Ralph Izard to the American Commissioners, 21 September 1778: résumé
Ralph Izard to the American Commissioners6
ALS: Archives du Ministère des affaires étrangères
<Paris, September 21, 1778: I have learned that the ship Nile, Captain Goldsmith, has been taken while bound from London to Leghorn and brought into Marseilles. She carried 20 packages of my baggage addressed to Monsieur Antoine Martinelli, merchant, to be delivered to the abbé Niccoli.7 My name doesn’t appear on them as this might have caused their detention at the London Customs House. Please take whatever measures you think proper, so they can be delivered to my authorized representative.>
6. Published in Taylor, Adams Papers, VII.
7. Izard shipped his goods to Leghorn in anticipation of joining them in Tuscany. Meanwhile, he received from Florence a discouraging letter in which the abbé Niccoli (identified above, XXIV, 84–5 n) advised him against assuming his diplomatic post there: Wharton, Diplomatic Correspondence, II, 669–70. For Izard’s reluctant acquiescence see ibid., p. 714.