Collapse of the Talks and the Commissioners' Departure
- When
- November 1797 – October 1798
- Where
- Paris, France
- Part of
- XYZ Affair
Talleyrand exploited the commissioners' divisions, appearing only in November to castigate them; Marshall and Pinckney left France in April 1798, and Gerry returned home in October 1798.
Informal avenues closed as Gerry told Hauteval they could no longer meet without formal authority, and Talleyrand appeared only at a November 1797 dinner, primarily to castigate the Americans for refusing the bribe. Seeing the commission's divisions, Talleyrand told Gerry in January 1798 he would no longer deal with Pinckney. After both sides prepared statements of their positions, Marshall and Pinckney, frozen out of talks conducted only with Gerry, left France in April 1798; Gerry finally returned home in October 1798.
Sources
- XYZ Affair Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-21
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.