When he arrived at Nantes Penet kept him drunk and hostile to the Paris commissioners. France and Great Britain were cutthroat enemies. Vergennes would promise to investigate the matter, which meant that Stormont had lost a point. This long-range program was necessary, but it did not change the fact that the lumbering and inefficient British war machine had at last got itself oiled and repaired for a heavy assault upon the United States. A French expeditionary force arrived in the United States in 1780. Meanwhile, Grard warned, the negotiations must be kept secret. Sieur Montaudoin shared many interests with Franklin; both were members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, enthusiasts of the new physiocratic school, and Masons. But he had met Deane, and wrote him asking for a rendezvous, hinting that he had come to promote peace. Ironically, this was one of the key factors that caused the revolution in the first place. Almost every transaction carried out for Congress was a mixture of public and private business, an accepted practice. This cat and mouse game was only part of the new turn in French policy. The only source for salt during the war was the Turks Islands beds at the tail of the Bahama chain, long a Bermudian monopoly. In 1757, Franklin went to England to represent the Pennsylvania Assembly as a diplomat in its fight against the descendants of the Penn . Now he hurried his preparations, and Captain Wickes was ordered to make all speed to Nantes, and to avoid action if possible. Moreover, a certain project which he may have discussed with Morris and Wickes was developing in his mind, and he needed to find out how France would react if prizes were brought into Nantes. Charles III refused the triple alliance. Franklin had already planned his mission to France, where he would be joined by his fellow commissioners, Silas Deane and Arthur Lee. The arms of which Doniol speaks had long since been amassed, and it seems probable that Dubourg and Vergennes discussed other matters. Though facing insurmountable odds, the underdog naval forces of the young United States proved their savvy by helping to defeat Great Britain in the War for Independence. He contributed a million livres to the colonies war chest and his uncle, Charles III of Spain, followed suit. British firms had also been running munitions to the colonies, and continued to do so, despite orders-in-council. Contrary winds kept the Reprisal from entering the Loire to make the port of Nantes. That was its only point; Vergennes would soon learn of this long interview with the British representative, and he might be worried if Franklin neglected to tell him anything about it. If Conyngham was not punished, Stormont would resign, breaking off diplomatic relations with France. With British warships on the prowl the voyage was dangerous, but Franklin had brought his grandsons along. When the royal nod transmogrified Beaumarchais into Roderigue Hortalez, he wrote Lee over that signature, announcing the formation of his house and his intended shipments to the Cape, to be paid for by remittances of American tobacco. These reports were written in invisible ink between the lines of love letters addressed to Mr. Little Benny Bache would be put in school to learn French, and Temple Franklin would act as his grandfathers unpaid secretary. In mid-November George III, who had no intention of starting a war with France, decided it would be useful to know the Spanish plans and sent Paul Wentworth to Paris to find out how Charles III stood. only affected North America. The Channel Islands privateers were out in force, and the maritime war in Europe, which could no longer be closely directed from Passy, was in a state of anarchy. As a result of Lees carelessness in leaving his portfolio in his room when he went out to dine, the commissioners had to abandon the building of a great frigate in Amsterdam, and she was sold to Louis XVI at cost. The treaties of amity and commerce were promptly offered. The greatest suppressed scandal of the war was the British trade with the enemy on Statia. By late June the captain and his men were released from jail, and the, But in mid-July Conyngham took his unharmed cutter out to sea and anchored at a safe rendezvous. Since France and Spain were not responding to the offer of a trade alliance, he raised his sights and proposed what amounted to a military one. In 1782, Benjamin Franklin rejected informal peace overtures from Great Britain for a settlement that would provide the thirteen states with some measure of autonomy within the British Empire. Captain Pearson of the Speedwell had orders to follow any suspected American ship out to the open sea and there arrest her. As soon as Arthur Lee arrived from London the three commissioners wrote Vergennes announcing their appointment to negotiate a treaty of amity and commerce with France. It happened that Americas greatest Spanish friend, the merchant Don Diego Gardoqui of Bilbao, was in Madrid at the moment, and he was called into consultation. By a natural process the activities of the mission were divided. Vergennes admitted that open assistance to the United States meant war, but war was in any case inevitable. Compared to the antics of the French Revolution, the infamous Tea Party in Boston was like the sisters at the convent sneaking into the dorm of the rival convent and shorting their sheets. In the kindest of letters, Gardoqui explained the situation to the approaching envoy and suggested a meeting on the French side of the border. The Virginia delegates differed upon his appointment. Here we are too near the sun, and the business is dangerous; with you it may be done more easily.. The story of his amazing accomplishments, of his