Simon Sebag Montefiore posted:

In April 1789, the American was arrested and accused of paedophile rape. The story has the seedy gleam of a modern sex scandal. Jones appealed to the prince: "A bad woman has accused me of violating her daughter!" Worse, the daughter was said to be nine. Jones, once a Parisian Lothario, admitted to Potemkin: "I love women" and "the pleasures that one only obtains from that sex, but to get such things by force, is horrible to me."

The French representative at the Russian court, Count de Segur, Jones's last friend, turned detective to save the American. He discovered that Jones had told Potemkin the truth – the accusing mother was a procuress who traded "a vile traffic in young girls."

The girl, Katerina Goltzwart, was not nine but 12, if not 14. She sold butter to guests at Jones's hotel, the London Tavern. In his statement to the chief of police three days after the incident, Jones admitted the "depraved girl" came several times to his room. He always gave her money. He claimed that he had not taken her virginity but "each time she came chez moi, she lent herself with the best grace to all a man could want of her."

Segur asked Prince Potemkin to reinstate Jones and not to charge him. The latter was possible, but not the former. "Thanks for what you tried to do for Paul Jones!" Jones was not prosecuted.

Who framed Jones? Potemkin was above such vendettas. The English officers hated the American corsair enough to frame him, but Segur concluded that Prince de Nassau-Siegen was the culprit.

Once back in Paris, Jones bombarded Potemkin with complaints about the medals he was owed: "Time will teach you, my lord. that I am neither a mountebank nor a swindler but a man loyal and true."