To Benjamin Franklin from Chevalier Gilles-Jean Barazer de Kermorvan, 19 November 1778
From Chevalier Gilles-Jean Barazer de Kermorvan3
ALS: American Philosophical Society
versailles 19 9bre 1778
Excellence
J’ai l’honneur de vous faire part de la délivrance heureuse de notre reine, elle est accouchée aujourdhuy a onze heures quarante deux minutes, d’une fille, on s’etoit trompé pendant une heure sur le sexe, soit par l’excès de la joye ou par l’embarras d’annoncer une fille, on a annoncé un dauphin au peuple. La reine a etè en travail depuis deux heures et demie du matin. Toute la cour est dans la joye de l’etat heureux oú est la reine.4 Voilá le moment des graces, c’est pourquoy j’ose supplier votre excellence d’ecrire une lettre en ma faveur au ministre de la guerre, ou d’ecrire seulement au bas de ce mèmoire ces trois mots “j’ai l’honeur de recommander ce mémoire aux bontés de m: le prince de montbarrey.” Si je tardois je manquerois le travail qui va se faire, et le moment de la joye où toute la cour est. J’ose esperer que votre excellence voudra bien m’aider de sa protection, et du succès qu’on ne peut réfuser a la celebrité de votre nom.5
Je serois tres honoré de vous devoir cette réconnoissance. Je suis avec le plus parfait respect de votre excellence Votre très humble et très obeissant serviteur
Le Chr. DE Kermorvan
3. Recommended by Barbeu-Dubourg, the chevalier had sailed to America as early as the spring of 1776, and his arrival had created a stir: see XXII, 390–1, 492, 558–62.
4. The end of Marie Antoinette’s confinement was celebrated in early February, 1779, by a general illumination. BF and JA spent 248 l.t. 10 s. for lighting up Passy with 300 colored lights and 500 lanterns. The bill was paid on March 22 (Account XXI, discussed in our headnote on accounts, above). Her daughter, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte (1778–1851), was known from birth as Madame Royale. The only survivor of Louis XVI’s descendants, she was exchanged in 1795 against a number of Frenchmen held captive in Austria; she then lived in Germany and England and eventually married her cousin Louis-Antoine de Bourbon, duc d’Angoulême, son of the comte d’Artois. When Louis XVIII re-entered Paris in 1814, she was at his side. She was, quipped Napoleon, “the only man of her family.” Larousse under Angoulême.
5. BF did not oblige. Kermorvan’s memoir to Montbarey, asking to be made a colonel of infantry and recalling the role he played at Saratoga, is still among BF’s papers in the APS. So is a French translation of the certificate delivered on Feb. 28, 1778, by Gen. Horatio Gates attesting that Kermorvan served zealously in Col. Daniel Morgan’s Riflemen. Congress had not appointed him a brigadier, as Henry Laurens had already told him on Jan. 3, 1778: Smith, Letters, VIII, 521. He therefore returned home, hoping to use BF’s recommendation for advancement in the French army. He wrote once more, in a letter dated merely “paris 19 1778,” and begged for help. Still more in debt than when he left for America, he feels entitled to some compensation; it is up to BF to decide what lump sum or weekly payment should be made (APS). BF apparently did not respond. Only in 1780 was Kermorvan made a captain of infantry. Eventually he served in the armies of the Revolution and died in 1817. Bodinier, Dictionnaire, under Barazer.