was protracted considerably beyond his orig
inal intention. This was due partly to the difficulty
and delay in obtaining the information of whioh he
was in search ; partly to his perception of commer
cial opportunities and desire to take advantage of
them ; and partly to the fact that Mr. Adams, who
had arranged the preliminaries of a commercial
convention between the United States and England,
was now engaged in drawing up a definite commer
cial treaty, and desired to avail himself of the Com
modore's practical knowledge of the subjects to be
dealt with. The nature of the earlier relations be
tween John Adams and Paul Jones, and the cir
cumstances of their reconciliation under the be
nignant auspices of Dr. Franklin at Passy, have
been explained in previous pages. That there could
ever be any relation between them even remotely
approaching that which always existed between Dr.
Franklin and Jones was, of course, prohibited by
the laws of temperament. But, whatever may have
been the opinion that each entertained of the other
at earlier periods, Mr. Adams and Commodore
Jones had long before this time (1786) arrived at an
understanding of mutual confidence in each other's
107

PAUL JONES
fidelity to the great cause of American Indepen
dence, of mutual respect for each other's powers of
usefulness in his own sphere, and of unreserved
and outspoken admiration for each other's master
ful qualities and established services. Mr. Adams
had not yielded to anyone in the profusion and elo
quence of his official praise of Jones for taking the
Serapis. He had been even more enthusiastic, or
at least more verbose, on that score than Dr. Frank
lin himself. When he was Minister to Holland,
Mr. Adams had fully learned and most unstintedly
appreciated the cunning and far-reaching acuteness
of Jones's " diplomatic duel " with Sir Joseph Torke
while in the Texel ; and he had already recorded, in
the vivid style of which he alone was capable, his
admiring approval of it, and his candid admission
of its effect in producing war between Holland and
England. On his part, Jones, than whom no man was ever
more susceptible to the art of compliment, not to
say flattery, was keenly grateful for the consider
ation Mr. Adams showed toward him. Through
such spectacles he surveyed all of Mr. Adams's
great qualities, and most of all that quality which
he himself valued above all others — power of ex
pression with tongue and pen ; in which, it need
not at this late date be remarked, Mr. Adams easily
excelled all his contemporaries. It must, in order
to conserve the strict exactitude of history, be ad
mitted that Mr. Adams, grounded as his concep
tions of domestic morality were in the " Scarlet
Letter " school of New England Puritanism, could
never forgive, even if he could temporarily forget,
108

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
the Commodore's cheerful, or at least non-apolo
getic, adoption of the " mode parisienne " in that
respect. And, it may be added, the sum of the
Commodore's offending on this score was by no
means lessened in the Puritan eyes of Mr. Adams
by the fact that the other party to it was herself the
fruit of the liberal, not to say licentious, Bourbon
view of that class of affairs.
However, these radical diversities of temperament
and these diametrically opposite moral conceptions
did not interrupt or even in the slightest degree af
fect their concurrence of views or concert of action
in everything that pertained to the public interests
of their common country. But, intimate as their
relations were in the capacity of public servants,
there is no record to show that Mr. Adams ever
introduced Paul Jones to his domestic circle, either
in London or in America, or that, when in Paris, he
ever shared the hospitality of the Commodore's
morganatic home there ; though cosmopolitan men
of the rank of Dr. Franklin, Edward Bancroft,
Thomas Jefferson and Gouverneur Morris did so
constantly with the utmost freedom, and, at least
tacit, approval.
The Commodore was too much of a philosopher
to be disquieted by these personal peculiarities of
his "great and austere friend," as he used to call
Mr. Adams in his confidential correspondence with
Bancroft, Lafayette, and Jefferson. On the contrary,
he was always careful to humor the scruples of Mr.
Adams. During the stay in England under consid
eration, the alert commercial instinct of the former
merchant captain, now become a naval hero, enabled
109

PAUL JONES
him to perceive opportunities to take advantage of
the temporary trade convention between England
and the United States recently arranged. And, as
he had much time to spare and some money to in
vest, he desired to avail himself of the chance. How
ever, mindful of his own public and semi-diploraatic
attitude, he asked the opinion of Mr. Adams as to
the propriety of his engaging in commercial enter
prises under the circumstances. Mr. Adams prompt
ly advised the Commodore that there was no ap
parent reason why he should refrain from such ac
tion. Of course, he said, it would be improper for
a minister engaged in negotiating treaties to take
advantage of his prior knowledge for purposes of
profit. But he also said that the Commodore's
mission was a limited one, for specific purposes,
having no relation to diplomacy at large and no
concern with the negotiation of treaties ; wherefore,
Mr. Adams conceived that perfect freedom of action
was left to Jones to embark in any regular and hon
orable venture that might present itself. And not
only that, but Mr. Adams also advised Jones to
place himself immediately in communication with
certain commercial establishments in Boston whose
management of any affairs that might be confided to
them he was sure would prove advantageous to all
parties concerned.
The practical outcome of all this cannot be ascer
tained in detail from any reliable data. But among
the quaint papers in a scrap-book of the Gardner
Collection we find a London letter, published in the
Guniberland Packet, a weekly paper of Whitehaven, in
November, 1786, which would seem to intimate that
110

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
Commodore Jones took advantage of the commer
cial opportunities of that time. This letter recites :
. - . Last Wednesday, appeared on the Underwriters'
'Change at Lloyd's no less a personage than the celebrated
Paul Jones; no stranger to the Cumberland coast and
Whitehaven ; but a most attractive stranger and object of
much interest at Lloyd's. He came on the most peaceful
errand of listing on the Boards for underwriting certain
cargoes of American destination in which he has interest.
No one noticed him until he had to sign the Owners'
Register, which he did in a bold, round hand. In a few
minutes many had seen it, and his identity among the
throng on the floor was quickly made out ; when there was
a rush about him amounting almost to mobbing. All in
troduced themselves to him and he received them in a most
charming manner, easy and affable. Among those who
met him was the Chairman of the Board, who invited him
into the lunch-room ; by accepting which he escaped at
tentions which, though kindly meant and most politely ac
cepted, must have been annoying. He took luncheon with
the Board in the inner room and then went away in about
an hour.
In appearance he is of middle stature, slender build, has
delicate features, a swarthy complexion, his attire is of the
most faultless make-up, and his bearing martial and im
posing to the last degree. It is gossipped about that while
at luncheon the chairman remarked that his relations to
British commerce had most materially changed during the
past few years. To which Captain Jones is said to have re
pUed, " Oh no, not so much that as it is a resumption of
most pleasant relations many years ago. ' '
The impression he made on all who had the privilege of
seeing and conversing with him is most pleasant, and it is
a common remark that it is much better to have him here
seeking insurance on cargoes of his own than at sea seeking
cargoes insured by others. Ill

PAUL JONES
Jones himself makes little reference to his stay in
London. He speaks of it once in his correspondence
(with Bancroft), and then only to express this gen
eral opinion :
As conditions are now, London is a much more inviting
field for American commercial venture than Nantes, Am
sterdam, or Antwerp. But, naturally, it will take some
time to restore generally the state of feeling betweei. Ameri
can and English merchants required for the most satisfac
tory operations of trade. My observation and what has
been said to me by English merchants convince me that the
course of our Government toward those whom the English
call loyalists and whom we call "Tories" in our country
has been ill-advised and must be calculated to keep open
the breach between the two countries. Por myself, I quit
fighting as soon as I heard the treaty was signed. So did
the English. Would that our own Government had in all
respects done the same. I need not add what you already
know, that I speak as a man whose fair property was most
ruthlessly ravaged by a force almost entirely Tories. But I
do not live in the past. Those who do so will only find
themselves always behind the present. No one believes
more than I do in fighting while war lasts. But when it
ends, I yield to no one in quickness of forgetting or forgiv
ing bygones.
These expressions, though philosophical on their
face, were no doubt to some extent inspired by the
Commodore's extreme sensibility to the blandish
ments of attention and politeness which he had ex
perienced during this his first visit to England, of
any duration, since the war. At all events, the inci
dent serves to exhibit his remarkable adaptability
to new conditions, and the ease and grace with which
113

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
he could fall into the proprieties of time and place
on short notice.
One interesting mention he makes of this visit, in
his Journal, is a remark that he returned by the
Ostend packet direct from London. This he says he
did because the captain of that packet, Mr. Colborne,
had been one of his mates in the Grantley Castle ;
and, finding that hewas in London, came to see him.
He also says: "I had crossed the Channel twice
since the war prior to this, but both times in French
luggers. The Ostend packet was English, and when
I boarded her, it was the first time since 1773 that I
had trod an English deck with the King's colors
flying. I own that for a moment the sensation was
queer." The only other reference to this English trip that
we have found in any of the Commodore's papers
occurs in the Journal of 1787 •
. . . I had the great pleasure to meet again Captain
the Honorable Samuel Hood, nephew and namesake of the
Admiral. [This was a mistake. Captain Hood was a
cousin of the Admiral.] I had met Oaptain Hood and
become well acquainted with him while he was in Prance
in 1784 and 1785, and it had been in my iiower to be ser
viceable to him in social directions. Now he, with the
courtesy for which he is everywhere distinguished, repaid
my former attentions, and to him more than to anyone
else I owe the most enjoyable moments of my stay in
London. His own stay in London, unfortunately for me,
was cut short by his assignment to command a sloop-of-
war on the North American station, and I had the pleas
ure of offering to him sundry letters to the Morrises,
Livingstons, and other disting-uished personages in Phila
delphia and New York. I venture to predict a great
Vol. II.— 8 113

PAUL JONES
future for this most accomplished oiBcer and chivalrous
gentleman, who honors both the naval profession and a
most illustrious family name.*
When the Commodore returned from England to
Paris, about the end of the year 1786, he made
preparations for a visit to Copenhagen in the early
spring of 1787. It was the opinion of Mr. Jeffer
son, our Minister to France, Mr. Adams, our Minister
to England, and his own view that the general
tenor of the resolution of Congress dated No-
*This was Captain, afterward Vice-Admiral, Sir Samuel Hood, of
heroic memory in British naval annals. His most popular fame rests
upon his association with Nelson, under whom he commanded the
Zealous, seventy-four, at the battle of the Nile, and, with Sir Thomas
Foley in the Goliath, seventy-four, led the van of Nelson's attack.
There was a young Hood in the Serapis, as midshipman or ensign,
who afterward wrote an account of the battle off Flamboro' Head ;
and the editor of the Edinburgh life of Jones assumes that he was
Sir Samuel. This is an error. The young Hood of the Serapis was
a. nephew of the first Admiral Hood, and, though he lived many years
after the capture of the Serapis, he did not rise to any high rank in
the British Navy. It may be interesting to note such historical facts
as we go along, if for no other purpose than to brush away silly
superstitions that have prevailed as to the attitude of the English
Government and people toward Paul Jones after our Revolutionary War.
It is due, no less to the character of the English Govemment and
people than to the true and actual historical memory of Paul Jones
to say that between the signing of the treaty in 1783 and the death
of the Commodore, the only danger he could have apprehended on Eng
lish soil would have been due to excessive curiosity on the part of the
people to see him and the universal disposition to offer him attentions
he could not adequately reciprocate. This was particularly true of
British naval officers, who, without exception, frankly recognized hia
professional merit and candidly praised his remarkable displays of cour
age and endurance. And, whatever misrepresentations of his character
and career may have been pubhshed in England at any time, it must
stand forever to the honor of the British Navy that no such expression
ever came from the tongue or pen of a British naval officer.
114

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
vember 1, 1783, required him to effect a settlement
of the Danish as well as the French prize-money
claims. Commodore Jones desired, before proceeding to
Copenhagen, to enlist the good offices of the French
Government in the presentation and prosecution of
the Danish claim. It was mainly to this end that
he had, as has been related, memorialized Louis
XVI. some time previously. Pending the decision
of France on this question, Jones had gone to
England for the purpose of securing the evidence
necessary to fortify his claim, as related in pre
ceding pages. On his return to France he found
that his efforts, seconded by Mr. Jefferson, had
resulted in instructions from the King of France
through his Minister of Foreign Affairs, de Ver
gennes, to his Minister at Copenhagen, the Baron
de la Houze, as follows :
Versailles, August 15, 1786.
The Barobt de la Houze,
Minister Plenipotentiary to the King of Denmark.
Sib : M. Paul Jones, an offlcer in the naval service of the
United States of America, having some business and certain
claims in Denmark on account of prizes which he took dur
ing the last war, proposes going on these accounts to Co
penhagen. It is the pleasure of His Majesty, sir, that you receive this
offlcer favorably, that you hear what he may wish to com
municate to you on the subject of his mission and with ref
erence to his claim, and that you assist him with your good
offices and your counsels, in case he should want them,
during his stay at the court near which you reside.
(Signed) de Vergennes.
115

PAUL JONES
Various causes operated to delay the departure of
Commodore Jones from Paris for Copenhagen, after
his return from England. The chief of these was a
prospect that the King of France might decide to
fit out a naval expedition to chastise the Dey of Al
giers and release from bondage a large number of
Christian prisoners who, having been from time to
time captured by the corsairs of the Dey, were then
held in Algiers, as slaves. Jones was encouraged to
believe that, if such an expedition should be fitted
out, he might be employed by the King either to
command it or as second in command to his inti
mate and devoted personal friend, the gallant d' Al
bert de Eions, then a young rear-admiral in the
French Navy ; or, equally, Morard de Galles. It is
probable, however, that Jones hoped to receive the
supreme command of this expedition, if it should be
fitted out ; because, as he intimates in a paragraph
of his Journal of 1787, both de Eions and de Galles
assured him that they would not only cheerfully
yield to him any claim either of them might have on
such a command, but would also, if called upon for
their opinions, energetically recommend him as the
proper kind of leader in that species of naval enter
prise, and would be quite as content to serve under
him as he had expressed himself willing to serve
under them.
Early in 1786, at the inception of the Algerine
question, Jones had taken care to place himself in a
position of availability for selection by tendering, in
a diplomatic way, his services to the King. This
tender of services formed the concluding part of a
letter or memorial addressed to the King of which
116

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
an extract has already been referred to. The con
cluding part of this memorial was as follows, in the
original French text : *¦
Cela a St6, et sera toujours, I'ambition de ma vie de m^r-
iter le singulier honneur que m'a 6t6 accord^ par le Brevet
de Votre Majest6, datSe, Versailles, le 28me juin, 1780, et
par la tr6s gracieuse lettre de Votre Majeste, laquelle lettre
dit: " Sa Majesty, voulant marquer au Paul Jones, Commo
dore de la marine des Etats Unis, de I'Amerique, I'estime
particuliere qu'elle fait de sa personne, pour les preuves de
bravoure et de 1' intrepidity qu'il a donnees, et qui sont
connues de Sa Majesty, eile a jugS a propos de I'associer a,
I'institution du Merite Militaire."
Le Congres des Etats, a, avec justice signal^, titule Votre
Majesty "Le Protecteur des Droits de I'Homme. "
Bn m6me temps que le grand cordon de 1' Ordre du
Merits Militaire, Votre Majesty m'a accord6 une 6pe6
d'honneur. "Le Grande Protecteur des Droits de I'Homme" me trou-
vera toujours pret a tirer cette epeS et a exposer ma vie
pour la gloire de son regne, et pour la cause de son roy
aume, dans n'importe quel post d'honneur ou quelle sta
tion des risques qu 'il lui plaira de m'ordonner de servir.
Bn attendant humblement les commandes de Votre Ma
jesty, je reste. Sire, avec la gratitude la plus sincere, le plus
devou6 de vos serviteurs.
Paul Jones.
* A translation is as follows : It has been, and ever wiU be, the ambi
tion of my life to merit the singular honor conferred upon mc by Your
Majesty's brevet, dated Versailles, June 28, 1780, and by the most gra
cious letter of Your Majesty, which says :
" His Majesty, desiring to signify to Paul Jones, a commodore in the
navy of the United States of America, the particular esteem he has for
him personally because of the proofs of courage and intrepidity which he
has given, and which are known to His Majesty, has judged it proper (or
117

PAUL JONES
That the ulterior significance of this movement on
the part of the Commodore may be understood at
the outset, it is necessary to refer briefly to events
that, for convenience, have been temporarily passed
over. In 1785, M. Soulanges, Intendant of Tou
lon, notified Mr. Jefferson that the Dey of Al
giers had declared war against the United States,
and had fitted out a squadron to cruise against our
commerce in the Mediterranean and as far west as the
Azores. When Jones heard of it he said to Mr. Jef
ferson that " this event will not be without good ef
fect if it unites the people of America in measures
consistent with their honor and dignity, and rouses
them from the ill-judged sense of security Avhich the
intoxication of success has produced in their minds
since the triumph of their strife for independence in
the War of our Eevolution. Such a sense of security
may be natural to a brave and indomitable people
who have so recently conquered their own freedom
at home by expelling tyrants from their soil ; but I
am sure you will agree with me that untiring vigil
ance must be exercised to maintain, as against all
foes, the priceless boon that we have won in conflict
with only one.''
has thought fit) to appoint him a member of the Order of Military
Merit." The Congress of the United States has, with signal justice, entitled
Your Majesty the Protector of the Rights of Man (or human rights).
With the Grand Cordon of the Order of Military Merit Your Majesty
conferred upon me a sword of honor. The Great Protector of Human
Rights will ever find me ready to draw that sword for the glory of his
reign and for the cause of his realm in no matter what post of honor
or what station of peril it may please him to order me to serve.
Awaiting humbly the commands of Your Majesty, I remain, Sire, with
the sincerest gratitude, the most devoted of your servants, Paul Jones.
118

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
At that moment, however, the United States was
too young, too feeble, and too much exhausted by
eight years of war with Great Britain, for political
independence, to entertain the project of a new
struggle with Barbary pirates for commercial immu
nity on the high seas. This was the reason that im
pelled Jones to appeal to France for resources that
his own country could not supply. In this as in
many other conceptions he was, if not prophetic, at
least far a headof the times in which he lived. He
thought that France ought to attack and subdue the
Algerine pirates in 1786. England and the United
States, by the fleets of Exmouth and Decatur, did
attack them thirty years later; and, nearly fifty
years afterward, France invaded and ultimately an
nexed the country.
It must be understood that the letter which Jones
addressed directly to the King of France, just quoted,
was intended to be a general offer of his services.
Of course, in view of the etiquette of the Bourbon
Court, he could not, in a letter to the King, specify
the particular services he might contemplate. But
he could specify such services to either the Minister
of Foreign Affairs or the Minister of Marine. He
chose to signify his meaning to both alike, and, soon
after receiving acknowledgment that the King had
read his letter, he handed, personally, to Vergennes
and de Castries a memorandum of which the trans
lation is as follows : Memorandum.
I have the honor to lay before Tour Excellencies the text
of a letter which I have ventured to address to His Majesty,
119

PAUL JONES
together with His Majesty's signification of having read the
same, through His Excellency M. de Genet, First Secretary,
etc. Having been thus honored by the most gracious con
descension of His Majesty, I now approach the task of lay
ing before Your Excellencies the reasons that impelled me
to address His Majesty to that effect.
From time immemorial the attitude of the Barbary States
toward the commerce of the Christian world has been in
sufferable ; yet it has been endured. Even tribute has been
paid to them by Christian powers, and large ransoms have
been given for the release of Christian captives held as
slaves. The sole excuse I have heard offered for such hu
miliating conduct has been the plea of diplomatists that
these States were feudatory to the Sultan, and that effort
to chastise them might produce more extensive complica
tions. I have never believed this. The Sultan has not suf
ficient naval strength to assist them if he would as against
the fleets of Prance or of England, or even of Spain or
Holland. And even if the Sultan could equip a force for
defence of his feudatories, he would hardly venture to draw
away from the Black Sea, for distant operations, any con
siderable armament in view of the mighty power of Russia
that must always hang over his head like an avalanche
ready to descend.
France has just emerged, with complete success and un
speakable glory, from a conflict waged to liberate a new
nation from an intolerable yoke. History, ancient or mod
ern, records no crusade so chivalrous or so disinterested as
that of Prance in behalf of America. What lustre, then,
must be shed upon the arms of His Most Christian Majesty
by a crusade, which could but be successful, in behalf of
the freedom of civilized commerce, and for the rescue of
hapless Christians held in a revolting state of slavery by
the most barbarous of corsairs and the savagest of pirates !
I am informed by Captain Legordes, of His Majesty's
ship la Minerve, that upward of twenty thousand Christian
slaves are at this moment held in the Barbary States, the
130

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
majority in Algiers alone. Nothing can release them ex
cept the bombardment of the Dey's capital, destruction of
his defences, disarmament of his forces, and reducing him
to a condition of complete powerlessness for mischief. My
study of the situation, which has been exhaustive, per
suades me that this could be accomplished by a fleet of ten
sail of the line, with an appropriate number of frigates and
bomb-vessels ; and one division of troops such as those
under command of His Excellency the Count de Rocham
beau in the finishing campaign of the late war.
But, sirs, aside from all sentimental views, there is a po
litical aspect of this question that cannot fail to commend
itself to the patriotic foresight of statesmen already world-
renowned for their grasp of affairs and their consummate
skill as pilots of the ship of state. It requires not such
prescience as that of Your Excellencies to discern that the
true destiny of France lies in the direction of Northern
Africa. That great fact is clearly perceived by even so
mediocre a person as myself. The laws of geography dic
tate that the whole North African coast, from the pillars
of Hercules to the sands of Suez, must sooner or later fall
under the beneficent sway of France. There, and there
alone, can Prance recoup her losses in North America. By
such meaus alone can the Mediterranean be made politi
cally the French lake that geography has designed it to be.
And I trust Your Excellencies will pardon me if I further
intimate that, notwithstanding her lack of similar geo.
graphical advantages, Britain will not long leave un
noticed the opportunities of this field of destiny, should
France hesitate. I am tolerably familiar with the genius
of the British people, being myself of them by birthright,
and having had most abundant opportunities to study
their traits in the widely diverse capacities of friend and
foe. This knowledge of the race persuades me that Eng
land will soon invade the Mediterranean — doubtless as soon
as she recovers fi'om the exhaustion of the late war. And
then unless forestalled in the most decisive and definitive
131

PAUL JONES
manner by France, she will become the predominant power
inside the Strait of Gibraltar as well as outside.
In presumptive proof of such intention I have only to
call Tour Excellencies' attention to the desperate defence
of Gibraltar in the last war. Much must always be allowed
for the native obstinacy of the British race. But the de
fence of Gibraltar was so unshaken that its stubbornness
cannot altogether be ascribed to a national trait alone.
Such a defence, at a time when the whole naval world was
in arms against Great Britain, and when, beset in every
part of the globe from America to India, she was yet will
ing to put forth such efforts and undergo such sacrifices as
she did to raise the siege and hold the place, cannot be as
cribed to any motive less ambitious than the ulterior one
of controlling the great sea of which Gibraltar is the gate
way. That this ambition will not be long restrained after
England shall have recovered from her present exhaustion
must be apparent to all who understand the British char
acter. Therefore, now is the time for France to strike. The
attitude of the Dey of Algiers toward civilized commerce,
his shameless enslavement of Christian captives taken by
piracy, and his contemptuous defiance of all warning and
all protest, must beheld to furnish the necessary pretext for
invasion of his domain and subversion of his power. The
ostensible provocation is such that even England cannot
maintain in the sight of the Christian world a valid pro
test against the movement. After the Dey shall have been
crushed, reasons for indefinite occupation of his territory
may without difficulty be found. And, such a foothold
once established, the spreadof Christian conquest under the
auspices of France must naturally follow all along the
North African coast.
Por myself, I have only to assure Tour Excellencies that
I shall be glad to contribute to such a cause my own hum
ble services in any capacity that may be assigned to me,
from the command of a fleet to that of a frigate, I am in-
123

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
fluenced to offer these representations by no desire for gain
or ambition for rank, but simply by my devotion to the
advancement of Christian civilization and my ardor for
the glory of France and the renown of His Most Christian
Majesty's reign.
This remarkable document struck de Vergennes
with vast force. But that great and enlightened
statesman was slowly dying, and his race was almost
run when he read it. Fifty years after, Louis
Philippe, in a speech from the throne, asking the
legislative body to grant supplies for the war of
Algerian conquest, referred to this prophecy of Paul
Jones in 1786, and quoted from it. But many causes
operated in 1786-87 to render the scheme so boldly
and so prophetically outlined by Jones, impractica
ble. France was bankrupt. Her grand, far-reaching
statesmanship had died or was dying with Maurepas,
Calonne, and Vergennes. Moreover, the volcano of
the Eevolution, so soon to burst forth in the fiercest
eruption ever knovm on this planet, was beginning
to rumble deep in the bowels of the political earth.
The opportunity passed. And before the ink was
quite dry on Paul Jones's memorandum, or the
grass green on Vergennes's grave, began that chaos
of universal war which paralyzed the civilized
world for almost a quarter of a century, and in the
titanic throes of which the piracies of Barbary
became petty by comparison.
Jones soon saw that there was no hope of enlisting
the power of France in a crusade against the Barbary
States, and, dropping that aspiration with his accus
tomed philosophy, he made preparations to pursue
the even tenor of his comparatively prosaic mission
133

PAUL JONES
to Denmark. Not willing to undertake that journey
before the opening of spring, he consumed the rest
of the winter of 1786-87 in fortifying himself with
diplomatic connections, and in elaborate preparation
of his case. Among the papers was a review of the
facts, showing such mastery of international law and
admiralty jurisprudence that its authorship has been
commonly ascribed to Jefferson. This is partly true.
Jones drew up the original, and Jefferson amplified
it. But its composition in the main and its theory
as a whole were those of Paul Jones.
At this period occurred an incident in the career
of Commodore Jones that serves to exhibit his ten
dency of thought in directions quite different from
those hitherto considered. Late in 1786 he received
a letter from William Frazier, Esq., of Virginia, of
which he gives a brief synopsis in his Journal of
1787. Mr. Frazier was one of two brothers whom
Jones made trustees of his property on the Lower
Eappahannock, in the summer of 1775, when he was
preparing to enter the naval service of the country.
The ravage of his plantation by Lord Dunmore, the
seizure of his slaves and their deportation to Ja
maica, have already been noted in an early chapter.
Subsequently, at various times Jones had realized
small amounts of money by mortgaging the remnants
of this property, but he had never wholly passed the
title to it. At all events, he still held an equity in
the land. As soon as the war was over, the Fraziers
had put the plantation under tillage again, erecting
temporary buildings sufficient for the purpose, and
hiring a number of slaves to cultivate the soil. Even
the hardy old Scottish Highlander, Duncan Macbean,
134

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
now past three-score, had returned from nearly
seven years' yeoman service with Morgan's Eiflemen,
and had resumed his former post of overseer.
Hearing from good authority that the Commodore
was about at the end of his mission in France, and
that he had considerable capital, the Fraziers wrote
to him, suggesting his return to the old plantation.
They promised to him most favorable terms so far
as the encumbrances were concerned, agreed to re
build his mill and wharf at the lowest cost, and also
to engage, either by hire or by purchase, sufficient
slave labor to put the plantation on its old Colonial
footing. They moreover assured him that it was the
unanimous desire and ambition of the good people
of that region to have once more for their neighbor
a man whose character was so renowned, and whose
exploits had so dazzled the civilized world with their
unparalleled lustre. They assured him that, if he
would return, he must instantly become the leading
citizen of that region, and that any place of public
trust within the gift of the people there would be at
his choice.
To this flattering letter the Commodore replied as
follows : Pakis, December 30, 1786.
Messrs. W. and Arch'd. Frazier.
Gentlemen : I should be wanting in the attribute of
common courtesy if I failed to promptly and with due feel
ing acknowledge your most polite and complimentary letter
of October 19th past, which has just come into my hands.
If, as you intimate, I have received ' ' flattering tokens
of esteem and sense of my services from Kings and Con
gresses, ' ' permit me to assure you that I none the less value
the expressions you transmit to me of the continued confl-
125

PAUL JONES
dence and affection of my old neighbors and friends along
the Rappahannock. To be insensible of the intrinsic value
of such expressions would argue obtuseness of which I have
never been capable and never can be.
But I fear it will not be possible for me to favorably en
tertain your flattering suggestions. In the first place, my
mission in Europe is not yet done. I have only thus far
succeeded in discharging that part of it having particular
reference to France. I have yet to deal with affairs of al
most equal pecuniary importance and probably of yet more
difficult character, in Denmark and Holland. And, besides
all this, I entertain the hope of further employment in the
line of my profession as a naval offlcer, which may afford
me new opportunity of signalizing my devotion to the
cause of Christian freedom. [An allusion, no doubt, to
the projected expedition against the Dey of Algiers.]
But beyond all these considerations, gentlemen, there is
another and, in my way of thinking, far weightier rea
son dissuading me from the meditation of resuming the
lite of a Virginia planter. To do that with prospect of suc
cess under existing conditions would require me to make
myself the beneficiary of slave labor ; to be again a holder
of property in human flesh and blood. I occupied that
attitude once, but It was at a time when my sensibilities on
that score had not been sharpened as they have since been.
Lord Dunmore relieved me, sadly and violently but no
less effectually, of the main part of my offending as an
owner of human slaves. Tou are aware that, early in 1776
I set free my only two remaining boys, Cato and Scipio,
at Providence, R. I. At this writing I must say I have
struggled so long and so desperately for the cause of human
liberty in general and the rights of man at large that I can
no longer bring myself to a distinction based on color or
misfortune as between men whom, as the Good Book says,
" God hath created in His own image. "
Please understand, gentlemen, I do not intend the least
criticism on the views of others in this respect, and 1 claim
136

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
only the privilege of governing myself by the law and the
standard of my own conscience. I certainly shall not be so
presumptuous as to pretend the setting up of a new doctrine.
Therefore you will accept these reflections as pertaining to
me alone.
In the present state of things I cannot see how a Virginia
plantation could be successfully managed without resort
to slave labor. Such an attempt would, undoubtedly, tend
to disturb the regularity of social conditions there, and
raight be detrimental to the public peace and welfare as
those terms are commonly understood. Por these reasons,
and principally for the last mentioned, you will see it is
not possible for me to entertain your most flattering over
tures. As for any remaining interest I may hold in the
land, it can be only a trifle ; and as I expect to be in the
United States very soon again, arrangements may then be
made for closing it out finally, and, I may say, on almost
any terms it may please you to propose.
In conclusion, I beg you to convey to every one of my old
friends and neighbors you may meet the most profound
and ardent assurances of my respect and esteem.
The author of this letter tn 1786 was the same man
who in 1766-67 had been first mate and jiart owner
of the ship King George, engaged in the slave trade
between the Guinea coast and the British West In
dies. If it has no other historical value it at least
serves to show that Paul Jones was a man capable
of adapting his views to the lessons of events.
Having completed the diplomatic preliminaries to
his satisfaction. Commodore Jones left Paris for
Copenhagen in May, 1787. He went first to Brussels
to arrange some private commercial affairs he had
in hand ; and he intended to go thence to Amster
dam for similar objects. He expected these affairs
and his journey to consume about a month, and had
127

PAUL JONES
planned to arrive at Copenhagen about the middle
of June. Soon after his arrival in Brussels he re
ceived a package of letters from America that had
reached Paris after his departure, and which Mr.
Jefferson had forwarded. To his amazement and
almost despair, these letters contained information
of the failure of two important commercial houses
in the United States which had been the principal
American correspondents of the commercial syndi
cate he had organized in France, Belgium, and Hol
land three years before.
Simultaneously with this information came ad
vices that two ships had sailed only a few days be
fore — one from Holland and one from Antwerp — with
rich cargoes belonging to the syndicate and con
signed to one of the bankrupt American houses.
Fortunately the two ships, like most merchant ves
sels of the Netherlands in those days, were slow
sailers. It was also lucky that the Belgian house of
Neuville & Co. was a large owner in the Antwerp
cargo, while the owners of the Amsterdam cargo
were the Van Staphorst Brothers, who had a branch
house at Brussels.
Jones knew that a fast-sailing French packet was
to leave Havre for New York in about ten days.
His resolution was quickly taken. Neuville &
Co. and the Brussels branch of Van Staphorst
Brothers appointed him managing owner of the two
cargoes ; and he at once set out for Havre to catch
the French packet, with the purpose of reaching
New York ahead of the Antwerp and Amsterdam
ships and of annulling there the letters of consign
ment, which, as was the custom in those days, were
128

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
carried by the captain or the supercargo of the
vessel. Of course if these cargoes should fall into
the hands of the assignees of the bankrupt house,
they might be totally swallowed up in the wreck,
or, if not so lost, they would surely be tied up by
legal processes indefinitely. Such a result must
have seriously injured the Dutch and Belgian
houses, but it would have absolutely ruined Jones,
who had all or nearly all his working capital em
barked in the two ventures. Therefore as soon as
the necessary papers were made out to constitute
him managing owner, he left Brussels express for
Paris. He stayed at Paris only long enough to ac
quaint Mr. Jefferson with the situation, and sug
gested that his Danish mission be transferred to Dr.
Bancroft, at least until he could return from the
United States. This was not done, because Mr.
Jefferson believed that delay would help rather than
hurt the interests of the Danish mission, for the
reason that the growth of American prestige gener
ally would day by day increase the tendency of Den
mark toward serious consideration of the cases in
volved. He in fact informed Jones that in his
opinion the necessity of returning to the United
States at that moment was lucky, and he also ad
vised Jones to take advantage of the opportunity
while in America to secure from Congress more
specific and detailed authority to handle the Danish
cases than was embodied in the original resolution
of November 1, 1783, appointing him generally as
plenipotentiary agent to collect prize-moneys in
Europe at large.
Jones now made the best of his way to Havre, in
Vol. II.— 9 129

PAUL JONES
good time to catch the packet, and arrived in New
York July 2, 1787, considerably ahead of the Antwerp
and Amsterdam ships. Once arrived in New York,
Jones had no difficulty in annulling the consign
ments in his capacity of managing owner, subject, of
course, to any bills that might have been drawn in
Europe directly against the cargoes, and he had to
give bond for protection of such bills. This, how
ever, was a matter of form, as he knew that no bills
had been drawn. He then made Van Santvoort &
Browne his agents, consigned the cargoes to them,
and when the ships arrived their cargoes were be
yond the reach of the assignees.
When this affair had been disposed of. Commodore
Jones, under date of New York, July 18, 1787, ad
dressed an official letter to the Honorable John Jay,
Secretary of State — or, as the office was then called.
Minister of Foreign Affairs. The material parts of
this letter were as follows :
. . . The application I made asking compensation
for our prizes through the Danish Minister in London not
having succeeded, it was determined between Mr. Jefferson
and myself that I should go in person to the Court of Co
penhagen. ... I left Paris in the spring and went as
far as Brussels on my way to Copenhagen, when an unfore
seen event in my private affairs rendered it indispensable
that I should turn about and cross the ocean. My private
business here being now finished, I shall in a few days re-
embark for Europe in order to proceed to the Court of
Denmark. .
It would be highly flattering to me if I could carry with
me a letter from Congress to His Most Christian Majesty
thanking him for the squadron he did us the honor to sup
port under our flag. . . . 130

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
Mr. Jay referred this letter to Congress, with
recommendation that it receive immediate attention.
But Congress had taken a recess until the first Mon
day in October, to enable its members to attend the
sessions of the Constitutional Convention then in
progress. The effect of this was to detain the Com
modore in this country about three or four months
longer than he had contemplated. About this time
he was informed that some question had been raised
in the Treasury Board as to his account of expenses
in the settlement of prize-money claims in France,
which Mr. Jefferson had some time before trans
mitted with his approval. On this incident Jones
comments in his Journal of 1787 as follows :
This "Board of Treasury "was something new to me. Ihad
in previous years made the acquaintance of what they called
the ' ' Board of Admiralty. ' ' The result of that acquaint
ance was a discovery that the "Board of Admiralty" was,
with apparent care if not design, composed of men who
knew nothing about naval affairs, the head of it being a
Major-General for whom the Commander-in-Chief could
not, apparently, find any suitable employment in his own
branch of service on land. [General McDougall, who was
connected with the Board of Admiralty in 1781, is prob
ably referred to.] I was now prepared to find the so-called
" Board of Treasury " composed of men knowing nothing
about the affairs of finance. In the main I was not mis
taken. This ' ' Board of Treasury " did not officially require
me to attend upon them, but an intimation from another
source that they would like to ask me a few questions was
enough. I at once, in polite terms, sent them a message,
quite informally, that as I happened to be in the country
at a moment when some of my pubhc accounts were passing
their scrutiny, I should find pleasure in waiting on them if
131

PAUL JONES
they so desired. In reply they informed me that their func
tion was limited to examination of the papers laid before
them by Congress, which consisted of my accounting to
Mr. Jefferson in July, 1786, and Mr. Jefferson's approval
thereof. Though this was evidence enough of their ill-favor and
indicated that, as is usually the case with " Boards, " they
had been misadvised, I bore in mind the fact that my colli
sion with the "Board of Admiralty " in 1781 had resulted
in my receiving the thanks of Congress and being ordered
to command the only ship of the line the country then
had. I was, therefore, not appalled at the apparent disfavor
of the "Board of Treasury."
Considering that I had fulfilled the requirements of
courtesy, I now officially demanded from Congress a copy
of the report of the Board, that I might examine it and, if
necessary, offer my comments upon it prior to its consider
ation by Congress. This request was referred to the Honor
able Mr. Carrington, as a committee of one, and he soon
persuaded the Board that they would make a mistake if
they persisted in treating me as a common agent or mes
senger sent abroad to receive moneys due on an agreed
account. I transmitted to the Board, through Mr. Carring
ton, a statement that the settlement I had made with the
Court of France by order of Congress dated November 1,
1783, had, flrst, Dr. Franklin's, and, second, Mr. Jefferson's
approval, in every stage and article of the business, aud
that I presumed it would be found, at least so far as de
pended on me, to merit the approval of the United States.
. The Board seemed very zealous for the interests of
that broken and disgraced offlcer. Captain Landais. I
¦shall say nothing in opposition to liis interests, but I have
in my possession the most ample testimony — which is at the
service of the Board or of Congress — that if he had been
tried on my accusations, instead of being broken and dis
graced for bringing the Alliance away from France after
his being suspended by Dr. Franklin, the judgment of the
133

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
court-martial must have been of a more grave and serious
nature. . . . The proposition of the Board that I
should give new security for the mission I am to transact
in Denmark could not be complied with. . . .
The result of Mr. Carrington's representations, and
of the impression produced upon Congress by the
statements Jones made through that emiaent gen
tleman, was the passage of the following resolu
tions : In Congkess, October 16, 1787.
Resolved Unanimously, That a medal of gold* be struck
and presented to the Chevalier Paul Jones in commemo
ration of the valor and brilliant services of that offlcer, in
command of a squadron of American and French ships
under the flag and commission of the United States, ofl the
coast of Great Britain, in the late war ; and that the Hon
orable Thomas Jefferson, Minister of the United States at
the Court of Versailles, have the same executed with the
proper devices ; and,
Resolved, That a letter be written to His Most Christian
Majesty informing him that the United States, in Congress
assembled, have bestowed upon the Chevalier Paul Jones
this medal as well in consideration of the distinguished
marks of approbation which His Majesty has been pleased
to confer upon that offlcer as from a sense of his merit ;
and that, as it is his earnest desue to acquire greater knowl
edge in his profession, it Avould be acceptable to Congress
that His Majesty would be pleased to permit him to em
bark with His Majesty's fleets of evolution, convinced that
he can nowhere else so well acquire that knowledge which
may hereafter render him more extensively useful. And,
Ordered, That the Secretary for Foreign Affairs prepare a
* The devices and lettering of the two sides of this medal are repro
duced on the covers of this work. 133

PAUL JONES
letter for the above purpose, to be signed by the President,
and that the Chevalier Paul Jones bear the said letter and
deliver the same into the hands of His Most Chi-istian
Majesty. The letter prepared by Mr. Jay in obedience to
the foregoing order of Congress was as follows :
To His Most Christian Majesty Louis, King of Prance and
Navarre. Great and Beloved Friend : We, the United States,
in Congress assembled, in consideration of the distinguished
marks of approbation with which Tour Majesty has been
pleased to honor the Chevalier Paul Jones, as well as from
a sense of his merit, have unanimously directed a medal of
gold to be struck and presented to him, in commemoration
of his valor and brilliant services while commanding a
squadron of French and American ships under our flag
and commission, off the coast of Great Britain, in the late
war. As it is his most earnest desire to acquire knowledge in
his profession, we cannot forbear requesting that Tour Maj
esty will permit him to embark in your fleets of evolution,
where, only, it wiU, probably, be in his power to acquire
that degree of knowledge which may hereafter render him
most extensively useful.
Permit us to repeat to Tour Majesty our most sincere as
surances that the various and important benefits for which
we are indebted to your friendship will never cease to in
terest us in whatever may concern the happiness of Tour
Majesty, your family, and your people. We pray God to
keep you, our great and beloved friend, under His holy
protection.
Done at the City of New Tork, the 16th day of October, in
the Tear of our Lord 1787, and of our Sovereignty and
Independence the 12th. 134

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
On October 24th Congress took up a resolution
amplifying the powers conferred by the resolution
of November 1, 1783, on Commodore Jones as agent
to collect prize-moneys and making the same appli
cable particularly to the cases then pending at the
Danish Court. But Jones was meditating the pos
sibility of other employment, and he requested his
friends in Congress to redraw the resolution so as to
lodge the whole authority and responsibility in the
hands of Thomas Jefferson, our Minister to France,
with power to delegate the same to the Chevalier
Paul Jones, or to any other agent.
The resolution thus amended was passed October
25, 1787, and with it ended| the last official business
of Paul Jones on the soil of the United States. His
stay in this country in 1787 lasted from July 2d to
November 10th. Though marked by no great events,
this incident in his career is of exceeding historical
interest as an illustration of the estimation in which
his contemporaries held him, and of his own con
summate tact in dealing with any and every kind of
problem that might confront him.
Pending the conferment of these honors, another
transaction of more business-like character had been
in progress. A select committee of which the Hon.
Mr. Carrington was chairman had been appointed
" to examine and report upon certain outstanding
accounts of the Chevalier Paul Jones with the
United States for deferred pay, advances, expenses,
and special services from December, 1775, to Octo
ber, 1787." Under date of July 28, 1781, the Com
modore had rendered to the Hon. Thomas McKean,
then President of Congress, an account covering the
135

PAUL JONES
period from December, 1775, to July, 1781, and em
bracing the above-mentioned items. The total of
this account as stated in 1781 was £5,413 18s. 7d.
(say $27,000). This account had been approved at
the time, but no settlement of it was made and noth
ing paid toward it except £400 personally advanced
to the Commodore by Eobert Morris when the former
was leaving Philadelphia to take charge of the sev
enty-four-gun ship America, then building at Ports
mouth. Now, in 1787, the Commodore, at the request of
the Board of Treasury, restated his account, and
brought it down to October, 1787. In this restate
ment he deducted from the original account of 1781
the £400 advanced to him by Eobert Morris, leaving
a balance of £5,013 18s. 7d. on that score. Then, as
from July, 1781, to October, 1787, he stated an ad
ditional account covering the items above men
tioned except deferred pay, amounting to £4,770
17s. 6d., the grand total as of October, 1787, being
£9,784 16s. Id. without including pay or allowances
for the last six years, for which exclusion he gave
as a reason that " he had not during those six years
served in any command afloat, but had been em
ployed in shore duty where he could find opportu
nity to support himself by legitimate enterprises of
his own."
The select committee of which Mr. Carrington
was chairman made an executive report approving
the Commodore's accounts in full and recommend
ing " immediate payment of the whole, or such part
thereof as may, consistently with the existing con
dition of the Treasury, be practicable." A few days
136

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
after this report Jones was notified that the Board
of Treasury could pay him 2,000 guineas on account,
but regretted that existing fiscal conditions ren
dered payment of the whole amount extremely in
convenient if not impracticable. The Commodore
thereupon replied that, fortunately, his private re
sources were such as to enable him to decline em
barrassing the treasury of our impoverished coun
try in the slightest degree, and he asked only a
formal and official certificate from the proper au
thority that his accounts as rendered were true
and just.
There may have been, perhaps, a trace of personal
vanity in the remark which concluded this decla
ration : *
Permit me to add, gentlemen, that I cannot bring my
self to accept on account any partial payment whatsoever
from a Treasury so depleted, at a time when arrears are
due to everyone who served our cause in all ranks, alike
high and humble ; when many of those unpaid are in need
and want, and when I, more fortunate than many or most
of my shipmates and comrades in arms in that glorious
struggle, am blessed with having to my credit in various
banks of France, Belgium, and Holland a sum greater than
the total of the account under consideration.
It is, perhaps, worth while to add here that this
account was settled for the benefit of the heirs at
law of the Commodore fifty-six years after his death
by an Act of Congress approved July 6, 1848, appro
priating $50,000 in full settlement thereof, including
his share in the three prizes surrendered at Bergen.
* Memorandum to the Treasury Board, November 3, 1787.
137

PAUL JONES
" Besides this," as Jones says in his Journal of
1787, commenting upon the ratification of the Board
of Treasury, " I incurred other outlays of my pri
vate funds on accounts incidental to the public ser
vice, but of which I never entered charge of any
kind, amounting at least to an equal sum. But for
it all, and for my twelve years of service with it, I
am amply repaid by my joy at our success, and by
the marks of lasting honor and approbation that my
countrymen have conferred upon me."
Among what the Commodore describes as " minor
transactions " while in the United States in 1787 was
the execution of a quit claim to all interest in or
title to the Eappahannock plantation, " for and in
consideration of £500, to be paid in tobacco, deliv
ered in hogsheads for shipment to the agent therein
designated, within a period of twelve months from
date." The performance of this agreement was
guaranteed by Messrs Frazier & Frazier, of Norfolk
and Bordeaux, and it was carried out. When this
tobacco was shipped for the Commodore's account to
Antwerp in 1788, he was in Eussia, and it was held
subject to his orders nearly a year, or until his orders
could be received by the slow mails of those days.
Thus by an advance of price the tobacco billed from
Virginia at £500 netted the Commodore nearly £800
when sold in 1789.
Contemporary records as well as his own observa
tions in his journals of that and subsequent years
leave no doubt that, on the whole, the Commodore's
four months' sojourn in this country in 1787, though
his last, was also his pleasantest view of this country.
As we have pointed out, public honors were simply
138

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
showered upon him. He had only to put in writing
to Mr. Jay a request and Congress would in a day or
two embody it in a resolution. Every door in the
land, from manor-house to cottage, was open to him.
The quaint newspapers of that olden time teemed
with sketches, stories, and anecdotes of his deeds
and his sayings. In short, we think it may safely
be said that from July to November, 1787, Paul
Jones was the most attractive and most widely
celebrated personage in the United States. In
his own Journal he makes little reference to the
general attention paid him. But he is careful to
record and describe every visit from his hero-ship
mates of the Alfred, the Providence, the Eanger,
and the Bon Homme Eichard. And they were not
few. Every survivor of those crews who could
possibly reach him visited the " old commander."
Whenever one of them was announced, whether
officer or common sailor, the Commodore at once
suspended any business, or even any social func
tion he might have on hand, to greet the ship
mate. Among his visiting comrades are recorded the
names of Dale, Lunt, Stacey, Hall, Gardner, Na
thaniel Fanning, Tom Potter — who came from Balti
more expressly to see him — and John Mayrant, who
made a sea voyage from Charleston to New York
for no purpose whatever but to visit Paul Jones.
Of this visit Jones has left a record in his Journal
that would be a garland for any name in history.
It is one sentence, where he says : "It was my
fortune to command many brave men, but I never
knew a man so exactly after my own heart or so
139

PAUL JONES
near the kind of man I would create, if I could,
as John Mayrant."
In the same relation a little further along the
Commodore draws a contrast between Mayrant and
Nathaniel Fanning that would stand for a charac
ter-picture unto all time of the best types of South
Carolina and Massachusetts manhood, respectively.
As has been intimated in previous pages, these two
were, par excellence, his favorites among all wbo
served with him. They happened to visit him in
New York simultaneously. Fanning coming from
Salem, and Mayrant from Charleston. Of them he
says :
Bach of these two was perfect of his kind. Fanning was
the perfection of the fighting Puritan, Mayrant of the fight
ing Huguenot. One was of the race of Cromwell, the other
of the blood of La Tour d' Auvergne, but both born and
bred Americans. In bravery, or, I should say, in that cheer
ful kind of spirit that makes a man unable to believe that
there is such a word as ' ' danger ' ' in the dictionary, or, if
so, not able to see why it should be there, they were quite
alike. Neither of them ever knew what the word meant,
and either of them would have gone to certain death in line
of duty, without realizing that he was doing anything out
of the common run. Diflerent as they were in all else,
they were alike in two things: Both were alike ignorant of
fear, and neither could be conquered alive.
Notwithstanding the numerous and diversified
demands upon the Commodore's attention during
these four months, he found time to discharge his
social obligations by visiting old friends in Phila
delphia, and by a tour among the manor-houses of
the Livingstons, the Van Courtlandts, and the Van
140

PRIZE-MONEY SETTLEMENTS
Eensselaers, on the Hudson ; where, it is needless to
say, he was received with all the eclat that Knicker
bocker hospitality could offer to a chevalier of his
distinction and his decorations.
On the occasion of the Commodore's visit to Liv
ingston Manor in October, 1787, Madame Livingston
endeavored to make a match for him. The lady in
question was Mrs. Eosalie Ten Eyck, nee Bloem or
Bloom, widow of a distinguished officer of the Second
New York Continentals (Van Courtlandt's regiment)
who had died some years before, from the effects of
wounds received in the storming of the British re
doubt at Yorktown. Mrs. Ten Eyck was then a
childless widow about twenty-seven years old, pos
sessed, in her ovsti right, one of the finest estates in
what is now Columbia County, New York, and was
perplexed by the attentions of a perfect legion of
suitors from far and near.
According to Madame Livingston's chaririing
journal, the young widow was her guest when the
Chevalier came to visit the manor-house. Madame
Livingston continues :
There was no mistaking the signs of her conduct in his
presence. I frankly own that though I had known the Chev
alier in Philadelphia when there with my husband during
the war, and had greatly admired him then, he was now an
infinitely superior man. Then I thoucrht him a genius, as
did everybody, but in many respects a "rough diamond."
But now he fairly shone with the polish of European courts;
his grace, dignity, and aplomb were easily beyond imitation
by the most accomplished men of our own set, and he seemed
more like some French Duke paying us a visit than the
brave, dashing sailor Paul Jones I had known in Philadel
phia iu 1776.
^ 141

PAUL JONES
His ways were the poetry of grace and elegance, his table
talk was a revelation to us of the charm and the fascination
of court life in the Old World. His discourses of the great,
the royal and the noble personages he had encountered in
his marvellous career, told sometimes in English like that ol
Bacon, and sometimes in French like that of Fontanelle, by
turns delighted, amazed, and mystified us. Alas that he
could have been with us but two short weeks ! . . .
Such chivalry I never saw in any man. We begged him
to give us his own description of the miraculous battle
that had made him famous in all the world. He parried
our importunity by saying that too much had already been
said and written about it, and, besides, the picture of it in
his memory was too horrible for portrayal in the sight of
our delicate sex. But he said he felt at liberty to impress
upon us that he owed a debt of gratitude to his brave and
chivalric adversary, Captain Sir Richard Pearson, whose
manful conduct and heroic bravery had given him the
opportunity for such a combat ; and in that view he con
sidered himself fortunate in having encountered so admira
ble a foe. And that was all we could induce him to say
about it.
The gallant Commodore succeeded in escaping
even so well-set and so temptingly baited a matri
monial trap, and when he left the hospitable roof of
Livingston Manor, and bade good-by to Eosalie
Bloom, as the young widow was known in her maiden
days, it was to go aboard the ship from whose deck
he was destined to take his last view of the land for
whose freedom he had fought so well.

