The Gazette des tribunaux seldom ventured beyond the borders of France. It did so, however, for this affair, which it headed “Parliament of England,” and which came to trial in London at the height of the American War.
The Sieur de La Motte, a Frenchman established in London, had taken it upon himself to keep the French ministry informed of England’s naval forces: the number of her vessels, their destinations, the designs of the English nation, her resources, her victuals, and her stores. To compass this end, he had found it necessary to bribe diverse private individuals, both to supply him with intelligence and to convey his dispatches across to France.
He discharged his commission, so the Gazette relates, with exceeding zeal and intelligence; but the men whom he was obliged to employ, having enriched themselves at his side, sought to double their fortune by betraying him, and denounced him to the British ministry. At the outset of 1781, he was arrested and committed to the Tower. After several months’ confinement, it was commanded that he be tried according to the laws of England.
At the bar of the Old Bailey, he was informed that he might choose two counsel and an attorney. On the day of the hearing, at nine of the clock in the morning, he was brought forward to the bar; twelve jurors took the oath.
The Attorney-General put the very question that lends this trial its peculiar consequence. It would be urged, said he, that some distinction must be drawn between a natural-born subject who gives himself up to high treason, and an alien who, in betraying a realm where he is but a sojourner, believes he serves his own lawful sovereign. To this he replied that were such distinctions admitted, no government could long subsist. The prisoner was indeed a Frenchman, yet he had enjoyed the protection of English law throughout his stay; he owed to those laws a transient allegiance coextensive with his residence; and, convicted as a subject, he must be punished as a subject.
The papers discovered upon his person and in the garden of a certain Lutterloh—manifestly destined for France—coupled with the testimony of this same Lutterloh, who had been first his confederate and then his accuser, carried the day and secured his conviction.
The Gazette announces in its very title that he was condemned to death for high treason and executed in July 1781. It is worthy of note that the chronicle treats him neither as a hero nor as a villain: merely as a man who had served his country well, and who was sold by the very knaves he paid. It is an ancient law of espionage that this case already illustrates: the gold one gives an informant buys also, on occasion, his betrayal.
Gazette des tribunaux, 1781, “Parliament of England”: trial of the Sieur François-Henri de La Motte, condemned for high treason and executed in July 1781.