Joseph Matthias Gérard De Rayneval
Joseph-Mathias Gérard de Rayneval (24 February 1736, Masevaux, Haut-Rhin – 31 December 1812, Paris), was a French diplomat and government minister of the Ancien Régime. Career Gérard de Rayneval served under the Bourbon Foreign Minister, Charles Gravier de Vergennes, as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Trade. In 1776, he produced a memo on France's strategic and diplomatic interests entitled ''Reflections on the Situation in America''. In 1782, he was sent on a secret mission to London to make peace feelers, before later undertaking official diplomatic visits (''qv.'' Eden Agreement). John Jay, a Founding Father of the United States, upon learning of the trips suspected French duplicity, leading him to begin separate negotiations with the British. He wrote about his negotiations with Jay over the Mississippi: If by the future treaty of peace, Spain preserves West Florida, she alone will be the sole proprietor of the course of the Mississippi from the t ...
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