diplomatic feats, of his wizardry in supplying the Continental armies, of his struggles with envious fellow commissioners, scheming enemies, and vacillating friendsthis is the burden of Helen Augurs new book, The Secret War of Independence (Duell, Sloan and PearceLittle, Brown). Franklin faced the critical year of 1777 with the knowledge that the British fleet would pound American hopes to nothing unless France and Britain began their ordained war. Soon Beaumarchaiss coach was tearing down the road to Paris so fast that it overturned and he injured an arm. At last America would hear of the third Lee brother, hitherto a cipher, as its savior in Europe. On January 24 Wickes sailed out of Nantes with a French pilot and several French seamen aboard, strengthening the desired impression of collusion with Versailles. Copyright 1949-2022 American Heritage Publishing Co. All Rights Reserved. Arthur Lee was rewarded by memories of turmoil, which he loved and which he was expert in creating. When they arrived at Martinique, the Americans were so cordially received that Bingham settled down as resident agent for Congress. As a past master in the art of making the other man feel that he was acting solely for him, Vergennes recognized this basic technique in diplomacy. The thirteen colonies were in the nightmare situation of trying to fight the strongest power in the Western world almost barehanded. They found the star of them all in Dunkirk. The fight for American independence piqued the interest of Europe's most powerful colonial powers. This well-connected young man had been sent direct from Congress to buy two ships to serve as packets for the mission. Stormont subsided; England needed time too. The idling envoys to Vienna, Berlin, and Tuscany not only buzzed around Passy day after day but tried to rewrite Franklins treaties. The French Revolution lasted from 1789 until 1799. Williams, now 27, had been trained in the Caribbean trade; he spoke French and was capable of dealing with accounts, which always baffled his granduncle. Gunrunning to America was certainly going on in 1774, and no doubt Franklin knew about it. The war provided Great Britain enormous territorial gains in North America, but disputes over . A photograph of Edouard de Laboulaye from the Galerie Contemporaine collection. In 1758 Britain found a new strategy. Robert Morris had arranged Toms appointment under the delusion that the youth had reformed during a long stay abroad and was to be trusted with the public business. Tom Morris was dragging out the last months of his wretched life, and Lee saw no point in beating a dead horse. While a gifted and expert secret agent can develop a second personality which keeps him from making slips, in Bancrofts case this doubling of self may have reflected a profound split in the psyche. However, Franklin had boarded the, But now he had something serious to report: My informations says that the, In later reports Sir Joseph drew such an alarming picture of Dutch gunrunning, especially to the Caribbean, that the British sent a Navy sloop and cutter to spend the winter at Texel Island near Amsterdam. Bancroft had sped to London, mainly to make a killing on the stock market, but he would not fail to bring George III the bad news. When Franklin came to the signing . On the land, if Washington finally got enough men and guns, he might wear down British troops far from their home base. The arrest did much to soothe British wrath. And Spanish concurrence in the alliance must be won. February 6, 1778. The French loan was a godsend. That formality over, Vergennes was ready for his great move. Late in October, 1776, Benjamin Franklin sailed for France to direct the foreign sector of the extraordinary war into which his young country had been plunged. The warehouses lining her one street, a mile long, were crammed with munitions, ships stores, bolts of cloth; sacks of sugar and tobacco covered the very sands, and the roadstead was packed with merchantmen. Wickes got clean away, only to founder in a storm off the Banks of Newfoundland. British general Henry Clinton marched north from New York and could have helped Burgoyne turn the tide at Saratoga, but he never arrived. All this was excruciating, since Lee had trumpeted in letters home that he had the ministry and Hortalez in his pocket. Stormont was instructed to tell Vergennes that the Rebels game was up. As far as brains and ability went, Deane belonged in the first rank of the men doing the hard immediate tasks of the Revolution. The American Revolution was by no means a purely American-British conflict. Contemporaries experienced the French Revolution as a set of interlocking changes or stages that seemed driven by some kind of mechanism or impetus. A swarm of workmen then changed the marks of the vessels by slapping on new coats of paint, changing the figurehead, and such devices. Franklin was a shrewd judge of men, and his unclouded confidence in Bancroft needs some extraordinary explanation. A growing fleet of American privateers had already brought prizes into the various French ports, and a system had been perfected for their disposal. But Beaumarchais was on a crusade for American independence, and he would not drop it until independence was won. The traffic which had started about 1770 was very large. After that opening wedge, which tacitly killed the embargo, Franklins resolution for world trade was bound to go through. But if she should declare war on France, we conceive that by the united force of France, Spain, and America, she will lose all her possessions in the West Indies, much the greatest part of that commerce which has rendered her so opulent, and be reduced to that state of weakness and humiliation which she has, by her perfidy, her insolence, and her cruelty both in the east and the west, so justly merited.. But Deane was not interested; he showed great American pride, Wentworth wrote Eden. Grimaldi told him that the King was presenting the Americans stores of arms, clothing, and blankets which their ships could pick up at New Orleans and Havana. was part of a larger war between Britain and France. 