The French had already commenced depredations on the American commerce, and reprisals soon followed. In February, 1798, the French frigate L’Insurgent, of forty guns, which had captured the American schooner Retaliation and carried her into Guadaloupe, was compelled to strike her colours to the American frigate Constellation, after a close engagement of an hour and a half, her loss being much the greater. This victory on the side of the United States soon produced overtures from the Directory at Paris, on which Adams immediately appointed Oliver Ellsworth, chief-justice of the United States, Patrick Henry, late governor of Virginia, and William Van Murray, minister at the Hague, to conclude an honourable peace. On their arrival in Paris, they found the Directory overthrown, and Napoleon Bonaparte at the head of the government, with whom a treaty of peace was satisfactorily concluded on September the 30th, 1800; after which the provisional army was disbanded by order of Congress. Washington, though he took the supreme command of the army, never believed that the French would actually invade the United States. He was not, however, permitted to witness the re-establishment of peace. On the 14th of December, 1799, he calmly and peacefully expired, after an illness of twenty-four hours, at Mount Vernon, his beloved residence, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. The whole nation mourned his loss. Congress was in session at Philadelphia when the news of this melancholy event reached that city, and both houses immediately adjourned for the remainder of the day. On assembling the next morning, the House of Representatives resolved that the chair of the speaker should be shrouded in black; that the members should wear mourning during the remainder of the session; and that a committee of both houses should be appointed “to consider on the most suitable manner of paying honour to the memory of the man, first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his fellow-citizens.” The Senate testified their respect in a similar manner, and the joint committee of the two houses appointed—that a marble monument should be erected to commemorate the great events in the military and political life of Washington; that an oration suitable to the occasion should be pronounced in presence of both houses of congress; and that the people of the United States should wear crape on their left arms for thirty days.