The Alliance had been placed by Congress at the disposal of Dr. Franklin. He, as the representative of the Government, was to order all her movements in Europe. This both Lee and Landais knew perfectly well. The French officer now presented to Landais the positive orders of Dr. Franklin to Landais, his officers and his men, to surrender the ship to the command of Commodore Jones.
The commodore now had the ship completely in his power. One or two broadsides from the battery would sink her and all her crew in the bottom of the bay. French soldiers were accustomed to obey command. The guns were loaded. The gunners stood ready with lighted matches. At one word of command a storm of balls would pierce the ship, and all France would receive another impressive lesson of the peril involved in disobeying the orders of the king. And yet the madman Landais, reckless of all consequences, was firm in his insubordination.
The Alliance was by far the finest ship in the feeble navy of the colonies. It was freighted with stores of inestimable value to our thinly clad, hungry, ill-provided soldiers, struggling against the most formidable military power then upon the globe. A large minority, probably a majority of the sailors were in favor of Commodore Jones. Those who adhered to Landais were assured by Commissioner Lee that they were surely in the right, and that if they abandoned Landais they would be exposed to be hung for mutiny against their lawful commander.
All the sailors felt deeply wronged. They could not understand why they received neither wages nor prize-money. They could not know but that the malignant and artful representations of Landais were true; that Jones, with his confederate aristocrats of the court, was squandering, in luxurious dissipation, their hard earnings. Under these circumstance it would have been cruel to consign these poor men to destruction, and our country to so great a loss. Commodore Jones, forgetting his resentment, acted the part of a magnanimous man, for which he merits the highest commendation.
He hastened to the quarters of M. Thevenard, the commandant of the port, and by his personal interposition, prevented him from opening fire upon the Alliance. He wrote to Dr. Franklin:
“Thevenard had received orders to fire on the Alliance and sink her to the bottom, if they attempted to approach and pass the barrier that had been made across the entrance to the port. Had I even remained silent an hour the dreadful work would have been done. Your humanity will, I know, justify the part I acted, in preventing a scene that would have rendered me miserable for the rest of my life. Yesterday the within letter was brought me from Mr. Lee. He has pulled off the mask, and I am convinced is not a little disappointed that his operations have produced no bloodshed between the subjects of France and America. Poor man!”
The commandant of the port called all his officers together, and they signed a paper, minutely stating the preparations they had made to render the departure of the Alliance impossible, and their great admiration of the magnanimity of Commodore Jones in causing their operations to be suspended.
Landais, unopposed, warped his ship through the mouth of the harbor and cast anchor in the roadstead of Groix. We must now take leave of Landais, with but a brief record of his subsequent career.
Pierre Landais was the youngest son of one of the proudest and, in rank, one of the most illustrious families in Normandy. Their ancestral estates had gradually passed away, and the family had become impoverished, but not the less proud. Pierre entered the Naval School, and was thoroughly instructed in the theory both of building and navigating a ship. He, however, found it difficult to get a commission so as to put his knowledge into practice. He had neither money, nor interest at court, with which to purchase court favor.
He was thus kept a mere midshipman until he was thirty-two years of age. Then for many years he remained in the humble situation of a sub-lieutenant. He was serving in this capacity, greatly discontented with his lot, when the war broke out between England and her American colonies. Landais then came to this country in command of a French merchant-ship laden with public stores. He was a man of much address and of boundless assurance. According to his representation he enjoyed the rank of captain in the royal navy; had commanded a ship of the line; had been chief officer of the naval depot at the port of Brest, and could have commanded any advancement he desired in his own country.