142

CHAPTEE IV
ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVT
The Commodore's last " bon voyage " from Amer
ican shores was a dinner given by John Jay, Satur
day evening, November 10, 1787, at which about forty
guests were assembled, and which is described in the
chronicles of the time as a grand affair. From Mr.
Jay's hospitable roof the Commodore went about two
o'clock Sunday morning to what is now Cortlandt
street wharf, where a boat waited to set him on
board the good ship Governor Clinton, then lying off'
the Battery, cable hove short, awaiting only her dis
tinguished passenger to weigh anchor and drop down
through the Narrows with the young ebb-tide. The
Governor Clinton was the fastest ship of her day.
She had been built by Mr. Peck, of Boston, just at
the close of the war, for a privateer, but the advent
of peace caused her to be converted into a packet.
She had already made several very rapid voyages,
but this one, in which she carried Paul Jones and
his fortunes, broke all previous records. Clearing
Sandy Hook at daylight November 11, 1787, she hove
to off Dover Castle, November 30th— nineteen days
from New York to the Strait of Dover, where she
landed the Commodore and then proceeded to her
destination, which was Antwerp."'
* In connection with this yoyage was an incident from which several
143

PAUL JONES
Jones proceeded immediately from Dover to Lon
don, where he delivered confidential mail and de
spatches to Mr. Adams. He remained in London
about a week; one incident of his stay there, as
described by his Edinburgh biographer, being pub
lic recognition while occupying a box at Covent
Garden Theatre in company with some British naval
officers. " He was on this occasion," says his biog
rapher, " the object of much curiosity, which, though
good-natured, was little the less annoying, as he
found himself obliged to avail himself of the stage
exit in leaving the theatre, to avoid a crowd of per
sons desirous of a closer view of him and of shaking
him by the hand." Another and more probable
version is that of the London Chronicle, which states
that " the celebrated American naval captain, Paul
Jones, was recognized in his box at the theatre by
one of the actors who had made his acquaintance in
of Jones's biographers have inferred that, as late as 1787, he apprehended
rough usage if he should fall into the hands of the English at sea. Under
date of October 24, 1787, he had written to .Jefferson saying that : " as
it is reported the English fleet is out and steering to the westward, I
have concluded not to take the French packet, but will sail in an Amer
ican ship a fortnight later." On November 9th he wrote a letter of
somewhat similar purport to General Washington, which is reproduced
here in fac-simile, and therefore it need not be printed in the text.
The historical fact is that Jones had no fear for his personal safety in
any event. But at that time there were rumors of strained relations be
tween England and France, and he apprehended that, possibly, the
French packet, which was a slow ship, might be overhauled and de
tained. Besides this, the American packet for whose sailing he waited
was the fastest ship of her day, and her commander was one of his old
subordinate ofiicers in the Revolution. This last was probably the
principal consideration that influenced him. However, as it turned
out, he lost no time, as the American ship sailing November Ilth
landed him at Dover November 30th, while the French packet sailing
October 24th did not arrive at Nantes until about the eame date.
144

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GRAPH LETTER FROM PAUL JONES TO WASHINGTON.
tk Department of Stale archives, Washington.
ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVT
Paris. He was invited to the green-room and was
much feted by the company of players, going with a
party of them after the play to a private supper. He
has, lately, appeared twice on 'Change and once at
the Bank, where he was the centre of observation.
At the Bank he lodged a credit for certain commer
cial houses he is understood to be allied with. He
was also observed riding in the park one afternoon,
and his equitation was thought remarkable for a man
whose career must have afforded little opportunity
for familiarity with the saddle."*
Whatever may have been the nature of the Commo
dore's business in London, he left that city in time
to arrive at Paris the evening of December 12, 1787,
where he at first took quarters privately at the Hotel
de Beauvois, whence he at once addressed the fol
lowing note to Mr. Jefferson :
My Dear ajstd Honored Sir • I am just arrived here
from England. I left New Yorli November lltii, and have
brought public despatches and a number of private letters
for you. I would have waited on you immediately instead
of writing, but I have several strong reasons for desiring
that no person should know of my being here until I shall
* This last surmise on the part of the Chronicle was not well founded.
Jones was always passionately fond ot horseback exercise, and indulged
in it whenever he could. During his plantation life in Virginia, brief as
it was, he rode constantly, and his horses were always the best to be had.
He was also a constant rider in the parks and environs of Paris during
the considerable periods of his residence there. And, as will appear in
subsequent pages, one of his journeys between St. Petersburg and Kher
son, a distance of nearly eleven hundred miles, was almost entirely done
in the saddle, which he preferred to the Russian wheeled vehicles of those
days— a preference that can be appreciated even now, when one has to
travel there in the summer, ofl the railway lines.
Vol.. IL— 10 145

PAUL JONES
have seen you and have been favored with your advice as
to the course I ought to pursue.
I have a letter from Congress for the King, and per
haps you will think it advisable not to present it at this
moment. I shall not go out until I hear from or see you.
And as the people in this hotel do not know my name, you
will please ask lor the gentleman just arrived who is lodged
in No. 1.
In his Journal of 1790, Jones explains that his
reasons for this preliminary secrecy were quite sim
ple. Since leaving Paris in the previous May he
had enjoyed scant means of keeping himself au cour
ant with the progress of diplomatic and court affairs,
and did not know what, if any, further steps had
been taken in the Danish case during his absence.
While in London Mr. Adams had strongly impressed
upon him the advisability of abandoning the prize-
money claims as a matter of separate or special ne
gotiation with Denmark, and of leaving them to be
included among the questions to be determined by
a general treaty of amity and commerce, which, Mr.
Adams assured him, must in the end result in
greater advantage to the claimants than direct or
separate negotiation. Mr. Adams had also intimated
that in no event would the Court of Denmark enter
tain demands for more than the amount which the
Baron de Waltersdorff had suggested to Dr. Frank
lin in 1785 ; namely, £10,000, which was little more
than one-fifth of the actual value of the prizes. He
says in his Journal that he wished to know Mr. Jef
ferson's views on these points before making up his
own mind. And he also wished to dispose of these
important public questions before making his arrival
146

ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVT
known socially. He states that his reliance for cur
rent information as to the aff'airs of the court and
society at Versailles was Madame de Telison, and
only one of her letters had reached him during the
four months or more of his stay in America. He
particularly wished to learn from Mr. Jefferson
whether his letter from New York of September 4th,
enclosing a letter of advice to that lady, had been
received, and, if so, whether she had acted upon
the advice, and with what result.
Mr. Jefferson promptly visited the Commodore at
his hotel and soon imparted to him all the informa
tion he desired, stating, among other things, that
Madame de Telison had been appointed to a suit
able position at court in the department of Madame
Campan, and was employed as a court reader and
translator of English papers, plays, and periodicals ;
and that for this reason she had been compelled to
leave Paris and take up her abode at Versailles,
where, Mr. Jefferson assured the Commodore, the
lady impatiently awaited his return.*
Having disposed of these affairs, Mr. Jefferson in-
* On October 34th, less than three weeks before sailing, the Commodore
had addressed from New York the following letter to Aimee de Telison ;
"... The last French packet brought no letter to me from the
person whose happiness is dearer to me than anything else. I have been
on the rack of fear and apprehension and am totally unable to account
for your silence ; having received but one letter since my departure from
France, and that one written soon after I left there, informing me of the
sudden death of our friend the most noble Marquise [de Marsan].
" My business is done here and the moment of my return to Europe
approaches. My sentiments are unchanged and my impatience can better
be imagined than expressed. I have been honored here beyond my own
expectations. But your sUenoe makes even honors insipid. I am, how
ever, far from blaming you and farther yet from asciibing your silence
147

PAUL JONES
formed the Commodore that the Eussian Ambassa
dor to France, the Baron Simolin, had requested
that he lay before him a proposition looking to an
engagement in the naval service of Russia. Mr.
Jefferson said the Eussian Ambassador was not au
thorized to make definitive arrangements, but that he
desired an interview with the Commodore, provided
he would entertain the project at all.
This was a surprise to Jones, and, at first, not alto
gether a welcome one, as appears from his comment
on it. He says, in his Journal of 1790 :
I was at first inclined to view the project as chimerical ;
though I knew that the impending war between Russia and
Turkey must afford grand possibilities of naval operation,
because an indispensable factor in it would be the destruc
tion of the Turkish Navy in the Euxine, and the conversion
of that land-locked sea into a Russian lake.
But, on the other hand, I knew little of Russia or the
Russians. My acquaintance with them was limited to less
than a dozen personages, all in Imperial diplomatic service
in France, England, or Holland. I knew not one word of
the language nor even the alphabet, and I could not see
how it would be possible to satisfactorily direct operations
of subordinates in warfare through interpreters. I knew
of course, that educated Russians could all speak French ;
but I did not suppose this accomplishment extended to
subordinate officers of the navy ; and besides, the command
er of a naval force should always be able to communicate
to neglect. Want of health or some other misfortune must have inter
posed. ,"
This letter was one of the two in his correspondence with her in which
she is addressed by her middle name, "Adele," all the others preserved
having been addressed more formally to "Madame de Telison." And
this letter also betrays more afiection, if not intimacy of relation, than
any other. 148

ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVY
personally with his common sailors, whenever occasions of
benevolence or justice may requue.
Beyond all this I had formed impressions as to the genius
and methods of government in Russia that accorded ill with
my conceptions of what ought to be in that respect.
Though, as these impressions had been derived wholly from
reading, I was, of course, open to whatever lessons actual
observation and experience might teach ; having long ago
perceived that books are after all only the borrowed spec
tacles of others and invariably colored or distorted by the
prejudices or interested motives of writers. On the whole
I at first conceived the project to be impracticable, and so
told Mr. Jefferson ; though I admitted to him that it opened
up a vista of ambitious hopes and dreams of glory on a grand
scale too powerful and vivid to be lightly cast aside, and
well worthy the most careful consideration and deepest
meditation. Mr. Jefferson said of course he could not answer for the
considerations I had mentioned, and he was compliment
ary enough to say that while my knowledge of French
would enable me to deal fully with Russians in high
station, he was persuaded that my aptness at learning
foreign tongues would doubtless soon remove the objection
on the score of the Russian language itself. He said he had
but one more duty to discharge in the premises, namely : to
bring me personally in contact with the Russian Ambassa
dor, which was arranged to take place at an early day.
Still mystified, however, as to the origin of this remark
able proposal, I set about investigating it in my own way.
Proceeding in a day or two to Versailles, I placed myself
en rapport with the court entourage and lost no time in
setting the wits of Little Madame [evidently meaning Ma
dame de Telison] at work to trace out the mystery. She
soon, through the gossip of the Palace, had the plot un
ravelled. It appears from her revelations that a year or more be
fore this time, or shortly after I had tendered my services
149

PAUL JONES
to the King in the hope of employment in a crusade against
the Algerines, the Empress Catharine II. had applied by
autograph letter to His Majesty for the loan of a flag-
offleer of high rank, comparative youth, and established
capacity, to organize and command her naval forces in the
Black Sea.
His Majesty had officers of suitable rank and attain
ments for such an arduous task ; as for example, Kersaint,
d' Albert de Eions, or Morard de Galles ; but, as I learned,
they would not have viewed the opportunity with un
questioning favor. Besides, His Majesty, from motives of
state prudence, was not inclined to so palpably choose
sides in the struggle between the Empress and the Sultan
as would be involved in encouraging or even allowing a
French vice-admiral or even eontre-admiral of established
repute to take active command against the Turks. His
Majesty, in this dilemma, had then intimated to his Am
bassador near the court of the Empress that my own ser
vices might possibly be found available, and, if so, com
mending me in most unqualified terms to the consideration
of the Empress. Ou such representations by the Count de
Segur (the French Ambassador) to the Empress, she had
instructed her Ambassador at Versailles, the Baron Simo
lin, to approach me ou the topic. And Simolin, in his
turn, had employed the good offices of Mr. Jefferson to in
augurate the project with me. I learned also that the
Empress had thus far succeeded in enlisting only the ser
vices of the Prince of Nassau-Siegen ; and this did not add
to my favorable impressions in view of my previous ac
quaintance with the Prince in the affair of the Indien and
other projects during the American war. I took precau
tion to fortify myself with this knowledge of preliminary
events before meeting M. de Simolin. I must own that,
whatever my misgivings on other points may havo been, I
was most deeply impressed by the benevolent and unso
licited interest King Louis XVI. had manifested in my be
half ; and think it well to say that my ultimate action in
150

ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVT
accepting the opportunity was due more to my gratitude
for his good offices than to any other cause.

The Commodore, having thus got to the bottom
of the affair, now called upon the Baron Simolin
agreeably to the arrangement made by Mr. Jeffer
son, and discussed with him the project in all its
bearings. But no conclusion was reached.
Preparation of the Danish case was completed ;
Mr. Jefferson not sharing Mr. Adams's view that
the prize-money affair should be left for treatment
as one of the range of subjects to be determined in
a general treaty. On the other hand, Mr. Jefferson
believed that it could not be effectively, if even
properly, dealt with in that manner, but, if left
open, might be used as a disturbing and quite alien
element in any general negotiations that might oc
cur. Mr. Jefferson also rejected the idea that the
Baron Waltersdorff's suggestion to Dr. Franklin of
£10,000 as a basis for full settlement was conclusive,
and held that it could not reasonably be regarded
as anything more than a feeler or as a minimum
representing the initial stand Denmark might take.
From these facts — though there is no lack of other
evidence — it is apparent that the conceptions of Mr.
Jefferson, not only as to the methods but also as to
the principles of diplomacy, were at wide variance
with those of Mr. Adams.
Among the papers which Jones took with him
from America to France at the end of 1787 was a
print of the Constitution as its text stood at that
time. When he arrived at New York, the beginning
of July that year. Congress was in recess, in order
151

PAUL JONES
to enable its members to attend the Grand Con
vention then engaged in considering what proved
to be substantially the final form of the Constitution
for submission to the States. In January, 1788, the
Commodore drew up for Mr. Jefferson a memo
randum of his views upon that great instrument,
which he had printed in leaflet form. The memo
randum is too long for complete insertion here, but
a few extracts will suffice to indicate the nature of
his study and reflection in respect to it. At the
outset he says :
In your masterful presence, sir, I am not expected to dis
cuss questions affecting the principles of statecraft, diplo
macy, jurisprudence, finance, the relations of legislation,
administration and execution of laws, one to the other ; nor
is it my province, even if I possessed the capacity, to con
ceive, much less offer views on subjects of purely civic nat
ure and quality. Those are affairs beyond me, not only in
the sense of mental unpreparedness to suitably survey or
pertinently discuss them, but also in the sense that, as a
military offioer, it is my duty to obey those whose province
it is to make and enforce laws, to help the civic authority
in its efforts to make the government of our country revered
at home and respected abroad. This is enough for one
station in the public sei'vice.
But I trust I may be pardoned if I say that it has been
my singular good fortune, at intervals of respite ashore, to
have opportunity of witnessing the operations and listen
ing to the debates that have at last brought forth this draft
of a new constitution — a new bible of liberty, I trust I
may term it— in the presence of which even Magna Charta
itself can but be content witb second place and inferior
consequence. It was my good fortune to be at Philadelphia during
those months of the year 1777 when the Articles of Confed-
153

ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVY
eration were debated. My friends the Honorable Eobert
Livingston and the lamented Honorable Joseph Hewes were
members of the Committee of Thirteen who framed those
articles, and they were so kind as to keep me au courant
with all intelligence concerning them that did not transpire
in published debate. The Articles ol Confederation were
not finally agreed upon until November 15, 1777, when I
was in mid- Atlantic with the Ranger ; but among the
precious papers I carried in that voyage was an advance
printer's-slip of those Articles lor the information of
His Excellency Dr. Franklin : an honor which I value
equally with any other it may liave been my fortune to re
ceive. The Articles of Confederation were enough to bind
the States together so long as the pressure of external
danger by war would of itself keep them from falling apart.
But I never believed that the system those Articles contem
plated could make a perfect union or create a permanent
nation. In my opinion those Articles, as soon as peace and
independence might come, would leave the several States in
relations to each other not unlike those of the petty princi
palities of Middle and Western Germany ; or, even worse,
like the disjointed provinces of Poland in the last century.
In 1783, just before sailing for Europe in November of
that year, I had the honor of meeting His Excellency Gov
ernor Henry [Patrick Henry], and we talked on this subject.
To my amazement he expressed the view that even the Arti
cles of Confederation, as they were then being interpreted
and enforced, conferred too much authority on the central
power and stripped the individual States of their rightful
sovereignty in many respects. When I argued to the con
trary he rather bluntly told me that my conceptions of gov
ernment, whatever might be my impulses of patriotism and
aspirations for the rights of man, were after all the result
of my lifelong experience on quarter-decks, and that I
could not apply the discipline of a ship to the problems of
governing a free people. In vain did I argue with Mr.
Henry that no government could hope to be respected at
153

PAUL JONES
home or honored abroad that was not firmly united or
capable of presenting an undivided and unbroken front in
any emergency; and that this could not be done by any
other than a strong and unquestioned central authority. I
could not persuade Mr. Henry out of the conviction ; or,
rather, I could not reason him into the admission that the
absorption of power by any central government could mean
anything but surrender of the rights of communities and the
freedom of individuals. Mr. Henry was by no means alone.
But it is, I think, fortunate for the whole future of our
country that he was in the minority and that doctrines
contrary to his have at last prevailed.
This new constitution beyond question will create, when
adopted by the necessary nine States, a firm and solid
government. Its adoption is assured not only by nine at
once, but by all eventually. There is but one clause in it
that I would modify in any respect if I had the power.
That is the one making the President Commander-in-Chief
of the army and navy. This clause fails to draw in so
many words the all-important distinction between civic
and martial command.
In connection with these observations, the Com
modore offered his views as to the proper relation
between the Chief Executive and the military power.
This occurs twice in his extant writings ; once in the
Jefferson memorandum under consideration, and
again some time afterward in a letter to Lafayette
in which he said :
I hope, by the time the necessary nine States have adopted
the new Constitution they will have provided in some way
to divest the President of all actual and substantive mil
itary rank and command; for though General Washing
ton might be safely trusted with such tempting power as
the chief command of the fleet and the army, yet, depend
154

ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVY
on it, in some other hands it could not fail to overset the
liberties of America. The President should be only the
First Civil Magistrate. Let him, as constitutional Com
mander-in-Chief, command with the pen alone; and deprive
him of the power or the right to draw his sword and lead
them, under some plausible pretext, or under any circum
stance whatever, to cut the throats of part of his fellow-
citizens in order to make himself tyrant over the rest.
Sovereignty in America, alone of all the world, rests in the
people, and is expressed through their representatives in
Congress. Let it be made forever impossible to exchange
the sovereignty of the people for that of a person.
Having thus expressed his views as to the organic
law, the Commodore proceeds :
As a sequel to the fortune I had of being at Philadelphia
when the Articles of Confederacy were under debate in 1777,
so again was it my exalted privilege to be in New York
during the" final consideration and engrossment of the new
Constitution during the summer just past (1787). The
grand convention had assembled May 25th, by the repre
sentation of seven States, and elected General Washington
President. The other States came in rapidly. When I
arrived at New York the beginning of July the good work
was well advanced, and the debates were in full progress.
I cannot bring myself to believe that ever again in the his
tory of the human race will it be possible for such porten
tous debates to occur or such everlasting solving of prob
lems to be done. The thanks of Congress I had enjoyed in
1781 entitled me to the privileges of the floor of that body
for life, and this grant was now graciously accepted by the
convention as carrying equal privilege. They did not ex
clude me even when, for reasons of state, their sessions
were secret. And this I conceived to be, tacitly, the most
exalted mark of consideration I had ever been honored with.
The engrossment and final adoption of the Constitution
155

PAUL JONES
as a whole took place the 17th of September, and on the
28th of September it was ordered that the instrument be
referred to the several States for their respective action.
It was, however, long since foregone that the action of
nine States would be favorable, that eleven were sure, that
the twelfth was scarcely doubtful, and it was not believed
that the thirteenth would long hold out against such over
powering odds.
Meeting General Hamilton at the house of Colonel Van
Courtlandt about this time, I asked him what provision
was going to be made for the navy when Congress came to
enact laws for the structure of the executive branch as pro
vided in the Constitution. The General told me it was
practically agreed in Congress that, when that time should
arrive, they would create four Ministries : — that of Foreign
Affairs, that of Finance, that of War, and that of Justice.
And he said it was agreed, for the present at least, to merge
the concerns of the navy in the Ministry of War.
To this I at once ventured protest. I represented that if it
were indispensable to unite the navy and the army under one
administrative head, the navy should be flrst instead of being
relegated, as was the apparent design, to the condition of a
mere appanage or subsidiary establishment to the army. I
urged that such an arrangement, if persisted in, must break
down; that it could never bear the test of experience and
practice, not even in peace, much less in war. It may be
well enough as a temporary expedient, particularly as at
this time we have no navy that requires separate adminis
trative control. But the situation of our country is such
that the growth of its navy cannot long be deferred ; and in
my judgment the growth of the country must in the long
run tend in the direction of naval rather than military
supremacy. Freed as we are and ever shall be by the laws of geogra
phy from the intricate questions and entanglements of
European states, and relieved as we forever must be from
the distractions of dynastic interests and the quarrels of
156

ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAV^
Crowned heads, we can never have occasion for maintenance
of large standing armies. But our navy must grow with
our commerce, and it is upon the sea, rather than on the
land, that we must in future meet the nations of the Old
World on equal terms. Hence, it seems to me that if there
is to be, in our original laws, a distinctiveness of rank and
consequence as between the two, the navy should be held
as the service of prior importance.
That it is not to be so held by the executive law as agreed
to be drawn is a matter of infinite chagrin to me. Even if
we have at the moment no navy in actual ships and men,
the irresistible fact that we must soon develop one should,
I think, have induced our statesmen to recognize it sepa
rately and of independent rank as a service in the text of
the primary law. The time must soon come when the logic
of events will compel the country to create a separate
Ministry of Marine. And I am sure that the esprit de
corps of the naval service in the future would be much
quickened if its officers and men could have the proud sat
isfaction that their branch of their country's defence had
received proper recognition in the original text of the
primary law, the first to be enacted after the Constitution
itseff. *
There are other grounds also for belief that the limiting
of the executive and administrative branch to four minis
tries, as intimated to me by General Hamilton, will prove '
unwise. The plea is, of course, that the country is new and
poor and therefore offices should be kept as few as possible.
But this is only penny wise for the moment and must prove
pound foolish in the long run. It is, in fact, a confession
* The experiment so vigorously and so prophetically condemned by
Commodore Jones in 1788 lasted just nine years after the adoption of the
Constitution. In 1798 the existing Department of the Navy was created.
And the officers of our navy, past and present, have always more or less
shared the chagrin expressed by Paul Jones that their branch of the
country's defence should not have had its birth as a complete and in
divisible part of the original executive establishment of 1789.
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PAUL JONES
that our country is an infant nation in swaddling clothes
and must await the slow processes of growth. Such a con
fession is repugnant to just pride. In my opinion, we should
discard all notions of infancy. We should view our coun
try, not as a babe among nations, but as having sprung by
miracle full-grown and panoplied like Minerva from the
brow of Jove.
No sensible person will maintain that four ministries will
answer the ends of our government for all time. Others
must be organized. Had I the power I would create at least
seven ministries in the primary organization of government
under the Constitution. In addition to the four already
agreed upon, I would ordain a Ministry of Marine, a Min
istry of Home Affairs, and a General Post Offlce ; and, as
commerce must be our great reliance, it would not be
amiss to create also, as the eighth, a Ministry of Commerce.
Such a ministry would be charged with the care and de
velopment of our shipbuilding, already conceded to rep
resent the most advanced skill, and fortified by nature with
our inexhaustible supply of the finest ship-timber right
at the hands of our shipwrights, which is already become
the envy of the almost treeless nations of the Old World
in comparison. It would also promote and encourage
the zeal and efficiency of our large seafaring population
throughout our long coast-line, producing a race of sail
ors who have shown that alike in battle and in the storm
they are the best in the world. I estimate that though
our population is now a little short of four millions, we
have at least a hundred thousand prime seamen from New
Hampshire to Savannah, which is a much larger propor
tion to the whole than in the Kingdoms of Great Britain
aud Ireland, with more than three times our population.
Surely, it seems to me, such great material resources and
such an array of men, holding so mighty a part of the des
tinies of the country, should be recognized in the form of
government. 158

ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVY
On January 24, 1788, Mr. Jefferson handed to the
Commodore his credentials as plenipotentiary agent
to the Court of Denmark, and he soon after left
Paris for Copenhagen. He travelled through Brus
sels, The Hague, and Amsterdam to the Helder, by
land ; thence to Hamburg by packet ; thence to
Lubeck by land, and from Lubeck to Copenhagen by
packet ; arriving at the Danish Capital March 4th.
This journey seems to have been a trying one; for
on March Ilth, a week after his arrival at Copen
hagen, he wrote to Mr. Jefferson to say that he
had been so indisposed from the fatigue and cold
suffered on the road that he was compelled to stay
in his apartments almost constantly ; that he at first
feared a serious attack of fever, but now the danger
was past and he should take up with energy the
object of his mission. On March 18th he wrote to
Jefferson again, giving an account of his presentation
to the King of Denmark the day before by the Baron
de la Houze, French Minister to Copenhagen, and
describing also the supper which the French Minis
ter and himself were invited to share with the royal
family the same evening.
In this description the Commodore betrayed, his
fondness for the attentions of royalty, notwithstand
ing the singleness of his devotion to the cause of
freedom and the " rights of man " — or as he used to
say, in his English as well as in his French writ
ings, " droits de l'homme." He seems to have been
quite enraptured with the Princess Eoyal of Den
mark, eldest daughter of the King. The Princess,
then not more than nineteen or twenty years of age,
was already celebrated for her beauty, grace, and
159

PAUL JONES
intelligence. Of her the Commodore said in his
letter to Mr. Jefferson : " The young Princess
Eoyal is a charming person, and her graces are so
much her own that it is impossible to see and con
verse with her without paying to her that homage
which artless beauty and good nature must ever
command, be the rank and station what they may."
However, the Commodore was not halted in the
prosecution of his mission by these royal hospitali
ties. On March 24th, a week after the royal enter
tainment, he addressed a formal letter to Count
Bernstorff, Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs, en
closing a copy of the Act of Congress by virtue of
which he acted, together with Mr. Jefferson's letter
of credential, and requesting, as far as might be
consistent with diplomatic usages, " a prompt and
explicit decision " on the affairs which Congress,
by its Act of October 25, 1787, had directed him to
settle. And he concluded his letter with the obser
vation, I have been very particular in communicating to the
Govemment of the United States all the polite attentions
vnth which I have been honored at this court ; and they
will learn with great pleasure the kind reception I have
met with here. I have felicitated myself on being the in
strument to settle the delicate international affair in ques
tion with a Mimster who conciliates the views of the wise
statesman with the noble sentiments and cultivated mind
of the true philosopher and the man of letters.
To this overture the Commodore received no im
mediate response, and on March 30th he addressed
a second letter to Count Bernstorff, repeating the
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ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVY
substance of his first one, and urged immediate
action ; calling attention to the fact that he had al
ready made engagements which would soon compel
him to leave Copenhagen.
Count Bernstorff answered under date of April 4,
1788, assuring the Commodore of the most distin
guished consideration of the Court of Denmark for
him personally and for the government he repre
sented, but stating that the King had decided that
the affair could not be concluded until the new con
stitution should have been adopted by the several
States, after whioh the negotiation would be re
sumed and promptly concluded ; together with many
other equally polite and equally evasive declara
tions. On receipt of this note the Commodore at once
considered his mission at an end, and replied by
thanking Count Bernstorff for the extremely polite
attentions with which the Court of Denmark had
honored him.
In the meantime Baron Knidener, the Eussian
Minister at Copenhagen, had laid before Commodore
Jones a definite proposition from the Empress Cath
arine herself, in her own handwriting, offering him
the command of her naval force in the Black Sea,
subject only to the general orders of Prince Potemkin,
Commander-in-Chief, and to operate in concert with
the army under command of General Alexander
Suwarrow. On receipt of this proposition direct from the Em
press, Commodore Jones cast aside all his previous
doubts or misgivings and authorized Baron Kru-
dener to inform Her Imperial Majesty that he would
Vol. II.--11 161

PAUL JONES
accept the commission of rear-admiral in the Eussian
navy. The Empress in her instructions to Baron
Krudener had described the appointment as that of
" captain-commandant, with the relative rank of
major-general " ; but Jones said that he could much
better comprehend the meaning of the words " rear-
admiral " than that of those used by the Empress ;
and as they seemed to mean substantially the same
thing, he would prefer the simpler and more strictly
naval designation of rear-admiral. Baron Krudener
then undertook, on behalf of the Empress, that the
Commodore's preference should be complied with,
and he promptly agreed to enter the Eussian naval
service. The complete text of the correspondence leading
up to this decision would be interesting rather to
the close student of history than to the general
reader. It is voluminous, covered a period of sev
eral months, and was participated in by Jones him
self ; by the Empress Catharine ; Count Segur,
French Ambassador at St. Petersburg ; Baron Sim
olin, Eussian Ambassador at Versailles ; Thomas
Jefferson, American Minister to France ; Baron Kru
dener, Eussian Minister at Copenhagen ; Count Bes-
borodko, Eussian Minister of Foreign Affairs ; Prince
Potemkin ; the Count Bernstorff, Prime Minister of
Denmark ; and Count Eazoumovskoy, Eussian En
voy at Stockholm.
This correspondence, in extenso, would fill at least
twenty pages of this volume, and while the tenor of
it is m the last degree complimentary to Commodore
Jones, it does not seem, in the broad historical sense,
worth reproduction in full. In synopsis, therefore,
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ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVY
it may be said that the result of these flattering over
tures was a decision by the Commodore to embark
in a new and strange epoch of his stormy career ;
that, though he served or tried to serve Eussia as
faithfully and as bravely as he had served America
and France, the conditions he encountered were not
adapted to his temperament, the associations into
which he was forced were not congenial to his fierce
spirit of self-reliance and freedom of project, the
colleagues with whom he was compelled to act — ex
cepting always and only the bluff and eccentric old
Suwarrow — were men whom he instinctively dis
trusted or despised ; so that, on the whole, the victo
ries he gained brought to his brow no new laurels ;
while the intrigues, the cabals and the conspiracies
of which for a time he was the victim embittered
his soul, shattered his health, and unquestionably
shortened his life by many years.
No fair conception of what Paul Jones undertook
when he entered the naval service of Eussia in the
spring of 1788 is possible without an historical and
analytical survey of that colossal country's progress
during the century that has intervened far more
prolonged and comprehensive than the limits of this
work admit. Between the Eussia of Catharine II.
and the Eussia of Nicholas II. there is a wider dis
parity in all the conditions that go to elevate the as
pirations, refine the tone, or alleviate the woes of
human existence than is presented by the history of
any other country or people during the same period.
It may seem strange to say, but it is true, that the
social and the political, the moral and the material
progress and improvement of Eussia and the Eus-
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PAUL JONES
sians have been greater in the last hundred years
than those of any other land or any other race on
the face of the earth.
The Eussia of to-day is a net-work of railways,
reaching from the frontiers of Germany to the capi
tal of Tamerlane in Central Asia and soon to connect
the shores of the Black and Baltic Seas with the
coast of the Pacific Ocean. It is a land of metro
politan cities, of industries developing as if by
magic in all directions and of all kinds ; a land of
commerce already vast and still only beginning to
grow. It is the home of a people instinct with am
bition to excel in the arts of peace, as well as in those
of war ; a people in whose upper classes are to be
found men and women of culture, refinement, and
grace nowhere surpassed ; a people whose hospital
ity, alike in its lavishness and in its unaffected sim
plicity and sincerity, has no equal elsewhere ; a
people who have developed a literature and a school
of art peculiarly their own.
Politically the Eussia of our time is a universal
empire, holding a status as a great power that but
two others, the United States and the British Em
pire, can now share with her. Within the confines
of Europe or on their own frontiers, Germany and
France are great powers. But in the world-wide or
universal sense there are now but three nations en
titled to that rank, and Eussia is one of them. The
greatest of Eussian writers in our time, Michael
Katkoff, late editor of the Moscow Gazette, has said
that "the advance of Eussia is like that of the
glacier : slow but resistless, all-crushing, always mov
ing, never halting, and powerless under the laws of
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ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVY
fate to recede anywhere." To this it might be added
that in the modern advance of Eussia the locomotive
is a mightier arm than even her bayonets, and the
conquests of her artisans have far outstripped the
march of her soldiers.
In the domestic sense the Government of Eussia
has kept pace with the development of her society.
The form indeed has not changed, but the substance
has, during the past hundred years. Then it was
despotic in fact and autocratic in practice. Now
it is autocratic in name and despotic in theory, only.
In a word, the Eussia of Nicholas is as far from
the Eussia of Catharine as the England of Victoria
is from the England of William the Conqueror ;
though in one case the diff'erence in time is nearly
nine hundred years and in the other only one hun
dred. None of these conditions pertained to the Eussia
of Catharine as Paul Jones found it. The country
itself was in its northern half an almost trackless
forest, and in its southern half an almost virgin
steppe. The population of the empire as a whole
was less than one-fifth of what it is now. Industries
were of the most primitive kind ; commerce was an
almost unknown pursuit ; the total exports and im
ports of a year in Catharine's time were not equal
to those of a week in the time of Nicholas II.
There was no such thing as a national culture,
much less a native literature. The Government
itself was carried on and all its archives were kept
in a foreign language. The tongue spoken by the
people had no official use whatever. Commodore
Jones himself says that there were two reasons
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PAUL JONES
why he abandoned all idea of trying to learn the
Eussian language. The first was because all public
affairs were conducted tn French, and the other was
because there were no text-books worthy of the name.
Education was almost wholly confined to the official
class and the higher orders of the clergy. Books,
periodicals, and newspapers were unknown in the
vernacular, and the importation of them in foreign
languages was rigidly restricted. There was no
generic school of art ; though Catharine, by found
ing the Hermitage gallery, began the creation of
one. Politically, or as a power, the Eussia of Catharine,
at least on the day of her accession, was yet in the
cradle. Peter the Great had indeed begotten a
European power in the northern forests, and his
genius had been incarnated in its lusty birth. But
it was still an infant when Catharine took the crown.
Even Sweden and Poland were dangerous neighbors,
and the Turk was a colossal threat all the time.
During the earlier years of Catharine's reign Swe
den and Poland had been put out of the lists ; and
the campaign in which Catharine enlisted Paul
Jones was intended to crush the Turk in the Black
Sea and on its northern shores, and to roll his hordes
back forever behind the crags of the Caucasus on
the east and the banks of the Danube on the west.
Alike in conception and in execution, alike in ob
jects and in results, this war of 1788-1790 was the
most colossal ever undertaken by Eussia ; for at its
end she stood unchallenged as a great power in
Europe. What Suwarrow and Paul Jones began at
Oczakoff in the spring of 1788, and what Suwarrow
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ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVY
ended alone in the butchery of Ismail, at the close
of 1790, marked the end of the Eussia that had been
and the beginning of the Eussia that is.
Having made up his mind to accept what ap
peared to him the flattering offer of the Empress,
Commodore — or, as we shall hereafter call him,
Admiral — Jones wrote, under date of Copenhagen,
April 8, 1788, a letter to Thomas Jefferson which,
more than any other production of his pen, signifies
the implicitness of his reliance on the friendship of
Jefferson as well as on that of Franklin, and also the
deeper springs of his ambition. We quote the ma
terial parts of it :
. . . While I express in the warm effusion of a grate
ful heart the deep sense I feel of my eternal obligation to
you as the author of the honorable prospect that is now be
fore me, I must rely on your friendship to justify to the
United States the important step I now take, conformably
to your advice. Tou know I had no idea of this new fort
une until I found that you had put it in train before my
last return to Paris from America. I am not forsaking the
country that has had so many disinterested and difficult
proofs of my affection ; and can never renounce the glorious
title of a citizen of the United States. [The italics are
Jones's. ]
It is true I have not the express permission of my sover
eign (Congress) to accept the offer of Her Imperial Majesty;
but America is independent, is in perfect peace, and has no
employment for my military talents. But why should I
excuse a conduct which I should rather hope would meet
with general approbation ? In the latter part of the year
1783, Congress passed an act providing for my embarka
tion in the fleet of His Most Christian Majesty, When, a
few months ago, I left America to return to Europe, I was
167

PAUL JONES
made the bearer of a letter to His Majesty requesting that
I be permitted to embark iu the fleets of evolution. Why
did Congress pass those acts ? To facilitate my improve
ment in the art of commanding fleets and conducting mili
tary operations. I am, then, conforming to the views of
Congress ; but the role allotted me is infinitely more high
and difficult than Congress meditated. Instead of receiv
ing lessons from able masters in the theory of naval war, I
am called to immediate practice, where I must command
in chief, conduct the most difficult operations, be my own
preceptor, and instruct others. Congress must accord to me
some merit for venturing to encounter such multiplied dif
ficulties. . . .
I pray you, sir, to explain the circumstances of my situ
ation and be the interpreter of my sentiments to the United
States in Congress.
Three days after the date of this letter — that is
to say, April Ilth —Admiral Jones left Copenhagen,
crossed to Gothenberg, and went thence to Stock
holm, where he stayed only about twenty -four hours
He went from Stockholm to Gottland in the regular
packet, but the ice was not yet out of the east chan
nel of the Baltic, so that the regular packet did not
attempt to cross to Eevel ; and he was compelled to
hire a private vessel — a small craft in which, after a
tempestuous voyage of three days and two nights,
he reached Eevel so worn out by exposure and loss
of sleep that he was not able to proceed on his jour
ney by land to St. Petersburg until after " three
days of rest, hot baths, and tonics," as he quaintly
says. The story of this voyage has been often told, and
in about as many ways as times. In his Journal of
1790, Jones says he was driven to the resort of com-
168

ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVY
polling his boatmen to push into the ice at the
muzzle of his pistol. In the same account he says,
however, that they afterward behaved well, and when
they reached Eevel he provided them with lodgings
and food until the weather should be more propitious
for their return. He then went from Eevel to St.
Petersburg by land, arriving at the Eussian capital
in the evening of April 23d, and on the 25th he was
received at court, the Empress then occupying the
Palace of Czarsko-Selo. Here he remained until
May 7th. In his Journal he says : " Her Majesty
gave me so flattering a reception, and up to the
period of my departure treated me with so much
consideration, that I was entirely captivated and put
myself in her hands without making any stipulation
for my personal advantage. I asked but one favor —
that she would never condemn, without hearing,
me." However flattering may have been the consid
eration with which the Empress received Admiral
Jones, and however satisfactory may have been the
promptness with which she carried out her promise
made through Baron Krudener by giving him the
commission of rear-admiral the day he was first
presented at court, his introduction to the Eussian
service was not free from annoyance. At this time
a considerable number of British naval officers were
in St. Petersburg, who had either received or were
applying for employment in the Eussian service.
William Tooke, in his " Life of Catharine the
Great " says there were thirty of these officers, of
whom eighteen had already been employed and the
other twelve had received assurances that they soon
169

PAUL JONES
would be. One of the British officers. Sir Samuel
Greig, was a rear-admiral and second in command of
the Baltic fleet under Vice-Admiral Kreuss, a
Eussian. Greig, however, had been in the Eussian
service since 1770, had taken no part in the Ameri
can war, and, being himself a Scotchman by birth,
did not share the then common English prejudice
against Jones. At any rate, if he entertained preju
dices he was too diplomatic to exhibit them. Be
sides, he knew that Jones was destined to command
in the Black Sea, and therefore there could not be
any immediate clash of their personal interests.
As soon as it became known that the Empress had
given Jones the commission of rear-admiral, the
English officers waited on Greig in a body, those
who had commissions offering to resign them, and
those not yet employed withdrawing their applica
tions, rather than serve under or with Paul Jones.
Narischkin, in his " Memoir of Ekaterina Velikai "
(Catharine the Great), says that Greig received this
demonstration on the part of the English officers
with indignation ; advised them to go about their
duties or await their opportunities like men, and not
act after the fashion of school-boys. He assured
them that if their conduct should become known to
the Empress, she would not only dismiss every one of
them from her service with all the disgrace she could
put upon them, but that she would also summarily
expel them from her dominions as conspirators
against her sovereign authority. They all took
Greig's advice except two, who persisted to the ex
tent of laying their grievance before Count Bes-
borodko, and this brought the whole affair to the
170

ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVY
attention of the Empress. As Admiral Greig had
apprehended, the incident roused her resentment.
She exclaimed, " What ! Do these men who are beg
gars of my bounty presume to question my treat
ment of a man who is my invited guest ? "
As for the twelve Englishmen whose applications
for employment were awaiting action, she ordered
that a summary refusal should be sent to them.
The two who had persisted in laying their grievance
before the Minister were already in her service, both
captains, and she peremptorily dismissed them. The
other sixteen holding commissions she was per
suaded by Admiral Greig to retain ; and one of
them. Lieutenant Edwards, who could speak Eus
sian well, was ordered to report to Admiral Jones
for duty as aide-de-camp and interpreter, when he
set out for the Black Sea. In the campaign that
ensued, this young officer received the highest com
mendation from Admiral Jones, alike for his per
sonal character and his skill and courage as a naval
officer. And in his subsequent Journal of the Oc
zakoff campaign Jones says : "Lieutenant Edwards
was led to join in the futile cabal against me, not by
his own inclinations but by the clamor of the other
Englishmen about him."
In a letter to Lafayette, written soon after his ar
rival at the Black Sea, Admiral Jones says : " On
my entry into the Eussian service Her Majesty con
ferred upon me immediately the grade of rear-
admiral, to date with rank and emoluments from the
overtures of her Ambassador to France, Baron Sim
olin. . . . This was a cruel grief to the English,
and I own that their vexation, which I believe was
171

PAUL JONES
generally known in and about St. Petersburg, gave
me no pain."
On May 7th, just two weeks after his arrival at the
Eussian capital. Admiral Jones set out for Kherson,
the headquarters of the forces operating against the
Turks. He carried an autograph letter from the
Empress, confirming all that she had indicated to
him orally as to the nature of the command he was
to assume. The conclusion of this letter was as fol
lows : " We have no doubt but that, on your side,
you will fully justify the high opinion we have
formed of you, and apply yourself with zeal to sup
port the reputation and the fame you have already
acquired by remarkable exhibitions of skill and
valor on the element on which you are to serve."
With these credentials the Empress gave the Ad
miral a gratuity of two thousand ducats (Austrian),
say one thousand pounds sterling, for his extraor
dinary expenses. Admiral Jones then set out May
7th on his journey to Kherson, a distance of one
thousand four hundred versts, in a straight line, or
about one thousand five hundred by the route of
travel — nearly one thousand one hundred English
miles. The tarantass provided for Admiral Jones
was one belonging to the Empress, and was fitted up
for the use of imperial couriers or other officers of
state. The Admiral had carte blanche in the matter
of relays of horses. However, with all these special
provisions for his comfort, the Admiral tired of the
tarantass in two days and nights, and on the third
day he took to the saddle for the rest of the journey
during waking hours ; using the tarantass only as
a "sleeping-car" at night. He made the trip in
173

ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVY
twelve days, arriving at Kherson May 19th. This
was an average of over ninety miles every twenty-
four hours, and it would be hard to beat, even now,
by similar means of transit over even the better
roads of modern times.
The Admiral says in his Journal that he made
only four stops of more than an hour's duration in
the whole journey. One was for about six hours in
Moscow, where he dined with the governor of the
city and visited the Kremlin. Another was for about
three hours in Tula, where he visited the armories
and purchased some souvenir weapons. Another
was at Khursk, awaiting some repairs to his coach,
and the fourth was at Ekaterinoslav. But he says
that the whole time of the four stops did not exceed
eighteen hours, and that in none of them did he
get any rest ; also that he never saw the inside of
a sleeping apartment during the twelve days and
nights, and had no sleep whatever except such as
he could enjoy in the jolting and rolling taran
tass, when utter fatigue had blunted his senses to
every kind of discomfort.
Immediately upon his arrival at the headquar
ters of Prince Potemkin he was assigned to com
mand of that part of the Eussian naval force in
the Black Sea known as the Squadron of Kher
son. This squadron consisted of seventeen ves
sels of all rates that might be termed sea-going
ships of war. Two were considered ships of the
line — the Vladimir, pierced for seventy guns, and the
Alexander for sixty. Five were rated by the Eus
sians as frigates, but none of them carried more
than thirty guns. The other ten vessels of the squad-
173

PAUL JONES
ron carried from sixteen to twenty-four guns each.
The water about the mouth of the Dnieper, where
the principal operations were to be carried on, was so
shoal that theVladimir and Alexander had to be light
ened by taking out their upper tiers of guns, which
reduced the former to a battery of forty-eight and
the latter to one of forty guns. Not more than one-
fourth of the men composing the crews could be con
sidered sailors in any sense of the term, and most of
these were Greeks, Genoese, and Crimean fishermen.
There were not two hundred men in the whole
squadron who had ever seen "blue water." The
ships themselves, though new, were badly built and
meagrely equipped. Their officers, except a few
foreigners, were destitute of naval training and ex
perience, as those terms were understood in West
ern Europe, and many of them did not understand
the art of navigating a ship out of sight of land
marks. The foreign officers were Greve, Varage,
and Verbois, Frenchmen ; Ten Broeck, Van Euypen,
and de Winter, Hollanders, and Fanshawe and
Edwards, Englishmen (the last named being the
Admiral's aide-de-camp). Of these only Greve,
Fanshawe, and de Winter had command of ships,
the others serving as executive officers under Eus
sian captains.
Soon after Jones took command, two new forty-
gun ships, the Pskoroi and the Azov, joined the
squadron. The Eussian Eear-Admiral, Mordwinoff,
and his fiag-captain, a Greek named Alexiano, at first
attempted to ignore Jones's authority, but were
promptly suppressed by Potemkin, and on May 26th
the Admiral hoisted his flag on board the Vladimir,
174

ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVY
receiving the customary salutes and other marks
of subordination from all the commanders in the
squadron. Besides the nineteen ships which Jones now com
manded there were about sixty gun-boats. These
were known as "the flotilla," and the Admiral was
astonished to learn that they formed an independent
command under the orders of the Prince of Nassau-
Siegen, who reported direct to Potemkin, and was
quite independent of the Admiral's authority. This
difficulty was, however, partially averted by an
order from Potemkin directing Nassau to place
under the Admiral's orders from time to time as
many gun-boats as he might require ; though, as
the sequel proved, Nassau never obeyed this order
when he could find any excuse for disregarding or
evading it.
Jones's first care on taking command was thor
oughly to inspect his ships. He found that, inferior
as was the quality of their crews, they were also defi
cient in numbers. He therefore obtained about three
thousand soldiers from Suwarrow's army, whom he
distributed among the ships of the squadron and
the gun-boats. He also had the ships thoroughly
cleaned, fumigated, and painted ; the rigging over
hauled, and full supplies of ammunition and provi
sions taken aboard, so that by the end of the first
week in June the Eussian naval force in the Black
Sea was as shipshape as it could be made with
the resources at hand. On May Slst Admiral Jones
assembled all the captains of the squadron on board
the Vladimir, flagship, for a council of war, as he
said in his order conveying it, "in conformity to
175

PAUL JONES
the ordinance of Peter the Great." He opened the
council with a brief address, as follows :
Gentlemen: Having been suddenly called to serve Her
Imperial Majesty, I have need of double indulgence, being
as yet ignorant of the language and customs of the country.
I confess that I mistrust my capacity properly to discharge
all the duties of the high trust with which Her Majesty
has honored me. But I rely on my zeal and on your favor,
co-operation, and candid advice for the good of the service.
We are met, gentlemen, on serious business. We are to
discuss points which involve the honor of the Russian flag
and the interests of Her Majesty's empire. We have to
deal with a formidable enemy. . . . We must resolve
to conquer. Let us join hands and hearts. Eet us exhibit
only noble feelings and cast far from us all personal consid
erations. Honor may be gained by every individual, but
the true glory of the soldier or seaman is to be useful to
his country.
At this council of war the Admiral explained his
system of signals, which were in the main those of
Pavilion, translated by Lieutenant Edwards into
Eussian. General sailing directions in order of bat
tle were agreed upon and the Admiral described his
tactical methods in detail under various conditions,
using a blackboard for graphic delineation.
" The effect of this council," the Admiral says in
his Journal, " was good ; and it was also intensely
interesting to the Eussian officers, few of whom had
ever seen an exposition of naval tactics in that man
ner, after the fashion of the French school. Except
as to Alexiano (who died soon afterward) and Nassau-
Siegen, I had no cause to complain of the conduct
of any officer in the squadron or flotilla afterward."
176

ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVY
Though the Sultan declared the war, the Empress
was readier for it than he. The Turkish garrison of
Oczakoff numbered about eight thousand at the mo
ment of the declaration, and a squadron of seven
Turkish ships was at anchor off the Liman. The
Sultan ordered his best general, the great Mameluke,
Mehemet Hassan Bey, to assemble eighty thousand
troops at Ismail on the Danube and march to the
Dnieper. He also ordered large naval reinforce
ments from Constantinople and Sinope. But the
Turks were as sluggish then as they are now, and,
though war was declared in August and these move
ments were ordered immediately, winter set in be
fore a Turkish soldier had crossed the Pruth and be
fore an additional Turkish ship reached Oczakoff.
The only movement accomplished by the Turks
between September 1st and the freezing up of the
Dnieper was to send three thousand troops from
Varna by sea, and a few small boat-loads of provis
ions and ammunition. Mehemet Hassan came with
the troops and assumed command of the fortress.
The prime objective of the campaign was, on the
side of the Eussian army, to reduce this Turkish
stronghold of Oczakoff, and, on the side of the Eus
sian fleet, to prevent relief of the place by water and
to destroy the sea-power of the Sultan in the Euxine.
Oczakoff was an impregnable stronghold, judged
by Oriental ideas of that day, and it was extremely
formidable according to even the rules of Vauban.
It was purely a place d'armes, the town within the
walls being wholly military in its make-up and ad
ministration, and no commerce with it being per
mitted. It was a naval as well as a military arsenal.
Vol. il— 12 177

PAUL JONES
and had been for more than a century the head
quarters of the Turkish fleet in the Black Sea. Found
ed in 1626 by the Sultan Murad IV., surnamed " The
Intrepid, " it had been from time to time enlarged
and improved by his successors until in 1788 it cov
ered, including its outer defences, between three and
four square miles of ground, and could shelter a gar
rison, including the resident military population,
from eighteen thousand to twenty thousand strong.
The site of Oczakoff was at the southern end of a
small peninsula bounded on the south and east by
the waters of the estuary of the Dnieper, on the west
by a long, narrow arm of the sea called the Liman,
and on the north by impassable marshes with the
exception of a narrow isthmus that connected it
with the mainland. The shores of the little penin
sula are rather bold for that part of the Black Sea
coast, and the main navigable channel of the Dnieper
runs close under its banks. About thirty miles east
of Oczakoff, and within the estuary of the Dnieper,
the river Boug empties in from the northwest, and
about forty miles to the westward is the mouth of
the Dniester. Thus, by its strategic geography,
Oczakoff effectually commanded the embouchures
of two of the principal rivers of Southwestern Eus
sia and practically dominated the third, thereby
holding the key to the commerce of the richest
quarter of the empire.
As has been observed, the fortress itself was the
growth of more than a century and a half. During
the first half of its existence its fortification was of
the Oriental type, having a central citadel and light
outlying curtain walls. But about 1709, during the
178

ADMIRAL IN THE RUSSIAN NAVY
wars of Peter the Great, the Sultan Achmet HI. em
ployed an Italian engineer named Palazzi to recon
struct it on the European system. In addition to
other improvements Palazzi built on the south and
southeast sides, fronting the channel of the Dnieper,
a chain of water-batteries commanding the channel
and also each other in succession ; and another tier
of water-batteries on the west side to command the
inner anchorage of the estuary of the Liman for
ships of war and the naval arsenal. This work oc
cupied several years, but when it was done and over
three hundred heavy guns were mounted in all the
defences — say about 1716 or 1718 — Oczakoff became
the strongest fortification to be found anywhere
east of Toulon. It was, in fact, impregnable so long
as its possessors could command its sea approaches,
and no operations against it on the land side could
possibly succeed except in concert with a close and
effective blockade on the side of the water.

