How much did you learn about John Hancock with this? :-)
I missed this ping-yes, I did learn some things about John Hancock I didn’t know.
I didn’t know he was instrumental, perhaps even solely responsible for keeping the French our allies at a critical time.
At one point, American colonialists were fed up (rightly or wrongly) waiting to see when France was going to deliver on their promises of aid, cultivated by Franklin.
Colonials were getting quite vocal about it, and it got to the point the French were being disparaged (in VERY uncivil terms) everywhere they went, in quite strident and impolite ways.
The French who were here became very angry about it at all levels, and the relationship was going to disintegrate because the French were quite sensitive to criticism, and colonials were not at all shy about saying what they felt, loudly, and often.
Hancock, already under the gun due to a whole range of burdens and tasks that he had willing accepted (a chronically overextended man) dropped everything and went back up to Boston, and threw a series of lavish parties on his own dime for the host of high-level French military and civilians who were quite numerous up there at the time.
All of them were extremely indignant and ready to walk out until he made that effort to stroke their egos and make them feel appreciated by Americans.
It was critical. This was before the French came in force at Yorktown, how long before I cannot recall.
The author of the book gave him all the credit for keeping the alliance intact.