From Benjamin Franklin to Vergennes, 8 March 1779
To Vergennes
Copy: Library of Congress
Passy, March 8 1779
Sir
I am much oblig’d to yr. Excy. for the Notice you were so good as to send me yesterday.
I send my Grandson to M. de Sartine, to procure from him two Orders to the proper Officers at Brest. The one to receive the Prisoners brought in long since by Capt. Jones.9 The other to receive the Mutineers from on Board the Alliance.1 I beg you would be pleas’d to give a Line, if you think it proper, to Mr. de Sartine, that we may obtain more readily these Orders. I have the Honor to be &c
Ct. de Vergennes.
9. See BF’s March 2 letter to Sartine and Sartine’s response of the 7th.
1. We have no record of the request, which may have been handled orally. Sartine had asked on Feb. 28 what to do about the crewmen who had mutinied aboard the Alliance (XXVIII, 637–8); on March 4 BF told Landais, above, that he had conversed on the subject with “the Minister,” presumably Sartine, although possibly Vergennes, from whom BF had earlier sought advice about the mutineers: XXVIII, 536.