179

CHAPTEE V
THE CONQUEST OF THE TURKS
When the Eussian army under Suwarrow and the
Eussian fleet under Paul Jones began operations
against Oczakoff, June 1, 1788, the garrison includ
ed fourteen thousand Turkish regulars and from
five thousand to six thousand effective irregulars ;
and the place was supposed to be provisioned and
munitioned for at least two years. The Turkish
commander on land was Mehemet Hassan Bey, and
the Sultan's naval force in the Black Sea was com
manded by Eeis Dejazet, Capitan Pacha, each on his
own element the ablest officer in the Ottoman service.
Due south from Oczakoff, on the other side of the
Dnieper estuary, is a long, low point of land called
the Spit of Kinburn. It is a gigantic sandbar
formed by the silt of ages from the great rivers that
empty there into the Black Sea. Bounded on the
north by the estuary of the Dnieper and on the
south by the Bay of Kinburn or Tjendra, this sand
bar is about thirty miles long. Toward its western
end and about four or five miles from its extreme
point was a fishing village called Kinburn, and an
old Turkish fort taken by the Eussians in the fall of
1787. But this fort could not command the naviga
ble channel. At the opening of the campaign Gen
eral Suwarrow had his headquarters at Kinburn.
180

THE CONQUEST OF THE TURKS
On May 22d, three days after his arrival and four
days before he hoisted his flag on the Vladimir,
Admiral Jones visited General Suwarrow for a gen
eral consultation as to the plan of campaign. One
of the first observations of the Admiral was to ex
press some surprise that no steps had been taken to
fortify the extreme western end of the Spit of Kin
burn. As this was the first council of war between
these two remarkable and immortal men, each
unique in his own sphere of action, and as their in
terview exhibits their respective characters most
graphically, and also the character of another, we
will reproduce the account of it as related by Kaul-
bars ( " Campaigns of Suwarrow" ) :
. . . General Suwarrow replied to Admiral Jones that
such questions belonged to His Highness the Prince-Mar
shal [Potemkin]. Perhaps, if His Excellency the Admiral
would offer the suggestion to Potemkin, something might
be done. But as for him (Suwarrow) he had long ago
learned to obey orders and say nothing.
Admiral Jones said that the fortification of the extreme
end of the Spit was a necessity that ought to be apparent
without suggestion. He said that the chart of soundings
given to him the day before at KZherson by Potemkin him
self showed that a strong fort on the extreme point— an
earthwork mounted with, say, twenty-eight or thirty heavy
guns — would command the only channel leading into the
Liman practicable for ships drawing over seventeen feet of
water, and that such a work would greatly aid the Russian
fleet in repelling any effort by the Capitan Pacha to force
an entrance with his heavy ships for relief of the fortress.
General Suwarrow said he knew all that. But he also
knew that His Highness the Prince-Marshal was not patient
of unasked advice. 181

PAUL JONES
"But, surely," exclaimed Admiral Jones, "the Prince-
Marshal, being a great soldier, must know that the step I
suggest is vital to success in the impending campaign."
"Ah, I see, my dear Admiral," said General Suwarrow,
' ' you are a discoverer ! ' '
" What do you mean ? " queried Admiral Jones, mysti
fied. "Why, of course, do you not see ? Tou have discovered
a great soldier I "
"In whom, pray? " asked the Admiral.
" In Potemkin," curtly answered the laconic Suwarrow.
At this the Admiral and the General looked at each
other, at first with solemnity. Then both grinned. No
more was said on that subject.
Necessarily this conference was in French, as Suwarrow
could not understand the Admiral's English and the Ad
miral would not have known ten words of Suwarrow's
Russian. It was most vivacious. The two men quickly
began to understand each other. Suwarrow perceived the
bold frankness of the American naval officer. Admiral
Jones fathomed the subtle caution and cunning self -con
tainment of the Russian general. And both alike saw
and were agreed upon the vain, weak character of their
common superior.
The Admiral, however, said he would not hesitate to
suggest to Potemkin the necessity of fortifying the ex
treme end of the Spit of Kinburn.
' ' If you will do that, ' ' said Suwarrow, ' ' and promise
me that you will make him believe that the credit of the
thing belongs to him, I will start to throw up a work
there before daybreak to-morrow. But let me entreat you,
my dear Admiral, do not give him cause to imagine that
any one here— least of all you or I — thinks of originating
any plan or of initiating any operation. He would not
endure it for a moment. It would make him your relent
less enemy for life. ' '
Suwarrow did proceed at once to fortify the Point of
182

THE CONQUEST OF THE TURKS
Kinburn. And Jones wrote a note to Potemkin con
gratulating him on the possession of the military genius
required to conceive such a project and the foresight to
order its execution.
Potemkin took it all in dead earnest, and actually
wrote a formal order to Suwarrow to build the fort, about
the time it was completed and when its guns were being
mounted. Possibly all the volumes that have been written
about Potemkin do not, collectively, afford such a
portrait of his real character as is displayed in this
interview between Suwarrow and Paul Jones, and
in its sequence. The fate, however, which befell
Jones in his efforts to serve the cause of Catharine
with the honesty that was as native to him as his sex
cannot be clearly comprehended without a some
what fuller survey of the characters of the two men
with whom he had to deal — Potemkin and Nassau-
Siegen. One of Jones's biographers — and among
the best — Edward Hamilton, author of the edition
published at Aberdeen and republished b}'^ Murray
in London in 1848, says : " The character of Potem
kin belongs to history, and his impress on its pages
cannot be altered by survey of his conduct toward
or his treatment of Paul Jones."
The obvious comment on this is that history knows
but little about the real Potemkin as Paul Jones had
him to deal with. History is acquainted with per
haps fifty Potemkins ; from the paragon of wisdom
and honor depicted by his slave, Narishkin, to the
saturnine and bacchanalian monster portrayed by
Lubinski, Lestucheff, and other Polish or Eussian
exiles — " Monstrum horrendum ; nulla virtute re-
183

PAUL JONES
demptum," as the old Latin satirist says. Nor is it
quite safe to judge him by the half-charitable, half-
cynical review of his career and character to be found
in the " EecoUections of the Count de Segur."
From 1774 to 1777 Potemkin had been the " reign
ing favorite " of the Empress ; or, in other words, the
lover of Catharine. In 1777 she had reached the age
of forty-eight, and, though she held the freshness of
her charms better than most women do at that time
of life, Potemkin relinquished his place in her ama
tory favor to Moimonoff, not only without a struggle
but with some signs of relief. He had become pos
sessed by an ambition to hand his name down to
history as a conqueror not alone of female hearts
but of imperial provinces. The fact that he pos
sessed no qualification whatever for that exalted role
did not appal him. Having found in Suwarrow a
soldier to fight for him battles he himself could not
fight, to make for him plans he could not compre
hend, and to win for him victories he not only was
unable to win himself, but the significance of which
he was not even able to appreciate, Potemkin, now
confronted with the necessity of operations by sea
as well as by land, hoped to find in Paul Jones at
once as able and as self-abnegating an admiral as
Suwarrow had been for him a general. He was by
no means without ability, and was possessed of cult
ure above the average of Eussian noblemen of his
time. But he was, after all, superficial in everything.
His knowledge was a smattering of many things, a
mastery of nothing. He was by turns soldier,
diplomat, statesman, and litterateur; but shallow,
showy, unsubstantial, and histrionic in all. For
184

THE CONQUEST OF THE TURKS
twelve years, from 1777 to 1789, he was the auto
crat of Southern Eussia. His power was second
only to that of Catharine herself. During that
period Suwarrow conquered everything in his way
from the foot-hills of the Caucasus to the plains of
Bessarabia, from the Volga to the Danube. Potem
kin did nothing but write the reports, claim the
credit, and then strip the conquered provinces of
their last copeck in levies and exactions.
In Nassau-Siegen we have a different subject to
deal with. Perhaps it might be well enough to de
scribe him in a single phrase by saying that he was
a poverty-stricken, homeless, and almost outcast
petty German princeling of the eighteenth century.
But the full meaning of that phrase might not be
completely comprehended except by close students
of the history of that period. He belonged, in a
younger branch and of inferior grade, to the breed
of German princes who sold their subjects — when
they had any — to King George, or to any other king
that would buy them, at $36 a head, to fight for the
cause of despotism in foreign lands.
Nassau-Siegen, having no subjects to sell, put
himself on the market. Not finding any king will
ing to buy him, he conceived in 1777 the absurd idea
of auctioning himself off to the cause of American
Liberty. With this object in view he went to Paris,
shortly before Paul Jones arrived at Nantes in the
Eanger, and offered his services to the American
Commissioners. He was a person of some address
and unspeakable pretension. He quickly fooled
Silas Deane, soon won the admiration of Arthur
Lee, and was even distantly tolerated by Dr. Frank-
185

PAUL JONES
lin for a while. As has been previously mentioned
in this work, our Commissioners for once employed
him on the important mission of going to Amster
dam to ascertain and report upon the actual condi
tion and prospects of the ship Indien, then building
there. After that he proposed to go with Jones as
a volunteer in the Bon Homme Eichard ; but on
second thought, and finding that Jones would be
likely to get in harm's way, he reconsidered that
notion. In the early part of 1786, being at his wits' ends,
Nassau-Siegen suddenly bethought himself that he
was something like a seventh cousin to the Empress
Catharine. The Empress was herself the daughter
of a German princeling known as " Anhalt-Zerbst."
Then, as now, all German princelings were related, or
inter-related, beyond the possibility of genealogical
analysis, by centuries of " breeding in-and-in."
Therefore every German princeling must be some
sort of cousin to every other German princeling. On
this basis Nassau-Siegen resolved to claim kinship
with the daughter of Anhalt-Zerbst. The Duke of
Luxembourg, who had interested himself in his
behalf, not loath to be rid of him, cheerfully pro
vided him with means for a trip to Eussia, and
thus we find it recorded that he joined at Kiev the
grand cavalcade of his Empress-cousin en route
to the Black Sea in the summer of 1786 ; also that
" he made a good impression on the Empress." It
was immaterial to him where she should place him.
By mere chance the Empress assigned him to her
navy. In conclusion, it is not only just but not even un-
186

THE CONQUEST OF THE TURKS
charitable to say that Nassau-Siegen was insincere,
untruthful, treacherous, and dishonest. He had but
little ability of any kind, less faith, still less grat
itude, and no courage at all. In short, he was,
beyond question, the most singular and original
compound of the courtier and the conspirator, the
charlatan and the coward, whose name can be found
in history.
Suwarrow and Jones perfectly understood each
other from the start, and both also thoroughly com
prehended the natures of the men they had to deal
with. It is, perhaps, unfortunate that their respec
tive methods were not so nearly identical as were
their conceptions. In the early part of the cam
paign, Jones, a stranger alike to the language and
the customs of those whom he commanded, used to
take every opportunity of communicating with Su
warrow, who could talk with him in French. But
the quaint old hero gave him scant consolation.
The most he would say was : " Mon cher Jones, mon
camerade, voici, done, mon example ; faites obeis-
sance et taisez-vous, toujours et partout ! " *
This advice was easier for Suwarrow to give than
for Jones to follow. They were both, indeed, under
the same absurd " commander-in-chief." But there
the parallel stopped. In his army Suwarrow was
supreme. There were no cabals against him. Every
one of his subordinate officers was devoted to him.
His soldiers worshipped him. Jones, on the con
trary, was constantly beset by the intrigues of Nas
sau-Siegen and hampered by the ill-will of the Eus-
* " My dear Jones, my comrade, see my example ! Obey orders and
keep your mouth shut, always and everywhere ! "
187

PAUL JONES
sian rear-admiral, Mordwinoff ; though, as the latter
was " Chief of the Admiralty for the Black Sea dis
trict," a shore command not directly affecting ser
vice afloat, and having headquarters at Sebastopol,
he was not seriously in the way. The sudden death
of Alexiano on July 8th removed another and, next to
Nassau-Siegen, the worst of the conspirators against
Jones, but the seeds of cabal and dissension had
been too thickly sown and could never be quite
eradicated. On May 30th the active campaign began. Suwar
row left his headquarters at Kinburn and took com
mand of the army, which had already left Kherson
on its march toward the Boug. On the Slst the
General addressed a note to the Admiral saying,
among other things :
You know well that, under the circumstances, the Rad
ical of the operations regards Kinburn, a principal, effi
cacious, and unequivocal point, and one on which all our
cares and pains should be directed. It is plausible enough
to wait for the land forces to cross the Boug and approach
Oczakoff. In the meantime I cannot answer for results.
It is for you to prevent interruption [of the crossing] from
the side of the water. Enough said for a soldier who
knows nothing of seamanship.
In his reply Jones said :
I must beg the General's pardon, but the Radical of oper
ations regards Kherson. Kinburn's value is that of an
outwork. It helps defend the base, but the base itself is
Kherson. The Capitan Pacha has too much sense not to
prefer attacking it if he attacks at all, since in moving
against Kherson he can pass Kinburn and leave it to be
taken afterward at leisure. 188

THE CONQUEST OP THE TURKS
In his letter forwarding copies of this and other
correspondence between Suwarrow and himself to
Potemkin, Admiral Jones said :
I beg Your Highness to issue explicit orders defining clear
ly the objective of the forces afloat and declaring exactly
the limits of power and responsibility between the squad
ron and the flotilla, as it seems settled that they are to be
separate commands ; and in order that there may be no
mistake, which might lead to mischievous consequences.
He then sent to Suwarrow a copy of the above
request with the following note :
Tou will see, my dear General, that I am willing to as
sume the responsibility for both Kinburn and Kherson
that your note of the 31st imposes upon me ; but you
will also perceive that I cannot decide as to the measure
of responsibility until I know definitively the scope of
power that is to be lodged in my hands.
Suwarrow made no reply to this in writing, but a
few days later he put off from the headquarters of
his army at Stanislav in a boat and went on board
the flagship. In the interview that ensued Suwar
row told Jones that the course he was pursuing
would indeed be the regular, proper, and only course
if these operations were in Western Europe. He
added :
But good as such a course would be there, it is bad here.
Tou must know once for all, Jones, that Potemkin does
not want to be responsible. Tour note requesting explicit
orders annoys him. He wishes to have your best services.
At the same time he wishes to humor Nassau. He re
lies on you but he does not like you. He does not rely
189

PAUL JONES
on Nassau but he loves him. Enough said 1 There is no
help for it.
In his Journal of 1790, Jones says :
The wily old Russian General was the only friend I had
there. He had come thirty miles in a small shallop to say
a few words to me. He was too cunning to put them on
paper or trust such a message to any courier. What he
said was of course disagreeable, almost disheartening, news ;
but the friendship of Alexander Suwarrow was of the sort
that tells the plain truth ; that never fiatters or deceives.
He was as true as he was brave.
Jones then goes on to say that Suwarrow's pres
entation of the case almost impelled him at first
thought to throw up the whole affair in disgust and
despair and go either to St. Petersburg to appeal to
the Empress in person or make the best of his way
to France at once. And he bitterly adds :
It would have been better had I done so. But second
thought persuaded me that I could not leave even such a
wretched post of duty at the beginning of the campaign. I
said as much to Suwarrow. And his reply was that wounds
and death were not the sole risks of war ; that injustice
might be quite as deadly as lead or steel.
However, a few days afterward, Potemkin informed
Jones that, while the commands of the squadron and
the flotilla would remain separate, the operations of
the fiotilla would be subordinate to those of the-
squadron, and that whenever he desired the use of
gun-boats they would be detached from the flotilla
at his request, and placed under his orders.
It is not practicable within the limits of this work
to describe in detail the operations of the campaign.
190

THE CONQUEST OF THE TURKS
The Admiral's own narrative of it, with accompany
ing official papers — orders, reports — would fill one
hundred pages. That part of it which has been
translated and printed iu English fills seventy-two
pages of the Janette Taylor Collection. This nar
rative, or, as the Admiral called it, his " Journal of
the Liman Campaign," was prepared by him in 1789
" for the information of the Empress, and to refute
certain calumnies and misrepresentations." The
copy which he sent to the Empress direct never
reached her, having been intercepted and sup
pressed by Count Besborodko. Ultimately she re
ceived another copy, sent through the French Am
bassador, the Count de Segur, and, after reading it,
she requested the Ambassador to convey to the Ad
miral in her name certain expressions of gratifica
tion and confidence.
On June 7th the Capitan Pacha, who had been
«ruising for several days off the bar, with the main
Turkish fleet, awaiting the arrival of his small ves
sels and gun-boats from Varna, made a strong at
tempt to break the blockade. A brisk action ensued
between the small vessels and gun-boats mainly.
The Turkish Admiral made no attempt to go into
the Liman with his heavy ships, and the principle
of the campaign did not contemplate attacking him
outside. The affair of June 7th was desultory, but
whatever advantage there was inured to the Eus
sians. Nine of the Turkish galleys and gun-boats
were destroyed and the rest forced to retreat, while
the Eussians lost only two small zebecks, which got
aground and were abandoned and burned by their
own crews. 191

PAUL JONES
This check, indecisive as it was, taught the Capi
tan Pacha a lesson of caution. Before renewing the
attempt he waited for the rest of his force to join
him from Varna and the Bosphorus. On June 16th
the Turkish fleet moved up into the channel and
cannonaded the fort and batteries on Kinburn Spit,
but they did not go far enough inside to engage
the large ships of Admiral Jones's squadron, which
were anchored in line oblique to the course of the
channel between Kinburn and Oczakoff. This was
due to the fact that the Turkish flagship, after pass
ing the Spit, ran aground on the west shoal at the
Liman and the rest of the fleet halted and anchored
in position near the flagship till morning. During
the night the wind hauled to the north-northeast,
blowing hard enough to drive the water out of the
estuary, and, as there is no tide in the Black Sea, the
Turkish flagship could not be got off the shoal.
At daybreak, June 17th, Admiral Jones got under
way with the whole squadron, signalling the flo
tilla to follow on the flanks, and bore down to at
tack the Turkish fleet. At first the Turks sustained
the action with spirit and the Eussian thirty-gun
ship. Little Alexander, was sunk immediately on the
right of the Vladimir, flagship. The latter, however,
bore down on the flagship of the Turkish second in
command, and, after receiving a few broadsides at
pistol-shot distance, the Turkish admiral cut his
cable and ran his ship aground on the southwest
shoal. In the meantime the five frigates that formed
the van of the Eussian squadron, under the English
captain, Fanshawe, had worked out past the Spit of
Kinburn and threatened to cut off the retreat of the
193

TIIE CONQUEST OP THE TURKS
Turks seaward. The Turkish line now broke up com
pletely, some of the lighter-draught ships attempt
ing to gain shelter of the walls of Oczakoff and the
heavier vessels trying to escape to sea. A few of the
former succeeded, but nine of the latter, including
the flagship, went hard aground on the shoals oppo
site the Spit of Kinburn in their efforts to keep out
of range of the fort and water batteries on that point
of land. The combat of June 17th did not end until
after ten o'clock at night, the days in that latitude
(46° N.) being at that time of the year sixteen
hours long.
At daylight on the 18th Admiral Jones, being un
able to approach the stranded Turkish vessels with
his large ships in consequence of the shoal water,
transferred his flag to one of the gun-boats under his
command and directed the division under Captain
Korsakoff — a brother of a general of that name — to
take possession of the Turkish ships aground, all of
which struck their flags as the gun-boats ap
proached. Korsakoff took possession of two — a
frigate of thirty guns and a sloop of sixteen. But
in the meantime Nassau-Siegen, who had kept well
out of range the day before, came up with his flotilla
and began setting fire to the seven other large
Turkish ships that were aground, together with the
disabled Turkish gun-boats that had not escaped
under shelter of Oczakoff. In vain did Admiral
Jones remonstrate, and urge that these ships could
all be saved for the Eussian navy by lightening
them and taking advantage of the first strong south
erly wind which would raise the water enough to en
able them to be hauled off. Nassau-Siegen paid no
Vol. IL— 13 193

PAUL JONES
attention to the Admiral's representations ; and, as if
to exhibit his contempt to the last degree, boarded
and set fire to one of the two vessels that Korsakoff
had taken possession of, and which was already
afloat again, practically uninjured.
Nassau-Siegen afterward said that he acted under
confidential orders from Potemkin to destroy every
thing Turkish and take no prizes so long as Ocza
koff held out ; and he declared that Potemkin's rea
son for giving this order was that he " did not want
the Eussian sailors to get prize-money ideas in their
heads like the French, English, and Dutch." Potem
kin may have given such orders to Nassau, but he
certainly did not repeat them to Admiral Jones.
Nor was Suwarrow aware that such orders were in
force, because he was at Kinburn on June 18th, and
expressed his indignation at what he termed " the
wanton and useless destruction of ^.valuable vessels
that might have been made serviceable in Her Im
perial Majesty's navy."
This action of June 17th is commonly known in
the Eussian histories as the battle of the Liman. The
forces engaged were, on the side of the Eussians,
eighteen ships, two of which, the Vladimir and the
Alexander, were rated ships of the line, seven were
frigates of about thirty-six to thirty guns, and nine
were corvettes and brigs carrying from twenty-four
to sixteen guns. On the Turkish side there were
seventeen sea-going ships, of which three were two-
deckers, seven frigates, and seven corvettes and
sloops. The Turkish Admiral, however, was sup
ported by a flotilla of about fifty galleys and other
small craft, carrying in all about one hundred and
194

THE CONQUEST OE THE TURKS
twenty guns ; while Admiral Jones had under his
orders no small vessels except Captain Korsakoff s
division of nineteen gun-boats. The main body of the
Eussian flotilla under Nassau-Siegen took no part
except to burn the prizes the day after the battle,
and, as Jones said in his report to the Eussian Ad
miralty — a report, by the way, which Potemkin
endeavored to suppress — "the main flotilla under
Nassau and Alexiano might as well have been at
Kinburn or Kherson as where it was during the
battle." The Turks lost nine of their large ships and over
twenty of their gun-boats, and the most trustworthy
authorities, including Jones in his report and Jour
nal, place their casualties at three thousand, many
of whom were drowned. The Eussian loss was one
frigate and six gun-boats sunk, and, in the squadron
alone, about seven hundred officers and men killed
or wounded. There is no account of the loss of the
flotilla except that of Korsakoff's division, which is
included in the seven hundred of the squadron.
Jones says the loss of the main flotilla under Nassau-
Siegen was slight, and most of that was due to the
reckless firing of the gun-boats upon one another in
the confusion of the 18th, when they were engaged
in destroying the prizes.
Jones says in his Journal, and his view is accepted
by both Admiral Greve and General Todleben that,
had the squadron been promptly and closely sup
ported by the main flotilla, as would have been the
case had the entire force been under Jones's single
command, hardly a Turkish vessel could have es
caped. As it was, however, the Turkish fleet was so
195

PAUL JONES
badly crippled by its loss of nine ships and a great
number of men that it at once bore away for Varna
for refit and reinforcement. On June 19th Jones as
sured Suwarrow that he could now cross the Boug
with his army in perfect security; and by the 27th Su
warrow was across with forty -two thousand men and
marching to invest Oczakoff on the north, or land,
side, Kutusoff sending forward from Balta a division
of twelve thousand of the " army of observation" to
join him under the walls.
Admiral Jones now proposed to Potemkin, who
had come from Kherson to Kinburn on June 20th,
that the Sebastopol fleet and the Liman squad
ron should take advantage of the withdrawal of the
remnant of the Turkish fleet to effect a junction, with
a view to attacking the latter in the open sea when
it should come out again. He even proposed an
offensive movement against Varna, to be followed
by a demonstration on the Bosphorus itself. Potem
kin went on board the flagship Vladimir the next
day, and dined with the Admiral and the captains of
the squadron. He appeared much pleased with the
project, but in a confidential interview with the Ad
miral after dinner raised the objection that it would
be impossible to reconcile the question of rank be
tween Jones and Mordwinoff. He reminded Jones
that Mordwinoff's commission as rear-admiral ante
dated his by several years, and, in fact, he said Mord
winoff was already due for the grade of vice-admiral.
Under such circumstances, Potemkin explained,
nothing less than an express order from the Empress
could oblige Mordwinoff to waive the rights of his
rank and yield the priority to Jones.
100

THE CONQUEST OF THE TURKS
The latter met this point with the suggestion that,
the safety of the land operations being assured, he
(Potemkin) should hoist his own fiag as commander-
in-chief of the combined fleet on board the Vladimir,
in which event he (Jones) would gladly act as chief
of staff, whereby all authority would run in the name
of Potemkin and Mordwinoff be compelled to obey.
This project pleased Potemkin exceedingly, and he
at once sent his chief aide-de-camp, General Popoff,
express to Sebastopol with peremptory orders for
the squadron there to get under way and come
round to the Liman. The Sebastopol squadron was
directly under command of Acting Eear-Admiral
Woinowitch, Mordwinoffs office being that of Chief
of the Admiralty for the Black Sea, and he being,
technically, the senior officer over both squadrons.
The Sebastopol division at that time was supposed
to embrace eight ships of the line (the largest of
seventy guns) and five frigates. But though Woino
witch did his best to comply with Potemkin's order,
he was only able on June 28th to set sail with five
ships of the line and four frigates, not having either
men or supplies enough for the other three ships of
the line and one frigate.
The day after leaving port, being detained to the
southward by contrary winds, Woinowitch fell in
with a division of the Turkish fleet on its way to the
Liman from the Bosphorus ; and though the Turks
had only four sail of the line, three frigates and
three or four small corvettes, Woinowitch precipi
tately fell back to Sebastopol after a long-range
cannonade in which the Eussian loss in the entire
squadron was one man killed and six wounded.
197

PAUL JONES
After this Potemkin abandoned the hope that Jones
had raised in his mind of adding to his other vicari
ous achievements the glory of winning a great naval
battle by proxy ; * and the original principle of the
campaign, so far as the naval force was concerned,
was stringently renewed ; that is to say, the prin
ciple of the strict defensive, inside the Spit of
Kinburn. The attempt of Potemkin to suppress Admiral
Jones's official report of the battle of the Liman has
been mentioned. It may now be said in proper
chronological order that the Admiral's persistency
in adhering to this report, his flat refusal to make it
conform to Potemkin's wishes at the expense of
truth, and, above all, the measures he took to lay it
before the Empress in spite of Potemkin, together
formed the cause of the irreconcilable breach be
tween them that ultimately wrecked Jones's career
in the Eussian service. Jones made his report to
Potemkin as commander-in-chief, and he sent a du
plicate of it to Admiral Mordwinoff as the represent-
*Kolnitz, a harsh critic, but in the main well sustained by his author
ities, says of this incident : *' Potemkin was, at first thought, captivated
by the idea Paul Jones oifered to him — that of figuring as the vicarious
hero of a great naval battle and victory. Bnt on second thought the
Prince-Marshal reconsidered that ambition. It occurred to him that the
hero of a naval battle must be on board a ship actually engaged in it.
On land, battles could be won by a pseudo-commander who might choose
the distance of his person from the enemy. There is no limit to the rear
of an army in battle. But there is no rear whatever on board a ship in
battle. For this particular kind of glory Potemkin had never shown the
least avarice. He had ' conquered ' the Kuban and the Tauric Cher
sonese without once exposing his person to the sight, much less to the
aim, of the enemy. But a hostile fleet could not be conquered at such
dignity of distance. Therefore the two fleets, that of Sebastopol and
that of Kierson, were not assembled." 198

THE CONQUEST OP THE TURKS
ative of the Eussian Admiralty or Ministry of Ma
rine in the Black Sea district. This report was a
frank, straightforward account of the action in con
siderable detail. It embodied unstinted praise of
the captains who served under him, and, curiously
enough, the one most conspicuously commended,
next to Korsakoff of the gun-boat division, was the
Englishman, Fanshawe, who commanded the frigate
Azov, and who led the detachment of five frigates
that went outside Kinburn Point to cut off' the re
treat of the Turks. In this report Jones did not offer
any criticism upon the conduct of Nassau-Siegen
with the flotilla except such as might be necessarily
inferential from a bare statement of the facts.
Almost simultaneously, Nassau-Siegen made a re
port of his own, in which he claimed for himself and
his flotilla the whole credit of the victory, at the
same time flattering Potemkin by the statement,
frequently reiterated, that " this unexampled success
was due to the zeal and bravery with which the offi
cers and men of the flotilla under my direction car
ried into effect the explicit and detailed orders so
wisely and with such masterly foresight dictated by
His Highness the Prince-Marshal, commander-in-
chief." In view of the facts, first, that Potemkin
did not issue any orders at all, and, being sixty miles
away at Kherson, did not know that there was a bat
tle until it was all over ; and, second, that Nassau-
Siegen was not within gunshot of the enemy the
whole day of June 17th, some idea may be formed of
the character of Eussian official reports in the last
century. Potemkin acted promptly. He ordered Mord-
199

PAUL JONES
winoff to give up to him the duplicate of Jones's re
port, which he destroyed. He then took the original
that Jones had sent to him, made his chief aide,
Popoff, revise it until hardly a vestige of the truth
was left, and then sent the revision to Jones by the
hands of the Chevalier de Eibas, with orders — not a
request — that he (Jones) sign Popoff's production as
his own official report. Of course Jones perempto
rily refused to do so. Eibas — who really liked
Jones — besought him to yield, and intimated that
yielding would bring to him a commission as vice-
admiral and the gift of an estate, while persistence
in his refusal would make Potemkin his relentless
enemy and end his career so far as the Eussian ser
vice was concerned. Jones thanked Eibas for his
advice, but said abruptly that his original report
must stand or nothing. Upon this Potemkin sup
pressed it entire, and the only report of the battle of
the Liman that went to St. Petersburg as official, and
approved by Potemkin as commander-in-chief, was
the grotesque melange of mendacity, vanity, and
sycophancy invented by Nassau-Siegen. In this
queer document the only mention made of the
squadron under command of Admiral Jones was a
casual remark toward the end that, " owing to shal
lowness of the water, the larger ships composing the
squadron of Kherson were compelled to remain
spectators of the conflict." Admiral Jones was not
even mentioned by name.
Doubtless prudence, as that term was then under
stood in Eussia, would have dictated to Jones accept
ance of the situation — as Suwarrow had already ad
vised him — " to obey orders and keep his mouth
300

THE CONQUEST OE THE TURKS
shut." But he did not take that course. At that
time the Grand Chamberlain of the King of Poland
was present with the Eussian forces as a sort of mil
itary observer. This gentleman was the Chevalier
Littlepage, born in France, but descended from one
of those Irish soldiers of fortune who emigrated to
France early in the reign of William of Orange.
His grandfather had been a soldier of the Irish
Brigade. Early in his career Littlepage, who was an
hereditary Knight of the Order of St. Louis, which
Louis XIV. had conferred upon his grandfather,
made a voyage to America and spent two or three
years in Virginia. Eeturning to France he went
thence to Poland, where he soon became Grand
Chamberlain to the King. He had been Polish En
voy to Paris in 1780-85, and had then become inti
mately acquainted with Jones. At the juncture now
under consideration, the Chevalier Littlepage was
about to return to Warsaw, intending to go thence
to St. Petersburg. Jones requested him to be the
bearer of a letter to the Count de Segur, French
Ambassador, in which he explained the situation,
enclosed a copy of his true report, a copy of the per
version of it by Popoff at Potemkin's order, and re
quested Segur to lay both before the Ministry of
Marine, and, if practicable, before the Empress
herself. The Chevalier Littlepage said that if Jones in
sisted he would comply with the request, but ad
vised him against it. In the conversation, as re
corded by Jones, M. Littlepage told him that in
Eussia it was necessary to be courtier as well as sol
dier, and, if a choice between the two became inev-
301

PAUL JONES
itable, it was better to be the former than the latter.
Jones answered bluntly that he was not made to
succeed by such means, and that he could see no
chance of gaining honor in a service where the truth
of history could be not only suppressed but actually
reversed in official documents. Jones then con
cluded : " I have stood more from Nassau-Siegen
than I ever did or ever would from any man not
crazy, and can stand no more. He is without either
ability, truth, or honor. One minute he will embrace
me, the next minute he will stab me in the back.
And, worst of all, he lacks even the quality that
often partially redeems characters otherwise vile —
the quality of personal courage. To every other
vice he adds the shame of a coward."
M. Littlepage did not argue the matter any fur
ther. He took the papers, went to Warsaw, and
thence to St. Petersburg, where he handed them to
Segur about October 1st. The French Ambassador
acted promptly. Apart from his personal friendship
for Jones, de Segur felt officially outraged by this
grotesque, shameless attempt to pervert and reverse
plain history for the benefit of a pretender like Po
temkin and a titled harlequin like Nassau-Siegen, at
the expense of Paul Jones, whom he and his King
had been chiefly, if not wholly, instrumental in per
suading to enter the Eussian service.
At that moment Segur was the most influential
foreign ambassador near the court of Catharine.
He had the unbounded confidence of his King and
his people. Louis XVI. was the only monarch and
France was the only nation in Europe at that mo
ment which Catharine could call friendly. England,
303

THE CONQUEST OP THE TURKS
with Prussia at her elbow, had already induced, if
she had not compelled, Joseph II. of Austria to
recede from his promise of close alliance with Eussia,
made in 1786, and the seventy thousand Austrian
troops that had been moved to the Moldavian and
WaUachian frontier in the spring of 1788 were being
withdrawn in the fall. So, naturally, with England
openly and Prussia covertly hostile, with Austria
vacillating and inclined to retreat, and with Sweden
and Denmark, under English influence, threatening,
Catharine was not inclined to make a personal issue
with so positive an ambassador as the Count de
Segur on a ground that she had reason to apprehend
would also excite the personal resentment of Louis
XVI. She was at heart convinced that Potemkin
and Nassau-Siegen were deceiving her, and that Paul
Jones had told her the truth ; but she was not yet
ready to confess it by openly discrediting or dis
gracing her deceivers. Therefore she temporized,
as the sequel will show. Meanwhile the campaign
against Oczakoff pursued its even tenor. The lim
its of this work will not permit us to give the de
tails of the siege which Suwarrow laid to this
fortress. In the sortie which the Turks made from
Oczakoff on July 20th he was disabled by a bullet
through the inside of the thigh that barely missed
cutting the femoral artery. The severity of this
wound and the fact that it made him unable to ride
a horse compelled him, much against his will, to
turn over the command, temporarily, to Benning-
sen, and he went across the Dnieper to Kinburn to
recuperate. Benningsen was ordered to push reg
ular approaches against the outer Turkish line of
303

PAUL JONES
works, but not to attempt an assault in Suwarrow's
absence. During his stay at Kinburn, Suwarrow was in fre
quent communication with Admiral Jones, and, as
the naval force had now nothing to do but to watch
the entrance to the Liman, they conceived the proj
ect of effecting a lodgment on the southern end of
the peninsula of Oczakoff, and approaching the for
tress from that side in conjunction with the main at
tack from the north and east. By this time (August)
the flotilla had been largely reinforced by zebecks,
built at Kherson as the campaign progressed, and
the total number of gun-boats was now about one
hundred and sixty, thirty-five or forty of them being
armed with ten-inch mortars. All these boats were
flat-bottomed scows, roughly but strongly built, and,
though incapable of much manoeuvring under sail,
they were well adapted to the service required of
them. To man these new boats and also to provide
a strong landing force for the movement on the
south end, Bariatinsky's division, about eight thou
sand strong, was detached from the main army and
brought over to Kinburn during the period of Su
warrow's convalescence.
In the preceding description of the fortification of
Oczakoff mention has been made of a system of
water-batteries at the south end of the peninsula.
These had been allowed to fall into decay, and when
Mehemet Hassan took command, in the fall of 1787,
he caused a large redoubt of earthwork and sand
bags to be built immediately in rear of the old water-
batteries of Palazzi. This new redoubt the Turks —
and the Eussians also — named Fort Hassan Pacha.
304

THE CONQUEST OP THE TURKS
This fort now became the object of almost daily
bombardment by the flotilla, and also by those of the
larger vessels of the squadron whose draught of
water was light enough to enable them to get within
range of it. Several attempts were made to land the
Eussian infantry, but with no result except more
or less bloody repulses until October 6th, when the
water-batteries were taken, and at once reversed for
operations against Fort Hassan Pacha. Admiral
Jones, according to some of the accounts, was on shore
during this operation with a considerable landing
force from the squadron, and participated in the as
sault. But he does not mention the circumstance
in his journal of the campaign, or in the accompa
nying documents. It is probable that, if on shore,
he took no personal part in the assault ; which he
mentions as having been directed by Brigadiers de
Eibas and Sergius Mensehikoff, and he states that
the sailors landed from the squadron were employed
in reversing and remounting the guns in the water-
batteries, so that they could be brought to bear on
Fort Hassan Pacha. In October, Suwarrow, having
fully recovered from his wound, resumed charge of
the main attack on the north side, and after severe
and bloody fighting effected the capture of the for
tress in December.
Admiral Jones says in his Journal that the Turkish
losses during the siege, as a whole, were about four
teen thousand on land, besides prisoners, and over
four thousand on the water. The Eussian loss he
estimates in total as nineteen thousand to twenty
thousand in the army, and one thousand four hun
dred to one thousand five hundred in the squadron
305

PAt"X JONES
and flotilla ; more than half of which was chargeable
to the battle of the Liman, on June 17th. These esti
mates substantially agi-ee with Suwarrow's general
report, and are accepted by the standard Eussian
historians. SuwaiTOw's report of the whole cam
paign would not fill two pages of this volume.
The immediate result of the fall of Oczakoff was
a suspension of military operations along the whole
line. Admiral Jones relinquished his command in
the Black Sea and returned at his leisure to St.
Petersburg. But the fall of Oczakoff by no means
ended the struggle ; and, though Admiral Jones did
not actively participate in its further operations on
the immediate theatre of war, yet his relation to the
conflict as a whole was such that a brief survej" of its
further progress to the end seems desirable. While
Suwarrow and his invincible soldiers rested, and
while the fleet that Paul Jones had commanded was
anchored, the diplomats of Western and Northern
Europe were astir. Every effort was put forth and
every expedient that the art of diplomacy could in
vent or command was exhausted to stop the con
quering progress of the Eussian arms. All efforts
at mediation, however, failed ; the old Eussian blood
hound was unleashed, and Suwarrow invaded Mol
davia at the head of an army eightj" thousand strong.
This was incomparably the best army ever assem
bled under the Eussian eagles up to that time, and,
in fact, it was one of the best armies that had been
seen in Europe. Close behind this superb army
was the reserve of thirty-odd thousand under Kutu
soff The campaign that ensued was the masterpiece of
200

THE CONQUEST OP THE TURKS
Suwarrow's long and masterful career. There was
hardly a check, much less a serious reverse, in it
from beginning to end. The whole of lower Mol
davia and Eastern Wallachia was overrun. Three
Turkish armies were routed and dispersed, one after
another, at Eymnik, Fokchani, Giurgevo, and under
the walls of Galatz. Three Turkish commanders
went do^vn one after another — Ibrahim Pacha,
Gouri Pacha, and Mustapha Bey — before the resist
less attacks and the invincible combinations of the
veteran Suwarrow — the man of almost half a century
of constant campaigning. At last the Turks were ex
pelled from every position north of the lower Danube
but one, the fortress of Ismail, and in this strong
hold, late in the fall of 1790, the last remnants of
Selim's armies, from twenty -four thousand to thirty
thousand strong, took refuge. Strangely enough,
after all his favorites had been beaten, Selim III.,
the successor of the Sultan Hamid I., at last turned
to Mehemet Hassan, who had been in disgrace since
the fall of Oczakoff, and bade him save Ismail if he
could. The veteran Mameluke, knowing well his
adversary by bitter experience, obeyed his sovereign
grimly and accepted the forlorn hope withthe sullen
fatalism of his race and creed.
The details of the capture of Ismail by Suwarrow's
army need not detain us. Some of the consequences
of the defeat of the Turks were, however, highly
important. In the military sense Suwarrow's War,
as it was called, demonstrated to Western Europe
and to the world facts never before distinctly ad
mitted: that Eussian armies were susceptible of the
most perfect modern organization ; that Eussian

PAUL JONES
commanders were capable of scientific combinations
and connected execution of comprehensive plans,
both tactical and strategic, on a seale actually larger
in point of numbers than had been seen in West
ern Europe prior to that time. Moreover, a Eus
sian general, handling larger armies than Marl
borough, Turenne, Saxe, Frederick the Great or
any other commander then known to history ever
handled, had at last checked the hitherto unbridled
power of the Turk in Southeastern Europe. Memory
was still fresh of the time when a Turkish army at
the gates of Vienna had threatened the capital of
the Holy Eoman Empire, near the end of the seven
teenth century, with the fate that befell the capital of
the Byzantine Empire in the middle of the fifteenth.
Suwarrow had changed all this. After Ismail the
statesmen of European Christendom slept well.
And every fanatical hope that Moslem breast may
have held of further European conquest was forever
quenched in the del age of Mussulman blood that
Suwarrow's pitiless bayonets let out on the streets
of Ismail that fateful day.
The permanent political lesson of all this was the
undisputed and indisputable entry of Eussia into
the front rank of nations. The best description we
have seen of the personality of the great soldier who
accomplished this result for Eussia was that by
Paul Jones himself in his Journal of 1791, written
in Paris soon after he had received the news of Is
mail. The Admiral says :
After relinquishing command of the squadron of Kher
son, I visited General Suwarrow at his headquarters. This
was a month before the fall of Oczakoff. His quarters were
308

THE CONQUEST OP THE TURKS
in a hut in one of the captured forts, and there were in it
but two small rooms. They were such quarters as a Turk
ish colonel would have occupied. The General used one
room for his offlce and dining-room, and the other for a
sleeping apartment. He had no servants— only a cook and
two orderlies, the latter looking after his horses and at
tending him personally so much as he required personal at
tention, which was but little. The officers of his staff had
much better quarters than he. In person he is about my
stature — five feet seven inches — but he stoops in the
shoulders, his chest is flat and even slightly hollowed or
shrunken, his body and limbs are slender, and his tout en
semble the reverse of imposing. His features are regular
and of most pleasant expression ; often benignant when he
is animated or amused. His complexion, though, seems
rugged, being tanned to a brown hue by more than forty
years of fleld service in all climates and at all seasons, and
his face, always smooth shaven, has been deeply furrowed by
time, care and pain ; for he has been wounded many times,
and his years are threescore. His knowledge of affairs is
comprehensive and accurate. He is an apt critic of the
military operations of the preceding two centuries, from
the wars of Gustavus Adolphus to those of Frederick, and
to my astonishment I found him familiar with the main
strategy and larger operations of our own Revolutionary
War, though but little has been published in Europe con
cerning it.
He is not apparently desirous of personal fame, though
it was easy for me to perceive that he had keen solicitude
for the opinions held of his exploits by military men in
France and England, which countries he was extremely
anxious to visit.
His attainments in languages are remarkable. He speaks
French, German, Swedish, Finnish, and Polish well, and
can write correctly as well in all those languages. He can
also make himself understood in several of the Tartar dia
lects, and even in Turkish.
Vol. il— 14 309

PAUL JONES
In character he is the soul of truth and honor. While
under the malign control of Potemkin he never made re
ports of his operations, because Potemkin would not let
him write the truth, and he would write nothing else. His
generosity is equal to his simplicity. He seems to have no
sense of values. His purse is at the service of every comer,
worthy and unworthy alike, his simplicity of nature be
ing such that he can be imposed upon by any plausible
person, no matter of what character. The magnificent
jewelled sword given to him by the Empress for his con
quest of the Taurida he was in the habit of wearing every
day, and nothing but the watchfulness of his faithful zapo-
ravian (cossaok) orderlies prevented jewels worth thousands
of roubles being lost out of its hilt from time to time when
loosened in their settings from rough usage.
He seems extravagant only in his horses, having, when I
visited him, four or flve of the purest Arabian breed, and
their stable was better than his own hut. He exhibited one
of these to me with vast pride — a gray stallion which he
had onee ridden from Taganrog to Moscow and back with
out relay or relief, and which, nevertheless, showed no signs
of being the worse for wear. When I departed from Suwar
row's headquarters, November 14th, to go to BLherson, en
route to St. Petersburg, he took from one of his camp
chests a fur cloak or mantle-coat made of Siberian sea-
otter skins, lined with yellow China silk and having wide
cuffs and collar, or hood, of sable, and long enough to
reach my heels. I had never seen so magnificent a gar
ment. But this was not all. He next produced a pelisse or
hussar jacket of solid ermine, white as driven snow, and
fastened in front with black-and-gold cord frogs — the court-
dress winter jacket of the fleld officers of the Pavlovskaia
Hussars of the Household Guard, of which he was honorary
lieutenant-colonel. "Take these, Jones," he said; "they are too good for
me. My children [meaning his soldiers] would not know
310

THE CONQUEST OE THE TURKS
their little old father, Suwarrow, if they saw him bedecked
in such finery. But they will become a French Chevalier
such as you. As for me, the coarse gray great-coat of my
soldiers and a pair of muddy boots are good enough for
your poor brother Suwarrow. Adieu! "
I never have seen him since. He was one of the few men
I have met who was always more interesting to me to-day
than yesterday, and in whom I always looked — and never
in vain — for still more delightful traits to-morrow. Brave
beyond description, generous beyond conception, able be
yond the power of any perception to penetrate beneath his
rude and almost uncouth exterior, I am not sure that Rus
sia does not see in him now the greatest soldier she will
ever know. He must certainly rank with such soldiers as
Alexander, Hannibal, and Csesar, in ancient times, or Gus
tavus Adolphus, Marlborough, and Frederick the Great in
modern days. And not only is he the flrst general of Rus
sia, but I am not sure that he lacks anything of being the
first in all Europe.
To resume our narrative proper, we have seen that
Jones, in defiance of Potemkin, forwarded by the
hands of the Chevalier Littlepage, Grand Chamber
lain to the King of Poland, the truthful report of the
battle of the Liman which Potemkin had ruthlessly
attempted to suppress in the interests jointly of him
self and his abject creature and sycophant, Nassau-
Siegen. Catharine, beset by this square conflict of
testimony between the report that had reached her
through the regular channels, countersigned by her
trusted — or at least beloved — favorite, Potemkin,
and the report of Paul Jones handed to her by the
French Ambassador, hesitated to decide. She did
not wish to discredit Potemkin, and she was afraid
to discredit Paul Jones, who was enthusiastically and
311

PAUL JONES
inflexibly backed by de Segur, the ambassador of
the only king in Europe on whom she could then
rely as a counterpoise to England. Segur, a positive
man, and fully cognizant of his advantage, did not
hesitate to have his say. He advised Catharine to
recall at once the pretentious and imbecile Potemkin
and exile or drown in the Schllisselburg the vile
and vapid Nassau-Siegen ; then to make Suwarrow
commander-in-chief in Potemkin's place, and leave
Suwarrow to assign to Jones his proper sphere of
duty, assuring her that Jones would obey Suwarrow
as gladly and as implicitly as the most humble Eus
sian soldier in his army.
The Empress, after considering the matter for
several days, decided to send for Jones to come to
St. Petersburg ; but she sugar-coated the order with
a plausible intimation that, in consequence of the
recent death of Admiral Greig,* and the threatening
* In a letter to the Chevalier Littlepage, Grand Chamberlain to the
King of Poland, dated Paris, September 28, 1790, Jones says ; '' The
sudden death of Sir Samuel Greig was a misfortune to me in two ways ;
first, because it removed a good friend from me, who was always near the
Empress ; and, second, because it gave her an excuse she might not
otherwise so easily have found to take me away from the Black Sea, and
thereby out of Potemkin's way. Sir Samuel and I understood each
other perfectly. We both knew that the Empress needed the services of
both of us. He knew that I, if ordered to serve on the Baltic fleet, would
cheerfully be second to him, or serve in any other suitable rank subject
to his seniority. And he and I both knew also that he would not, if he
could help it, serve in the Black Sea, because he had been there, under
conditions similar to mine, during the previous war — ITI'S-TT — and wanted
no more of that kind of service under any circumstances. I ordy wish
that all my experience with superior officers while in the Russian service
could have been as satisfactory and as unobjectionable as were my rela
tions with Sir Samuel Greig in the navy, and with General Alexander
Suwarrow in the army." 213

THE CONQUEST OE THE TURKS
attitude of Sweden, and also in view of the total
prostration of Turkish naval power in the Black
Sea, she would require his services the next season
in command of her Baltic fleet.
On October Sth, four days after Greig died, Catha
rine announced to the Count de Segur that she had
decided to promote Eear-Admiral Jones to vice-
admiral and place him in command of her Baltic
fleet. The same day she despatched an imperial
courier to Kherson with the following- order :
According to our imperial desire, based upon necessity,
the sphere of service for our Vice-Admiral, the Chevalier
Paul Jones, is now fixed in the Northern seas. His Excel
lency the Vice-Admiral will at once proceed on the journey
to our capital. His Excellency the Vice-Admiral will with
out ceremony present himself at our Palace of the Hermit
age, where he will be made acquainted with our further
wishes. (Signed) Catharibtb.
The Empress also direoted that Admiral Jones be
provided with one thousand ducats (Austrian) —
about $2,400 — for the extraordinary expenses of the
journey, and informed him that the mayors of the
principal towns along his route would receive him
with the honors due to his rank. She also author .^
ized him to bring with him to St. Petersburg any
two officers he might select from his squadron as
aides-de-camp, with the understanding that such
selection should be considered a mark of particu
lar merit, and that the officers selected would be
promoted and decorated on their arrival at the
capital. The Vice-Admiral selected Captain Korsa
koff as one of those favored officers, and Lieuten-
313

PAUL JONES
ant Albert Edwards as the other ; the selection of
Edwards, who was an Englishman, being a curious
commentary on the treatment he had experienced
at the hands of the whole body of English officers
in Catharine's service when he first appeared in
Eussia. It exhibits conspicuously the total ab
sence of jealousy or revenge from Paul Jones's
nature. It was right and just that he should rec
ognize Edwards, who had served him with fault
less courage and fidelity ; and therefore he did it
without the least reference to the origin or pre
vious associations of that good and gallant young
officer. Two days before Admiral Jones left Kherson for
St. Petersburg, Potemkin invited him to dinner
and also to receive a personal letter to the Em
press. Jones describes this event in his Journal as
follows :
I was invited by the Prince-Marshal to his headquarters
for leave-taking, and also to receive from his hands a letter
to the Empress in person informing Her Imperial Majesty
as to my services. After dinner, the Prince-Marshal having
temporarily withdrawn, I spoke freely, and told his chief
of staff. General Popoff, all that was on my mind. After I
had left, the General repeated to Prince Potemkin what I
had said, or the substance of it, quite accurately. At flrst,
as he informed me, the Prince was vexed, but the next day
he sent for me to talk with him. He opened the subject by
saying that he had not been aware of some of the facts I had
stated to General Popoff.
Without failing in the respect due to his rank, I answered
him quite freely and without reserve. I frankly told him
he had played an unfair game at the opening of the cam
paign in dividing the command of the naval forces in the
314

