Authors: Barbara W. Tuchman
In 1777, happy to bear the news of Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga, Jones, in command of the 18-gun
Ranger
, sailed for France, where he expected to be given command of the strong new warship
L’Indien
, under construction in Amsterdam. Charging that this was a violation of neutrality, Britain exerted pressure through her partisans in Holland to prevent the transfer; instead, Jones was given an ancient French merchantman, which he caused to be rebuilt and altered to fighting condition and renamed the
Bonhomme Richard
, in honor of Benjamin Franklin. Before the refitting and diplomatic arrangements could be accomplished, he received orders to conduct a free-lance cruise for “distressing the Enemies of the United States,” a mission perfectly suited to his temperament. He headed from France in the
Ranger
straight into enemy waters, where he sailed right around England making raids on coastal towns, firing ships in the harbors, capturing merchantmen and capping his venture by seizure of the 20-gun frigate
Drake
. When he took this prize and the others into France, he was greeted as a hero and his European reputation began to build.
Seeking greater glory, and now in command of the
Bonhomme Richard
, he learned of a British convoy bringing home a large number of merchantmen, and scouted the seas for a sight of them. He caught up with them at sunset on September 23, 1779, off Flamborough Head on the Yorkshire coast. Ahead of him he saw a huge quarry of 41 ships escorted by the powerful new British two-decker
Serapis
. Her armament was 50 guns, including twenty 18-pounders, superior to Jones’s 40 guns with six 18-pounders. As the two warships approached each other, both opened fire. For the next three hours, as the scene darkened between sunset and moonlight, onlookers watched the melodrama of a battle unforgettable in naval history. When the ships closed to a distance within pistol shot, a hit by the
Serapis
exploded powder charges on the
Richard
’s gundeck, killing many of the gunners and putting Jones’s heaviest guns
out of action. Having the advantage of the wind in his sails, an unquenchable spirit and a mastery of seamanship, he furled his mainsail to slow the
Richard
and bring her across the
Serapis
’ stern in position for greater broadside or raking fire. Calculating his only chance, he closed for boarding and in a smart maneuver brought his ship alongside the enemy. Calling for grappling hooks, he fastened the
Richard
onto the
Serapis
while his sharpshooters fired at every British head, knocking men off the yardarms and strewing the deck with dead. Grenades lobbed onto the
Serapis
’ deck blew up a pile of powder cartridges, wrecking half her cannon. Under the darkening sky, both ships at close range poured on fire. For the onlookers, flashes of flame lit the silhouettes of the two ships locked in their death grip like two fighting elk. The
Richard
’s decks were on fire and her hull taking in water. With his ship faced with the danger of sinking, the
Richard
’s chief gunner screamed to the
Serapis
, “Quarter! quarter! for God’s sake!” Jones hurled a pistol at the man, felling him. But the cry had been heard by Pearson, the
Serapis
’ commander, who called, “Do you ask for quarter?” Through the clash of battle, gunshot and crackle of fire the famous reply came faintly back to him: “I have not yet begun to fight!” Making good his boast, Jones sprang to a 9-pounder whose gun crew were killed or wounded, loaded and fired it himself, aiming at the
Serapis
’ mainmast, then loaded and fired again. As the mast toppled, Pearson, surrounded by dead, with rigging on fire, hauled down his red ensign in token of surrender. Escorted to
Richard
’s quarterdeck, he handed over his sword to Jones just as the
Serapis
’ mainmast crashed over the side and its sail, nevermore to carry the wind, collapsed in a dying billow into the sea.
Bonhomme Richard
, the shattered victor, too damaged to repair, sank the next day. On board the
Serapis
as his prize, Jones headed east for Holland and, after a ten days’ crippled sail, limped into the Texel on October 3. His destination, requiring shelter in a neutral harbor for his captive ship and the provisioning and care of the wounded and guard of his prisoners, was certain to make trouble for Holland with the British, and it did, exacerbating the British resentment that already existed.
