Benjamin Franklin Papers
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Horneca, Fizeaux & Cie. to the American Commissioners, 24 December 1778: résumé

Horneca, Fizeaux & Cie. to the American Commissioners3

LS: American Philosophical Society

<Amsterdam, December 24, 1778, in French: We did not receive your letter of December 6 until the 15th. We have already told Sir Georges Grand,4 currently in Paris, that we have as yet placed only fifty-one promissory notes, but we have no doubt of eventual success if we are patient.5 By forcing things we will only undermine our credit; please trust us. We await your further orders.>

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

3Published in Taylor, Adams Papers, VII, 315–16. For the firm and the loan with which it was charged see Dumas’ letter of Nov. 24.

4A silent partner in the firm, which in 1779 became Fizeaux, Grand & Cie.: Price, France and the Chesapeake, II, 722.

5Their optimism proved misplaced; the loan netted only 51,000 florins or $32,000 before failing: Ferguson, Power of the Purse, p. 128; Lüthy, Banque protestante, II, 615. BF’s Wastebook (Account I, XXIII, 19) has an entry dated March 10, 1779: “Receiv’d from Horneca, Fizeaux & Co in Amsterdam, the Money they had borrow’d for us, in Bills upon Paris amounting to 34010 Ecus: 41 sols: 6 or 102,036 [l.t.].3.0. which I deliver to Mr Grand on Acct. of the States.” For an analysis of the failure of the Dutch loan see Friedrich Edler, The Dutch Republic and the American Revolution, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical Political Science, XXIX, no. 2 (Baltimore, 1911), pp. 78–80.

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