[Illustration: _From an engraving by Dodson after the portrait by Wood._] Meantime arrangements had been making to give Captain Jones a fleet instead of a single ship. The Congress had built a frigate of thirty-two guns--she carried thirty-six, however, all told--which, because of the recently formed alliance between France and the United States, was named the _Alliance_. As a further compliment to the French one Pierre Landais, a French naval lieutenant, was placed in command of her. It was a pleasant thing to compliment France, but disastrous to appoint Landais, for he had a vein of insanity in him due to brooding over his previous failure to gain promotion in the service of his own country. The _Alliance_ was detailed to carry Lafayette home to France after his service in America, and this duty she performed, although she was narrowly saved from capture when a number of Englishmen in her crew mutinied--a crime, by the way, for which no penalty was inflicted, because of the noble generosity of Lafayette. The _Alliance_ was ordered to sail under Captain Jones. To these was added a merchant ship called the _Pallas_, commanded by Capt. Denis Nicholas Cottineau. She was armed with thirty-two guns. Then a brig, called the _Vengeance_, Captain Ricot (also a Frenchman), was secured, and then the squadron was completed with a man-o’-war cutter carrying eighteen small guns. It was at first intended that Lafayette, with a considerable force of soldiers, should go with the fleet and make a flying assault upon Liverpool, but this project was abandoned because the French meditated a more formidable assault upon the somewhat “tight little isle.” Then a general cruise against British commerce was proposed and carried out. But before any detail of this cruise is given a paragraph must be inserted here from a letter of instructions which Franklin, as the head of the American commissioners in France, sent to Captain Jones. When considered in connection with the act of Parliament by which American prisoners in England were starved, it is worth printing in italics: “_As many of your officers and people have recently escaped from English prisons, you are to be particularly attentive to their conduct toward the prisoners which the fortune of war may throw into your hands, lest the resentment of the more than barbarous usage by the English in many places toward the Americans, should occasion a retaliation and imitation of what ought rather to be detested and avoided for the sake of humanity and for the honor of our country._”