He now careened his ship and cleaned the hull at his leisure while the excitement died down. With economic law as a lever he got Congress to open trade with the whole world, Great Britain excepted, three months before independence was ratified. France was a long-term historical rival with the Kingdom of Great Britain, from which the Colonies were attempting to separate.. A Treaty of Alliance between the French and . But the accident was symbolic: Hortalez & Company had suffered a bouleversement . However, Franklin had boarded the Reprisal for that very purpose. Lord Stormont, the British ambassador, had been sputtering at Vergennes for two years about the shipping of contraband from French ports, and now he raised such a storm that the minister had to forbid the sailing of one Hortalez vessel after the other. 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. France had 26 battleships ready, and by spring Spain would have thirty. 1778-1782. He had reached an impasse: France would not help America unless America showed promise of winning her war, and America could not win without French help. This required certain arrangements in the ports of France. Grard, calling at Passy that evening, gave the commissioners a full report of the Cabinet meeting. But he was too late. The American Revolution had a multifaceted effect in France, extending the national debt, contributing . Spain had ceased her royal aids to America. Intended as a defensive alliance, it saw France provide both supplies . After this momentous decision of December 17, Deanes meeting with Wentworth was a decided anticlimax. When Deane left Philadelphia on his mission to France, Franklin suggested that Edward Bancroft would be a useful consultant on European affairs, and so it proved. Vergennes was alarmed. Britain won the Seven Years War and imposed the Peace of Paris which bred the next cycle of conflict with the Continental powers. Like the first conflict of that name, it was a period of intermittent warfare and political and economic rivalry between the two powers. Deane and Beaumarchais were already fast friends, working in harmony to load the Hortalez fleet with war supplies. Vergennes would promise to investigate the matter, which meant that Stormont had lost a point. Nothing was a dead secret at Passy. 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. A number of ill-advised financial maneuvers in the late 1700s worsened the financial situation of the already cash-strapped French government. This kept him out of personal debates and increased his potential. 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. William Lee opened the campaign against Deane in a letter to Francis Lightfoot Lee. Vergennes, facing a furious Stormont, knew he had been caught red-handed in a raid on the English mails by a ship fitted out in a French port. It attempted to pay down that debt by taxing colonists through the Stamp Act, generating far more resentment than revenue. Our want of powder is inconceivable, wrote Washington in the bitter early days of the Revolution. The arms of which Doniol speaks had long since been amassed, and it seems probable that Dubourg and Vergennes discussed other matters. He sent his first secretary, Grard de Rayvenal, to Passy with his congratulations and the suggestion that Franklin might now press the treaty negotiation which France had avoided for nearly a year. On May 3 Vergennes wrote his royal master that he proposed to call in Sieur Montaudoin of Nantes and entrust him with forwarding funds and arms to America. The trouble with Silas Deane was tragically simple: he was never quite sure who he was. He was a smaller copy of Robert Morris and aspired to become a great international merchant like his friend. 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 sacred British mails were rushed down to Passy, and then the storm broke at Versailles. There was merely enthusiasm for the American cause, Stormont reported to Whitehall, on the part of the Wits, Philosophers and Coffee House Politicians who are all to a man warm Americans.. As such is their miserable policy, it is our business to force on a war for which purpose I see nothing so likely as fitting our privateers from the ports and islands of France. There was no mention of payment. He was evidently buying arms and setting up a smuggling base in the Low Countries. Franklin and Deane co-operated with him by being very discreet about evading this prohibition, but the year which had begun so brilliantly in maritime operations was in the doldrums. The King was progressing from the swaddling clothes of a dominant mother to the strait jacket of his manic seizures, and even in his long periods of sanity his balance was precarious. There must be a breaking point somewhere in his patience. During this period of watchful waiting, Franklin applied political pressure. It was an entirely new sort of war because the United States was a new sort of country, whose survival depended less on land fighting than on a complex of factors in which Franklin was deeply involved. Lee next stormed Prussia. The chief French ammunition dumps were Martinique and Cap Franois (now Cap Haitien) on Santo Domingo, known to seagoing Americans simply as the Cape. The Spanish shipped to New Orleans and Havana, and the British chose islands convenient to Washingtons chief arsenal, the Dutch island of St. Eustatia. The situation at home was alarming. Lying close to British, Danish, French, and Spanish islands, Statia, as she was known to her friends, had for generations offered European goods at bargain rates, and arms to any enemy of Britain. Lee could not bear to lose Beaumarchais and tried to detach him from Deane. Conyngham hastily sailed back to his berth and unloaded the powder. Somehow the wild Irishman, repeating the maneuver of the sound and sober Wickes, created an infinitely greater reaction. As for Dr. Dubourg, this bookish man was an incongruous visitor at Versailles by June of 1776, by which time he had received Franklins appointment as the French agent of his Committee of Secret Correspondence. In their eyes she was still colonial, an outlying province of Europe. Franklin had no doubt guessed, when the courier returned from Europe in September with news of tremendous shipments of arms by Monsieur Hortalez, that the real name of this mysterious friend was France. Young Gustavus Conyngham of the landed Irish gentry had emigrated as a boy to Philadelphia where his relatives were prominent shipping merchants. France's support deepened after the Americans beat the British in the October 1777 Battle of Saratoga, proving themselves committed to independence and worthy of a formal alliance. Only a frayed rope anchored the nations to peace, and Franklin believed that an implement lay ready to hand which would saw through the hawser. In France, however, this separation of function was impossible. 