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Travel Journals of Matt & Mary Capps
Paris 1777
Benjamin Franklin had been in France for almost a year now, and with little or no success in getting the French to sign an alliance with the new nation or even a formal recognition. Diplomatically, these now where hard time for Franklin. Things did not help any when word came back to France that British General Howe had captured Philadelphia.
Howe’s success was a personal blow for Franklin. His house on Market Street
was commandeered by British captain named John Andre, who stole his electrical
equipment, books, musical instruments, and an elegant portrait of him that had
been painted by Benjamin Wilson in 1759. (It was returned from England in 1906
and now hangs on the second floor of the White House.)
With diplomacy at a stalemate Franklin did what he could to help the war effort
back home. He used his wit to parry the propaganda reports being spread by the
British ambassador, Lord Stormont.
Wild rumors began to circulate about Franklin’s strategies and schemes
in France. One British spy reported that Franklin was preparing “a great
number of reflecting mirrors” that would be placed on the Calais coast
to focus the heat from the sun on the British navy, thus destroying it. That
would be followed by an electric shock sent over a cross-channel chain that
would disrupt the entire British Island. The New Jersey Gazette went further:
Franklin was inventing an electrical apparatus that could shift landmasses and
a method of using oil that could still the waves in one place while stirring
up tempests in another.
Alas, what he was actually doing was much more mundane, such as coping with
European supplicants who sought commissions to serve as officers in the American
army. His collected letters are clogged with requests, more than four hundred
in all, some valiant and others vain.
Not all the supplicants where vagabonds. Franklin was able to find, among those
seeking commissions, a few great officers to recommend: the Marquis de Lafayette,
Baron von Steuben, and Count Pulaski, a famed Polish fighter were just a few
of the officers he sent over to fight in Washington’s army.
September 15th 2005
Mary and I had a wonderful time at Versailles. We seen the splendid world that the French kings and queens lived in. Even the mistresses had a really nice palace. We bought many souvenirs for our friends, and families, and were ready to be taken back to Paris. But before we left I asked our young chauffeur and guide about where I might be able to find a Trebuchet. He gave a very puzzled look and after a few minuets of explaining to him what a trebuchet was he came up with a lead where I might be able to find one.
You see before Mary and I left my young stepson Cory asked for only one souvenir,
a trebuchet. You might be wondering what a trebuchet is, well let me explain.
A trebuchet is a medieval siege warfare weapon used to break down the walls
of castles. It was the successor of the Catapult; it could take heavier rocks
and projectiles, and fling them farther, with more accuracy.
We spend some times hours playing a video game back home called age of kings.
In this game you build a medieval army and defeat other kings on the battlefield.
When you get close to another kings castle you use siege equipment to nock down
walls of castles. One of the biggest and best siege equipment of the game is
a trebuchet.
I could tell that I was the first tourist ever to request this, and after some
time Sebastian came up with the French military museum. It is also the place
where Napoleon is berried. He was kind enough to drop Mary and I off at the
museum, which is located just blocks from the Eiffel tower. This was an unexpected
stop on our tour of Paris and it was something that was not listed on our itinerary
of monuments to visit. But it turned out to be a little gem of a stop.
It was about 1pm when we were dropped off and after a short walk we were there.
I was expecting a museum of artifacts but much to my surprise it is still being
used today by the French military. It is something like there west point.
After passing the front gate and armed guards we strolled up to the front of
this fortified building. It is a large complex surrounded by a moat and has
a large gold dome in the back of it. We bought our tickets looked around inside
at the many large rooms full of 18th and 19th century cannon and weapons. Most
of which is from the Napoleonic wars. There must have been 100 cannon of all
shapes and sizes. On each of the cannon were the dates that they were used.
I could not but help to notice that on many of the cannon I could see the dates
of 1776, 1777, 1778, and so on. I am sure that our French allies used more than
one of these cannon during the American Revolution. I could imagine that some
of these cannon might even have been used by the Marquis de Lafayette at the
siege of Yorktown where General Cornwallis surrendered to Washington in 1781.
Mary was finally hungry enough that we stopped off at the cafeteria to eat.
It was her first French food she had that she was able to keep down. After lunch
we went into Napoleons tomb, then seen some of the World War II museum and then
to the gift shop. After some time of looking we finally found a book on trebuchets.
We could not find an English version of the book but Cory can’t read that
well any way, plus it had some really good pictures of medieval siege weapons
in it. Mission accomplished!
We were ready to find a subway and our way back to the Bastille. We took a short
cut across the grounds but soon ran into that damn moat. So we had to back track
around to the back gate and then on to the subway. We got back to our room about
3 pm. After all of that walking a nice nap felt good and then on to our last
tour of the day, Montmarte.
Matt standing next to a statue of Napoleon
Napoleons tomb. The picture does not give it justice. This thing was bigger than our hotel room in Rome.
Napoleons tomb.
Mary standing next to some fire power
I was so tired after the day’s long walk and tours of Versailles and Napoleons tomb I almost canceled this part of our trip and stayed in and slept. But Mary was up and feeling good so I dragged my self up out of bed and prepared my self for the night time adventure.
We departed our hotel at 7:30pm for dinner at Montmarte and a night time tour of Paris. We were accompanied by another good guide his name was Bartholomew and we were the only one’s going to Montmarte this time. This made me a little leery of the trip. I wondered why we where the only ones going? Maybe it was a bad site and nobody wanted to visit such a lame place. Later I would comment that this was the best night of the whole trip. So we started the journey to the tallest hill in Paris, Montmarte. We were by our selves but we soon discovered that after dinner and drinks we would have a van full of people for the night time tour of Paris.
Many of the great artists of the impressionist era lived on Montmarte. In the early 1900s it was a cheap place to live. But now it was a trendy place for people to live and hang out.
When we got to the square we noticed a large crowed and many lazy artist setting around drinking wine and reading books. This looked like my kind of place. So I jewed down a poor starving artist to 30€ to draw a sketch of Mary. He did such a good job I went ahead and paid him 40€ . It should be noted that none of the pictures you see here are of Mary. She is the pink blure you see in the background.
Here is a picture of Mary being sketched.
This was the best meal we had the entire trip. I can’t really remember what we ate but Mary ate a little of every thing on her plates and of course I drank my wine and Mary’s to
