The Life of John Marshall
Chapter 89 : "They reckon ... upon many friends and partisans among us," wrote the America

"They reckon ... upon many friends and partisans among us," wrote the American Minister in London to the American Minister at The Hague.[644]

The Directory even had its particular agents in the United States to inflame the American people against their own Government if it did not yield to French demands. Weeks before the President, in 1797, had called Congress in special session on French affairs, "the active and incessant manoeuvres of French agents in" America made William Smith think that any favorable action of France "will drive the great ma.s.s of knaves & fools back into her [France's] arms," notwithstanding her piracies upon our s.h.i.+ps.[645]

On November 1 the envoys again decided to "hold no more indirect intercourse with" Talleyrand or the Directory. Marshall and Pinckney told Hottenguer that they thought it "degrading our country to carry on further such an indirect intercourse"; and that they "would receive no propositions" except from persons having "acknowledged authority." After much parrying, Hottenguer again unparked the batteries of the French party in America.

He told Marshall and Pinckney that "intelligence had been received from the United States, that if Colonel Burr and Mr. Madison had const.i.tuted the Mission, the difference between the two nations would have been accommodated before this time." Talleyrand was even preparing to send a memorial to America, threatened Hottenguer, complaining that the envoys were "unfriendly to an accommodation with France."

The insulted envoys hotly answered that Talleyrand's "correspondents in America took a good deal on themselves when they undertook to say how the Directory would have received Colonel Burr and Mr. Madison"; and they defied Talleyrand to send a memorial to the United States.[646]

Disgusted with these indirect and furtive methods, Marshall insisted on writing Talleyrand on the subject that the envoys had been sent to France to settle. "I had been for some time extremely solicitous" that such a letter should be sent, says Marshall. "It appears to me that for three envoys extraordinary to be kept in Paris thirty days without being received can only be designed to degrade & humiliate their country & to postpone a consideration of its just & reasonable complaints till future events in which it ought not to be implicated shall have determined France in her conduct towards it. Mr. Gerry had been of a contrary opinion & we had yielded to him but this evening he consented that the letter should be prepared."[647]

Nevertheless Gerry again objected.[648] At last the Paris newspapers took a hand. "It was now in the power of the Administration [Directory]," says Marshall, "to circulate by means of an enslaved press precisely those opinions which are agreeable to itself & no printer dares to publish an examination of them."

"With this tremendous engine at its will, it [the Directory] almost absolutely controls public opinion on every subject which does not immediately affect the interior of the nation. With respect to its designs against America it experiences not so much difficulty as ...

would have been experienced had not our own countrymen labored to persuade them that our Government was under a British influence."[649]

On November 3, Marshall writes Charles Lee: "When I clos'd my last letter I did not expect to address you again from this place. I calculated on being by this time on my return to the United States....

My own opinion is that France wishes to retain America in her present situation until her negotiation with Britain, which it is believed is about to recommence, shall have been terminated, and a present absolute rupture with America might encourage England to continue the war and peace with England ... will put us more in her [France's] power.... Our situation is more intricate and difficult than you can believe.... The demand for money has been again repeated. The last address to us ...

concluded ... that the French party in America would throw all the blame of a rupture on the federalists.... We were warned of the fate of Venice. All these conversations are preparing for a public letter but the delay and the necessity of writing only in cypher prevents our sending it by this occasion.... I wish you could ... address the Minister concerning our reception. We despair of doing anything.... Mr.

Putnam an American citizen has been arrested and sent to jail under the pretext of his cheating frenchmen.... This ... is a mere pretext. It is considered as ominous toward Americans generally. He like most of them is a creditor of the [French] government."[650]

Finally the envoys sent Talleyrand the formal request, written by Marshall,[651] that the Directory receive them. Talleyrand ignored it.

Ten more days went by. When might they expect an answer? inquired the envoys. Talleyrand parried and delayed. "We are not yet received," wrote the envoys to Secretary of State Pickering, "and the condemnation of our vessels ... is unremittingly continued. Frequent and urgent attempts have been made to inveigle us again into negotiations with persons not officially authorized, of which the obtaining of money is the basis; but we have persisted in declining to have any further communication relative to diplomatic business with persons of that description."[652]

Anxious as Marshall was about the business of his mission, which now rapidly was becoming an intellectual duel between Talleyrand and himself, he was far more concerned as to the health of his wife, from whom he had heard nothing since leaving America. Marshall writes her a letter full of apprehension, but lightens it with a vague account of the amus.e.m.e.nts, distractions, and dissipations of the French Capital.