THE CONQUEST OE THE TURKS
Liman, in view of the existing situation of the country and
the proper objects of the war ; also that but for my resolve
to sacrifice my own feelings, and even rights, in the hope
of ultimately managing the persons whom he had made
my colleagues when it was understood they were to be
my subordinates, I should have thrown up the whole
affair before the end of May.
I impressed upon him that when I left St. Petersburg
I clearly understood, not only from Count Besborodko
and the French Ambassador but also from the Empress
herself, that I was to have as undisputed a command of the
whole naval force in the Euxine as General Suwarrow had
of the land forces.
Had this agreement been kept, I assured him the cam
paign would have taken a very different turn ; that I would
have attacked the Capitan Pacha in the open sea with the
united squadrons of Kherson and Sebastopol, aud that
there would have been no more of the Turkish fleet left in
the Black Sea than there was Turkish garrisou left in Ocza
koff at the end of the campaign. I said : ' ' Tou can see, sir,
from the defeat I inflicted on the Turkish force June 17th,
with less than half the total Russian strength in these
waters, what I would have done had the entire fleet of Her
Imperial Majesty been at my disposal. In this estimate I
did not count the flotilla at all ; only the sea-going ships
of the two squadrons. ' '
The Prince, after considerable further discussion of the
points, in which I demonstrated that the two squadrons
united would have been superior to any force the Turks
could assemble in the Euxine, both in ships, men, and
weight of metal, replied that " he agreed with me, but it
was too late now."
I then said to him that I did not complain on my own
account so much as on that of my officers. I showed to
him the statements of my flag-captain, Zefelianoff, com
mander of the Vladimir : Captain Abuljanin, of the Psko
roi ; Captain Danileff, of the Nicolai ; Captain Makinin,
315

PAUL JONES
of the Taheurok ; Captain Savitzky, of the Little Alex
ander ; Captain Rostopoloff, of the St. Anne ; Captain Fan
shawe, of the Azov; Captain Grev6, of the Borysthenes,
and Captain de Winter, of the Great Alexander ; and when
he had read them the Prince was convinced that he had
neither done justice to me nor to the brave and capable
captains of the squadron.
I then as delicately as I could called his attention to the
strange treatment my ofQcial report of the Battle of the
Liman had received at his hands. This seemed to nettle
him for a moment, and he remarked with impatience that
he had wished that subject to be ignored.
I replied that it was an essential part of the history ; in
fact, from my point of view, the Radical of it.
He then after a little hesitation broke out in violent de
nunciation of Nassau-Siegen, whom, as I knew, he had sent
to Warsaw about October 30th preceding. The Prince told
me he had sent Nassau-Siegen on a pretended mission to
Warsaw to get rid of him ; that he had found him out only
when it was too late. He said that Nassau had at first
completely deceived him, pretending to have done all him
self ; but that now he could deceive him no longer and
that he now knew that person for what he really is.
To this the Prince, after a few minutes' reflection, added,
with great warmth : ' ' But now, sir, having admitted so
much, I want to say to you that I am not wholly to blame.
If you and Mordwinoff had not quarrelled at the start Nas
sau-Siegen would never have had opportunity for intrigue.
It was Mordwinoff who first unmasked his absurd preten
sions to me. But he deferred it until too late to mend
matters or prevent the mischief that had been done ! "
He then said if I would consent to co-operate with Mord
winoff and recognize his seniority of rank he (the Prince)
would take it upon himself to secure a revocation of the
Empress's order summoning me to St. Petersburg ; that I
could spend the winter fltting out the eight new ships then
completing at Taganrog ; that in the spring I would have
316

THE CONQUEST OP THE TURKS
sole command afloat of the united fleet ; that Mordwinoff
was content to discharge the duties of Chief of the Ad
miralty for the Black Sea Division and busy himself with
the administration of naval affairs on shore, and would
not in any way interfere with my operations afloat nor
seek to deprive me of any credit for his own beneflt.
To this I responded that I had been induced to come to
Russia on the understanding explicitly set forth by Baron
Simolin at Paris, conflrmed by Baron Krudener at Copen
hagen, and fully approved by the Empress herself before I
left St. Petersburg, that I was to command the Black Sea
fleet, and, as that understanding had not been carried out,
I must now decline to make a new agreement calculated to
reduce the terms of that understanding. Besides, the Em
press had ordered me to repair to St. Petersburg, and I did
not wish that she be asked to reconsider her imperial man
date. I then concluded the interview by entreating the
Prince to consider the services of my officers and give back
to them the seniority they had lost by the promotion of
officers of the flotilla who did not belong to the naval
service, and to reward them otherwise according to the
memorandum I had left with Admiral Mordwinoff, who
had approved it in my presence. The Prince promised
to do this, and, as I afterward learned, kept his word
fully. The foregoing is a translation from the original
text of Admiral Jones's Journal of the Liman cam
paign as it appears in the French Collection of 1799.
Those who may happen to read the Janette Taylor
Collection, American Edition of 1830, will find on
page 458 et seq. a partial translation, presumably
by Dr. Sands or Edward Hamilton. As far as it goes
the translation is fairly accurate ; but it is too much
condensed to bring out all points of prime histor
ical interest. 317

PAUL JONES
The Admiral's Journal ends with a few pages de
voted to a most interesting survey of the state of
naval architecture in the Black Sea at that time.
It is worth reproduction entire. He says :
I observed with much regret that the ships built on the
Black Sea, particularly at Kherson, generally became rot
ten in five or six years. This is because the Russians do
not make 'proper provision for seasoning their timber by
cutting it a sufficient time in advance of its use. This is
an extraordinary waste, because no river in the world pen
etrates such vast or so accessible forests of ship-timber as
the Dnieper, and before the present war the French used
to obtain enormous supplies of the most valuable timber
from the mouth of that great river. I have myself wit
nessed that the King's dockyard at Toulon, one of the
most extensive in the world, was for many years more than
half supplied from this source alone.
My respect for the Empress who has created the Russian
naval power in the Euxine makes me regret most keenly
that those whom she has intrusted with the construction
of her fleet should have built it on false principles, whereby
it is unable to sustain the heavy artillery which she has lav
ishly provided for it, and cannot mancBuvre properly at sea
in consequence of the faulty models of its hulls and of in
sufficient sail-power. For example, my flagship, the Vlad
imir, though pierced for seventy guns on two decks, had
less sail-power than the American-built frigate Alliance of
thirty-six guns, and could not with the fairest wind, carry
ing all sail, log more than seven knots an hour, and could
hardly beat to windward at all ; whereas the Alliance has
logged thirteen knots, and could run in the teeth of the
wind faster than the Vladimir could with it on the
quarter. The hulls are built without attention to "lines " as that
term is understood in Western Europe and America, or
218

THE CONQUEST OP THE TURKS
even in Turkey and the Barbary States. The floor-timbers
are laid with but little dead-rise, and there is hardly a pre
tence of turning the bilges, except to round off the corners
with axes. The bow and stern are drawn in simply by
shortening the floor-timbers forward and aft, giving to the
hull on the stocks the appearance of a huge skiff (" d'un
gros esquif " in the French text). The frames are butted
to the floor-ends by means of heavy gussets of plank,
though occasionally knee-timbers are used for this purpose
in the larger ships. Sometimes the upper frames are
slightly curved inboard to produce an appearance of tum
ble-home amidships, but more often they come up straight
to the plank-sheer, making the vessel perfectly wall-sided.
The floors and frames are very thick and closely spaced, the
abundance of timber and cheapness of labor being such as
to make economy in this respect of no importance. The
planking and decks are fastened in the usual manner, both
being extremely thick. The masts and spars are short,
thick, and clumsy, and the sails small and badly cut and
fit. The rigging is also unnecessarily heavy, and the run
ning part of it invariably stiff and hard to handle. On the
whole the ships are crank, unwieldy, cannot tack handily,
and, if they had to be used in seas where tides and currents
exist, would often be unmanageable, in roadsteads or on lee
shores. Yet the Russians have been and are by no means destitute
of competent advisers in respect to naval construction.
At Kherson, and also at Sebastopol, Taganrog, and Azofl,
they employ foreign shipwrights of skill and ability. I
was not personally acquainted at any of the dockyards ex
cept Kherson, but there they had two Swedes, Nissen and
Kronstrom, pupils of Chapman; and the assistant to Secre
tary Dimitreffsy, of the Admiralty (chief of construction
and supply), was an English shipwright named John
Cramp, a very capable man.
These men, however, all told me the Russians would not
adopt their methods of lines, models, and calculations, con-
319

PAUL JONES
sidering them unnecessary refinements, at least for service
in the Black Sea, where rapidity of construction was almost
the sole desideratum. A curious circumstance was that
these foreign shipwrights were all invested with the relative
rank and entitled to wear the uniform of cornets of cuiras
siers of the Imperial Guard. Just why a master shipwright
should have the rank and wear the uniform of a subaltern
officer of heavy cavalry is a hopeless puzzle, though, after
all, it is hardly more absurd than the reckless mingling and
interchange of naval and military titles in the service aboard
ship afloat.
The Turkish vessels, both large and small, have decided
advantage over those of the Russians in speed and manoeu
vring power. Marshal Saxe has said that the victories of
armies lie in their legs as much as in their hearts ("dans
les jambes, " etc.). This expression, though apparently ob
scure, envelops a profound and sensible meaning, that the
marching power of an army is as essential to success as its
flghting power. This meaning applies with equal or even
greater force to naval armaments and their operations.
Give me a fieet of equal force and superior in its sailing and
I will always engage to bring the enemy's fleet into port or
leave it at the bottom. If I am to be inferior in anything
let it be in ships, men, and weight of metal, so only my
fleet can sail faster, handle quicker, and hold a wind better
and closer than the enemy's can.
The commerce of the Black Sea is an object of the great
est importance to Russia. But this commerce, so advan
tageous and so indispensable to the welfare and growth of
the empire, will always be annoyed and hampered by the
Turks until Russia maintains a preponderating fleet in the
Black Sea to hold a rod over them and to place the keys
of Constantinople in the hands of the Empress and her
successors. Russia has all the materials, and, by making the neces
sary organization of skill, order, and economy, the existing
deficiency might be supplied in a few years. The means of
330

THE CONQUEST OP THE TURKS
obtaining good seamen is by creating a merchant fleet, con
cluding a commercial treaty with the United States, foster
ing an ocean commerce, and having a squadron of evolution
in the Black Sea in constant training under competent
command. Having finished with Potemkin, Admiral Jones on
December 6, 1788, set out for St. Petersburg. On
his arrival at Elisabetgrad he decided to go by way
of Warsaw, and proceeded as far as Kiev in that
direction. At Kiev, however, he met Generals Kutu
soff, Benningsen, and Bagration, who had taken leave
of absence from the army the day after Oczakoff fell,
and were on their way to St. Petersburg by the direct
route. They easily persuaded the Admiral to accom
pany them, and after a day or two of rest and enter
tainment at Kiev, they all set out by the winter route,
through Minsk, Dwinsk (Dunaburg), and Pskoff.
They travelled slowly, stopping a day or two in each
large town, and four or five days at Pskoff, where they
were royally entertained by the venerable General
Zoritsch, who was then the ranking officer of the
Eussian army, Chief Aide-de-Camp to the Empress,
Honorary Colonel of the Preobrajensky Guards,
etc., etc., and a veteran of the wars of Elisabeth's
time. They arrived at St. Petersburg on December
28th, and on the Slst Admiral Jones was received at
court with every mark of confidence and distinction.
At the conclusion of this chapter it seems proper
to remark that the readers of the numerous biogra
phies of Paul Jones and of the various collections
of his papers must observe the apparently inextrica
ble confusion of dates that are assigned to events of
his Eussian campaign in the various versions.
331

PAUL JONES
Some of this confusion may be due to inperfect
translation or to typographical error — as is notori
ously the case with Colonel Sherburne's Collection
and some of the biographies that are, in general,
founded upon it, without showing much collateral
research. But in the main it is due to the fact that
some writers follow the original text of Jones's
journals and letters during this period of his career,
in which he uniformly adopts the Eussian calendar
or " Old Style " for his dates of events ; while others
endeavor to transfer the chronology to the "New
Style " ; and yet others follow first one and then
the other, as carelessness may dictate.
In this work, which, so far as the Admiral's Eus
sian service is concerned, is based almost entirely on
his own writings, and on the vernacular Eussian his
tories, the " Old Style," which he and they invaria
bly follow, is rigidly adhered to.

323

CHAPTEE VI
RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
Dissatisfied as Admiral Jones was with the dis
honorable treatment he had thus far experienced
in Eussia, and doubtful as he must have been of any
future betterment of his situation there, he seems to
have forgotten all the injustice he had suffered in
the charm of the personal attention — or condescen
sion, in court phrase — which the Empress conferred
upon him. To all other men she was simply the
sovereign ; the visible head of the state. Even the
naturally chivalric Segur took that view of her, and
that only ; and he invariably subordinated his warm
instinct of gallantry as a Frenchman to his cold
sense of officialism as an ambassador. But Jones
seemed incapable of such an attitude. In this was
displayed the one besetting weakness of his charac
ter. He could not help worshipping a handsome or
a gifted or, above all, a royal or imperial woman. It
is doubtful whether poor little Aimee de Telison could
have held his fealty as she did from 1778 till he died,
in 1792, despite his roving, if, with all her petite
beauty and all her exquisite tact and talent, she had
been else than the daughter of a king, albeit ille
gitimate. Likewise, it is more than doubtful if any
woman, not imperial, sixty years of age, as Catharine
was in 1789, could have commanded the gallantry
223

RAUL JONES
and enthralled the common sense of Paul Jones as
she did, in spite of his disappointments and not
withstanding the failures of herself, or her creatures
in her behalf, to keep faith with him.
It is clear — or it ought to be clear by this time —
that Catharine never actually intended to place
Paul Jones in command of her Baltic fleet vice
Greig, deceased. From this point of view, it is
almost painful to read the tributes Jones pays to
Catharine in his extant writings of that period. It
is equally unpleasant to read his correspondence
with Potemkin and Besborodko during the same
period ; because his letters to them indicate an in
ability or an unwillingness to conceive that they
were both his bitter, relentless, and unscrupulous
foes, bent on his disgrace and destruction. Most of
the biographers of Admiral Jones attribute the dif
ficulties of his situation at this time to the "in
trigues of the English officers in the Eussian ser
vice." Dr. Sands, in his always peculiar and often
absurd " editing " of the Janette Taylor Collection,
asserts (page 475) that : " Both the Count Segur and
Jones unhesitatingly ascribe it to English officers
in the Eussian navy, and the English merchants,"
etc. If that be true, Dr. Sands carefully refrained from
reproducing any extracts from either the " EecoUec
tions " of the Count de Segur or the Journals of Jones
to verify his assertion. The truth is, that, whatever
may have been the attitude of the English officers in
the Baltic fleet toward Jones when he first appeared
in Eussia, their antagonism found expression in the
open and, from their point of view, manly protest
324

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
they made against serving under his command ; but
having offered that protest, they stopped there and
gave no further sign. This was doubtless in some
degree due to the attitude assumed by Greig ; but
it was mainly due to the racial fact that English
men, particularly if they happen to be military or
naval officers, usually fight in the open or on deck,
and are not in the habit of hatching vulgar conspir
acies or cowardly plots for the ruin of any man, no
matter how heartily they may hate him. The fact,
already stated, that two English officers. Captain
Fanshawe and Lieutenant Edwards — and, we might
add. Lieutenant Fox, not previously mentioned —
served with zeal, courage, and ability under Jones in
the Black Sea, indicates that some of them, at least,
accepted the situation with good grace.
During the months of January, February, and part
of March, 1789, Admiral Jones remained in St. Peters
burg under conditions that could not have been irk
some for any reason unless it might have been that
of procrastination in determining his future employ
ment. He had the entree at court, was provided
with elegant quarters, his pecuniary needs were
lavishly met by allowances in addition to his pay,
and social attentions were showered upon him.
Though not formally assigned to command, and in
fact not definitely employed, his advice as to the im
provement of the Baltic fleet was freely sought by
the Imperial Admiralty, and he had no reason to
complain of inattention, either personal or official.
About the middle of March, 1789, he was thunder
struck to find himself the victim of a plot so infa
mous, and the object of a conspiracy so vile, that he
Voi..n.— 15 23,5

PAUL JONES
was at first incapable of conceiving it to be real. We
may as well let him describe it in his own way, as he
did in a memorandum addressed to the Count de
Segur dated April 2, 1789. He says :
Some days since, a young girl came to my apartments;
the porter announced her as a child whose mother mended
garments for a livelihood, and said that she came to ask if
I had work of that kind to be done. The child then came
into my reception-room and immediately began some ear
nest and indecent allurements of person. Astonished at so
much boldness on the part of one so young, I felt compassion
for her, advised her to beware of such a career, gave her a
rouble in charity and dismissed her ; but she refused to
leave the room. Unwilling to call the porter for the pur
pose of ejecting a female child, though impatient at her
contumacy, I took her gently by the hand and led her to
the door. But the moment I opened the door the little
profiigate tore her sleeves, cast off her neckerchief, raised
great cries, loudly accused me of assaulting her, and at the
foot of the staircase threw herself into the arms of an old
woman whom she called her mother, and who, certainly,
was not brought there by chance. The alleged mother and
daughter then went out on the street — the Great Morskaia —
and denounced me, exciting the neighborhood with their
cries. Now you know the whole affair as I know it.
The porter, an honest fellow, had seen all, and took down
their names as they gave them to him, but he had not taken
down their place of abode. He could speak some French,
and hastened to tell me they would make trouble. I at
once sent a message to Monsieur Krimpaii, an attorney,
whom I had previously employed to draw up some papers
for me, and who, by the way, is the only attorney I know
in St. Petersburg. He came, and I gave to him the facts
written in French, exactly as herein stated. Two days
afterward he returned the paper to me with a private mes
sage saying that a high authority had interdicted him from
226

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
acting in my behalf, under severe penalties. The same day
a court courier came with an order from the deputy cham
berlain forbidding me to approach the palace of Her Maj
esty, or to presume to send any communication to anyone
in regard to the affair.
Then I perceived that I am the victim of a plot as aston
ishing as it is incomprehensible, and therefore, as a last
resort, I appeal to you.
We may now let the Count de Segur tell the rest of
the story as it appears in his " EecoUections " pub
lished at Paris in 1834. A translation of some sort
appears in the Janette Taylor Collection, and a par
tial one in the Edinburgh life. The literal transla
tion is as follows :
. . . Without loss of time I visited the Admiral. . . .
' ' Give me all the papers, ' ' I said, ' ' and resume your compos
ure ; let me undertake the management of the case. You shall
see me soon again. " As soon as I arrived at the Embassy, I
summoned the sharpest and most wary of my own corps of
secret agents, who were devoted to me personally and to the
service of our King, and directed them first to establish
the identity of the females concerned in the plot, the prog
ress and denouement of which I fully explained to them,
and to bring me exact information as to the mode of life of
these females. They were not long in learning that the old
woman was a procuress, who carried on a special traffic in
the bodies of young girls for the benefit of certain particu
larly depraved and debauched courtiers, and that she was
in the habit of passing these poor young creatures off as
her ' ' daughters. ' '
This was so far so good ; but now I told my sleuths that
I must know the courtiers for whose lechery the old woman
procured the poor little girls. In a couple of days they
brought me a list, not of names — which would, of course,
337

PAUL JONES
have meant nothing because they were necessarily false
names — but of such close, accurate, and unmistakable de
scriptions of person, gait, attire, etc., with accounts of
tracing them to their proper habitations ; in short, com
plete reports, such as the secret agents of great embassies
are trained to make on peril of theu Uves if they fail or de
ceive. Putting what they reported with what I knew, I found
no difficulty in locating one ofthe miscreants as that grand
Chevalier d^ Industrie ttie soi-disant petit prince de V AUe
mand, Nassau-Siegen ; another as young Zouboff ; another
as a nephew of Besborodko himself ; with yet others of less
note. To this damning chapter but one page remained to be
added. That was a confession of the women. . . .
Having now completed my evidence in perfect chain, I
waited on the Count Besborodko and without going into
detail, warned him that I had unearthed a conspiracy
which, if sustained or even ignored by the court, would, as
far as I could make it so, leave France unrepresented at
St. Petersburg.
The dull old man for once was startled and he eagerly
asked me for particulars. I responded that the particulars
were of such a nature that I could lay them before only two
persons in the world — the Empress of All the Russias and
the King of France and Navarre. I also intimated to him
that they concerned a member of his own family.
Besborodko now begged, but I remained calm and in
formed him that the next day but one I should request au
dience of Her Majesty on affairs personal to the King of
France; and that, if the Empress should so will, I would not
object to his presence at the audience. The old man was
nearly convulsed. But he was not present at the audience.
The result of the Count de Segur's investigations
having been to fix, by the most irrefragable proof,
333

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
the responsibility of originating and trying to exe
cute this infamous conspiracy, upon Nassau-Siegen,
he obtained audience with the Empress for the
express purpose of denouncing the plot and its
authors to her in person, not only for himself as a
friend of Admiral Jones, but in the name of his King,
through whose instrumentality in large part, if not
altogether, Jones had been induced to favorably
consider overtures to enter her service. De Segur did
not mince words, and he did not need to. He was
then and had been for a long time much more than
Ambassador of France, near the court of Catharine.
The Empress had relied much more on his counsel
and advice in the conduct of her delicate and diffi
cult diplomacy immediately preceding and during
the Turkish war, than on that of her own Minister of
Foreign Affairs. This fact was so well known in the
inner circles of diplomacy that on one occasion the
English Ambassador rather sneeringly said, in reply
to a request for introduction to Count Besborodko,
Prime Minister — " If you wish to transact any real
business, you should see first the Count de Segur."
And on another occasion the same Englishman is
reported to have said: "The Empress does not as
a rule tell her Ministers what to do until Segur has
advised her what to tell them."
Such a relation meant tremendous power in such
a court as Catharine's. And Segur was a man capa
ble of taking every advantage of it in an affair which,
like this one, enlisted all his personal feeling and
aroused all his wrathful resentment. He told the
Empress in the plainest terms that it was by no
means an affair that concerned Paul Jones alone :
239

PAUL JONES
that it closely and personally concerned the King of
France. He told her that not only had the King
recommended Admiral Jones to her, but he had also,
through Thomas Jefferson, American Minister at
Versailles, advised the Admiral to accept her over
tures for his services. This made the King of
France sponsor for the honor and integrity of Ad
miral Jones. But that was not all. The King of
France, nearly ten years before, had conferred upon
Admiral Jones the order of knighthood in the mili
tary class — an order seldom given to anyone, and
never before to a foreigner. The sole bases of this
order were always and invariably the qualities of
honor and courage displayed in the loftiest degree
and in the most memorable manner. The confer
ment of that order, he said, meant that the King had
solemnly pronounced Admiral Jones to be, like the
Premier Chevalier of France, " san^ peur et sans re-
procJie." The Empress was as frank as Segur. She admitted
the truth of all he had said. And she freely assured
Segur that if Nassau-Siegen were a Eussian subject
instead of the scion of a princely German house he
would be on his way to Schliisselburg or Siberia at
daylight the next morning. But that, she said, under
the circumstances, was out of the question. She ex
plained that she had quite recently given to Nassau-
Siegen the life tenure and use of a small estate be
longing to the Crown lands in Courland, near Mitau.
She wished to avoid the scandal that a public dis
crediting and punishment of him would surely raise.
The most she could do without risk of scandal
would be privately to order him to retire to that es-
330

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
tate and forbid him under severe penalties from ap
pearing at the capital or anywhere in society recog
nized by the court.
Segur then told the Empress that he intended to
send an official note of the affair for publication in
the Official Gazette of France, and also that he would
request the French Foreign Office to procure the
publication of the note in all the other court ga
zettes of Europe ; and not only that, but he would
also forward to the French Foreign Office a private
official precis of the whole matter, stating in full
Nassau-Siegen's connection with it and requesting
the French Minister of Foreign Affairs to lodge a
copy of that precis in every European cabinet ; so
that if that infamous adventurer should ever again
attempt to palm himself off anywhere in false colors
his record might be ahead of him to damn him.
The Empress winced at this and asked Segur if
he did not think that too severe and too far-reach
ing a punishment.
He said he did not think so ; but, on the other
hand, he believed that the punishment due to any
cowardly assassin should be visited upon Nassau-
Siegen, and that so far as he had power it should be
done ; that the fate of even Damiens would not in
his (Segur's) estimation be too cruel for such an un-
quartered miscreant.* There was no man in the
*The Empress was not much in earnest with Nassau-Siegen. His
*' exclusion from court " was a farce — and no one knew it better than
Segur. However, he was accustomed to Catharine's artifices. In the
spring of 1790 she gave Nassau-Siegen an independent naval command.
Of course this expedition, like Nassau-Siegen's attack on the Isle of
Jersey m the American war, failed utterly and miserably. With char
acteristic poltroonery the wretch, as soon as the topsails of the enemy's
231

PAUL JONES
world at that moment, not wearing a crown or oc
cupying a throne, who would have dared to address
such language to Catharine except the Count de
Segur, and he would never have ventured it under
less stinging provocation. But it closed the inci
dent. The Empress informed de Segur that the etiquette
of the court would require Admiral Jones to address
to her a memorial setting forth that the accusations
which had induced her to exclude him were false,
and asking that the injustice done him be repaired.
Segur prepared such a letter for the Admiral to sign,
but he says that the Admiral re-wrote the letter and
changed it from Segur's original to such an extent
as to make it practically his own utterance. " On
the whole," says the Count in his " EecoUections,"
"the Admiral improved upon the letter I had writ
ten for him. But he could not be persuaded from
ships could be seen approaching, deserted his ill-fated squadron and fled
alone in his swift galley, never stopping until he was safe under the guns
of a Russian fort. The enemy destroyed every vestige of his squadron
and butchered the luckless crews almost to a man. Nassau-Siegen, gift
ed and remorseless liar as he was, could not wholly conceal this fact.
He made a mendacious report, nevertheless, in which he represented that
he had abandoned the conflict only when overwhelmed by numbers.
The truth was that he had not even witnessed the slaughter, and that
the hostile squadron was far inferior to the Russian force in vessels,
men, and guns. However, he allowed his cowardice to master his vanity
and asked to be relieved from the coramand, declaring that his health
was shattered. Catharine then gave him a small estate near Tynnia in
Podolia, then the southwestern comer province of the empire. This was
the last of Siegen. He afterward aspired to u. diplomatic position, but
no European court of consequence would tolerate him. Finally Catha
rine died. The Emperor Paul, whatever may have been his faults, had
the good sense to despise Siegen, and not only refused to give him em
ployment but cut his pension down to nine hundred roubles a year. He
died in 1808. 333

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
saying some things in it that had better have been left
out, if he had — which may be doubtful — any intention
or hope of remaining in Her Majesty's service. His
expressions of personal devotion were chivalrous as
well as delicate, and impressed the Empress most
favorably. But the following declaration was not
well judged in my opinion : ' Understanding neither
the laws, the language, nor the forms of justice of
this country, I needed an advocate and retained the
services of one ; but, whether from terror or intimi
dation, he stopped short all at once and dared not
undertake my defence, though convinced of the jus
tice of my cause.' "
This, says Segur, was an implied impeachment of
the character of Eussian justice, and was, therefore,
not a well-judged expression to address to the head
of the state. The Empress, however, overlooked it,
and rightly attributed it to the unstudied candor of
the Admiral's temperament. Her Majesty received
the letter May 17, and on the 19th Admiral Jones
was recalled to court. He now believed that he
would be assigned to command the Baltic fleet, be
cause the day after his reception at court the Em
press directed him to proceed to Sveaborg, where
that fleet was at anchor, to inspect it thoroughly,
and report its condition to her personally. This
order brought down upon his head the vengeance of
the Ministry of Marine. Of course no official dared
openly to antagonize an imperial order, but when
Admiral Jones reached the fieet at Sveaborg he
found every preparation made to balk him in the
proper discharge of his duty. He, however, seems
to have expected this, because, before going on
333

PAUL JONES
board the flagship he sent his aide-de-camp, the
faithful Edwards, with a note to the admiral in com
mand informing him of the nature of his orders and
saying that in such cases it was customary in the
navies of Europe to give the commanding officer of a
fleet suitable notice of an intended inspection. He
said also that in case of a fleet like that of the Baltic,
which had recently been frozen up in the ice for five
months, such notice was doubly necessary ; that,
therefore, he would begin personal inspection of the
fieet, ship by ship, the following Monday, and in the
meantime he requested the admiral commanding to
make a preliminary report as to the number of offi
cers and men present for duty, the amount of stores
and munitions on board, and the quantities that
might be required to complete the equipment and
outfit of the fleet for a cruise.
To this the admiral in command made an evasive
answer, but he at once sent a trusty staff officer post
haste to St. Petersburg with a letter to the Minister
of Marine, alleging that Admiral Jones was secretly
negotiating with Gustavus III., King of Sweden, for
command of the Swedish fieet, and that his object
in asking such peculiar and hitherto unheard-of
questions as to the condition of the Eussian fleet,
was to obtain information for the enemy. The al
most instant result of this, as soon as Catharine
heard of it, was the summary suspension of the Eus
sian rear-admiral in command, in which situation
he remained several months, the Empress not being
inclined to humor a new conspiracy so soon after
the old one had been exposed and exploded.
Admiral Jones then made an exhaustive inspection
334

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
of the Baltic fleet and fully reported its condition to
the Empress. Here he made what was, doubtless,
the error of judging by Western European stand
ards, which Eussia then possessed neither the re
sources nor the faculty to emulate. And he pointed
out so many shortcomings and recommended such
expensive improvements that the Empress was al
most alarmed. However, she adopted many of his
suggestions, particularly as to the need of new rig
ging and sails, supplies of provisions and ammuni
tion, recalking of decks, etc., etc.
During this inspection, which consumed about fif
teen days, the Admiral contracted a heavy cold,
which, almost the very day of his return to St. Peters
burg, developed into pneumonia. He attributed it
to the foulness of the air in the bilges of the ships,
for the ventilation of which there was no provision
whatever, and, as the bilge-water was allowed to
freeze in them during the winter, it became exceed
ingly foul when thawed out in the spring. As Ad
miral Jones inspected each ship personally, from
truck to keelson, he was exposed to the damp, viti
ated air of the holds, and his lungs were thoroughly
poisoned. His illness, though severe, was not pro
longed. He was treated by the Empress's own court
physicians, Drs. Eogerson and Cazzini, and about
the end of June was able to be out again. But he
was not cured, and never was a well man again.
Both the eminent physicians who attended him
pronounced his lungs permanently affected and told
him he could never hope to endure again the rigors
of a Eussian winter. They advised him to leave
St. Petersburg before cold weather should begin,
335

PAUL JONES
and they also apprised the Empress of their con
clusions. She thereupon, about the middle of July, gave him
a year's leave of absence, to be prolonged to two
years, if necessary, and on July 19th he was received
in audience to take leave of Her Majesty. She gave
him a considerable sum of money as a gratuity for
his extraordinary expenses and directed that he
should receive during his leave of absence the full
pay and emoluments of vice-admiral.
For some inscrutable reason Dr. Sands, editor of
the Janette Taylor Collection, considered it proper
to say that the Admiral never received any pajj^ or
allowances under this arrangement. He even trans
lates a passage in Jones's Journal in a way to sustain
such a conclusion. But it is clear that the passage
which Dr. Sands thus translates refers to the Ad
miral's service in the Black Sea, for which he re
ceived no pay, only allowances at the rate of about
three thousand roubles a year, besides the sums given
to him for the expenses of travel to and from his sta
tion. So far as concerns the arrangements for his
leave of absence, it needs only to be said that he ap
pointed M. de Genet,* First Secretary and afterward
Charge d' Affaires of the French Embassy, fiscal
agent to receive and forward his pay and allowances ;
and the Genet papers show by accounts of remittance
and receipt that the Empress kept her engagements
on that score.
*This was Edmond Charles Genet, then a very young man for so re
sponsible a diplomatic post, being only twenty-four years of age. He
was the son of Franpois de Genet, Chief Clerk of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs since the time of Choiseul, and brother of Jeanne Louise
336

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
On July 29th, having made all his preparations
to leave St. Petersburg, the Admiral addressed
a farewell letter to the Empress, which he after
ward incorporated in his Journal. In this letter he
briefly reviewed the circumstances of his entry into
the Eussian service ; avowed his personal fealty and
devotion to the Empress ; assured and besought her
to believe always that no consideration could induce
him to undertake any service hostile to Eussia, and
to brand as the basest of calumny any representations
that might be made to her to that effect. He ex
pressed the hope that on the complete recovery of
his health he might find opportunity to testify by
acts the sincerity of his professions. He closed this
letter as follows :
Since I am found too frank and too sincere to make my
way at the Court of Russia without creating powerful ene
mies, I have philosophy enough to withdraw; but as I love
honor better than reward, and as my greatest ambition is
to preserve, even in the shades of retirement, the precious
approval of the Empress, I may tell Her Majesty that, even
in the midst of persecutions, my mind was occupied by
plans for the essential advancement of her service. . .
I have the happiness to know that, though my enemies may
Henriette Genet, better known to fame as Madame Campan. The elder
Genet had been one of the Admiral's most earnest and serviceable friends
at the Court of Versailles during the American Revolution, and the rela
tion was taken up and maintained by the son. About the end of 1792
young Genet was withdrawn from St. Petersburg and appointed Minister
of France to the United States, where his impulsive temperament soon got
him into trouble. He was recalled, but did not return to France, though
Napoleon, who came into power soon afterward, wished him to ally him
self with his fortunes. He settled on a small estate in the town of
Sohodack, Rensselaer County, N. Y., became an American citizen, and
Uved untu 1834. 237

PAUL JONES
not be converted into friends, my name will always be re
spected by worthy men who know me ; and it is to me a
satisfaction and a signal triumph at the moment of leaving
Russia, that the public, including even the English at St.
Petersburg, without my seeking their favorable connection,
have changed their sentiments in regard to me, have given
me their esteem, and regret my departure.
The Count de Segur — quite naturally — objected to
the foregoing observations ; but, as he says in his
"EecoUections," he could not control the Admiral
in that respect. His amour propre had been deeply
wounded, and he was not diplomatic enough, even
in his protestations of personal fealty to the Em
press to conceal the stings inflicted upon him by her
myrmidons. The subject was, no doubt, says Segur,
as distasteful to her as to him ; and no possible good
could come to him by keeping it alive. But he
would not forget, though not only the Empress her
self but all his real friends ardently wished him to
do so. Much allowance must, however, be made for
the Admiral's physical condition at this time. He
was still weak and nervous from his recent severe
illness. He had reason to believe that his lungs
were permanently, and perhaps fatally, diseased.
Though only in his forty-third year, he now looked
every day of sixty. It was with most painfully ap
parent effort and difficulty that he maintained the
erect figure and martial bearing so long characteris
tic of him. His eyes lacked their old fire and lustre ;
his rich, swarthy complexion was changed to a dark
sallow ; his once jet-black hair had mostly fallen out
during his illness, and thinner locks of iron -gray had
taken its place ; above all signs of decay was the
338

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CAXUMNY
change in his voice, which, from one of the most
winning ever heard, had become husky, had lost its
former richness of volume, and was ever and anon
interrupted by a short, hacking cough that cruelly
foretold his impending fate. Yet, says Segur, the
Admiral, whatever might be the physical signs of
his distress, and howsoever cruelly the poisoned
arrows of malignity may have wounded him, ex
hibited no trace of depressed spirit or chilled hope.
Being amply provided with means, and having
from the Ambassador letters of the most unequivocal
character to every French embassy or legation he
might wish to visit, the Admiral mapped out a tour
by way of Warsaw, thence to Vienna, thence to Mu
nich, thence to Stuttgart, and thence by Strasbourg,
and down the Ehine to Holland ; after completing
which he would go by way of Brussels to Paris. He
estimated that this journey would embrace about
four or five months of travel through the interior of
Continental Europe, at his leisure ; an experience
he ardently coveted, but heretofore without oppor
tunity to realize it. Segur encouraged this pro
gramme of travel because, as he said, it would draw
the Admiral's mind away from the affiictions he had
suffered in Eussia, and prevent him from brooding
over misfortunes and ill-usage that, being irrepara
ble, should be forgotten.
While all these affairs were in progress, the Ad
miral became aware of yet another species of outrage
to which he had been systematically subjected while
in the Eussian service — or, more particularly, during
the time he was in the region of the Black Sea. This
was nothing less than the total interruption or sup-
339

PAUL JONES
pression of his personal correspondence during that
period. While serving in the Black Sea from May
to November, he had been exceedingly annoyed and
worried at the total lack of communication with his
friends in France and the United States. Though
he had written many letters, some of them on im
portant business affairs, he had received no replies,
except one from Mr. Jefferson, one from Dr. Ban
croft, and one from Lafayette. And he was indebted
for these to the fact that they were brought to him
direct from Paris by the Chevalier Littlepage.
Not the least of his worry was on account of Aimee
de Telison. This at last impelled him, in a letter
written to Mr. Jefferson from his flagship, the Vladi
mir, under date of August 29, 1788, to make certain
inquiries concerning her. He was sure this letter
would reach its destination, because the Chevalier
Littlepage undertook to carry it to Warsaw and for
ward it thence in the packet of official or diplomatic
mail, always in those days despatched by special
courier. In this letter Admiral Jones says: "I
pray you to inform me what has become of Madame
T  . I am astonished to have heard nothing
from her since leaving Paris, though I had written
to her frequently before leaving Copenhagen." He
then mentions a business affair which he had
arranged for her with a banker, in which he guaran
teed the payment of several thousand livres, and
made arrangements to meet it when due. He con
cludes by asking M. Jefferson to communicate with
the banker, M. Dubois, and ascertain whether the
debt was paid when due. But the embargo upon
his correspondence continued as long as he remained
310

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
in the region of the Black Sea, and he received no
tidings from any quarter. However, after he arrived
at St. Petersburg, he could avail himself of the sealed
and inviolable packets of the French Embassy, and
he soon began to receive letters from his friends.
One of his first acts after arriving at St. Petersburg
was to write to Mr. Jefferson, in January, 1789,
and to that letter he received a reply in March stat
ing that, with one exception (the letter carried by
M. Littlepage already referred to), this was the first
tidings his friends had had of his existence since he
left Copenhagen in April, 1788.
Letter after letter followed ; from Dr. Bancroft,
from Lafayette, from his bankers in Paris and Am
sterdam, from friends in the United States, from
Aimee de Telison and others. Many of these let
ters referred to previous ones written during the
period of his campaign in the Euxine ; but not one
had ever reached him. There could now be no doubt
that his correspondence had been systematically in
tercepted in bulk ; not merely tampered with or an
occasional letter filched by spies, but the whole
totally and ruthlessly suppressed by some unseen
agency. He could assign but one reason for this — a
determination on the part of some one high in power
to completely isolate him from the outside world.
This was a conspiracy that could not possibly be laid
to the account of Nassau-Siegen. It could not have
been accomplished — at least not so thoroughly as it
had been — by any agency less potent than that of
the Prime Minister, Besborodko himself, and he did
not believe Besborodko would have issued such a
sweeping order to confiscate his correspondence
Vol. il— 16 341

PAUL JONES
without the prompting of Potemkin. The latter
could indeed have intercepted the Admiral's letters,
anywhere within the limits of his supreme com
mand, without Besborodko's aid ; but it was clear
that some had been waylaid and suppressed at
points outside the sphere of Potemkin's absolute
sway. Admiral Jones could not be persuaded that
the Empress had anything to do with this outrage,
even by knowledge of it. In fact, he had addressed
two letters to her in the usual way and neither of
them had reached her ; the only means by which he
had been able to communicate with her at all hav
ing been by the hands of Littlepage and the French
Ambassador. There is abundant evidence in the Admiral's subse
quent correspondence and Journals that this discov
ery exasperated him more than all his persecutions.
Many of the intercepted letters to him, particularly
those from Aimee de Telison and the Countess de la
Vendahl, were full of the gossip of Versailles, which
perhaps could not have been known in Eussia by
any other means. In short he had to face the con
clusion that for a whole year his personal and pri
vate affairs, so far as correspondence could disclose
them, had been constantly in the hands of Eussian
officials and their spies. But there was no remedy.
He knew that it would be useless to complain.
Segur advised him by all means to keep silent about
it not only while he remained in Eussia, but even
after he passed the frontier, for fear that it might in
juriously affect the arrangements already made. In
this particular he, in the main, followed the Am
bassador's advice. 343

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
A short time before Admiral Jones left St. Peters
burg, the Count de Segur addressed an official note
to Count Montmorin, then French Minister of For
eign Affairs, in which he enclosed an article for
publication in the Official Gazette of France and
at other capitals of Europe within the purview of
French influence or good offices. He also wrote let
ters to the ambassador of France at Vienna, to the
French envoys at Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich.
These letters were all of similar purport. In one of
them he says :
The Vice-Admiral is not adapted by temperament to the
service of Russia under present auspices. This fact, I need
not say to you, is far from being to his discredit. On the
contrary, it springs from his inability to suppress or dis
guise, for the sake of diplomacy or temporary advantage,
those lofty principles of truth and honor which have ever
distinguished his conduct and which have made for him the
exalted reputation he sustains at courts more enlightened
and in societies less crude than those whose atmosphere he
has lately experienced.
His frankness, probably imprudent in this environment,
has embroiled him with Potemkin, and that man's friends,
who are his enemies, endeavored to ruin him, employing for
that purpose the vilest artifices and the most wretched
agencies. At the flrst breath of the base calumny every
creature about the court hastened to abandon and de
nounce him. Like a pack of their own wolves in the for
ests of this strange country, the people all fall upon one
who seems crippled to devour him.
But the common fate of Russian courtiers in disgrace
could not befall Paul Jones while there was magic in the
name of the King of France or power in his Embassy. I
instantly upheld and defended the Admiral. The country
to which he belongs, the grand order which he bears from
343

PAUL JONES
the hand of our King, and which he acquired by such noble
deeds; his brilliant reputation, and, above all, our long,
intimate, and delightful acquaintance personally, made his
vindication a law to me. My efforts were not in vain. I
unmasked the vile plot against him, put the conspirators to
ignominious flight, and caused his innocence to be acknowl
edged and his right recognized by the Empress in person.
The article which Segur prepared for publication
in the Official Gazette of France and elsewhere in
Europe was, of course, formal, and contained no refer
ence to the events just described. It was as follows :
St. Pbtersbubg, July 21, 1789.
The Vice-Admiral, Paul Jones, being on the eve of re
turning to Prance, where private affairs require his pres
ence, had the honor to take leave of the Empress the 7th of
this month and was admitted to kiss the hand of Her Im
perial Majesty, who had confided to him the command of
her vessels of war in the campaign of the Liman in 1788.
As a mark of favor for his conduct during that campaign,
the Empress has decorated him with the order of St.
Anne ; and Her Imperial Majesty, pleased with his ser
vices, grants him permission to absent himself on leave for
a limited time, and preserves for him the full emoluments
of his rank.
By Authority.
Besides these official letters of the Ambassador,
the Admiral carried from young Genet a personal
letter to his sister, Madame Campan. In this letter
Genet briefly explains the conspiracy against the
Admiral, recounts the history of its exposure, and
then concludes :
But this celebrated sailor, who, as you are aware, knows
better how to conduct himself in the midst of desperate
244

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
battles than in courts, and who is more skilled in the art
of gaining victories over the enemy than in seeking fa
vors, has given offence by his frankness to people in power,
and, among others, to Prince Potemkin. . . . M. de
Segur defended and sustained him. I flatter myself, also,
that I have been of some service to him. Our efforts
were successful. The Empress recalled him to court, and
reinstated him in her confldence and favor. But he fell
seriously ill, and the condition of his health, together
with the demands of his private affairs in Prance and
elsewhere, make imperative his departure from Russia.
He is also, I believe, at heart disinclined to remain in
the service of a country where he has been treated un
justly by the creatures of the Sovereign. . . .
It is impossible, my sister, to tell you how happy I
have been to be able to render service to a man whom
our father loved and esteemed, and to whom I have been
personally attached since I first knew him in my early
youth. The Admiral will call upon you on his arrival
at Versailles, and will deliver this letter to you in person.
Admiral Jones left St. Petersburg on August 18,
1789, having spent about sixteen months of his life
in Eussia ; unquestionably the most miserable period
of his career. Comment could only weaken the force
of the foregoing recital of historical facts, sustained
by documentary evidence. Suffice to repeat the re
mark suggested at the outset : It was in the Eussia
of the eighteenth century and Catharine ; not the
Eussia of the twentieth century and Nicholas.
He went first to Warsaw, where he remained until
early in November. At the Polish capital his rela
tions with the Chevalier Littlepage, Grand Cham
berlain to the King, of course secured for him all
possible attention and entree. He also made there
245

PAUL JONES
the acquaintance of General Kosciuszko, whom he
had not happened to meet during the service of that
officer in the American Eevolution. An intimate
friendship at once sprang up between them which
resulted in considerable correspondence subse
quently, though that part of it which has been pre
served is rather enigmatical. Enough, however, can
be made out of it to show, in connection with other
contemporaneous evidence, that Kosciuszko was even
then (the fall of 1789) fully convinced of the inten
tion of Eussia to attack Poland as soon as the Turk
ish war was over, and he more than once prophesied
that the conqueror of Oczakoff and the " Butcher of
Ismail," as he afterward called Suwarrow, would
next be seen at the gates of Warsaw. It is needless
to say that this prophecy did not long await fulfil
ment. The Polish general was, even in 1789, laying
his plans for defence.
Among other measures he sought to detach Ad
miral Jones from his connection with the Eussian
navy, though naval force could not be used against Po
land as the remnant of that ancient kingdom then ex
isted. Jones, however, promptly assured Kosciuszko
that under no circumstances could he serve any cause
hostile to Eussia unless there should come a clash of
arms between Eussia and the United States, which
was impossible. However, the spies of Besborodko
and Potemkin were still on his trail, and they re
ported among other things that Kosciuszko had
persuaded him to accept an offer from the King of
Sweden. Segur heard of this and wrote to Jones about it.
The Admiral promptly replied as follows, in dupli-
246

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
cate, requesting Segur to place one copy in the
hands of the Empress :
Desirous once for all of making known unequivocally
my view of my connection with the service of Your Imperial
Majesty, I declare that, considering myself absent on leave
or by permission, it is inconceivable that I could entertain
an offer much less accept a commission from an enemy of
Russia. I have at all times expressed to Your Imperial Majesty
my purpose to preserve the condition of an American citizen
and ofiicer.
Also, that, having been honored by His Most Christian
Majesty with the order of knighthood and a jewelled sword,
I have vowed never to draw it in warfare waged against
His Majesty's interests.
Should, however, circumstances I cannot clearly foresee
cause me, in spite of my attachment and gratitude to Your
Imperial Majesty, and notwithstanding advantageous prop
ositions that have been made to me, to resign from your
service, I shall do so; probably before the expiration of the
leave of absence I now enjoy. But I shall not so resign
without Your Imperial Majesty's gracious consent, and
under no circumstances shall I ever enter a service hostile
to Your Imperial Majesty's empire or interests.
Segur delivered this letter to the Empress, and
she expressed much satisfaction at its tenor, so
much that she directed her chief secretary. Baron
Krapowitzky, to acknowledge it in her name with
the most profound assurances of her continued con
fidence, and her entire disregard of the feeble slan
ders of his enemies. Segur's comment was as follows :
He [Jones] could not content himseK with the reflection
that the Empress was not likely to be deceived by his ene-
347

PAUL JONES
mies a second time. Every new calumny that was aimed at
him excited his resentment afresh, as if he had never tri
umphed over former ones. If I was ever tempted to lose pa
tience with him it was in consequence of his inability of
self-containment or to bide his time [' ' se recueiller " in the
original] whenever he imagined his honor questioned or his
fealty challenged. In this he was no respecter of persons.
He resented the aspersions of the vulgar spies who dogged his
footsteps at Warsaw quite as vehemently as he would have
resented the same from princes of the blood. His declara
tion to the Empress on this occasion did no harm. But it
was sure to become known to creatures about the court who
delighted in persecuting him, and they would gloat over
such evidences of the pain they were able to inflict upon
him. But he could never see such things.
In this connection, or perhaps it would be more
accurate to say, in a vein of general reflection ap
parently suggested by these incidents, Segur * draws
* Louis Philippe, Count de Segur, was bom in Touraine, France, April,
1753. He belonged to one of the oldest lines of the noblesse. He was
at first destined for the army, and pursued his studies with that object
in view until his eighteenth year, when he entered the foreign service
and remained there two years. On his return to France he expressed a
preference for the diplomatic service, and very soon attracted the notice
of Maurepas and Vergennes. In 1775, when he was twenty-two years
old, he achieved a national reputation by his published observations on
the situation of France in the Orient, and he was advanced rapidly in
the Foreign Office. In 1778 he declared for the party of ' ' Young France,"
of which Lafayette was the first and most conspicuous exponent ; and
when the Treaty of Alliance was made he at once retumed to the army
and embarked with Count d'Estaing's expedition in aid of the American
Colonies. He served in various capacities with the French forces in
America until after the surrender of Yorktown — in the attack on whioh
his conduct was most distinguished — when he returned to France and
resumed his diplomatic career.
After filling several minor posts in the French foreign service with
great ability and credit, he was appointed, when thirty-two years of age.
Ambassador to Russia, then, with the exception, perhaps, of Austria,
348

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
a dashing and graphic pen-picture of the Court of
Catharine. No one was better able to draw such a
picture. No Eussian of that time was able to do it
if he had dared. And no foreigner had facilities for
insight or faculty for observation equal to those of
Segur. The reign of Catharine, he says, was strong, and
its results were glorious. Territorially she almost
doubled the empire. Politically, she established as
a first-rate great power, what had hitherto been to
most European statesmen, if not a terra incognita at
least a mystical land of vast distances, horrible for
ests, and limitless wastes.
the most important diplomatic station within the gift of the King of
France. Here his extraordinary abilities found full play. He found him
self pitted at once against one of the wiliest and most subtle of British
diplomatists in a game that had for its stake the reorganization of the
map of Europe. The Empress Catharine was charmed with Segur at
the outset. Classically handsome in feature and in form, graceful
in deportment almost beyond description, fascinating in speech, and,
above aU, cultured to a degree that was almost a revelation in the north
ern capital, he took the Court of St. Petersburg by storm. At the time
he presented his credentials the Empress was in her fifty-sixth year, but
her first impressions of Segur as she recorded them in her correspondence
with Baron Grimm are more in the vein of eighteen years than of fifty-
six. "I understand French," she said, "as well, I think, as anyone
born to another tongue. But I confess I never knew quite the meaning
of the word ' aplomb ' until I had the pleasure of receiving the Count de
Segur.'' The new French Ambassador, on his part, lost no time. Finding that
the Empress, above all things, desired to be considered a "real Russian"
(Tchistaia Russkaia), he complimented her on her patriotism, extoUed the
Russian character, praised the traits of the people, regretted that pre
vious sovereigns had tried to introduce foreign manners and customs, and
expressed the conviction that her reign would be memorable in history
as the reign that de-Germanized and re-Russianized Russia. Catharine
had never before received such flattery from a foreign ambassador. She
at once took Segur into her confidence, political as well as personal.
249

