Ten days later a Swiss financier, Jean Conrad Hottinguer, showed up after dark at the Left Bank quarters of the Americans and told them President Adams had insulted Barras in a speech assailing French attacks on American ships. To begin negotiations, said Hottinguer, Barras would require an official apology, along with douceurs, or “sweeteners” for the directors—Talleyrand, Bonaparte, and the others. When Marshall and Pinckney questioned Hottinguer about the douceurs, the bankers asserted they were “gratifications” that were “customary distributions in European diplomatic affairs.”31
The entrance to Talleyrand’s lavish mansion off the Place de la Révolution (later, Place de la Concorde) was a European Portal of Power, through which the naïve American negotiators—John Marshall, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Elbridge Gerry—thought they could enter and obtain an immediate peace settlement with France. (UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE)
Marshall asked whether such a payment would buy the release of captured American ships and cargoes still in French government hands. Hottinguer shook his head “no.”
Would the payment at least earn suspension of French attacks on the high seas? Again, a firm “no.”
Believing Hottinguer might be an adventurer, Marshall and Pinckney demanded that he return with a written request from the Foreign Ministry.
Two days later—again, at night—Hottinguer showed up with a second Swiss banker, Pierre Bellamy, a close friend of Talleyrand. He told Marshall that Talleyrand considered himself a friend of the United States, but the directors felt John Adams had insulted France and demanded “a spontaneous gesture of friendship or gift” to placate them enough to receive American envoys. The douceurs, he explained, were similar to “the fealty and remuneration demanded by the ancient kings of France.” Bellamy said he believed a gift of 120 million francs—about $250,000—would suffice, along with a loan of $12.8 million as a show of good faith.
“You must understand,” Bellamy told the Americans, “without money, you will not be received.”32
Marshall rejected the demand outright, warning that if France preferred war, “we regret the unavoidable necessity of defending ourselves,” and he and Pinckney showed the two men to the door.33
Hottinguer returned a week later, warning the Americans, “Think of the power and violence of France. Give them the gifts and loans and buy some time. I fear the Directory will declare war on America.”
Pinckney exploded: “We are unable to defend our commerce on the seas, but we will defend our shores!”
“It is not a question of war, but money,” Hottinguer insisted. “The Directors are waiting for money!”
“We have already answered that demand,” Pinckney and Marshall answered in unison.
“No, you have not,” snapped the banker. “What is your answer?”
“It is no!” both Americans shouted. Then Pinckney barked, “Not even a six pence!”
Hottinguer sighed but kept his calm, spending two more hours pleading, cajoling, threatening: a bribe would be of great advantage to the Americans, old allies should not bicker over money; the commissioners were risking war and endangering their nation by refusing to pay so small a sum.
“He stated that Hamburg and other states of Europe were obliged to buy peace,” Marshall related, “and that it would be in our interest to do so.”
An Oxford-educated lawyer who signed both the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney rejected efforts by the French government to extort bribes in exchange for a peaceful settlement of the “quasi-war” with America. His response to the French—“Millions for defense, but not a cent for tribute”—became a national battle cry in the United States. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
Marshall replied, “Our case is different from that of one of the minor nations of Europe.”
They were unable to maintain their independence. . . . America is a great and . . . powerful nation. . . . Our national independence . . . is dearer to us than the friendship of France. America had taken a neutral stance. She had a right to take it. No nation had a right to force us out of it. To lend a sum of money to a belligerent power . . . is to relinquish our neutrality and take part in the war. To lend this money under the lash and coercion of France is . . . to submit to a foreign government imposed on us by force.34
Talleyrand’s efforts to extort bribes from the American commissioners knew no bounds, however. He sent a third banker, Lucien Hauteval, and when he failed to extort any money, Talleyrand sent Tom Paine, Connecticut artist John Trumbull, and other Americans with Jacobin sympathies—all to no avail.
As weeks elapsed, the commissioners grew anxious about the mounting costs of their stay. “Friends”—secretly enlisted by Talleyrand—steered them to a palatial mansion owned by Voltaire’s niece, a delightful thirty-two-year-old widow whom the great philosopher had adopted as his daughter before adopting her as his mistress.
Madame Reine-Philiberte Marquise de Villette charmed the commissioners as much as she had her uncle, with magnificent suppers that they shared with leaders of Parisian society and with a private box at the theater, opera, and other entertainments. The commissioners luxuriated in their new quarters that, though inexpensive, were far more lavish than their previous lodgings and commanded a sweeping view of the magnificent gardens of Marie de Medici—today’s Jardin du Luxembourg.
“Paris presents an incessant round of amusement and dissipation,” Marshall exulted in an uncharacteristically thoughtless letter to Polly.
