Browsing: Diary of John Adams, Volume 4

3. Marie Louise Nicole Elisabeth de La Rochefoucauld was the widow of Jean Baptiste Frédéric de La Rochefoucauld de Roye, Due d'Anville, who in 1746 had led the ill-fated French expedition to recapture Louisbourg and had died of mortification, perhaps by his own hand, at what later became Halifax, N.S.; her son was Louis Alexandre, Due de La Rochefoucauld d'Anville (often spelled Enville), a philosophe, correspondent of Franklin and JA, and friend of the American cause, who was stoned to death by a Revolutionary mob in 1792 ( Dict. de la noblesse ; La Grande Encyclopedie ). JA may have borrowed from Thomas Hutchinson the term “Armada” for the Duc d'Anville's fleet, which had caused wild apprehensions in New England; see Hutchinson's Massachusetts Bay, ed. Mayo, 325–328; also p. 67, below.