PAUL JONTES
Her policy was doubtless wiser for Eussia at that
time than any other could have been. Mediocre
men, so long as they were faithful, suited her pur
poses and fulfilled her objects better and more safe
ly than able men would have done. She could not
afford to permit any man or even group of men to
obtain an ascendancy. Able men would strive to
do that ; mediocre men would not ; or, if they did,
the crushing of them would be easier than to crush
men of real power and resource.
The same rule applied to her " favoritism." Her
frequent changes in this respect have been attrib
uted by many writers to mere licentiousness. Noth
ing could be less true. Catharine discarded one
favorite and selected another at short intervals —
hardly ever more than two or three years. But this
was more iDolitical in its purposes than amatory.
She needed the aid of at least one virile mind at a
time, and her system of rule, as well as the peculiar
character of the nation she ruled, required that this
one mind should be that of a man attached to her
person as a woman rather than as a sovereign — or
rather a combination of the two sentiments, with af
fection for the woman predominating over or absorb
ing in itself fealty to the sovereign.
Thus it was that she always dismissed the favorite
just before he might feel entitled to view himself as
indispensable. Potemkin was sure that her love for
him amounted to infatuation, yet she dismissed him
calmly when his time was up and ever after held
him at arm's length, though trusting him with great
affairs and lodging in his hands tremendous power,
So of the others. Soltikoff, her first lover, was al-
250

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
ways her best friend as well as the ablest man about
her ; but when she was done with him as a favor
ite, he was never more to her than a faithful subject
afterward. Such facts could not be accidental. They must
be the fruits of a deeply planned, carefully thought
out, and systematically pursued policy of imperial
conduct. Whenever she found a man enough abler
or more crafty than his fellows to argue a possibility
that he might be dangerous, she made an ambassador
of him. For this reason, all through her long reign,
the foreign service of Catharine displayed a much
higher range of intellect than was perceptible in her
home administration, and gave to the world exactly
the impression she wished to produce — that she her
self felt strong enough and great enough to govern
within her frontiers irrespective of the quality of
her instruments, and that it was in her dealings with
other courts only that she needed the services of
really superior men. That this was her own view
of the situation is beyond question, and it is equally
indisputable that she compeUed the world at large
to accept her estimate.
The digressive nature of the foregoing observa
tions on the conditions prevailing in Eussia at the
time of Paul Jones's experience there is more ap
parent than real. We have, in fact, considered them
indispensable to a clear understanding of his situ
ation there and of the causes that led to the defeat
of his efforts and the destruction of his hopes.
The service of Jones in the Eussian navy embit
tered his life, shattered his constitution, and short
ened his days. Yet when the whole story is dis-
251

PAUL JONES
passionately told and intelligently read, it must
rather add something to than take anything from
the general glory of his career. Viewed at the
worst, it exhibits his power to triumph, to some ex
tent, over obstacles insuperable to any other man,
and his capacity of wresting some laurels from sit
uations that to any one of less indomitable resolu
tion would have been utterly dark and perfectly
hopeless. Admiral Jones remained in Warsaw until Novem
ber 1, 1789, when he set ont for Vienna. Travelling
at leisure, he spent some days in Breslau, stopped
at Prague, and arrived at the Austrian capital the
18th of the same month. His stay at Vienna was
marked by no event of importance. The French
Ambassador received him cordially, and presented
him at the Court of Joseph II. The Emperor was
then ill, and died a few months later. Jones met the
Archduke Leopold — soon afterward Leopold II. —
who conversed with him at length about the inci
dents of the Oczakoff campaign and kindred sub
jects. The Admiral's impressions of Leopold II.
are interesting. He says :
The audience was quite informal. The Archduke is of
most pleasing manner, frank in speech, and showed none
of the hauteur which one naturally associates with the heir
of the house of Hapsburg. He has much of the kindness of
heart of Louis XVL, though he has not the winning grace
of that unequalled monarch. Had I not been compelled by
history to see in Leopold the son of Maria Theresa and the
brother of Marie Antoinette as well as the coming Emperor
of Austria, I should not have found him impressive. He
was free in his comments upon the Russian generals and
353

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
their troops. I could see that he had a poor opinion of the
talents of Suwarrow, and he clearly betrayed that he had
derived that opinion from the Prince of Coburg, who, in
the summer just past, had made himself the object of Su
warrow's contempt, and with whom that blunt old warrior
had refused to co-operate after the battle of Pokshani, in
Moldavia. Naturally my sympathies were with Suwarrow,
not so much because I know him well as because Coburg
is a petty German prince of the Nassau-Siegen class, and
they are all alike. If they differ at all, it is only in grade
rather than quality of baseness, venality, pomp, aud stu
pidity. However, I of course kept these reflections to my
self, venturing to suggest to the Archduke only that fair
judgment could not be formed of Suwarrow's merits ex
cept on intimate knowledge of the forces with which he
had to deal and conditions under which he must act.
To the Archduke's criticism that he was uncouth, outr6,
and often discourteous to other commanders, I explained
that it was not fair to judge him in those respects by the
standard of Austrian or French military schools, to which
His Imperial Highness freely assented.
Admiral Jones left Vienna about the end of No
vember and went by way of Munich to Stuttgart,
and thence to Strassbourg, when he paid a short
visit to the Grand Duke of Wirtemburg at the Pal
ace of Mont Beliard. He then resumed his journey
down the Ehine to Holland, and arrived at Amster
dam December 18, 1789.
Here he at once applied himself to the task of
straightening out his private affairs, which had been
totally neglected for nearly two years. No very re
markable turns of fortune had occurred. The Van
Staphorst Brothers had, during his absence, carried
on the American trade in which he had interests,
353

PAUL JONES
and they had not lost anything for him. On the
contrary, his finances in their hands were in better
shape than when he left them on his way to Copen
hagen and Eussia at the end of 1787. While adjust
ing his business concerns in Amsterdam, the Admi
ral found time to resume correspondence with his
friends and associates in the United States, France,
and England ; or, as he expressed it in a letter to
Lafayette, December 22d, " to breathe again the in
spiring atmosphere of Western civilization and lib
erty ; where power is something else than the gross-
ness of favoritism; where truth is welcomed and
honor recognized ; where letters are not intercepted
or reports of battles fought altered to suit the whims
of selfish courtiers, and where vulgar plots do not
engage the energies of those who pass for states
men." When the Admiral left St. Petersburg the Count
de Segur had given to him, under the seal of the
French Embassy, a letter to be forwarded to General
Washington, enclosing, among other documents, a
formal statement by the Ambassador reciting briefly
the reasons why Admiral Jones entered the Eussian
Navy ; his services ; the treatment he had experi
enced ; the plot that had been made against him ;
its exposure, and the Admiral's vindication. Segur
informed Washington that he took this course at the
request of Admiral Jones, who thought it due to the
head of the state of which he was still a citizen and
an officer that such a statement should rest upon
evidence other than his own, and therefore he
(Segur) gladly offered it in the Admiral's behalf,
not only upon his honor as a gentleman but under
354

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
the Ambassadorial seal of France. And Segur
added :
Though it is by no means necessary to suggest to Your
Excellency that this is the flrst occasion in Admiral Jones's
long and diversified career when any episode of it should
seem to require such or any explanation, I offer the sug
gestion for the purpose of saying that calumny has proved
as powerless to defeat him as the forces of battle, and that
he has emerged from the perils of one as from those of the
other, with new honor and the unswerving confidence of all
who know him.
The letter with which Admiral Jones forwarded
the Segur papers to General Washington was itself
one of his best efforts, and it aptly illustrates the
relations they always sustained :
Amsterdam, December 20, 1789.
Sir : I avail myself of the departure of the Philadelphia
packet. Captain Earle, to transmit to Your Bxcelleiiey a
letter I received for you on leaving Russia in August last
from my friend the Count de Segur, Ambassador of France
at St. Petersburg. That gentleman and myself have fre
quently conversed on subjects that regard America ; and
the most pleasing reflection of all has been the happy es
tablishment of the new Constitution and that you are so
deservedly placed at the head of government by the unani
mous voice of the American people. Your name alone,
sir, has established in Europe a confldence that was for
some time before entirely wanting in the stability of Amer
ican institutions ; and I am assured that the happy effects
of your administration are still more sensibly felt through
out the United States. This is more glorious for you than
all the laurels that your sword so nobly won in support of
human rights. In war your fame is immortal as the Hero
of Liberty. In peace you are her patron and the firmest
355

PAUL JONES
supporter of her rights. Your most ardent admirers and
your best friends can have now but one wish left for you —
that you may long enjoy health and your present happi
ness. Mr. Jefferson will inform you respecting my mission to
the Court of Denmark. I was received and treated there
with marked pohteness ; and if the fine words spoken to
me are true the affair will soon be settled. I admit, how
ever, that I should have stronger hopes if America had
created a respectable navy ; for that argument would have
weight in every transaction with Europe.
I acquitted myself of the commission with which you
personally honored me when last in America, by delivering
your letters with my own hands at Paris to the persons to
whom they were addressed. . . . And in an audience
with His Most Christian Majesty soon afterward, I had the
honor and the pleasure to acknowledge the sentiment he
expressed when he inquired as to the state of health in
which I had left his " great and good friend. General Wash
ington," as he always styles you.
General Washington did not reply to the Admi
ral's letter directly, though he acknowledged that
of the Count de Segur through Mr. Jefferson, then
Secretary of State. In fact it was nearly a year be
fore he wrote to Admiral Jones, and then this letter
was quite formal, informing him that measures were
under consideration to bring about a better system
of protecting our commerce in the Mediterranean
from the corsairs of the Barbary powers, and saying
that, if the means could be provided to equip a re
spectable naval force to appear at Algiers, Tunis, and
Tripoli, the sentiments of the people and the inter
ests of American commerce would require it to be
done. 256

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
In this communication General Washington did
not refer to the subject of Jones's letter of Decem
ber 20, 1789, except indirectly by saying : " While
I have not expressed an opinion concerning your
entry into the naval service of Eussia, I will say
now that, in view of the prospective employment
before intimated, and for other reasons, I am glad
that you are aloof from that connection."
Alexander Hamilton, however, wrote to Lafayette
in May, 1790, that Washington was from the first
displeased with Jones's action in 1788 ; that had he
known of his intention in time he would have
strongly advised him against it ; that he almost
censured Mr. Jefferson for the part he took in pro
moting the arrangement while United States Min
ister at Paris, and that he frequently expressed ap
prehension that the Admiral would suffer by reason
of it in reputation, in spirit, in health, and probably
in fortune.
Correspondence concerning the situation in the
Mediterranean had been kept up for several years —
beginning as far back as 1785. Still nothing was
done at this time or for some years after, except to
debate the question of rebuilding the navy, which
did not reach definite action until 1794. There was
no lack of spirit in 1791. But the poverty of the
new Eepublic was something that cannot be compre
hended in our time. The treasury was not merely
an " empty name," it was empty in fact as well. And,
worst of all, the new Government had no credit either
at home or abroad. When the almost unorganized
and unrecognized colonies were struggling for ex
istence they could borrow money in France and
Vol. il— 17 357

PAUL JONES
Holland. But it was on the principle that the
most desperate cause can always get money to fight
with when really responsible treasuries go begging
for loans in time of peace. Such was the poverty of
our young nation in 1791 that it could neither raise
by taxation nor borrow on security the compara
tively small sum — less than a million dollars — neces
sary to fit out a squadron capable of overawing or
chastising the Dey of Algiers. Even the gallant
old Alliance, the last survivor of our Eevolutionary
frigates, lay for years moored in the Delaware at
Philadelphia, slowly rotting away, the government
too poor even to keep her decks calked ; and finally,
as if disheartened by such neglect, she tore her
rotten moorings loose one night in a winter gale
and drove on shore at the south end of Petty's
Island, where she sank in the half-tide mud ; her
gaunt timbers standing out for many a year at low
water.* It is a sad picture, and yet a most natural
one ; because it was not within the bounds of
human possibility for a country that had just spent
eight years in the most devastating and cruellest of
wars, and then seven years more in a struggle of
factions almost as fierce as the war had been, to sig
nalize its second year of assured union and com
parative restfulness by preparation for a new and
foreign war.
The correspondence of Admiral Jones during his
stay in Holland at this time would fill a small
*The Alliance had been sold by the Govemment in 1784 and was used
as an Indiaman until 1791, when she reverted to the possession of the
Govemment, which intended to fit her out as a man-of-war again. But
for lack of funds, it was not done, and she was left to rot at her moorings.
258

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
volume. The most touching of his letters during
this period is one to Dr. Franklin, dated December
27, 1789. It was his last letter to his " foster-father '
as he used to call the philosopher, and it was also
one of the last letters the venerable statesman ever
received. It reached Franklin in February, 1790,
and in April following the veteran passed away.
This letter was as follows :
My Dear and Most Rbvbred Fbibnd : — The en
closed documents from the hand and under the seal of my
friend — and yours — His Excellency the Count de Segur,
Plenipotentiary of Prance at St. Petersburg, will explain to
you in some degree my reasons for leaving Russia and the
dangers to which I was exposed by the dark intrigues and
mean subterfuges of Asiatic jealousy and malice. Your
friendship for me, which I remember with particular satis
faction and unspeakable gratitude, and which it has ever
been my most ardent ambition to merit, will, I am sure, be
now exerted in the kind use you will make of the three
pieces * I send to you for my justification in the eyes of my
friends in America, whose good opinion is dearer to me than
anything else.
I wrote to the Empress from Warsaw, in October, for
warding a copy of my journal (of the Oczakoff campaign),
which will exhibit to Her Majesty how basely she has been
deceived by the ' ' official accounts ' ' made to her of our
maritime operations in that campaign. I can easily prove
to the world that I have been treated unjustly, but it is my
determination to remain silent at least until I know the
fate of my journal.
I shall remain in Europe till after the opening of the
next campaign, and perhaps longer, before returning to
America. Judging from the troubles in Brabant and the
* The " three pieces " were duplicates of the documents sent by Segur
to General Washington, already referred to.
359

PAUL JONES
course now pursued by the King of Prussia, together with
the ferment in Poland and the sullen attitude of Sweden, I
presume that peace in Northern and Eastern Europe is yet
distant, and that next summer the Baltic will witness
warmer work than heretofore. On the death of Admiral
Greig, I was last year called from the Black Sea by the
Empress to command the Baltic fleet ; but, beyond a mere
inspection of that fieet on the opening of navigation in the
spring, the design was not carried into effect. I must al
ways assume that the Empress means to carry out her en
gagements, because she is both an honorable sovereign and
a most charming woman. But her proposal to place me in
command of the Baltic fleet set the invention of all my
enemies and rivals at work, and the event has proved that
even the Empress Catharine, great as she unquestionably
is, and with all her autocratic power, cannot always do as
she pleases.
By the way, it is this day just ten years since I sailed
from the Texel, almost in sight of here, in the Alliance.
What changes since that day !
The only reply Jones received to this letter was a
note from Dr. Franklin's daughter, Mrs. Bache,
some months afterward, announcing the death of
her father and saying that he was too feeble to re
spond to it himself from the day of its receipt until
his death. Mrs. Bache assured him that almost the
last utterances of the Doctor were expressions of
unimpaired confidence in the integrity and of undi
minished admiration for the courage of Paul Jones.
But Mrs. Bache added that she felt it her duty to
say what her father had often said, and what he
would have written had his strength been spared —
that he never approved the judgment of Jones in
accepting the Eussian offer, and always apprehended
SCO

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
that it would expose him to the evils he had in fact
undergone. Mrs. Bache concluded her note as follows :
Your going to Russia was often the subject of conversa
tion here. When Mr. Jefferson in his correspondence tried
to make my father believe it was for the best and to justify
his own part in promoting it, my father met all such rep
resentations with the inflexible argument that no man who
had learned, as you did, his lessons of battle in the school
of liberty could ever serve acceptably in the cause or to
promote the aims of despotism.
Early in April, 1790, Admiral Jones found that he
would have to go to London in order to straighten
out the business interests he had in England. Ever
since 1783 he had had commercial connections in
Great Britain, and he had now neglected them ut
terly for two years and a half, his last visit to Lon
don having been in the late fall of 1787. During
that time his interests had been confided to Dr. Ban
croft, in whose hands they were safe enough, but
now Bancroft had taken Sir Eobert Harries into the
partnership, and he wished Jones to come to Lon
don and examine the accounts in person. The most
important of the interests in question was a mo
nopoly of the use of quercitron bark for woollen
dyes, which by that time had grown to large pro
portions in British manufacture of wools and flan
nels. A very considerable sum had accrued to
Jones's credit on this account during his Eussian
campaign, and, as he had not the slightest knowl
edge of the progress of the business during his two
years or more of absence. Dr. Bancroft would hear
361

PAUL JONES
to nothing except that he should come to London
and examine the books himself, particularly as the
scope of operations had been enlarged and a new
partner taken into the concern since he went away.
The Admiral thereupon went from Amsterdam to
Antwerp, and thence by the Belgian packet to Lon
don. He had many misgivings as to what kind of
reception he would meet. He knew that an under-
attache of the British Legation in St. Petersburg,
by the name of Tooke, had been in the pay of Bes
borodko, Potemkin, and Nassau-Siegen at the time
of the plot against him, and that Tooke had flooded
the English papers with accounts of the affair to his
discredit. Here, as elsewhere, fate at last decreed
in his favor. The venal Tooke had done his worst.
But, fortunately, at the moment the Potemkin-Bes-
borodko-Nassau Siegen plot was exposed by the
Count de Segur, it happened that one of the noblest
and most chivalric men that ever wore the British
naval uniform — which is about all that can be said
of any man — was in St. Petersburg. This was
Captain, afterward Admiral, Sir Eoger Curtis,
who needs no introduction to readers of English
naval history beyond the mention of his honored
name. Curtis had been invited to the Eussian capital at
that time to consider overtures to enter the service
of the Empress, and it happened that he arrived there
about the time when the plot against Jones was ex
posed and exploded by Segur. Curtis and Segur
had met before, in India, as young subalterns, in
time of peace, and in America as enemies. Natu
rally, when they were again together in St. Peters-
863

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
burg, once more at peace, they fraternized, as chiv
alrous men always do.
Curtis, knowing all the facts in the plot against
Jones, shared Segur's resentment against its authors.
He peremptorily declined to consider the Eussian
overtures as to himself, though he expressly said that
he declined for reasons other than those he might
have entertained from knowledge of what had just
happened. He unequivocally took Jones's part. As
soon as he returned to England he caused an article
to be published in London over the nom de plume
of "A Briton Afloat," in which he denounced in un
measured terms the plot against Jones, to all prac
tical purposes translated the French version of Se
gur's exposure, and wound up by advising all British
officers that the time had come when they " ought to
cease entertaining the hatreds of a past war as to
Paul Jones, and welcome him to their respect and
admiration as the only commander in naval history
who had shown himself able to make French sailors
fight like Englishmen ; " and then to " reflect with
pride that he could never have done this if he had
not himself been British-born. Those who wish to
do so," he went on, " may call him a pirate. To me
he was a rebel, indeed, in the American Eevolution ;
but his rebellion has succeeded, its success has long
been acknowledged by our Sovereign, and now I
think it high time to view him on his merits as a
fighter and a conqueror on the sea, without prejudice
and without any more impotent hate."
About the same time Captain Frederick Fanshawe,
who, as previously related, commanded the frigate
Azov under Jones at the Battle of the Liman, had
363

PAUL JONES
quit the Eussian service and returned to England,
where he was soon employed in the marine of the
East India Company. Fanshawe added his testi
mony to that of Sir Eoger Curtis. The result was
that Jones, on his arrival in England in April, 1790,
was most happily disappointed to find a cordial
welcome in British naval circles.
He comments characteristically on this in his
Journal of 1791 :
I had been apprehensive that the officers of His Majes
ty's navy might not have been properly informed as to the
Russian affair. I knew that the man Tooke, and maybe
others, had published falsehoods about it in England and
Scotland. But I found to my surprise and delight that all
calumnies had been brought to nothing by the honorable
truth of Curtis and Fanshawe. For the abuse of paid
penny-a-liners like Tooke and Eaton I care nothing. One
word of approval from an offlcer and gentleman like Cur
tis or Sir Richard Pearson or Frederick Fanshawe — or any
man who, as I know by experience or observation, will
flght as long as anything is left of him — one word from
such a man has more weight with me than a book-shelf-
ful of the slanders of penny-a-liners who never smelt pow
der and never would.
And I wish to say here, what I do not remember to have
said elsewhere, that in all my experience of the world and
of men, I have never known a fighting man who would lie
— unless it might be to save the fair fame of a lady ; and I
never knew a liar who would fight — if there was a shadow
of a chance to run. In other words, truth and courage
are twin traits ; and, on the other hand, so are coward
ice and falsehood alike inseparable.
These reflections suggest a curious contradiction
in the character of Paul Jones. No one inveighed
864

RUSSIAN INTRIGUE AND CALUMNY
more vehemently than he against England and Eng
lishmen in general terms. And yet no one seemed to
be more solicitous than he for the good opinion of
the English people. It is easy to understand why he
should value the good opinions of British naval of
ficers as he frankly admits, because as a class they
are men whose approbation was a complete certifi
cate of good character the world over — then as much
as now. But his desire was more than that. The
papers of his later years — say from 1785 until his
death — indicate that his ruling aspiration was to be
respected and admired by the English. He did not
expect Englishmen to like him, but the minute
record he made of every social attention shown to
him when in London and the care he took to pre
serve every complimentary utterance of the British
press clearly exhibit the nature of his ambition in
that respect. He doubtless felt that history would
be mainly written by Englishmen, anyhow, and
wished that his memory might be fairly if not ten
derly handled by them.
During his stay in London Admiral Jones re
ceived all the social attentions that his vanity could
desire. Among other honors he was entertained
over Sunday by Charles James Fox at the famous
cottage of St. Anne's Hill. He was put up at the
Carlton and introduced to the Prince of Wales, af
terward George IV., and was present at a party
where his old friend the Duke de Chartres, now
Duke of Orleans, was the guest of honor. He was
even made acquainted with Prince George's favorite
retinue of prize-fighters, and had the distinguished
honor of accompanying the prince-regal party to
365

PAUL JONES
witness " Big Ben " Eyan's great fight with Men-
doza at Wormwood Scrubbs, for the championship.
Parliament was in session, and among the ques
tions of prime importance were the encroachments
of Eussia to the southward and westward. The cam
paign in which he had borne so prominent a part was
discussed in both houses. In fact the parliamen
tary session of 1789-90 may be considered as having
inaugurated the " Eastern policy " of Great Britain,
which lasted for more than a century, and is by no
means abandoned yet. The Admiral speaks with
vast pride of the hospitality extended to him by the
Earl of Wemyss, by Lady Ossory and many other
"people of fashion," as he calls them.
Meantime his business operations were not neg
lected. A balancing of the accounts showed a credit
of about £6,000 in Admiral Jones's favor, and he
drew out £4,000, as appears in the papers accom
panying his will. Soon after this adjustment of ac
counts the Admiral left London and arrived at Paris
May 30, 1790.

266

CHAPTEE VII
LAST YEARS AND DEATH
With the arrival of Admiral Jones in Paris at the
end of May, 1790, began the last chapter of his
romantic career. He was in comfortable circum
stances. The adjustment of his long-neglected busi
ness affairs had placed at his disposal between forty-
five and fifty thousand dollars in available funds,
and his interests in Holland, Belgium, and England
were prosperous. His health had much improved
since he left Eussia, but the condition of his lungs
was still the object of much anxiety to his friends,
if not to him.
Soon after his arrival at Paris he was induced, more
by the insistence of Aimee de Telison and others
interested in him than by his own inclination, to call
a consultation of physicians, among whom was Dr.
Gourgeaud, then Medical Director in the French
Navy, who had been fleet surgeon of the Marquis de
Vaudreuil's flagship, la Triomphante, when Jones
made the West India cruise in 1782-83. The doctors
declared that his left lung was more or less perma
nently affected, but that with extraordinary prudence
and care of himseK he might live many years. They
told him, however, that he could never again endure
the climate of Eussia ; not even of the Black Sea
367

PAUL JONES
region in winter ; and advised him to renounce at
once all hope, if he still entertained any, of resuming
active service there. They said he would be well
enough in Paris during the summer, but believed it
would be best for him to make arrangements for
spending the next winter in the South of France.
All this of course was gall to him, but the verdict of
such physicians as they were could not be ignored,
and he at last realized that, though only forty-three
years old, his best energies had already been ex
pended. However, there is no sign that this gloomy
outlook depressed his spirits or impeded his activity
in affairs.
Great changes had occurred in the political situa
tion of France since he went away, in the beginning
of 1788. It did not require prophetic vision to see
that still more startling events were at hand. Up
to June, 1790, however, the forces of conservatism,
and the adherents of social order, led by Mirabeau,
Lafayette, and their coadjutors of the Moderate or
Constitutional party, had been able to preserve the
monarchical system and the traditional machinery
of government. The " Third Estate " of May, 1789,
had become the National (or Constitutent) Assembly.
In June, 1790, that body was at the middle of its
existence. It had not thus far seriously attacked
the monarchical system, but it had exhibited both
its supremacy over the King and its disposition to
exert that supremacy by compelling the royal family
to relinquish the traditional palace of Versailles and
take up their residence in Paris. This was practi
cally the abolition of the historic Court of Versailles,
and its prime significance was the fact, which it must
868

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
have demonstrated to all far-sighted men, that the
house of Bourbon, in the absolute sense, had ceased
to reign ; that its future existence must be that of a
constitutional figurehead of the state, if anything ;
that the real power of the Crown was gone, and that
king, crown, and throne together no longer had any
lease of life except by sufferance of the popular
assembly. To all intents and purposes the immediate des
tinies of France, even at the middle of the year 1790,
were in the keeping of two men. So long as Mirabeau
could control the Assembly, and so long as Lafayette
could command the army, the project of establishing
a constitutional monarchy on the ruins of the old
Bourbon despotism would be carried along. There
has been, and doubtless always will be, the widest
diversity of opinion among students and writers of
history whether, at such a juncture, the chances of
preserving the monarchy in a limited and constitu
tional form would have been better had there been
a strong, resolute, decisive king instead of the gen
tle, generous, and indecisive one that was. It is, of
course, wholly external to the scope of this work to
attempt a survey of such questions. But the view
that Paul Jones took of the subject, as he expressed
it to Lafayette, Mirabeau, and Malesherbes, very soon
after his arrival at Paris, is germane to our text. A
little later, when Segur had returned from Eussia,
and endeavored to aid Mirabeau and Lafayette in
the effort to stem the revolutionary tide, he said sub
stantially the same things to that statesman. With
out pretending to quote the Admiral's exact lan
guage, his views may be summarized partly after
869

PAUL JONES
the style of Segur's version, and partly from the
rather more copious record of Adrien de Capelle.
Among the first events of the Admiral's return to
France was a personal notice printed in the Poifit
du Jour, a paper which then or soon afterward was
the official organ of the Assembly. This notice was
so complimentary, and withal betrayed such accurate
knowledge of his career, that he felt called upon to
thank the editor in person. The result was the be
ginning of an acquaintance with Bertrand Barere,
then manager of the Point du Jour.
To that, unfortunately, vast majority of American
readers who derive their ideas of French history
and their impressions of Frenchmen from books
written by Englishmen, it would undoubtedly be use
less to attempt a portrayal of the real character of
Bertrand Barere. The average or general Ameri
can view of him is, beyond question, permanently
based upon the fierce diatribe which it pleased
Macaulay to style " a review " of the Memoirs of
Barere, published by Hippolyte Carnot at Paris,
in 1843. It may suffice to say that Macaulay's
misrepresentation of the real Barere differed from
the average English misrepresentation of every
thing and everybody French only in the degree in
which Macaulay's powers were superior to those of
the average English writer. This difference was of
course very great, and therefore the uselessness of
effort at this late day to antidote Macaulay's poison
is correspondingly emphasized. For this reason no
such attempt will be offered here. Jones found that
the little paragraph in the Point du Jour was not
the first compliment Barere's pen had paid him. In
370

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
1780, when a young advocate at Tarbes in Gascony,
and doubtless long before he ever dreamed of being
one of the most conspicuous actors in the tremen
dous tragedy of the French Eevolution, Barere had
published at Toulouse a pamphlet entitled "An
Essay on the Liberty of the Sea." This little work
had for its text the naval career of Paul Jones up to
that time, and half or more of its space was devoted
to accounts of his battles in the Eanger and the Bon
Homme Eichard.
It had been brought to the attention of Jones
along with many other like publications of that
time, and he had always considered it one of the
best, as it undoubtedly was, both in grasp of the
subject and in literary execution. Naturally an ac
quaintance thus begun quickly grew. Admiral
Jones had been a hero to Barere when Barere was a
poor country lawyer, and when Jones was already
the most famous naval captain in two continents.
And though now Barere had been considerably pro
moted in a new regime, he was yet modest enough
to set high value upon the personal acquaintance
and friendship of a man whom ten years before he
had worshipped from afar off. As for Jones, he found
in Barere a rising man, vivacious, cheery, enthusias
tic and apparently sincere ; and, above all, quick to
flatter that irrepressible personal vanity which was
always and everywhere the one weakness of his
nature. Beside this, Jones found in Barere a type
of Frenchman to which he had hitherto been a
stranger. All the previous associates and friends
of Jones in France had been people of rank or title
about the court ; officials high in the administration
371

PAUL JONES
of monarchical govemment ; officers of the army
and the navy ; in short the elite of French society
under the ancien regime. Judged by the standards
naturally resulting from such previous social en
vironment, Bertrand Barere was a kind of revelation
to Paul Jones.
Barere was provincial and also bourgeois. He
was, indeed, ultra-provincial, being a Gascon ; and,
not only that, but hardly more than half real French.
In his veins was a liberal admixture of that strange
survival of an ancient race — the Iberians of Hanni
bal's armies ; the Basques on the Spanish slopes
of the Pyrenees, and the Biscayens on the French
slopes in modern times. In his cups Barere used to
boast that his ancestors helped Hannibal conquer
Gaul and would have conquered Eome for him if he
had not wasted most of them in battle and then let
the remnant die in the debauch of Capua. Barere
was so much of a Basque that he could speak the
language of that race fluently ; and in his fierce ora
tions when he had become a leader and a terror ili
the National Convention of France, it was one of his
pet tricks to interpolate, now and then, savage
phrases borrowed from that ancient tongue.
There is nothing of consequence, either in the Me
moirs of Barere, as edited by Hippolyte Carnot, or
in any of the Jones papers extant, to show that their
acquaintance was anything but formal, or that their
relations were closer than the ordinary friendship
that might exist between any two men of brains
who should happen to meet as they did. But there
is evidence in contemporary writings to the effect
that, not long afterward, Barere made use of the
373

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
name and fame of Paul Jones to further certain de
signs he had upon the reorganization of the French
Navy in 1791-92.
However, so far as the immediate time now under
consideration is concerned — the summer and fall of
1790 — Admiral Jones was nothing more than a deeply
interested observer of French politics. While his
natural associations were with such men as La
fayette, Mirabeau, Malesherbes, and Segur (now
recently returned to France from the Eussian Em
bassy), he did not miss the opportunity which his
acquaintance with Barere afforded to see the other
side. In that line of introductions he soon met Car
not, Cambon, Elie Lacoste, Billaud de Varennes,
Collot d'Herbois, Jean Bon St. Andre, and even
Eobespierre, Couthon, and St. Just. Danton and
others of the moderate school — later of the Gironde
— he already knew. In these associations he became
more or less an habitue of the " civic clubs," which
were then all the rage among the revolutionists, and
in which most of the devilment subsequently de
veloped was hatched.
So far as extant papers afford indication, the Ad
miral's attitude during this period was one of calm
observation and careful neutrality as between the
ideas and aims of the ferocious factions. In the
fragmentary memoranda of his utterances during
this period, as recorded by Capelle and printed in
the Collection of 1799, some index may be found of
the Admiral's general attitude. In these discourses
he steadily maintained that the true road to liberty
for France lay, for some generations at least, through
constitutional monarchy. When reminded of the
Vol. il— 18 373

PAUL JONES
successful establishment of purely republican insti
tutions in America, he always pointed out that the
conditions were different ; that the Americans were
accustomed to representative control and local self-
government even as colonists ; that they were not
prone to gusts of popular passion Uke the French
populace, and, above all, were not surrounded, as
France was, by feudal institutions in neighboring
states. He maintained that Louis XVI. was an en
lightened and liberal man ; that, viewing him as that
kind of a man simply, irrespective of his kingly sta
tion, he was better fitted than any other Frenchman
to preside over the destinies of France, and that a
constitutional monarchy, begun under his benevo
lent auspices and perfected by the growth of poUti
cal wisdom among the French masses, would in time
completely solve the problem of liberation.
He told the men he met that if they dethroned or
killed Louis, they would kill the best friend the cause
of French liberty had. He argued that extreme
violence, even though it might go no further than
dethronement and exile of the King, would be sure
not only to consolidate Europe against France, but
would also rend France herself asunder in civil war.
He said he had made all due allowance for those re
sentments, and even for those revenges, which must
naturally fill the bosoms of a brave and chivalric race
like the French toward a dynasty which, from the
death of Henri IV. in 1610 to the accession of Louis
XVI. in 1774, had apparently considered France as
a personal estate or private property, and had used
that great nation as the instrument of individual
caprice. But he urged that Louis XVT. was not like
274

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
his ancestors ; that he belonged to a new time, was
filled with new sentiments, and was ready, even
anxious, for new departures, not only in the des
tinies of France, but, fundamentally, in the relation
between king and people.
He dwelt upon the prompt, firm, and vigorous
espousal by Louis of the cause of American Inde
pendence and republican liberty in the New World.
When some of them, even such men as Carnot, Cam
bon, and Danton, sneeringly replied that Louis
thought more of hurting England than of helping
America, Jones retorted that he had his choice of
advisers — that Turgot and de Sartine had not left
him without arguments against espousing the Amer
ican cause ; that even the Queen had exhausted her
gentle though no less potent influence against it ;
that, in fact, when the treaty was signed, Vergennes
alone of the King's Ministers was heartily with him,
while all the others were either openly against him
or cynically conservative or non-committal. From
this point of view he maintained that Louis XVI.
was really the leader and not the follower, actually
the teacher and not the pupil, of French liberal
ism in 1778.
These debates in the various civic clubs which
Jones visited sometimes waxed warm. On one
occasion, when Thomas Paine was present, he
said to Jones that, in any event, France would
not be the first regicide nation ; that both Jones
and himself were of the Anglo-Saxon breed, with
out a drop of Gallic blood, and yet they were the
descendants of the men who, a century and a half
before, had killed an English king and raised to
375

PAUL JONES
power an English Liberator. Jones liked Tom
Paine, and Paine almost worshipped Jones. All
through the American Eevolution they had been
bosom friends. They invariably addressed each
other as " Tom " and " Paul." But now Jones's
temper took fire :
"What you say is true, Tom," he retorted; "but
bear in mind that the French lack two essential ele
ments of that situation : First, they have in Louis
XVI. no Charles I., and, second and most impor
tant, there isn't the making of one Cromwell in the
whole group of them together ! "
No man can wholly smother his racial instincts.
Tom Paine was not a Frenchmen. No Frenchman's
levity or fantastic cynicism could have affected
Jones as did the cold sneer of his own countryman,
Tom Paine. It made him for the moment betray
what he had always cleverly concealed — that, deep
down at the bottom of his ferocious nature, Paul
Jones was as full as any other British-born man
could be of the instinctive contempt the Anglo-
Saxon harbors toward every other race on earth —
the French not excepted.
About this period the King was subjected to
almost daily insult by the Parisian rabble. The
mob of February 28, 1791, commonly known as " the
Day of Daggers," greatly exasperated Admiral
Jones. He happened to be at the Tuileries when
the National Guard demanded that the assembled
notables be disarmed, and Louis, to avoid strife,
yielded. Then, for the first time, the Admiral felt
his faith in the King shaken and began to despair
of the establishment of constitutional monarchy in
876

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
France. His Journal of 1791 contains this expres
sion concerning the event :
Up to this time I had been able to flnd reasons for the
King's gentleness. But this was not gentle. It was weak.
Prom that hour I pitied the poor man, beset by situations
to which nature had made him unequal. Then or never
was the time for grape-shot. Then, and then only, did my
heart turn against the populace. For once I wished I
might be in command of the thirty cannon that were
parked in the court-yard, with trained men standing ready
to work them. Some slaughter would have been neces
sary. But it would have been a slaughter of criminals.
f'Boucherie des sc^l^rats, " in the original.]
In another place he says that " the saddest trait
of the populace is their levity. They are ridiculous
even in their patriotism. Their emblems of the
grand sentiments they profess are as childish as the
language in which they proclaim their lofty aspi
rations is fantastic. For example, there is the red
cap ! An invention borrowed from the gutters and
made the symbol of popular sovereignty ! "
Shortly after the attempt of the King to quit
Paris and after he had been brought back from Va
rennes — about the time of the disbandment of the
Garde du Corps — quite a number of the revolution
ists were assembled one evening at the Admiral's
apartments in Tournon Street. This was at that
time a common occurrence, because he kept open
house and his hospitality was proverbial, even in
hospitable Paris. His apartments were spacious
and elegant, his wines were of the best, and there
was never any lack of boon companions at his side
board. On this occasion among his visitors were
377

PAUL JONES
Barere, Collot, Billaud, Tom Paine, and Jean Bon
St. Andi'e.
The conversation, as recorded by Capelle, natu
rally turned to the leading topic of the day. The
Admiral vigorously denounced the excesses of the
Assembly which had led the King, in respect to his
personal dignity rather than in terror, to attempt
to quit Paris, saying among other things that he
(Jones) had and could have no sympathy with agi
tation and tumult such as that which had evidently
made so good and virtuous a sovereign as Louis
XVI. distrustful of the integritj^ of those who were
representing or pretending to represent his people
in an Assembly chosen and convened in the name
of liberty.
" You must understand, gentlemen," said Jones
with some warmth, " that I have in my time fought
eight years for liberty and the rights of man ; and
you know, I presume, that during that period I was
concerned in some affairs which mankind has con
sented to dignify by the name of real battles. But
I fought my battles against the foes, not against
the friends, of freedom. I fought mj^ battles with
the cannon and powder aud ball of ships of war,
not with decrees of assemblies or with the cabals
of secret clubs!"
On the occasion of the " Day of Daggers " La
fayette was present and took the part of the Nation
al Guards. It was declared by Mirabeau and dis
puted by no one that Lafayette's advice, to use no
stronger term, induced the King to yield to the de
mands of the National Guards. Mirabeau even
charged Lafayette with hypocrisy in his pretended

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
attachment to the King, and said, " that, at least,
was one lesson in the school of liberty that he never
could have learned from George Washington ! "
Paul Jones leaned to the side of Mirabeau. Dis
ciple as he was of the faith he always styled " the
rights of man," Jones never believed or admitted
that those rights could be properly expressed by
tumult, asserted by mob violence, or enforced by
riot. Had Jones instead of Lafayette been in com
mand of the defences of the Tuileries on February
28, the ulcer that was in the body politic would
have been opened at once by cannon-shot instead of
being left, as Lafayette left it, to fester through
another year or so of anguish and anarchy. At any
rate, Jones at that moment ceased to hope for the
ultimate triumph of constitutional monarchy in
France, and grimly set about preparing himself to
take his chances with the rest whenever the deluge
might come.
He had at this time just returned from the South
of France, and was in better health, nerve, and spir
its than he had known for two years or more. He
had fully determined to sever finally his connection
with the Eussian naval service. His two years' leave
dating from July 17, 1789, would be up in a short
time, and he had decided to resign his commission,
to take effect on the date of the expiration of his
leave. In fact, he forwarded his resignation through
the Eussian Minister at The Hague a short time
after the event just described. In the early spring of
1791 business affairs called him again to England,
where he made the longest and the last of his visits.
Judging from the extent of the record he has left of
879

PAUL JONES
this English trip, it was, on the whole, among the
most enjoyable events of his lifetime. This was due
partly to his apparent gain in physical condition,
with the naturally resulting rise of his spirits, and
partly to the numerous and complimentary social
attentions he received, far exceeding those of any
previous occasion. He also, with the exception of
an interest amounting to about £2,500 which he left
in the hands of Sir Eobert Harries, closed out his
English business affairs.
Horace Walpole, the Earl of Orford, entertained
him several days at Strawberry Hill, Twickenham.
Lord Shelburne, of our Eevolutionary epoch, but
in 1791 Marquis of Lansdowne, entertained him at
the famous London mansion of that great family.
Charles James Fox renewed the hospitality of pre
vious occasions. He met Eichard Brinsley Sheridan
and all the other wits of the Whig party. He even
had the pleasure of meeting the son of the Earl of
Selkirk and of receiving confirmation of the acknowl
edgment already made in writing as to the Earl's
perfect satisfaction at his conduct in regard to the
descent of the Eanger's men upon St. Mary's Isle
many years before. But what pleased him most of
all was the spirit in which the officers of the British
Navy met him, and the cordiality with which they
welcomed him to their exclusive circles.
On this, he says, as on other occasions when he
was leaving France for England, his friends had
jocosely warned him that they would expect as first
news of his landing that his body ornamented a gib
bet on the battlements of Dover Castle, or his head
a pikestaff on London Bridge. Soon after landing
380

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
he even deemed it his duty to write, in a vein of
persiflage, to a lady at Avignon, who was ever deeply
solicitous for his welfare, that the English " not only
did not murder him when he landed, but by their po
liteness actually made him not a little ashamed of
some things he had said about them in earlier days."
Always desirous to avail himself of every oppor
tunity to augment his store of professional knowl
edge, he eagerly accepted an invitation of Admiral
Lord Barham to visit Portsmouth dockyard, of
which that noble old seaman was then commandant.
Admiral Jones had met Lord Barham at Paris in
1785-86, and they had then formed a pleasant ac
quaintance. During this visit * Admiral Jones was
an object of intense interest to the young officers of
the British Navy. Among these were Captains Bren-
ton-Wright, Troubridge, Foley, Ball, Hood, Harvey,
Saumarez, and others, who were soon to win ever
lasting fame with Howe or with Nelson.
He says in his Journal :
I felt particularly complimented at the assiduity with
which these young officers plied me with questions about
* The Admiral's accounts of his visits to England in 1790 and 1791, re
spectively, appear in his Journal of the latter year, whioh seldom gives
exact dates of occurrences, being a continuous narrative rather than a
diary or journal day by day. For this reason, when he refers to meeting
certain British officers, it is not always clear whether he met them in 1790
or in 1791. Por example, he speaks of Sir Samuel Hood and Sir Thomas
Troubridge. He must have met Troubridge in 1790, because that ofiicer
sailed for India in command of the Thames (frigate) in July of that
year ; and he must have met Hood in 1791 , because Sir Samuel was com
manding the Juno (frigate) in the West India and North American sta
tion in 1790, and did not return to England until June, 1791. But
Jones, in his Journal, does not clearly make these distinctions. This
explanation is offered to avert any possible captious criticism.
381

PAUL JONES
the Russian and French navies, particularly the latter.
They asked my judgment as to the effect the existing state
of France was likely to have upon the materiel, personnel,
and morale of the French navy, and they did not hesitate
to say that they expected soon to have to flght it again.
Some of them even asked me if I would serve in the French
Navy in event of hostilities, and I, not to be outdone in
candor, assured them that I should, if invited. They were
complimentary enough to say that it made a great deal of
difference which side of the Channel an admiral was bom
on, but, after all, an admiral was by no means all of a fleet,
and, no matter whom the French might have in command,
their crews could never be anything but Frenchmen. When
I ventured to suggest to them that I had seen French sailors
fight well, they quickly retorted that the case I had in mind
was a rare exception — almost impossible to occur again —
and they declared that the Frenchmen fought so well on
that occasion only because they had for shipmates a crew of
old Yankee and Briton-born bully- raggers to show them how
to walk! Ajid this, in truth, I could not altogether gainsay.
One of them [Captain Brenton- Wright] had been first
lieutenant in the Serapis twelve years before, and Lieuten
ant Hood had been a midshipman in that ship. I was
deeply indebted to these two brave and generous gentlemen
for much of the courtesy I enjoyed; they making it their
particular affair to correct in my behalf the mistaken im
pressions that some of their brother-officers had formed. I
could not help foreseeing in all these young officers antag
onists of the most formidable character whenever they
should reach high commands. Much as I believed British
statesmen, particularly of the Tory party, to have deterio
rated, I could not help admitting that all the ancient sense
and pluck of the British Navy was there, ready as ever to
show forth once more in battle. "
* Admiral Jones relates many anecdotes of this visit to England, of
which the following seems worth preserving: "One day," he says,
" while walking along the street, a decrepit man, one-legged, blind in one
388

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
During this visit Jones met Lieutenant Eichard
Harrison Pearson of the British Navy, nephew of
Sir Eichard Pearson. This young officer had been
a midshipman in the Serapis and was wounded in
the battle. The Admiral speaks of him as a young
man of most pleasing address and great promise,
and says that next to a meeting with Sir Eichard
himself, which was out of his power, he valued the
opportunity of seeing his worthy young kinsman
and namesake.
Admiral Jones was in London when the death of
eye and with one arm crippled, asked me for alms. Seeing, from the cut
of his jib, that he was a man-of-war sailor, I asked him where he had got
hailed and his rigging torn to pieces in that manner. He replied, ' Many
years ago. Your Honor, in His Majesty's ship the Serapis, Captain Pear
son, in action with the American ship Bon Homme Richard, Captain Paul
Jones, off Scarboro'.'
" Amused and pleased at such a rencontre, and seeing that the man did
not recognize me, I asked : ' What was the result of that battle ? ' To
which he replied, ' We struck to the American ship, sir ; but we had
mauled her so that she went down the next day.'
" Then with, I trust, pardonable curiosity, I asked, ' What opinion had
your shipmates of Captain Jones ? '
" ' WeU, sir, we had been told he was a pirate ; but he fought us braver
than anyone else ever did, and after we struck he treated us all humanely ;
not at all like a pirate. When he got into the Texel with the prizes, he
put all ns wounded sailors ashore in a good hospital in an old Dutch fort
on the island, where we had more comfort than aboard ship. '
" I then said, ' Did you soe Captain Jones ; would you know him now,
think you ? '
" ' I saw him several times, sir ; he came frequently to look after the
wounded, ours as well as his own, while we were aboard ship. But it was
long ago, sir, and I was so bad hurt and suffered so much, that my mem
ory is not very good about what happened after the battle.'
"I asked him what was his name, and he told me, ' Samuel Davis, sir.'
I well remembered this name among the wounded prisoners, and with
this refreshment of memory I could recall the man. I gave him a guinea,
which seemed to almost stupefy him, and then walked away as fast as I
could, not having the heart to tell him who I was."
383

PAUL JONES
Mirabeau was announced by the papers, in the
month of April, 1791. He at once wrote his impres
sions of the event in a communication addressed to
Lord Wemyss, which has been preserved. It is too
long for reproduction here in full, but a few extracts
will serve to indicate its tenor and quaUty :
. . Louis XV. said, "After me, the deluge." It
might, with more truth, have been said by Mirabeau.
While he lived that strange concourse of evil spirits, the
Assembly, had a master. Now that he is gone the animals
are without a keeper. I have never seen or read of a man
capable of such mastery over the passions and the follies of
such a mob. There is no one to take the place of Mira
beau. He was the only man in all France who seemed to
possess a single trait of Cromwell. Of course he was not and
never could be such a soldier as the Great Protector. But
he was much like him in the elements of statesmanship.
Of course the conditions were wholly reversed. Cromwell
was the champion of a brave, sober, invincible people
against a tyrannical king. Blirabeau was the champion of
a liberal, honest, albeit feeble, king against the clamors and
the threats of a despotic and senseless rabble. But even
with the conditions so exactly reversed the parallel still
holds good. The momentous consequences of Mirabeau's
fall will soon be apparent. No extreme of excesses on the
part of the Assembly and the populace of Paris need be
wondered at henceforth.
Lafayette cannot long restrain the sinister forces that are
at work. Frankly I must say, my noble friend, that
Lafayette is not equal to his task. He is brave and chival
rous, but he has not the heart or the brain needed in this
crisis. I have conversed with him many times on these sub
jects. He shrinks from the ultima ratio regum ! But in
this case it is not the last argument of kings : It should
be viewed as the first argument of the people.
384

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
I am not a man of thirst for blood . If I have fought, it
has always been for the good to come to mankind from
victory, not for the sake of victory itself. To you, in
the confldence of friendship, I am willing to say that
during the past year there have been many moments
when my heart turned to stone toward those who call
themselves "the people" in France. More than once
have I harbored the wish that I might be entrusted by
Lafayette with the command of the Palace, with carte
blanche to defend the constitution ; and that I might
have once more with me, if only for one day, my old
crews of the Ranger, the Richard, and the Alliance ! I
surely would have made the thirty cannon of the court-yard
teach to that mad rabble the lesson that grape-shot has
its uses in struggles for the rights of man 1 . . .
But the King is too good-hearted and Lafayette is 
well, as I have said, he is not equal to the destiny of his
time. It is a sad subject. I cannot meditate upon it with
out anguish. With Mirabeau gone and no one to replace
him, there is nothing to do but await in silence the ap
proach of the bitter end.
Early in 1791 the depredations of the Barbary
corsairs on our commerce in the Mediterranean, and
even in the Atlantic as far west as the Azores, had
become so injurious that our government recognized
the necessity of action. It was proposed to fit out a
squadron composed of at least two frigates and two
sloops-of-war, to go to Algiers, and probably also to
Tunis and Tripoli, for the purpose of displaying
our flag, liberating the American sailors then held in
slavery there, and, if possible, compelling the rulers
of those states to cease their piracy. As a step
in this direction the old frigate Alliance which had
been sold in 1784, was bought back by the Govern-
385

PAUL JONES
ment to be refitted for naval service. But nothing
further was done. In anticipation of this project,
or rather while it was under consideration, Mr. Jef
ferson, then Secretary of State, wrote a letter to Ad
miral Jones, in July of that year, advising him of
the scheme, and requesting him to forward any in
formation on the subject he might have obtained
later than that he had transmitted in previous cor
respondence — some of which dated as far back as
1785-86. Mr. Jefferson frankly told the Admiral of
the financial difficulties attending the fitting out of
a squadron, in consequence of the depleted state of
the national treasury. He also admitted that in the
then disturbed state of France it would probably
not be practicable to induce effective co-operation
on the part of that naval power. Under these cir
cumstances, Mr. Jefferson suggested that he confer
with our Envoy in Holland to see if that state
would join the United States in an effort to suppress
the Barbary piracies. In conclusion of this letter,
Mr. Jefferson said: "The President has directed
me to say that it does not seem necessary to indi
cate the identity of that naval commander to whom
all eyes would be tumed should the United States
be able to fit out a squadron of magnitude suitable
to form a command for an officer of high rank and
extraordinary distinction."
The Admiral received this letter shortly after his
return from England, and proceeded at once to Hol
land as suggested. In the early part of September
—the day of the month does not appear in the dat
ing of the letter— Jones repUed to Mr. Jefferson at
considerable length. It is evident that this corre-
3SG