900 seconds. It happened that Franklin and Morris were the only members of the Committee of Secret Correspondence in town when the courier arrived, and they resolved to keep the news to themselves. Franklin immediately got to work at this dismal situation. He made this gesture impressive by sending two sloops of war to Dunkirk to take the captain and his men and deliver them to the local jail. In this desperate situation a few individuals took over as heads of non-existent departments. Finally the almost moribund Board of Trade and Plantations was given the assignmentwhich doubtless proved profitableof issuing permits to merchants wishing to export warlike stores. The Estates-General was a meeting of the three estates (clergy, nobles, everyone else) that could be called by the French King and was famously and infamously called in 1789 out of a desperate desire to try to push through reforms that would keep France from going bankrupt. Beaumarchais was with the three commissioners when the official messenger arrived. He was the Edward Edwards of the secret service, the master spy of the century. It attempted to pay down that debt by taxing colonists through the Stamp Act, generating far more resentment than revenue. A few days later Louis XVI made the United States a loan of 2,000,000 livres. Introduction. Hundreds of privateers were at their work of economic attrition, wearing down Britains strength by blows against her merchant shipping. He had written his own instructions for Commissioner Franklin to carry out. Franklins hosts were the merchants Pliarne and Penet, who had little standing in Nantes, but who may have been subsidized by Vergennes. His future United States included Canada and the Floridas and the British West Indies, especially Bermuda and the Bahamas. The fact is that Congress had little authority over the coloniesit managed to adopt the Army, but the Continental Navy was a bitter joke. The King was always anxious to avoid friction with England, and Lees visit would arouse her suspicions. They were in the best possible hands; Captain Lambert Wickes was one of the few masters seasoned in the merchant fleet who had joined the Continental Navy. He had sent some of his baggage ahead to Florence, never dreaming that an Izard would not be received in the duchy. At Passy Bancroft was a loved and trusted figure, and Vergennes so admired him that after the war he sent Bancroft on a highly confidential mission to Ireland. The American Revolution and the French Alliance. The American Revolution. As the French Revolution was inspired by the American Revolution, it is easy to determine that the two must have similarities. The Revolution precipitated a series of European wars, forcing the United States to articulate a clear policy of neutrality in order to avoid being embroiled in these European conflicts. If successful, France would get as her share half the Newfoundland fishery and all the sugar islands; Spain would be enriched by Portugal and the Floridas, and the United States would gain Canada, Bermuda, and the Bahamas. War profiteering was pandemic. In the summer of 1775 Colonel Henry Tucker, whose clan dominated island affairs, came to Philadelphia in a state of worry and resentment. The French Revolution also influenced U.S. politics, as pro- and anti- Revolutionary factions sought to . But his eventual victory depended on two essentials which only Europe could provide: military supplies of all sorts and a powerful navy. That switched him to the Caribbean trade. It thus comprises the first seven years of the period of warfare that was continued through the Napoleonic Wars until Napoleon's abdication in 1814, with a year of interruption under the peace of Amiens (1802-03). He closeted himself with Silas Deane, who had now been in France for six months on a dual mission for the two secret committees and had a tremendous budget of news. However, Izard and Arthur Lee let no day pass without earnest efforts, and on January 2, 1781, a move was made in Congress for Franklins recall. He was delighted to find his brother William waiting for him in Paris. Lack of food. Spain had ceased her royal aids to America. When Deane arrived in Paris in the summer of 1776 Arthur Lee rushed over from London. Arthur Lee knew he was being kept out of important conferences, and yet within a few months he was writing friends that he alone had negotiated the French alliance, though Franklin and Deane tried to take credit for the work. The Bahamas, too, acted as allies. During the summer Congress became alarmed at the massing of French warships in the Caribbean and sent young William Bingham to find out whether this mobilization portended action against the United States. No doubt the colonies hoarded local supplies for their own defense, and the merchants hoarded their stocks for higher prices. Soon Franklin and Deane had a group of young men busy in the various ports, helping merchantmen and privateers speed on their way, informing them of shifts in French regulations and dangerous areas patrolled by British warships, recruiting French seamen to fill out depleted ships companies, finding masters for ships and ships for masters. Franklin remembered the bitter crisis of the summer when Louis XVI had agreed to armed intervention and then had capitulated to his uncle. 