The XYZ Affair, written by William Stinchcombe, is a very informative book about the incident that took place and how it became to be known as the XYZ Affair and what this incident started. As the book starts, it begins at the time of when the famous XYZ Affair started to take place which was in 1797, and ended in 1798, the United States and France were not on each other’s side. The United States and France were starting to become enemies, when France was going into war with Great Britain, at that time, the United States wanted to be a neutral country. They decided that they would just not be able to aid the French in the revolution, and France did not like that at all. For revenge, the French seized all American merchant ships, and also refused …show more content…
Their names are: Jean Hottinguer who was named X, Pierre Bellamy who was named Y, and Lucien Hauteval who was named Z. Americans also used a fourth person, named Nicholas Hubbard who was named W in the papers, Hubbard was used to notify Pinckney in France that Hottinguer (X) needed to meet with him (pg.597). Not many people knew about the ‘W’ in this affair, or else they would have called it the WXYZ Affair. These three Frenchmen were going to talk to the Americans in hopes of solving the dispute in a peaceful way. First, America will pay a large bribe to Talleyrand (the Directory’s foreign minister of France) and also pay a large loan to the French. The famous and very memorable response came out of this: Pickney said, “No, no not at sixpence.” (pg. 600) Pickney did not agree to this negotiation. Stinchcombe continues to describe the long awaiting of France trying to come to an agreement with America and what they should both do. In the end, Talleyrand does not want to deal with Pickney anymore (pg. 606-609). Talleyrand probably believes there is no hope in trying to come to an agreement with Pickney. Most of the time Talleyrand was just dealing with an American commissioner named Elbridge