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
spondence was considered personal or unofficial, be
cause it was not filed in the public archives and is
extant only in private papers. In the first part of
his letter the Admiral discussed the proposed ex
pedition, agreed with Jefferson that there was little
to expect from France, as things were, and intimated
that Holland would not be likely to join in such a
project ; or, if she did, it would be under conditions
not desirable to the forces which might represent
the United States. He then argued in favor of sole
and independent action by the United States with
out reference to any European power whatever ;
saying that the moral effect upon the Dey of Algiers
and the other Barbary potentates would be infinitely
more salutary if they were to be overawed by an un
expected display of naval power on the part of the
United States alone than if our forces should appear
as a mere adjunct to a European squadron. He
said that with two frigates equal to the Alliance, and
two or three twenty-gun sloops-of-war, an enter
prising commander ought to be able to bring the
Dey to terms without firing a shot, or certainly with
out attacking his capital, after sinking two or three
of his corsairs.
The other part of the letter was a description of the
situation in France at that time, which is so graphic
and comprehensive that it cannot be summarized
without impairing its historical value. The Admiral
sent a copy of this part of his letter to John Eoss,
Esq., of Philadelphia, who had charge of his business
interests in the United States. It was as follows :
It is painfully evident that the people of fashion are be
ginning to take deep alarm. The rapid and constant en-
387

PAUL JONES
eroachments of the Assembly on the old order of things ;
the sinister attitude toward the King ; the decree provid
ing for abolishing of the privileges of noblesse ; the reor
ganization of the army on republican lines ; . . . the
institution of the National Guards ; the clear intention to
reconstruct the naval establishment on a similar basis,
which is known to be under consideration in committee ;
and, above all, the character of the Assembly itself as to
the personal qualities and antecedents of the great major
ity of its members — all these things have affected the
minds and excited the apprehensions of the former ruling
class in France to a degree that must be seen and felt on
the spot to be realized.
There is a universal inquiry, What next? Everyone
seems to feel that all sense of real security is gone. After
rank and titles are abolished the next step will naturally
be to assail the vested rights of property. To such an ex
tent have I recognized the state of things that I have for
some little time past been gradually transferring my own
funds from Nantes and this place (Paris) to Amsterdam,
and I am leaving my interests in London to accumulate
there. Of course I do not expect to be made the object
personally of any acts they may decree as to property ; but
I am apprehensive of a general crash in finance that will
destroy existing banks and revolutionize the monetary sys
tem of values ; and this could not fail to swallow up effects
in the form that mine are in ; namely, money and bills of
credit. Last season — 1790 — there was but little abatement of the
former gayety. Many people felt and some freely expressed
forebodings, but all seemed to prefer hope to fear, and so
the world of fashion went its way about as usual. There
was indeed gloom even then at Versailles, but none in Paris
or in the outlying towns of consequence. What the Palace
of Versailles lacked in spirit and splendor was more than
made up by the extraordinary brilliancy of the affairs of
the Duke d'Orleans. This latter fact still holds good, and
388 -

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
the Duke d'Orleans has practically organized a new repub
lican court of his own whioh really has for some time
eclipsed that of the King himself in extravagance and eclat.
Naturally these things give me pain, because they argue,
to my mind, an open rupture before very long between the
royal family and the House of Orleans ; and my gratitude
to both is such that even in my humble capacity I cannot
contemplate the necessity of choosing between them but
with sadness. The Duke d'Orleans avows the most perfect
fealty to the King. He says with but little attempt at pri
vacy that he alone can save the monarchy and perpetuate
the dynasty ; and he protests most vehemently that he has
no thought or dream of succession in favor of himself or
his line, either through abdication or dethronement of the
regular Bourbon branch. For my part, I believe he is
sincere ; but many do not. At any rate, my deliberate
opinion is that the monarchy can be preserved only in the
person of Louis XVL, and that if he is deposed, the revo
lutionists will never accept any other monarch — neither the
Duke d'Orleans nor anyone else.
The court as it exists at Paris is nothing like the court
that was at Versailles. The men of the Assembly, most of
whom are provincials of small degree, never heard of before,
have abused the good nature of the King in the matter of
audience and reception until all etiquette is well-nigh gone,
and all restraints of decorum broken through.
The Assembly itself is a singular body. I have attended
some of its sessions. Naturally I compared them with the
deliberations of our own Congress and the Constitutional
Convention, which I also, on various occasions, had the
honor to attend. Our Congress and our Convention were
always the soul of dignity, the pattern of decorum, the
Garden of Wisdom, and the Paradise of Thought. This
Assembly is a huge body as to number, under little or no
parliamentary control, composed of a few men who talk
all the time, and a great many men who do nothing but
applaud, or hiss or make tumult and uproar generally.
Vol. IL— 10 389

PAUL JONES
Everything about it is theatrical; the men who speak seem
to struggle for epigrams instead of proclaiming principles,
and almost every day sees altercations aud bandying of
epithets between members in open session that no one ac
customed to the ways and usages of the British Parliament
or our Congress would believe possible without actually wit
nessing them. Despair as to the outcome of such conditions
is almost unavoidable. But the crisis caimot be far off.
It is vain to expect good to come of the so-called deUbera-
tions of such a body, animated by such passions and affect
ing such methods. In fact I should not style it a legislative
body at all as we understand the term; but simply un trou-
peaii eiiorme de moutons, deguises en lion [a vast fiock of
sheep masquerading as lions].
Two years nearly have elapsed since the assembling of the
Tiers-Etat (the Third Estate, which was the outgrowth of
the States General). If the next two years witness equal
development in the same direction as the last two, it needs
httle prescience to see that France must become a hell,
politically, socially, and commercially. Some miracle may
intervene for the better ; but there is no sign of one in the
sky now. Nevertheless my devotion to France — brave,
chivalrous Prance! in good part the builder, if not the ar
chitect of our o^vn liberties — impels me to still hope for the
best, even though it may be, as it seems, hoping against fate.
It will be noted that the Admiral, in his reply to
Mr. Jefferson on the subject of the proposed naval
expedition to the Barbary States, speaks in a gen
eral way as to what " an enterprising commander "
might accomplish with certain force that he de
scribes. But he does not intimate that he himself
felt in a position to accept such a command if offered
to him. Nothing, in fact, ever came of it. The country
was too poor to raise the million or so of dollars
necessary to fit out an effective squadi'on.
390

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
In the fall of 1791, Paul Jones had dreams of far
grander glory than the command of an expedition to
the Barbary States. The determination of the As
sembly to reorganize the French Navy on republican
lines had caused the cooler heads to look for admi
rals to take the places of the aristocrats who then
filled all the higher grades. Prior to that time va
rious decrees had been passed by virtue of which
subalterns of the navigating grades might rise in
line of promotion, which had been denied to them
under the ultra-aristocratic regime of Bourbon ab
solutism ; a policy that, as set forth by Jones him
self in a letter to Joseph Hewes, reproduced in pre
vious pages, had culminated in the " ordonnance de
Segur " of 1776. It had also been decreed that mer
chant captains of suitable age, who could pass a cer
tain examination — not very drastic — might be en
rolled as lieutenants with full eligibility to the
highest grades. But all this had been so far experi
mental and tentative. There had been some appoint
ments in the lower grades, from the ranks ; but the
Assembly, though it could — or as its successor did —
alter the calendar and change the seasons, had not
yet found a way to create naval skill or the faculty
of naval command, at its will. Therefore the French
Navy at the end of 1791 stood, as it had for two cen
turies, the most perfectly aristocratic force in the
world so far as its higher grades and its most ap
proved skill were concerned. The Assembly might
make fairly good watch officers or even frigate cap
tains out of East Indian skippers or the commanders
of Levant trading-barks. But they could not im
provise d'Estaings, Grimouards, Vaudreuils, Mo-
391

PAUL JONES
rards, Kersaints, Kerguelens, or de Eionses. All this
was seen by such heads as Carnot, Lacoste, Cambon,
Barere and Danton.
Just about this time a pamphlet appeared from
the press of Grandjean, printer of the Point du Jour,
entitled " Traite sur I'etat actuel de la marine fran-
caise " (" Treatise on the Existing State of the French
Navy "). It was a small affair of thirty -four closely
printed pages ; but written by a master-hand ; by
the hand of a man not merely familiar with naval
history, but also skilled in the art of naval warfare
in the most comprehensive sense, well versed in the
political significance of sea-power, and practically
acquainted with the science of marine architecture.
Its first edition was anonymous, though Carnot, La
coste, Barere, and a few others knew who its author
was. Eight years afterward, when Barere was editor
of the Moniteur, and when Napoleon had begun to
appreciate the value of sea-power — an appreciation
that Nelson had no doubt quickened by his awful
lesson of the Nile — this pamphlet was reprinted by
order of the First Consul ; and in that edition the
title-page bears the words " Ecrit par le grand amiral
americain et russe, Paul Jones."
In this pamphlet, as in all his writings, Jones went
straight for his subject without much preface. He
always wrote as he liked to fight — at close range.
His opening sentences may be translated as follows :
The time has arrived in development of the new regime
in France when Frenchmen must take account of its effects
upon the efficiency of their navy. It may be natural that
in such upheaval of ancient traditions and such reversal of
long-established usages as have taken place on the land, at-
298

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
tention has been temporarily diverted from the vital inter
ests of France on the sea. The army of France has been or
is in fair way to be republicanized. The doctrines of liberty
and equality are being applied to the military institutions
with the same happy auguries that have marked their ap
plication to the civic affairs of the state. Now the atten
tion of patriots is to be turned to the navy of the nation.
All agree that the basis of the Revolution is reason.
Therefore it is with no apology that one approaches the
task of pointing out that, of all French institutions whose
welfare demands the application of calm reason to its af
fairs, the navy is the foremost.
He then summed up the history of the French Navy
during the time of Louis XYI. The sole trouble
was, he said, that at the beginning of the new order
of things, say at the end of 1788, the navy of France
was wholly an aristocratic organization, the high or
responsible grades of which were totally inaccessi
ble to merit without noble birth, or to ability not
anointed by title. This, he maintained, was unques
tionably an evil ; but it was one that could not be
sensibly or safely extirpated except by the wisest
legislation, the most prudent administration, and,
above all, the cleansing and healing effects of time.
Any effort to force it, or any scheme to produce in
stantaneous change, he declared, could not result
otherwise than in confusion and disintegration in
time of peace, or untold disaster and humiliation in
the event of war. He went on to say that the admin
istration and command of a ship of war or of a fleet
must be an affair of unquestioned autocracy and abso
lute despotism, limited only by wise regulations and
just measure of responsibilities. The word " disci-
393

PAUL JONES
pline," he declared, has a meaning at sea that can
not even be comprehended, much less put in force,
on land. He asserted, without fear of successful
contradiction, that an army might be effective, and
even grandly victorious, on land under laxity of
discipline in the sense of minutiae that would be
next door to open mutiny aboard ship. There was
no common ground on which the two could be com
pared, and, therefore, he would sum up by saying
that no one could clearly understand his meaning
except men who had been in command of, or who
had been commanded in, ships of war.
Passing from this view of the subject, Jones
warned the French that their crusade against caste
and class could not much longer fail to bring upon
them the resentment of their hereditary foes, "still
steeped," as he said, " in aristocracy and feudalism."
He told them that " their neighbors across the chan
nel were already counting the piles of cannon-balls
in their arsenals and sending their cutlasses to the
grindstone ! "
Under such conditions, he said, it behooved
Frenchmen to halt at their navy and consider well
any scheme of change that might cripple it even for
one moment — "because in that moment, believe me,
the ever-watchful and always-ready foe will be upon
you." There was much more in the same vein, all vivid
ly interesting, all strangely sagacious, and all, as
events proved, prophetic in fact if not in vision.
He concluded as follows :
Let no one gather from these lines an intention to argue
in favor of the naval aristocracy. Let everyone gather an
294

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
intention to argue in favor of the integrity and efficiency
of the navy itself. You may find generals in the ranks of
your armies, but you can never catch admirals by combing
the forecastles of your fieets. If you are sorry that it is so,
I will be sorry with you ; but neither of us can help it. It
is a fact as inexorable as the saltness of the sea itself.
Grandjean's imprint on the title-page of this pam
phlet is simply " Paris, 1791." It was probably
issued in November of that year, just at the moment
when the raid on the French Navy began, which not
long afterward bore fruit in Jean Bon St. Andre,
poor Villaret- Joyeuse, the fatal First of June, and the
hapless Vengeur. Naturally it attracted universal
attention. Copies of it found their way to England
and, anonymous as it was, the impress of the genius
of Paul Jones was so plain upon the face of its pages
that Horace Walpole wrote to the Admiral a con
gratulatory note about it, but expressing regret that
so much good sense should have been wasted on such
barren ground. The letter of the Earl of Orford said :
Much as it might flatter your ambition, my dear Jones,
I would not like, for the sake of your own fame, to see
your flag hoisted in a French fleet. You might, perhaps,
make trouble for us once or twice, as, for example, the Irish
Brigade did at Fontenoy ; but the ultimate issue of the
campaign would not be altered, and you, if you survived,
would only have to chew what no one had yet been able to
force into your teeth — the bitter cud of defeat at the hands
of your own kith and kin. Let France go. As for your
self, either go home to America and repose upon your
laurels or come to England, where even those who do not
like you cannot help admiring you. It is not money you
need, because I know you have enough for your frugal
wants. If you need any more than you have, I and your
895

PAUL JONES
other friends here will take pleasure in finding it for you,
for the sake of your society and your table-talk. Great as
you have shown yourself in war, those intimately acquaint
ed with you know that you are equally masterful in the
affairs of commerce. You have already fought under two
flags. Is not that enough ? Can you not conceive that the
time must come in every man's life— no matter how heroic
—when reason dictates that he should quit fighting? I
take your anonymous pamphlet to be simply a bid for high
rank in the navy of France under the new r€gime. Much
as I like and admire you, I hope it may fail ; for the rea
son that your laurels of Old Flamboro' Head would surely
turn, sooner or later, to cypress-leaves as a French admi
ral in the wake of British broadsides, with none of your
good old Yankee tars to stand by !
While Paul Jones was a somewhat prolific writer
on the personnel and materiel, the organization and
administration of navies, but few expressions of his
views on naval tactics are extant. The only one of
any considerable historical importance that we have
found is a letter to Admiral Kersaint,* written in
* Vice- Admiral le Comte de Kersaint was one of the most distin
guished French naval officers of his time. He was born at Paris in
1741, a scion of one of the oldest noble families of Touraine. In 1755 he
entered the navy as a midshipman. He reached the rank of capitaine de
vaisseau in 1775 ; that of rear-admiral in 1781, and that of vice-admiral
in 1786. Serving with d'Estaing aud de Grasse in the American Revo
lution, he early accepted the pohcy of Lafayette and adopted the princi
ples of Mirabeau ; becoming iu 1787 a Revolutionist of the moderate or
Constitutional School. As a naval officer he ranked as one of the three
most brilliant young admirals of France at the outbreak of the Revolu
tion ; the other two being d'Albert de Rions and Morard de Galles.
He was chosen a member of the National Convention, and when the
vote of death against Louis XYI. was passed, January 20, 1793, he re
signed his seat in the Convention by letter, boldly denouncing that crime
against reason aud against humanity. He was soon after condemned
and guillotined with Danton and others of the Gironde.
29G

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
1791, which appears in the Memoirs and Correspond
ence of that distinguished but unfortunate French
man. It seems that Kersaint had written to Jones
shortly after the publication of the monograph,
" Traite sur I'etat actuel de la marine fran^aise,"
congratulating him upon it, approving his conclu
sions and expressing the hope that France might
find a way to avail herself of his services as a com
mander afloat.
In his reply, after the usual acknowledgments,
Jones said :
. It has not been my habit to indulge in comment
upon French naval tactics as I have read of them in his
tory or observed them in the last war. But my long and
happy personal acquaintance with your Excellency, dating
from our flrst accidental meeting in the Chesapeake in
1775, emboldens me to offer a few observations of a charac
ter that I have hitherto withheld.
I have noticed — and no reader of the naval history of
France can have failed to notice it— that the underlying
principle of operation and rule of action in the French
Navy have always been calculated to subordinate immedi
ate or instant opportunities to ulterior if not distant ob
jects. To you, conversant as you are with history, this re
mark will need no explanation. In general I may say that
it has been the policy of French admirals in the past to
neutralize the power of their adversaries, if possible, by
grand manoeuvres rather than to destroy it by grand at
tack. A ease in point of this kind is the campaign of the Count
de Grasse in his conjoint operation with the land forces of
General Washington and the Count de Rochambeau which
so happily resulted in the capitulation of Cornwallis at
Yorktown. It is well known to you as an officer of
important command in the French fleet on that occasion
297

PAUL JONES
that for at least three days— that is to say, from the mo
ment when Admiral Graves appeared off the Capes (of the
Chesapeake) until he beat his final retreat to New York-
it was in the power of the Count de Grasse to bring him
to close and decisive action with a superiority of force
that could have left no doubt as to the issue. It is true,
as may be said, that The ulterior object of the grand
strategy in that operation, viewed by land as well as by
sea, was aeeomphshed by the skilful maiia?uvring, the
imposing demonstration, aud The disTant cannonade prac-
Tised by the Count de Grasse, without determined attack
or persistent pursuit. It may be also urged — which I have
heard from the Marquis de Vaudreuil and the Chevalier
de Barras — that de Grasse was hampered in this respect
by the nature of his agreement wiTh de Rochambeau,
approved by Washington, that it should be the policy
to preserve the French fleet from the contingencies of
close action, so far as might be done without saorifleing
its efficiency in the adjunetorj' sense to the operations by
land. Yet, admitting all this in full force, it has always seemed
to me that there was a moment when the — perhaps unex
pected — development of weakness and incertitude on the
part of Admiral Graves afforded de Grasse abundant justi
fication for revision if not momentary discarding of the
Terms of any prior understanding he may have had with de
Rochambeau and Washington. De Grasse had more ships,
more men and more guns than Graves had. His ships
were better found and sailed faster, either ship for ship, or
measuring the manQ?uvi'ing power of the fleet by the slowest
or dullest of all, than the ships of Graves. In my judg
ment, there has never been an occasion in all the naval
wars between France and England when the opportunity
was so distinctly and so overwhelmingly ou the side of
France as in those few Oetober days in 1781. off the Capes
of the Chesapeake — when France actually had, for the mo
ment, command of the sea. 398

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
Now, my dear Kersaint, you know me too well to accuse
me of self-vaunting. You will not consider me vain, in
view of your knowledge of what has happened in the past
off Carrickfergus, off Old Flamboro' Head, and off the
Liman in the Black Sea, if I say that, had I stood — fortu
nately or unfortunately — in the shoes of de Grasse, there
would have been disaster to some one off the Capes of the
Chesapeake ; disaster of more lasting significance than
an orderly retreat of a beaten fleet to a safe port. To put
it a little more strongly, there was a moment when the
chance to destroy the enemy's fleet would have driven from
me all thought of the conjoint strategy of the campaign as
a whole. I could not have helped it.
And I have never since ceased to mourn the failure of the
Count de Grasse to be as imprudent as I could not have
helped being on that grandest of all occasions.
Howbeit, as I have already said, the object of grand
strategy in that operation was accomplished by the ma
noeuvring of the Count de Grasse without general action-
in-line. But I confess that under similar conditions the
temptation to destroy as well as repulse the fleet of the
enemy would have been resistless, had I been the com
mander. It would have cost more men and perhaps a ship
or two ; but, in my opinion, success in naval warfare is
measured more perfectly by the extent to which you can
capture or sink the ships and kill the seamen of the enemy
than by the promptness with which you can force him, by
skilful manoeuvre or distant cannonade, to sheer off and
thereby, with your consent, avoid a conflict that could
hardly result otherwise than in conquest for you and de
struction to him.
It is recorded that, in battle some years ago, when the
English Guards and the French Guards came in contact,
one said to the other, "Gentlemen, flre first, if you please."
Chivalrous as that may appear in history, I frankly confess
that it represents an imagination of the amenities of war-
299

PAUL JONES
fare which I not only do not entertain but which I cannot
conceive of.
The year after the operations of the Count de Grasse off
the Capes, I was cruising in the West Indies, having the
honor to be the guest of the Marquis de Vaudreuil on board
his flagship, the Triomphante, and I offered for his consid
eration some reflections similar to the above. I am happy
to say that the noble Marquis did not disagree with me.
And I am sure that, had the noble Marquis on that occa
sion enjoyed opportunity to bring to action the fleet of
Admiral Pigott before it was reinforced by the other divis
ion just at the moment peace was proclaimed, other tactics
would have been pursued. . . .
You will by no means infer from these cursory observa
tions that I fail to appreciate, within my limited capacity,
the grandeur of the tactical combinations, the skill of the
intricate manoeuvres, and the far-sighted, long thought-out
demonstrations by which the Count de Toulouse drove
Rooke out of the Mediterranean in August, 1704, with no
more ado than the comparatively bloodless battle off Mala
ga ; or the address with which La Galissoniere repulsed
Byng from Minorca in 1756 by a long-range battle of
which the only notable casualty was the subsequent execu
tion of Byng by his own Government for the alleged crime
of failing to destroy the fleet opposed to him I or the brill
iant campaign of my noble friend, the Count d'Orvilliers
off Ushant in July, 1778, when he forced Keppel to retreat
ignominiously to England ; not by stress of defeat, but
by the cunningly planned and adroitly executed expedient
of avoiding, on any terms but his own, the battle which
Keppel vainly tried to force upon him. Let me assure you
that none of these great events has been lost upon my sense
of admiration.
Most impressive to me of all the triumphs of the French
Navy is the matchless signal-system of the great Pavilion,
with the portentous secrets of which I had the honor of
being the first foreign offlcer to be entrusted when the full
300

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
code was placed in my hands by d'Orvilliers in person, on
the eve of my sailing from Brest in the little Ranger,
April, 1778.
And yet, my dear Kersaint, one refiection persecutes me,
to mar all my memories and baffle all my admiration.
This is the undeniable fact that the English ships and
English sailors whom La Galissonifere manoeuvred away
from Minorca, under Byng, in 1756, remained intact and
lived to ruin Conflans in Quiberon Bay three years later
under Sir Edward Hawke ; and that the ships and the sea
men of Graves, whom de Grasse permitted to escape from
his clutches off the Capes of the Chesapeake in October,
1781, were left intact, and lived to discomflt de Grasse him
self off Santa Lucia and Dominica in April, 1783, under
Rodney. You know, of course, my dear Kersaint, that my own
opportunities in naval warfare have been but few and feeble
in comparison with such as I have mentioned. But I do
not doubt your ready agreement with me if I say that the
hostile ships and commanders that I have thus far enjoyed
the opportunity of meeting did not give any one much
trouble thereafter. True, this has been on a small seale ;
but that was no fault of mine. I did my best with the
weapons given to me. The rules of conduct, the maxims
of action, and the tactical instincts that serve to gain small
victories may always be expanded into the winning of great .
ones with suitable opportunity ; because in human affairs
the sources of success aie ever to be found in the fountains
of quick resolve and swift stroke ; and it seems to be a law
inflexible and inexorable that he who will not risk cannot
win. Thus, from my point of view, it has been the besetting
weakness of French naval tactics to consider the evolutions
of certain masters of the art of naval warfare as the art
itself. Their evolutions, as such, have been magnificent ;
their combinations have been superb ; but as I look at
them, they have not been harmful enough ; they have not
301

PALX JONES
been calculated to do as much capturing or sinking of
ships, and as much crippling or killing of seamen, as true
and lasting success in naval warfare seems to me to de
mand. This may be a rude — even a cruel — view ; but I cannot
help it. The French tactical system partakes of the gentle
chivalry of the French people. On the wave as on the field
of honor, they wish, as it were, to wound with the delicate
and polished rapier, rather than kill with the clumsy — you
may say the brutal — pistol. I frankly — or if so be it hum
bly — confess that my fibre is not fine enough to realize that
conception. To me war is the sternest and the gloomiest of
all human realities, and battle the cruelest and most forbid
ding of all human practices. Therefore I think that the true
duty of everyone concerned in them is to make them most
destructive while they last, in order that the cause of real
humanity may be gained by making them soonest ended.
I have never been able to contemplate with composure the
theory of the purely defensive in naval tactics. With all
due respect to the sensibilities of Frenchmen, I make bold
to say that better models of action are to be found in Hawke
at Quiberon Bay and in Rodney off Santa Lucia and Domini
ca than in de Grasse, either when successful in the Chesa
peake or when beaten in the West Indies.
But, my friend, I fear that I weary you. Let me thank
you again for your compliments and kind wishes. I hope
that France, in her struggle for Liberty, may, as America
did, find use for me. no matter in what capacity or what
grade of my profession— from a sloop-of-war to a fleet— on
the high seas. But, should Prance thus honor me, it must
be with the unqualified understanding that I am not to be
restricted by the traditions of her naval tactics ; but with
full consent that I may, on suitable occasion, to be de
creed by my judgment on the spot, try conclusions with
her foes to the bitter end or to death, at shorter range and
at closer quarters than have hitherto been sanctioned by
her tactical authorities. 303

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
Jones's Highland biographer, Hamilton, writing
nearly half a century afterward, with the letter to
Kersaint before him, remarks (page 337) :
Somewhat of the heroic vaunting which marks other
parts of his correspondence as well as this appears incident
to the enthusiastic temperament of many great naval com
manders. How would Nelson's tone of confldent predic
tion and unqualified boasts, not merely of British prowess
but of his own, have sounded from the pen or from the lips
of any but an habitual victor ! How easily we forgive
Hawke for saying to his pilot, at Quiberon : " G — d d  n
you, sir, you have done your duty in warning me of the
danger of this passage ! I did not ask your tactical advice ! I
I asked you only to lay me alongside the enemy — now do
that, and keep your mouth shut ! ! I am not emulous of
the fate of Byng ! !"
And from any other man than Sir Francis Drake that
superb sailor's customary language would have been reck
oned that of a vainglorious swashbuckler, if not of an in
flated braggart !
Hamilton leaves his readers to draw the inference
natural from his comparisons. It is that Paul Jones,
in the frank vigor of his letter to Kersaint, had no
thought of bravado. The undertone of exultant self-
reliance that runs through it was nothing more than
the defiant virility of a heart that had never been
subdued, and the unconscious egotism of a brain
that could not conceive the sense of surrender.
The winter of 1791-92 passed without particular
event so far as Admiral Jones was concemed. He
had some rather acrid correspondence with Bertrand
de Moleville, Minister of Marine, but it came to an
abrupt end with the resignation of that Minister, and
was not resumed with his successor, EUe Lacoste.
303

PAUL JONES
In March the Admiral made a short trip to Amster
dam and The Hague. This was for the purpose of
conference with the Russian Ambassador or Minis
ter Plenipotentiary to Holland, who had charge of
his remaining relations with the Eussian Navy. In
July, 1791, at the end of his two years' leave, Jones
had tendered his resignation from Catharine's ser
vice. The Empress had not accepted it, but had
written through Baron Grimm to the effect that she
desired to retain him ; that her peace with the Turks
and truce with the Swedes had rendered his imme
diate services unnecessary, and therefore he might
prolong his leave on the existing terms until she
should want him again, when, she told the Baron,
she would communicate her wishes to the Admiral
directly. She also ordered his arrears of pay and
allowances to be settled up to July 21, 1791, which
had been done. Now, in the spring of 1792, he de
sired to be freed entirely from his Bussian engage
ments, and the object of his trip to Holland was to
effect a final settlement with Krudener. Singularly
enough, the Bussian Minister had some Russian
mail for him when he arrived. In it was a letter
from old Suwarrow. This characteristic epistle was
dated Wilna, March 3, 1792. In this letter Suwar
row, after informing Jones that he had just been ap
pointed to the supreme command in Poland and of
the whole Baltic frontier, went on to forecast the im
mediate future of European politics and diplomacy
with prophetic accuracy. In the course of it he said :
Do not, my good brother, let any siren, either of flesh or
of ambition, entice you away from the service of the Em
press. I hear bad reports of your health, but I am sure
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LAST YEARS AND DEATH
you will be safe in the climate of the Black Sea. There is
the place where Russia needs you. Remember that in 1788
England and Prussia coalesced to protect the Turk from
us, and even Austria withdrew from our alliance when she
found we had an intention of striking at the Sultan in his
capital itself — you to invade the Bosphorus with the
fleet ; I to scale the Balkans with the army.
Now your Frenchmen are preparing a stew of mischief
that must soon keep all the Western powers busy to save
themselves. I do not deceive myself. I can see that the
goings on in France must soon overset the monarchy.
Wlien that is done France will be the common enemy of
neighboring monarchs, and there will be a general war
in Western Europe, occupying the whole attention and en
ergy of Austria, Prussia, and England, and lasting a long
time. These things cannot be long postponed — not more
than a year, I think. Austria may declare war before this
finds you.*
When all Western Europe shall be thus embroiled, will
be our time. We shall then have a free hand with the
Turk. Our command of the Black Sea is safe. Since you
went away nine new ships of the line have been built
there, and six stout new frigates ; more than doubling the
force you had at the Liman.
Then, what is more, I can protect you now from court
intrigues, which I could not do before. Since Ismail, cour
tiers have not troubled me. I brush them away as flies.
In a new Turkish campaign I would be Generalissimo of
all forces, land and sea, and you would be responsible
only to me — a situation which, I flatter myself, would
not be intolerable to you.
Such is my scheme. Thus far I have imparted it to
no one but the Empress. She approves it, and will move
*Thi8 was absolute prophecy. Suwarrow's letter was dated March
5th. War broke out between Prance and Austria April 20th. Jones did
not receive the letter until some time iu that month.
Vol. II.— 30 305

PAUL JONES
the moment the conditions I expect in Western Europe
come to pass.
Now, my good brother, the Empress "will have a copy of
this letter. She will agree with me that your presence in
command of the Black Sea fleet is a necessary part of the
scheme. I therefore exhort you to make no entanglements
in the West, but return here as soon as you can. Come
now, in the summer, when you can safely go to St. Peters
burg ; and come by way of my camp here or in Poland, so
that we may discuss plans.
Jones undoubtedly replied to this letter, but there
is no record of it, either in his own papers or in any
of the Russian biographies of Suwarrow. The episode
could have made no difference with his plans any
how, because he had fully determined to terminate
even the semblance of his Russian service that re
mained, and he could have cherished at this time no
other aspiration than that of being very soon ap
pointed to a high rank in the French Navy. He did
not expect such an appointment before the autumn of
1792. It had already been resolved, in the conclaves
of the few men who then controlled the destinies of
France, that the Assembly would cease to exist in
September, 1792 ; that a new body called the Na
tional Convention would take the reins of power
that this body would abolish the monarchy, pro
claim the universal republic, and defy the sovereigns
of Europe to do their worst. These great facts were
not then of general public knowledge, but Admiral
Jones had the confidence of the ruling group be
hind the scenes, and he knew what was coming. He
could not consistently with his notions of honor re
main even provisionally in the service and under
306

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
the pay of Catharine when he contemplated such a
sweeping change of allegiance that might bring
him in collision with her maritime forces, sooner or
later. Therefore he insisted on a final settlement of the
Russian affair, and Catharine's Minister to Holland
undertook to forward to her his peremptory resig
nation. The Minister also gave him a certificate of
pay and allowances due up to the date of the resig
nation, amounting to a trifle over six thousand rou
bles in gold — say, at the then value of the rouble in
specie (seventy -two cents), about $4,300. This was
afterward paid, though, in the slow course of ex
change in those days, not until after Jones was
dead. However, it must be said to the credit of
Catharine's memory that, whatever might have been
her injustice to Paul Jones in other respects, she ul
timately kept her financial engagements with him
to the last copeck, the amount paid in final settle
ment accruing to his estate and being paid over to
his heirs by his French executor, M. Beaupoil.
This affair having been satisfactorily concluded,
Admiral Jones returned from The Hague to Paris,
where he arrived in May, 1792. From that time
until his death but little authentic record of him or
his movements has been preserved. Aside from his
correspondence with Bertrand de Moleville and a
letter dated " March, 1792," without day, congratu
lating Elie Lacoste upon his accession to the office
of Minister of Marine, there is nothing except one
fragment which found place in the French Collec
tion of 1799, under the head of " Loose Papers,"
printed in the appendix. This from its context must
307

PAUL JONES
have been written early in July, 1792, only a fort
night or so before his death. It is the rough draft
of a letter to Madame le Grand, of Trevoux, a chalet
near Lyons. It is unimportant except that it in
formed the good lady, who, by the way, was the
widow of his old banker in Paris, that his health
was so much improved as to warrant him in ventur
ing the hope that some career worth mentioning
was still before him.
The last appearance of Paul Jones in public of
which there is any authentic account was on Wednes
day, July 11, 1792, just a week before his death. On
that day he attended the session of the Assembly,
and was honored with the privilege of the floor dur
ing the debate upon and passage of the memora
ble decree declaring the country in danger and pro
viding for the universal armament of France by sea
and land. It had been proposed by Cambon, 13arere,
and others that he should be called to the bar of
the Assembly, as an experienced and highly honored
adviser, to answer such questions as might be asked
of him concerning the needs of the navy, and his
own ideas as to how those needs might best be met.
But on that day he asked to be excused on the
ground that his articulation was not strong, and he
feared that effort to make himself heard throughout
the vast chamber would so strain his vocal organs
as to bring on a fit of the convulsive coughing which,
despite his apparent strength in other respects, so
surely presaged his imminent doom. For this reason
he did not figure in the proceedings of that eventful
day. When the session ended, which was at a some
what late hour, the Admiral went to a supper which
308

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
had been provided by Barere, Cambon, and others,
at the Cafe Timon, then a favorite rendezvous of the
Central Jacobin Club.
It was a grand affair. At the table sat Carnot,
Cambon, Vergniaud, Marron, Collot, Billaud, Ker
saint, Gensonne, Barbaroux, Louvet, and others of
that brilliant group. No one apprehended that the
Admiral's end was so near. He coughed a little,
but was otherwise strong. That supper had been
planned by his intimate friends for the purpose of
formally presenting him to their colleagues of the
Central Jacobin Group as their candidate for Admiral
of the French Navy. Capelle thus describes the
scene :
At this, which proved to be his last supper, all were de
lighted with the apparent mending of the Chevalier's health.
Barere and Philippe were particularly cheered by his show
ing of strength and recuperating energy. They toasted him
as the coming admiral of Prance. But he parried all their
compliments politely and finally said :
' ' Gentlemen, pardon me, but let me say that this is no
time for jest or raillery, no matter how well meant or how
gentle. You all know my sentiments. I do not approve,
I cannot in conscience approve, all that you have done, are
doing, and, alas, intend yet to do. But I feel that I ought
to take advantage of this — perhaps my last — opportunity
to define clearly my attitude.
" Whatever you do now, France does. If you kill my
good friend the King, France kills him ; because, as things
are now ordered, the group of which a great majority is
present here, is Prance. Louis XIV. once said : ' I am
the State. ' You ean say that you are the State with more
truth. "My relations with the people across the Channel are
known to all. Their enemies must be my friends every-
309

PAUL JONES
where ; those whom they hate, I must love. As all here
know, as all France knows, the progress of the French
people toward liberty, and the promise that progress gives
of new strength and new might to the French nation, fill
the rulers of England with alarm and resentment. The
day when this alarm will turn to hostility and this resent
ment be expressed by blows is not far off.
' ' When that day comes, if I am able to stand a deck, I
shall make no point of rank. I shall raise no question of
political opinion. I shall only ask France to tell me how
I can best serve her cause.
' ' You have brought back to my ears the sound of many
voices giving forth the lusty cheers of courage in combat.
Some of those faces were of the American mould ; but more
were faces of Frenchmen. Some of those voices sounded in
my native tongue, but more in the language of France.
The Richard's crew was, as you know, considerably more
than half Frenchmen.
"I cannot be immodest enough to say that I found it
easy to teach them the art of conquering Englishmen. But
I trust you will not think me vainglorious if I say that, in
that combat, I at least did what, unfortunately, some French
officers have not of late years done — I simply let my French
men fight their battle out.
"Now, I promise you that, if I live, in whatsoever sta
tion France may call me to lead her sons, I shall always, as
I have done, when meeting the English or any other foe,
let my Frenchmen flght their battle out.
" Citizens, we have to-day heard from the lips of the
President of your Assembly the solemn warning ' Our
country is in danger ! ' That admonition has come none
too soon. Already the hosts of oppression are gathering
upon your frontier. It is not the wish of those who wear
the crowns of Europe that France shall be free. Not long
ago another country was in danger. Its people wished to
be free, and though it was a land far across the sea the
hosts of despotism found it out and descended upon it.
310

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
They were the hosts of a king, and some of them he hired
like working oxen from other kings.
"The struggle was long. For almost eight years the
sound of cannon, the glare of the torch, and the wailing of
widows and orphans filled that land. Truly it was in dan
ger. But all that is past now — and why ? Because Prance,
brave, chivalric France, alone of all nations in the world,
interposed her mighty arm to help the weak, and stay from
its smiting the hand of the oppressor.
" I have no title to speak for that country. But I can
speak for one citizen of it. Count me with you. Enroll
me in those hosts of deliverance upon whom the Assembly
to-day called to rise en masse in defence of their lives, their
liberties, and those whom they love. I am, as you see, in
feeble health. Would that I were strong as when I long
ago brought to France the news ol Liberty's flrst great vic
tory in the New World !
" But ill as I am, there is yet something left of the man —
not the admiral, not the chevalier — but the plain, simple man
whom it delights me to hear you call ' Paul Jones, ' with
out any rank but that of fellowship, and without any title
but that of comrade. So now I say to you that whatever
is left of that man, be it never so faint or feeble, will be
laid, if necessary, upon the altar of French Liberty, as
cheerfully as a child lies down to pleasant dreams ! My
friends, I would love to pursue this theme, but, as you
see, my voice is failing and my lower limbs become swollen
when I stand up too long. At any rate I have said enough.
I am now ready to act whenever and wheresoever bidden
by the voice of France. ' '
This was, doubtless, the best extemporaneous
speech Paul Jones ever made. His eloquence usu
ally was that of the pen. But in this instance, sur
rounded though he was by a group of the most fin
ished orators in the world, his speech excited their
311

PAUL JONES
admiration no less than their wonder. It was, in
fact, a perfect specimen of the simple, unstudied
eloquence of sincerity. Aud, it might be added, the
French original was much more graphic and power
ful than the translation.
The party did not rise from table until nearly
three o'clock in the morning, and then the Admiral
with two or three companions Avalked to his house in
Tournon Street, some distance away — about one-
third of a mile. After that there are but two records
of him prior to the making of his last will and testa
ment. One is an entry in the diary of Gouver
neur Morris, dated Sunday, without the day of the
month, but it must have been the 15th of July, be
cause it was after the event just described, and it was
the onlj' Sunday that Paul Jones ever saw alive after
that. The entry is as follows :
Sunday : Visited Paul Jones at his house, 43 Tournon
Street, in the afternoon. Found the Admiral lying in a
hammock, stretched in the little garden in rear of his lodg
ings. Mme. T. [doubtless Aim^e de Telison] and two young
ladies were with him. He was extremelj' cheerful, and
seemed better than for a long time previously. He did not
cough much, and talked a good deal. Wonderfully inter
esting ! Promised to lunch with me next day. Took my
leave about five o'clock, and the ladies accompanied me.
While there the Admiral took from his pocket, and showed
to me, a recent letter from Jefferson which mystified me
somewhat. It concerned our affair in Denmark. The Ad
miral said he quite shared my want of ability to compre
hend it, but suggested that perhaps Jefferson had been cor
responding directly with the Baron de la Houze about it,
and that some things might have passed between them that
neither he nor I knew. Mme. T. was most charming, and
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LAST YEARS AND DEATH
was in high spirits at the evident improvement of the
Admiral's health.
The last and saddest record of the strange and
stormy life of Paul Jones may be found in the sim
ple phrase of his French private secretary, Benoit-
Andre, who published a little memoir of him in
1798. Andre says :
. . . The day after the Admiral had been at the supper
of the Caf^ Timon he did not rise until nearly noon. His
lower limbs began to swell prodigiously, his stomach soon
began to expand, and he had much difficulty at times in
breathing; all the time afilicted with au exhausting cough,
and much raising of mucus. It was clear to everyone ex
cept himself that his end was near. During these few days
his friends came to see him in legions; the American Minis
ter, the Hon. Gouverneur Morris, Cambon, Carnot, Barere,
Lacoste, Colonel BLackden, Major Beaupoil, Lafayette,
and, once, the Duke of Orleans. The King, perplexed as
he was, found time to send a cheerful message. But of
all devotion, that of Mme. de Telison was the most pro
found. With the prescience of a woman she seemed to see
what neither the Admiral himself nor his male friends
would perceive, that his dissolution was at hand.
The weather being very warm, Mme. de Telison caused
to be rigged in the garden of the Admiral's lodgings. No.
43 Tournon Street, a genuine sailor's hammock, swung
low to the ground with long cords stretching clear across
the little garden. In this hammock the Admiral would
pass the afternoon when the sun had retired behind the
shade of the houses opposite ; and Mme. De Telison would
sit by him, gently moving the hammock. In this way the
stricken hero found some relief from the pains that de
voured him.
But it could not last. He was doomed. Not the atten-
313

PAUL JONES
tionsof his myriad of friends, not even the devoted nursing
of the petite woman with the red-golden hair, could save
him! Even on the day he died, and while he was waiting
for the notaries to come and take his will, he went out a
little after noon and swung in his hammock for more than
an hour in the early afternoon.
During these few days the Admiral alone was cheerful.
His friends could only pretend to be so. All but he saw
the approach of death. Dr. Gourgeaud, who came every
day, said nothing, but looked more than could be spoken.
One day, it was the Sunday before he died — only four days
— the Admiral rallied. The swelling of his limbs seemed
to disappear. His throat became clear once more, and
his voice almost resumed its wonted volume and melody.
That afternoon his Excellency the American Minister
came and stayed a long time. This gentleman, the Hon.
Gouverneur Morris, Avas much attached to the Admiral,
and the Admiral fully reciprocated the sentiments of
the Minister. On this occasion several ladies were pres
ent. The Admiral sat up in his sailor's hammock and
bandied badinage with all. When Mr. Morris indicated a
wish to speak with him privately for a moment, he bound
ed out of the hammock like a deer and walked briskly to
the end of the garden where was a little rustic bench on
which he and Mr. Morris sat for a considerable time, talk
ing earnestly, though in undertones, with much apparent
vigor and some gesticulation. At the end of this colloquy
Mr. Morris took his leave and BIme. de Telison, M. Cam«
bon, and the other visitors accompanied him. Very soon
afterward the Admiral retired to his apartments, quite
exhausted. It has been learned that the subject upon which the Ad
miral and the Minister conversed in their private inter
view had reference to the relations between the United
States and the Barbary Powers ; and that the Minister
informally told the Admiral that Mr. Pinckney, who
would soon axrive in Europe as American Minister at the
314

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
Court of St. James, would bring with him a commission
authorizing the Admiral to open negotiations with the
Dey of Algiers for the release of the Christians then held in
slavery there ; also that a suitable force would be placed at
his disposal to make his mission effective. However, this
commission never reached him. Mr. Pinckney, who bore
it as a confidential document, did not arrive in Europe
until after the death of the Admiral. But it could have
made no difference. At that moment, had fate decreed to
him a little longer life, he was, or would have been, des
tined to command the fleet of republican France.
The animated argument he held with Mr. Morris, the
Sunday before he died, related to this question. He took
Mr. Morris into his confldence, and told him that if health
should once more shine upon him he would not need
such an armament as the United States, in its poverty,
could place at his command ; but that he would be en
abled to draw once more the sword that Louis had given
him for victory in the cause of American freedom, in be
half of the liberty and the glory of France. And by that
token, he told Mr. Morris he would answer for the end of
all other slavery.
Paul Jones dictated his will, and it was witnessed
about five o'clock in the afternoon of Wednesday,
July 18, 1792 ; his death, which, according to the
testimony of witnesses to the formal " acte de deces "
(certificate of demise under French law), occurred
about nine o'clock that night. After the notaries
went away — together with Gouverneur Morris, who
witnessed the original French text of the will and
took down the Admiral's inventory of his property
— which was probably about seven o'clock, Mme.
Arbergne brought him a bowl of broth. An hour
or so later she went to clear his table and found him
315

PAUL JONES
in his bedroom, the upper half of his body lying
face down across the middle of his couch, his feet
trailing on the floor, his arms outstretched, his fin
gers clutching the counterpane — dead. He died as
he had lived — alone and with his boots on. From
all appearances, death had not given him more than
a minute's notice. On the floor, half way between
the chair in which Mme. Arbergne last saw him
sitting and the couch on which he lay dead, was a
book, fallen, leaves downward, open. It was one
of Voltaire's. In one clenched hand was the little
watch that Mary Adelaide of Orleans had given
him, with her miniature on the dial — the watch he
was wont to time his battles with. Dr. Gourgeaud,
on viewing the remains, said that his death was
caused by tubercular effusion, producing strangula
tion. He said it was probably brought on by convul
sive coughing, to which in the then condition of his
lungs he was at any moment subject ; that, ovei'come
by exhaustion, doubtless dizzy from the convulsive
action of his lungs, he had endeavored to pass from
his chair to his couch, dropping the book as he rose
and mechanically grasping his watch, which Mme.
Arbergne remembered to have seen lying on the
table by his side when she left him.
The most particular account of the death of Paul
Jones extant is found in a letter written by Colonel
Samuel Blackden to Mrs. Janet Taylor, of Dum
fries, the Admiral's eldest sister. The material part
of it is as follows :
. . . Your brother, Admiral Jones, was not in good
health for about a year past, but he had at no time been
so ill as to be confined to the house. Buoyed up by his
316

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
strong will and stimulated by his ardent ambition he had
often exhibited signs of recovery that cheered his friends.
But for two months past he began to lose his appetite,
grew yellow, and showed symptoms of jaundice. For this
he took medical treatment and for a short time seemed to
grow better. A few days before his death his legs began
to swell, which proceeded upward to his body, so that
for two days before his decease he could not button his
waistcoat and had great difficulty in breathing.
I visited him every day and, beginning to be apprehen
sive of his danger, desired him to settle his affairs ; but he
would not take that view of it and put off the making of
his will until the afternoon of July 18, when he was pre
vailed upon to send for a notary and made his will. M.
Beaupoil and myself witnessed it and then left him sitting
in a chair in his parlor. A few minutes after Ave retired
he walked into his chamber and laid himself upon his face
on the bedside, with his feet on the floor. The Queen's
physician who was attending him eame soon and, on en
tering the apartments, found him in that position, and, on
trying to lift him up, found that he had expired. His
disorder had terminated in dropsy of the heart. His body
was put into a leaden coffin on the 30th, that in case the
United States, which he had so essentially served, and
with so much honor, should claim his remains they might
be more easily removed.
Colonel Blackden was a wealthy merchant-planter
of North Carolina, and was in Europe on commercial
business In the American Revolution he had been
an officer in the North Carolina line and had seen
much honorable service. His acquaintance with
Paul Jones dated as far back as 1775, and they had
been introduced to each other by Joseph Hewes. M.
Beaupoil, of whom Colonel Blackden speaks as a
co-witness to the will, was a major in the French
317

PAUL JONES
Army, who had served in the American Revolution,
was present at the surrender of Yorktown, and at
the time under consideration was aide-de-camp to
Lafayette. Of the will it is sufficient to say that it involved
property on which about $60,000 was ultimately
realized by the testator's immediate heirs, together
with arrearages due to him from the United States,
which were liquidated about half a century later by
two appropriations of $50,000 each. Robert Morris
was named testamentary executor, and the English
text of the will was filed for probate in the Regis
trar's Office at Philadelphia in 1797.* The Admiral
* There is a prevalent impression that Paul Jones died in poverty, the
degree of which Heems to vary from *' comparative '* to "abject," with
the fancy of the person writing about it. He was by no means in affluent
circumstances at the time of his death. His possessions, as scheduled by
Gouverneur Morris, were not all immediately available. In fact, none of
them could be at once converted into cash, except certain bank stock he
owned in America, the arrears due him from Russia, and the amounts to
his credit in the hands of John Ross, of Philadelphia, and Sir Robert
Harries, of London. From these his heirs realized, not long after his death,
as follows: American bank stocks, about $11,000; arrears of pay, etc.,
from Russia, about $4,300 ; money in the hands of Sir Robert Harries,
£1,880 (say $9,400) ; in the hands of John Ross, about $3,600. This is a
total of at least $28,000. Besides this, bis sister, Mrs. Janet Taylor, found
about $3,000 (15,600 francs) in the hands of Major Beaupoil, whom Ad
miral Jones had privately authorized — some time before, in case of acci
dent — to draw out his immediate funds in bank at Paris, his banker at
the time of his death being M. Dubois, 18 Rue des Petits Champs.
Mrs. Taylor arrived at Paris in October, l?9ri, amid the wreck and
riot that marked the beginning of the Reign of Terror ; but in spite of
all that trouble she had no difficulty in obtaining the money from Beau-
poU, on her personal promise to distribute it in accordance with the pro
visions of tbe will, though it was not specifically included in that instru
ment. The grand total of immediately available assets was, of course
only a little over $30,000, of which only about $3,000 was left in bank in
Paris after paying the funeral expenses ; and while that was not a condi-
318

LAST YEARS AND DE.VTH
divided his property equally among the children of
his two sisters, Mrs. Mary Loudon, of Virginia, and
Mr.s. Janet Taylor, of Dumfrie.s, Scotland. The
jewelled sword that had been given to him by the
King of France he orally bequeathed to Richard
Dale, his old first lieutenant in the Richard, with
a message through Gouverneur Morris in these
words : " My good old Dick is better entitled to
it than anyone else, because he did more than
any other to help me win it." The sword is now in
the possession of the great-grandson and namesake
of Richard Dale, residing in Philadelphia.
Only two members of his immediate family out
lived him, Mrs. Loudon and Mrs. Taylor. Both
sisters were living in the United States at the out
break of the American Revolution. The Loudon
family were stanch Whigs or patriots, and his sister
Mary adhered to the faith of the family into which
she had married. But Mr. Taylor, the husband of
the other sister, Janet, was a Tory and returned
with his family to Scotland soon after the outbreak
of war. A feud therefore arose between the two
families and some of the Admiral's correspondence
with them, as late as 1790, which need not be repro
duced here, indicates that their quarrel gave him
much pain and chagrin. He might naturally have
been more favorably impressed toward the Whig
Loudons than toward the Tory Taylors. But in his
correspondence with them he invariably counselled
tion of affluence, it certainly was a considerable remove from " abject".
or any other kind of poverty.
Gouverneur Moma in his report says : " the funeral appointments were
on a. modest scale ;'' bnt he does not intimate that the fact was due to
poverty. 319

PAUL JONES
them to forget their quarrels, and in his will he re
membered all alike. One extract from a letter to
Mrs. Taylor, dated Paris, December 27, 1790, will
serve to indicate his feelings toward his sisters and
their families. In this letter, after stating that his
ill-health continues, but that he has no doubt that
he is in a fair way of recovery, though it will take
time and patience, he proceeds :
I shall not conceal from you that your family discord
aggravates infinitely all my pains. My grief is inexpres
sible that two sisters whose happiness is equally so inter
esting to me do not live in that mutual tenderness and
affection which would do so much honor to themselves and
to the memory of their worthy parents. Permit me to rec
ommend to your serious study and application Pope's Uni
versal Prayer. Tou will find more sound, real morality in
that little poem than in many volumes that have been
written by great divines:
" Teach me to feel another's woe,
To hide the faults I see ;
That mercy I to others show,
Such mercy show to me."
This is not the language of weak superstition, but the
offspring of true religion springing from a heart sincerely
inspired by charity and deeply impressed with a sense of
the calamities and frailties of human nature. ... If
the sphere in which Providence has placed us as members
of society requires the exercise of brotherly kindness tow
ard our neighbor in general, how much more is it our duty
to individuals with whom we are connected by the near
and tender ties of kin as well as by moral obligation?
Every lesser virtue may pass away ; but Charity is the gift
of Heaven and is immortal. 320

