To Benjamin Franklin from [Peter Allaire], 26 August 1777: résumé
From [Peter Allaire6]
AL: Historical Society of Pennsylvania
<London, August 26, 1777: He reports intelligence, gathered from one of Germain’s secretaries, about Howe’s and Burgoyne’s forces, the impact in England of the Battle of Trenton and of the capture of the Fox, friction between North and Germain, public puzzlement at the number of officers returning from America, and the likelihood of an insurrection in Britain. Gen. Prescott is undoubtedly a prisoner, and the fall of Ticonderoga is unconfirmed; Capt. Manley has been taken in the Hancock. Signed, “An American whom You have seen at Paris.”>
6. Identified by the handwriting. Allaire was a New York merchant who will reappear later; as a young man he had been a contractor for French troops in Guyana, and later he travelled widely―to England and France, Morocco, Russia―before settling in London in about 1775. Claude-Anne Lopez, “The Man Who Frightened Franklin,” PMHB, CVI (1982), 515–16.