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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. CareerGérard 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.[1] In 1782, he was sent on a secret mission to London to make peace feelers and later undertook official diplomatic visits that led to the 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:
On 30 November, preliminary articles of peace were signed but it took a year, until 3 September 1783, for the Paris Peace Treaty to be signed.[3] Chevalier Gérard de Rayneval was appointed to the Royal Order of Charles III and served in King Louis XVI's Conseil d'Etat. FamilyHe was the fourth son of Claude Gérard, of Masmünster in Alsace, by his wife Marie-Françoise Wetzel. In Paris on 8 August 1776, he married Sophie Gaucherel and had by her three children:
His eldest brother was Conrad-Alexandre Gérard, comte de Munster. See alsoReferences
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