That this was the deliberate purpose of Jones in going to Holland instead of to France, as he might have done, was believed to have been ordered as part of his mission by the Committee of Secret Correspondence of the Continental Congress, the department in charge of foreign affairs, and conveyed to Jones by Charles Dumas, the Committee’s semi-official agent and general busybody. Dumas was a collaborator of Ben
Franklin, who was then in Paris conducting America’s relations with France and was said to have acted as intermediary. Supposedly, the maneuver to use Jones as a cat’s-paw to put Holland at war with Britain was a French idea of which the British were made aware through Sir Joseph Yorke’s network of channels. He had access to Dumas’ correspondence with Vergennes, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, which was intercepted and copied for him by a person especially assigned to the task and who, over time, learned the cipher. In the 18th century, embassies were penetrated without benefit of electronic devices or seducible marines. It was the general practice of nations to open and copy correspondence of a foreign minister. Jones was happy to oblige the French idea. His greatest satisfaction, he wrote to Edward Bancroft, a correspondent of the American Commissioners and in fact a secret agent in the service of British espionage who has been called the “
supreme spy of his century,” “is in having used his position here to strain relations between Holland and England to a point past mending. Nothing now keeps Holland neutral except the influence of the ship owners who are doing almost the entire commerce of Europe at enormous rates.” The Dutch people are for us, Jones reported, and Adams relayed his words in a letter to Congress. “Every day the blessed women come to the ships in great numbers, mothers, daughters, even little girls, bringing with them for our wounded all the numberless little comforts of Dutch homes, a tribute that came from the hearts of the people, and therefore far overlaid in effect all statecraft and all diplomacy against us.”
Popular songs were composed in Jones’s honor, and ballads celebrating his presence in Amsterdam were sold in the streets. His presence—and even more that of the shorn
Serapis
, which had nothing left abovedeck and lay rocking meekly in the harbor in sad solitude like a lost dog—was a daily unpleasantness for the British Ambassador, who began at once to assert his usual demands for retribution and his insistence that Jones be expelled. As a subject of the King, he informed the States General, Jones could only be considered a rebel and a “pirate” and, together with his ship and crew, should be surrendered to His Majesty’s government. He told the Prince that he believed Jones’s entrance into the Texel was “a plan formed to embroil the States with Great Britain,” an outcome he professed to welcome, for it was better, he said, to have an outright enemy than one masquerading as a neutral, although the popular enthusiasm displayed for Jones was a constant distress.
“
A thought struck me yesterday,” Yorke wrote to the Admiralty on
October 8, 1779, that “we could arrest him …” when he left his ship to come into the city. Sir Joseph was not a man to worry about the propriety of an ambassador arresting the guest of a neutral country. “I despatched a friend on purpose to attempt it,” he continued matter-of-factly, but found himself thwarted by the High Bailiff, who said that “without proofs and affidavits of robberies and demands of moneys all of which we had not at hand,” it was not in his power, as the affair would immediately become a political one, “I was obliged to give up that scent to my great regret.” There is something irresistible about the straightforward methods of this ornament of the British foreign service.
If he could not effect a physical arrest, he tried next for a court order to force Jones’s eviction, but that too was refused, because of the strong sentiment of the Amsterdam and other merchants. Jones’s efforts to obtain care for the wounded—including the wounded English prisoners—became highly complex, because the problem of guarding English prisoners by American soldiers on neutral Dutch soil defied a solution. Finally, Jones was allowed to land a number of wounded prisoners on the Texel island and “to guard them by our American soldiers on the fort of that island with the
drawbridges hauled up or let down at our discretion.” Food and water and repairs of the ship, without which she could not sail, absorbed further discussion and were finally obtained with the help of Jean de Neufville, chief of a prominent merchants’ firm of Amsterdam, who was deeply engaged in another American matter of greater moment.
While Jones was waiting for a wind that would let him leave the channel and escape the British who were lying in wait outside, de Neufville was negotiating a project that would break through the morass that clogged Dutch affairs and precipitate decisive action. The year before, France had signed a treaty of amity and commerce with America to take effect when the Colonies should become independent, and Franklin, Silas Deane and Arthur Lee, the American Commissioners in Paris, had sent a copy to the Grand Pensionary, Van Bleiswijk, suggesting that Holland do the same. The matter was also submitted to the more dynamic Pensionary of the city of Amsterdam, Engelbert François Van Berckel, a lawyer of combative character. As a leader of his city and of its dreams of America as a trading partner, he was eager to conclude a business contract with the Americans before they might succumb to British peace offers and fall back under the dominion of Britain.
