Jean Luzac

He was the most influential newspaper editor in the Western world in the years immediately preceding the French Revolution, and his sister Emilie married his fellow Patriot Wijbo Fijnje.

Its readers included Louis XVI, Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, and all the influential rulers and diplomats of the day.

When John Adams arrived in the Netherlands, he immediately paid Luzac a visit, to provide him with full reports of the constitutional debates in America.

[1] Shortly after this, Luzac published a Dutch translation of the Massachusetts Constitution, which affected public opinion about the American War of Independence in the Netherlands.

[4] Luzac was critical of the violence of the French Revolution, however, and he had to abandon the editorship of the paper in 1798 for six months, under pressure from the pro-French government of the Batavian Republic.