1783. Among the papers was Lees private journal with a log of his Spanish transactions and details of every move made by the Paris mission up to that June. In making this special adaptation of her book for AMERICAN HERITAGE, she has re-created that less familiar but vital struggle behind the scenes which was necessary at Versailles before Cornwallis could march out, in defeat, at Yorktown while the drums beat for the birth of a new nation. The second . Lee next stormed Prussia. He had come to the point where he must drop his perilous but always enjoyable collaboration with Franklin and play for France alone. During the Revolution this tiny island was the clearinghouse for American trade with the Caribbean and Europe, including Britain. He was such a master at dissimulation that he kept the British ambassador, Lord Stormont, convinced all through 1774 that nothing illicit was going on. He was free for a time to be the scientist, finding in nature a fidelity to laws beyond the reach of human meddling. The court of France, he wrote, is the great wheel that moves them all and he added that of all posts he preferred Paris for himself. For months, in fact, Franklin and Deane had slipped away in the evening for conferences with the minister, and Lee spread the word that the Doctor was having an affair with some French beauty. Here are five ways the French helped Americans win their freedom. It is true that these countries, and to some extent Spain, had for some time been shipping out contraband for America, mostly through their Caribbean islands. But before this blackout settled down Congress managed to get dispatches through, which in effect begged Franklin to manage his side of the desperate crisis as he saw fit. One traditional characteristic of the French diplomacy of alliances has been the "Alliance de revers" (i.e. The exhibit traces the American naval effort in its three components: the Continental Navy, state navies, and privateers. Islanders and continentals had worked out a prototype of the free trade which was one of Franklins major objectives. Congress was shipping them tobacco, furs, and other valuable products to buy war supplies and ships, but Tom Morris and Penet claimed every cargo arriving in France. There was nothing to do but restore the packet and the brig to England and order the arrest of Conyngham and his crew. On the same day he wrote Richard Henry Lee: My idea of adapting characters and places is this: Dr. Franklin to Vienna, as the first, most respectable, and quiet; Mr. Deane to Holland; and the alderman [William] to Berlin. Concluded between the government of King Louis XVI and the Second Continental Congress, the treaty proved critical to the United States winning its independence from Great Britain. When Wickes brought his captured brigantines to Nantes they were speedily bought by a French purchaser for less than half their value. He supported his private investment in the American future by using his fleet of a dozen ships for Caribbean trade on the return voyage to France, and this sugar trade brought him profits to invest in more goods for America. He was a bosom friend of Alderman Lee and had accepted his appointment by the Adams-Lee bloc in Congress as envoy to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. New York: Random House, 2015. Gardoqui proposed a sensible solution: he and the retiring foreign minister, Grimaldi, would arrange a secret rendezvous just across the border, and Lee would not enter Spain at all. The American people had shown their power. Since Wentworth often slipped across to Paris, much of Bancrofts information could be delivered verbally, but he made a weekly report in writing. The French support NATO modernization efforts and are leading contributors to the NATO Response Force. He had a vital part in transforming the flow of war supplies from a too little, too late dribble into a steady stream which insured an American victory. But Bancroft was in the most strategic position of any informer, and his conduct at Passy was mysterious. The Reprisal was carrying a cargo of indigo worth 3,000 which was intended to pay the early expenses of the Paris mission. After Lees visit he proffered no more aid and listened to Floridablanca. Then he tried to tempt Deane with the honours and emoluments which the King would bestow on him if he brought about a reconciliation. At once, on March 17, the commissioners sent memoirs to the French and Spanish ministries urging a triple war against Britain and her ally Portugal. Franklin took charge of diplomatic duties, Arthur Lee undertook missions to Spain and Prussia which happily kept him out of Paris at a crucial period, and Deane continued his commercial activities. Even Vergennes was now lukewarm. His new cutter, the Revenge , had been bought by William Hodge of Philadelphia, who had also obtained Conynghams first ship. This was the germ of the deliberate policy Franklin and Deane pursued during 1777: to create such an open scandal about French connivance in American raids that it could not be effervesced in private conversations between Stormont and Vergennes. Later that year, the Franco-American army marched 700 miles south to besiege Gen. Charles Cornwallis' British army at Yorktown, while . France and Britain drifted into hostilities without a declaration of war when their fleets off Ushant off the northwest coast of France on June 17, 1778. D.) It caused many French nobles and clergy to move to the newly independent United States. By 1763, France had suffered a crushing defeat in the Seven Years' War (more commonly called the "French and Indian War" in the U.S.), losing all its claims to mainland Canada and the Louisiana Territory. Vergennes promptly granted the requested interview. The copies of his early correspondence with