With the Carlisle Peace Commission presently in the Colonies making
overtures to Congress, the prospect of America yielding and never becoming an independent trading partner was now feared, even by those who did not relish a victory of the Revolution. For some past indignity, Van Berckel nourished a hatred of Britain, and for personal reasons would be delighted to see the de Neufville treaty puncture their pride. Although de Neufville’s proposed treaty as an alliance with England’s enemies was supposed to be kept secret, the Grand Pensionary, Van Bleiswijk, quite properly consulted his sovereign, William V, who flew into a passion, declaring the treaty was equal to recognizing the Americans as an independent state. He would lay down the Stadtholdership and quit the country with his entire family, he informed the Duke of Brunswick, rather than accept anything of the kind. The Duke was able to calm him and persuade him to approve the secret discussion of the proposal. Meanwhile, Van Berckel advised the Amsterdam Council not to communicate the proposed treaty officially to the States General but to pave the way by informing the other town councils. As a result, the secret was soon known to several hundred people, and before the end of the year the Republic buzzed with rumors, and leaks appeared in the English papers. Van Berckel also authorized de Neufville to negotiate a draft treaty with the Americans intended to be kept secret until England had recognized American independence. For Yorke, the rumors were the culmination of a series of affronts extending from de Graaff’s salute to the adulation of John Paul Jones, and behind it all the constant nagging inability of the British to suppress the American rebellion. And now here was talk of a major power actually proposing to treat with the rebels.
He could see no answer but war. As an extension of policy, it was not in that era fearful to contemplate, but considered feasible and possibly advantageous. If prosecuted with proper energy and a sufficiency of arms and men, it offered British planners the opportunity to regain lost, or gain new, colonies to compensate public opinion for the failure in America up to now. The disadvantages—that Britain already had difficulty in making up a sufficiency of soldiers in America and, even more, that twenty additional enemy ships of the line would be added against Britain’s ships already too few for her needs—were, like most contraindications to a happy plan, thrust under a mental rug. Yorke, unworried, held a reproachful interview with the Prince of Orange, expressing his distress that William had not discussed the proposed treaty first with his English ally. On his dignity, the Prince, who did not possess the
status of royalty in the Dutch Republic, a deficiency that greatly annoyed his royal kinsmen in England, replied that since it was a document of state, he was not obliged to discuss it with anyone whatsoever. Not hesitating to rebuke the sovereign, Yorke stated that a project of “three wretches,” meaning the American Commissioners in Paris, rebels against their King, could not be a state secret. As no action or further information was at hand, Yorke could not press his usual hot demands for “condign punishment” of the perpetrators; for the moment the matter was not pursued.
While the secret treaty smoldered quietly like a lighted fuse, a more importunate flame burned in the open. This was an international League of Armed Neutrality designed for common resistance to British assaults at sea and personally conceived and sponsored by a newcomer on the scene, Catherine II, Empress of Russia, an adventuress in power whom Voltaire named the Semiramis of the North and the world would come to know as Catherine the Great. With a territorial appetite like that of Louis XIV, she wanted to expand her borders over Austria and Poland, from which she had already taken a piece and was to take two more in the three partitions of that country. Another of her aims was to overthrow the Ottoman regime in order to revive the Byzantine Empire under Russian patronage. Most of all she wanted a warm-water base in the Mediterranean. When Malmesbury was Ambassador in St. Petersburg before he came to The Hague, he actually succeeded in persuading his government to offer Catherine England’s precious Minorca if Russia would enter an offensive and defensive alliance and would succeed in mediating a just and honorable peace among Britain, France and Spain. Although it would have given her the prize she so long coveted, Catherine resisted the temptation because she suspected a trick in which too much would be asked of her in return, or, as she put it in a phrase that became a byword in diplomacy, “
La mariée est trop belle. On veut me tromper
.” (The bride is too beautiful. They want to deceive me.)