To Benjamin Franklin from James Moylan, 21 March 1783
From James Moylan
ALS: American Philosophical Society
L’Orient 21st. March 1783
Honor’d Sir
Your Dispatches for the Ministers of Foreign affairs & Finances have come safe to my hands,1 and agreeable to your directions I have deliver’d them to the Captain of the Frigate bound to America,2 who promised to take particular care of them.
With the utmost respect I have the honor to be Honor’d Sir Your most obedt. & most hle Servt
Addressed: A Monsieur / Monsieur Franklin / Ministre plainépotentiaire des / Etats Unis de l’Amerique / a Passy / près Paris
Notation: J. Moylan 21 March 1783
1. Doubtless those of March 7, above.
2. Probably the Active, which arrived at Chester, Pa., before the end of April. She was the last French frigate to reach the Delaware before the evacuation of French forces: Amblard-Marie-Raymond-Amédée, vicomte de Noailles, Marins et soldats français en Amérique pendant la guerre de l’indépendance des Etats-Unis (1778–1783) (2nd ed., Paris, 1903), p. 339. For her captain, Edouard-Charles-Victurnien Colbert, comte de Maulevrier (1758–1820), a nephew of d’Estaing, see the DBF, under Colbert; Rice and Brown, eds., Rochambeau’s Army, I, 294.