Beaumarchais proved that he knew better. The Continental Navy would never be able to take on the larger British units. But Montaudoin and all Nantes had begun to increase clandestine trade with the thirteen colonies about 1770, long before Franklin decided on his personal break with England. Students will analyze maps, treaties, congressional records, first-hand accounts, and correspondence to determine the different roles assumed by Native Americans in the American Revolution and understand why the various groups formed the alliances they did. In his plain dress, still wearing his comfortable fur cap, he was the natural man Rousseau had taught the French to revere, and a symbol of Utopia. Delays which were not the fault of Deane and Beaumarchais held up most of the fleet for months after lading. George III, faced with plain warnings from Bancroft and Wentworth that a French alliance was pending, would not believe them. Deane and Beaumarchais were already fast friends, working in harmony to load the Hortalez fleet with war supplies. (One factor, the actual fighting on land, would make up the bulk of future histories. For 70 years, American Heritage has been the leading magazine of U.S. history, politics, and culture. In the matter of the Hortalez ships, it was Vergennes who had yielded. France's prolonged involvement in the Seven Years' War of 1756-1763 drained the treasury, as did the country's participation in the American Revolution of 1775-1783. Compare And Contrast The American Revolution And French Revolution. A first fleet under the orders of the Admiral d'Estaing was dispatched to . The Comte de Vergennes. British spies were everywhere. Whereas French intervention in the war would help turn the tide in favor of the Americans, the debt it incurred would contribute to the later French Revolution (1789-1799 . Somehow the wild Irishman, repeating the maneuver of the sound and sober Wickes, created an infinitely greater reaction. To forestall a truce with Britain, the ministers had stipulated that the United States must make no peace that surrendered her independence. American victory over the British in the Battle of Saratoga convinced the French that the Americans were committed to independence and worthy partners to a formal alliance. Bingham was in other privateering ventures with Robert Morris and had made St. Pierre a virtual American war base. Bancroft was a supreme spy, but he preserved a curious code of his own, almost a code of honor, about what he would or would not do. By a supple turn of the wrist, Franklin transformed Franco-American relations. Q. French forces under Rochambeau landed at Rhode Island in 1780, which they fortified before linking up with Washington in 1781. The romantic era of secret aid was finished; there would be no more subsidies and loans from Versailles, and his company was already in financial straits. In a few swift parries Franklin suggested what his technique of dealing with the ministry would be. It led the French to seek an alliance with the Americans to dethrone Louis XVI. Since Nantes was the key port for American purposes, Franklin made a personal sacrifice and sent his grandnephew Jonathan Williams there as the special agent for the commissioners. But he was too late. Though he knew that affairs at Nantes were in a frightful state, William Lee lingered in Paris until August to confer with his brother about rearranging American foreign affairs to enhance the family glory. A generation after the end of the Revolutionary War, new revolutions emerged in nearly a dozen Spanish colonies in Central and South America. It ultimately did nothing of the sort, and its calling is usually . If this scheme can be executed, it will disconcert all the plans at one stroke, without an appearance of intention, and save both the public and me.. It had only an overworked legislature trying to perform administrative functions. The American Revolution of 1775-1789, which concluded as the revolution in France was unfolding, was perhaps the most significant. The Committee of Secret Correspondence, under Franklin, engaged agents abroad to explore the possibilities of foreign alliances. how did the french alliance contribute to the american revolution. He spent much of the latter half of 1776 in Paris as mentor to the inexperienced American, and the close friendship thus begun lasted as long as Deane lived. Moreover, orders would be given for British warships to seize the French fishing fleet daily expected from the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. He was overimpressed with titles and high connections and had made the serious blunder of sending a stream of idle young aristocrats overseas to serve under Washington. He signed only his initials. The French helped the American colonists in two main ways. At the moment, Nantes was all Frankliniste . The providence which was evidently favoring the American cause got the rest of the fleet safely to the mainland except the Seine , which the British captured after she had unloaded part of her cargo on Martinique. The greater part of the American seaboard was tightly blockaded, and the whole Atlantic was so unsafe that Dutch shipments to Statia now went out under heavy convoy. That night boats brought his cannon and powder and a number of French seamen, and the Dunkirk Pirate was on his way. At any rate, they had bobbed up in Philadelphia and obtained the first publicized arms contract between Congress and foreign shippers. During Franklins years in London he had watched the old power pattern repeat itself. The misunderstanding was cleared up, but meanwhile Deane was bitter about Morris and bitter about the energies he had poured into his public life, only to be systematically destroyed by the Lees.