History of the United States of America, Volume 2 (of 9) : $b During the first administration of Thomas JeffersonAdams, Henry
History
History of the United States of America, Volume 2 (of 9) : $b During the first administration of Thomas Jefferson
Adams, Henry
United States -- History -- 1801-1809; United States -- History -- 1809-1817
Jefferson’s delicacy and hospitality were worthy of a great lord of
Spain, and did honor to his innate kindliness; but they put Yrujo in
an attitude so mortifying, that when he returned to Washington and
learned what had taken place in his absence, he was overcome with shame
at finding himself charged with calumniating his host at the moment of
claiming his hospitality. He immediately prepared a counter-statement
and took it to the President, who replied that the matter was one
which should properly belong to Madison. Yrujo then printed his letter
in the “National Intelligencer,” where Madison first saw it. For
the moment the matter went no further; but Madison was fixed in his
purpose of effecting Yrujo’s recall, and when in the following spring
he instructed his minister at Madrid to ask this favor, he alleged the
affair of Jackson among the reasons which justified his request.
Pichon, who was in charge of the French legation, cordially disliked
Yrujo, and did nothing to help him against Madison, although the
relations between Spain and France were those of close alliance; but
Madison next suffered a severe loss in the removal of Pichon, and in
the arrival, Nov. 23, 1804, of the first minister sent by France to the
United States since the departure of Adet in President Washington’s
time. The new appointment was not a happy one. Pichon had carried
friendliness so far as on several serious questions to take sides with
the United States government against his own, and had fallen into
disfavor with Napoleon in consequence. The new minister was little
likely to repeat this blunder. Napoleon liked military discipline in
all things; and he sent as his minister to Washington a former general
of the Republic, Louis Marie Turreau, best known for the extreme
severities he was charged with having inflicted on the Vendeans in
1794. Like most of the republican generals, including even Moreau
and Bernadotte, Turreau accepted the _coup d’état_ of the 18th
Brumaire, and was for private reasons anxious to obtain some position
far removed from France. According to his own story, he had during
the Vendean war been so unfortunate as to be saved from death, in a
moment of extreme danger, by a woman’s self-sacrifice. In token of
his gratitude he married his preserver; but from that time his life
became a long regret. His wife’s temper was terrible; his own was
querulous and morbidly depressed. Although he could speak no English,
had no diplomatic experience and little taste for general society, he
sought the post of minister resident at Washington in order to escape
his wife. To his extreme annoyance, she followed him to America; and
Washington resounded with the scandal of their quarrels, which reached
the extremity of pitched battles. He wrote to his friends in the French
Foreign Office that he was almost mad with mortification and despair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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