"I have not, since my departure from the United States," Marshall tells his wife, "received a single letter from you or from any one of my friends in America. Judge what anxiety I must feel concerning you. I do not permit myself for a moment to suspect that you are in any degree to blame for this. I am sure you have written often to me but unhappily for me your letters have not found me. I fear they will not. They have been thrown over board or intercepted. Such is the fate of the greater number of the letters addressed by Americans to their friends in France, such I fear will be the fate of all that may be address'd to me.

"In my last letter I informed you that I counted on being at home in March. I then expected to have been able to leave this country by christmas at furthest & such is my impatience to see you & my dear children that I had determined to risk a winter pa.s.sage." He asks his wife to request Mr. Wickham to see that one of Marshall's law cases "may ly till my return. I think nothing will prevent my being at the chancery term in May.

"Oh G.o.d," cries Marshall, "how much time & how much happiness have I thrown away! Paris presents one incessant round of amus.e.m.e.nt & dissipation but very little I believe even for its inhabitants of that society which interests the heart. Every day you may see something new magnificent & beautiful, every night you may see a spectacle which astonishes & enchants the imagination. The most lively fancy aided by the strongest description cannot equal the reality of the opera. All that you can conceive & a great deal more than you can conceive in the line of amus.e.m.e.nt 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," Marshall tells his "dearest Polly" "[if I could] ... be among the wealthiest of its citizens. I have changed my lodging much for the better. I liv'd till within a few days in a house where I kept my own apartments perfectly in the style of a miserable old bachelor without any mixture of female society. I now have rooms in the house of a very accomplished a very sensible & I believe a very amiable Lady whose temper, very contrary to the general character of her country women, is domestic & who generally sits with us two or three hours in the afternoon.

"This renders my situation less unpleasant than it has been but nothing can make it eligible. Let me see you once more & I ... can venture to a.s.sert that no consideration would induce me ever again to consent to place the Atlantic between us. Adieu my dearest Polly. Preserve your health & be happy as possible till the return of him who is ever yours."[653]

The American Minister in London was following anxiously the fortunes of our envoys in Paris, and gave them frequent information and sound advice. Upon learning of their experiences, King writes that "I will not allow myself yet to despair of your success, though my apprehensions are greater than my hopes." King enclosed his Dispatch number 52 to the American Secretary of State, which tells of the Portuguese Treaty and the decline of Spain's power in Paris.[654]

In reply, Pinckney writes King, on December 14, that the Directory "are undoubtedly hostile to our Government, and are determined, if possible, to effectuate a change in our administration, and to oblige our present President [Adams] to resign," and further adds that the French authorities contemplate expelling from France "every American who could not prove" that he was for France and against America.

"Attempts," he continues, "are made to divide the Envoys and with that view some civilities are shown to Mr. G.[erry] and none to the two others [Marshall and Pinckney].... The American Jacobins here pay him [Gerry] great Court."[655] The little New Englander already was yielding to the seductions of Talleyrand, and was also responsive to the flattery of a group of unpatriotic Americans in Paris who were b.u.t.tering their own bread by playing into the hands of the Directory and the French Foreign Office.

Marshall now beheld a stage of what he believed was the natural development of unregulated democracy. Dramatic events convinced him that he was witnessing the growth of license into absolutism. Early in December Bonaparte arrived in Paris. Swiftly the Conqueror had come from Rastadt, traveling through France _incognito_, after one of his lightning-flash speeches to his soldiers reminding them of "the Kings whom you have vanquished, the people upon whom you have conferred liberty." The young general's name was on every tongue.

Paris was on fire to see and wors.h.i.+p the hero. But Bonaparte kept aloof from the populace. He made himself the child of mystery. The future Emperor of the French, clad in the garments of a plain citizen, slipped unnoticed through the crowds. He would meet n.o.body but scholars and savants of world renown. These he courted; but he took care that this fact was known to the people. In this course he continued until the stage was set and the cue for his entrance given.

