Benjamin Franklin Papers
Documents filtered by: Author="Vergennes, Charles Gravier, comte de" AND Period="Revolutionary War"
sorted by: relevance
Permanent link for this document:
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-36-02-0419

To Benjamin Franklin from the Comte and Comtesse de Vergennes and the Marquis and Marquise de Vergennes, [c. 18 February 1782]

From the Comte and Comtesse de Vergennes and the Marquis and Marquise de Vergennes4

Printed announcement: American Philosophical Society

[c. February 18, 1782]

M

Monsieur le Comte & Madame la Comtesse DE VERGENNES, Monsieur le Marquis & Madame la Marquise DE VERGENNES, sont venus pour avoir l’honneur de vous voir & vous faire part du Mariage de Monsieur le Vicomte DE VERGENNES, leur fils & Neveu, avec Mademoiselle DE LENTILHAC-SEDIERES.5

Addressed: M. francklin

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

4Anne Viviers Testa, comtesse de Vergennes (XXXI, 51n), and her brother- and sister-in-law, Jean Gravier, marquis de Vergennes, and his wife and cousin, Jeanne-Claude Chevignard de Chavigny. In 1779, Vergennes had appointed the marquis to be Louis XVI’s ambassador to Venice. See Jean-François Labourdette, Vergennes, Ministre principal de Louis XVI (Paris, 1990), pp. 14, 168; Orville T. Murphy, Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes: French Diplomacy in the Age of Revolution, 1719–1787 (Albany, 1982), p. 422.

5The marriage, on Feb. 18, 1782, of Constantin Gravier, the older of Vergennes’ sons and the one to whom the minister had entrusted the family’s future advancement, was arranged by the maréchal de Mouchy, adoptive father to Mlle de Lentilhac-Sédières, an orphan, who belonged to the old nobility of Limousin and was closely related to the Clermont-Tonnerre and the Noailles families: Labourdette, Vergennes, p. 167. Vergennes’ aspirations for his son are described in Murphy, Vergennes, pp. 173, 204–5, 346, 350–7.

With this announcement BF received a similarly worded one from the bride’s uncles, the comte de Lentilhac-Sédières, the abbé de Lentilhac, and the marquis de Saint-Denis.

Index Entries