He was to steal all original papers possible from the commissioners, and copy others. Nobody could find the prizes, which had been sold. His Reprisal , a full-rigged ship in an age of sloops and brigs, flew under the strong westerlies and completed the voyage in five weeks. A member of the Royal College of Physicians, in 1773 he was elected to the Royal Society under the sponsorship of Franklin, the astronomer royal, and the kings physician. Due to the fantastic time lag in communications with Congress, Alderman Lee was about to take up his assignment as joint commercial agent for France ten months after Congress had canceled that assignment and appointed him envoy to Prussia and Austria. It encouraged the French to adopt the government system of popular sovereignty. Shortly after this, Parliament authorized British privateering. American merchantmen picked up contraband all over Europe; the British, Dutch, and French sent some cargoes direct to the thirteen colonies, but far greater amounts to their islands in the Caribbean, to be picked up by American traders. 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 . Whatever disaster happened in 1777, he wanted to build a friendship between the French and American peoples which would last for many generations, and he calmly laid the foundations of that friendship in his own daily associations. To license content, please contact licenses [at] americanheritage.com. His association with Hortalez was a stroke of luck. In order to make the war effective he reminded Vergennes of things Vergennes could do. 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. 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. British Debt. The defeat was so ugly for France that it led them to lose all the colonies in the Americas. During Franklins years in London he had watched the old power pattern repeat itself. France had 26 battleships ready, and by spring Spain would have thirty. France Allied with American Colonies. On Christmas Day Washington wrote Congress: Our want of powder is inconceivable. Three weeks later there was not a pound in his magazines. His key man for American contacts was Paul Wentworth of New Hampshire, who before the war had been the London agent for that colony and after the war was elected a trustee of Dartmouth College, to which he had presented scientific apparatus. During 1775, in London on a royal errand, he was in close touch with the American patriots. John Adams once remarked that while Washington was to be respected as a private individual, in Congress I feel myself to be superior to General Washington. He objected to the commander being allowed to name his own generals and thought Congress should carry on every function of war except shoot down redcoats. 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. In a word, Franklin laid the cornerstone of American foreign relations, and for a long time to come American treaties would be modeled on these first ones with France. Moreover, importers of cannon and powder had to arm their merchantmen, and if their merchantmen were transformed into privateers, as many were, they needed a large supply of ammunition. It is hard to see how the patriots could have started their war, or kept it going, without the help of the islanders. 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. The French Revolution lasted from 1789 until 1799. Offered the bait of gunpowder, Congress swallowed the hook which Franklin had prayerfully included and ruled that any vessel bringing war supplies to the seaboard would be allowed to load up with produce. The second . Meanwhile, Grard warned, the negotiations must be kept secret. These reports were written in invisible ink between the lines of love letters addressed to Mr. 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. February 6, 1778. 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 royal loan was followed by an advance of a third million by the Farmers General of the French Revenue, who administered the government monopoly of tobacco and hoped for large shipments from Congress. On February i he urged that France enter her unavoidable war at once, and the next day gave Vergennes the personal pledge of the commissioners that if France entered the war the United States would not make a separate peace with Britain. 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 insisted that Arthur Lee was mad, and perhaps only a madman could have created a cabal of such malignity and scope out of nothing but his own emotions. The greatest suppressed scandal of the war was the British trade with the enemy on Statia. A first fleet under the orders of the Admiral d'Estaing was dispatched to . Lack of food. There was no mention of payment. Deane and Beaumarchais were already fast friends, working in harmony to load the Hortalez fleet with war supplies. Here we are too near the sun, and the business is dangerous; with you it may be done more easily.. One after the other his Whig friends rose in Parliament and warned that France might soon come out in support of the Americans. The fight for American independence piqued the interest of Europe's most powerful colonial powers. Despite his own best efforts, Lees mission turned out to be a success. 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. He raided in the North Sea and the Baltic; he sailed around England and then around Ireland, everywhere taking prizes. These three phases reveal an orderly progression in Franklins mind. France's Debt Problems. He had come to the point where he must drop his perilous but always enjoyable collaboration with Franklin and play for France alone. He helped Beaumarchais buy and fit out eight ships, prudently scattered in various ports: the, Amphitrite, Mercure, Flammand, Mre Bobie, Seine, Thrse, Amelia, Delays which were not the fault of Deane and Beaumarchais held up most of the fleet for months after lading. The American people had shown their power. Copyright 1949-2022 American Heritage Publishing Co. All Rights Reserved. France and Great Britain were cutthroat enemies. One traditional characteristic of the French diplomacy of alliances has been the "Alliance de revers" (i.e. At the moment, Nantes was all, The American was adulated, wined and dined. 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. People heavily associate the French Revolution with the American Revolution, due to the many general similarities. 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. In 1776, Louis XVI was just 22 years old and had been king for only two years. The Continental Navy would never be able to take on the larger British units. Dr. Bancroft was an old friend of Franklins from his London days. 