LAST YEAES AND DEATH
Paul Jones was as mindful of the obligations of
chivalry as of those of kinship. The devotion of
Aimee de Telison to him had been unbroken since
their first meeting in 1778. We have seen glimpses
here and there of her constancy and also of her use
fulness in promoting the ambitious of the man she
loved. We have also seen how in 1787, on the death
of her protectress, the Marchioness de Marsan,
Jones was instrumental in obtaining for her a posi
tion in the entourage of the court, suitable to her
rank and abilities. When the court was forcibly re
moved from Versailles to Paris, the palace-list was
also much reduced, and among the places in the
Queen's household thereby abolished was the one
that Aimee de Telison had held. Thus, at last, in
the progress of the French Revolution, the daughter
of a Bourbon king became wholly dependent upon
the son of a Scottish gardener. Jones at once took
measures to provide for her to the extent of his
means. Soon after his return from England in 1791
he bought a small house in the Rue Vivienne, in
stalled Aimee in it, and provided her with means
to entertain her friends and his in a modest way.
Capelle cleverly says that " though one of the most
frequent visitors to Aimee's charming little salon,
Jones was also the humblest ; and with the excep
tion that sometimes in moments of extreme vivacity
she would address him as 'Mon Paul,' there was
nothing in their deportment to indicate any relation
other than the most formal amity. Her little house,
before and after the Admiral's death, was a resort of
the ablest and wittiest men and women of the new
regime. It was wonderful to see how this pretty
Vol. il— 21 321

PAUL JONES
little offspring of an amour of the haughtiest of
Bourbon kings could charm the bourgeois savages
of the Assembly and the Convention, who thought
of nothing but cutting royal throats ! "
Resuming our narrative : As soon as the body of
the Admiral had been properly disposed on the
couch. Dr. Gourgeaud sent Mme. d'Arbergne's son
to notify the American Minister, together with
Colonel Blackden and other near friends. Gouver
neur Morris was himself in feeble health at the time,
being a victim of nervous indigestion with frequent
attacks of neuralgia of the stomach, and one of these
attacks had seized him on his return from witnessing
the will and scheduling the property of the Admiral.
He had believed that Jones was likely to live for
some time, and even thought there was a possibility
of his rallying. Hence, when suddenly informed,
about half-past ten or eleven o'clock at night, that
the Admiral was dead, Mr. Morris, nervous as he al
ready was, collapsed with the shock and could not
leave his apartments, even to attend the funeral the
next day but one. However, Mr. Morris at once
sent messengers to notify Lafayette and Le Brun,
President of the Assembly.
When the Assembly met the next day, July 19th,
M. Le Brun announced, in a few words, that Paul
Jones was no more.
Cambon thereupon moved to suspend the order of
the day, to consider the following resolution, which
he offered :
The National Assembly, desirous of honoring the memory
of Paul Jones, Admiral of the United States of America,
322

LAST YEAES AND DEATH
and to preserve by memorable example the equality of re
ligious rites, decrees that twelve of its members shall assist
at the funeral of a man who has so well served the cause of
liberty. And the President of the Assembly shall forthwith
name twelve members, including himself, to represent our
desire to so honor the memory of such a man.
In asking immediate action upon the resolution,
Cambon said it was to be presumed there would be
no desire for debate, which was received with cries
of " Question ! " " Question ! " from all parts of the
chamber, and with several voices, " Let us put him
in the Pantheon ! " Cambon, however, asked for a
word, and said :
I trust that while no one wishes debate or to pronounce
eulogy, the feeling of personal bereavement, universal in
this body, may be granted brief expression. What Paul
Jones has done for the rights of man needs not be told to
Frenchmen. What more he stood pledged, almost with his
last breath, to do if spared, is known to many Frenchmen.
But now all is past. If anyone wishes to know the history
of great struggles for liberty within his lifetime, it is need
ful only to speak the name of Paul Jones. He is one of the
few men who have made such impress upon their times.
Therefore, I say only that the name of Paul Jones is itself
history, and in honoring his memory this body, dedicated
to liberty, honors itself and sanctifies its own mission!
The resolution was then adopted by the Assembly
by standing vote, in silence. President Le Brun
named the committee, besides himself, as follows:
Bouvet, Cambon, Rouvier, Brivet, Guy Vernon,
Bishop of Haute Vienne ; De Chalot, Episcopal
Vicar of Loire et Cher ; Charlier, Dupetit, Le Josnes,
Felix Roubaine, and Deydier. Jules Marron, for-
323

PAUL JONES
merly rector of the Protestant Consistory of Paris
and a member of the Assembly, was selected to pro
nounce the funeral oration. Marron was of Hugue
not descent and one of the most ardent Republicans.
A fragment of his oration was preserved by Capelle.
TJpon the conclusion of this public ceremony the
body in its leaden casket was deposited in a vault in
the Cemetery for Foreign Protestants. This was
done at the instance of Gouverneur Morris, who be
lieved that the Government of the United States
would cause the remains to be brought home for
final interment. *
The tributes that Frenchmen paid to Paul Jones
did not stop at his tomb. The Sunday after the fu
neral Bertrand Barere delivered, from the portico
of the Palace of Justice, one of those " sermons to
the people " that were such a remarkable feature of
those marvellous times. He was in the zenith of
his fame and popularity as an outdoor orator — or,
as we would say, stump-speaker — at the time of
Paul Jones's death. His oration had for its subject
" The Freedom of the Sea," and for its text the
achievements of his dead friend. No exact report
of it has been preserved, but some years later Ba-
* There has been some confusion as to the actual date of the death
and burial of Paul Jones, due to errors of dates in Colonel Sherburne's
Collection of Papers and in his, fortunately, limited editorial notations.
On page 338 of the second and final edition of his work, published in 1851,
Colonel Sherburne says that "Paul Jones died at Paris, September 13,
1793." Many other mistakes of date in Colonel Sherburne's CoUection
may be attributed to typographical error, but thia one hardly admits of
that explanation. It may have arisen from confusion caused by trans
lating records kept in the peculiar calendar of the French Revolution.
Otherwise it is wholly inexplicable. The record here given is taken di
rectly from the archives of the French Govemment.
334

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
rere reproduced the best part of it in a small book
or large pamphlet on the same subject. These trib
utes were by no means all. While Americans for
got Paul Jones, the French remembered him. The
first memoir of him, that of Citoyen Benoit-Andre,
was published at Paris in 1798. The next year Ca-
pelle's Memoir was printed, as was also the French
Collection of Papers. In 1805 Napoleon, musing
gloomily over the news from Trafalgar, asked Ber
thier : "How old was Paul Jones when he died? "
Berthier said he did not know to a day, but thought
he was forty-five years old — certainly not older than
that. " Then," said Napoleon, " he did not fulfil his
destiny. Had he lived to this time France might
have had an admiral." On another and later occasion
Napoleon said : " Our admirals are always talking
about pelagic conditions and ulterior objects, as if
there was any condition or any object in war except
to get in contact with the enemy and destroy him.
That was Paul Jones's view of the conditions and
objects of naval warfare. It was also Nelson's. It
is a pity they could not have been matched some
where with fairly equal force."
Perhaps it was not wholly a misfortune to the
permanent fame of Paul Jones that he died before
his friends in the National Convention could give
him command of the French fleet, and before he
could have been called upon to measure even his
genius, with French seamen at his back, against the
genius of Nelson in command of the sailors of Old
England. The historical result, we believe, must
have been the same as it actually proved ; and all
that the genius of Paul Jones could have accom-
325

PAUL JONES
plished would have been to cause deeper mourning
in a greater number of English homes. Yet it can
not be doubted that he would have led the fleets of
France either to desperate victory or to awful defeat
had he lived a few years longer. When this grand
vista of possibilities in his profession opened be
fore him, Jones, sick almost unto death as he was,
seems to have found for the moment a new and al
most superhuman strength. It was the triumph of
fierce ambition over a dying frame, the last gasp of
an unconquerable soul defiant even in the clutch
of death. With diseased lungs, with swollen legs,
with every brand of the near tomb upon his stricken
body, his invincible spirit yet cherished dreams of
new glory and saw visions of fresh victories.
So far as origin and early environment operate to
mould character or shape career, they were, in the
case of Paul Jones, calculated to repress rather
than to promote the traits he actually developed.
There was nothing in the birth or childhood of the
little boy of Arbigland to foreshadow a naval hero
or to foreordain an immortal name. Born a Scot
tish peasant of the humblest parentage — a parent
age that in the middle of the eighteenth century
could only be described as menial — he enjoj^ed no
advantages of early education, merely learning to
read, write, and cipher in the humblest of parish
schools. As for interest or influence in his behalf
at the hands of those of higher birth, he had none,
and, probably, had no practical conception of what
the words meant. Even with such primitive and
scant tuition, and totally unhelped by friend or
326

L,\ST YEAES AND DEATH
family, he was launched on the ocean, while yet a
child below his teens, not only to solve the problem
of bread-winning but also to battle with privation
and tempest among the roughest of men in the
hardest of trades and in the rudest of times.
Sailor at twelve, mate at seventeen, captain at
twenty in the merchant service of the North At
lantic ; slave-trader. East Indiaman and Virginia
planter — all before he had passed the age of twenty-
six; naval lieutenant at twenty-eight, captain at
twenty-nine, and commodore at thirty -two ; at thirty-
three the ocean-hero of the old world and the new,
a Knight of France, the most famous sea-victor of
his time, patronized by kings, petted by duchesses
of the blood-royal, thanked by Congress ; and, more
than all else, the trusted friend and valued associ
ate of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Lafayette,
Hamilton and Morris ; at thirty-six, selected as
special envoy to the most aristocratic of courts,
charged with the most delicate, difficult, and intri
cate of missions — the adjudication and collection of
international claims, without any guide of prece
dent or any commonly recognized code of procedure ;
at forty, voted a gold medal by Congress ; at forty-
one, a vice-admiral in the navy of an empire; at
forty-three, a prominent figure in the overture of
that tremendous drama, the French Revolution, —
and dead at forty -five !
No analysis of the character and no estimate of
the inteUect of Paul Jones from the purely specula
tive point of view can be as searching or as conclu
sive as the foregoing concise, chronological epitome .
of what he did, the time he had to do it in, and the
337

PAUL JONES
conditions under which he wrought. He had hardly
any childhood, and no period of youth at all. In all
his study he had no teacher ; and with all his learn
ing — of languages, of history, of philosophy, or of
the lore of his own profession itself — he never had a
preceptor. Everything that he was, or that he did,
or that he knew, was the fruit of self-incentive and
self-help to a degree that was, and still is, unexam
pled in the histories of great men. From this point
of view, which seems to sustain itself without argu
ment, the conclusion must be that Paul Jones owed
as little debt to oiiportunity in the normal sense,
and was as little beholden to the adventitious in cir
cumstance as any successful man that ever lived.
From the age of twelve to that of twenty-six he
lived aboard ship altogether, and was actually under
way two-thirds of the time in blue water. The word
" home " had no meaning for him. Even the idea
of citizenship seems, in his earlier career at least, to
have held light significance in his mind. He touches
upon these topics in a passage of his celebrated
letter to the Countess of Selkirk, written on the
Ranger, May 8, 1778, after he had taken the Drake.
" Though I have drawn my sword," he says, " in
the present generous struggle for the rights of man,
yet I am not in arms as an American, nor am I in
pursuit of riches. My fortune is liberal enough,
I having no wife nor family. ... I profess myself
a citizen of the world, totally unfettered by the little,
the mean distinctions of climate and country, which
diminish the benevolence of the heart and set bounds
to philanthropy. Before this war was begun, I had
at an early time of life withdrawn from sea-service
328

LAST YEARS AND DE.VTH
in favor of calm contemplation and poetic ease. I
have sacrificed not only my favorite scheme of Ufe
but the softer aflections of the heart and my dream
of domestic happiness."
Of these " softer aflections of the heart " and this
" dream of domestic happiness " not the faintest trace
is left in authentic history. Upon whomsoever
the " softer affections " may have been lavished, and
whatsoever may have been the memory -picture in
the " dream," Paul Jones surely kept the secret
well. The letter to Lady Selkirk was written early
in 1778, and before he formed that attachment for
one of the opposite sex which, whatever may have
been its real character, was the only one that ever
found enduring place in his history.
In later life Jones dropped much of the tendency
to grandiloquence that marked his early style and
that pervades his letter to Lady Selkirk ; and he
soon divested himself of " citizenship of the world" ;
quite content with the fealty of an American citizen,
which he maintained through all his vicissitudes.
The courting and petting in French society that
rewarded his phenomenal victories did nothing to
soften the traits bred in his bone by previous isola
tion. The solitary instinct still dominated him.
His complete social triumph in France had no other
result than a gentle liaison, which, to say the least,
was distinguished by far more than ordinary con
stancy and by almost marvellous delicacy.
His personal attachments seem to have been
few. Among men they scarcely exceeded a dozen :
Franklin, Bancroft, the two Morrises — Robert and
Gouverneur — Jefferson, Lafayette, Hewes, Wayne,
839

PAUL JONES
Biddle, Cadwalader, Dale, the Duke de Chartres
and Alexander Suwarrow ; while his acquaintance
included Washington and Louis XVI. He liked a
good many other men from time to time, but those
named seem to have been the only ones to whom he
gave unquestioning fealty or unalterable respect or
homage — as the case might be.
Among women his allegiances were more diffu
sive, because he seldom failed to enslave himself at
the feet of that sex — for the time being at least —
upon the slightest provocation. But in this there
was more of chivalry than of affection ; or all of the
one and none of the other. The most that history
knows or ever can know is that he worshipped Mary
Adelaide of Orleans as a goddess or as an idol, far
away ; and that he was fond of Aimee de Telison.
But no token lingers to show that his heart was
ever really touched by any emotion more serious
than that "tendresse universelle " which, the French
say, is the common heritage of heroes.
In dealing with those subordinate to him he was
simply a prince. He died in 1792 at the house, in
Paris, of Madame d' Arbergne, who had kept the inn
at I'Orient where he first took lodgings in 1778,
when he was refitting the Ranger. When he settled
down at Paris, in 1783, he brought Madame d'Ar-
bergne there from I'Orient, provided her with a
house, and used his influence to get her young son
by her second husband a good appointment as
bailiff in one of the city tribunals. He never would
have any other housekeeper than Madame d' Ar
bergne. He also constantly looked out for the
interests of her son by her first husband, Pierre
330

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
Gerard ; whose advancement in tho French Navy to
the rank of enseigne de fregate was among the last
things he busied himself about just before he died.
The same was true of all who had served under him
faithfully. His time, his infiuence, and his purse
were always theirs. When he was ashore and hap
pened to meet his old sailors — every one of whom he
knew and called hj his first name — they seldom
failed to strip his pockets of the last shilling.
All his biographers agree that, to those under
his command, he was a kind and forbearing, albeit
strict, discif)linarian ; and that as a rule he effected
the ends of discipline by force of his own character,
corporal punishment being extremely rare in all his
ships, notwithstanding the heterogeneous and unruly
character of most of his crews. But his biogra
phers, with almost equal unanimity, represent him
as irascible, overbearing, or intolerant toward his
equals in rank, and obstinate, opinionated, or in
tractable with his superiors. The truth of this view
depends wholly on the other man. He certainly was
irascible with such equals in rank as Dudley Salton
stall, Pierre Landais, and Nassau-Siegen. But his re
lations with Nicholas Biddle, Anthony Wayne, John
Cadwalader, Lafayette, and Alexander Suwarrow
were perfectly harmonious. As for being obstinate
with his superiors, it cannot be disputed that he was
so with Le Ray de Chaumont, Arthur Lee, and Po
temkin. But he used to obey Washington, Franklin,
Jefferson, and Robert Morris like a private soldier.
His biographers have called attention to the in-
frequency of the personal mention by him in official
reports of distinguished conduct on the part of his
331

PAUL JONES
subordinates. This is true ; but to single out this
or that man for special mention was not a matter of
naval etiquette then as it is now. In fact it was not
the custom at all then in any navy or army. But
Jones amply made up for such official omissions in
the praise he gave to individuals in his personal
letters to men in power. Besides this, he had a
theory that if his subordinates were brave and capa
ble, it was no more than their duty to bs so ; and his
theory — perhaps cynical — was that no man deserved
any special credit for simply doing his duty. Yet,
as we have seen, he took fatherly care to protect
"his boys," as he affectionately styled John May-
rant and Nathaniel Fanning, from the wiles of
French privateer owners ; and these " boys " claimed
his affection because, as he himself proudly said of
them, they " were ignorant of fear and could not be
conquered alive." In this brief expression is written
a whole volume upon his character. He loved brave
men ; the braver they were the more he loved them;
and in his fierce creed there was no sin for which
courage could not atone.
With his failing breath he bequeathed — ^by the
hands of Gouverneur Morris — the Sword of Honor
that the King of France had given him, to Richard
Dale, whom the undying fondness of battle-memory
made him call "my good old Dick." There was
no lack of loyalty in the dying heart that went back
from the room in Tournon Street in 1792 to the gun-
deck of the Bon Homme Richard in 1779 ; no want
of gratitude in the soul that, in the presence of the
King of Terrors, still cherished the name of the man
who had helped him win his best battle.
332

LAST YEARS AND DEATH
Such facts and such traits, all clearly historical,
many unique and some marvellous, indicate a char
acter rare to the point of genius, and a nature espe
cially adapted by destiny to the wonderful epoch in
which he wrought, to the all-important results he
helped achieve, and to the immortal associations
whose unfading glory he shares.
He died as he had lived — on his feet and strug
gling. And the last impulses smothered in his soul
were the self-reliance that had never yielded, and
the courage that no foe but death could subdue.

333

APPENDIX

THE PORTRAITS OP PAUL JONES
The portrait frontispiece to the first volume of this
work is from a copy of a miniature now in the Hermitage
gallery in St. Petersburg, which the author had made
during a recent visit to Eussia. The original was painted
on ivory by a Dutch artist named Van der Hnydt, to
whom Jones gave sittings in 1780, shortly after the
return of the Alliance to France, and was presented by
Jones to his royal patroness, the Duchess of Chartres.
Two, and possibly three, replicas of it were made by
Van der Huydt, and copies were doubtless made by
other painters. One of the replicas was given to the
Countess de la Vendahl, and another, the one on which
the frontispiece is based, found its way to the hands of
the Empress Catharine of Russia, and is now in the im
perial Catharine collection of famous miniatures. This
portrait is the one which Jones himself always liked best,
because it represented him in his favorite rdle of a well-
dressed society man. The miniature represents him in the
court uniform, or evening dress, of his rank, and shows
the star and cross of the Order of Military Merit, which
Louis XVI. had conferred upon him just before it was
painted. The artist may have idealized his features
somewhat ; though the descriptions of him in "Histor
ical Anecdotes of the Eeign of Louis XVI." and in the
letters of Miss Edes-Herbert speak of him as " exquisitely
Vol.. II. —32 337

APPENDIX
handsome," and of his features as " delicate almost to
the point of effeminacy."
Charles Willson Peale's portrait, the frontispiece to
volume two, was undoubtedly from sittings, which may
be verified by reference to Madame Livingston's diary.
In 1787 Jones, while on his last visit to these shores,
was a guest at the Livingston Manor for a week or ten
days, and Peale was there at the same time, engaged on
some family portrait work for the Livingstons. At
Madame Livingston's suggestion he sketched Jones dur
ing this visit, and subsequently elaborated the sketch
into a painting.
A good many other pictures of Jones have been painted,
but none of them, except this little miniature and Peale's,
can, so far as the author knows, claim the merit of being
from sittings. Houdin made a bust about three-quarter
life size of Jones in Paris in 1784 or 1785, and he pre
sented several casts of it to his friends ; among them,
one to JefEerson, one to Eobert Morris, one to General
St. Clair, one to Lafayette, and one to Washington ; also
one to John Eoss, of Philadelphia, and perhaps others.
At any rate, there is frequent reference to these busts in
his correspondence about that time.
Chapelle's picture, which represents him full lengthy
standing on his quarter-deck, with his spy-glass in one
hand, was painted from this bust. Another picture,
which was used as the frontispiece of the Janette Taylor
Collection, was an etching from the bust, and is quite
characteristic.

EOSTEE OF THE EANGBE

Paul Jones, Philadelphia, Captain.
Thomas Simpson, Portsmouth,
First Lieutenant.
Elijah Hall, Portsmouth, Second
Lieutenant.
Richard Wallingford, Philadelphia,
Third Lieutenant.
Nathan Sargent, Portsmouth, Act
ing Master.
Nelson Green, Portsmouth, sur
geon.
(Dr. Green also acted as purser.)
John Calvin Robinson, Philadel
phia, boatswain.
Thomas M. Falls, Salem, gunner.
Joseph Powers, Portsmouth, mid
shipman.

Arthur Green, Portsmouth, mid
shipman.
James Meserve, Portsmouth, mid
shipman.
Nathaniel Fanning, Salem, mid
shipman.
Charles Hill, Barnstable, midship
man.
William Hichburn, Salem, car
penter.
Thomas Lowe, Boston, sailmaker.
[Also : Edmund Meyers and C.
Ford Morris, described by Jones
in a foot-note to his roster of
June, 1778, as ' ' Gentlemen Vol
unteers."]

PETTY OFFICERS AND AJ3LB SEAMEN.

Charles Ball, Portsmouth.
William Young, do
John Casey, do
Samuel O'Dorne, do
Daniel Jacobs, do
John Parsons, do
Joseph LaPlante, do
Simon Staples, do
Solomon Hutchings, do
William Finney, do
Charles Lamont, do
Daniel Sargent, do
Joseph Fernald, do
Theophilus Simpson, do

John Colbaith, Portsmouth.
Ephraim Grant, do
David Sargent, do
Thomas Staples, do
Daniel Sherburne, do
Reuben Hanscom, do
WilUam Chandler, do
John Grosvenor, do
Louis Boutelle, Castine.
Gabriel Gautier, do
Charles Gaudreau, do
Nicholas Coverley, do
Francois Andre, do
Joseph Mathieu, do

339

APPENDIX

Joseph Brien, Castine.
Reuben Chase, Nantucket.
Henry Martin, do
Wmiam Roberts, do
Thomas Turner, do
James Chase, do
Reuben Joy, do
Albert Cogswell, do
Nathan Aldrich, do
Latham Gardner, do
James Nicholson, do
Owen Starbuck, do
Seth Folger, do
Wniiam Nye, do
Freeman Lufkin, do
Paul Worth, do
Henry Gardner, do
Matthew Starbuck, do
Bar2dllai Folger, do
Robert Moore, New Bedford.
Nathaniel Willis, do
Charles Ward, do
Darby Daly do
Amost Albert, do
Jonathan Wells, do
William Allen, do
Obediah Dowell, do

Andrew Anderson, New Bedford.
James Roberts, do
Daniel Jackson, do
Thomas Davis, do
Thomas Knight, do
Frank Conroy, do
James Marston, Boston.
Eben Watson, do
John Dougall, do
William Perkins, do
John Munson, do
Thomas Adams, do
James Keen, Philadelphia.
Amos Stockham, do
John Byerly, do
Robert Bowers, do
Matt. Davis, do
Jacob Coxe, do
John Hartly, do
John Price, do
John Bettenham, do
Peter Santgrath, do
Mahlon Williams, do
Samuel Bowers, do
Philander Wright, do
Lewis Morris, do

APPRENTICE BOYS.

Johnny Downes, Portsmouth.
John Holliday, do
George Grant, do
Oliver Crommett, do
William Shores, do
John Roberts, do
Abram Knight, do
Samuel Holbrook, do
Caleb Emory, do
John Walker, do
Aaron Goodwin, do
Stephen Folger, Nantucket.
Nelson Aldrich, do

Charles Crampton, Nantucket.
James Ricker, Sag Harbor.
Reuben Ricker, do
Samuel Locke, Salem.
Edward Shapley, do
Thomas Beckett, do
William BickneU, do
John Dolan, do
William Gerritt, do
Robert Poor, do
Wilham Garth, New Bedford.
Samuel Starke, Dover, N. H.
Edward Boynton, Boston.

340

APPENDIX
Benjamin Brackett, Boston. ^^^^^ Jones ) Negro cabin boys,
Stephen Dickson, do Scipio Jones f formerly slaves of
AnthonyJeremiah, Martha's Vine- ') Captain Jones.
yard (Narragansett Indian).
This list consists of sixteen officers, two volunteers
and one hundred and thirteen enlisted seamen and
boys ; one hundred and thirty-one all told. Bat Jones
states in a report to Dr. Franklin that, while the
Eanger lay in I'Orient harbor before sailing on her
cruise to the English coast in the early spring of 1778,
he " enlisted eight Frenchmen who can speak or under
stand our language. They are Pierre Fanchot and
Pierre I'Eveque, seamen and good channel pilots, and
six others who are marines lent to me by His Excel
lency the Comte d'Orvilliers, Commander-in-Chief of
the Brest Fleet, at the instance of my good friend and
the firm advocate of our cause, H. E. H. the young
Duke de Chartres, second in command of the Brest
Fleet. "You must know," he adds, ^ that up to this time I
have had no marine guard on board. In a cruise such
as is planned, it is necessary to have at least a sergeant's
guard of marines. I therefore obtained these six, who
are trained French regulars, and I have added to their
number eleven of my own men, or rather my boys, mak
ing a guard of one sergeant, two corporals, and four
teen private marines. The names of my new French
marines are Denis Bouchinet, sergeant ; Joseph Ga
lois and Nicolas Forestier, corporals ; and Pierre Daniel,
Felix Marselle, and Jean Tardif, privates.
" The eleven of my own men whom I have assigned
to duty as marines — with the full consent of each — are
James Eoberts, Daniel Jackson, Eben Watson, John
341

APPENDIX
Holliday, Samuel Holbrook, Charles Crampton, Thomas
Beckett, Samuel Starke, Benjamin Brackett, William
Bicknell, and Eobert Poore. The complement of my
ship, therefore, is now sixteen officers and one hundred
and twenty-one seamen and marines ; one hundred and
thirty-seven, all told."

342

EOSTEE OP THE BON HOMME EICHAED
It is not customary in accounts of naval battles to
publish names of any but officers. In view, however,
of the peculiar character of the struggle between the
Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis, and of the
unique interest every detail of it has had and doubtless
always will have, we think it proper to offer here the
complete roster of the Eichard, with marks of reference
exhibiting the individual casualties.
When the ship sailed from I'Orient, August 14,
1779, she had on board three hundred and seventy-
three combatants, all told, of whom two hundred and
forty-one were shipped as seamen and one hundred and
thirty-two as "French volunteers," and six or seven
non-combatants. She had on board, September 33, 1779, three hundred
and twenty-five, all hands, less Lieutenant Henry Lunt
and fourteen men in charge of a captured pilot-boat. Of
this total two hundred and one were the officers and
crew proper, and one hundred and twenty-four were
French volunteers. Of the latter about thirty-seven
were sailors or regular marines, the rest, as has been
stated, being simply soldiers or landsmen doing duty as
marines. The only authentic roster extant is that furnished by
Commodore Jones to the Marshal de Castries, French
Minister of Marine, in response to his order dated
343

APPENDIX
October 23, 1784. This roster is on file in the archives
of the French Ministry of Marine, and a certified copy
of it, with the signature of Paul Jones, is in the posses
sion of our Department of State.
The document from which the roster of the Bon
Homme Eichard is herewith reproduced bears date of
October 25, 1784, and is attested by Paul Jones to be a
true copy of the original in his possession, dated at
I'Orient August 12, 1779. Its introductory note is as
follows :
" E61e des noms, surnoms, et qualites des officiers-
majors, officiers-mariniers, volontaires, matelots, sur-
numeraires, mousses et domestiques, sujets americains
et etrangers, qui ont servi sur le vaisseau Le Bon
Homme Eichard, commande par le Commodore Paul
Jones dans la course qu'il a faite en 1779 , et des
sommes revenant a chacun d'eux dans le prodnit des
prises faites par la dite escadre, dont les parts ont ete
reglees au Port de FOrient en vertu des ordres du
M'g'r Le Marechal de Castries, Ministre et Secretaire
d'Etat de la Marine, annonces dans sa depeche du 22"°
Octobre, 1784, et conformement a I'Ordonnance du Eoi
du 28'"° Mars, 1778, concernant les prises faites par
les vaisseaux de sa Majeste, Sgavoir [A savoir] : " *
* Translation of the above : ''Roll of the names, sumames and rank
of the superior officers, subordinate officers, volunteers, seamen, super
numeraries, landsmen, and servants, American and foreign subjects, who
served on board the ship Bon Homme Richard, commanded by Commo
dore Paul Jones in the cruise made in 1779 ; and of the sums due to each
ot them from the proceeds of the prizes taken by the said squadron, the
distribution of whioh has been regulated at the Port of I'Orient by
virtue of the orders of His Excellency the Marshal de Castries, Minister
and Secretary of State of the Navy, announced in his despatch of
October 22, 1784, and in conformity to the Royal Ordinance of March
38, 1778, concerning prizes taken by the ships of His Majesty, as follows;
344

APPENDIX

Those on board effective for duty September 33, 1779,
were as follows :

COMMISSIONED OFFICERS. Captain of the Bon

Paul Jones, Commandant of the Squadron
Homme Richard.

Richard Dale, First Lieutenant,
wounded.
Samuel Stacey, Acting Master.
Laurens Brooke, Surgeon.
Matthew Mease, Purser, wounded.

Edward Stack, Lieutenant.
Eugene Macarty, do., wounded,
John Mayrant, Acting Lieutenant,
wounded.

WARRANT OFFICERS.

John 0. Robinson, boatswain.
Nathaniel Fanning, midshipman.
Thomas Potter, midshipman,
wounded.
Benjamin Stubbs, midshipman,
wounded.
Beaumont Grubb, midshipman.
Robert Coram, do
John West Linthwaite, do
(Stephen Lee, jr.

Jonas Caswell, master's mate,
killed.
Johu Gunnison, carpenter,
wounded.
William Clarke, sailmaker,
wounded.
Arthur Randall, gunner, wounded.
Henry Gardner, acting gunner,
wounded.
, Captain's clerk.)

PETTY OFFICERS AND ABLE SEAMEN.

Jacob True.
Thomas Turner, killed.
Ichabud Lord.
Daniel Russell.
Edward Garrett, wounded.
Thomas Miller.
William Phisic, killed.
James Connor.
Robert Steel, killed.
Robert Towers, wounded.
William Thomson.
John Woolton, wounded.
Robert Stevens.
Thomas Macarthy, killed.

Jonathan Wells, wounded.
John Murphy, killed.
Francis Campbell.
Michael Langstaff, killed.
Elijah Perkins.
Hugh Wouton, killed.
John Williams, killed.
John Peacock.
John Burbank, wounded.
Josiah Brewster, killed.
William Sturgess.
John Thomas, wounded.
John Madden.
John Hughes, wounded.

345

APPENDIX

Thomas Davis, Idlled.
Thomas Knight, wounded.
Pierre Gerard (Fr.).

Peter Nolte.
Gilbert Crumb.
Thomas Wythe, wounded.
Henry Martin, killed.
John Brown, wounded.
William Fox.
Duncan Taylor.
John McKinley.
Bobert Hill, killed.
Lewis Brown.
James Evaus, wounded.
John Earl
Robert Doherty, kUled.
John Brown, wounded.
WiUiam ClisdeU.
James Nicholson, killed.
John Connor, wounded.
John Walker.
George Johnston, wovmded.
Andrew Ryan.
Samuel Matthews.
Lawrence Furlong, wounded.
James McKinley, wounded.
John McCafifery.
Thomas Mehanney.
James Riley.
James Lenn, wounded.
Joseph CoUinson, wounded.
Joseph Weira (P. *), wounded.
Antoine Alcantara (P.).
Joseph Mare (P.), killed.
Joachim Joseph (P.), killed.
Vincent Ignace (P.), killed.

James Quinn.
John Weaver, wounded.
David Cross.
John Turpin.
John Carrico, killed.
John Burnet, wounded.
John Thompson.
John Frankford, wounded.
Charles Peterson, wounded.
Daniel Bmblen.
Peter Biorkman.
Benjamin Gartineau.
Peter Molin, wounded.
Oliver Gustav.
Elijah Johnstone.
Pierre Carreau (Fr.), killed.
Jacques Lorziere (Fr.).
Jacques Maziani (Fr.).
Jacques Carrons (Fr.), wounded.
Nicolas Muhe (Fr.).
Francois Etienne Mare (Fr.).
Alexandre Antoine (Fr. ), killed.
Jean Baptiste Ferry (Fr. ), killed.
Jacques Loria (P.), killed.
Louis Role Tomise (P.), killed.
Jacques Baterga (P.), killed.
Thomas Watt, wounded.
John Lyons, wounded.
George Tref athen, wounded.
Richard WiUiams, wounded.
John Mclntyre, woimded.
Hugh Euroney, wounded.
Aaron Smith, wounded.
Richard Hughes, wounded.
WiUiam Hamilton, wounded.
Nicolas Borela (Fr.).
Louis Joly (Fr.), wounded.
Pierre I'Eveque (Fr.), wounded.

* " (P)" means Portuguese and (Fr.) means Frenchman, when placed
after a name in this roster. The Irish, Scotch, and Scandinavians in the
crew are not specially indicated, because they either then were or after
ward became American citizens — such as survived the battle.
346

APPENDIX

Leonard la Roche (Fr.).
Pierre Panohot (Fr,).
Jean Moulin (Fr.), wounded.
Jean Fanchot (Fr.).

Modiste Tardif (Fr.).
Jean Constant (Fr.).
Jean Tardif (Fr.), wounded.
Jean Paul (Pr. ), wounded.

ORDINARY SEAMEN, LANDSMEN, AND BOYS.

John Downes, wounded.
Anthony Jeremiah (Narragansett
Indian).
.lohnRedway, killed.
John Jordan, wounded.
Francis Perkins, kiUed.
Joseph Crooks, killed.
James Parry.
William Lister, wounded.
Isaac Hobshaw.
Samuel Fletcher.
Thomas Hammett, wounded.
Stephen Soley, killed.
Nicholas Rodgers.
Andrew Mason, killed.
Nathaniel Kennard.
William CoUingwood, wounded.
Benjamin Bickert.
James Cunningham.
James Halliday, wounded.
James MacMichan, wounded.
Robert Upham, wounded.
Joseph Bartlett.
WiUiam McCullough, wounded.
John Kilby.
William Simpson, wounded.
Nicholas CaldwelL
Jerry Evans.
Patrick Quinn.
William Garth, wounded.
Daniel Pryor.
Joseph Cooper.
William Murphy, kiUed.
Mark Paul.

Robert Lyons, wounded.
Laurent Verness.
Daniel Swain, wounded.
John Duffy.
William Knox.
Abram MarteU.
Nathaniel Bailey, killed.
James Mehanney.
William Wilkinson.
George Harroway, killed.
Thomas Clarke, killed.
Antoine Francisque (P.), wounded.
Francois Darros (P.).
Ignace Silveira (P. ).
Mathieu Antone(P. ).
Josef Rodrique (P.), killed.
Antoine Cazziero (P.), killed.
Mathieu Josef (P. ).
Joan Ignacio (P.).
Joan Prafia (P.).
Josef Ma(;eda(P. ), killed.
Manuel Viera(P.).
Joan Silveira (P.).
Manuel Priezra (P.).
Joan Josef (P.), killed.
Antoine Foustade (P.).
Manuel Antone (P.), killed.
Mathieu Francisque (P.).
Josef Ignacio (P.), killed.
Antonio SUvestre (P.), killed.
Joachim Joseffa (P.).
Manuel Castaino (P.).
Luis Antonio (P.), killed.
Robert Bruman (Fr.).

347

APPENDIX

George CampbeU.
Charles Priestly.
Joseph HoUand.

COOK AND COOK'S MATES.
Louis Perrine.
Augustin Garat.
Olivier Relaut.

FRENCH MARINES (VOLUNTEERS).

Commissioned Officers.
ChamiUard, Captain, Pran9ois de la Bernerie, Lieuten-

P.aul de
wounded.
Wibert de Mezieres, Lieutenant.

ant, killed.
Francois Kuelain, Ensign, killed.

NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS.

Pierre Mongue, sergeant-major,
kUled.
Denis Bouchinet, sergeant.
Frangois La Fraye, sergeant,
wounded.
Barthelemy PeUe, sergeant.
Charles Conconnier, corporal,
wounded.

Antoine Longpre, corporal,
wounded.
Jean Brousseau, corporal.
Pierre Lusson, corporal, wounded.
Charles Quentin, corporal, killed.
Nicolas Foret, corporal, killed.

The foregoing were all regular marines, loaned for the cruise from the
Royal Dockyard of I'Orient. Private Marines.

Jean Marque.
Georges Wiebert.
Pierre Daniel, kUled.
Balthazar Audibert, wounded.
Jean B. Flandrin.
Louis Mac^.
Joseph Revellant.
Charles Quedon, killed.
Michel Langlois.
Jacques Langlois, wounded.
Joseph Olivard, wounded.
Joseph Beille.
Jacques Pegorier, wounded.
Jean B. La Porte.
Louis Gandalin.
Gabriel OiUie, wounded.

Rene Brousseau.
Jean Guerrier, killed.
Jean Peroussel, wounded.
Louis de la Mare.
Renaud Cavelet, killed.
Jacques Core.
Pierre de la Haye, wounded.
Jean Pillier, kDled.
Jean B. Deschamps.
Jean B. Lubin, killed.
Ren6 Rousselain.
Pierre Georgelin, wounded.
Andre Duvinique.
Jean B. Janique.
Louis Neant, wounded.
Claude Rousseau.

348

APPENDIX

Joseph Gourgeon, wounded.
Ambroise Launay.
GuUlanme Le Brun.
Ren^ Murat, wounded.
Julien Ligonue, killed.
Andre BronSge.
Mathurin Leger.
Jean Ferront, killed.
Jean Gaspardin.
Guy Brissard, wounded.
Baptiste Quentin, wounded.
Jean Denee.
Manuel Chaussepied, wounded.
Denis Bernard.
Louis Jacquenot.
Pierre Menard, wounded.
Rene Jou6.
Francois Chapon, killed.
Franfois Vallee, wounded.
Vincente Roland.
Manuel Le Deime, wounded.
Francois le Rote, wounded.
Pierre BouiUait.
Francjois Aline, killed.
Jacques Ribout, killed.
Pierre OUivier.
Laurent Clerge, wounded.
Pierre d' Armour.
Mathurin Chevrauce.
Jean Mac^.
Jacques Chaouest, killed.
Frangois Lesconnee, wounded.
Pierre Viand, wounded.
Louis Latiner, wounded.
Louis Jeannot.
Jean Saligan, killed.
Joseph Paule.
Mathurin Lepeine.
Jean Org6rot, killed.

Franfois Saleme.
Pierre GuUlard, wounded.
Ambroise Daniaud.
Mathurin Led6e.
Yves Geoffrin.
Joseph Deliarme, wounded.
Claude Le Maitre.
Jean Rentier, killed.
Pierre Louis Lemoine.
Jean Denis Jaquet, wounded.
Henri Ystreau, killed.
Joseph Bosquet.
Jean Fren^, wounded.
Pierre Maudin, wounded.
Franfois ChaUlon.
Christophe Billiere, killed.
Jacques Datte', wounded.
Antoine La Bastier, wounded.
Franijois Duclos.
Jean Antoine Auger, killed.
Franpois Victor Noel, wounded.
Antoine Perrigat, wounded.
Francois Legu^.
Toussaint Gautier, wounded.
Pierre Antoine Vouan, kiUed.
Antoine Villeger, wounded.
Bernard Tabournier, wounded.
Franfois Map^re.
Pierre Fr's Languille, killed.
Baptiste Macheret, wounded.
Gerome Doux- Ami.
Franfois AmbeUon, killed.
Pierre Pillon.
Julien Laurent, wounded.
Jean Paterne,
Louis Roule Johonnot, wounded.
Jacques Laziere, kiUed.
Jean Baptiste Travaille.

(The private marines were mostly infantry soldiers who volunteered
from the garrison of I'Orient for the cruise. A few of them were civilian
volunteers, who had never seen service of any kind before.)
349

Appendix
The following-named officers, seamen, and marines,
belonging to the ship when she sailed from I'Orient
August 14th, were absent, for various reasons, when she
began the battle, September 33d, and took no part in the
action. These may be divided into three classes : First,
those sent into port as prize-crews; second, those lost
with the master of the ship, Mr. Cutting Lunt, on the
Irish coast August 33d ; and, third, those who were de
tached under command of Lieutenant Henry Lunt in
charge of the captured pilot-boat during the forenoon
of September 33, and who were not able to rejoin their
ship nntil the close of the action. No data are extant
that enable us to separate in exact detail the prize-
crews from those lost on the Irish coast with Mr.
Cutting Lunt. But there is record of the names of
those who were detached in the pilot-boat with Lieuten
ant Henry Lunt. The latter are indicated in the list of
absentees by a * opposite their names.
ABSENT AND NOT IN ACTION.
Cutting Lunt, Master. * James Smith, seaman.
* Henry Lunt, Second Lieutenant. * Edward Lev?is, do
Jame» Gerald O'Kelley, master's George Walker, do
mate. (Sent to France in com- Alexander Cooper, do
mand of a prize.) Richard Taylor, do
John White, master's mate. (Sent * David Pritchard, do
to France in command of a prize.) Thomas Forrest, do
* Reuben Chase, midshipman. John Colbraith, do
William Danill, do James Hareham, do
Louis White, do Jacob Henzies, do
Richard Watt, do James Powers, ordinary seaman.
Gilbert Watt, do Peter Richardson, do
* WiUiam Lee, petty ofiicer. Joseph Stewart, do
John Pearce, do Aaron Goodwin, do
Thomas Jones, do Richard Lawson, do
WiUiam Roberts, do Manuel Quito (P.), do
350

APPENDIX

John Brnssen, ordinary seaman.

* Joseph Galois, corporal of ma.

John Jones,

do

rines.

Joseph Burns,

do

* Felix Marrel, marine.
John Pinkham,
do
* Louis Guinot, do
Henry Humphreys,
do
* Je.au Rousseau, do
Bhjah Middleton,
do
* Yvon Hierry, do
John Hackett,
do
* Nicolas Abelard, do
James Fogg,
do
* Joseph Pennetier, do
Adolphe la Bemiere
1, surgeon's
* GuiUaume Valmont, marine.
mate.
* Bernard Noguez, do
Besides the regular roster of the Bon Homme Eichard
as here given, which is based on the roll filed in the
Department of State, tliere were four men in the action
described by Jones in a marginal note appended to his
own copy of that roster as " Americans taken out of
the prize Union, letter-of-marque " — previously de
scribed — "who, having been in English prisons-of-war,
had volunteered into the British service in hopes of
getting to the United States and then escaping by de
sertion." They were : James Bayard Wilkeson, of
New York ; John Henry Eeynolds, of Newport, E. I.
(badly wounded by grape-shot and scorched by explo
sion of a gun); Daniel Sargent, of Portsmouth, N. H.,
and Henry Chandler, of Salisbury, Mass.
351
EOSTEE OF THB SEEAPIS
No part of the history of this marvellous battle is
more eloquent than the cold, hard, official records of
the British Admiralty. Those records show that on
September 23, 1779, the day before the combat, there
were on board the Serapis — officers, seamen, and ma
rines — as follows :
Officers (including midshipmen)  16
Warrant officers  22
Petty officers and seamen  327
Marines (officers and men)  47
Supernumeraries  25
Total  337
This roster included, of course, the surgeon and his
two mates, and the cooks and servants, besides some on
the sick-list ; by making due allowance for whom we
may perceive how Captain Pearson arrived at the num
ber of three hundred and seventeen which he stated in
his report as those " at stations combatant," etc., when
the action began. The limits of this work hardly ad
mit of reproduction of the roster of the Serapis in full.
But, as an index of the whole, and also by way of im
pressing upon the pages of history some idea of what it
takes to compel Englishmen to surrender at sea, we
may offer the roster of the officers, warrant officers, and
352

APPENDIX
quarter-gunners of the Serapis, with notations exhibit
ing their fates in the battle.
This roster is as follows :
OFFICERS.
Richard Pearson, Captain. William Brown, midshipman
William Wheatley , Master, wound- killed.
ed. George Ludewig, midshipman,
Malcolm Cockburn, Purser, wound- killed.
ed. Richard Harrison Pearson, mid-
John Brenton Wright, First Lieu- shipman, wounded.
tenant. William W. Miller, midshipman.
M. Stanhope, Second Lieutenant, John BrowneUe, midshipman,
wounded. wounded.
Richard Shuckburg, Third Lieu- Arthur Hood, (temporary) mid-
tenant, wounded. shipman, wounded.
WUham Popplewell, midshipman William Bannatyne, surgeon,
(Acting Third Lieutenant), wounded.
killed. George Postgate, pilot, killed.
James Mayo, midshipman, wound
ed. WARRANT OFFICERS.
James McKnight, surgeon's mate, William Owen, quartermaster,
wounded. killed.
Walter Kitchen, surgeon's mate, Charles Brooks, quartermaster,
wounded. wounded.
Nathaniel Hall, carpenter, wound- George Wilson, quartermaster,
ed. wounded.
John Maloney, carpenter's mate. John Ward, quartermaster.
David M. Ross, master-at-arms, Charles Jebb, quartermaster,
wounded. killed.
Gabriel Wright, gunner, wounded. Anthony Franks, ship's coxswain,
William McCann, Gunner's Mate, killed.
wounded. Thomas Murphy, yeoman of
James Shane, acting gunner. sheets, wounded.
Jesse Moseley, armorer. William Robinson, yeoman of
Samuel Greenway, armorer's sheets.
mate, wounded. Robert Orzad, sailmaker, wound-
Edward Place, boatswain, killed. ed.
William Booth, boatswain's mate, John Morton, sailmaker'a mate,
killed. wounded.
Vol. IL— 23 353

APPENDIX

QUARTER-GUNNERS.
Henry Hooke, wounded. Robert Burton.
Michael Jones, wounded. John WUkinson, kUled.
John Bowman. Robert Anson, wounded.
WUliam Parker, killed. John EUia, killed.
Alexander MitcheU, kiUed. Thomas Hislop, wounded.
John Appleby, kUled.
OFFICERS AND WARRANT OFFICERS OF MARINES.
Samuel Weightman, Lieutenant, John M. Evans, sergeant, wound-
wounded, ed.
Hon. George Edward Robey, Lieu- John Middleton, corporal major,
tenant, wounded. killed.
WUliam Hodges, sergeant-major, Edward Morgan, corporal, kUled.
wounded.

354

WOEKS CONSULTED
Generally speaking, there were three groups of Paul
Jones's papers. Immediately after his death his sister,
Mrs. Taylor, went to Paris and took back with her, to
Dumfries, all of his papers, except those which had al
ready passed into the possession of Benoit Andre, Ca
pelle, and Aimee de Telison. Those were his Journal of
1786 to the King, his great historical Journal of 1787,
and his supplementary Journals of 1790-91, together
with a great deal of correspondence and papers more
or less fragmentary, and all in French.
His Journal of 1789, written for the Empress Cath
arine, involving the history of his Eussian campaign,
was included in this lot, but there were two copies of it,
and one of them was taken by Mrs. Taylor.
Not long after the Admiral's death, Mrs. Taylor
separated the papers which she had into two lots, one of
which embraced all the papers of a character calculated
to prove his services in the Eevolutionary War, and these
she sent to a solicitor in New York named Eobert
Hyslop, who acknowledged receipt of them August 10,
1797, with an inventory; Mrs. Taylor retaining Mr.
Hyslop to prosecute the claim for back pay, prize-money,
and expense account. Mr. Hyslop died shortly after
this and the papers were stored in a vault in New York.
Mr. Hyslop's commentary upon them in his inventory
is as follows : " Sundry letters, accounts, papers, log
books, journals, etc., supposed to be of no value."
355

APPENDIX
In 1824, when Lafayette came to this country, he
gave information which enabled Colonel John Henry
Sherburne, then Eegistrar of the Navy, to find these
papers. Colonel Sherburne at once produced them in
the first life of Paul Jones published in this country,
now commonly known as the Sherburne Collection.
This work was published in 1825. In it were embodied
also additional papers which the author received from
Thomas Jefferson, who was still alive, from the estate of
Eobert Morris, from Gouverneur Morris, from the Liv
ingston estate, and from Lafayette. In 1851 a second
edition, considerably enlarged, was published.
As soon as Colonel Sherburne's first edition reached
Europe Miss Janette Taylor, daughter of Mrs. Taylor,
the Commodore's sister previously mentioned, placed the
rest of his papers, including the Journal of his Eussian
campaign, in the hands of an editor, who produced what
is known as the Edinburgh Life, published in 1836.
Upon these two collections, that of Colonel Sherburne
and that of Janette Taylor, all the lives of Paul Jones
have been based.
The list of works consulted in the preparation of this
biography is as follows :
Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Eevolution,
by Dr. Francis Wharton. Published by Act of
Congress.
Life and Correspondence of Paul Jones, by Sherburne,
New York, 1825. Second edition, 1851.
Life and Correspondence of Paul Jones (Janette Taylor
Collection), edited by Eobert Sands. New York,
1830.
Life of Paul Jones, by Mackenzie. Boston, 1841.
356

APPENDIX
Life of Paul Jones, by Simms. New York and Boston,
1845.
John Paul Jones in the Eevolution, by Captain A. T.
Mahan, U. S. N., in Scribner's Magazine for July
and August, 1898.
Paul Jones, by J. S. C. Abbott, "American Pioneers
and Patriots." 1874.
Memorial Papers, etc., of Joseph Hewes, Wilmington,
N. C, 1818. Also, MS. Correspondence.
Livingston Papers. Historical Society of New York.
Eobert Morris's Papers. Historical Society of New
York.
Gouverneur Morris's Papers. Historical Society of New
York.
British Admiralty Papers.
American State Department Papers.
French Admiralty Papers.
Life of Paul Jones. Anonymous. Edinburgh, 1836.
Life of Paul Jones, by Edward Hamilton. Aberdeen
and London, first edition, 1842. Murray's edition
(second edition), 1848.
M6moire de I'Amiral Paul Jones. Edited by Benoit
Andre, Paris, 1798.
Memoires, Journaux et Lettres de I'Amiral Paul Jones.
Anonymous. Paris, 1799, 1800. Imprime par ordre
dn Premier Consul.
American Edition of Edinburgh Life of Paul Jones.
Gregg & Elliott, Philadelphia, 1846.
EecoUections of Nathaniel Fanning. Pamphlet, New
London, 1806. " New and enlarged edition," 1826.
Narrative of Henry Gardner. Pamphlet, Portsmouth,
N. H., 1782. Eeprint, New Bedford, 1826, en
larged. 857

APPENDIX
Memoire du Combat. Pierre Gerard. Paris, 1781.
Pamphlet.
Scrap-book. Gardner Collection. Newspaper clippings
of the Period of the American Eevolution.
Memoir of the House of Orleans, by Dr. W. Cooke.
Taylor, London.
Memoires, etc., of the Count de Segur. Paris, 1830.
Papers of Edmond Charles Genet. Unpublished.
Marie Antoinette, by Madame Campan. Original edi
tion.
Historical Anecdotes of the Court of Louis XV., by
Soulavie.
Memoire of Madame d'Hausset.
Historical Anecdotes of the Court of Louis XVI. An
onymous. ("Last Days of the Ancien Eegime.")
Life of Paul Jones. Anonymous. Lippincott, Phila
delphia, 1875.
Horace Walpole, by Cunningham.
Correspondence of Sir Joseph Yorke. British Foreign
Office Papers.
Participation de la France a I'etahlissement des !&tats
Unis, by Doniol. Paris, 1886-88.
Papers of Dr. Edward Bancroft. Force Collection,
Congressional Library.
Letters of an Englishwoman in Paris, during the Amer
ican War, by Miss Edes-Herbert. Edinburgh, 1809.
History of French Privateering, by Marchand. Paris
edition of 1818.
Histoire de la France, by Lacretelle.
Batailles Navales, by Troude.
Histoire de la Marine Francais, by Chevalier.
Campaigns of Suwarrow, by Kaulbars. Moscow, 1829.
(Eussian. ) 358

APPENDIX
The War of 1788, by Todleben, St. Petersburg, 1851.
(Eussian.)
Survey of the Turkish Empire, by W. Eaton. London,
1790. Second edition, 1799.
Verfall des Turkischen Eeichs* (Decline of The Turk
ish Empire). Kolnitz, printer, Vienna, 1831.
W. Tooke's Life of Catharine the Great. London, 1789.
Second edition, 1798.
* The actual author was believed to be Metternich.