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. He raided in the North Sea and the Baltic; he sailed around England and then around Ireland, everywhere taking prizes. 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. Here are five ways the French helped Americans win their freedom. All George III had to offer his erring children, who would of course return to colonial status, was the repeal of the obnoxious acts since 1763, which had precipitated the war. People he loved and admired had far too much influence on him. The stench of treachery was in the air. With British warships on the prowl the voyage was dangerous, but Franklin had brought his grandsons along. But Bancroft was in the most strategic position of any informer, and his conduct at Passy was mysterious. This must not happen again. For once Wentworth brought the King good news, the only kind he could ever believe. On the land, if Washington finally got enough men and guns, he might wear down British troops far from their home base. In August, 1774, Sir Joseph Yorke, for years the British ambassador at The Hague, wrote his superior, the Earl of Suffolk: As the contraband trade carried on between Holland and North America is so well known in England I have not thought it necessary of late to trouble your Lordship with trifling details of ships sailing from Amsterdam for the British Colonies, laden with teas, linnens, etc., But now he had something serious to report: My informations says that the Polly , Captain Benjamin Broadhurst, bound to Nantucket has shipped on board a considerable quantity of gunpowder. When Franklin came to the signing . The King was always anxious to avoid friction with England, and Lees visit would arouse her suspicions. Johnson was captured and sent to the Old Mill, from which he soon escaped. But he was quite happy to spend the year of 1777 in the humbler role of itinerant trouble shooter in the French ports. New York: Random House, 2015. One result of the raid by the Dunkirk Pirate was the fact that British merchants no longer trusted the Admiraltys ability to protect British ships. Because of the Family Compact, Spain would have to approve the alliance with America, and accordingly Vergenness memoir was sent to Madrid with its proposal for a triple offensive and defensive alliance. The French government has immediately recalled its ambassadors to the US and Australia for consultation in response to America's recently announced national security partnership with the United . The treaties of amity and commerce were promptly offered. Moreover, orders would be given for British warships to seize the French fishing fleet daily expected from the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. On February 6, 1778, Benjamin Franklin was in France signing the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance. In 1776, France was one of the great powers of Europe. This was the same thing as asking France and Spain to declare immediate war against Great Britain. Ferreiro, Larrie D. Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France & Spain Who Saved It. According to Doniol, Franklin dealt through Sieur Montaudoin of Nantes, a great shipping merchant, and the savant Dr. Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg. 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. The British were methodical. This cat and mouse game was only part of the new turn in French policy. This was a bitter blow to Vergennes and a calamity to the Americans. When he arrived at Nantes Penet kept him drunk and hostile to the Paris commissioners. 1. The United States and the French Revolution, 1789-1799 If Vergennes had any doubts about Franklins grasp of Bourbon aims, they were resolved by the Doctors masterly letter of January 5. He seemed to be everywhere at once, a nightmare figure. 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. When Deane arrived in Paris in the summer of 1776 Arthur Lee rushed over from London. Long before it got into feeble action, eleven of the colonies had started their own navies, and several of them commissioned their own privateer fleets. The joint conquest was proposed of Canada, the Floridas, and the British West Indies. The prevention of anarchy and civil unrest. France Allied with American Colonies - America's Library A phenomenal number of men escaped Old Mill Prison at Plymouth; they scaled the walls, dug long tunnels under them, or bribed the guards to let them through the gates. William Lee was rewarded with office as alderman of the city, a title which he did not relinquish until the war was almost over and he knew which side would win. One of Conynghams prizes was recaptured by the British, who took her into Yarmouth. The French and Indian War was the North American conflict that was part of a larger imperial conflict between Great Britain and France known as the Seven Years' War. He might have included the foreign islands, since all colonial America had been united for a century and a half in its resistance to the mercantilism of Europe. For diplomatic reasons, he always pretended a vast ignorance of Hortalez & Companya feat like hiding an elephant in a hat. Vergennes may never have realized what had happened during that fateful year of 1777. When Wickes brought his captured brigantines to Nantes they were speedily bought by a French purchaser for less than half their value. The Committee of Secret Correspondence, under Franklin, engaged agents abroad to explore the possibilities of foreign alliances. To forestall a truce with Britain, the ministers had stipulated that the United States must make no peace that surrendered her independence. The second . Above all we needed an ally. Question 5. These crucial French contributions exemplify the global character of the . With a fur cap on his unwigged gray head, Franklin took up his studies of the Gulf Stream where he had dropped them on his voyage home from England. 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.. They asked that frigates be sent over by August to cruise against Englands Baltic trade and attack the British Isles. Resentful over the loss of its North American empire after the French and Indian War, France welcomed the opportunity to undermine Britain's position in the New World.
