The leaders of the President's party in Congress greatly deplored the selection of Gerry. "No appointment could ... have been more injudicious," declared Sedgwick.[581] "If, sir, it was a desirable thing to distract the mission, a fitter person could not, perhaps, be found. It is ten to one against his agreeing with his colleagues," the Secretary of War advised the President.[582] Indeed, Adams himself was uneasy about Gerry, and in a prophetic letter sought to forestall the very indiscretions which the latter afterwards committed.
PART OF LETTER OF JULY 17, 1797, FROM JOHN ADAMS TO ELBRIDGE GERRY DESCRIBING JOHN MARSHALL
(Facsimile)
"There is the utmost necessity for harmony, complaisance, and condescension among the three envoys, and unanimity is of great importance," the President cautioned Gerry. "It is," said Adams, "my sincere desire that an accommodation may take place; but our national faith, and the honor of our government, cannot be sacrificed. You have known enough of the unpleasant effects of disunion among ministers to convince you of the necessity of avoiding it, like a rock or quicksand.... It is probable there will be manœuvres practiced to excite jealousies among you."[583]
Forty-eight days after Marshall took ship at Philadelphia, he arrived at The Hague.[584] The long voyage had been enlivened by the sight of many vessels and the boarding of Marshall's ship three times by British men-of-war.
"Until our arrival in Holland," Marshall writes Washington, "we saw only British & neutral vessels. This added to the blockade of the dutch fleet in the Texel, of the french fleet in Brest & of the spanish fleet in Cadiz, manifests the entire dominion which one nation [Great Britain] at present possesses over the seas.
"By the ships of war which met us we were three times visited & the conduct of those who came on board was such as wou'd proceed from general orders to pursue a system calculated to conciliate America.
"Whether this be occasion'd by a sense of justice & the obligations of good faith, or solely by the hope that the perfect contrast which it exhibits to the conduct of France may excite keener sensations at that conduct, its effects on our commerce is the same."[585]
It was a momentous hour in French history when the Virginian landed on European soil. The French elections of 1797 had given to the conservatives a majority in the National Assembly, and the Directory was in danger. The day after Marshall reached the Dutch Capital, the troops sent by Bonaparte, that young eagle, his pinions already spread for his imperial flight, achieved the revolution of the 18th Fructidor (4th of September); gave the ballot-shaken Directory the support of bayonets; made it, in the end, the jealous but trembling tool of the youthful conqueror; and armed it with a power through which it nullified the French elections and cast into prison or drove into exile all who came under its displeasure or suspicion.
With Lodi, Arcola, and other laurels upon his brow, the Corsican already had begun his astonishing career as dictator of terms to Europe. The native Government of the Netherlands had been replaced by one modeled on the French system; and the Batavian Republic, erected by French arms, had become the vassal and the tool of Revolutionary France.