Famous games of dice: a new history. Part 1 of 16 in a series.
On 3 September 1783, at the Hotel d’York, 56 Rue Jacob, Paris, American and British delegations met to discuss the surrender of the American Resistance to British colonial rule in the Americas. David Hartley the Younger, His Britannic Majesty’s Minister Plenipotentiary, unexpectedly challenged the upstarts to a game of Dice, thought to be Farkle, to decide who would win the war. For the Americans, Benjamin Franklin thought it beneath him, so John Adams and John Jay played Paper-Scissors-Stone to decide who would represent the revolutionaries. John Jay won. The theory goes that Hartley had weighted dice, hence gambling the war in such a way. But disastrously, John Jay won the first drive. It was a complete shock to the British party.
In order to try to avert disaster, Hartley offered Jay double or quits, with the double representing surprisingly good surrender terms by the British, with enlarged boundaries and good fishing rights. Incredibly, Jay won again. Hartley offered triple or quits, this time allowing the Americans full rights to corrupt the English Language in any way they saw fit, including the much extended use of the letter Z which was highly prised in the Americas. For a third time Jay won, and though Hartley, increasingly panicked, wanted to play on, offering British virgins, dentists and turnips as well as Ireland and the wretched town of Southampton in Hampshire, the American party closed the game, and the Treaty of Paris was drawn up accordingly.