Every day there is something new, magnificent and beautiful; every night you may see a spectacle which astonishes and enchants the imagination. The most lively fancy . . . cannot equal the reality of the opera. All that you can conceive and a great deal more . . . in the line of amusement is to be found in this gay metropolis but I suspect it would not be easy to find a friend. I would not live in Paris to be among the wealthiest of its citizens.35
When Polly received her husband’s letter, she was staying with relatives in Winchester, Virginia, where she had gone after her father’s death in early January. Three days later, on January 13, 1798, the Marshalls’ third son, John, was born, but, in the absence of her husband and the wake of her father’s death, Polly sank into a deep depression. The birth was not only difficult—as all births were for her—her husband had stayed away far longer than she had anticipated.
Already in despair over his absence when she lost her father, Polly Marshall collapsed in tears after reading the first part of his letter describing Paris as a “gay metropolis” with an “incessant round of amusement and dissipation.” As she read further, she all but despaired of ever seeing her husband again—with good reason:
“I now have rooms,” he foolishly confessed, “in the house of a very accomplished, a very sensible, and a very amiable lady whose temper . . . is domestic and who generally sits with us two to three hours in the afternoon. This renders my situation less unpleasant than it has been.”36
Indeed, Madame de Villette overwhelmed Marshall and Gerry with favors, teaching them to speak French, showing them the sights of Paris—by day and by night. Pinckney had come to Europe with his wife and daughter and spent his free time with them, but, as Mrs. Pinckney noted, the thirty-two-year-old Marquise “always dines with the two bachelors,” as she called Marshall and Gerry, “and renders their situation very agreeable.”37
Although Marshall tried assuring his wife that “no consideration will induce me ever again to consent to place the Atlantic between us,” the first part of his letter had done its damage. Convinced that her husband was in the clutches of a French courtesan, Polly sank into so deep a depression that her sister took her out to the country to care for her.
Polly’s concerns were not without foundation.
“Why,” Marshall heard the seductive French whisper one evening. “Why will you not lend us money,” Madame de Villette had surprised Marshall in the quiet of her dimly lit salon. “If you would only give us the money, we could arrange everyt
hing satisfactorily. We gladly loaned you money during your revolution.”38
Stunned by the lady’s words at first, Marshall called in Pinckney. Both suddenly realized their hostess was also a Talleyrand agent. The French Foreign Ministry had duped them into renting lodgings subsidized by the French government to lure them into the arms of a seductress. Pinckney told his hostess he planned to return to America immediately. Madame de Villette hissed that if he ended his mission, France had a powerful political party in America ready to seize power from the Adams administration by force if necessary.
In April 1798 Marshall and Pinckney abandoned their quest. They sent Talleyrand a thirty-five-page “memorial . . . in which we review[ed] fully the reciprocal complaints of the two countries against each other” and summarized their intent in coming to France and their view of the reasons for their failure.39 “There is not the least hope of an accommodation with this government,” Pinckney concluded. “We sue in vain to be heard.”40
Gerry, however, took issue with the two Federalists. He insisted that peace with France was within reach and that “to prevent war, I will stay.”41 He said he would apologize to the Directory for President Adams’s anti-French statements and negotiate a peace treaty with the French as a private citizen.
Outraged by Gerry’s disloyalty, Pinckney and Marshall showed Gerry to the door and never spoke to him again. Although Pinckney and Marshall intended to leave France together, Pinckney had brought his thirteen-year-old daughter along, and she was ill, forcing him to remain long after his mission ended.
On April 24, 1798, Marshall reached Bordeaux, “bid an eternal adieu to Europe and its crimes,”42 and set sail for America aboard the Alexander Hamilton. He called the ship “excellent . . . but for the sin of the name, which makes my return in her almost . . . criminal.”43 Marshall believed that Hamilton’s espousal of alliance with Britain threatened American independence as much as Gerry’s espousal of alliance with France. He was convinced America would soon be at war with France or Britain or both.
Before he left he sent a letter to the American consul general in Paris asking that he tell the Marquise “in my name and in the handsomest manner everything which respectful friendship can dictate.”44 Although some historians suggest that the handsome forty-two-year-old Marshall had an affair with the Marquise, there is no evidence to support the suggestion—even in the notes of the all-knowing Talleyrand, whose omnipresent spies reported every word and every move—sexual as well as political—of every important figure in Paris, day and night.
By the time Marshall embarked, news of the failed mission had reached Philadelphia, where congressional Anglophiles and Francophiles turned on each other, shouting insults and even assaulting each other. Federalist Congressman Roger Griswold of Connecticut got into a shouting match with Vermont’s Republican Congressman Matthew Lyon, with Griswold accusing Lyon of cowardice during the Revolutionary War.
Lyon sprang across the floor of the House and spat in Griswold’s face—earning the Vermont congressman the epithet of “The Spitting Lyon.” Griswold reacted by beating Lyon about the head with his cane. Lyon retreated to a fire pit for a pair of tongs to parry; Griswold tackled him, and other congressmen jumped into the fray to pull Griswold from the melee by the legs.
The Lyon-Griswold free-for-all was but the first of the congressional crises that threatened to bring down constitutional government in the United States—much to Talleyrand’s delight. With Marshall and Pinckney out of the negotiations, Talleyrand planned extending negotiations with Gerry long enough to permit what he called the “French Party” in America—Jefferson’s pro-French Republicans—to seize power.