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. Franklin had a share in preserving the friendship between the mainland and Bermuda at a moment when it was severely strained. He was also making them a gift of 375,000 livres. 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. Before Deane and Wentworth met, he sent word to Passy that France would after all not wait for word from Spain but would conclude the alliance independently, on one condition: that no separate peace be made with England. To formalize the colonial complaints against Parliament. As far as brains and ability went, Deane belonged in the first rank of the men doing the hard immediate tasks of the Revolution. Hoping to calm down the furor, Franklin appeared in public as little as possible. America needed French aid of every sort: ships, supplies, loans, to begin with. 1. The American victory secured critical financial support from the French. He went back to London in a fury. Somehow the wild Irishman, repeating the maneuver of the sound and sober Wickes, created an infinitely greater reaction. For a complication of reasons the Massachusetts cousins, John and Samuel Adams, had formed a close alliance with the Virginia brothers, Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot Lee. Franklin insisted on British recognition of American independence and refused to consider a peace separate from France, America's staunch ally. France is one of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) top five troop contributors. But once these two great steps in the right direction were made, it was easy to push through resolutions for negotiating foreign alliances. The first similarity between the two revolutions are their origins. It was three weeks before Wentworth managed to get an interview with Franklin, and he spent the interval in terror of imprisonment and even assassination by the French, whose agents were around him in clouds. It began with the bold request that France sell the United States eight ships of the line, 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. However, he had proved to himself more than once that prodigies could result from careful planning and unstinted effort. In March the Doctor was given a charming house at Passy on the grounds of the Htel Valentinois, which belonged to the merchant prince Donatien le Rey de Chaumont. 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. Conyngham hastily sailed back to his berth and unloaded the powder. Vergennes was alarmed. The Doctor was adept at working through trusted friends, and his friends were legion. But the accident was symbolic: Hortalez & Company had suffered a bouleversement . Since Charles III had already contributed a million livres to Hortalez & Company, and allowed New Orleans to become an American privateer base, he may well have thought that he had done his share. They sent eight of them to France and got back safely. His emotional balance was precarious. The colonies could not conclude treaties until they declared themselves a nation, and the necessity of getting military supplies and the support of a powerful fleet did a great deal to hasten independence. The stench of treachery was in the air. In the last months the King had relinquished his illusion that war could be avoided, and he approved his ministers memoir the day it was presented. Then he captured the Kings packet Swallow , running between Falmouth and Lisbon. It made the French . Many of them were now flocking to Europe, for the word had been passed of the hospitality of French and Spanish ports if the proper techniques of evasion were followed. Much later Wentworth revealed the trick: the night before the official inspection Wickes had pumped water into the hold. Late in May Captain Wickes made a cruise quite around Ireland in company with two other captains and captured eighteen small vessels. 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. The move was long overdue, for the Americans had been making a brilliant success of their sea raids all over the Atlantic and the Caribbean. He gave Franklins courier a verbal message: due to Mr. Lees unflagging labors with the French embassy in London, Versailles had been persuaded to send goods worth 200,000 (Hortalez had said 25,000) to the Caribbean as an outright gift. 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. While Spain's influence on the Revolutionary War was significant, perhaps the most profound impact was the broader American Revolution's impact on Spain. Later Lee developed this fantasy into a sinister engine of destruction against those he hated. They were the victims of their friends in Congress, who believed in promiscuous diplomacy as a device for distributing patronage. They asked that frigates be sent over by August to cruise against Englands Baltic trade and attack the British Isles. People he loved and admired had far too much influence on him. In 1776, the Continental Congress sent diplomat Benjamin Franklin, along with Silas Deane and Arthur Lee, to France to secure a formal alliance. Stormont was instructed to tell Vergennes that the Rebels game was up. Britain won the Seven Years War and imposed the Peace of Paris which bred the next cycle of conflict with the Continental powers. Hundreds of privateers were at their work of economic attrition, wearing down Britains strength by blows against her merchant shipping. Contemporaries experienced the French Revolution as a set of interlocking changes or stages that seemed driven by some kind of mechanism or impetus. Conyngham shook them off and began the most spectacular cruise of the war. Little Benny Bache would be put in school to learn French, and Temple Franklin would act as his grandfathers unpaid secretary. He could not punish Conyngham, who was in parts unknown, so he had William Hodge arrested and sent to the Bastille. That formality over, Vergennes was ready for his great move. Focusing on the British government and the problems it faced in 1764, explained why its ministers considered introducing a stamp tax in colonial America. 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. Modern as they were, and involving as they did a certain war with Britain, these treaties were provisionally accepted on December 12 by Louis XVI and his ministers. He was the mutant of a new species. This move had been made after Franklin left Philadelphia, and the bad news would not reach Paris for months. Much of this trade was illicit, but it was based on realities and it bred a friendship between the West Indies and the mainlanders which was all-important to the Revolution. 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. However, over time divisions of opinion became apparent between federalists and anti-federalists. 