a British flotilla led by the ship Serapis. Historian John
Shy writes:
The heavier guns smashed the Richard during
the first half hour, but Jones seized a moment
when Serapis lost way in a failing breeze to close
in. By 9:00 p.m., both ships were ablaze. The
American ship Alliance, under the [command
of the] eccentric French Captain Landais, ap-
peared and fired several broadsides, doing more
damage to Richard than to Serapis—deliberately
so, in the opinion of Jones’ chief biographer.
But when hand grenades thrown from Richard
ignited power cartridges on the British gundeck,
killing or wounding about fifty seamen, the Brit-
ish captain surrendered. About half of each crew
had been killed or wounded. Transferring his flag
to the crippled Serapis from the sinking Richard,
Jones and his squadron limped to The Texel,
Amsterdam’s port, as his orders dictated. His
presence there compromised Dutch neutrality,
but in Amsterdam, he was a popular hero, as he
was in Paris, where he returned in April 1780.Jones returned to America on the French ship Ariel,
where he was greeted as a national hero. On 14 April
1780, he was given the official thanks of Congress and
assigned to the ship America. But the ship was soon sold
to France to replace a lost French ship, and Jones was
sent to that country to serve as a prize agent, or broker,
to sell those ships captured for profit. He returned to
the United States in 1787, was awarded a gold medal
by Congress for his service to his adopted country, and
again sent overseas, this time to Denmark to demand
payment for two ships the Danish had given to England
that belonged to America. However, while in Copen-
hagen in 1788, he accepted a commission from Rus-
sian czarina Catherine the Great to serve in the Russian
navy with the rank of rear admiral. He was immediately
dispatched to the Black Sea, where Russia was at war
against Turkey, but he soon became disenchanted with
his command as his orders were circumvented and vic-
tories due him were credited to others.
In March 1789, while in St. Petersburg, Jones was
falsely accused of assaulting a young girl, although he
was never formally charged. Catherine saw him as a
worn-out warrior and offered him a dismissal from the
Russian service. He returned to Paris, where his health
quickly declined, and he died on 18 July 1792. He was
buried in an unmarked grave in a Protestant cemetery
which, over the years, became a garbage dump, covered
with refuse and the bodies of dead horses.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ameri-
can ambassador to France, Horace Porter, angered that
Jones, an American hero, lay in an unknown grave with-
out the credit due him, set out to find the missing naval
officer. After a lengthy search, Jones’s remains were lo-
cated, and an American warship was dispatched to Paris
to bring him back to his adopted nation. With full hon-
ors, he was laid to rest in the naval chapel at Annapolis,
Maryland, now the home of the U.S. Naval Academy.
Historian Victor Hawkins writes of Jones’s impact on
history: “Jones was a brave, resolute, and brilliant com-
mander; an adventurer-turned-patriot, he gave valuable
service to the [American] nation; his tomb at Annapolis
reads: ‘He gave our navy its earliest traditions of heroism
and victory.’ ”References: Bowen, Marjorie, The Life of Rear-Admiral
John Paul Jones, Chevalier of the Military Order of Merit
and of the Russian Order of the Empress Anne, 1747–1792
(London: H. Jenkins, 1940); Lorenz, Lincoln, John Paul
Jones: Fighter for Freedom and Glory (Annapolis, Md.:
United States Naval Institute, 1943); Morison, Samuel
Eliot, John Paul Jones: A Sailor’s Biography (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1959); Thomas, Evan, John Paul Jones (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2003); Shy, John, “Jones, John Paul,”
in American National Biography, 24 vols., edited by John
A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1999), 12:220; Hawkins, Victor B., “Jones,
John Paul,” in The Encyclopedia of Military Biography,
edited by Trevor N. Dupuy, Curt Johnson, and David
L. Bongard (London: I. B. Taurus & Co., Ltd., 1992),
381–382.Junot, Jean-Andoche Alexandre, duc
d’Abrantes (1771–1813) French general
Jean-Andoche Junot was born at Bussy-le-Grand, on
the Côte d’Or, France, on 23 October 1771. In 1790,
before he turned 20, he volunteered for service in the
French army, rising to the rank of sergeant, and he
fought at Toulon in 1793. There, because of his ser-
vice, he was noticed by naPoleon bonaParte, whoJunot, JeAn-AnDoche AlexAnDRe, Duc D’AbRAnteS