Like many French foreign ministers before and after, Talleyrand completely misjudged the temper of Americans. Despite their calls for rapprochement with France, even Republican congressmen grew uneasy when dispatches from the commissioners arrived. The “unexampled arrogance” of Talleyrand outraged President Adams, who sent a message to Congress for funds to reinforce coastal defenses, build a navy, arm merchant ships, and call up an army of 15,000 men to repel a possible French invasion.
Vice President Jefferson called the President “insane,” claiming Adams had concealed all but the negative aspects of the peace commission’s dispatches from Paris. Republicans demanded to see all the commission’s messages.
On April 3, 1798, the President obliged, with the secretary of state disguising the names of Hottinguer, Bellamy, and Hauteval as X, Y, and Z to protect them from retaliation. Jefferson called them a “dish cooked up by Marshall where swindlers are made to appear as the French government,”45 but the XYZ dispatches soon silenced the vice president and French partisans in Congress and across the nation. Indeed, they provoked a frenzy of war fever and violent anti-French demonstrations. More than a thousand young men in Philadelphia marched to the President’s house to volunteer to fight against France. The President came out to address them, dressed incongruously for so short and stout a man, in military parade dress, complete with a sword in a gleaming scabbard that scraped the ground as he waddled to and fro.
A cartoon entitled “Congressional Pugilists” shows Roger Griswold of Connecticut (right) fighting with Vermont Republican Matthew Lyon on the floor of the House of Representatives. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
When First Lady Abigail Adams greeted another group, she wore a flowerlike device she had sewn together herself, with radiating bows of black ribbon. Federalists converted it into a black cockade that became their symbol of opposition to the French tricolor cockade.
“Every [black] cockade will be another Declaration of Independence,” wrote the editor of Boston’s Columbian Centinnel.46
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, the President’s alma mater, Harvard, canceled the French oration at graduation exercises. In Philadelphia wearers of Abigail Adams’s black cockade ripped tricolor cockades off Republicans in the State House yard, setting off a riot that required a troop of cavalry to suppress.
Across the nation Federalist newspapers called for expulsion of French aliens for plotting with Jacobins and Republicans to overthrow the government. Frightened French émigrés—many of them royalists who had fled the guillotines of the French Revolution—crowded onto ships bound for Europe to escape the tar and feathers of American mobs.
In April Congress created a Department of the Navy, authorized acquisition of twelve ships—later thirty-six—with up to twenty guns each, and ordered them to seize French privateers and other raiders in or near American waters. It authorized merchant ships to arm and defend themselves against French attackers and to seize French ships and contribute them to the navy in exchange for 6 percent government bonds.
In May Congress imposed an embargo on trade with France, and the State Department rejected the credentials of the new French ambassador who, together with all French consuls, sailed back to France and left the United States without French diplomatic representation. As John Marshall sailed home from France, news reached the United States that Napoléon Bonaparte was massing an army to invade the United States.
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* Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for reelection to a third term in 1939 and won a fourth term four years later. Mounting concern over the lack of presidential term limits provoked enactment of the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution in 1951, limiting the president to no more than two full terms in office.
CHAPTER 8
Our Washington Is No More
JOHN MARSHALL’S SHIP ARRIVED IN NEW YORK FROM FRANCE ON June 17, bringing with it news of Bonaparte’s latest military adventures. Not satisfied with conquering half of Europe, he had set off in June 1797 for the Levant with the largest force to cross the Mediterranean since the Crusades—400 transports carrying 35,000 elite troops, escorted by thirteen ships of the line (battleships) and more than forty frigates and corsairs. On June 12 he had reached Malta, confiscated the bullion and treasures of the ancient Knights of St. John, then sailed for Alexandria to conquer and plunder Egypt
and the Middle East.
Bonaparte’s outrageous plunder of Malta’s national wealth provoked demonstrations against French expansionism across Britain and in New York, where it reached a peak of intensity when Marshall’s ship tied up in lower Manhattan. The city gave the man who stood up to the French a hero’s welcome—indeed, a welcome fit for a President and not seen since Washington’s presidential inauguration. The plaudits and cheers only grew as his coach left New York for Philadelphia to report to President Adams.
Secretary of State Pickering met him six miles outside the capital with a delegation of high-level government officials and three troops of cavalry in dress uniform to escort him into the city. As artillery fired salvo after salvo of welcoming blasts, Philadelphia’s churches pealed their greetings to the returning envoy. Crowds filled the streets, jammed into every window and leaned over every rooftop to glimpse “the man who, at the hazard of his life, had displayed the most eminent talents and fortitude in the support of the interest and honor of his country.”1
The Speaker of the House led a congressional delegation at a lavish banquet for him and 120 guests, including the entire cabinet and the justices of the Supreme Court. Vice President Jefferson did not attend. One of the traditional toasts for each of the sixteen states set the crowd aroar by echoing Pinckney’s defiant cry: “Millions for defense, but not a cent for tribute.”2 Federalists across America adopted the words as their battle cry for war with France.
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