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. Now he hurried his preparations, and Captain Wickes was ordered to make all speed to Nantes, and to avoid action if possible. For all his enjoyment of high life and high-level intrigue, he was a seismograph about social upheavals and an intellectual who understood their necessity. The idling envoys to Vienna, Berlin, and Tuscany not only buzzed around Passy day after day but tried to rewrite Franklins treaties. Despite having little experience in commanding large, conventional military forces, his leadership presence and fortitude held the American military together long enough to secure victory at Yorktown and independence for his new nation in 1781. What event launched the beginning of witchcraft accusations in Salem. The fact that he was a genius, and a genius of such multiple gifts that he might easily inspire alarm or jealousy in others, had early taught him the art of using screens and disguises. If Vergennes had any doubts about Franklins grasp of Bourbon aims, they were resolved by the Doctors masterly letter of January 5. It led the French to seek an alliance with the Americans to dethrone Louis XVI. Patrick Henry delivering his famous speech on the Rights of the Colonies, before the . He radiated reassurance like one of his own stoves; the warmth and charm of his personality masked his Merlin powers. The United States, far from asking something for herself, was in reality advancing Bourbon interests and fighting their war. The American was adulated, wined and dined. The new physiocratic school had its followers on both sides of the Atlantic. Floridablancas policies prevailed; he wanted to keep the United States too weak to threaten Spanish possessions in America. At the first hint of this the Doctor tendered his resignation, which to his relief was not accepted. He soon went down to Spain, where Conyngham was taking fresh prizes. Therefore, by the time the American Revolution broke out in 1775, the young French King Louis XVI was eager to use this conflict to . The memoir to Vergennes asked for a French loan of 2,000,000 (which Congress had hopefully requested) . His, Soon Beaumarchaiss coach was tearing down the road to Paris so fast that it overturned and he injured an arm. Franklins household, the unofficial American embassy, was never lonely, even when Benny was sent off to school. The situation at home was alarming. They were sure that the men who were shouldering the executive functions of a nonexistent Administration were in the wrong: Washington, Franklin, Morris, Deane, John Jay, and their hardheaded allies. The historian Henri Doniol, who edited the secret French archives of the period, claimed that Franklin did more than coach the Whigs; that he in fact started an international gunrunning ring by quiet negotiations with certain arms manufacturers and exporters in England, Holland, and France. Though the mail vessel was lightly armed she gave Wickes some trouble, and one of his seamen was killed and a lieutenant wounded. How long could he continue? 1778-1782. 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. England registered the expected sense of outrage; the whole country seethed with the news. He demanded every favor under heaven and even wrote Frederick (who refused to receive him) a preposterous letter, in effect telling him how he could run his kingdom better. He had high connections at the court, which did not at all disapprove his heavy shipments of arms to American merchants, and later he was appointed ambassador to the United States. A clever negotiator could have done much there, for Frederick the Great despised the British and the little German states that sold them mercenaries; he took a lively interest in the progress of the American war and was ready to expand Prussias trade with the Americans, which so far had been clandestine. British firms had also been running munitions to the colonies, and continued to do so, despite orders-in-council. The colonies needed these things . Bermuda, which barely escaped becoming the fourteenth state, had a large merchant colony on the Dutch island, and there sold her American friends the thousand fine cedar sloops she built or refitted for them. France Allied with American Colonies. Moreover, every port in Europe was under the surveillance of the British Admiraltys intelligence service, directed from Rotterdam by Madame Marguerite Wolters, widow of the former chief. E . A.) First off, the debt of the French Indian War was the reason parliament started imposing taxes on the colonist in the first place. His friend Sieur Montaudoin bought a great Dutch ship and named it, Silas Deane was invaluable. The Reprisal was carrying a cargo of indigo worth 3,000 which was intended to pay the early expenses of the Paris mission. Still hopeful that Congress had ships to command, they spoke of raids on Greenland whalers and Hudson Bay fishing fleets, and urged that Navy ships convoy shipping in the Caribbean, since England would now send privateers and heavy units of her fleet there. He gave the Doctor the unsigned letter from Eden, which said that Britain was ready to fight for another ten years rather than grant American independence. This tax was given to the people to help settle the debt of the war, and it started an argument of "taxation without representation". In mortal terror of discovery, Bancroft was always called Edwards or some other cover name in the secret files, and even in private conferences with Wentworth and Lord Stormont. She was starting out as a beggar at the court of Versailles, and she would have to keep on begging until the war was over. 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. Vergennes, who had confidently hoped to receive these protests under very different circumstances, was forced to buy a little more time at the expense of his American friends. The arrest did much to soothe British wrath. America needed French aid of every sort: ships, supplies, loans, to begin with. He was evidently buying arms and setting up a smuggling base in the Low Countries. The foreign alliances of France have a long and complex history spanning more than a millennium. During the American Revolution, the American colonies faced the significant challenge of conducting international diplomacy and seeking the international support it needed to fight against the British. Many of the vessels loading up in French ports with arms for Washington were the private ventures of merchants whom Deane had inspired with confidence. New York: Random House, 2015. In the late 1780s, Jefferson witnessed first-hand the beginnings of the French Revolution and what would become the eventual overthrow of King Louis XVI and the French monarchy.