Finally the people's yearning to behold and pay homage to their soldier-statesman becomes a pa.s.sion not to be denied. The envious but servile Directory yield, and on December 10, 1797, a splendid festival in Bonaparte's honor is held at the Luxembourg. The scene flames with color: captured battle-flags as decorations; the members of the Directory appareled as Roman Consuls; foreign ministers in their diplomatic costumes; officers in their uniforms; women brilliantly attired in the height of fas.h.i.+on.[656] At last the victorious general appears on the arm of Talleyrand, the latter gorgeously clad in the dress of his high office; but Bonaparte, short, slender, and delicate, wearing the plainest clothes of the simplest citizen.

Upon this superb play-acting John Marshall looked with placid wonder.

Here, then, thought this Virginian, who had himself fought for liberty on many a battlefield, were the first fruits of French revolutionary republicanism. Marshall beheld no devotion here to equal laws which should s.h.i.+eld all men, but only adoration of the sword-wielder who was strong enough to rule all men. In the fragile, eagle-faced little warrior,[657] Marshall already saw the man on horseback advancing out of the future; and in the thunders of applause he already heard the sound of marching armies, the roar of shotted guns, the huzzas of charging squadrons.

All this was something that Jefferson had not seen. Jefferson's sojourn in France had been at the time when the French Revolution was just sprouting; and he foresaw only that beautiful idealism into which the glorious dreamers of the time fondly imagined the Revolution would flower.

But Marshall was in Paris after the guillotine had done its work; when corruption sat in the highest places of government; and when military glory in the name of liberty had become the deity of the people. So where Jefferson expected that the roses of peace would bloom, Marshall saw cl.u.s.ters of bayonets, as the fruitage of the French Revolution.

FOOTNOTES:

[611] Marshall's Journal, Oct. 15, 4-5.

[612] Paris made an impression on the envoys as different as their temperaments. Vans Murray records the effect on Gerry, who had written to his friends in Boston of "how handsomely they [the envoys] were received in Paris and how hopeful he is of settlement!!!"

"Good G.o.d--he has mistaken the lamps of Paris for an illumination on his arrival," writes our alarmed Minister at The Hague, "and the salutations of fisherwomen for a procession of chaste matrons hailing the great Pacificator!... His foible is to mistake things of common worldly politeness for deference to his rank of which he rarely loses the idea.... Gerry is no more fit to enter the labyrinth of Paris as a town--alone--than an innocent is, much less formed to play a game with the political genius of that city ... without some very steady friend at his elbow.... Of all men in America he is ... the least qualify'd to play a part in Paris, either among the men or the women--he is too virtuous for the last--too little acquainted with the world and himself for the first." (Vans Murray to J. Q. Adams, April 13, 1798; _Letters_: Ford, 394.)

[613] Marshall's Journal, 5.

[614] _Ib._, Oct. 17, 6.

[615] Probably the same Hottenguer who had helped Marshall's brother negotiate the Fairfax loan in Amsterdam. (_Supra_, chap. IV.)

[616] Marshall's Journal, Oct. 17, 6.

[617] _Am. St. Prs., For. Rel._, ii, 158; Marshall's Journal, 6-7.

[618] Marshall's Journal, 7-8.

[619] _Am. St. Prs., For. Rel._, ii, 158.

[620] Marshall's Journal, Oct. 20, 8-9.

[621] Marshall's Journal, Oct. 20, 8-9.

[622] _Supra_, 226.

[623] Directing the capture of enemy goods on American s.h.i.+ps, thus nullifying the declaration in the Franco-American Treaty that "free bottoms make free goods."

[624] _Am. St. Prs., For. Rel._, ii, 159.

[625] Marshall's Journal, Oct. 20, 10. _Am. St. Prs., For. Rel._, ii, 159.

[626] Marshall's Journal, Oct. 21, 10-11.

[627] _Am. St. Prs., For. Rel._, ii, 159-60.

[628] _Am. St. Prs., For. Rel._, ii, 159-60.

[629] By "national" lands, Marshall refers to the confiscated estates.

[630] Marshall to Was.h.i.+ngton, Paris, Oct. 24 (postscript, 27th), 1797: _Amer. Hist. Rev._, Jan., 1897, ii, 301-03; also, Was.h.i.+ngton MSS., Lib.