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Jean-Baptiste Bonneau,[1] the longest confined, had been there two years before I came.
- ↑ Jean Baptiste Bonneau, born at Montpellier in 1739, entered, when very young, into diplomacy. In 1780, he came to Poland as chargé d'affaires of the Prince Xavier of Saxony, the son of Agustus III., king of Poland. After this he was actively engaged in the negotiations regarding the opening of the commerce of Poland with France, through the Black Sea, and obtained from the Polish Government measures favourable to that project, by which he attracted the attention of the French Government, and, in 1793, Mons. Descorches de la Croix, the French Ambassador at Warsaw, being recalled, Mons. Bonneau was appointed in his place. His long residence in Poland, his profound knowledge of the laws, manners, and language of the country, rendered him highly qualified to discharge those duties. He did not, however, perform them long. The Russians having become again masters of Warsaw, imprisoned Mons. Bonneau, in the course of the same year, 1792, and all the papers of the French legation, which were in his hands, being seized, he was conducted as a prisoner to St. Petersburg, where he remained four years in close captivity. Paul I., at his accession to the throne, released him, but he found that his wife and his daughter had sunk under the grief caused by his misfortunes. In Paris
