On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, Julien-Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir wrote to the French ambassador to Britain Comte de Guines a report to pass along to the French foreign minister Comte de Vergennes regarding his second meeting on December 27 with Benjamin Franklin and John Jay of the Committee of Secret Correspondence of the Continental Congress, and their translator Francis Daymon:
I have found this country in an inconceivable agitation … They besieged Montreal, which has capitulated and are actually before Quebec which I think will soon fall also. They have seized several of the King’s vessels filled with provisions or war and food. They are perfectly entrenched before Boston; they have built a small Navy; they have unbelievable spirit and good will … I made no offer to them, absolutely none, promising only to give them all the service I can without compromising myself, and without vouching for events in any fashion … I told them I thought France wished them well; if she would aid them that that might well be; on what terms I did not know … that I promise to present their requests without anything more … They asked me whether it would be prudent for them to send an empowered deputy to France. I told them I imagined this would be precipitous, even hazardous; that everything is known about London in France and about France in London, and that the step would singe the English beard …
Their affairs are in good state … I have just this instance learned that the savages of five nations have sent their chiefs to the general assembly, in order to assure them they wished to be neutral … They are convinced that they cannot sustain themselves without a nation that protects them by sea; … Everyone here is a soldier. The troops are well clothes, well paid and well commanded. They have about 50,000 men hired and a greater number of volunteers who do not wish to be paid … They have said they are fighting to become free and that they will succeed at no matter what price, that they are linked bu oath and … know well that they cannot maintain themselves at sea and that only France is in a condition to protect their commerce without which their country cannot flourish …”
Bonvouloir‘s overly optimistic report reached Vergennes in Paris on February 27, 1776.
Sources:
https://www.carpentershall.org/pages/the-unlikely-spy; “Achard de Bonvouloir to the Comte de Guines, 28 December 1775: extract,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-22-02-0187. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 22, March 23, 1775, through October 27, 1776, ed. William B. Willcox. New Haven and London:: Yale University Press, 1982, pp. 310–318.]
On this day 250 years ago at Cambridge, Massachusetts, Captain Reuben Dow of Hollis, New Hampshire was discharged from service because his right ankle had been shattered by a musket ball at Bunker Hill. Captain Dow was placed on half-pay through December 31, 1776 and then received one-fourth pay until 1783 when he was granted a lifetime pension by New Hampshire. After his discharge, Captain Dow served as Chairman of the Committee of Safety of Hollis and a Representative to the General Court.
On This Day In The Revolution 