359

INDEX

Adams, John, opposition to Jones,
i. , 44, 45 ; favorite among naval
captains, 60 ; reasons for dislik
ing Jones, 74, 75 ; reconciled to
Jones, 144, 145 ; praises Jones's
bravery, ii. , 74, 7.5 ; meets Jones
in London, 90 ; advises Jones
on Denmark claims, 105-107,
148 ; opinion of, and personal
relations with Jones, 107-110
Alfred, the, description of, i., 29,
30 ; floats the American flag, 48 ;
captures prize ships, (34-66 ; es
capes from the Milford, 65 ; re
turns to Boston, 66
Alliance, the, building and de
scription of, i. , 43 ; arrives in
France, 171 ; crew of, 174 ; com
manded by Landais, 181 ; takes
prize ship, 187, 188 ; fires on the
Bon Homme Richard, 213 ; rakes
the Serapis and Bon Homme
Richard, 230, 231 ; deserts the
Bon Homme Richard, 246 ;
commanded by Jones, 284, 285 ;
cruise to Corunna and back,
285-287 ; fighting crew of, 285,
286, 287 ; arrives at I'Orient,
288 ; overhauled by Jones, 298,
299 ; sails for America, 305, 306 ;
decays and sinks, ii. , 258
America, the, description of, ii.,
68 ; fitted out by Jones, 68-72
Amphitrite, the, i., 78
Andrea Doria, the, i., 46
Arbergne, Mme. de, ii., 315, 316,
330
Ariel, the, fitting out, i. , 296 ; held
back by Jones, ii. , 3, 3 ; sails for
America, 24 ; caught in terrible
storm, 24, 25 ; engagement with
British ship, 28-31 ; arrives in
Philadelphia and cruise to

Portsmouth, 31, 33 ; returned to
France 33
Austin, J. L., i., 88, 93, 94
Bancroft, Edward, accused of
dishonesty, i. , 87, 88 ; represents
Jones at Paris, 260 ; letters from
Jones, 380-283, 295, 290 ; holds
money for Jones, 319 ; financial
transactions with Jones, ii., 87,
88, 361, 262
Bannatyne, William, i., 305, 315,
316, 217, 248, 251, 281
Barere, Bertrand, friendship with
Jones, ii., 370-273 ; character
istics of, 372 ; funeral oration on
Jones, 325
Barham, Lord, ii., 281
Barry, John, i. , 68 ; ii. , 35
BoaupoU, Major, ii., 318, 319
Belle Poule, the, i., 123, 134
Benningsen, General, ii. , 203
Benoit-Andre, citoyen, ii., 313-
315. 335
Berckel, van, M., i., 281
Bernstofi; Count, ii., 160, 161
BersoUe, M., i., 136, 137, 138, 129,
130
Besborodko, Count, ii., 191, 215,
328, 241, 342
Betsey, the, i., 189, 190; ii., 105
Biddle, Nicholas, mentioned, i.,
39 ; appointed naval captain, 44 ;
death of, 46, 47 ; member of
Marine Board, 68 ; engagement
with the Yarmouth, 46, 47, 103
Bideford, the, i., 64, 66, 67
Blackden, Samuel, ii., 316, 317
Bon Homme Richard, named by
Jones, i. , 166 ; description of,
171 ; crew of, 171 ; cruise round
British Isles, 180-301 ; overtakes
the Serapis, 193-201 ; literature

361

INDEX

of battle with Serapis, 203-205 ;
engages Serapis, 306 ; gun-room
battery explodes, 306; gunnery of,
307 ; suffers from fire of the Sera
pis, 311, 313 ; blankets the Sera
pis, 313, 213, 314 ; fired on by the
AUiance, 313, 214; grapples the
Serapis, 316-223 ; terrible mus
ketry fire of, 317, 319, 231;
catches fire, 228 ; raked by the
AUiance, 230, 231 ; boards Sera
pis, 232-336 ; cuts loose from
Serapis, 242 ; disabled condition,
242, 243 ; wounded crew re
moved to Serapis, 243 ; goes down
with flag flying, 344, 245 ; story
about fiag of, 244, 245 ; surviv
ing crew of, 247, 248 ; roster of,
ii. 343-351 ; absent crew of, 350
Bonne Aventure, the, i., 391, 293
Bourbon-Penthievre, Duke de, i.,
25, 26
Bourbon-Penthievre, Mary Ade
laide de, i., 26
Brooke, Dr. Laurens, i., 243, 249,
251
Buckley, John, i., 346
Burbank, John, i. , 326
Burden, Captain, i., 131
Burgoyne, General, i., 81, 83, 87,
92, 93
Cabot, the, i., 46
Cadwalader, John, ii., 38, 39, 40,
41
Cambon, M. de, ii., 322, 323
Campan, Mme., i., 309; ii., 18,
95 344 315
CapeUe, Adrien de, i., 324, 335;
ii., 370, 373, 335
Capellen, Baron Van der, i., 383
Castries, Marechal de, i, 396; il,
25, 36, 27, 93
Catharine of Russia, offers com
mission to Jones, ii., 148-151 ;
161-163 ; condition of Russia dur
ing reign of, 163-167 ; dismisses
English naval ofiicers, 170, 171 ;
appoints Nassau-Siegen to navy,
186 ; attitude toward Jones and
Potemkin, 203, 211, 212; sum
mons Jones to St. Petersburg,
212-314 ; admired by Jones, 223,
224 ; excludes Nassau - Siegen
from court, 228-232 ; appoints

Jones to Baltic fleet, 233-235 ;
relations with Count de Segur,
249 ; personal character and po
htical policy, 249-251 ; treat
ment of favorites, 250 ; appoint
ment of Jones not carried out,
260 ; financial dealings with
Jones, 307
Cato (Jones), slave of Paul Jones,
i.,32, 51, 58. 63, 136; ii., 126
Chamillard, de. Captain, i., 318,
233, 223, 225
Chandler, CaroUne, i. , 345
Chartres, Duchess of, entertains
Jones, i. , 106 ; presents watch to
Jones, 107, 108 ; intercedes with
the KiTior for Jones, 160-165 ;
aids Jones financially, 167 168 ;
mentions Jones, 316 ; grand ban
quet to Jones, ii., 8-13 ; life and
character of, 11-13 ; admiration
for Jones, 15-17 ; worshipped by
Jones, 16, 17
Chartres, Duke of, comes to
America, i., 35 ; first meeting
with Jones, 35, 26, 27 ; political
views, 94, 95 ; renewed friend
ship for Jones, 106, 107 ; advises
Jones to appeal to the King, 152,
153 ; becomes Duke of Orleans,
and afterward Citizen Philippe
Egalite, il, 10, 11 ; guest of
honor in London, 265
Chase, Reuben, 1, 391
Chaumont, Le Ray de, 1, 176,
378, 380, 384, 316
Coburg, Prince of, ii., 353
Columbus, the, 1, 46
Concordat Paul Jones compelled
to sign, 1., 175-178
Cornwallis, Lord, ii., 66, 73
Cottineau, Captain, commander of
the PaUas, 1, 191 ; confers with
Jones, 19i, 192 ; captures the
Countess of Scarborough, 236,
237 ; cares for British prisoners,
244, 248 ; receives Captain Pear
son on the Pallas, 248, 249 ; voy
age to the Texel, 251 ; chaUenged
by Landais, 353 ; duel with Lan
dais, 2.54; mentioned by Jones,
277, 278
Countess of Scarborough, the, i.,
237, 244, 351
Craik, Robert, i., 1, 3, 3

362

INDEX

Currie, Beck, and Co., 1, 8, 9, 11
Curtis, Roger, defends Jones's
character, ii. , 363-264 ; opinion
of Jones, 363
Dale, Richard, mentioned, 1, 29 ;
lieutenant on the Bon Homme
Richard, 174; conducts bom
bardment of Serapis, 306, 307 ;
orders from Jones, 3li ; remarks
on courage of crew of the Rich
ard, 325, 326 ; receives surrender
of Captain Pearson, 233, 235,
236 ; silences battery on Serapis,
243, 343 ; quarrel with Landais,
356-258; gets Jones's sword by
bequest, il, 4, 319, 333
Deane, SUas, 1, 97, 98
Degge, J. A., i., 346, 252, 353, 306
Denbigh, Captain, 1, 7, 8
Doniol, M., ll, 46
Downes, John, 1, 231 ; il, 78, 79
Downes, Rachel, ii., 78, 79
Downes, Robert, ii., 78
Drake, the, capture by the Ranger,
1, 114-131 ; estimate of repairs
to, 130
Duane, James, il, 85
Dumas, C. F., 1, 98, 104, 371, 373
Dunmore, Lord, 1, 57; il, 126
Duras, the, 1, 166, 167
Eclipse, the, 1, 291, 293
Edes-Herbert, MUe., 1, 310, 311,
313, 313, 325
Edgar, the, 1, 249, 350
Bdgerlej', Dr., 1, 249, 251, 381, 383
Edwards, Lieut., u., 171, 313, 214,
325
Fanning, Nathaniel, mentioned,
i., 51, 63, 174; account of battle
with Serapis, 318-330 ; after-ca
reer, 330 ; Jones's opinion of,
330; throws grenade into Sera
pis, 329, 330 ; describes condition
of the Richard after battle, 343,
343 ; story of voyage to Texel,
350, 351 ; transferred to the Al
liance, 2.54 ; describes cniise of
the AlUanoe, 385, 386; engages
in French privateer service, 289-
393 ; praised by Jones, 295 ;
qualities characterized by Jones,
il, 140

Fanshawe, Capt., il, 193, 199, 225,
261
Ford, Hezekiah, 1, 86, 133; il,
43
Fortune, the, 1, 184
Fox, C. J., entertains Jones, u. ,
265, 280
Franklin, Benjamin, receives de
spatches from Jones, 1, 86;
keeps Jones in Europeiin waters,
103 ; influence over Jones, 144-
146; reconciles Adams and Jones,
145 ; attitude on Jones's appeal to
King, 163-165; requires Jones to
sign "Concordat," 176-178; com
ments on Jones's quarrel with
Landais, 259, 260 ; conducts Lan
dais inquiry, 260 ; not the author
of Jones's letter to the States-
General, 370; letter to Jones,
about the alliance, 299, 300;
friendship for Jones, il, 49 ;
characteristics of, 49 ; com
mends Jones, 63, 63 ; meeting
with Jones, 91 ; letter to Jones,
98 ; last letter from Jones, 259,
260 ; death, 259, 260 ; disapproves
of Jones's Russian connections,
260, 361
Franklin, WiUiam, 1, 164
Frazier Bros., 1 , 37, 57, 58 ; u. , 134,
135
Friendship, the, 1, 6, 7
GardnSr, Henky, mentioned, 1,
51, 174 ; brings prize ship from
Jamaica, 63 ; makes diagram of
naval battle, 305 ; narrative of
Serapis - Bon Homme Richard
fight, 310-213, 329, 230, 234-3:^6 ;
engages in French privateer ser
vice, 292 ; fits the America for
war, 11,71,72
Genet, B. C. de, il, 236, 237, 244,
245
Genet, Francois de, 1, 302, 303,
304; il, is; 95
Gerard, Mile, de, 1, 314
Gerard, Pierre, i., 221, 233, 223,
224, 226, 327, 285, 320, 321
GUlon, Captain, 1, 98
Glasgow, the, sloop of war, 1 , 50
Governor Clinton, the, ii., 143
Grantley, or GrantuUy Castle, the,
1, 11

363

INDEX

Grasse, Count de, ii., 398, 399, 300,
301
Graves, Admiral, ii., 298
Green, Arthur, 1, 110, 111
Greig, Samuel, u., 170, 171, 334,
360
Hall, Dobotht, 1, 345
HaU, Elijah, i., 78, 79, 83, 345; il,
79,80
Hamilton, Alexander, letter to
Jones, il, 257
Hamilton, Edward, 1, 23 ; ii., 303
Hancock, John, 1, 48
Hauscom, WilUam, il, 71
Henry, Patrick, il, 153, 154
Hewes, Joseph, 1, 18, 19, 23, 32 ;
champions Jones's cause, 44, 45 ;
letters from Paul Jones, 116-
121, 176-179 ; death of, 179, 180 ;
comments on Jones, 180
Hichburn, WUliam, 1, 51, 120
HiU, Charles, 1, 51, 84, 85, 110,
111
Hinman, EUsha, 1, 68
Hood, Admiral, 1, 263
Hood, Samuel, il, 113, 114, 381
Hopkins, Ezek., 1, 46, 49; u., 75
Hopkins, J. B., 1, 44, 46
Houdin, il, 338
Houston, il, 58, 61
Houze, Baron de la, ii. , 115, 159
Huntington, Samuel, ii. , 59, 63, 63,
85
Hyslop, R.,ii., 355
Indien, the, i., 98, 99, 154
Jay, John, il, 134, 143
Jefferson, Thos., views on the en-
sis, 1, 21, 33; grants commis
sion to Jones, 57 ; letters from
Paul Jones, 317, 318 ; services to
Aimee de Telison, 330 ; receives
prize money settlement from
Jones, il, 103, 104 ; conferences
with Jones, 139 ; assists Jones
to obtain Russian command,
147-150 ; views on the Danish
case, 151 ; letter from Jones,
167, 168 ; views on Jones's Rus
sian connection, 361 ; conference
with Jones, 286
Jeremiah, Anthony, 1, 51, 53, 63,
136, 313, 329

John, the, 1, 8, 9
John O'Gaunt, the, 1, 8
Jones, Paul, father and family, i.,
1, 2; maternal ancestry, 3, 3;
hereditary traits, 3, 4 ; childhood
and schooling, 4 ; early love of
the sea, 4 ; apprentice to Jas.
Younger, 5, 6 ; first voyage on
the Friendship, 6, 7 ; rapid ad
vance in profession, and voyage
to West Indies, 7 ; two voy
ages on the King George, 7, 8
navigates John O'Gaunt, 8
commander of the John, 8, 9
three voyages on the John, and
subdues mutiny, 9 ; prosecution
and acquittal on charge of
murder, 9, 10, 11 ; voyage on the
Grantley, 11, 12 ; study and
mastery of profession, 12 ; social
ambitions and characteristics, 13,
1 4 ; voyage on the Two Friends,
14, 15 ; succeeds to the name of
Jones, 15 ; settles in Virginia, 15;
life as a planter, 15, 16, 17, 18 ;
quarrel with Lieutenant Parker,
19, 30 ; acquaintance with Jef
ferson and Livingston, 31, 33 ;
views on the political crisis, 31,
33 ; trip to New York, 33, 34 ;
offers services in navy, 24, 35 ;
opinion of the Tory party, 34,
35 ; visit to La Terpsichore, 35,
36 ; obtains plans of La Terpsi
chore, 36, 27 ; consulted on
naval affairs by Congress, 37, 38;
on naval commission, 38, 29 ; re
ports on the Alfred, 30 ; fits the
Alfred for war, 30, 31 ; reports
on the personnel and materiel ot
navy, 32-37 ; opinion on buUd
ing war-ships, 38-42 ; opposed
by Samuel Adams, 44, 4.5 ; re
ceives naval commission, 48 ;
hoists American fiag on the Al
fred, 48; " Pine Tree and Rattle
snake " emblem, 49 ; first cruise
with naval squadron, 49, 50 ;
commands the Providence, 51 ;
sails on general cruise,52 ; eludes
British frigate, .53, 54 ; success
of his cruise, 54-56 ; Mahan's
opinion of, 55, 56 ; destruction
of plantation, 57-59 ; remon
strates with Marine Committee,

364

INDEX

59-63 ; views on prize money,
etc. , 60-64 ; cruise with the Prov
idence and Alfred, 64 ; captures
the MeUish and Bideford, 64-66 ;
escapes from the Milford, 65,
66; reports for duty at Phila
delphia, 68 ; visits ruined plan
tation, 69; plans for European
cruise, 70 ; meets Lafayette, 70-
73 ; applies for the TrumljuU,
73 ; bon-mot at expense of
Adams, 74, 75 : interview with
Washington, 76 - 78 ; opposes
Captain Saltonstall, 76, 77 ; faUs
to get the Amphitrite, 78 ; ap
pointed to the Ranger, 79 ; pre
pares for voyage, 81,83; voyage to
France, 83-86 ; reports to Marine
Committee, 85, 86 ; delivers de
spatches to Franklin, 87; investi
gates charges against Bancroft,
88, 89 ; pugnacious character of,
89, 90 ; sense of personal hon
or, 90, 91 ; refits the Ranger,
100 ; first national salute to the
Stars aud Stripes, 100-103 ; in
spects the Indien, 103, 104 ; dis
pute with Lieutenant Simpson,
104, 105 ; social festivities in
France, 10,5-108 ; friendship with
Duke and Duchess of Chartres,
106-108; cruise round British
Isles, 109,110; takes Whitehaven,
110-113 ; foray on Earl of Sel
kirk's castle, 113, 114 ; returns
plate to Earl of SeUrirk, 114 ;
captures the Drake, 114^131 ;
opinion of Lieutenant Simpson,
118 ; returns to Brest with
prizes, 133-134 ; difficulties in
providing for crew and prisoners,
135 - 131 ; remonstrates with
American commissioners, 137 ;
arranges for sale of the Ranger,
138-130 ; deaUngs with Lieuten
ant Simpson, 131-134; letter to
Louis XVL, 130 131; personal
encounter with Ford, 133 ; de
scribes his crew, 135, 136 ;
quarrel with Sayre, 137-139 ; en
dorsed by Franklin and Adams,
139, 140 ; personal magnetism,
142 ; fighting characteristics,
142, 143 ; personal relations with
Adams, 144 ; reconciled to

Adams, 145 ; difficulties in ob
taining a ship, 146-149 ; com
ments on the French Navy, 147,
148 ; his position in France,
150, 151 ; letter to the Due de
Chartres, and reply, 152, 1.53 ;
appeals to King Louis XVL,
153-160 ; letter to Duchess de
Chartres, 160 - 163 ; letter to
Dr. Franklin, 163, 164; uater-
view with the King, 165, i66 ; ap
pointed to the Bon Homme
Richard, 166 ; financial aid from
the Duchess de Chartres, 167,
168 ; enlists exchanged Ameri
can sailors, 173, 174; signs
"Concordat," 175 - 178; ob
jections to "Concordat," 177,
178 ; cruise round British Isles,
180 ; captures Dutch vessel, 184 ;
loses two boats, 185 ; shipboard
discipline, 185-187 ; takes pos
session of the Union, 188; at
tack on Leith fort, 190, 191;
overtakes the Serapis and con
voy, 192-201 ; opinion of Henry
Lunt, 195, 196 ; diagram of bat
tle between the Bichard and the
Serapis, 205 ; action between the
Richard and the Serapis, 206-
242 ; manoeuvres and grapples
with the Serapis, 208-217; as
sumes comraand of French ma
rines, 218-220, 223, 234 ; wonder
ful rally of crew, 223 ; refuses to
surrender, 334 ; boards the Sera
pis, 833-236 ; interview with
Mayrant, 233 ; surrender of Pear
son, 237-343 ; story about Pear
son's surrender of his sword, 338-
841 ; courtesy to Pearson, 341 ;
cuts loose from the Serapis, 243 ;
wounded moved to the Serapis,
343, 844 ; "quilting party" flag,
844, 345; transfers Pearson to
the PaUas, 348, 349 ; drifts in ter
rible gale, 350, 251 ; arrives in the
Texel, 851 ; suspends Landais,
252 ; visits the Alliance, 253 ;
transfers crews of Alliance and
Serapis, 254 ; challenged by Lan
dais, 255, 356 ; willingness to
fight Landais, 358-860 ; incident
about the Hoods, 363 ; replies to
Sir Joseph Yorke, 365-373 ; let-

365

INDEX

ter to Robert Morris, 874 ; .States-
General resolution concerning,
273, 374; plans to leave in the
Serapis, 375-379 ; interview with
Sir Joseph Yorke, 380-383 ; gives
up the Serapis, 884 ; commands
the AUiance, 284, 385 ; cruise on
the AUiance, 385-387 ; discipline
of juiuor ofiicers, 387 ; arrives at
I'Orient, 387, 388 ; negotiations
with French privateer-owners,
888-893; plans for command
ing the Serapis, 894-390 ; corre
spondence about the Serapis,
397 ; personal habits, etc. , 398,
399 ; overhauls the AUiance, 398,
399, 300 ; difficulty with Arthiu:
Lee, 300-305; prevents the Al-
Uance being fired on, 303-305 ;
meets Aime'e de Telison, 309 ; ap
pearance, person, and manners,
310, 311, 313, 313, 314 ; lionized
by Parisian society, 310-316;
verses written to Mile, de Gerard,
314 ; loved by Aimee de Telison,
315, 316 ; relations with Aimee
de Telison, 316, 317; letters to
Aimoe de 'TeUson, 317-320 ; per
sonal appearance, habits, etc.,
333-384 ; correspondence with Ai-
m^e de 'Telison, 334. 325 ; varying
opinions as to his personal rela
tions with Aimee de Tehson, 335-
388 ; allows the Alliance to sail
with Lee, il, 1, 3 ; plans to se
cure the Serapis, 3, 3 ; gift of
Bword and title of Chevalier from
the King, 4 ; French literature
on his exploits, 5, 6, 7 ; describes
his adventures to Aim6e de Teli
son, 6, 7 ; banquet to, by Duchess
de Chartres, 8, 10; presents
sword to the Duchess, 9 ; con
tradicts story about Capt. Pear
son, 13-15 ; Louis Philippe's ac
count of, 15-17 ; unexpected
rencontre with the King, 17-19 ;
declination of commission in
French Navy, 19, 80 ; unsatisfied
ambitious, 30-34 ; attitude of
French captains toward him,
23, 83 ; saUs on the Ariel, 34 ;
overtaken by storm and puts
back, 34, 35 ; relations with Mar
shal de Castries, 35-87 ; proposed

attack on British coasts, 36, 37 ;
farewell letter to Aimee de Teli
son, 87, 38 ; voyage on Ariel to
America, 38-33 ; action with the
Triumph, 38-31 ; arrives at Phil
adelphia, 31, 33 ; terminates ser
vice in Continental navy, 32, 33 :
estimate of his naval services,
32^35 ; quarrel with Arthur Lee,
37-40 ; standing as a gentleman,
38, 39 ; questioned by Admiralty
Board, 40-43, 53-57; paper on
"Arthur Lee in France," 48-45
charges treason against Lee, 43
48 ; friendship for Dr. Franklin.
48-51 ; connection with the sail
ing of the Alhance, 56, 57 ; ex
amined by select committee of
Congress, 58-63 ; Varnum's ac
count of Jones's testimony, 59,
60, 61, 63 ; vote of thanks from
Congress, 61-63 ; acknowledges
vote of thanks, 63 ; congratula
tory letter from Washington, 64,
65 ; predicts Washington's fame,
65-67 ; appointed to command
the America, 67 ; inspects and
reports on the America, 68-73 ;
letter from Lafayette, 78, 73 ;
applies for leave of absence, and
is declined, 78 ; letter to John
Adams and reply, 74, 75; great
social popularity in Portsmouth,
76-79 ; speech at Portsmouth,
77-79; employs Elijah Hall on
the AJnerica, 79, 80 ; turns over
the America to Chevalier de
Martigne, 81, 83 ; joins Marquis
de Vaudreuil on the Triom
phante, 83 ; arrives in Philadel
phia again, 83 ; commended by
de VaudreuU, 83, 84; rests at
Bethlehem, Pa., 84; mission to
France to adjust prize moneys,
84, 85 ; successful business trans
actions, 86-88; arrives in Lon
don, 89 ; meeting with John
Adams, 90 ; delivers despatches
to Franklin, 91 ; entertained by
the King, 93 ; presented to Marie
Antoinette, 93 ; negotiations re
garding prize-money settlements,
95-103 ; difficulties and complica
tions about claims, 96-98 ; letter
to FrankUn, 99 ; appointment due

366

INDEX

to Franklin, 99 ; correspondence
between de Castries and Jones,
100 ; characteristics of style in
writing, 100, 101 ; submits nar
rative of naval operations to the
King. 101, 103 ; letter from Mal
esherbes to, 103 ; completes prize-
money settlements in Prance,
103, 104; goes to Copenhagen,
104 ; stay in England, 101^114 ;
consultation with John Adams,
105-107 ; personal relations with
John Adams, 107-110 ; commer
cial enterprises, 110 ; visit to
Lloyds, 111 ; feeling toward Eng
land, 113 ; meeting with Captain
Hood. 113, 114 ; English admira
tion for, il4 ; returns to Paris,
115 ; offers his services to the
King of France, 116-119 ; views
on the conquest of northern Af
rica by France, 119-133 ; offers to
assist in a war against the Dey
of Algiers, 138, 133 ; invited back
to Virginia, 134r-137; views on
slavery, 186, 137 ; returns to New
York on private business trans
actions, 137-130 ; applies to Con
gress for letter, ISO, 131 ; con
ference with the Board of
Treasury, 131, 133 ; gold medal,
and letter to King of France
from Congress, 133, 134; finan
cial claims against Congress, 135-
138 ; sells Rappahannock planta
tion, 138 ; popularity in America,
and visits from old shipmates,
139, 140 ; tour among country
houses, 140; visit to Mrs. Liv
ingston, 140-143 ; voyage to Lon
don, 143, 144 ; visit to theatre in
London, 144, 145 ; fondness for
horseback riding, 145 ; arrives
secretly in Paris, 145, 146 ; inter
view with Jefferson, 146, 147 ;
letter to Aimee de Telison, 147,
148 ; offer of command in Russian
Navy, 148-151 ; origin of Bus
sian offer, 149, 150 ; views on the
Constitution of United States,
153-154 ; conversation with Pat
rick Henry, 153, 154 ; views on
executive branches of American
government, 154-1.58 ; arrives in
Copenhagen, 159 ; presentation

to the King and the Princess
Royal, 1,59, 160 ; negotiations
with Count Bernstorff, 160-163;
accepts commission in Russian
Navy, 161-163 ; correspondence
about Russian appointments,
163, 163 ; letter to Jefferson on
appointment, 167, 168 ; journey
to St. Petersburg, 168, 169 ; re
ception by the Empress, 169 ;
annoyed by British naval offi
cers, 169-171 ; journey to Kher
son, 173, 173 ; commands squad
ron of Kherson, 173-176 ; hoists
fiag on ship Vladimir, 174, 175 ;
condition of ships, 174-176 ;
council of war with officers, 175,
176 ; council with Suwarrow, 181-
183 ; relations with Suwarrow,
187-190 ; correspondence with
Potemkin, 189, 190 ; narrative of
the Liman Campaign, 191 ; en
gagements with the 'Turkish fleet,
191-196 ; remonstrates with Nas
sau-Siegen, 193, 194; proposes
i" unction of Sebastopol fleet and
^iman squadron, 196, 197 ; writes
report of Battle of Liman, 198-
300 ; sends report to St. Peters
burg, 300, 301 ; opinion of
Nassau-Siegen, 303 ; assists at
bombardment of Oczakoff, 304,
305 ; returns to St. Petersburg,
806 ; description of Suwarrow,
308-311 ; summoned by Catharine
to St. Petersburg, 313-314; in
terview at Kherson with Po
temkin, 814^317 ; reviews naval
campaign, 314-316 ; survey of
naval architecture, 818-831 ;
journey to St. Petersburg, 331 ;
confusion of dates in Russian
campaign, 231, 222 ; admiration
for Empress Catharine, 883, 384 ;
life at St. Petersburg, 385 ; victim
of an infamous plot, 335-839 ;
letter in his own defence to the
Empress, 333, 333 ; inspects the
Baltic fleet, 333-335 ; severe ill
ness, 335 ; obtains leave of ab
sence, 836-344 ; farewell letter to
the Empress, 337, 338; weak phys
ical condition, 838, 839; suppres
sion of personal correspondence
by Russian spies, 339-343 ; de-

367

INDEX

fended by Count de Segur, 243,
344 ; journey to Warsaw, 345 ;
friendship with Kosciusko, 846 ;
declares loyalty to the Empress,
347, 348 ; Segur's opinion of,
243-248 ; meeting with Leopold
H., 853, 353 ; journey to Amster
dam, 253 ; correspondence with
old friends, 354 ; letter to Wash
ington, 255, 356 ; last letter to
Franklin, 359, 360 ; stay in Lon
don, 361-866 ; defended by Cur
tis, Fanshawe, and others, 363-
364 ; desire for British esteem,
365 ; social attentions, 865 ; en
tertained by Fox, 865 ; arrives
in Paris, 366, 867 ; consults phy
sicians, 267, 268 ; delicate state
of health, 868 ; views on state of
Prance, 368-279 ; friendship with
Barere, 370-373 ; attitude tow
ard French crisis, 273 - 275 ;
debates in civic clubs, 273-375 ;
upholds Louis XVL and the mon
archy, 274, 275 ; discussion with
Tom Paine, 275, 276 ; exasper
ated by rough treatment of the
King, 276, 277 ; meeting with
revolutionists, 277 ; denounces
excesses of the Assembly, 278 ;
improves in health, 279 ; resigns
from Russian Navy, 279 ; last
visit to England, 379-383; en
tertained by Walpole, etc. , 2S0 ;
admired by young naval ofiicers,
381, 883 ; conversations with
naval men, 381, 383 ; anecdote
of crippled saUor, 383, 383 ; opin
ion of Mirabeau, 384 ; criticism
of Lafayette, 284, 285; visit to
Holland on state business, 286 ;
views on war against Algiers,
287 ; summary of situation in
Prance, 287-290; financial ar
rangements, 288 ; comments on
the Assembly, 389, 290; pubU
cation of treatise on the French
Navy, 292-296 ; views on naval
affairs, 393-295; letter from
Horace Walpole, 295, 396 ; views
on naval tactics, 897-303 ; self-
confidence, 399-303 ; trip to Hol
land, 304-307; invited by Su
warrow to return to Russia,
304-306; retires finaUy from

Russian service, 304-307 ; re
turns to Paris, 307 ; visit to As
sembly and last public appear
ance, 308 ; speech at a grand
supper, 308-313 ; visit from Gou
verneur Morris, 313, 313, 314, 815 ;
grooving weakness and suffering,
313, 314; receives many visi
tors, 313, 314 ; dictates wiU, 315 ;
death, 315-317 ; particidars of
will, 318, 319 ; private fortune at
death, 318, 319 ; letter to his sis
ter, Mrs. Taylor, 330 ; provides
for Aimee de Telison, 331, 332 ;
resolution of French Assembly,
322, 323 ; public funeral 323, 334;
fimeral oration of Barere, 335;
Napoleon's opinion of, 335 ; dying
ambition, 336 ; early disadvan
tages, 336 ; epitome of career, 337;
self-taught, 328 ; letter to Coun
tess of SeUdrk, 388, 339; do
mestic affections, 389 ; personal
friendship, 389, 330 ; relations
with the fair sex, 330 ; dealings
with subordinates, 330, 331 ; a
strict disciplinarian, 331 ; atti
tude toward equals and superiors,
331; conduct toward naval offi
cers, 333 ; bequeaths sword to
Richard Dale, 319,333; rare char
acter and genius, 333 ; portraits
of, 337, 338 ; busts of, 338 ; pa
pers, journals, and literary re
mains, 355, 356; lives, reminis
cences, and works on, 35(>-359
Letters of, to John Adams, il,
75 ; to Dr. Bancroft, 1, 380-283,
295, 296; il, 36, 37, 112; to
Count Bernstorff, ti., 160, 161 ; to
BersoUe, 1, 128. 189 ; to Empress
Catharine, il, 237, 238, 247; to
M. de Castries, il, 86 ; to Duch
ess of Chartres, 1, 160-163; to
Benjamin Franklin, i., 163, 300,
304, 305 ; il, 99, 359, 860 ; to W.
and A. Frazier, ii., 135-137 ; to
French Commissioners, 1, 137;
to Joseph Hewes, 1, 19, 30, 24,
33-37, 53, 54, 57-59, 116-131, 135,
136, 146-148, 150, 151, 176-179 ;
ii. , 89 ; to Samuel Huntington,
il, 63 ; to John Jay, ii. , 130 ; to
Thomas Jefferson, 1 60, 317
318; u., 103, 104, 145, 146, 167,

368

INDEX

168, 387-390 ; to Admiral Ker
saint, il, 297-303 ; to Lafayette,
ii., 154-158; to Louis XVL,
1,130,131,154-160; 11,101,117,
118; to Robert Morris, 1, 60-
63, 66, 67 ; to Count de Segur, il,
347 ; to Countess of Selkirk, ii.,
338, 339 ; to Lieutenant Simpson,
1, 133-134; to the States-Gen
eral of Holland,!., 866-370; to
Suwarrow, ii., 188, 189 ; to Mrs.
Jane Taylor, ii., 330; to Aimfee
de Telison, 1, 318-330; il, 6, 7,
37, 38; to Treasury Board, il,
137 ; to George Washington, il ,
65, 355, 356; to Lord Wemyss,
11,284,285
Jones, William, i., 1, 6, 9
Jones, William Paul, 1, 1, 6, 9, 15
Josepli IL, of Austria, il, 202
Kersaint, Commodore de, men
tioned, i., 25, 86, 87; il, 296;
sketch of letter from Jones on
naval tactics, 297-302
Kinburn, il, 180
King George, the, 1 , 7, 8
Kolnitz, ii., 198
Korsakoff, Captain, ii., 193, 194,
199, 213, 214
Kosciusko, General, il, 246
Kreuss, Vice-Admiral, il, 170
Krudener, Baron, ii. , 161, 162, 304
Kutsukoff, General, il, 196
Lafayette, Marquis de, meets
Paul Jones, 1, 70-73 ; friendship
for Jones and approval of his
naval plans, 72, 73; sympathy
with America, 94; letter to
Jones, ii., 73 ; letter from Jones,
154-158 ; charged with hypocrisy
by Mirabeau, 278, 279 ; criticised
by Jones, 284, 285
Landais, Pierre, commands the Al
liance, 1 , 181 ; previous life and
character, 182 ; mans two prize
ships, 189; fires on the Bon
Homme Richard, 213, 230, 231
deserts from Jones, 246; sus
pended from command, 252
challenges Captain Cottineau,
252 ; leaves the Alliance, 253
253 ; duel with Captain Landais,
254 ; goes to Amsterdam, 255

writes abusive letters to Jones,
255 ; chaUenges Jones, 355 ;
avoids duel by flying, 256 ; quar
rel with Dale, 2.57, 258 ; intrigues
with Arthur Lee, 301, 303 ; saUs
for America, 305; declared in
sane and dismissed from the ser
vice, 305, 306 ; Jones remarks on
fate of, u., 36, 37
Langdon, Mary, 1, 345
Lee, Arthur, accuses Bancroft, 1,
88 ; characterized, 97 ; employs
spies, 133, 133, 137 ; repudiates
Sayre, 139; faUs to sign letter
exculpating Jones, 140; hostU
ity to Jones, 149 ; quarrel with
Jones, 300-306; conspires with
Landais to seize the Alhance,
301-306 ; voyage to Boston, 305,
306 ; opposes Landais on ship
board, 305, 306 ; early career of,
li., S"? ; controversy with Jones,
37^0 ; Jones's pamphlet against,
43-45 ; charge of treason against,
43-48 ; motives in opposing
French alliance, 51, 53; sus
pected of dictating admiralty
questions to Jones, 53-57; fur
niture brought to America, 57
Leopold II. , king, il, 353, 853
Lexington, the, i., 29, 174
Liman, battle of, u., 192-196
Linthwait, J. W., 1, 230, 234, 388
Littlepage, Chevalier, ii., 300-303,
240, 841, 845
Lively, the, 1, 157
Livingston, Edward, 1, 23
Livingston, PhUip, 1, 81, 33; il,
38, 39, 91
Livingstone, Mme., il, 141, 143,
338
Livoncourt, Chevalier de, 1, 361,
376
Loudon, Mary, u., 319, 330, 381
LouisX;lV., 1,307
Louis XV., 1, 306, 307, 308
Louis XVL, attitude toward Amer
ica, 1, 95, 96, 97; receives report
of Jones, 130, 131 ; appealed to
by Jones, 153-160 ; interview
with Jones, 165, 166 ; mentioned,
884, 316 ; kindness to Aimee de
Telison, 317, 318; unexpected
rencontre with Jones, il, 17, 19 ;
attitude and conduct toward

Vol. II. —24

369

INDEX

Jones, 19-23 ; invites Jones to
luncheon, 98, 93 ; liberal charac
ter, 93-95 ; interest in Jones,
150; character portrayed by
Jones, 374, 87.5 ; weakness
against the populace, 376, 877
Louis Philippe, il, 10, 11, 15, 16,
17, 133
Lunt, Cutting, 1, 185, 186
Lunt, Henry, mentioned, 1, 51,
174; conduct during fight be
tween the Bon Homme Richard
and the Serapis, 195, 196 ; cen
sured by Mahan, 195 ; Jones's
friendship for, 196; represents
Jones in quarrel with Landais,
'856-358; left in charge of the
Ariel, il, 3
Lynde, James, 1, 846
Macarty, Eugene, 1, 354; il,
3,3
Macbean, Duncan, 1, 17,58; u.,
124, 135
Macduff, Ian, 1, 3
Macduff, Jeanne, 1, 3, 3
Mackenzie, A. S., 1, 238
Madison, Jas., ii., 63
Magnifique, the, il, 80, 81
Mahan, Alfred, opinion of Jones,
1 , 55, 56 ; note on mutiny on the
Ranger, il7 ; censure of Henry
Lunt, 195
Malesherbes, M. de, il, 96, 103, 103
Marcereau, M. , 1 , 388, 389, 390, 391
Marie Antoinette, character of, 1,
95 ; meeting with Jones, il, 93 ;
attitude toward America and
Jones, 93, 95
Marsan, Marchioness, 1, 309, 310
313, 318
Martigne, Chevalier de, il, 81
Matthews, M., il, 58,60
MaxweU, M. M., 1, 9, 10, 11
Mayrant, John, mentioned, 1, 47,
174 ; severely wounded, 306 ; leads
boarding party on to the .Sera
pis, 832-335 ; praised by Jones,
33::J, 334 ; acts for Jones in duel,
356 ; adventure at Corunna, 387,
388 ; signs with French privateer
owners, 389-892 ; mentioned by
Jones, 395; characterized by
Jones, ii. , 140 ; Jones's affection
for, 338

Mayrant, Josephine, 1, 334
Mehemet Hassan, ii., 177, 191,
l'J2, 204, 307
MeUish, the, 1, 64, 66, 67
Milford, the, 1, 65
Miller, R. W., u., 13, 14
Mirabeau, charges Lafayette with
hypocrisy, ii., 378, 879 ; Jones's
opinion of, 384
Mordwinoff, Admiral, il, 174, 196,
197, 198, 816, 317
Morgan, General, 1, 58
Morris, Gouverneur, visit to Jones,
ii., 318, 313, 314, 315 ; witnesses
Jones's will, 315 ; illness of, 333
Morris, Ro'oert, Jones's letter to, 1,
60-64 ; advice to Jones about
Saltonstall, 76, 77 ; despatch to
Franklin, 93 ; Jones writes to,
374; appointed Minister of Ma
rine, ii., 54; advice to Jones re
garding Arthur Lee, 67 ; re
fuses leave of absence to Jones,
73 ; directs Jones to give up the
America, 81 ; advances money
to Jones, 136 ; executor of
Jones's wUl, 318
Nassau-Siegen, Prince, enlists in
Russian service, ii. , i50 ; posi
tion in Russian fleet, 175 ; char
acter and career of, 185-1 87 ; sets
fire to Turkish war-ships, 193,
194 ; writes false report of the
battle of Liman, 199, 300 ; treach
ery toward Jones, 308 ; denounced
by Potemkin, 816 ; implicated in
plot against Jones, 228-232 ; ex
cluded by Empress from Russian
Court, 830-232 ; after-career and
death, 231, 238
Nicholson, James, i., 68; il, 33
Nolte, Peter, 1, 229
Oczakoff, description of, il, 177-
179 ; besieged and captured by
Suwarrow, 303-206
Orange, Prince of, 1, 272, 274, 276
OrviUiers, Count d', 1, 106, 107,
123, 125
Paine, Thomas, il, 276
PaUas, the, described, 1, 171, 173;
saUs in Jones's squadron, 180;
captures the Mayflower, 184 ;

370

INDEX

commanded by Cottineau, 191 ;
captures Countess of Scarboro',
336, 337 ; takes wounded and
prisoners aboard, 344, 348 ; Cap
tain Pearson on board, 848, 249 ;
voyage to the Texel, 251
Park, Morris, 1, 346
Parker, Lieutenant, 1, 19, 30
Patience, the, 1, 173
Paul, Adam, 1, 1, 8
Paul, Elizabeth, 1, 1, 3
Paul, Janet, 1 , 1, 8
Paul, Jeanne Macduff, Paul Jones's
mother, 1, 3, 3
Paul, John, Paul Jones's father, 1 ,
1, 3, 3
Paul, Mary, i., 1, 3
Paul, Robert, 1, 1, 2
Paul, WUliam, i., 1
Peale, C. W., u., 338
Pearson, Richard, conduct on sight
ing the Bon Homme Richard, 1,
199, 300 ; report and court-mar
tial after defeat, 303, 304 ; ma
noeuvres against the Bon Homme
Richard, 808, 309; grappled by
the Richard, 317 ; strikes his
flag, 235 ; goes on board the
Richard, 336 ; surrenders his
ship, 237-843 ; remark to Jones
on surrendering, 338-341 ; trans
ferred to the PaUas, 348, 849;
Jones's opinion of, il , 13-i5
Pearson, R. H, 1, 335; il, 883
Peirce, Augusta, i. , 845
Pieroey, WUliam, 1, 337
Pindar, Captain John, il , 31
Pompadour, Mme. de, 1, 306, 307,
308
Popoff, Colonel, U., 800, 814
Potemkin, Prince-Marshal, charac
ter and career of, ii. , 181-185;
correspondence with Jones, 189,
190 ; orders given to Nassau-
Siegen, 194 ; conference with
Jones, 196, 197 ; suppresses
Jones's report, 198-300; vanity
and cowardice of, 198 ; forwards
garbled report to St. Petersburg,
300 ; interview with Jones at
Kherson, 314-217
Potter, Thomas, 1, 51, 286, 837,
887, 891
Providence, the, commanded by
Jones, 1 , 51 ; sails on cruise, 53,

53 ; eludes British frigate, 53,
54 ; successful operations under
Jones, 55, 56 ; captures the Mel
lish aud Bideford, 64-66
Randall, Arthur, 1, 310, 334,
889
Randolph, the, 1, 46, 108
Ranger, the, launched at Ports
mouth, 1 , 78 ; description, 79,
80; voyage to France, 83-86;
crew of, 86 ; saluted by French
fleet, 10], i08; cruises round
British Isles, 109-114; captures
the Drsike, li6-131 ; captured by
British at Charleston, 137 ; roster
of, ii. , 339-343 ; marine guard of,
341-343
Read, John, 1, 68
Reprisal, the, 1, 89
Reynst, Vice-Admiral de, 1 , 376
Riijas, Chevalier de, il , 300
Ricot, Captain, 1, 190, 193, 195
Riemersma, Commodore, 1. 876
Robinson, John C, i., 51, 174,
886
Saint Esprit, the, 1, 135
St. Mary's Isle Castle, 1, 113
SaltonstaU, Dudley, 1, 44, 46, 49,
74, 75, 70, 77; il, 75
Sands, Robert, 1, 3, 164
Sargent, Nathan, i., 51, 63, 119
Sartine, M. de, disappoints Jones,
1 , 149, 150 ; quoted by Jones,
1.54-1 58 ; negotiations with Jones
about ships, 155-158, 161 ; gives
Jones command of the Bon
Homme Richard, 166; report
from Dr. Franklin, 860 ; orders
to Jones regarding his ships,
378 ; opposed to Treaty of Alli
ance, il, 25, 26 ; resigns as Min
ister of Marine, 25
Sayre, Stephen, 1, 137, 138, 139;
il, 43
Schweighauser, 1. 128, 129
Scipio (Jones), slave of Paul Jones,
1, 83, 51, 58, 63, 136; il, 186
Seavey, Helen, 1, 345
Segur, Count de, mentioned, ii.,
150 ; interviews Empress on
Jones's behalf, 808, 389-331;
position at Russian Court, 339 ;
secures vindication for Jones,

371

INDEX

330-333; gives letter to Jones,
343 ; opinion of Jones, 243, 244
life and character, 248, 349
friendship with Curtis, 863
Selim IH.,il, 807
Selkirk, Countess of, ii., 328,
329
Selkirk, Earl of, 1, 113, 114; u.
280
Serapis, the, description, 1 , 1 97-199:
battle with the Bon Homme Bich
ard, 202-205 ; gunnery of. 208
blanketed by the Richard, 213,
214; grappled by the Richard,
'216 ; vain efforts to get clear, 216,
317 ; bombards at close range,
316, 218 ; sets fire to the Richard,
338; explosion on, 329, 830
boarded by the Richard's crew,
838-836 ; surrenders to Jones,
243, 343 ; surviving crew of, 347.
348; drifts in gale, 850, 251:
arrives at the Texel, 851 ; Jones
plans to sail in, 377-379;
wounded on, 888, 383 ; roster of,
ii. , 358-354 ; list of officers and
casualties 353-354
Shelburne, Lord, ii,, 43, 380
Sunolin, Baron, il, 148, 150, 151
Simpson, Lieutenant, 1, 104, 105,
117, 118, 131, 133, 133, 134, 135,
137
South Carolina, the, 1, 43
Stacey, Samuel, 1, 61
Stack, Edward, 1, 839, 888; il,
3, 3
Starbuck, Owen, 1, 51, 118
Stars and Stripes adopted as the
American flag, 1 , 79 ; first salute
to, by foreign fleet, 100, 101
Suwarrow, General, coUeague of
Jones, ii. , 163 ; first council of
war with Jones, 181-183; posi
tion under Potemkin, 184, 185;
friendly relations with Jones,
187 ; marches to invest Oczakoff,
196 ; wounded at Oczakoff, 203;
captures Oczakoff, 204^206 ; cam
paign in Moldavia and WaUa-
chia, 306, 207; routs Turkish
armies and capiiures fortress of
Ismail, 307 ; Jones's description
of, 308-311 ; criticised by Leo
pold II. , 353; invites Jones to
Russia, 304-306

Taylor, Mrs. Jane, ii., 318, 319,
330, 355, 356
Taylor, Janette, 1, 164, 279, 309
Telison, Aimee de, edits Gerard's
"Memoir du Combat," 1, 383;
parentage and early histor j', 306-
308, 317 ; meets Paul Jones, 309 ;
attachment to Jones, 313, 315,
316; letter to Jones, 315, 316;
relations to Jones, 317 ; letter
from Jones, 317-319 ; figures in
historical novels, 38i ; personal
appearance and accomplish
ments, 331, 333 ; correspondence
with Jones, 334, 335; assists
Jones in correspondence, etc.,
335; becomes teacher of the
EngUsh language, 336 ; varying
opinions about her relations
with Jones, 335-338; forwards
pamphlets to Jones, il, 5-7 ;
fareweU letter from Jones, 37,
38 ; employed at French Court,
147 ; letter from Paul Jones,
147, 148; discovers origin of
Russian offer to Jones, 149, 150 ;
correspondence with Jones in
tercepted, 840, 343; devotion to
Jones during last illness, 313,
313, 314 ; provided for by Jones,
313, 313 ; entertains at her house,
321
Ten Eyck, Rosalie, il , 141, 143
Terpsichore, the, 1, 36, 296
Thevenard, M. de, 1, 302, 303, 304,
305 ; il, 1
Thornton, 1 99; ii., 43
Thouvenot, Chevalier de, 1, 380
Thouvenot, Mme. de, i., 330
Tiercelin, M. de, 1, 307, 308
Tieroelin-Bonneval, Mile, de, 1,
306, 308
Toulouse, Count de, 1, 86, 106, 107,
108
Triomphante, the, ii., 83, 84
Triumph, the, ii. , 88-31
Troubridge, Sir 'Thomas, il , 38
TrumbuU, the, 1, 73
Two Friends, the, 1, 14, 15
Union, the, 1, 188, 189; ii., 105
Van der Huyt, ii., 337
Van Staphorst brothers, il, 863,
364

372

INDEX

Varnum, J. M., 11, 58, 59, 60,
61
Vaudreuil, M. de, ii. , 81, 83, 83,
300
Vauguyon, Duke de la, 1, 861, 371,
873,876,877, 884; il, 19
Vendahl, Countess de la, 1, 309,
313, 314, 315
Vengeance, the, 1, 178, 190, 191,
193, 351
Vergennes, Count de, il, 43, 44,
46, 47, 93, 115, 183
Vincent, Captain, 1, 47
Vladimir, the, il, 174, 180, 818
Wallingford, Richard, 1, 51,
110, 111, 119, 130
Walpole, Horace, 1, 865; ii., 280,
395
Warren, the, i., 77
Washington, George, views on the
crisis preceding the Revolution,
1, 81, 33 ; opinion of Jones, 37 ;
interview with Jones, 76 - 78 ;
sends despatches by Jones, 87 ;
congratulatory letter to Jones,

il , 64, 65 ; Jones predicts hia
fame, 65 - 67 ; letter from Jones,
855, 856 ; writes to Jones, 856,
357; disapproves Jones's Rus
sian connection, 857
Washington, Martha, 1, 18
Wayne, Anthony, il, 38, 39
Wells, Jonathan, 1 , 113
Whipple, Captain Abraham, i., 44,
46
Wickes, Captain Lambert, i. , 29
Woinowitch, Admiral, ll, 197
Yarmouth, the, 1, 46, 47
Yorke, Sir Joseph, demands Jones's
ships, 1, 251 ; requests land
ing of wounded, 262, 263, 264 ;
claims Jones is a pirate, 264,
865 ; Jones's reply to, 365-373 ;
points against Jones, 374, 375,
377 ; letter to British seaman's
wife, 379, 880; interview with
Jones, 881, 288; kindness to
wounded sailors, 281, 383 ;
Jones's reference to, ii., 6, 7, 8
Younger. James, 1, 5, 6, 7

373

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