Latest publication: Article on solving power puzzles with our elders: Chapel Hill Herald, June 5, 2011 and June 12, 2011

Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul by Jean-Dominique Ingres

Description of Research

One of my current research projects is an article on the stay of William Richardson Davie in Paris in 1800 when he was a member of a team of diplomats who were sent by President John Adams to arrange a treaty between the U.S. and France. Maritime illegalities on both sides had been seriously hampering American – French relations, and the First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, had offered to come to terms on the matter. Napoleon's elder brother Joseph was appointed head of the French team. Davie was in Paris from April to October of 1800. I wish to draw his experiences as a visitor to the post-revolution French capital at a time when the First Consul was consolidating his hold on the government and revolutionary colors and sayings were draping monuments, theatrical scenery, newspapers, and buildings. My article will show how an American diplomat would have been entertained and exposed to the new regime in France.

My reading at this point is on the French Revolution, especially at its end - the Directory and the 18 Brumaire, the day of the coup in which Napoleon seized power at St. Cloud, using the bravado of his brother, Lucien, and a few well-armed troops.

Since I also have to add a knowledge of Talleyrand, French customs and styles in the very first hours of the Consulat, on which very little seems to have been written, and the locations of the houses, chateaux, and temporary lodgings of all the players, this article is taking longer than I had thought. I went to the United States archives in Maryland in March 2009 to see originals of the notes sent between the negotiating parties. The U.S. copy of the Convention of Mortefontaine is in the Archives I in downtown Washington, D.C. I will travel there to obtain an image of it. The papers of William Vans Murray, one of the three members of the U.S. delegation, are in the Library of Congress. I will be looking at those and also those of Oliver Ellsworth. I hope Vans Murray's diary entries will give some insight into not only the negotiations but the character of William R. Davie, and how Davie and his French counterparts got along. It seems that Joseph Bonaparte was quite jovial and welcoming, as well as an intelligent, honest broker of the treaty, and he hosted his guests frequently at Mortefontaine, his estate near Paris. In Vans Murray's papers I hope to find out more about Joseph's hospitality to Davie, Vans Murray, and Oliver Ellsworth, the chief of the U.S. team.

For more on William Richardson Davie's life and mission to France, see Blackwell Robinson's William R. Davie published by the University of North Carolina Press, 1957.

Last updated 06/19/2011.